Drug legalization in spain

Former Spanish Prime Minister Says Legalize Drugs to End Violence
Posted in: Crime & Violence Legalization News Brief Politics Outside US
Felipe Gonzalez has joined the ranks of prominentglobal political figures calling for the legalization of drugs. In remarks made Monday at a Madrid event commemorating Mexico's 200th anniversary of Independence, Gonzalez said that legalizing drugconsumption should be considered as a solution for the violence currently sweeping Mexico.

Felipe Gonzalez
But the violence in Mexico isn't solely a Mexican problem, Gonzalez said. It has much to do withthe United States, and the solution could be to legalize drug consumption.

"Mexico is burying the dead, but it isn't just Mexico's problem," Gonzalez said. "The $350 million or $350 million is onthe other side" of the border with the US. "From there come the weapons," he added.

Gonzalez joins Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos and Mexico's Vicente Fox as the latest current and former heads ofstate to call for legalization. Mexico's current president, Felipe Calderon, has also lent recent support to discussing legalization, though without taking the pro position.

Organized crime is "oneof the most serious threats to security that the world faces," Spain's former prime minister said. An international conference on the matter could be "an option," he added.

One need only look at theexperience of alcohol Prohibition in the US to see what happens, Gonzalez continued. "Look back and think about the organized crime in the United States, with thousands of deaths, that occurred as aresult of the criminalization of alcohol," he said. That violence "did away with Prohibition, and the business, with its taxes, was made legal."

In that sense, legalization of drugs could bedefended as a solution, Gonzalez said, although he added that "no country can do this unilaterally without an extraordinarily grave cost for its leaders." Instead, "there must be an international...