Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, is proposing that his country decriminalize drug possession. The upper and lower houses of Congress passed the bill in April, and Calderon looks ready to sign it.

His reasoning: It makes sense to distinguish between small-time users and big-time dealers, while re-targeting major crime-fighting resources away from the consumers and toward the dealers and their drug lord bosses.[...]

The bill says users caught with small amounts — 5 grams of marijuana, 500 milligrams of cocaine — clearly intended for "personal and immediate use" will not be criminally prosecuted. They will be told of available clinics, and encouraged to enter a rehabilitation program.

It looks like a done deal. Of course, Mexico passed similar legislation in 2006 and it also looked like a sure thing, with robust support from then-president Vicente Fox and Congress. But in an 11th hour push, Bush's Drug Czar John Walters vehemently campaigned to block it. Fox caved and the legislation died.

But the Obama Administration's tack is noninterference (an approach that drug czar Gil Kerlikowske practiced around Seattle as police chief, and one I speculated he would adopt as drug czar). If that's all Obama does for reforming drug policy—let other countries and U.S. states pursue decriminalization without federally lobbying against it—that would mark the most progressive federal administration we've seen. The next test will be California and then Nevada, which plan to run initiatives to tax and regulate marijuana in the next few years.