U.S. and Latin America officials met this week to assess the regional impact of drug legalization laws enacted in Washington and Colorado.
Representatives from Mexico and Colombia and Costa Rica met with U.S. counterparts at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss their concerns about the easing of drug laws in states such as Colorado and Washington.
In November, voters in Colorado and Washington approved the sale and recreational use of marijuana without a prescription or medical condition. California is another state that has loosened its law on marijuana, but the Golden state only permits the sale of the drug to people who have a prescription.
These laws have garnered criticism from many countries in Latin America, especially those that suffer from rashes of violence related to the global drug trade. Some 70,000 people have died in the last six years in Mexico stemming from the country's drug war and the trade has plagued Colombia for decades.
The U.S. federal government still opposes marijuana legalization and argues that these laws promote drug addiction and crime.
“The U.S. continues to oppose drug legalization because evidence shows our shared drug problem is a major public health and safety threat, and drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated,” Berit Hallberg, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDPC), told Fox News Latino
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