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Interesting point of view from Mexico's past President, who certainly had experience in dealing with the country's powerful cartels…..
….among the most interesting/controversial aspects of his opinion is his notion that society has to be ready to allow yesterday's cannabis outlaws to become an overground businesspersons, trading legitimacy and ceasing police actions against them for responsible behavior – rather than trying to give established markets to new "squeaky clean" operators licensed by the government – which is the approach most US state laws have followed, i.e., people with a cannabis arrest records need not apply to become legal growers or purveyors.
Who has the most practicable side of this argument? We'd like to hear from you….
Excerpt from the linked article:
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Since leaving office in late 2006, Fox has been a vocal advocate for the legalization of medicinal and recreational marijuana, and last year joined the board of Canadian cannabis company Khiron Life Sciences.
Speaking to CNBC in London last week, Fox pointed to Colombia, parts of the U.S. and Canada as examples where relaxing the government stance on personal recreational drug use had yielded promising results.
“Watching that example, we see that in a natural way, the old illegal underground activities start to disappear by themselves, because now they don’t have a market. The market is taken by the new situation — the new products, the new corporations being provided,” he said.
“If you go to Washington state, or Seattle, you see today that many of the old places that we used to look that were underground providing product to consumers, now they have formed part of the new industry that is legal. Now, instead of committing crimes by distributing drugs, now they do it as a businessman.”
Fox added that for such transitions to work, it is important that the government does not go after distributors for past illegalities, and instead enable them to legitimize their operations instead of being forced to diversify into other criminal activities.
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Fox goes on to talk about the possibility of legalizing other drugs, including the highly abusable opioids and others. His take is different from the system employed in Portugal which has experienced a lot of success in decriminalizing the use of all drugs as long as users of heavy drugs agree to be in treatment, as one aspect of the program.
Again, how does this strike you??
Legalization of drugs is the way to combat cartels, former Mexican president says
Legalizing drugs is the best way to combat cartels, according to Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico.
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