SOME SKEPTICAL OF MEXICO'S RELAXED ANTI-DRUG LAW

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Police and business owners from Mexico's
beaches to border cities worried Sunday that a measure passed to
decriminalize possession of cocaine, heroin and other drugs could
attract droves of tourists solely looking to get high.

Mexican and U.S. officials insist that the bill eliminates legal
hurdles to prosecuting drug crimes large and small. But it also lays
out specific amounts of drugs -- including marijuana, LSD,
hallucinogenic mushrooms and ecstasy -- that can be possessed in
small quantities for personal use.

President Vicente Fox has yet to sign the bill, but his office
praised it after Congress passed it Friday.

In Juarez, which borders El Paso, 58-year-old waiter Raul Martinez
said he was worried "for the kids of Texas, the kids of Juarez."

Martinez, who works at the border-area bar Kentucky Club, noted that
U.S. teens already swarm the city's bars and clubs and said he feared
the new measure could lead youths to try hard-core drugs.

It also confused some police.

"On one side, they're asking us to fight it," Jose Valencia, a police
officer in Mexico City's tourist-oriented Zona Rosa district said of
drug use. "On the other, we have to allow consumption."

A former Pentagon anti-drug official, Ana Maria Salazar, said the law
would make it easier to convict street-corner drug pushers by setting
limits for personal possession. That would make it harder for people
to bribe judges and prosecutors, who now have discretion in deciding
how much is "personal."

"All of those who think this legalizes drugs in Mexico, not only are
they wrong but they are going to get in a lot of trouble if they come
here and try to use drugs," said Salazar, now a political and
security analyst in Mexico City. "It's designed to go after the
smaller groups of drug smugglers."

Mexican lawmakers have said this country should focus on major drug
traffickers and not clutter its prisons with small-time offenders.

"The objective of the law is to throw in jail not consumers but those
who sell and smuggle," said Sen. Jorge Zermeno, of Fox's conservative
National Action Party.

The city of Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas,
has been terrorized by deadly battles between rival drug gangs, and
some fear the new measure could make things worse.

Higinio Ibarra, head of a Nuevo Laredo business organization, said
the measure might entice American tourists, but "they won't be the
best kind of tourists."

Shining shoes for tourists, Elipio Rodriguez said drugs were already
everywhere in Nuevo Laredo.

"There by the bridge (to the United States), anyone can do drugs," he said.

"Police always patrol there, by those who are selling, and nothing
ever happens," Rodriguez said. "Do you think something will change?"

Dutch student Reitse Beek, 22, said it would help visitors avoid
harassment by police.

In the Caribbean resort of Cancun, Roberto Collado, a tourist from
Puerto Rico, warned that "a lot of criminal problems are caused by
these kinds of drugs."

However, Jesus Almaguer, president of Cancun's Hotel Association,
said the measure wouldn't make much difference: "Those who consume
drugs and visit our city already know how to obtain them."