Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted on August 18, 2008.
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2008 > August > 18
Monday, August 18, 2008
PRD: Legalize it
According to a front page story in this morning’s El Universal newspaper, PRD officials have directed their legislators to begin discussion on a legalization reform in the Mexican Congress.
The Televisa network quoted Javier Gonzalez Garza, the PRD coordinator in the lower house of Congress, as saying the drug violence requires out-of-the-box thinking. “We can’t continue thinking that we are going to combat the problem of drug trafficking without more radical measures, and one of them has to be the legalization of drugs in the United States,” the network’s website quoted Gonzalez as saying. “After the United States will we continue with Mexico? Of course, or both at the same time…This war, the way it is outlined, is going to be lost, we’re all going to lose, it makes no sense and there need to be some changes.”
The PRD came within a whisker of capturing the presidency in 2006, but since has seen its support erode sharply, thanks in part to bitter internal divisions. The party is expected to finish a distant third in mid-term elections next year.
The ruling PAN party has favored a military approach to the nation’s drug cartels and President Felipe Calderon has sent some 25,000 federal troops to battle them along the border and in various states. Many experts say the spike in violence is a result of this confrontation, which they say has disrupted the cartels’ operations.
In 2006, Mexico scuttled a measure to legalize small amounts of drug possession after outcry from the United States. And recently approved $1.4 billion aid package dubbed the Merida Initiative would sure be in danger if Mexico headed down the road of legalization.