The U.S. decision not to challenge Washington and Colorado's plans to legalize marijuana makes the U.S. drug policy look like a text-book case of political hypocrisy: How can the U.S. government give a green light to legalization at home while continuing to fight it abroad?


In its memo Thursday, the Justice Department told prosecutors not to challenge the two states' pot legalization laws as long as they impose a strict regulatory system that prohibits among other things the sale of marijuana to minors, the cultivation of marijuana on public lands and its export to other states that have not legalized it.

"This puts the United States in an awkward position in respect to its drug war export policy," said John Walsh, a drug expert with the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that supports pot legalization. "The United States is going ahead with a policy that is quite different from what it tells other countries to do."


In Uruguay, the Chamber of Deputies has already approved a government-supported marijuana legalization bill, which is likely to be approved by the Senate before the end of the year. Now, with the latest U.S. Justice Department decision, its Senate approval may be even easier than previously expected.

In Mexico, where more than 50,000 people have died in the U.S.-backed war on drugs over the past six years, legalization supporters in Congress will have additional arguments to back their stands. Why should we continue to spend money and lives to eradicate marijuana crops and to seize the drug before it reaches the U.S. border, when the United States has stopped fighting this war at home? they will ask.

Mexico is by far the biggest exporter of marijuana to the United States, and where the Justice Department ruling may have the biggest impact. Other major pot exporters in the region are Jamaica, Canada and Colombia.

Asked about the contradiction in U.S. domestic and foreign drug policies, a State Department spokesman told me that "marijuana is and remains illegal under federal law. We continue our important counternarcotics cooperation with the international community to combat drug trafficking and use, and to improve citizen security."

U.S. officials suggest that it's important to remember that Thursday's Justice Department's decision is conditioned on Washington state and Colorado's ability to effectively police themselves. Internationally, it's not that clear that countries with weak institutions will be able to do that, and prevent, among other things, sales of marijuana to minors, legalization critics say.

As Uruguayan Sen. Pedro Bordaberry, an opponent of his country's pot legalization bill, told me recently, "If Uruguay cannot even effectively enforce its prohibition to re-sell tickets for soccer matches, how can we expect it to enforce prohibition of marijuana sales to minors?"

My opinion: The Justice Department's decision not to challenge the Washington state and Colorado legalization laws will go down in history as a turning point in the four-decade-old U.S. war on drugs.


But, in light of the latest Justice Department decision, the current U.S. drug policy is unsustainable. The Obama administration should drop its blanket opposition to foreign countries' marijuana legalization laws. It should do so in exchange for international agreements to enforce strict regulations on the marijuana business, including commitments to invest savings from marijuana eradication into anti-drug education campaigns and drug prevention and rehabilitation programs. It's a new day in the drug-fighting movement.

Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald, email: aoppenheimermiamiherald.com.