Mexico’s new government is set to explore the possibility of legalizing drugs, as part of a policy to tackle the violent crime that grips the nation, incoming Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero said on Tuesday July 17.
Sanchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court judge, made the remark at a university seminar on the nation’s cartel-fueled violence. Mexico’s drug traffickers are the biggest suppliers of cocaine, heroin and other narcotics to the US.
“On the subject of decriminalizing drugs, Andres Manuel told me, and I quote: ‘Carte blanche. Whatever is necessary to restore peace in this country. Let’s open up the debate,'” Sanchez Cordero said.
Demonstrators hold up marijuana as they take part in a rally for the legalization of marijuana in Mexico City, Mexico, May 7, 2016. REUTERS/Henry Romero
Since Mexico deployed its army to fight drug trafficking in 2006, the country has been engulfed in a wave of violence that has seen more than 200,000 murders. The incoming interior minister said that this militarization policy was in violation of the constitutional statute that public safety should be in the responsibility of civilian authorities.
“What no one can deny with hard data is that, at least in the past 10 years, the Mexican government has been incapable of stopping violence and responding to it with institutional mechanisms,” Sanchez Cordero said, in a clear rebuke to previous administrations.
(SMT Newsroom with information from EFE, AFP)
