The President of Mexico has announced plans to pursue a dramatic shift away from drug prohibition. The National Development Plan for 2019-2024, presented by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his administration last week, states that a “prohibitionist strategy is unsustainable” because it leads to violence and public health harms, and criminalizes people who use drugs. The plan proposes to negotiate with the United States and in multilateral settings like the United Nations to end the prohibition of drugs and redirect the resources now invested in the war on drugs toward treatment programs.

Statement from Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance:

“Mexico’s president is rightly identifying one of the major drivers of violence and corruption in his country: the prohibition of drugs. The next step is to translate words into action, by pursuing both a domestic and international agenda of drug policy reform, grounded in respect for human rights.”