FW: LAR/US: US Marijuana Reform: Impact in Latin America?

InSightCrime
07 November, 2014

US Marijuana Reform: Impact in Latin America?
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/marijuana-reform-us-impact-latin-a
merica-stand

Written by Elyssa Pachico, David Gagne and Kyra Gurney

Drug Policy Tools and Data

Medical marijuana for sale in Oregon.

Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. have become the latest places in the US
to legalize marijuana, providing another push towards drug policy reform in
the hemisphere and prompting questions over what these changes could mean
for organized crime in Latin America.

The panel of high-profile political figures who make up the Global
Commission on Drug Policy said earlier this year that the global taboo
around discussing drug policy reform has been "broken." The election results
in the US -- including California, where voters approved an initiative that
reduces penalties for drug crimes -- could prompt more prominent figures
across Latin America to speak out on alternative ways to approach the drug
issue.

Here are three ways that these latest reforms in the US could impact its
neighbors further South:

1. It makes it harder for the US to push for a more traditional approach to
the so-called "drug war." William Brownfield, assistant secretary of state
for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said as much in a
press conference some weeks ago at the United Nations. "How could I, a
representative of the government of the United States of America, be
intolerant of a government that permits any experimentation with
legalization of marijuana if two of the 50 states of the United States of
America have chosen to walk down that road?" he said at the time.

In an e-mail to InSight Crime, Institute for Policy Studies Fellow Sanho
Tree noted that with more states passing US drug reform laws, foreign
governments no longer see a "strong domestic consensus" when it comes to
drug policy.

"Since our own citizens are coming out against the drug war on a
transpartisan basis, it erodes the legitimacy of our drug war bureaucracy
overseas," he wrote.

John Walsh, the Senior Associate for Drug Policy at the Washington Office on
Latin America, echoed Tree's remarks.

"The US is no longer in the position it once was as the international drug
policeman," he said. "If the US tries to denounce other countries for trying
to legalize marijuana, their leaders can easily accuse the US of hypocrisy."

2. Legal marijuana in the US could hit Mexico criminal groups hard and
prompt them to rely more on heroin or methamphetamine exports. Crime analyst
Alejandro Hope has previously hypothesized how a chain of marijuana reform
in US could devastate Mexican suppliers and prompt a new model of regulation
in Mexico. However, the issue of harder drugs -- methamphetamine, heroin,
cocaine -- would remain.

Alejandro Madrazo, a law professor and drug policy expert at Mexican
research center CIDE, told InSight Crime that these recent reforms in the US
could accelerate trends already evident in Mexico, including the increased
importance of poppy production and heroin production for criminal groups.
Heroin use is booming in the US -- and to a certain extent in Mexico as well
-- evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are increasingly relying on this
product in order to turn a profit.

Meanwhile, Mexico criminal groups producing methamphetamine at an industrial
scale continue to impact states across the US. It's possible this could be
exacerbated if Mexico marijuana suppliers are impacted. One study in 2012
calculated that if marijuana became legal in three US states, Mexican
cartels could see their profits drop by up to 30 percent.

But when it comes to policy reform within Mexico, Madrazo said that may
depend somewhat on whether California votes on the issue in 2016.
"California is very close to Mexico both physically and culturally and so it
carries particular symbolic weight in the political imagination," he said.
The reforms in Oregon and elsewhere created "pressure, but were unlikely to
be the tipping point yet."

3. Popular support for marijuana reform in the US provides a contrast to
some Latin American countries, where majority popular opinion doesn't yet
favor legalization. In Uruguay, for example, where legalization of
consumption and production is underway, polls consistently show that the
majority of the population opposes the country's landmark laws.

"The state level-initiatives have really pushed the issue forward in the
United States," said Walsh. "It's a popular issue in that sense, so the
political leaders are playing catch-up for the most part... In Latin
America, and other countries where there is a vigorous debate over drug
policy, it tends to be elite-led, rather than a popular opinion question."
What Next?

As the chart below shows, the push for alternative drug policies in Latin
America is picking up steam, but while many countries are in the midst of
debating proposals for reform, legalization remains a distant reality for
many.

Read more:
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/marijuana-reform-us-impact-latin-a
merica-stand


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