Drug decriminalization in Mexico has failed to destroy society as promised

Personal possession of most of the drugs you've ever heard of was decriminalized in Mexico around a year ago.  Somehow, this landmark change in drug policy wasn't much discussed in US media.  So far, the result of this has been that the Mexican government has more money to spend going after organized criminals.  This increase in meaningful drug war activity may be why it's been a fairly violent year in Mexico, which you might have heard about.  It's not actually the most drug violence in Mexico in recent memory, though, which is also something that isn't put into context in the US media treatments of Mexican drug violence I've read lately.  I thought that Mexico had a record number of murders this year, because they have had a lot.  But it turns out the recent figures aren't even close to the kind of killing during the'80s.

In latin America, it has become a commonly held belief that the drug war is impossible for anti-drug elements to win.  The pro-drug team has the anti-drug team outclassed in terms of intelligence networks, weaponry, and possibly even public sentiment.  They have way more money to throw at the problem, and are indeed the means of financial livelihood for a number of people who would not otherwise be able to feed their families.*

Generally, personal drug possession decriminalization has almost no effect on drug use, supply, or demand.  I think this is an argument for drug decriminalization, personally.  I suppose it would be nice if legal possession reduced one of those things, but it doesn't.  If it made use more common, that would be an argument against decriminalization in some people's books, since it would mean that there would be more criminal behavior in trafficking and dealing to keep up with demand.  Since it has no effect except to put drug users in jail, we should stop doing it.  After all, it's expensive and it doesn't do anything.  

This is why Latin American countries are decriminalizing personal drug use, by the way.  They don't care any more than our government whether or not drugs or drug policies are harmful to people.  It's just that keeping so many people in prison is expensive.  So they've decided to make the use of drugs legal... sort of.

Mexico has a peculiar set of legal limits of each drug.  Peruse the follow list and tell me if anything jumps out at you.

Drug	Quantity
Opium (raw, smokable)	5	gm
Heroin	25	mg
Marijuana	5	gm
Cocaine	500	mg
LSD	0.015	mg
MDA	200	mg
MDMA (ecstacy)	200	mg
Mescaline	1	gm
Peyote	1	kg
Psilocybin (concentrate, pure active ingredient)	100	mg
Hallucinogenic mushrooms (raw, off the farm)	250	mg
Amphetamines	100	mg
Dexamphetamine	40	mg
Phencyclidine (PCP)	7	mg
Methamphetamines	200	mg
Nalbuphine (synthetic opiate)	10	mg

 Does it strike you as at all odd that A person can carry a kilogram of peyote for personal use, but only 15 micrograms of LSD?  In case you aren't familiar, 150 micrograms is generally considered to be a dose of LSD.  Below 20 mics, no one would even notice they'd taken a drug. 
Peyote gets you high because it contains Mescaline.  The effective dose for Mescaline, which has more in common with LSD than the other drugs on this list, is around 250 milligrams.  a kilogram of dried peyote has about 36 grams of mescaline in it.  That would be enough peyote to make 144 people hallucinate and gibber for the rest of the day.  Then again, a person can only carry up to one gram of pure mescaline (the same drug as peyote, you understand)  which is to say, about a sugar cube's worth, but peculiarly, the dried plant is legal in volumes that would be a significant bulge in your knapsack. 

The psilocybin/mushrooms limits have the opposite problem.  A 1/4 gram of dried psilocybin mushroom is well below the psychoactive threshold.  A common dosage would be about 2 grams.  But 2 grams of dried mushroom would contain about 10mg of psilocybin, the active chemical.  If you just carry the chemical itself, you can have 10 times that much.  That strikes me as a strange rule.

The law says in effect that you can have enough fresh peyote for 100 people, or less mescaline than you can use yourself, and you can have too little mushroom to get high, but enough psylocybin for ten people. Ah well, hey, okay, whatever.  It doesn't totally make sense, but it's a start.  I assume that the folks who came up with this policy were not familiar with these particular drugs.  They made some strange choices.  It beats sending people to prison for carrying a few joints, anyway.

Anyhow, I made up the map you see here that indicates the legal status of drug use in various Latin American countries.  I couldn't find any reliable info for Suriname or French Guiana, but I did find this peculiar fact the other day.  Residents of Suriname made a liqueur out of avocados.  This drink had a thick texture like a pudding, but packed around the same alcohol content by volume as wine.  These folks couldn't get avocados anymore when they moved to the Netherlands, so they used custard to mimic the texture instead.  This delightful relative of eggnog is called advocaat.  

Back to the map, Uruguay gets special mention because drugs haven't ever been illegal there.  The Brazilian government has recently decided that drug users need counseling rather than jail time, so they're heading in the right direction. 

As you can see, Latin America is leading the world in drug legalization.  I think it's probably a good sign.  It may be a sign of what's to come, too.  Ain't the future grand?


* I could tell you about it, or you could watch movies on the drug war and see these people explain it themselves, so I leave it to you if you're inclined.  I highly recommend a documentary called Drug Wars: the Rise and Fall of the Worlds Largest Drug Cartels.  This movie is a 4-part series, and is badly edited, but extremely informative.  It's pretty unbiased, and will make you think about this stuff in different ways.  You can stream it on Netflix or buy it at Amazon.  It really is a great survey of drug use worldwide.