Mexico's Drug Decriminalization Could Impact US Businesses

Tchort

Tchort

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SecurityInfoWatch.com

09/03/2009

Could new drug laws in Mexico affect business security for non-Mexican firms? That’s the question that businesses should be wrestling with right now, says Bob Hayes, managing director of the Security Executive Council.

His group, a collection of top corporate security directors, has been tracking recent news from the Associated Press out of Mexico that the possession and or use of small, personal amounts of many common drugs is no longer illegal. Mexico now makes it legal to have 5 grams for marijuana, one-half gram for cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams of LSD. To put that in perspective, that is about four marijuana joints and about a similar number of lines of cocaine.

While the general thought is that decriminalizing such drugs frees up Mexico’s police officers to focus on more serious crimes such as violent murders occurring in some parts of the nation, business leaders like Hayes say it can create problems for U.S. companies who want to ensure that their employees are sober and safe.

“You can still make drug use against company policy, but almost all policies say use or possession of ‘illegal’ drugs, so now they are going to have to list which drugs since these drugs aren’t illegal if the employee uses them in Mexico,” explained Hayes. “And there is no way to test on the quantity of usage. It’s not like blood alcohol content; they have no way to test how much of those drugs you’ve had. There is no standard for impairment with any of those drugs.”

Hayes said it’s not exactly clear how this could impact U.S. employers, and says his organization doesn’t yet know how member companies should react in terms of examining the anti-drug sections of their personnel policies.

“All I know at this point is that you better sit down and figure out what the impact is going to be,” Hayes said. “You need to re-read your policies and see exactly what they say.”

Hayes said the change in Mexico, where many U.S. companies have operations, could also raise issues of pre-employment drug screening and corporate liability.
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http://www.securityinfowatch.com/root+level/1312818
 
So they wrote an article saying that this new policy could impact US businesses...but they're not sure how?

Whew! Glad I read that!
 
If drugs impair your ability to do your job, it doesn't matter if they're legal or not. Just look at how alcohol is treated as far as being intoxicated at work...

The only thing that this could have an impact on is pre-employment drug screening, but that would be in Mexico, not here. International corporations have to take in account local laws everywhere they do business and have employees, it's no big deal to adapt to this.


This guy's a fucking genius. Not surprising that he got published at securityinfowatch.com.
 
Drug testing is invasion of privacy. Don't drug test. Just monitor all employees for attendance, safety and performance. Business as usual.
 
Sounds like a joke of an excuse to criticise the new laws there. Whats more important anyway? A few more people having a puff or trying to reduce the ridiculous amount of violent crime in Mexico.
 
Why did an 8th grader write this article?
Anyways, I don't see why it should be a big deal... If the contract says 'illegal drugs' then it makes sense that they will not be able to test for them and imply any sort of consequence.
 
Those quantities are very small anyway. 40mg of meth? That's less than a single dose for almost any user. Would have expected more like 1/2 a gram of meth/heroin, 3 grams of coke.
 
almost all policies say use or possession of ‘illegal’ drugs, so now they are going to have to list which drugs since these drugs aren’t illegal if the employee uses them in Mexico
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uhh, by "illegal drugs" they mean "list of all drugs that are illegal"... so the sign still makes sense. they can't say "you can't be a janitor at this facility if you are an alcoholic or drink responsibly"
drug_mentor said:
Sounds like a joke of an excuse to criticise the new laws there. Whats more important anyway? A few more people having a puff and trying to reduce the ridiculous amount of violent crime in Mexico, OR a possible impact on US businesses from a change in Mexico's laws (which happens all the time i assume..) because think of the children!!
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the bolded "and" was fixed from "or", with the bolded text added to the end as well
 
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