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LatinNews Daily - 08 October 2018

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López Obrador to consider legalising medicinal use of opium poppy

Development: On 7 October Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that his incoming government would consider legalising the medicinal use of opium poppy as a way to help reduce the violence fuelled by drug trafficking in Mexico.

Significance: López Obrador’s remarks further suggest that his government could move to radically change drug policies in Mexico as part of its bid to reduce the rampant levels of violence affecting the country. But just like with the suggestion to legalise the recreational use of marijuana, the proposals are controversial not just in Mexico but in the US, where it is widely believed that the legalisation of these narcotics in Mexico would lead to increased levels of drug trafficking across the shared border.

  • López Obrador’s remarks came after Mexico’s outgoing defence minister, General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, said that legalising the production of opium poppy could help to solve Mexico’s current violence problems. Speaking during a 5 October visit to the Guerrero state, the main area of opium poppy production in Mexico, General Cienfuegos said that providing poppy farmers with a legal alternative market could offer a solution to the current illegal drugs trade and help to reduce the violence related to it.
  • General Cienfuegos said that legalising the use of opium poppy for medicinal purposes and for the production of morphine for the pharmaceutical industry for example could help to create a profitable legal market for poppy growers. The minister was clear that any such scheme would require strict control to protect poppy producers and ensure that none of their production is diverted to the illegal drugs trade, but he insisted that such a solution “should be debated”.
  • López Obrador was asked about Cienfuegos’ comments by reporters yesterday. The president-elect said that he had heard Cienfuegos’ remarks and that he was open to analysing such a proposal. “What he proposes is important, there are other proposals…we need to analyse all of them and see what is more convenient”, López Obrador said, adding that reviewing Mexico’s drugs policies “may be needed to address the violence”.

Looking Ahead: The debate over the decriminalisation of opium poppy production could move up the agenda after López Obrador assumes office on 1 December. Yet suggesting that there may already be cross-party political support for wider decriminalisation of the use of narcotics, Mexico’s former president, Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), of the traditional Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) party, has recently recognised that his government “followed the wrong policy in seeking to prohibit the use of narcotics instead of regulating them”. 

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