President Seeks Drug Legalization Dialogue

President Laura Chinchilla, after her Guatemalan counterpart, President Otto Perez, broached the subject in talks with El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes, said she "would not oppose" the opening of a regional dialogue about decriminalizing narcotics and other drugs.

All three Central American countries feel themselves threatened by international drug traffickers. Chinchilla also noted that in Costa Rica, the consumption of drugs is not criminalized, only production, transport and sale.

All three countries as well as Honduras and Panama, spend large parts of their budgets battling drug related crime. But the President was a long way from welcoming decriminalization, simply opening the door for consideration.

She noted that the debate was far from a new one. In her own country, the English-language newspaper The Tico Times has long held an editorial stance urging decriminalization of narcotics as a way to stop "drug wars."

Just last year, the Judicial prosecutors announced that possession of small amounts of marijuana would not be prosecuted although growing of the plants, manufacture and distribution of pot is illegal. The reason given was a shortage of manpower to capture and prosecute offenders.

But even Perez was not proposing legalization, a hot button issue with passionate feeling on both sides, but merely opening the dialogue. All the countries involved contain a conservative Catholic majority.

He did, however, point out that both his country and El Salvador are wrestling with a near mortal combat with organized crime stemming from drug trafficking by cartels outside Central America. This is one of the major talking points of those in favor of legalization.

President Perez also noted that the consumption of drugs, whether in the major hemisphere market, the United States, or in Central America was not going to go away.

Debate: On the other hand, murder has spiked here in large part because of narcotics traffic. The criminal court says that of 527 murders last year, 157 (30%) were related in some way to drugs and their sale. Hired killings, all but unknown here during the last century, account for many of the deaths.

Some point to the lesson of Prohibition in the U.S. where licensing and taxation of alcoholic beverages, after repeal of the Constitutional amendment prohibiting sale an consumption of alcohol, resulted in halting rampant violence.

But consumption of alcohol, except among very religious persons, was a custom among the majority of the populace for millennia. Primitive societies, on the other hand, used behavior altering drugs for religious purposes only, restricting their use to shamans and other religious figures to use only ritually.

Moreover, once formed, organized crime mutates if the main income-producer is removed. In the case of Prohibition, the Mafia turned to other pursuits but remained in being. Would decriminalization simply cause the cartels to turn to other crime or would they wither away?

A decriminalization would not sit well with the United States with which this country has a long-standing agreement to fight drug traffic. The government to the north spends trillions of dollars in an "war on drugs." Would Central America bow to U.S. pressure?

Chinchilla points out that all these arguments should be thrashed out, along with the inevitable effect on public health of legalization. She would like to gather information from countries whose laws are more liberal regarding drugs. If the debate goes forward, it will take long to reach consensus.