International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 158

A Brief Genealogy of Cannabis Policy in the United States
In Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the new president elected in
July 2018, who is to take office on December 1, plans as a minimum to legalize
cannabis, but Donald Trump’s administration has warned that it would not allow
such a policy. Yet the big neighbor to the north offers no solution other than to
continue the policy of “total war on drugs” shaped by Anslinger, Nixon, and Reagan,
even though this policy has plunged Mexico into a kind of general anarchy
in which weapons rule; one person is killed every 25 minutes, 124 with journalists,
lawyers, elected officials, and social organizers who fight against cartels, corruption,
violence, and lawlessness particularly targeted.
In the world as it is in 2018, the policy of domination 125 brought about
through the creation of new criminal phenomena—for instance, those induced
directly through successive laws on cannabis “control” at the international level,
such as the situation of minorities in the United States or the case of Mexico,
just two examples of the practical consequences of this drug policy that is now a
danger to democracies—has perhaps already turned into the domination of states
themselves, democratic or otherwise, by criminal groups. Basic realism is what
raises such questions.
124 https://www.proceso.com.mx/551215/eu-la-piedra-en-el-zapato-de-la-politica-antidrogas-deamlo.
125 https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/170814/legaliser-le-cannabis-47-les-impasses-dela-guerre-contre-la-drogue.
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