A Latin American commission calls for rethinking drug prohibition

In February 2009 the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy called for a change in the region’s response to illegal drugs. Former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico had convened the group.

Its declaration, Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift, made personal cannabis possession one of the subjects for reconsideration.

What it proposed

The statement asked governments to evaluate decriminalising possession of cannabis for personal use on public-health and scientific grounds. It coupled this with prevention, education and treatment, while directing enforcement toward organised crime. It also argued that crop eradication needed viable development alternatives for affected communities.

This was a proposal for a different allocation of public resources and responsibilities. It did not establish a legal supply chain or repeal any country’s possession offence.

A regional argument travels

Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace place the declaration in their account of growing opposition to the drug-war approach on both sides of the US–Mexican border. Its significance in their narrative is the willingness of prominent former officeholders to question a policy consensus they had once worked within.

The commission’s work helped lay the foundation for the Global Commission’s 2011 report, which took the argument to a wider international audience and explicitly encouraged experiments with legal regulation.

The two reports document an evolving reform campaign. They should be distinguished from the statutes and court decisions through which governments later changed cannabis policy.^[1][2][3]