Mexican heroin-producing state wants opium legalized

Mexico City (AP) — Political leaders from Mexico’s main heroin-producing state are pushing the federal government to legalize opium production for pharmaceutical use in a move they hope will reduce violence and help local farmers.

Legislators in Guerrero state voted Friday to send an initiative to the Mexican Senate for further debate, since the proposal to legitimize opium output would require changes to federal health and penal codes.

Incoming Interior Minister Olga Sanchez has expressed support for nationwide legalization of opium production for medical purposes after President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador takes office in December.

The mountainous state of Guerrero, on Mexico’s southern Pacific Coast, is home to most of the poppy bulbs that yield heroin consumed in the U.S.

Guerrero state legislator Ricardo Mejia said an estimated 120,000 people cultivate poppy in poor, isolated communities across the state. A legal channel to sell sticky poppy sap could offer growers more stable incomes, he argues.

The United Nations estimates that Mexico has the world’s third-largest geographic area dedicated to illicit opium cultivation, after top producer Afghanistan and Myanmar. Yet prescription opioids are severely restricted for cancer patients and the terminally ill in Mexico.

Criminal groups control access to the poppy fields in the rugged Sierra Madre mountains of Guerrero, more than five hours by car along bumpy dirt roads from the state capital of Chilpancingo or the nearby beach resort of Acapulco. Subsistence farmers have been pressured under threat of violence in recent decades to grow poppy rather than crops like coffee or mangoes.

Mejia considers the forced production of poppy a form of slavery.

“They can recover their freedom via the legal cultivation of poppy,” he said. “Right now the criminal groups have a social base because they control the only economic activity of the people.”

Guerrero Gov. Hector Astudillo first floated the idea of decriminalizing poppy in 2016 to combat the state’s rampant drug gang violence. Guerrero has one of the highest murder rates in Mexico.