Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra | |
|---|---|
 Salazar, c. 1930
| |
| Born |
December 17, 1898
Pánuco de Coronado Municipality, Durango, Mexico
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| Died | September 23, 1957 (aged 58)
Mexico City, Mexico
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| Alma mater | National Autonomous University of Mexico |
| Known for | Scientific investigations on cannabis and other psychoactive substances, promoting legalization of psychoactive substances in Mexico |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychiatry |
| Institutions | La Castañeda |
Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra (December 17, 1898 – September 23, 1957) was a Mexican doctor, psychiatrist, writer and professor, whose scientific investigations influenced the legalization of drug substances during the Lazaro Cardenas administration in 1940.
It was at La Castañeda, the institution Salazar worked for more than twenty years, where he led many scientific investigations into the effects of marijuana. These investigations detailed in his report "El mito de la marihuana" (lit. 'The myth about marijuana') helped Salazar launch onto the national public discourse the de-stigmatization of drug addiction and its treatment as a disease, not a crime. Due to increasing political and economic pressure from the United States government and a U.S. campaign to discredit Salazar, the law was repealed on July 3, 1940. Salazar focused his final years studying mental health illnesses until his death in 1957 in Mexico City.
Early life and education
Salazar was born in Pánuco de Coronado, Durango in 1898, the son of Leopoldo Salazar Salinas and Aurora Viniegra de Salazar. After his elementary studies in Durango, he moved to the capital to begin his university education at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM). He left to Europe where completed his medical schooling at the Facultad de Medicina de San Carlos in Madrid. For his specialization in psychiatry he studied at the Faculté de médecine in Paris.
Career
After finishing his specialty in psychiatry, Salazar returned to Mexico City in 1925 and started working as a psychiatrist for Mexico City's General Asylum, La Castañeda. In addition to his work at La Castañeda, Salazar held several positions throughout his career with different medical institutions in Mexico City. Starting in 1927, Salazar taught courses on neuropsychiatry and medical clinical studies at the Facultad de Medicina. He also founded the first clinic to treat epilepsy in Mexico and was in charge of the psychiatric department at the Clinica Londres, along with leading his own private practice. Salazar developed a reputation for his humane and compassionate treatment of patients. He frequently engaged in friendly conversation and shared meals with patients, treating them as friends rather than solely scientific subjects to be studied, which put him at odds with conservative colleagues.
Despite his reputation among his colleagues, Salazar held several important roles in Mexican medical society as the head of the Hospital de Drogadicción de Ciudad de Mexico in 1938, and chief of the Oficina de Toxicomanias y Alcoholismo from 1938 to 1939. He held memberships to the Sociedad de Neurologia y Psiquiatria, Consejo de Psiquiatria e Higiene Mental and the Academia Nacional de Medicina.
Complementing his work as a medical practitioner, Salazar was also a writer. He published his research findings in several, well known academic journals like Gaceta Medica de Mexico, the journal of the Sociedad de Neurologia y Psiquiatria de Mexico, the journal Manicomios and Criminalia, a publication of the Academia en Ciencias Penales. In addition to his scientific research findings, he published throughout his career opinion pieces in well known national newspapers such as El Universal, El Nacional, and Excélsior. He used this journalistic medium to educate and discuss medical topics on a national scale like discussing mental illnesses and differences between drug substances.
El mito de la marihuana
In December 1938, Salazar published a report titled "El mito de la marihuana" (The myth about marijuana) in the criminal sociology journal, Criminalia. In the publication, Salazar presented his scientific findings on the effects of marijuana, dispelling the long held associations between marijuana and madness. Salazar enlisted the consenting participation of patients from La Castaneda to carry out multiple controlled experiments that questioned the basis of prejudices held against cannabis such as insanity, delirium, hallucinations, and criminality as scientifically unfounded. He focused on the potential use of cannabis to treat maladies such as anxiety, asthma, and rheumatism. He suggested that substance abuse and addiction ought to be treated humanely as an illness or disease, not as a crime, encouraging a combination of education, pharmacological treatment, and psychiatric support. A local newspaper regarded him as the man with the solution to drug addiction in his hands. Salazar believed that by placing the prescription and distribution of drug substances under the authority of the government and control of medical professionals, those with drug addiction could receive better medical treatment, and run drug traffickers out of business.
Open letter to Lola La Chata
In March 1938, he published an open letter in El Universal to Lola La Chata, one of the most prominent drug traffickers in Mexico City that operated in the neighborhood La Merced. Salazar viewed drug traffickers and peddlers as part of a crises harming Mexican society and straining relations with the United States. In his letter to Lola La Chata, Salazar wrote that she had been more successful with drug abusers than the Alcohol and Narcotics Service of the Department of Health, who were charged with reincorporating them to society. He suggested that her success was due to her talent at exploiting the corruption in society among the police force and politicians.
Impact
Legalization of drug substances
Salazar advocated for psychoactive substances to be discussed from a public health and medical perspective where drug addicts were treated like patients rather than criminals. In a similar vein, he advocated for governmental policies to be based on current scientific knowledge rather than prejudices and/or economic or political interests. He viewed the prohibitionist laws in place as encouraging the illegal drug trade, corruption of the police force, and criminality of drug users who resorted to crime in order to pay for the high priced substances. Salazar's proposed solution was the monopolization of drug substances by the state.
Salazar's scientific investigations and writings served as the intellectual foundation for the Reglamento Federal de Toxicomanias (lit. 'Federal Regulation on Drug Addictions'), enacted during the Lazaro Cardenas administration. Signed into law on January 5, 1940, and published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación (lit. 'Official Journal of the Federation') on February 17, 1940, the law effectively legalized psychoactive substances, and attempted to guarantee medical attention to drug addicts by authorizing medical professionals to prescribe and administer drugs. The government allocated funds to create a special budget for clinics or dispensaries to open up in order to effectively treat patients by administering controlled doses of low cost, safe quality substances. Patients were required to officially register with clinics in order to receive treatment. Around six clinics were set up around Mexico City. Around 200 people with some estimates stating as many as a 1000 attended the clinics daily.
The law also decriminalized sales and purchases of small quantities of substances, eliminating former punishments for drug offenses. In addition, drug users jailed for small criminal drug offenses were released.
The state controlled monopoly on drug substances made it so they could provide high quality substances at a low cost, and much lower and safer than what was sold on the streets of Mexico City at the time. To compare prices, morphine sold at 3.20 pesos a gram at the clinics. The same amount but of poorer, diluted quality was sold on the streets at 45-50 pesos, while it is estimated that a pure gram cost around 500 pesos.
The law was in effect for about 5 months, when on July 3, 1940, the Mexican government published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, the end to the Reglamento. The formal government explanation attributed this decision to a shortage of resources and the inability to purchases substances from Europe due to World War II. Not mentioned in the official declaration were the increasing economic and political pressures from the U.S. to repeal the law.
U.S. government involvement
Salazar's scientific investigations and support for the decriminalization of substance abuse drew the attention of the United States administration, specifically that of Harry Anslinger, Commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger was a known supporter of the criminalization of all drug substances and a staunch advocate for punitive drug punishments, especially marijuana. Documents from the National Archives in DC demonstrate multiple investigations into Salazar were held by several departments in the United States including the FBI, the State Department, American Embassy in Mexico, and the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
Documents show the Treasury Department had focused on Salazar as early as August 1938, and reached the attention of US Secretary of State Cordell Hull on October 21, 1938, after Salazar sent a discourse to the Mexican Embassy in Switzerland that recommended Mexico take an international stance to the defense of marijuana.
The American campaign to discredit Salazar and his investigation began taking shape before the conference of Comité de Tráfico de Opio y Otras Drogas Peligrosas of the League of Nations in June 1939 in Geneva, where Salazar was scheduled to speak on his narrative about the de-stigmatization of marijuana and other substances. Days before the conference, Salazar was invited to the American Embassy in Geneva to meet with American diplomatic officials to discuss his ideas. No official reason was given, but Salazar did not speak at the Geneva Conference, leaving to Mexico soon after his visit to the Embassy. Months later, Salazar left his post as chief of the Oficina de Toxicomanias y Alcoholismo in 1939.
Despite the United States clear disapproval of the legalization of substances, Mexico's administration passed the Reglamento Federal de Toxicomania. As a result, the U.S. invoked the 1935 amendments to the Law of Importation and Exportation of Narcotics. This allowed the U.S. to establish an embargo on the exportation of narcotics if the U.S. deemed the country's aims neither medical nor scientific. Although the Mexican administration sent diplomats to DC to discuss the success and efficiency of the new system, the U.S. Administration maintained their prohibitionist stances and threatened Mexico with economic and political threats of an embargo. In May 1940, the U.S. ceased all exportation of morphine and cocaine to Mexico. Months later, the Reglamento Federal de Toxicomania was repealed, and Mexico resumed their prohibitionist stance towards drug substances and their abuse, reinstating their illegality and the punitive response.
Later life
Despite the campaign that discredited his medical reputation and the repeal of the law of Reglamento, Salazar continued his practice as a medical professional. He was Director of La Castañeda from 1945 to 1948. He spent his final years investigating mental health illnesses, including funding an institution for youth with a history of delinquency or mental health issues named the Centro de Orientación Psicopedagógico o “Casa sin rejas.” In 1957, Salazar died by suicide after investigations into the youth center found irregularities in the financial administration.
In the media
Luis Gerardo Méndez portrayed Salazar in the 2021 podcast Toxicomanía: el experimento mexicano.