Mexico Decriminalizes Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin and Other Drugs | Hacker News Reader

Mexico Decriminalizes Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin and Other Drugs

nytimes.com

99 pointsojbyrne51 comments

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I think you're right from a business perspective. The reality though is that "gang bangers" aren't killing people solely for the benefit of their drug smuggling and distribution operations. It's become a cultural thing, the change you're suggesting would require a total cultural change, which wouldn't happen anywhere near the present day.

If you don't believe me, look at the slew of wealthy hip hop/rap artists who get busted with firearms or even for violent crimes. There's no reason for them to do it, but they do it anyway, because it's what they're used to.

Rappers don't feel the forces of competition.

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.

There's little reason to suppose that with legalization the cartels will suddenly stop using bribes, violence and killings to maintain their monopoly.

They would be reduced, not crippled. They would move onto whatever was in demand but still illegal, harder drugs, guns, slaves.

Nobody with millions and millions of dollars at stake goes down without a fight.

Yes but the difference is their supply of money would be greatly diminished which would reduce their capacity for action. There is no reason to think that profits from 'guns and slaves' would increase. If anything they would decrease. Harder drugs? Than Heroin?

> There's little reason to suppose that with legalization the cartels will suddenly stop using bribes, violence and killings to maintain their monopoly.

All of which are illegal, and as such mean extra costs, which would put them at disadvantage with legal competitor.

I'm not sure, but I don't think many of the mafia gangs that ran the alcohol business survived the end of prohibition very well, the alcohol industry has been run as a normal business ever since.

> I'm not sure, but I don't think many of the mafia gangs that ran the alcohol business survived the end of prohibition very well, the alcohol industry has been run as a normal business ever since.

That's true of large-scale criminal enterprise, but small-scale moonshine continued until the cost of raw materials started to approach the cost of the cheapest hard liquor in stores.

Post-prohibition moonshine runs is where/why NASCAR came from.

>They would move onto whatever was in demand but still illegal, harder drugs, guns, slaves.

I hear this argument a lot and it doesn't make any sense. I'm sure individual would try. But you don't get such a big industry just because of unemployed gangsters. The drug market is massive. It exists as a response to demand. A demand for guns slaves etc. doesn't just materialise.

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.

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.

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

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.

Take that, Steve Yegge ;)

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

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

NORML has a rebuttal to this article on their blog:

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

While this is true, gambling and video games aren't physically addictive and I know several people who suffer from addictions to one or the other.

"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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

You are absolutely right, in the first article it says the president vetoed the law the first time in 2006. Nevertheless the law was approved by congress in April of this year, so it appears like the NYTimes article is a few months late.

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.

This is what you're searching for http://dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5106093&fecha=...

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl...

sorry for my english :S

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.

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

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.

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?

Am I missing something?

You are missing 0.015 mg of a sense of humor.

A reference, perhaps?

???

Clue #1: My comment was a joke.

Clue #2: Jokes aren't necessarily funny.

Clue #3: Even if a joke isn't funny, it is still a joke.

Clue #4: Jokes, whatever the degree of funnyness, are not appropriately responded-to by "How did you come about such-and-such a miscalculation? I demand citations." My calculations were deliberately fallacious; see Clue #1.

This website is sometimes like a frickin' Aspergers asylum.

"frickin Aspergers asylum ... " - you had me in splits on that one! Upvoted.

This entertaining little conversation was probably helped along by my being influenced by one of the substances in the title.

It's cool.

Yeah, damn those Aspergers fuckers, trying to assume you were being intelligent instead of a moron who thinks the site is Reddit! I hate people like that, always being nice and using their brains.....

I've never seen such an asshole comment get upmodded so much. It'll all fade anyway.

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.

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

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.

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