On February 22 & 23rd Monday and Tuesday in Mexico City, political figures, academics, social scientists, security experts, and activists from at least six countries came together for the Winds of Change: Drug Policy in the World conference sponsored by the Mexico City-based Collective for an Integrated Drug Policy (CUPHID). Coming as Mexico's war on drugs turns bloodier by the day, the conference unsurprisingly concluded that current prohibitionist policies are a disaster.

"The principal conclusion is that we need a more integrated drug policy based on prevention, scientific evidence, and full respect for human rights," summarized CUPHID president Jorge Hernandez Tinajero. "It remains clear that, yes, there exist alternatives to the current strategy."

In a press release after the conference, CUPHID emphasized the following points:

    * The so-called war on drugs has failed and, without doubt, we need "winds of change" to advance toward alternative policies to address the problematic of drugs across the globe.
    * The prohibitionist paradigm has been ineffective, and furthermore, for the majority of countries it has implied grave violations of human rights and individual guarantees, discrimination, and social exclusion, as well as an escalation of violence that grows day by day, ever broadening the scope of impunity for organized crime.
    * Drugs are never going to disappear. Thus, a more realistic drug policy should focus on minimizing the harms associated with drug use -- overdoses, blood-borne diseases like HIV/AIDS, and violence. This concept is known as "harm reduction," and must be the backbone of any drug policy.

The conference opened Monday morning by putting its star power on display. In its opening session, former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, who, as a member of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy coauthored a report a year ago with former Brazilian President Henrique Cardoso and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo denouncing drug prohibition as a failed policy, returned to the theme. Noting that as president of Colombia in the 1990s, he had been a firm supporter of prohibition, Gaviria said he had changed his tune.

"With the passing of time, prohibitionism, in which I believed, has demonstrated itself a failure," he told an attentive crowd jammed into a conference room of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in upscale Colonia Napoles. The attendant human rights abuses were a big reason why, he said.

The El Paso City Council considered a resolution today calling for the legalization of marijuana as way to strip Mexican drug cartels of the  rich profits they make from the illegal market.

Unfortunately the resolution failed when Mayor John Cook broke a 4-4 tie and voted against. However, the council then amended the resolution to  take out the marijuana legalization language and passed it as amended.   The amended resolution still says the council calls for a "comprehensive  re-examination of our country's failed War on Drugs and...support[s] initiatives that do not result in wasting government funds and  empowering criminal gangs and trafficking organizations."

This is particularly noteworthy considering that previously, the El Paso City Council set off a nationwide debate on the merits of legalization  in January 2009 when it unanimously passed a resolution that merely  called for serious consideration of ending prohibition as one possible  option. Mayor Cook vetoed that resolution and the council refrained from  overriding the veto only after receiving threats from Congressman  Silvestre Reyes that the city would lose federal stimulus money if it  insisted on supporting a discussion of the merits of legalization.

It remains to be seen if the mayor will veto today's amended resolution, or if the council will get pressure from Congress.

(See video of former federal agent Richard Newton testimony at El Paso hearing on Youtube)

The original draft of the  resolution that explicitly calls for the legalization of marijuana can be viewed at
http://www.elpasotexas.gov/muni_clerk/agenda/02-09-10/02091011A.pdf