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 Hector Astudillo, governor of Guerrero, one of the most violent
states in Mexico, told Milenio television it was worth at least
exploring the possibility of allowing cultivation.
"Let's do some sort of pilot scheme," Astudillo, a member of
President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party,
told Milenio in an interview recorded last week but broadcast on
Monday.
"Provided it's used for medical issues ... It's a way out that could
get us away from the violence there has been in Guerrero," he added.
Home to the beach resort Acapulco, Guerrero was the scene of the
September 2014 disappearance of 43 trainee teachers, who the
government says it believes were massacred by a drug gang working
with corrupt local officials and police.
The disappearances sparked widespread international condemnation of
the state of law and order in Mexico.
Astudillo, who was elected governor of the southwestern state last
year, said Guerrero could not tackle the violence on its own, and
argued bringing poppy cultivation into the open could weaken the
hold gangsters have on local farmers.
He did not offer details of how such a scheme could work in Mexico,
which is currently conducting a national review of its policy on
marijuana after the Supreme Court last year granted an advocacy
group the right to grow it for recreational use.
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Though the marijuana ruling only applied to the group in question,
it could eventually usher in nationwide changes.
Still, President Pena Nieto has been very cautious about the
possibility of liberalizing Mexico's drug laws.
Opium poppies are used to make opium and heroin, as well as morphine
and other pain-killing drugs. They can only be grown legally in a
handful of countries, including India, Turkey and Australia.
More than 100,000 people have died in Mexico due to clashes between
drug gangs and the state since the previous government sent in the
armed forces to fight the cartels in late 2006.
(Reporting by Dave Graham)
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