Citing Marijuana Legalization Vote, Latin Leaders Call for Policy Review

Five conservative Latin American heads of state said in a joint declaration Monday that the votes by two US states to legalize marijuana would have important ramifications on regional efforts to suppress the drug trade. While the declaration did not say the leaders were considering relaxing their efforts against marijuana, it suggested that the votes in Colorado and Washington could make their enforcement of laws against marijuana more difficult.

Outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon was joined by Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla and Prime Minister Dean Barrow of Belize in Mexico City for a meeting before issuing the declaration. Guatemalan President Oscar Perez Molina, who also signed the declaration, was not present at the meeting because he was overseeing recovery efforts from last Wednesday's deadly earthquake there.

Mexico and Central America have in recent years seen unprecedented levels of prohibition-related violence, with more than 60,000 killed in Mexico during Calderon's tenure and with rising levels of violence in Central America as Mexican enforcement efforts push the so-called cartels into the isthmus.

In addition to several paragraphs of boilerplate language reiterating their country's continuing commitment to fighting criminal drug trafficking organizations, the declaration also "underlines that it is necessary to deeply analyze the social, political, and public health implications for our nations of the processes in action at the state and local level of some countries of our continent to permit the production, consumption, and legal distribution of marijuana, which constitutes a paradigmatic change in respect to the current international regime on the part of such entities."

The declaration asks the secretary general of the Organization of American States, who was mandated at the Summit of the Americas in April with completing a hemispheric study of drugs, "to incorporate an analysis of the impact of the new policies referred to [above] on our countries." It also calls on the UN General Assembly to hold a special session on drug policy no later than 2015.

The Mexico City declaration comes just days after a key advisor to incoming Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto questioned how Mexico will enforce marijuana prohibition there when it is legal in some US states. The Obama administration has yet to formally respond to the decision by voters in Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana.

Last Tuesday's legalization votes are reverberating not just across the country, but across the hemisphere.