Translated by Leslie Castillo Navia
Among the topics which usually repeat themselves with regard to the harm caused by marijuana is that which says it is a cause of psychosis, especially schizophrenia. The most serious studies, however, do not establish a clear causal relationship between the two; the most supported conjecture suggests that marijuana may be a trigger of symptoms in people who are prone to developing the illness, but it is not the cause.
However, the debate regarding the necessary regulation of cannabis, which was provoked by the Supreme Court’s ruling last November, has certainly triggered a schizophrenic episode in the Federal Government, without a doubt latent in a coalition as diverse as those traditionally formed by the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) in order to govern throughout its history.
MV Note: In November 2015, the First Chamber of the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice granted an amparo, injunction, to four persons who had applied, as a test case, to the Federal Commission for Protection Against Health Risks (COFEPRIS) for permits to grow marijuana for their personal consumption. The court ordered COFEPRIS to issue the permits on the grounds that prohibition of such violated the constitutional right to the free development of personality.
For the decision to be generally applicable, the First Chamber needs to resolve consecutively four other similar amparos, also with four favorable votes. COFEPRIS recently announced that it has received over 200 more requests for permits since last December and that it will reject them, which will lead to more appeals to the Supreme Court. This led the government to organize a national debate on marijuana, to conclude by the end of March. Congress has also held hearings on the issue. In announcing the debate, Peña Nieto stated he is opposed to eliminating the prohibition against the legal growing and selling of marijuana.The government’s schizophrenia has manifested itself through a splitting into three different personalities. On one hand, encouraged by the presidential declaration against the possible legalization of marijuana, the National Commissioner Against Addictions, the policeman-doctor Manuel Mondragón y Kalb, has appeared, thundering, to declare again and again that he doesn’t want a country of potheads and that lifting the prohibition would exponentially increase addiction levels as well as create an unmanageable problem for health services. In a final outbreak of his prohibitionist fury, the policeman-doctor sat in a meeting with the most rancid clericalism of the National Union of Parents and made a speech which completely coincided with the statements of Cardinal Norberto Rivera.
MV Note: Mondragón y Kalb is physician and surgeon by training but served as head of public security in Mexico City before being appointed by Peña Nieto in December 2012 to head federal public security (pólice). He resigned in March of 2014 after five inmates fled from Ceferesco Prison in Ciudad Juarez. Subsequently, Peña Nieto appointed him to head the Commission Against Addictions.Mondragón's perspective anticipates the expected conclusions of the alleged debate on the use of marijuana organized by the government. The Commissioner is sure that the legalization of cannabis in Mexico will not be accepted. “I do not think that it will happen, under any circumstance,” he stated, and he validated his position by saying that 80 percent of the population is against the legalization of marijuana because “we don’t want a country of addicts.” Later, he pulled supposed information out of his policeman's hat regarding counties in Colorado where the consequences of having legalized marijuana are being paid—with fragmented and false information which was used as a means of magic.
Commissioner Mondragón’s psychotic episode contrasts with the Secretary of Government Relation’s audacity who has shown his critique of prevailing drug policy in at least two of his speeches in the debate forums. First, in Ciudad Juárez, he declared himself in favor of the effective decriminalization of users and implicitly criticized the so-called Small-Scale Drug Law, with its ridiculous chart of tolerance limits for personal use [in Mexico the limit for cannabis is five grams [.18 oz.], in other regions of the planet it is much higher (up to 28 grams [1 oz.]]. Later, in Saltillo, he clearly suggested the failure of the War on Drugs based—according to his statement—on a bad assessment and an incorrect strategy. Worse than drugs, he said, have been bad drug policies.
The Secretary of Government Relations, Osorio, was much more indifferent and ambiguous in last Tuesday’s forum in Gaudalajara, but another supporter of the PRI within the close government circle there stood up against prohibition. The Governor of Jalisco, Aristóteles Sandoval, said directly that the production, sale and distribution of marijuana should be regulated by laws of the State.
“In Jalisco’s government, we say it clearly and forcefully: yes to the decriminalization of marijuana use, and yes to the respect of people’s free will,”He affirmed this in clear support of the Court’s ruling. Sandoval is the second Governor of the PRI who pushes for a radical shift in drug policy, after the declarations by Governor Astudillo of Guerrero who suggested legalization of opium production in his state in order to satisfy the national demand for opioids as essential medicines—a demand which is unmet due to international import restrictions.
The third government personality with respect to drug policy also appeared on Tuesday in Vienna, in the preparatory meeting for the extraordinary period of UN General Assembly sessions about the worldwide drug problem which will be held in one month in New York. There, the Undersecretary for Human Rights and Multilateral Issues of the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Relations presented a wimpy position, to say the least: pure generalizations that had been advanced in the UN General Assembly Special Session of 1998, but today seem anachronistic and contrast with the clarity of the position held by the Colombian Minister of Law and Justice, Yesid Reyes, who stated in the last meeting that
“it would be crazy to maintain current drug policy unchanged, with the thinking that through this policy we will obtain better results than those reached up until now.”The multiple government personalities in this subject strive to satisfy all tastes. Like that Woody Allen character, Zelig the human chameleon, the position of Peña’s administration seems to mimic the public that listens to it: with the clerics, moralistic foolishness; for the public, ambiguous reformism; before the UN hawks, cowering indifference.
Meanwhile, the ruins of a failed policy continue leaving people dead and ruining the lives of consumers who were jailed only for having a substance in their possession without having committed any other crime. In the UN General Assembly Special Session 2016, convened at the request of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala, most likely Mexico will just make a fool of themselves.
By the way, Secretary Osorio Chong’s declarations in Juárez and Saltillo led me to temper my skepticism with respect to the forums organized by the government and agree to participate in last Tuesday’s forum in Guadalajara. However, I confirmed that, in reality, no substantial discussion is being made there and that, like the former forums of PRI's Political, Economical, and Social Studies Institute (IEPES) during its classic era, everyone goes there with their own opinions and the only thing relevant is what the Secretary of Government Relations declares at the occasion. Governor Sandoval’s comments didn’t even have an important repercussion in the face of a media centered on what the secretary would propose.
As for the others, it is mere repetition of what has been said over and over again, without any filter as to the seriousness of those presenting. Yesterday, for example, a man from the outrageous organization "Without Weed We Are More" had egg on his face when he said that he knew someone who hadto use Coke-bottle glasses due to having smoked marijuana. What a bore… Spanish original
*Jorge Javier Romero Vadillo is a political scientist, professor and researcher in the Department of Politics and Culture at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, Xochimilco Campus. He holds a masters in Political Science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a doctorate from the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the University Complutense of Madrid. He is a regular contributing columnist for Sinembargo. @Giorgioromero
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