Mexico Legalizes Consumer Drug Use
In a bold move to fight larger drug dealers and cartels, Mexico is legalizing consumer carriage of "small amounts" of formerly illegal drugs.
Under the legislation, police will not penalize people for possessing up to 5 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of opium, 25 milligrams of heroin or 500 milligrams of cocaine.
People caught with larger quantities of drugs will be treated as narcotics dealers and face increased jail terms under the plan.
It’s not really a great solution, or anywhere near a complete one, but I wonder what people’s thoughts are on this and, specifically, how this would work in the U.S.?
If anything, one can hope that this would be a step in the direction of total deregulation of presently illegal drugs and while I can’t see the US adopting a similar policy, if more nations move in this direction it might begin putting some minute pressure on our government. One thing I wonder is, and note that I am really unfamiliar with illegal drugs, if it is reasonable to expect that these amounts are "adequate" for personal users to have or not? Like would a normal user have more of these drugs or not? How did they come up with those numbers anyway?
I don’t know anything about purchasing Blow or Smack, but this is only 0.18 Oz, while Alaska allows for 4oz w/o penatly. .25 oz is a normal purchasefor light users, although having an ounce or so on hand is not uncommon.
In my eyes this is simply a vote getter (they do vote in Mexico, I’m assuming, too tired to check). If they are still outlawing the dealers, how is the customer of the dealer supposed to acquire their legal amounts. (Obviously the law is not obeyed, but in theory.)
Furthermore, this could be a slippery slope, to use a somewhat cliche term, in that the police catch you with some small amount, possibly a little bit above the limit, and they tell you they’ll ‘misrecord’ the amount of the drug you had if you tell them who you got it from.
Further opinion on the outlawing of the dealer but not the customer; it reminds me of a stupid Massachusetts law. It is illegal for a person under the age of 18 to buy cigarettes, but it is legal for them to possess and smoke them. I have never been able to come to grips with the logic behind that, but no matter. These laws encourage illegal activity. In fact, their very existence implies that their are people breaking the law. Making half of a transaction legal is hardly the right way for a government to govern.
Also, one marijuana plant would produce more than 5 grams of usable drug, though I am not sure about the poppy. The point is, the users must either grow their own stuff and throw all but 5 grams of it away, or buy from dealers. And, it would hardly be economical for a person to go through all of the effort to make cocaine or heroin and only make half a gram of it.
I don’t know why I wrote so much, I just think the law is stupid.