Gael García Bernal and Mexican Government Agree: Drugs Should be Legal

Two weeks ago, the Mexican government announced that it would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cocaine, metamphetamine and LSD for "personal use." The move appears to be aimed at cutting down administrative and police corruption, though in the past, in practice, the government rarely went to the trouble of prosecuting people in possession of drugs. But corrupt cops did haul individuals in for questioning in order to harass them or extort bribes.

Bernal has always been an out-spoken critic of his country. In Sept. 2008, when bombings occurred in the Mexican state of Michoacan, he wrote a column in "complicated Spanish" for the Mexican newspaper El Universal. In it, he mourned the violence of the bombings and passionately lamented the sad state of affairs in his home country, waxing nostalgic about his childhood there.