Mexican President Backs Off Drug Bill

Alfredo, 19, smokes during a protest demanding a law that allows legal consumption of marijuana, Mexico City, Mexico, in this May 3, 2003 file photo. Mexican President Vicente Fox refused to sign a drug decriminalization bill Wednesday, May 3, 2006 hours after U.S. officials warned the plan could encourage "drug tourism." (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, file) (Rodrigo Abd - AP)

Mexico's Congress has adjourned for the summer, and when it comes back, it will have an entirely new lower house and one-third new Senate members following the July 2 elections, which will also make Fox a lame duck.

However, Sen. Jorge Zermeno, of Fox's conservative National Action Party _ a supporter of the bill _ said he thought Congress would be open to changing the legislation to delete a clause that extends to all "consumers" the exemption from prosecution that was originally meant to cover only recognized drug addicts.

"The word 'consumer' can be eliminated so that the only exemption clause would be for drug addicts," Zermeno told The Associated Press. "There's still time to get this through."

The bill contained many points that experts said were positive. It empowered state and local police _ not just federal officers _ to go after drug dealers, stiffened some penalties and closed loopholes that dealers had long used to escape prosecution.

But Mexico's top police official, Eduardo Medina Mora said legislators had changed Fox's original proposal by inserting a controversial table laying out maximum amounts of drugs considered for "personal use."

Current Mexican law allows judges latitude to drop charges if suspects can prove they are addicts and the quantity they were caught with is small enough to be considered "for personal use," or if they are first-time offenders.

The new bill would have made the decriminalization automatic, allowed "consumers" as well as addicts to have drugs, and delineated specific allowable quantities, which do not appear in the current law.

Under the law, consumers could have legally possessed up to 25 milligrams of heroin, 5 grams of marijuana (about one-fifth of an ounce, or about four joints), or 0.5 grams of cocaine _ the equivalent of about four "lines."