Patterico's Pontifications

8/22/2009

Mexico Decriminalizes Personal-Use Drugs

Filed under: Crime,International — DRJ @ 12:26 am



[Guest post by DRJ]

Mexico has decriminalized personal use of small amounts of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and other drugs:

“Anyone caught with drug amounts under the new personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory.

The maximum amount of marijuana for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams—the equivalent of about four joints. The limit is a half gram for cocaine, the equivalent of about 4 “lines.” For other drugs, the limits are 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams for LSD.”

Decriminalization will reportedly enable the government to focus on large-scale drug traffickers and decrease abuses in the enforcement of drug crimes.

I don’t know if this is a good or a bad idea but it seems like it would be hard to legalize one-half of a drug transaction and criminalize the other half, although it’s probably true law enforcement can’t abuse laws that don’t exist.

— DRJ

19 Responses to “Mexico Decriminalizes Personal-Use Drugs”

  1. All I could think of is all those kids on spring break now feeling safer to experiment with drugs as if the alcohol and everything else wasn’t worrisome enough

    EricPWJohnson (fc03bb)

  2. Hmmm, doesn’t say how the new law affects foreign nationals…

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  3. If the stuff is now legal, why would anyone care about treatment? And if you never get cited for drug possession, how could anyone ever be “caught” a third time?

    The inquiring Dana (474dfc)

  4. Dollars to donuts those kids will use about the same amount of drugs if they went to Florida. It’s really not hard to get weed or coke at spring break. The key is to raise your kids so that they don’t want to do drugs.

    time123 (238129)

  5. I would worry about LSD, heroin and Meth.

    arch (6ebeba)

  6. I agree about the kids. This will probably drive the price down, making it more tempting to “bring back a little”.
    I’m not a fan of imprisonment for users. Really hefty fines (1000 dollars or more for first offense and rising with subsequent offenses) are a better deterrent in my opinion.
    I can say from first hand experience that marijuana is harmful to one’s good mental judgment, even when not high. Took me a year or two to feel like I was at 100% again.

    voiceofreason2 (cfab95)

  7. Not enough to encourage a mass migration of libertarians to Mexico. They f*cked up again.

    daleyrocks (718861)

  8. I wonder if they will extend this same decriminalization to the possession, in small quantities, of ammunition for “military arms”?
    People have been thrown into jail for possession of just one, 12-gauge shotgun shell.

    AD - RtR/OS! (48b300)

  9. La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha,
    Ya no puede caminar.
    Porque no tiene, porque le falta,
    Marijuana que fumar.

    the culturally-sensitive nk (4ee048)

  10. Comment by daleyrocks — 8/22/2009 @ 7:58 am

    Hey, I’ll defend the Mexicans on this one.
    They get their home-grown “disidents” to voluntarily expat themselves to El-Norte, why would they want to encourage the movement of Gringo-Crazies into Mexico?
    They’re just not that stupid!

    AD - RtR/OS! (48b300)

  11. “There’s just one thing left to do!”
    “…Tijuana roadtrip!”

    Rich Fader (295108)

  12. Is the kid buying his own ticket to Mexico? I wouldn’t fund a kid’s spring break trip to anywhere, unless it was with family.

    SarahW (692fc6)

  13. I wonder how many people will be running the border…in the other direction.

    SallyJJ (a1325d)

  14. Some people have claimed that one way to decrease the huge amounts of crime and corruption in Mexico is to decriminalize the use of narcotics. I’ve always felt that a rather naive assumption. That’s because I suspect much, if not all, the crime and corruption in a nation like Mexico exists in spite of, and not because of, laws against drugs.

    There are parts of LA where drugs have been widely available, even though such substances are illegal in general. But the neighborhoods in question might just as well have been located in Amsterdam or, now, Mexico. In light of that, have those communities been any less dangerous and crime-filled through the years? No.

    Mark (411533)

  15. I don’t see it as any more odd to criminalize one-half of this transaction than it is to criminalize one-half of statutory rape. Aren’t drug laws *supposed* to protect the users from the pushers?

    Xrlq (b32f32)

  16. […] DRJ at Patterico’s Pontifications: I don’t know if this is a good or a bad idea but it seems like it would be hard to legalize one-half of a drug transaction and criminalize the other half, although it’s probably true law enforcement can’t abuse laws that don’t exist. […]

    Harold And Kumar Are Obviously Headed To Mexico « Around The Sphere (44368e)

  17. The way I understand it, this was done because of corrupt police officers either planting small amounts of drugs on people of finding small amounts and using that to extort bribes to avoid prosecution. The government decriminalized small amounts in order to take this avenue of corruption away from the police. It just became a little less lucrative for cops on the take in Mexico.

    crosspatch (6adcc9)

  18. The government decriminalized small amounts in order to take this avenue of corruption away from the police. It just became a little less lucrative for cops on the take in Mexico.

    One would hope. But it’s likely they will start planting more, or other items (like ammunition, as AD – RtR mentioned above).

    Interesting that treatment on the third offense is “mandatory”. One wonders how that will work.

    Anyway, this seems more like a budget-saving and corruption-control measure than the kind of blue-sky reimagining of drug laws that libertarians always talk about. But I bet Reason magazine will start sponsoring Mexican getaways. If we’re lucky, they’ll stay down there. 😉

    Mars vs Hollywood (f062b9)

  19. There are some bills would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime carrying a mandatory day in jail to a civil infraction imposing a $100 penalty payable by mail. The bill was voted out of committee with a bipartisan “do pass” recommendation and will be considered by legislators in 2010.

    James Crosson  (8aa9e5)


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