MEXICO WARY AS CALIF. VOTES ON LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

TIJUANA, MEXICO - To embattled authorities here, where heavily armed
soldiers patrol the streets and more than 500 people have been killed
this year, marijuana is a poisonous weed that enriches death-dealing
cartel bosses who earn huge profits smuggling the product north.

"Marijuana arrives in the United States soaked with the blood of
Tijuana residents," said Mayor Jorge Ramos, whose police department
has lost 45 officers to drug violence in recent years.

But just over the border in California, cannabis is considered by law
a healing herb. After the Obama administration announced that it
would not prosecute the purveyors, about 100 medical marijuana
dispensaries opened in San Diego alone in the past year, selling vast
quantities of Purple Goo, Green Crack and other varieties of super-charged pot.

The marijuana divide between these sister cities points to major
disparities between the fight against drugs in Mexico and their
acceptance in the United States.

As the Obama administration presses Mexican President Felipe Calderon
to stand firm in his costly, bloody military campaign against drug
mafias, Mexican leaders are increasingly asking why their country
should continue to attack cannabis traffickers and peasant pot
farmers if the U.S. government is barely enforcing federal marijuana
laws in the most populous state.

This debate grows more urgent as California prepares to vote in
November on Proposition 19, a game-changing ballot initiative to
legalize the recreational consumption of marijuana. According to the
polls, the vote is tight.

Weary of spectacular violence and destabilizing corruption stoked by
the prohibition against pot, some of Mexico's most prominent figures
are wondering aloud what legalization would do on their side of the drug war.

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, a rancher and a
free-market conservative, said last month that cannabis should be
legal in his country. "The sales could be taxed, with high taxes, as
we do with tobacco, to be used to fight addiction and reduce
consumption," he said.

Marijuana smuggling and sales represent a roughly $10 billion
business for Mexico's drug mafias, which earn up to 60 percent of
their profits from pot, according to U.S. estimates.

Fox said legalizing marijuana and other drugs "will allow us to hit
and break apart the economic structure that allows the drug mafias to
generate huge profits - profits they use to corrupt and increase their power."

Calderon, a center-right politician who has staked his presidency on
his fight against organized crime, hosted three days of nationally
televised meetings last month to debate "the pros and cons" of legalization.

"It is worth asking if it still makes any sense to maintain our
prohibition against marijuana in Mexico when the United States is
taking gradual steps toward legalization," said Jose Luis Astorga,
one of Mexico's most prominent scholars of drug policy. "Why are we
spending our resources on this?" Legal-pot predictions

U.S. voters have already passed measures allowing the medicinal use
of marijuana in the District of Columbia and 14 states, including
Maryland. Proposition 19 would legalize the drug for all adults in
California over 21.

The nonpartisan voter guide written by the California secretary of
state concludes that a commercial marijuana industry could produce
"hundreds of millions of dollars annually" in new taxes.

Proposition 19 would allow local governments to adopt ordinances
regarding commercial marijuana activities - including cultivation,
processing, distribution, transportation and retail sales. For
example, local governments could license establishments to sell
marijuana and allow customers to get high on the premises. Oakland's
City Council has already approved giant indoor marijuana farms as
large as two football fields.

But no one knows whether legalization in California would hurt or
help Mexico. Bringing marijuana into California from Mexico would
remain illegal under federal law.

Still, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials worry that
legalization in California could stoke greater demand that would be
met by Mexican cartels.

The Mexican military, working with U.S. agents and intelligence,
chops and burns thousands of tons of pot each year in the rugged
mountains of the "golden triangle" in Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango.
Mexico's marijuana-eradication program is the largest in the world,
according to the United Nations.

Advocates of legalization in the United States and Mexico argue that
California's Proposition 19 would actually hurt the drug cartels.

Given California's agricultural expertise and fertile soils, these
advocates say, domestic marijuana yields would soar.

Much of the Mexican marijuana that reaches U.S. consumers today is a
lower-quality, relatively inexpensive product raised on large
mountain plantations with little husbandry.

In contrast, the meticulously tended, genetically refined,
ultra-potent marijuana typically sold in California dispensaries for
$20 to $40 a gram is a cartel-free local product, Eugene Davidovich
said. His San Diego dispensary, the Best Buds Collective, acquires
its wares only from known providers, not Mexican smugglers, he said.

"If someone comes in off the street, it doesn't matter what the price
is - we won't buy it," said Davidovich, whose by-the-books operation
offers medications such as Trainwreck Hash, pot-laced arthritis balm,
and jars of crystallized super-cannabis with names such as Afghani Goo.

As much as half of the U.S. marijuana supply is now domestically
produced, according to Drug Enforcement Administration estimates, and
the homegrown trend has already cut into the earnings of Mexican
cartels. The criminals have responded by setting up indoor operations
in the United States or large outdoor plots on public lands.

In California, medical marijuana has become a fig leaf for those who
want to legally smoke pot.

At one San Diego area doctor's office next to a driving school and a
Christian youth center, walk-in patients can fill out a
questionnaire, undergo a four-minute consultation with a physician,
and purchase a medical marijuana certificate with a "420"
identification card granting them access to the state's dispensaries.

In Mexico, the governors of the states that grow the most marijuana
and face the most drug violence have warned that no solution is
possible unless Mexico and the United States adopt a single,
coordinated approach to drug use and drug trafficking, and Mexico's
president has made clear that he agrees. "If there is not an
international approach, Mexico will pay the costs and will get none
of the benefits," Calderon said in a recent debate. "The price of
drugs is not determined by Mexico. The price of drugs is determined
by the consumers in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago."