We are so very unfair to Mexico. We take some of the nation's most motivated citizens, put them to work in dead-end, backbreaking jobs, and constantly threaten to send them all back home so they don't get too uppity. We blame the Mexican government for failing to provide for its citizens and for failing to police them well.
Then, when Mexico finally takes a big, positive step to improve the lives of its citizens and to police them better, what does America do? Blows it away with chicken-little rhetoric and raw muscle.
President Vicente Fox now says Mexico won't decriminalize drug use. American pressure is the unmistakable cause of Fox's 180-degree shift.
Too bad. The Mexican decriminalization bill was common sense.
It said possession of small amounts of common recreational drugs would not be a crime, although individual Mexican states could levy fines on users. It was an expansion of an existing legal exemption for addicts who, incredibly, were (and are) immune from prosecution if found in possession of personal-use quantities.
The bill also spelled out the quantities that would qualify for the "consumer" or "addict" exemption, ending confusion and disparate enforcement. Finally, the decrim bill made important distinctions between dealers and users, and added enforcement authorities for local police to target traffickers. These were smart steps within a context that assumes the drug traffic must remain criminal and unregulated.
Of course the major objection from American officials wasn't that Mexicans would use drugs more, but that Americans would. Already-bustling Spring Break resorts would become little Amsterdams. American teens and twentysomethings would slip across the border into Tijuana or Juarez for daytrips of debauchery - just like they do now, but sampling newly legal drugs, not just tequila and beer.
Pouring on the overheated rhetoric about feared "drug tourism," the spokesman for the ex-police-chief mayor of San Diego said the Mexican bill would ignite "a public health emergency for our county." (San Diego currently has no drug users.)
American drug warriors also attacked because they simply couldn't stand a public break with the international orthodoxy they dictate. It takes some work to continue propping up a consensus that drug prohibition is the best policy. Dozens of countries already draw distinctions between users (noncriminal) and dealers (criminal), and practice a mix of indifference and harm-reduction tactics with users and addicts. But Mexico is literally too close to home.
It was rare to see Mexican legislators defend the essence of their law during the outcry. One, Sen. Jorge Zermeno, said forthrightly, "We cannot continue to fill our jails with people who have addictions." This is the same sentiment that led voters in neighboring California to pass Proposition 36 in November 2000, requiring treatment, not jail, for drug possession. (Indeed, the great flaw in the Mexican proposal was the glaring lack of a treatment component.)
But now even Sen. Zermeno is cowed. He's urging legislators to strike the exemption for users. Apparently he now does wish to fill Mexican jails with addicts.
This is why the most dispiriting, but ideologically vital, part of the denouement of this debate was President Fox's promise to make it "absolutely clear [that] in our country the possession of drugs and their consumption are, and will continue to be, a criminal offense."
While the final, revised bill takes shape, it's still possible that Mexico will draw a distinction between its own citizens and tourists. The law could say Mexicans won't go to jail for drug use, but Americans will. That would be a fair compromise -- although a bit misleading, since drug-using tourists will still be more likely to succumb to a dirty-cop shakedown ("¿por qué no pagamos la fina aqu�") than to see the inside of la cárcel.
The Mexican effort to decriminalize poses the dangerous question again: Why should drug use be a crime? American hard-liners haven't won this debate, they've just thrown their weight around again.