Mexico expected to enact liberalized drug law

MEXICO CITY — Will Mexican cities become Latin Amsterdams, flooded by drug users seeking penalty-free tokes and toots?

That is the fear, if somewhat overstated, of some Mexican officials, especially in northern border states that serve as a mecca for underage U.S. drinkers.

The Mexican legislature has voted quietly to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and other drugs. Past efforts have proved highly controversial, most recently three years ago, but President Felipe Calderón is expected to sign the bill into law this time.

There has been less protest this time around, in part because there hasn't been much publicity.

Some critics have suggested easing the punishment on drug possession sends the wrong message at a time when Calderón is waging a bloody war on major narcotics traffickers. But Calderón proposed the decriminalization legislation.

His reasoning: It makes sense to distinguish between small-time users and big-time dealers, while re-targeting major crime-fighting resources away from the former and toward the latter and their drug-lord bosses.

"The important thing is ... that consumers are not treated as criminals," said Rafael Ruiz Mena, secretary general of the National Institute of Penal Sciences. "It is a public-health problem, not a penal problem."

The legislation was approved at the height of a swine-flu outbreak in Mexico that dominated the public's — and the world's — attention. Meeting at times behind closed doors — the better to prevent the spread of disease, officials said — the lower and upper houses of Congress passed the bill in late April. It awaits Calderón's signature.

Three years ago, in May 2006, then-President Vicente Fox, from Calderón's conservative National Action Party (PAN), vetoed a similar bill that he initially had supported. Fox backed down only under pressure from Washington, D.C., where the Bush administration complained that decriminalization for even small amounts could increase drug use.

But with less than a month to go before critical midterm elections in which his party is struggling to maintain control of the legislature, Calderón cannot afford to be seen as bowing to the United States, analysts say.

The Obama administration also has not publicly objected to the legislation, even though Michele Leonhart, acting director of the Drug Enforcement Administration said in April that legalization of drugs "would be a failed law-enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico."

So Calderón is expected to sign the bill into law, political observers say. Calderón's office did not comment.

Mexican government officials stress they are talking about decriminalization, not legalization. Until now, courts decided on a case-by-case basis whether and how to punish first-time drug-use offenders. And standard criteria for quantities hadn't existed.

Mexico is woefully underequipped to handle a booming drug-abuse problem.

The country for decades was a transit point for cocaine, marijuana and other drugs headed to the United States. But domestic consumption has soared more recently. A 2007 government study found the number of "addicts" in Mexico doubled in the previous five years.

Drug abuse has worsened, in part, because some of the big cartels pay their people with cocaine, marijuana or other such substances.

Clinics and other institutions that specialize in treatment and prevention have not kept up with the trend. The government is building 310 centers to improve care, but experts say that is not enough.

The legislation has received criticism from religious leaders and several officials of northern border states, who fear that so-called "drug tourists" will begin flocking to towns and cities already besieged by violence.

Mary Ellen Hernandez, director of the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition in El Paso, Texas, across the border from the blood-soaked Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, said she worried decriminalization would lure Americans into a drug world they aren't prepared for and increase violence on both sides of the border.

"Already, the drugs that don't come over into the U.S. are being handed out by dealers to younger and younger children [in Mexico], 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds, hooking them," said Hernandez, whose agency specializes in drug prevention. "And then [the youths] steal to feed the habit."

Except for a relatively few voices, however, there has been minimal protest over the bill, and some praise.

Luciano Pascoe, vice president of the small left-wing Social Democratic Party (PSD), said the legislation was a positive "first step" that helped "shatter the stigma that consumers are criminals."