MEXICO CITY — Could 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 American drinkers.
The Mexican legislature has voted quietly to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of pot, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs, an effort that in the past has proved highly controversial.
There has been less protest this time around, in part because there hasn’t been much publicity.
Some critics have suggested that easing the punishment on drug possession sends the wrong message at a time when President Felipe Calderon is waging a bloody war on major narcotics traffickers. The battle between law enforcement authorities and drug suspects has claimed more than 11,000 lives in the past 2.5 years.
But it was Calderon himself who 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 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 on the last days of April. It awaits Calderon’s signature.
The bill says users caught with small amounts — five grams of marijuana, 500 milligrams of cocaine — clearly intended for “personal and immediate use” will not be criminally prosecuted. They will be told of available clinics and encouraged to enter a rehabilitation program.
As many as 40 milligrams of methamphetamine, a synthetic and especially harmful drug, are permitted, as are as many as 50 milligrams of heroin.
In May of 2006, then-President Vicente Fox, from Calderon’s right-wing party, vetoed a similar bill Congress had approved and that he initially supported. He backed down only under pressure from Washington, D.C., where the Bush administration complained decriminalization for even small amounts could increase drug use.
Political implications
But with less than a month to go before critical mid-term elections in which his party is struggling to maintain control of Congress, Calderon cannot afford to be seen as bowing to the U.S., analysts say. Already under intense criticism for the drug-related violence terrifying parts of the country, Calderon needs to maintain good relations with Congress, where much of the opposition voted in favor of the decriminalization initiative. He can’t suddenly go back on his own bill.
And so, political observers say, he probably will sign it into law. Calderon’s office did not comment for this story.
So far, the U.S. government has not publicly objected to the bill. Michele Leonhart, acting director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, however, said in April that legalization of drugs “would be a failed law enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico.”
Mexican government officials stress they are not talking about legalization, but decriminalization. Until now, courts decided on a case-by-case basis whether and how to punish first-time offenders. And standard criteria for quantities hadn’t existed.
Mexico is woefully underequipped to handle a booming drug-abuse problem. Recently, domestic consumption has soared. A 2007 study by the government found the number of “addicts” doubled in the previous five years.
Critics cite violence
The decriminalization legislation has received criticism from several officials of northern border states, who fear so-called “drug tourists” will flock to towns and cities already besieged by violence.
“Allowing the carrying of certain amounts of drugs will create more consumers,” said Oscar Villalobos Chavez, social development secretary for the State of Chihuahua, which borders Texas.
Mary Ellen Hernandez, director of the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition in El Paso, across the border from blood-soaked Juarez, 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.”
Seal of the Texas DPS
BROWNSVILLE, Texas – A state trooper has been charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine after police said they saw him accept two suitcases full of the drug in a parking lot.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement that Department of Public Safety Trooper Jesus Rafael Larrazolo, 35, made his first appearance in federal court Monday. DPS spokeswoman Lisa Block said Larrazolo resigned shortly after his arrest Friday.
Brownsville police and agents from the FBI’s Special Investigations Unit saw Larrazolo pull into a Best Buy parking lot next to another vehicle, then take two suitcases from it. Larrazolo was dressed in street clothes, but identified himself as a trooper when police approached. He was carrying a gun.
There were 26 kilograms of cocaine in the suitcases. According to court records, Larrazolo told a Texas Ranger after his arrest that he had been forced by threats to pick up the drugs.
Block said Larrazolo joined the department in October 2002 and was working as a commercial vehicle enforcement officer in Cameron County. The FBI is investigating the case.
It was not immediately clear from court records if Larrazolo had an attorney.
Border Patrol agents seized more than 1,400 pounds of marijuana over the weekend in four separate busts, according to Laredo Sector Border Patrol
The most recent seizure occurred Monday at Texas 16 traffic checkpoint.
Hebbronville agents observed a white pickup truck heading northbound make an abrupt U-turn prior to reaching the checkpoint.
Agents observed the driver of the vehicle pull onto the south side of the road and exit the vehicle.
The driver quickly jumped over a barbed wire fence and fled into the brush.
Agents saw several bundles of marijuana wrapped in cellophane in plain view inside the passenger seat and in the bed of the pickup truck.
One hundred individually wrapped bundles of marijuana, weighing 620.7 pounds and valued at $496,560, were recovered from the truck.
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McALLEN -(The Monitor) The former owner of an Edinburg. Texas trucking business was sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday for his role in a drug smuggling and money laundering ring.
A federal jury in Houston found Ricardo Garcia Heredia, 44, of McAllen, guilty in May of multiple counts of conspiracy and drug possession.
Prosecutors allege Garcia used his business – Edinburg-based Earth Transportation – as a front to recruit drivers for cocaine shipments that passed through the Rio Grande Valley on their way to Chicago.
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Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents made several drug seizures in the past few days, netting an estimated $5.6 million worth of illegal drugs.The latest case occurred Monday morning when agents working at the Interstate 35 checkpoint inspected the driver of a 2000 Chevrolet Monte Carlo after a service canine alerted toward the car.
Agents found 24 cellophane-wrapped bundles hidden behind the interior side panels near the back seat.
Twenty-three of the bundles contained methamphetamines weighing 52.4 pounds with an estimated value of $1.6 million.
The last bundle contained 2.4 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $76,800.
The drugs, the driver and the vehicle were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Agents working at the I-35 checkpoint made another seizure Sunday.
In that case, agents were conducting an immigration inspection on the driver of 1995 GMC Suburban when a Border Patrol canine alerted toward the rear of the vehicle.
The vehicle was referred for secondary inspection. Agents found 30 cellophane-wrapped bundles inside the gas tank containing about 75 pounds of cocaine with an estimated value of $2.4 million.
The drugs, the driver and the vehicle were turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
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NUEVO LAREDO (MTNS) Almost 3 tons of marijuana was seized Monday outside the town of Camargo by units of the First Motorized Calvary, on routine patroi.
Military units discovered two SUV’s abandoned next to a canal on a ranch close to town and upon investigation, found they contained 276 packages of marijuana wieghing 2,852 kilograms
.It appeared the vehicles and their contents had been abandoned and no arrests were made. The drugs and vehicles were truned over to the AFI for further investigation.
To date, as part of operations on the border to combat narcotics, the First Motorized Calvary stationed in Nuevo Laredo have seized more than 14 tons of marijuana and 51 kilos of cocaine.
Cd Camargo is approximately 60 miles south of Nuevo Laredo and reputedly a stronghold of the Zeta’s, enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel.
Nuevo Laredo. – More than 4 tons of marijuana in addition to other drugs and pirated CD’s,were destroyed yesterday by personnel of the Army in the presence of federal, state and municipal authorities.
Operativo Permanente, has resulted in the seizure of enormous amounts of narcotics in Nuevo Laredo, Nuevo Guerrero, Cd. Mier, Miguel Alemán, Díaz Ordaz y Camargo, according to spokesmen from the First Motorized Cavalry regiment, headquartered in Nuevo Laredo.
The contraband was turned over to the Military and State and local authorities by the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), after being used as evidence in administrative and legal proceedings
The contraband was incinerated at Cuarentenaria Station, located on the Ribereña Highway, between Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa.
The destruction of the goodies was overseen by members of the local Subdelegation of the PGR, of the Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI), the Army, the Preventive Federal Police (PFP) and the Municipal Police.
Among the items destroyed were various chemicals from a clandestine laboratory in the Municipality of Miguel Aleman that were part of a meth lab.
Also destroyed were more than 50,000 pirated CD’s seized in raids around the city.
This is more evidence of President Calderon’s ongoing effort to fight organized crime and corruption in Mexico.
Mexico deserves and needs the $1.4 billion dollar aid package recently approved by Congress to fight the cartels. Mexico does not need US interference or boots on the ground however. Calderon is quite capable of turning this country around.
Calderon vows to press war on cartels despite the body count
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s security forces have been swept into the eye of the storm since President Felipe Calderon decided to get tough on the country’s drug-smuggling gangs.
Once-untouchable federal officials have been assassinated in the streets. Out-gunned soldiers and police have battled gangsters armed with grenades and bazookas. Local police chiefs have resigned, a few fleeing to the United States for safety. Hundreds of police and soldiers have been sent early to their graves.
Amid a fierce counteroffensive by the drug cartels, the question becomes: How long can, or will, Mexico’s thin police line hold?
Calderon and his top assistants say the security forces are up to the task. The gunfights and killings, including the assassinations this month of four top police officials, are signs of success rather than defeat, they say.
“This reaction is precisely a desperate act to weaken the federal police,” Calderon said, defending his policies and trying to rally the public to support them. “The effectiveness of a new, cleaned-up police force was hitting the criminals. We’re going to continue this frontal attack.”
But Bush administration officials, pushing Congress to approve a $1.4 billion, three-year package of equipment and training for Mexico’s security forces, warn that Calderon’s campaign will founder without the aid.
Analysts on both sides of the border worry that Mexico’s underequipped and poorly trained police forces — with long histories of ineffectiveness and corruption — will come up short.
“There comes a moment when the imbalance in resources reverses the relationship between government and cartels,” George Friedman, founder of Strategic Forecasting, an Austin political risk firm, wrote in a report on Mexico’s drug war this week.
“Government officials, seeing the futility of resistance, effectively become tools of the cartels.”
A relatively new twist
Other analysts point out that many Mexican policemen and officials have long been at the cartels’ service. They argue that much of today’s sustained violence against police — a relatively new twist in the country’s decades-long dance with the drug trade — arises from a fragmentation of a protection system that existed for decades.
Hundreds of dedicated police and soldiers have been killed over the years in the line of duty. But for much of the past, authorities and gangsters preferred their relationships to be defined by business rather than bloodshed.
Officials were killed if they welched on a deal with the criminals. They rarely were targeted for simply doing their jobs.
“They didn’t have to kill the police before, because the agreements were clear, and the limits were well defined,” said Ernesto Lopez Portillo, president of a Mexico City think tank that studies police and public security.
That has changed since the presidential elections of 2000 ended seven decades of one-party rule and shook the protection that it afforded the country’s gangsters, Lopez Portillo said.
Political power, and the cover it can provide drug traffickers, has splintered among the federal, state and local governments.
At the same time, a reorganization of the federal security forces, including the replacement of the notoriously corrupt Federal Judicial Police with a quasi-military force, has made enforcement more effective. Narcotics use has ballooned in Mexico, while smuggling organizations grew more powerful and more competitive with one another.
Now, each cartel has its own protection system, often based on the guns of local and state police. Many crime bosses also employ gunmen who until recently were active-duty soldiers.
Gangs’ firepower and vendettas have multiplied. Police have been caught in the crossfire. Chaos reigns.
“All the old alliances have broken down,” said Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami political scientist who specializes in the Latin American drug trade. “And they are striking back against cops, many of whom are dirty. The whole process has been thrown into flux.”
Calderon has ordered nearly 30,000 soldiers and quasi-military police into the fight against the cartels. The offensive has proved ineffective in stopping the trafficking of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin to American consumers. But more than 3,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in the 18 months since Calderon became president.
The dead include about 300 federal, state and local police. Some have been killed by rivals of the gangsters who employed them. Many others were slain doing their jobs.
“There have been, obviously, very lamentable losses on our side,” Calderon told reporters this week. “But fortunately Mexico has many patriots like them.”
Calderon insists he is determined to press the crackdown, regardless of the body count. He has asked Congress for a five-fold increase in the budget of the federal police, to be used in large part to build new regional bases across the country.
“We will continue building a better federal police, which this country has severely needed,” Calderon said. “We’re not going to add to the abandonment, the cowardice or the complicity that allowed Mexico to arrive at this situation.”
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