Development: On 30 October, Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s designated deputy minister for human rights and migration, Alejandro Encinas, said that the incoming government would adopt a “new paradigm” with respect to drugs regulation.
Significance: The re-definition of a drug policy is an integral part of López Obrador’s public security agenda, and members of his future government and López Obrador himself have indicated that they would be favourable to legalising marijuana for recreational use, and opium poppy for medicinal use, as a way of combatting the violence that is fuelled by drug trafficking in the country.
- Encinas, a well-established politician who joined López Obrador’s Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) this year, was speaking yesterday at the opening session of the VII Latin American conference and II Mexican conference on drug policy. He criticised Mexico’s current prohibitionist policies, saying that that they had emphatically failed and brought about serious consequences for the country.
- According to Encinas, the last twelve years of the 'war on drugs' have cost the lives of 250,000 people and caused the disappearance of 38,000 and the displacement of 250,000 Mexicans, while illegal drug production and consumption have increased, along with violence and insecurity.
- The solutions Encinas proposes are an end to the criminalisation of illgal drugs consumption, and regulation instead of prohibition, with the state establishing restrictions and regulating “in a firm manner the production, distribution, consumption [of drugs] and attention” to drug users.
- The incumbent deputy minister for human rights in the foreign ministry, Miguel Ruiz Cabañas, also in attendance, noted that not all drugs should be regulated in the same way. Ana Pecova, director of local NGO and conference co-organiser Equis Justicia para las Mujeres, said that the “meaningless war based on prohibition” had promoted the militarisation of the country and changed the dynamics of violence, notably of violence against women.
Looking Ahead: More precise information on López Obrador’s drug policies is expected to be given as part of his national security strategy, which will have been shaped by the public consultative forums for peace and national reconciliation that Morena has been organising across the country since August. Initially due to be presented last week, López Obrador has said that the final details of the strategy are still being ironed out and that he will announce a date for its presentation today (31 October).
