Mexico Prepares Drug Orgy for US Tourists

MEXICO
CITY – Demonstrators pretend to smoke fake marijuana cigarettes during
a protest for the decriminalization of marijuana
in La Alameda park, in this May 4, 2002 file photo in Mexico City. Police
and business owners from Mexico’s beaches to border cities worried that
a measure just passed to decriminalize possession of cocaine, heroin
and other drugs could attract droves of tourists solely looking to get
high. (05/01/06 AP
photo)

Yep, that’s pretty much how we remember Mexican weed
from back in the day: cheap and plentiful, but you had to roll huge fucking
joints to get a decent buzz.

This whole Mexican drug fiasco seems to be another
example of the primacy of spin over substance. As we understand it,
the original
measure was designed to strengthen prosecution by the Federal Drug Police
of dealers, narcotraficantes and major miscreants, while leaving the
nickel and dime trade (including foreign tourists) to the discretion
of the local cops.

Meaning that drugs wouldn’t be legal, exactly, just that the local gendarmes would have the choice of extracting reasonable
fines and
administrative costs for processing stoners caught possessing or consuming
drugs in public. Getting caught would cost 2 or 3 hours in some crummy
police station and 2 or 3 hundred bucks in "fines", without the necessity
of clogging the Mexican jails with idiot Gringo wastrels. Basically,
a more formal and efficient version of the time-honored payoff system
in place for generations.

Meanwhile, the Feds will go for the really big bribes
and payoffs concordant with prosecutions of the big fish, and everybody
will get a slice of the drug pie. So the whole thing was just a novel
and efficient distribution of law enforcement graft.

But once the US press got hold of the story, and miscast
it as a nefarious Drug Legalization aiming harpoons at the soft underbelly
of American indolence, the plan was doomed.

Too bad. Even if the reefer sucks, we’ve heard the mushrooms
kick ass.

from the AP