Mexico Decriminalizes Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin and Other Drugs

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21mexico.html

by ojbyrne • 17 years ago

99 51 17 years ago

nytimes.com

mynameishere4• 17 years ago

0.015 milligrams of LSD.

I'm not an expert, but I believe that's enough to intoxicate the entire world's population of elephants.

pwmanagerdied3• 17 years ago

0.015 mg = 15 μg. According to erowid.org, the threshold dosage for LSD averages around 20 μg. It sounds like this isn't enough to significantly effect a human, let alone elephants. Am I missing something?

mynameishere4• 17 years ago

Am I missing something?

You are missing 0.015 mg of a sense of humor.

nimbix• 17 years ago

Tusko, the elephant from the famous LSD experiment, was injected with 297 milligrams. 0.015 milligrams, on the other hand, is only about 1/10 of the usual dose one would take for a "trip". I suspect this might be a typo since 0.15mg is the about the amount of LSD you can usually expect to find in a single tab of blotter or a drop of liquid LSD.

Timothee• 17 years ago

Chances are that said elephants would be pink. They might also fly. Depends on your trip…

magoghm• 17 years ago

The original draft for the law had higher amounts for all the drugs. For LSD it was 0.025 milligrams (which would be the smallest possible dose). When the law was vetoed, congress reduced the doses and voted again on it. That's the way they came up with that 0.015 milligrams.

asdlfj2sd33• 17 years ago

How will this affect the illegal smuggling operations into the US? Probably not at all. If the US legalizes drugs that would bankrupt the drug cartels in Mexico.

kitcar• 17 years ago

Probably will have no effect. It should give a small boost to Mexico's tourism business though

dkokelley• 17 years ago

I agree. The law is really just reflecting unwritten rules already adhered to there.

I disagree that legalization would bankrupt the cartels. While a good portion of their operations involve non-essential tasks like smuggling, transportation, and security (and bribes, I suppose), the cartels are in the best position to capitalize on legalization. They have the growing and refining operations down on a scale large enough to support the (supposed) increased demand due to legalization. The smuggling portion of their costs will be substituted with marketing and supply chain management costs.

dkasper• 17 years ago

I think you're right, drug cartels will just become legal businesses rather than an illegal ones.

scythe• 17 years ago

Perhaps, but they would no longer have an incentive to kill people as they were going about it. That's really what we'd like to end. If they had a public presence (which they'd need if they were going to compete in a world of legal weed),they wouldn't be able to commit violent crimes. Hell, they probably wouldn't be as bad as most businesses.

mixmax• 17 years ago

The difference is that prices would be driven down. The reason the drug cartels make obscene amounts of money is that they operate a monopoly, which they defend with violence and killings. If the market became legalized other players would enter the market until the profits were driven down to normal levels. And a gram of coke would cost you $1 on the street.

helveticaman• 17 years ago

After prohibition, it was the illegal smugglers that became the new businesses that ran the trade. They were notorious for lobbying against mariguana and other drugs' legalization, but, on the bright side, no longer killed people.

quantumhobbit• 17 years ago

The article states that people will not be arrested for possession, but says nothing about sale. It sounds like this wouldn't allow Amsterdam style "coffee shops" only allow the police to ignore minor infractions as they apparently already do.

huhtenberg• 17 years ago

Shops is the next logical step if they want to tax this activity (and I am sure they do).

nico4• 17 years ago

On this article:

- http://www.tribunalatina.com/es/notices/mexico_despenaliza_l...

It says:

Según la nueva ley, los policías estatales y federales podrán poner trampas a los vendedores mediante la compra de narcóticos y lograr la detención de los responsables de su tráfico.

Which translates to (google translator is good!):

"Under the new law, federal and state police may set traps to sellers through the purchase of drugs and to arrest those responsible for trafficking."

So you are right, no "coffee shops" or anything like it.

tremendo2• 17 years ago

Article in NYT has yesterday's date, but I cannot find any similar note on Mexican news sites.

An immediate consequence could be harder, longer times crossing the border from Mexico back into the U.S. For labor day weekend coming up, it's traditionally a 3 or 4-hr affair to get accross by car, it can only get worse with these news.

nico4• 17 years ago

This law was vetoed by the president of Mexico in 2006 and sent back to congress for review:

- http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/137975.html

Then it was finally approved on April of this year:

- http://www.tribunalatina.com/es/notices/mexico_despenaliza_l...

Edit: corrected description of links. Thanks PieSquared for noting the veto.

PieSquared• 17 years ago

While I'm not fluent in spanish, the gist I get from the article is that it was vetoed and sent back to Congress in 2006; perhaps it has only been passed recently?

tremendo2• 17 years ago

Well again, the news site saying the law was approved, is not from Mexico (TribunaLatina based in Spain). All law updates are published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación http://dof.gob.mx Searching that site for 'droga', or 'marihuana', 'posesión', etc. turnes out nothing relevant. Will have to call the family over there later to get more insight.

nico4• 17 years ago

Sometimes nytimes.com forces me to login to read articles. Only if it's interesting enough (the title at least) I'll bite. For these cases I recommend BugMeNot: http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com

rms• 17 years ago

It should also go away if you delete your NY Times cookies.

collision• 17 years ago

Google the article title and follow that link. You won't get the paywall.

dougp• 17 years ago

It is interesting I noticed that the NY Times seems to be doing some A/B testing around this. I Followed a link and was surprised to be able to read when I clicked on the second page link it told me to login. When my co worker went to this page he had to click past one of those big skip this advertisement pages but the article was all on one page and he didn't have to login.

bilch• 17 years ago

After much bugmenot and cookie hassle I'd recommend the Firefox RefControl add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/953. It lets you set your referrer to http://www.google.com for nytimes.com so NYT thinks you're coming from a Google search and always skips the login page.

JBiserkov• 17 years ago

Take that, Steve Yegge ;)

Context: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...

pavelludiq• 17 years ago

"President Felipe Calderón waited months before approving the law."

chrischen• 17 years ago

They should legalize it all. Then Microsoft go in and drive the drug dealers out of business.

riffic2• 17 years ago

NORML has a rebuttal to this article on their blog:

http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/21/new-york-times-mexico-legal...

mariorz• 17 years ago

While the rebuttal makes good points, it still misses what the law is really about and why it isn't a step in the right direction at all. It's about prosecuting small-time drug dealers. Except now anyone caught exceeding the above limits of personal use is a drug dealer. The limits are so arbitrary they're laughable. I mean 5 grams of pot could keep you high for days or just give you a bad head ache, 40 mg of mdma? How much is that? the kid at the club only sells it by the pill.

TBF, it seems you could make yourself a pretty crazy personal party kit and stay under the legal limit. Too bad the kid caught with just a 10 mg bag of crappy pot will get a really hard time at the police station though.

tetha• 17 years ago

They miss the point that merely the title is misleading.

The correct title should have been 'Mexico legalizes drug addictions', and I consider this a very, very good and important step for a country.

Why? Because there is a certain asymmetry in the drug scene.

On the one hand, you have those guys who are addicted. They buy small amounts of drugs to consume and, well, consume them. Usually, and especially for those harsher drugs, however, this addiction is physical, which -- at least to me -- qualifies as a sickness.

On the other hand, you have the professional drug dealers. They buy large amounts of drugs (much more than one could consume and not die) and sell drugs to other people. I consider this to be a nasty abuse of sick people (one might go as far and sort of compare it with stealing purses from people in wheelchairs, even though that might be a bit harsh).

Thus, mexico legalized a disease, while keeping abuse and organized criminality illegal, which seems like a good, correct step to me.

gojomo• 17 years ago

That's an interesting viewpoint, but for a newspaper to write "Mexico legalizes drug addictions" would have been a strange, non-idiomatic, somewhat-loaded way to say things.

There's already a word appropriate for Mexico's half-step -- decriminalization -- and I'm happy to see that in the HN headline.

riffic2• 17 years ago

NORML seems to only be concerned with marijuana law reform. From a marijuana standpoint, addiction is irrelevant. You can't get physically addicted to marijuana, and recreational users of cannabis are not sick; no more so than recreational non abusers of alcohol.

jsteele• 17 years ago

"They buy large amounts of drugs (much more than one could consume and not die) and sell drugs to other people. I consider this to be a nasty abuse of sick people..."

You just described the whole pharmaceutical industry and its distribution chain.

dylanz• 17 years ago

If 5 grams is 4 joints, I'm either a lightweight, or I've been doing it wrong. I think I'd be able to roll 4 joints in "1" gram.

Mexico Decriminalizes Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin and Other Drugs

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