Schaffer Online Library of Drug Policy Sign the Resolution for a Federal Commission on Drug Policy

 

Contents | Feedback | Search | DRCNet Home Page | Join DRCNet

DRCNet Library | Schaffer Library | Historical Research

The New York Times May 15, 1953

__________

MEXICO DENIES AIDING

ILLICIT DRUG TRAFFIC
__________

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

LOS ANGELES, May 14 –– A representative of the Mexican Government has lodged a formal protest with Gov. Earl Warren against a charge by a State Crime Commission that Mexico was tacitly encouraging the illicit international traffic in heroin, an opium derivative.

The special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime, a group of layman appointed by the Governor eighteen months ago, in a report released Monday designated Mexico as primarily responsible for the recent "enormous" increase in the traffic through failure to destroy opium poppy fields and take action against the laboratory processing of heroin.

Salvador Duhart, Mexican Consul-General for Southern California released today the text of a letter to Governor Warren dated May 11 in which the crime commission's assertions were denied.

He cited a statement by Harry J. Anslinger, chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, before the United Nations Narcotic Commission April 13, that criticism of the Mexican Government in regard to the narcotics traffic was "wholly unjustified" and that Mexico had done "everything possible even beyond the measures required by the (international) conventions," to fulfill its obligations in the antinarcotics effort.