MEXICO: Felipe Calderon criticizes California's marijuana legalization measure
Mexican President Felipe Calderon strongly criticized Proposition 19, the California ballot measure that would legalize small amounts of marijuana, saying it reflects softening attitudes toward drug consumption in the U.S. that are undercutting efforts to control organized crime groups in Mexico.
"The growing acceptance by the American public of marijuana as a medicinal drug is absurd," Calderon said, and he expressed disappointment that the U.S. government hasn't done more to oppose the measure.
"I think they have very little moral authority to condemn a Mexican farmer who for hunger is planting marijuana to sustain the insatiable North American market for drugs," Calderon said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
California's Proposition 19 could have enormous implications for Mexico, and has triggered sharp debates between advocates who say passage could help stop the drug war and critics who are worried that growing demand would empower organized crime groups.
Calderon said loosening drug consumption laws would result in "serious consequences for American and Mexican society."
"Drugs kill in production. Drugs kill in distribution, as is the case in the violence in Mexico, and drugs kill in consumption," Calderon said.
-- Richard Marosi in Tijuana
Calderon has tried and failed to defeat the drug cartels with military force. The drug war is not working. We’ve given it a fair chance. It's time to take a different approach.
The drug war, mostly about cannabis, has been waged with great fervor since Nixon started it in 1971.
The US has spent $1 trillion dollars and arrested 37 million people to fight the drug war. The Mexican government has thrown their armed forces into a full-scale fight for the US drug war, all without success.
The drug war cannot be won without legalizing cannabis. The only thing you get from even more violent police action is worse collateral damage that causes daily tragedies and wrongful deaths.
The collateral damage inflicted on US and Mexican citizens by the US drug war causes more harm than the drug use and is unjustified.
Posted by: wayneflo | October 08, 2010 at 05:07 PM
It would be such a shame if prop 19 passed and the revenues formerly flowing to Mexico as a result of the industries involved in circumventing prohibition
were to cease.
I'm all broken up that monies flowing to Mexico might remain in our local economies.
Posted by: DrClue | October 08, 2010 at 03:59 PM
It's funny that Calderon would say that, in view of the fact that Mexico recently decriminalized possession of small amounts of ALL drugs, including meth and heroin. Why is that OK for Mexico and not for us? We're only asking for our Cannabis back, not the other drugs.
Bring back Over the Counter Cannabis - YES on Prop. 19!
Posted by: Kevin | October 08, 2010 at 03:15 PM
Oh sure Mr. Calderon... It's okay for YOU to change the drug laws in YOUR country to say that ANY drugs (in small quantities) INCLUDING cocaine, heroin and others, won't get you arrested (unless you are a tourist/American that is)...
The REAL reason he doesn't want it passed is because the money made from major pot growth and sales is sent to MEXICO where it gets spent... We've all seen the pictures of the pallets of money these kingpins have down there...
Legalizing it in the USA (after Calif.) would mean that it would be legal to GROW it and therefore no need to buy MEXICAN pot (or CA pot grown by illegals)... Legalizing it would clear out the courts of about 80 percent of all drug cases and clear out the jails of thousands of inmates costing taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars!
Or is he worried that California pot growers will start sending pot SOUTH??
Posted by: AlanM | October 08, 2010 at 03:00 PM
'"Drugs kill in production. Drugs kill in distribution, as is the case in the violence in Mexico, and drugs kill in consumption," Calderon said.'
.
Nonsense! Drugs kill in production and distribution only because they're illegal and carry artificially inflated prices because of it. In 5,000 years of the recorded history of its use, marijuana has never killed a single person from its consumption.
.
Legalizing marijuana in California will reduce the demand for cross-border smuggled marijuana. As California does not control the international border, its legalization of marijuana would not make it any easier to smuggle.
Posted by: Buzzby | October 08, 2010 at 02:42 PM
This sounds very convoluted to me. I thought Mexico already legalized Heroin, Cocaine and etc? American pharmacies sell a broad variety of narcotics to the afflicted. There is a historical record of medicinal use of hemp stretching back across cultures to prehistoric times. Criminalization has not resolved the recreational cannibus issue and drug laws in the states have functioned as de facto jim crowe laws. so perhaps some new initiatives are worth exploring.
If I was cynical I might imagine that Calderon is concerned about Mexican market share and falling prices of what has been a cash crop for peasants.
Posted by: mw | October 08, 2010 at 02:20 PM
Now why would Calderon say that? Is he trying to protect a huge source of income for his country at the expense of the U.S.?
Just as the cartels can't compete against legal alcohol sales, they also can't compete against legal marijuana sales. The after-tax marijuana prices able to be set by legal stores will be too low for the cartels to match. Gone will be the bulk of their funding, gone will be the violence they use to protect it.
This is the first opportunity in forty years to bankrupt the cartels and Calderon *opposes* it?!! Very suspicious.
Posted by: Jillian Galloway | October 08, 2010 at 01:48 PM
What a miss-guided man that president is. He doesn't realize that by legalizing marijuana it california would no longer have to rely on mexican gangs as a source for its decriminalized marijuana.Its prohibition that causes that violence in mexico. The only reason there is killing involved in the production and distribution of marijuana is because its illegal, its out of government control and its unregulated. To say that the consumption of marijuana kills is completely false, there has never been a documented death caused by mary jane.
Posted by: KFF | October 08, 2010 at 01:19 PM
Would this hypocrite of a mexican president just shut his trap? Marijuana has been legalized or "de-criminalized" in mexico last year, along with heroin, cocain, meth...you name it. The move has caused substantial drug tourism to his country. Here he goes again criticizing Americans in the same hypocrisy about criticizing SB1070 in Arizona, where their wall and crackdown of Nicaraguans in the souther border have been brutal. I must say I admire the man about his business accumen. If we legalize pot in CA or the rest of the US, then there's less revenue for them to line the pockets of his goons. Viva mejico! atzlan forever!
Posted by: kylito | October 08, 2010 at 01:18 PM
Wow. That made very little sense.
Posted by: Andy | October 08, 2010 at 01:14 PM
Frankly I find it good news that an idiot who has totally screwed his country and driven it to the brink of civil war finds Prop 19 a bad idea. Some people I don't want on my side, and Mr. Calderon is near the top of the list.
Posted by: Duncan20903 | October 08, 2010 at 12:17 PM