Fox balks at signing drug decriminalization law

“The word ’consumer’ can be eliminated so that the only exemption clause would be for drug addicts,” Zermeno told The Associated Press. “There’s still time to get this through.”

The bill contained many points that experts said were positive: it empowered state and local police — not just federal officers — to go after drug dealers, stiffened some penalties and closed loopholes that dealers had long used to escape prosecution.

But the broad decriminalization clause was what soured many — both in Mexico and abroad — to the proposal.

Rite of passage for U.S. teens
Hard-partying U.S. teens and college students have long crossed the Rio Grande to knock back cheap beers and tequila shots in Mexico away from the watchful gaze of parents, teachers and police.

“When I heard the news I said, ‘Mexico is going to be the new Amsterdam,’” said Texan student Matthew Flores, 23, in reference to the Dutch city where liberal narcotics laws attract drug tourists from across Europe. “People will now be able to go over the border, maybe smoke a doobie (marijuana cigarette) and hang out, and it won’t be a big deal.”

But authorities in Mexico’s Baja California state estimate that as many as one in eight people there already abuse narcotics. They say 98 percent of crimes committed in the gritty border city of Tijuana are carried out by drug users, and that they would look at possible ways to get around the law if passed.

“As it is, there are fights and public order problems caused by young people who come here to party,” policewoman Ana Lilia Ortega said in Reynosa, a sweltering Mexican border city with gaudy bars and strip clubs south of McAllen.

“They come to have a few drinks and some tequilas, and now with drugs on top we’re not going to be able to control it.”

North of the border ...
In El Paso, Texas, a non-profit group that seeks to crack down on bingeing by local youngsters who cross the border to Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico, says loosening drug laws would deepen the already existing problem.

“It’s already a concern that teenagers and college-age kids go to Juarez to drink, and I’m worried they are going to be encouraged to try harder drugs because it won’t be against the law,” said Marge Bartoletti, the director of the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition.

“My fear is we’re going to see overdoses and more trips to the emergency room, and an increase in preventable traffic accidents as kids are now going to be coming back high” she added.

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