All drugs, including cocaine, heroin and crystal meth, will be legal in drug-scarred Mexico within 10 years, former Mexican President Vicente Fox believes, after a court ruling that he said makes the legalisation of marijuana inevitable.
"I think marijuana (legalization) is a first step," Fox said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "It's now irreversible."
Fox was president between 2000 and 2006 and became an advocate of legalising drugs after leaving office.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court approved growing marijuana for recreational use. The landmark decision blasts open the door for an eventual legalisation in Mexico, where warring gangs have waged a decade of drug violence.
Now that the court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to prevent people from smoking marijuana, Fox said it would eventually have to make a similar decision for drugs like cocaine and heroin.
"The other drugs will take a longer cycle, say five to 10 years," he said.
In a 2013 interview, Fox said he believed Mexico could legalise pot by the end of current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's six-year term in 2018, which had seemed far-fetched to many at the time, but now appears possible.
Pena Nieto, who has repeatedly said he is against legalisation, has called for a national policy debate on the issue of marijuana reform.
Last week, Deputy Interior Minister Roberto Campa, the government official overseeing a review of marijuana policy, said questions such as easing custodial sentences and raising the amount of the drug that people can carry will be considered.
When Fox, a former Coca Cola executive, won the presidency in 2000 as the candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) it ended 71 years of uninterrupted rule by Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Since leaving office, Fox has learned a reputation for speaking his mind and butted heads with the PAN after he voiced support for Pena Nieto in the run-up to the 2012 election, which handed the presidency to the PRI after 12 years of PAN rule.
Fox said he had no interest in commercialising marijuana himself, once legalised but expected major agribusinesses to be interested.
"If they regulate freely so you can produce to export, the big guys are going to jump in," he said, adding that The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-style regulations would be needed if both Mexico and the United States eventually legalise marijuana.
Possessing and consuming tiny amounts of drugs including marijuana and cocaine were decriminalised in Mexico in 2009. The U.S. states of Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and the District of Columbia have legalized pot use.
But, it is still early days for federal legalisation in both countries, Fox said.
"(U.S. President Barack) Obama has to resolve his things over there and Pena Nieto has to make sure he sorts out this problem here," Fox said.
Despite holding differing views on marijuana legalisation, Fox said he approved of Pena Nieto's strategy against the country's drug gangs, even taking into account this year's high-profile jailbreak of drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
In a tacit swipe at his successor, former PAN President Felipe Calderon, whose military-led assault on the cartels sparked violence that resulted in more than 100,000 drug-related deaths since 2007, Fox said, "(Pena Nieto) doesn't go around putting a military beret on, he's not putting five stars on his chest and he's not conducting a holy war against the cartels."
