Costa Rica Joins Call for Drug Legalization Debate
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Phillip Smith
Stop The Drug War
Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla has added her voice to the rising clamor for discussions on drug legalization as an alternative to the current state of affairs, in which Central American nations see themselves as increasingly threatened by the illicit drug trade. The discussion should go on even if the US opposes it, Chinchilla said.
“If we keep doing what we have been when the results today are worse than 10 years ago, we’ll never get anywhere and could wind up like Mexico or Colombia,” Chinchilla said in San Jose Wednesday in remarks reported by Bloomberg Business News. There needs to be a “serious” discussion of legalization even if the US disagrees, because Central American nations are “paying a very high price” and “we have the right to discuss it,” she added.
Chinchilla made her remarks the same day as she met with Guatemalan Deputy President Roxanni Baldetti de Paz and a day after she met with US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. That same day, Napolitano said the US position is that drug legalization “is not the way” to stop the drug traffic.
She joins Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina in calling for regional legalization discussions. Perez Molina said last month that he was open to legalizing the use and transport of drugs as part of a crackdown on heavily-armed Mexican drug trafficking organizations whose corrosive influence has been seeping into Central America in recent years.