Guatemala leader to propose legalizing drugs

[Comrade Grumpy]

27. Guatemala is by no means alone. Check out this December declaration of 12 Latin American leaders:

My apologies. All the links in the text got stripped out, but you can go to the link below to see them. Also, I tried to bold some stuff, but I don't know if that worked. This is my first post here; I will eventually figure this stuff out.

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http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2012/02/12-latin-american-leaders-call-for.html

Thursday, February 09, 2012
12 current Latin American leaders call for exploration of legal drug regulation

A remarkable and almost unreported event took place at the beginning of December last year at the somewhat obscure, 13th summit of the Tuxtla Mechanism for Dialogue. (See here For more on the Mechanism.)

It was reported in El Universal on 6 Dec 'Frenar consumo de droga o regularlo, exigen paises a EU' and in the Washington Post on 19 Dec 'Latin American leaders assail US drug 'market'', but has had no international pick up beyond.

A dozen Latin American countries issued a joint statement on organised crime and drug trafficking (here is the original Spanish text on the Mexican Government website). Point 7 is translated here:

“What would be desirable, would be a significant reduction in the demand for illegal drugs. Nevertheless, if that is not possible, as recent experience demonstrates, the authorities of the consuming countries ought then to explore the possible alternatives to eliminate the exorbitant profits of the criminals, including regulatory or market oriented options to this end. Thus, the transit of substances that continue provoking high levels of crime and violence in Latin American and Caribbean nations will be avoided.”

<snip>

The summit was attended by the Presidents of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom; Honduras, Porfirio Lobo; Mexico, Felipe Calderon; Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; Panama, Ricardo Martinelli; the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez; and the First Vice President of Costa Rica, Alfio Piva Messer. Also present were the Foreign Ministers of Belize, Wilfred Elrington; Colombia, Maria Angela Holguin; and El Salvador, Hugo Martinez. Chilean President Sebastián Piñera was also present as a special guest.

Following President Santos’s lead, twelve countries have now effcetively called for an end to the war on drugs. The significance of this is great, but the silence following it has been deafening. Perhaps because there was no pro-active media promotion of the statement, it has not been reported anywhere nearly as widely as last years ground breaking Global Commission report. That report - suypported by a global media campaign - was however, made up almost entirely of former presidents. The Tuxtla group are all incumbents.