Guatemala estudia reformas para gravar cultivos legales de drogas

Noticias

Guatemala estudia reformas para gravar cultivos legales de drogas

29 mayo 2014

Guatemala está estudiando la posibilidad de gravar cultivos legales de drogas, despenalizar los delitos menores de drogas y ofrecer una amnistía a las personas condenadas por posesión y venta de estupefacientes a pequeña escala.

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Guatemala is examining the possibility of taxing legalized drug crop cultivation, de-penalizing low level drug crimes and offering amnesty to people convicted of small scale drug possession and sale, as it moves further and further away from the US-led prohibition paradigm.

In an interview with Reuters, Guatemala's Interior Minister, Mauricio Lopez Bonilla, said the government was considering legalizing poppy and marijuana production, and using the resultant tax revenues to fund drug prevention programs and social spending.

Lopez admitted that enforcing current laws was impracticable and that poppy eradication programs only destroyed around 10 percent of the total crop.

"If we followed the letter of the law, we would have to send the inhabitants of three municipalities to prison and that is impossible," he said.

The minister also discussed the possibility of ending criminal punishments for minor drug crimes but ruled out a blanket decriminalization of the drug trade.

"We're not talking about the legalization of the drugs trade, of production or the use of drugs," he said. "We are talking about changes to a system that over the last 40 years has proven to be inefficient."

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