Ecuador’s president may pardon ‘drug mules’

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Ecuador’s President Correa is planning to change the country’s drug laws. Stiff penalties unfairly punish the poor, says Correa, who are forced into the drug trade for economic reasons.

This video dispatch from Reuters goes inside a prison in Ecuador to speak to some of those serving long jail sentences for possession of small amounts of drugs. The left-wing president is proposing a pardon for 2,000 ‘mules,’ or low-level drug carriers, currently languishing in jail, many of them because they can’t afford a lawyer.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City