Drug War Chronicles 'the fight to stop the drug war'

California Cops To Feds: Please Help Us Break The Law!

2008-12-22T09:38:00.001-08:00

This from NORML

It’s been twelve years since California voters approved the physician-supervised use, possession, and cultivation of marijuana, and it’s been nearly five years since the state legislature mandated that, “qualified patients … who associate within the state of California in order collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes, shall not … be subject to state criminal sanctions.”

Too bad nobody told the cops.

According to papers recently submitted to Congress by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, representatives from the California Police Chiefs Association believe that they can simply override laws that they philosophically disagree with.

Here’s what Association President Steve Krull had to say about this matter in a 2006 letter to former DEA head Karen Tandy: “[A] concentrated effort [by the DEA in California] sustained over a period of time would send a strong message to local and county government that ‘medical marijuana’ is not allowed [in this state.]”

Except for the fact that it is.

Jacob Sullum over at Reason.com nails the situation here, but my added frustration comes from mainstream media’s utter failure to cover this story. Forget that this topic has any connection to marijuana; the larger and more far reaching issue here is that we now have physical evidence that a rogue group of law enforcement officers are trying to undermine democracy and the rule of law.

Perhaps if this sort of behavior was taking place in a foreign country, the US news media would be investigating the issue seriously. But instead the guilty parties are our own police officers, so the mainstream press simply sweeps the story under the rug.

Nothing to see here, except there is.

.The Lure of Opium Wealth Is a Potent Force in Afghanistan. LA Times Report

2008-11-19T07:07:00.001-08:00

AFGHANISTAN: A HARVEST OF DESPAIR

Western officials warn of a nascent narco state as drug traffickers act with impunity, some allegedly with the support of top officials

By Paul Watson, L.A Times Staff Writer
May 29, 2005

Kunduz, Afghanistan

Like a frustrated hunter, the head of the local anti-drug squad keeps snapshots of the ones who got away.

Colombia, ground crews a bigger part of the cocaine battle

2008-11-19T06:49:00.001-08:00

Aerial spraying is still the preferred method of coca eradication but the use of manual laborers is expanding. Many take the dangerous job because of good wages; some have more personal reasons.

Reporting from Nechi, Colombia -- Cesar Lopez and his crew resemble human weed eaters, dispensing with 15 acres of illegal crops a day in the sweltering hills of north-central Colombia.
Guarded by a cordon of 120 anti-narcotics police officers, the group uses metal rods to uproot bush after bush on the steep hillside. In a gully below stands a thatched-roof laboratory where farmers processed a kilogram of coca paste a week, worth about $1,000 each, before fleeing last month, police said.

Cesar Lopez

Lopez leads Mobile Eradication Group 5, one of scores of 30-man teams of laborers the government has deployed across the nation to manually destroy coca crops, a program now deemed nearly as important to the drug fight as sprayed weedkiller.
On a recent day, Lopez and his comrades were on the outskirts of this river town in Antioquia state. They marched into the hills that are polka-dotted with distinctive lime green patches of the shrub whose leaves are cocaine's raw material.
"We just keep going until it's gone," said Lopez, 32, a wiry onetime narco-trafficker who gave up coca farming after tragedy struck. "I feel proud of what we do because I know from experience these bushes are the root of all that's evil in Colombia."

Spraying from crop-dusters is still the preferred eradication weapon of Plan Colombia, the U.S.-funded initiative targeting illegal drugs and terrorism. But disappointing results from years of aerial spraying, plus fears of environmental damage caused by the chemicals used, have led U.S. and Colombian officials to put more emphasis on teams like Lopez's.
This year, ground crews will destroy 250,000 acres of coca, 67% more than in 2007, compared with the 325,000 acres of coca to be sprayed this year, Colombian and U.S. officials said. Five years ago, manual eradication represented less than one-tenth of all coca crops destroyed, the officials said.
The shift is having an effect, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says. In a visit to Colombia last month, the office's director, John P. Walters, said street prices of cocaine in the States were up 6% in the 12-month period that ended June 30 and up 25% since January 2007.
Higher prices indicate that efforts to control the supply and trafficking of cocaine are working, Walters said.
"There has been a market meltdown in the cocaine business," Walters said in an e-mail to The Times. "We have made huge strides in breaking the machine that delivers addiction, violence and misery to our nations."
But Plan Colombia critics are skeptical, saying that cocaine street prices fluctuate and the White House discloses little about how its data are developed or what measurement methods it uses. Previous claims of higher prices have been challenged by news organizations that have surveyed the same urban markets the Bush administration cites.
"This White House just doesn't have the credibility to ask people to take their word for it," said John Walsh, a researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America, a watchdog organization. "If they can't back it up with data that's open to independent expert scrutiny, they're going to have a tough time convincing people."
Some say any shrinkage of the U.S. supply is explained by the growing market in Europe, where much of South America's drug production has been redirected because it can fetch higher prices there.
The police officers watching over Lopez's group acknowledge being nervous -- it's a dangerous job. Snipers with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's main rebel group and largest cocaine trafficker, frequently take aim at them from dense jungle perches that adjoin coca clearings.
At night, stealthy killers called zorros sneak up on police sentries at worker camps to attack them with knives or guns.
But the biggest danger comes from land mines that guerrillas plant in coca fields to dissuade the workers from doing their job. Often assembled with gravel, wood splinters and fecal matter encased in rubber, the mines are sometimes difficult to find, even with metal detectors and explosives-sniffing dogs.
"The terrorists have become very inventive," police Col. Harold Santamaria said.
An average of two land mines a week are detected by police. One that wasn't noticed exploded Oct. 17, blowing off the leg of a lieutenant guarding Lopez's unit. This year, in this region alone, one police guard and one eradicator have been killed and seven wounded by mines and snipers.
Since the manual eradication program began in earnest in 2003, the toll has been heavy, with dozens of soldiers, police officers and eradicators killed, including 24 in two months in 2006, when guerrillas attacked teams in Macarena National Park, a rebel stronghold.
"Psychologically, it's a heavy load," police Maj. Delfin Murillo said. "But our people never lose their spirit. They see they are having an impact."

Neither the military nor officials in Social Action, the government agency that organizes and deploys the teams, have any illusion about the difficulties of winning the drug fight.
"We can't win the war; we can only control it," said a Social Action official who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oscar, for security reasons.

Members of Lopez's crew signed up mainly for good wages. They earn nearly $500 a month, or 2 1/2 times the minimum wage.
Lopez says he has another incentive. Once a small-time coca grower and processor, Lopez says he does this work as penance for the death of his 19-year-old brother.
In 2003, his brother, Ariel, was helping Lopez grow and process coca on a small plot in the southern state of Putumayo. They had gone there from their native city of Manizales to join a Colombian version of a gold rush.

"The money was easy; I thought we had it made," Lopez said. But a rival trafficker came around one day to collect a debt, and not finding Lopez, shot his brother dead.
"I feel responsible. I'm redeeming myself by doing this work," Lopez said.

New Heroin Crisis Threatens Britain, Report Say's

2008-11-12T10:59:00.001-08:00

Despite the presence of British forces, Afghanistan has produced two record opium harvests, with Helmand province accounting for more than half the poppies grown.

A glut of opium on the world market fuelled by a record Afghan harvest threatens a new heroin crisis in Britain, the European Union drug agency warns today.

And the UK remains at the top of the European "league table" for cocaine abuse for the fifth consecutive year, according to the annual report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

But it reports that there are "stronger signals" of the declining popularity of cannabis across Europe, with a strong downward trend especially noticeable among British school students.
The agency suggests this decline may be a byproduct of the introduction of widespread bans on smoking tobacco in public places. Nevertheless the drugs experts say that a quarter of all Europeans - 71 million people - have tried cannabis at some point in their lives, 12 million of them within the last month.

AddAction's Andrew Horne on why Britain leads Europe in heroin and cocaine use
Link to this audio

The heroin warning follows two record opium harvests in Afghanistan of 8,200 tonnes in 2007 and 7,700 tonnes this year. These harvests represent 90% of the world's illicit opium production, with Helmand province, the centre of British military operations, accounting for more than half of the poppies grown. The agency says "alternative development" measures to persuade farmers to switch to other crops are having a very limited impact.

The EU is worried that these record harvests are threatening to bring to an end the "slowly improving" heroin situation in Britain and across Europe, and reverse the decline seen in heroin-related drug deaths. Seizures have doubled in Turkey, an important transit country, are up 10% up in Britain, and pockets of new injecting heroin users are appearing for the first time in recent years.

"Current evidence does not point to an epidemic growth in heroin problems as experienced by most of Europe in the 1990s," said the EU drugs agency director, Wolfgang Gotz. "Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the threat posed by the glut of heroin now available on the world market, the concerns raised by indicators of heroin use, or signs that synthetic opiates may be a growing problem. Vigilance is clearly required."

Britain's continuing position at top of the league table of 27 EU countries for cocaine abuse is based on the fact that 12.7% of young adults aged 15 to 34 have used the drug. Typical cocaine users in Britain are now just as likely to be poor working class young men as wealthy city traders. The latest school surveys show that 5% of teenagers aged 15 and 16 have tried the drug.

Cocaine use in Europe is concentrated in only a few countries. Use is highest in Britain and Spain but has stabilised in both countries in recent years at a level similar to that seen in the US. The increasing number of Europeans using the drug – an estimated 4 million last year - reflects its recent growth in Italy, Denmark and Ireland. The increasing popularity of cocaine has been matched by declining use of cannabis.

There is however some encouraging news about cannabis consumption in Britain. While the UK consistently had the highest levels of cannabis use among school children in the early and mid 1990s, in this European survey it has seen the sharpest decline in popularity of any EU country.

Britain is now fourth in the European league table for cannabis use amongst 15- to 24-year-olds, with 39.5% saying they have tried it and 12% saying they have used it in the last month.

The European drugs experts say domestic herbal cannabis production is no longer marginal in some EU countries, including Britain, with 2.3 million cannabis plants seized last year in Europe.

The most recent Eurobarometer poll on the subject shows increasing support for decriminalisation of cannabis, with 31% of Europeans backing the idea.

Dutch Ban Sale Of 'Magic Mushrooms'.

2008-11-12T10:43:00.001-08:00

From Dec 1 the famous Amsterdam magic mushroom will no longer be on sale in the city. The hallucinogenic mushrooms, imported mainly from Hawaii, Mexico and Ecuador, have for years been freely available, at modest prices, in shops around the city.

Neatly packed and labelled in display cases beside regular goods like vegetables and milk, and often packed in souvenir gift wrapping, the mushrooms have been popular among mainly German, French and British tourists.

Shop owners have claimed the ban will result in hundreds of jobs being lost and are planning protest marches.

While the dried variety, which provides even stronger hallucinations, is already illegal, the decision to ban fresh magic - or psilocybin - mushrooms was taken after a 17-year-old French girl jumped to her death from one of Amsterdam's canal bridges in March after taking them.

Amsterdam city council supports the government's ban, hoping it will change the general perception of the city as a mecca for drug user and the sex industry.

Earlier this year moves were made to close down part of the city's famous red light district.

But Paul Van den Berg, who works in one of the shops that sells the mushrooms, described that ban as "a disgrace".

He said: "It's all the fault of tourists, especially the Brits. They misuse alcohol at home and come over here to do the same with hash and the so called 'magic mushrooms'."

He said that the mushrooms were intended for connoisseurs who know how to eat them properly and in the correct quantity, producing a euphoric state with the odd "pleasant hallucination".

But a city councillor said: "Despite Amsterdam having the world's most important collection of Rembrandts and Van Gogh and being home to the famous Concertgeboug Orchestra, the City is still perceived as a place where you go to buy drugs."

The Netherlands agreed legislation in July to ban cigarette smoking in bars and restaurants. However the euphemistically labelled "coffee shops" where soft drugs can be selected from a menu remain open and smokers can puff on a roll-up of marijuana on the premises, provided tobacco is not used.

Dutch tourist organisations insist that windmills, tulips and Rembrandt remain the major draw for tourists.

A Dutch magic mushroom customer said: "Sunday lunch just won't be the same. I always used the mushrooms in my stew for friends. They produce a nice relaxing glow, much better than alcohol".

Above, typical Dutch mushroom store

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Dutch Marijuana Smoker Fined......For Using Tobacco.

While the Netherlands has kept its liberal policy on the smoking of cannabis in the country's legendary "coffee shops", zero tolerance is now shown to tobacco smokers in Dutch cafes and restaurants after a smoking came ban came into force last July.

An Amsterdam police spokesman admitted that it could be difficult to understand the current Dutch policy of allowing smokers to puff away on pure cannabis while fining tobacco users.

"For logic it is sometimes impossible to explain, even to the Dutch," he said.

"The man was not fined for smoking a cannabis joint but for smoking. You can smoke cannabis but not tobacco in coffee shops."

The unnamed 27-year-old man owns one of the city's coffee shops, where the purchase and smoking of cannabis is tolerated, and he is expected to contest the case in court.

It will be the first test of a Dutch smoking ban that exempts people from enjoying joints as long as only pure marijuana is used.

The man was caught lighting a hand rolled cannabis joint during a routine police check and fined because officers found tobacco mixed with the soft drug.

The smoking ban is usually enforced by municipal health and safety inspectors "but if a police officer signals an infringement, he does not close his eyes to it," said the police spokesman.

A fifth of Dutch cafes and bars are ignoring the tobacco smoking ban, which was introduced on July 1. Many are setting up special funds to collect money to pay fines issued to smokers.

Above, Dutch cannabis joint ½ weed, ½ tobacco, semi-legal ?

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US D.E.A Accused Of Drug Trafficking By Bolivian Head

2008-11-11T02:25:00.001-08:00

Bolivian leader Evo Morales on Thursday accused the US government of encouraging drug-trafficking as he explained his decision to banish the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Morales, a staunch opponent of the Washington government, said the staff from the US agency had three months to prepare to leave the country, because "the DEA did not respect the police, or even the (Bolivian) armed forces."
"The worst thing is, it did not fight drug trafficking; It encouraged it," the Bolivian leader said, adding that he had "quite a bit of evidence" backing up his charges.
Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana presented a series of documents and press clippings at a news conference, which he described as "object data" that had influenced Morales' decision to suspend DEA activities last week.
Quintana said Morales was ready to present the evidence to incoming US president Barack Obama "to prove the illegality, abuse and arrogance of the DEA in Bolivia."
Throughout the 1990s, the DEA in Bolivia "bribed police officers, violated human rights, covered up murders, destroyed bridges and roads," said Quintana.
Morales earlier Thursday said that after a 1986 operation in Huanchaca National Park, it was determined that the largest cocaine processing plant "was under DEA protection."
He also charged that the DEA had investigated political and union leaders opposed to neoliberal economic policies, which he said amounted to political persecution.
On Wednesday, he had accused the DEA of shooting and killing Bolivians during their anti-drug operations, including members of the coca farmers' movement.
Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, has served as the leader of the Bolivian coca-growers union. The coca plant, from which cocaine is derived, has many uses in traditional Andean culture.
The Bolivian leader announced last Saturday he was suspending the work of the DEA in the impoverished Andean nation, and accused it of having encouraged political unrest that killed 19 people in September.
"From today all the activities of the US DEA are suspended indefinitely," the Bolivian leader had said in the coca-growing region of Chimore, in the central province of Chapare, where he was evaluating efforts to combat drug trafficking.
The DEA has denied Morales' accusations.
US President George W. Bush, in a finding released in September, added Bolivia to a list of countries that have "failed demonstrably" in anti-drugs cooperation.

Mexico Drug War, Sorting Good Guys From Bad

2008-11-04T23:28:00.001-08:00

From the New York Times

MEXICO CITY - Many of the mug shots of drug traffickers that appear in the Mexican press show surly looking roughnecks glaring menacingly at the camera. An anticorruption investigation unveiled last week in the Mexican capital, however, made it clear that not everybody enmeshed in the narcotics trade looks the part.

Above, Miguel Colorado González, formerly of the attorney general’s organized crime unit.

There was a gray-haired, grandfatherly type who was pushing 70, as well as an avuncular figure with a neatly coiffed goatee and wire-rimmed spectacles perched upon his nose. Some of the five men who found themselves on the front pages of newspapers on their way to jail, wore suits, which made them look more like bureaucrats than bad guys.

Among the greatest challenges in Mexico’s drug war is the fact that the traffickers fit no type. Their ranks include men and women, the young and the old. And they can work anywhere: in remote drug labs, as part of roving assassination squads, even within the upper reaches of the government.

It has long been known that drug gangs have infiltrated local police forces. Now it is becoming ever more clear that the problem does not stop there. The alarming reality is that many public servants in Mexico are serving both the taxpayers and the traffickers.

The men in suits, it turns out, were both bureaucrats and bad guys, officials say, corrupt employees high up in an elite unit of the federal attorney general’s office who were feeding secret information to the feared Beltrán Leyva cartel in exchange for suitcases full of cash.

Their arrest, and the firing of 35 other suspect law enforcement officials, represents the most extensive corruption case that this country, which knows corruption all too well, has ever seen. And it raises a question that is on the lips of many Mexicans: how does one know who is dirty and who is clean?

“I’m convinced that to stop the crime, we first have to get it out of our own house,” President Felipe Calderón, who has made fighting trafficking a crucial part of his presidency, said in a speech on Tuesday, after the arrests were announced.

That house is clearly dirty. There is ample evidence that Mexicans of all walks of life are willing to join the drug gangs in exchange for cash, including farmers who abandon traditional crops and turn to growing marijuana and accountants who hide the narco-traffickers’ profits.

There was sporadic evidence in the past that such corruption extended into high-level government offices. An army general who commanded Mexico’s anti-drug unit was arrested and convicted in 1997 after the discovery that he was working for a drug lord on the side. In 2005, a spy working for a drug cartel was discovered working in the president’s office and accused of feeding traffickers information on the movements of Vicente Fox, then the president.

But the abundance of law enforcement officials now believed to be on the take has made Mr. Calderón’s drug war all the more difficult to execute. Traffickers often know beforehand when raids are going to occur. Sometimes dealers plant their people on the teams that carry out the raids to act as saboteurs.

The traffickers’ networks are not foolproof. Mr. Calderón’s government did manage to capture Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, a cartel leader, in January even though the group was receiving inside information. What appears to have happened, officials say, is that the army carried out the raid without involving the attorney general’s office, inadvertently keeping the corrupt officials out of the loop.

The cartel’s leaders, who operate out of Sinaloa State and have been implicated in the killing of a top police commander in Mexico City, were described in local press accounts as being furious that their government moles had not informed them of the raid.

Still, the reach of the drug networks is so extensive that even winning a court conviction against a kingpin is not always enough to claim victory.

Many prison wardens and guards have shown themselves to be corrupt, allowing prominent detainees not only to operate their crime networks from their cells, but also to use their illicit drug proceeds to be as comfortable as possible behind bars, paying for everything from pizza to prostitutes. The cartel leaders sometimes even use their money to escape. The most notorious case was in 2001, when Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the country’s most wanted drug lord, managed to slip out of a maximum security prison in a laundry cart.

The porous nature of Mexican penitentiaries has prompted Mr. Calderón to increase the number of transfers of drug lords to the United States prison system. The United States has already filed the paperwork to extradite one of the officials accused last week of corruption. The official, Miguel Colorado González, 68, was a top manager in the government organized-crime office known by the Spanish acronym Siedo.

Mr. Calderón is not the first president to try to root out corruption. President Ernesto Zedillo reorganized the nation’s federal police at least twice; each time traffickers quickly infiltrated the force and bought off leading officials. His successor, Mr. Fox, tried and failed to clean up law enforcement as well.

Mr. Calderón’s efforts have been sustained enough that the traffickers have begun a vicious counterattack; so far this year, about 4,000 people — including police officers, soldiers, criminals and civilians — have been killed in an extraordinary wave of violence linked to organized crime.

The latest corruption scandal has prompted President Calderón’s attorney general to order a restructuring and purging of his office, and specifically of Siedo, which was formed from another agency that was shut down after being infiltrated by drug spies.

The government has ordered more lie detector tests for officials in delicate posts, beefed-up background checks and better salaries for underpaid police officers. But the amount of cash that the traffickers throw around — which Jorge Chabat, a security analyst, calls “enough money to buy part of the state” — makes government salaries seem laughable. Clearly, the government cannot compete peso for peso.

In some cases, finding out who has strayed from the straight and narrow should be a simple matter of following the money. Mr. Colorado González is reported to have bought four luxury vehicles in one year. Expensive jewelry was found in his home. His bank account was bulging.

In Tuesday’s speech, a clearly frustrated Mr. Calderón said that the fight to clean up Mexico depended on citizens putting their country first and respecting the law above all else. He suggested that the small bribes so often demanded by the officer on the beat, and accepted by the public as normal, for infractions real and imagined, were not disconnected from the government official receiving millions of dollars in drug profits.

“We need a stronger society, a society that lives the principle of legality with conviction, that encourages, promotes, spreads and educates its children with values,” Mr. Calderón said. In other words, there has to be a line people will not cross, even for a suitcase full of cash.

Walter Cronkite & America's Disastrous Drug War Pt 1 of 6

2008-11-03T22:25:00.001-08:00

Walter Cronkite explains why the drug war has failed so miserably.

Please use these links for parts 2 - 6

Part two
Part three
Part four
Part five
Part six

Drug War Chronicle Video Review: "Prince of Pot: The US v. Marc Emery," Directed by Nick Wilson (2008, Journeyman Pictures).

2008-11-03T11:40:00.001-08:00

Drug War Chronicle, Issue #558, 10/31/08

Let me say right up front that Marc Emery sometimes pays me money to write articles for his magazine, Cannabis Culture, so I am not a completely disinterested observer. That said, "Prince of Pot" director Nick Wilson has done a superb job of explaining who Emery is, where he came from, and what he is all about -- and in tying Emery's trajectory to the larger issues of marijuana prohibition, the drug war in general, and Canadian acquiescence to US-style prohibitionist drug policies.

Marc Emery (courtesy Cannabis Culture magazine)

I assume that anyone reading these words already knows who Marc Emery is: Canada's most vocal advocate of marijuana legalization, founder of the BC Marijuana Party, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, operator of POT-TV, and former proprietor of the Marc Emery Seed Company. Emery made lots of money with his seed company, and plowed much of it back into the marijuana legalization movement, not only in Canada, but also bankrolling activists in the US Marijuana Party south of the border and putting some loonies (Canadian nickname for their one-dollar coin) into various Global Marijuana Marches. For Emery, the seed company was merely a means to an end, a method of raising money to subvert marijuana prohibition, or, as he nicely put it, to overgrow the government.

But all that came to a crashing halt three years ago, when Emery and two of his employees, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Seattle on marijuana trafficking charges for his seed sales. Now, the Vancouver 3, as they have come to be known, face up to life in prison in the US if and when they are extradited.

The documentary, which is available from Journeyman Productions, opens with some vintage Emery, addressing the crowd at a pro-legalization, anti-extradition rally in Vancouver, the headquarters of his operation. "The DEA says I am responsible for 1.1 million pounds of pot," he said to cheers from the crowd. "I would be happy to believe that. That's the problem -- the DEA and I agree on the facts."

"Prince of Pot" follows Emery's career from his beginnings as an Ontario bookstore owner who loathed stoners, but came to embrace their cause as he fought the Canadian government's censorship of "drug-related" magazines like High Times. Early on, Emery displayed the same qualities that propelled his meteoric rise to the heights of the pot legalization movement: a libertarian sensibility, "an ego that takes up 40% of his body weight," as one observer put it, an aggressive, abrasive personality, a penchant for the publicity stunt, and a mouth that never stops working.

The documentary also shows that Emery's exhibitionism isn't limited to the sphere of the political. Early on, viewers are treated to a shot of Emery's backside as he gets out of bed, and another scene shows him naked on a Vancouver nude beach being anointed with cannabis oil by his young wife Jodie in an experiment to see whether it could have an impact on "any cancerous or pre-cancerous cells." (No word on how that turned out.)

But if Marc Emery's ass is on the screen, it's also on the line, and this is where "Prince of Pot" really shines. The documentary makers interviewed the unrepentant US attorney in Seattle who indicted him and a Seattle DEA agent who justified the bust, and confronted DEA head Karen Tandy at a 2006 international DEA conference in Montreal.

"Prince of Pot" hones in with precision accuracy on Tandy's post-bust press release where she bragged about how Emery's arrest was "a blow to the legalization movement." That press release may be Emery's best long-shot chance at avoiding extradition because it provides evidence that his prosecution was politically motivated.

All of the feds, of course, deny that was the case, but, in tracing Emery's career, his succession of trivial arrests by Canadian authorities, and growing US frustration with Canada's seeming indifference to his activities, the documentarians make a strong case that Marc Emery was busted not because he sold seeds, but because he was a burr under the saddle of Washington.

The documentary also features a strong cast of Canadian supporters, including former Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell ("The drug czar is an idiot"), Vancouver East MP Libby Davies, Toronto attorney Alan Young, Ottawa attorney and criminal justice professor Eugene Oscapella ("Why should we emulate the failed drug policies of the United States?"). Vancouver activist David Malmo-Levine, shown smoking a foot-long joint at one point, makes a compelling observation, too: "They want to send him to prison for life," he exclaims, recounting the DEA's argument about the harm Emery has caused by promoting marijuana production. "What harm? Show me the bodies," he demands. "There has to be at least one body if they want to send him away for life. There has to be at least one person who suffered more than bronchitis."

Washington state marijuana defense attorney Douglas Hiatt's brief appearance is also powerful and worth noting. Visibly angry at the injustice of the marijuana laws, Hiatt lashes out at prosecutors and the DEA. "If the DEA wants to talk about destroying families," he growls, "they can talk to me about the families they've destroyed for trying to use medical marijuana. The only thing I see ruining people's lives is the government's policies," Hiatt spits out. His righteous wrath is refreshing.

At one point in the documentary, film-maker Wilson says that for him, "It's not about seeds, it's about sovereignty." From the Canadian perspective, he's right, of course, but it's really about marijuana prohibition, and Wilson does a wonderful job of sketching its history and ugly current reality.

At the end, the documentary speculates about a possible deal for Emery to serve a shorter prison term in the US. That didn't happen. Neither did a proposed deal that would have seen charges dropped against Rainey and Williams and Emery serving a few years in a Canadian prison. Now, it's back to fighting extradition, and given that the decision to extradite is ultimately a political one made by the Justice Minister and given that the Canadian federal government is in bed with the US on drug policy, extradition remains the most likely outcome.

In a touching scene, Emery and his wife argue over whether he will serve his cause by martyring himself, something he seems determined to do. I have personally counseled him otherwise. I suggested that he become the marijuana movement's Osama bin Laden. No, not that he blow up DEA headquarters, but that he escape to a hidden cave complex somewhere in the Canadian Rockies and bedevil his enemies with communiques from his hidden sanctuary. I, for one, would rather see Marc Emery figuratively flipping the bird to the US government than disappearing, like so many others have, into the American gulag.

Check out this documentary. It's a good one. It'll give you goose bumps at some points, make you want to cry at some, and make you want to cheer at others.

More Drug War Victims.......

2008-11-03T10:45:00.001-08:00

John Adams

64 years old
Lebanon, Tennessee
October, 2000

Shot to death during a SWAT drug raid while watching TV. The house didn't match the description on the warrant.

Xavier Bennett

8 years old
Atlanta, Georgia
November, 1991

Xavier was accidentally shot to death by officers in a pre-dawn drug raid during a gunfight with one of Xavier's relatives.

Delbert Bonnar

57 years old
Belpre, Ohio
October, 1998

Shot 8 times by police in drug raid. They were looking for his son.

Veronica Bowers

35 years old

Charity Bowers

7 months old

In the air over Peru
April, 2001

As part of a long-standing arrangement to stop drug shipments, U.S. government tracking provided the information for the Peruvian Air Force to mistakenly shoot down a Cessna plane carrying missionaries. Killed in the incident were Roni Bowers, a missionary with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and her daughter, Charity. As of August, 2003, the United States is considering reinstating the shoot-down program. Perhaps they think by now we've forgotten.

Rudolfo "Rudy" Cardenas

43 years old
San Jose, California
February, 2004

Rudy was a father of five who was passing by a house targeted by narcotics officers attempting to serve a parole violation warrant and the police mistakenly thought he was the one they were there to arrest. They chased Cardenas, and he fled, apparently afraid of them (they were not uniformed). Cardenas was shot multiple times in the back.
Dorothy Duckett, 78, told the Mercury News she looked out her fifth-floor window after hearing one gunshot and saw Cardenas pleading for his life. "I watched him running with his hands in the air. He kept saying, 'Don't shoot. Don't shoot,'" Duckett said. "He had absolutely nothing in his hands."

Jose Colon

20 years old
Suffolk, New York
April, 2002

Jose was outside the house where he had come to repay a $20 debt, when a drug raid on the house commenced. He was shot in the head by SWAT.

Troy Davis

25 years old
North Richland Hills, Texas
December, 1999

During a no-knock raid to find some marijuana plants he was growing, he was shot to death in his living room. There are disputed accounts regarding whether he had a gun.

Anthony Andrew Diotaiuto

23 years old
Sunrise, Florida
August, 2005

Anthony worked two jobs to help pay for the house he lived in with his mother. He had permit for a concealed weapon because of the areas he traveled through for his night job. Sunrise police claimed that he had sold some marijuana, and because they knew he had a legal gun, decided to use SWAT. Neighbors claim that the police did not identify themselves. Police first claimed that Anthony pointed his gun at them, and later changed their story. Regardless, Anthony was dead with 10 bullets in him, and the police found 2 ounces of marijuana. Article.

Annie Rae Dixon

84 years old
Tyler, Texas
January, 1993

Bedridden with pneumonia during a drug raid. Officer kicked open her bedroom door and accidentally shot her.

Patrick Dorismond

26 years old
New York, New York
March, 2000

Patrick was a security guard who wanted to become a policeman. He was off-duty and unarmed when he went out with friends. Standing on the street looking for a taxi, he was approached by undercover police who asked to buy some marijuana from him. Patrick was offended by the request (he didn't use drugs), and a scuffle ensued. Dorismond was then shot to death by the police.

Shirley Dorsey

56 years old
Placerville, California
April, 1991

Rather than being compelled to testify against her 70-year-old boyfriend (Byron Stamate) for cultivating the medicinal cannabis she depended upon to help control her crippling back pain, Shirley Dorsey committed suicide. She saw it as the only way to prevent the forfeiture of their home and property. Despite her suicide, Stamate was sentenced to 9 months prison, and his home, cottage, and $177,000 life savings were seized.

Juan Mendoza Fernandez

60 years old
Dallas, Texas
September, 2000

Police found a variety of drugs when they raided the Fernandez' home. However, Juan apparently believed he was the victim of burglars during the raid, and was shot while trying to protect his 11-year-old granddaughter. He and his wife had been married 36 years and had four children and 13 grandchildren.

Curt Ferryman

24 years old
Jacksonville, Florida
August, 2000

Undercover agents were attempting to arrest Ferryman, who was in his car and unarmed. A DEA agent knocked on the car window with his gun to get the suspect's attention, and the gun went off, killing him as he sat in the car.

Derek Hale

25 years old
Wilmington, Delaware
November, 2006

A retired Marine Sergeant who served two tours in Iraq, was peacefully sitting on the front stoop of a house, when police in unmarked cars who had him under surveillance (believing based on his acquaintances that he might be part of a narcotics ring) pulled up and tasered him three times, causing him to go into convulsions and throw up. Because he had not gotten his hand free from his jacket quickly enough (while convulsing) an officer then shot him point blank in the chest with three .40 caliber rounds. Hale's widow has filed a civil lawsuit.

Willie Heard

46 years old
Osawatomie, Kansas
February, 1999

SWAT conducted a no-knock drug raid, complete with flash-bang grenades. Heard was shot to death in front of his wife and 16-year-old daughter who had cried for help. Fearing home invasion, he was holding an empty rifle. The raid was at the wrong house.

Clayton Helriggle

23 years old
Eaton, Ohio
September, 2002

Clayton was shot to death while coming down the stairs during a suprise raid. He was carrying either a gun or a plastic cup, depending on the report. Less than an ounce of marijuana was found.

Esequiel Hernandez

18 years old
Redford, Texas
May, 1997

Hernandez was shot and killed by a Marine sniper in camouflage who was part of a military unit conducting drug interdiction activities near the Mexican border. Esequiel was out herding his family's goats and had taken a break to shoot at some tin cans with his antique rifle.

John Hirko

21 years old
Pennsylvania
1997

An unarmed man with no prior offenses was shot to death in his house by a squad of masked police. In a no-knock raid, they tossed a smoke grenade in through a window, setting the house on fire. Hirko, suspected of dealing small amounts of marijuana and cocaine, was found face down on his stairway, shot in the back while fleeing the burning building. When the fire was finally put out, officers found some marijuana seeds in an unsinged plastic bag.

Lynette Gayle Jackson

29 years old
Riverdale, Georgia
September, 2000

Shot to death in her bed by SWAT team.

Kathyrn Johnston

88 years old
Atlanta, Georgia
November, 2006

Kathryn lived in a rough neighborhood and a relative gave her a gun for protection. When she noticed men breaking through her security bars into her house she fired a shot into the ceiling. They were narcotics officers and fired 39 shots back, killing her. The police had falsified information in order to obtain a no-knock search warrant based on incorrect information from a dealer they had framed. After killing Johnson and realizing that she was completely innocent, they planted some marijuana in the basement. Eventually their stories fell apart federal and state investigations learned the truth. Additional facts have come to light that this was not an isolated incident in the Atlanta police department.

Officer Ron Jones

29 years old
Prentiss, Mississippi
December, 2001

Officer Jones was in the process of serving a drug warrant, based on an informant tip. While trying to enter the rear of a duplex, he broke into the wrong apartment and was shot by the resident, Corey Maye, who had no prior record and was protecting his daughter. No drugs were found. Maye was charged with capital murder, and sentenced to death.
Corey Maye is a Drug War Victim waiting to happen, unless we can prevent the government from murdering him.

Tony Marinez

19 years old
De Valle, Texas
December, 20001

Officers conducted a drug raid on a mobile home in De Valle. Martinez, who was not the target of the raid, was asleep on the couch when the raid commenced. Hearing the front door smashed open, he sat up, and was shot to death in the chest.

Peter McWilliams

50 years old
Laurel Canyon, California
June, 2000

Peter was a world-famous author and an advocate of medical marijuana, not only because he believed in it in principle, but because it was keeping him alive (he had AIDS and non-Hodgkins lymphoma). After California passed a law legalizing medical marijuana, Peter helped finance the efforts of Todd McCormick to cultivate marijuana for distribution to those who needed it for medical reasons. Federal agents got wind of his involvement, and Peter was a target for his advocacy. He was arrested, and in federal court was prevented from mentioning his medical condition or California's law. While he was on bail awaiting sentencing, the prosecutors threatened to take away his mother's house (used for bail) if he failed a drug test, so he stopped using the marijuana which controlled his nausea from the medications and allowed him to keep them down. He was found dead on the bathroom floor, choked to death on his own vomit.

Ismael Mena

45 years old
Denver, Colorado
September, 1999

Mena was killed when police barged into his house looking for drugs. They had the wrong address.

Pedro Oregon Navarro

22 yeqrs old
July, 1998 </HOUSTON,>

Following up on a tip from a drug suspect, 6 officers crowded into a hallway outside Navarro's bedroom. When the door opened, one officer shouted that he had a gun. Navarro's gun was never fired, but officers fired 30 rounds, with 12 of them hitting Pedro. No drugs were found.

Mario Paz

65 years old
Compton, California
August, 1999

Mario was shot twice in the back in his bedroom during a SWAT raid looking for marijuana. No drugs were found.

Charmene Pickering

27 years old
Brooklyn, New York
July, 2001

Charmene was a passenger in a car driven by a drug suspect. State troopers and DEA agents were in the process of arresting the driver when the trooper's gun went off and hit Charmene in the neck, killing her. Both passenger and driver were unarmed.

Manuel Ramirez

Stockton, California
January, 1993

At 2 am, police smashed down the door and rushed into the home of Manuel Ramirez, a retired golf course groundskeeper. Ramirez awoke, grabbed a pistol and shot and killed officer Arthur Parga before other officers killed him. Police were raiding the house based on a tip that drugs were on the premises, but they found no drugs.

Officer Arthur P. Parga

32 years old
Stockton, California
January, 1993

Deputy Keith Ruiz

36 years old
Travis County, Texas
February, 2001

Ruiz was a husband and father who was a veteran of numerous SWAT raids. In the process of serving a drug warrant, he was trying to break down the door to a mobile home occupied by painter Edwin Delamora, his wife, and two young children. Confused by the raid at night, Delamora yelled to his wife that they were being robbed and shot through the door, killing Ruiz.

Donald P. Scott

61 years old
Malibu, California
October, 1992

Government agencies were interested in the property of this reclusive millionaire. A warrant was issued based on concocted "evidence" of supposed marijuana plantings, and a major raid was conducted with a 32-man assault team. Scott was shot to death in front of his wife. No drugs were found.
A later official report found: "It is the District Attorney's opinion that the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government. Based in part upon the possibility of forfeiture, Spencer obtained a search warrant that was not supported by probable cause. This search warrant became Donald Scott's death warrant."

Alberto Sepulveda

11 years old
Modesto, California
September, 2000

Alberto was killed by a shotgun blast to the back while following police orders and lying face down on the floor during a SWAT raid. He was a seventh-grader at Prescott Senior Elementary School.

Isaac Singletary

80 years old
Jacksonville, Florida
January, 2007

Isaac lived in a rough neighborhood and often brought out his gun to chase off drug dealers. So when he saw a couple of low-lifes conducting transactions on his lawn, he came out with it again and told them to get off his property. Except they were undercover narcotics officers so they shot him. Isaac managed to get a shot or two off in response, but the officers were able to finish him off.

Gary Shepherd

45 years old
Broadhead, Kentucky
August, 1993

When a Kentucky drug task force came to uproot his marijuana plants in August 1993, pot-grower and Vietnam vet Gary Shepherd told them, "You will have to kill me first," took out his rifle and sat down on his front porch. That evening he was shot dead in front of his infant son. Despite the fact that Shepherd never fired a shot and his family was pleading with authorities for negotiations, state police sharpshooters appeared from the brush without warning and opened fire when he refused to drop his rifle.

Alberta Spruill

57 years old
Harlem, New York
May, 2003

Police, acting on a tip, forced their way into Spruill's home, setting off flash grenades. She suffered a heart attack and died. It was the wrong address.

Ashley Villareal

14 years old
San Antonio, Texas
February, 2003

Ashley went outside at night with a family friend to move their freshly washed car under shelter. DEA agents, interested in her father, were staking out the house, and believing that her father was driving, shot and killed Ashley. The agents did not have a warrant for her father. Read The Murder of Ashley.

Kenneth B. Walker

39 years old
Columbus, Georgia
December, 2003

Walker and three companions were pulled over in an SUV by police in a drug investigation. No drugs or weapons were found, but Walker was shot in the head. Walker was a devoted husband and father, a respected member of his church, and a 15-year middle-management employee of Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Deputy David Glisson, who killed Walker, was fired three months later for failing to cooperate in an investigation into the shooting.

Accelyne Williams

75 years old
Boston, Massachusetts
March, 1994

Accelyne was a retired Methodist Minister and substance abuse counselor. After an informant gave police a bad address, a SWAT raid was conducted on the minster's home. The door was battered down, Williams was tackled to the floor and his hands tied behind his back. He died of a heart attack.

Want to see the REAL reason Marijuana is illegal?, how the prohibition itself is driving the business and what mugs the government think you are, then watch this film****.

2008-11-02T05:12:00.001-08:00

BC's illegal marijuana trade industry has evolved into a business giant, dubbed by some involved as 'The Union', Commanding upwards of $7 billion Canadian annually. With up to 85% of 'BC Bud' being exported to the United States, the trade has become an international issue. Follow filmmaker Adam Scorgie as he demystifies the underground market and brings to light how an industry can function while remaining illegal. Through growers, police officers, criminologists, economists, doctors, politicians and pop culture icons, Scorgie examines the cause and effect nature of the business - an industry that may be profiting more by being illegal. Written by Brett Harvey

* Basically the whole film.

** See how - Prohibition breeds modern day Al Capones.

*** See How - Richard Nixon (famous anti-Semite and world class liar) the president of America, buried 'The Shafer Report' commissioned by Nixon himself first because he didn't like the findings and second because he mistakenly believed the legalization movement was a Jewish conspiracy, as he said the year before Shafer, "Everyone of the bastards that are out to legalize Marijuana is Jewish" 1971 - White House Tapes.

**** See how - Ridiculous the illegal status of a simple plant is

..................................................................................

Prices on heads,

Bin Laden $25 million, Saddam Hussain's sons Uday & Qusay $15 million each, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the accused terrorist mastermind in Iraq, from $10 million, Tommy Chong $12 million, think I'm joking, watch and see the lengths the US govt went to to jail Tommy Chong, it really isn't funny, in fact it is pretty frightening how low the govt will stoop to 'get even' as they did with Tommy Chong

..................................................................................

Medical Marijuana.....

If you are one of many who still have their eyes firmly shut, who believe Marijuana has no medical value, spend 2 minutes watching from 88.02, this poor guy suffering horrific spasms from M.S and Ataxia so severe his life is a living hell, Marijuana brings so much relief and some sort of life to him, if you could deny him you must have a swinging brick where there should be a heart!.

Vote Yes On Prop 5

2008-10-29T03:25:00.001-07:00

Below, A Success Story

Below, Former San Quentin Warden supports Prop 5

Below, Rewind.

Vote Yes On Prop 5, Save $Billions! Save Lives.

Drug Czar Attacks Prop. 5

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

President Bush’s Drug Czar and the powerful California prison guards' union are both turning their guns on the biggest U.S. drug policy reform since alcohol Prohibition was repealed 75 years ago.

Don’t let them get away with it. Tell everyone you know in California to vote YES on Prop. 5!

Proposition 5 on the California ballot would dramatically reduce the role of prison in dealing with drug offenders.

It’s also the only measure on the ballot in California that will save taxpayers billions. (That’s not just our opinion). It’s the conclusion of the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.)
But the Drug Czar and the prison guards' union don’t give a damn about soaking taxpayers to pay for a failed drug war. And they could care less about giving people with drug problems a chance to get treatment and rehabilitation instead of a prison cell.

Now we just found out that the “lock ‘em all up” lobby is raising big bucks to defeat Prop. 5 from the casinos, beer distributors and drug war fanatics.

All that money is going for TV ads using the same old scare tactics that fueled the war on drugs in the first place. But on Election Day, we can show them how wrong they are -- if we get voters to the polls in support of Prop. 5.
No matter where you live, we bet you know at least a few Californians (or at least someone who does)! Will you help get out the vote for Prop. 5? Do it the easy way -- email this message!
Check out our TV ads [above] and then share the link with your friends in California so they hear the truth about Prop. 5. Coming from you, the message will carry a lot of weight. You can help us counter the millions of dollars the prison guards’ union and their friends are spending on dishonest and scare tactic ads.
You’ll be in good company. Everyone from the League of Women Voters of California to the California Nurses Association to the California Federation of Teachers to the Consumer Federation of California supports Prop. 5. So does former Secretary of State George Shultz. They all know Prop. 5 will save money and save lives.

Sincerely,
Ethan Nadelmann
Executive Director
Drug Policy Alliance Network

Key Figure In Mexican Drug Cartel Arrested

2008-10-27T02:16:00.001-07:00

SAN DIEGO — One of Mexico's most wanted drug trafficking suspects was captured Saturday night at his Tijuana home after a fierce shootout with authorities, providing some good news amid the border city's raging drug war.

Eduardo Arellano Felix, an original member of the notorious Arellano Felix drug cartel, was arrested in an operation by more than 100 federal and state police and soldiers, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. They were acting on a tip supplied by U.S. authorities, who had offered up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest of Arellano Felix, according to Eileen Zeidler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Arellano Felix was a key figure in the early years of the cartel, which grew into one of Mexico's most powerful organized crime groups by smuggling tons of cocaine into the U.S., starting in the late 1980s.
The cartel has been decimated in recent years by arrests and killings, including the capture and deaths of four siblings of Arellano Felix. The suspected kingpin had been in hiding for several years and was living at his home under an assumed name, authorities said.
"He was the last of the brothers. This was another significant blow to what's left of the Arellano Felix organization," Zeidler said.
The U.S. attorney's office in San Diego named Arellano Felix in a 2003 indictment that charged him and 10 cartel associates with racketeering, drug trafficking, money laundering and several murders.
No injuries were reported in the shootout. The suspect was flown to Mexico City after his arrest, and U.S. authorities will seek his extradition.
The Mexican government claimed a major victory in its offensive against the country's organized crime groups. Facundo Rosas, deputy minister for strategy and police intelligence, called Arellano Felix a "historic and moral figure in the Tijuana Cartel" at a news conference in Mexico City.
But some experts and U.S. officials said his role in the organization had diminished in recent years and it's unclear whether his capture would have much impact.
Arellano Felix, nicknamed "El Doctor" because he was once a medical student, took a much lower profile after the 1993 murder of Guadalajara Archbishop Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, which was blamed on cartel gunmen.
"All of a sudden everybody was their enemy," said John Kirby, a former federal prosecutor

No Hiding From Drug War

2008-10-27T02:12:00.001-07:00

["It's shocking," said Victor Rene, 14. "I saw four dead guys last week, but that was clean. Their heads were wrapped in tape."]

TIJUANA — The schoolchildren bounded up the rickety steps and followed the path of shattered glass into the two-story house on Laguna Salada Street. Two boys in neatly pressed gray pants flipped open their cellphones and took pictures of the pools of sticky blood. One teenager with a blue backpack pounced on a mangled brass bullet lying near a stained mattress.

In the living room, someone slipped on a pile of human entrails.
Downstairs, girls in blue skirts and white socks carefully avoided the blood dripping through the ceiling. The "Scarface" poster hanging on the pockmarked wall disappeared.
The day before, a shootout between Mexican soldiers and drug cartel suspects had left three suspects and a soldier dead in the safe house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. Police had cleared the bodies, including the corpse of a kidnapping victim stuffed in a refrigerator. But someone had left the door open.
"Look, intestines!" yelled one teen, who was among dozens of children who streamed through the house between classes at nearby Secondary School 25.
"I think I'm going to be sick," said one boy, covering his mouth.
"It's shocking," said Victor Rene, 14. "I saw four dead guys last week, but that was clean. Their heads were wrapped in tape."
As Tijuana's latest flare-up in the drug war rages into its fifth week, with the death toll approaching 150, violence is permeating everyday life here, causing widespread fear, altering people's habits and exposing the city's youngest to carnage.
Civic leaders are calling for a 9 p.m. curfew for children. Archbishop Rafael Romo has asked the media to refrain from showing gruesome photographs. One priest halts his sermons every week to demonstrate proper shootout-safety behavior: He cues a drum roll, then throws himself to the floor.
But these and other measures haven't been able to shield children from the violence near schools, neighborhoods, busy streets and popular restaurants. Grisly public displays of death have been the hallmark of the killings since the latest violence between rival drug cartels started Sept. 26.
Bodies have been hung from overpasses. Twelve corpses, some with their tongues cut out, were tossed into a vacant lot across from an elementary school. Several men have been beheaded, and killers have left behind acid-filled barrels containing dissolved human remains.
The toll of innocent victims has also been rising. Gunmen burst into the El Negro Durazo seafood restaurant and killed two rivals and a photographer who tried to run away. A 24-year-old teacher was kidnapped outside her school. Gunmen wielding AK-47s killed two teenagers sitting outside their home after they witnessed a drug-related killing. A toddler died this week when his mother crashed her car trying to avoid a shootout between state police and suspected cartel hit men.
Tijuana has endured years of violence and waves of kidnappings that have led thousands of people to move across the border to San Diego suburbs.
Still, the recent violence is unprecedented in scale and brutality. More than 460 people have died violently so far this year, a record, according to the Baja California state attorney general's office.
"It makes your hair stand on end," said Rev. Raymundo Reyna, a radio show host who keeps a muertometro—death meter—tally. Reyna is the priest who demonstrates to parishioners how to duck when gunfire breaks out.
"We show people how to prepare for an earthquake," Reyna said. "Now we need to train them for a shootout."
Many people simply avoid public places. Families have cut back on going to restaurants. Some parents forbid their children from going to nightclubs. More parents pick up their children from school rather than letting them take public transit.
Cops, or anybody in a law-enforcement uniform, are avoided; at least 10 security personnel have been gunned down in recent weeks in the Tijuana metropolitan area. Teachers have twice had to evacuate Secondary School 25, where a razor-wire fence rings the playground. The first time, police had opened fire at the state prison a few blocks away, killing at least 20 rioting inmates. Two weeks later, a body was tossed in the street outside the school.
Last week's shootout at the safe house forced teachers and students to hit the floor again.
When the youngsters returned for afternoon classes after visiting the house, teachers had trouble getting their attention: They were showing off their cell phone pictures of the carnage.
A teacher asked an assistant principal to confiscate the kids' phones and give them to their parents, so they could lecture their children. The assistant principal, Marcos Alvarez Guardado, just shrugged.
"I'm sure they've already posted the images on the Internet," he said. "What more can we do?"

Latino Drug Lords Find African Allies.

2008-10-27T01:36:00.001-07:00

Above Packs of cocaine are burnt by officials and members of United Nation Mission in Liberia in Monrovia. Emmanuel Tobey / Reuters

FREETOWN // An upcoming UN report will shed light on criminal gangs in West Africa that work with South American drug cartels in a murky alliance that threatens stability in the region.
“Besides foreigners there is a growing phenomenon of local criminal groups,” said Antonio Mazzitelli of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). “This certainly creates obstacles to democracy, to good governance, to development.”

The UN estimates that US$2 billion (Dh7.3bn) worth of cocaine enters West Africa each year before being smuggled into Europe. Previous research focused on the role of South American cocaine cartels, which began operating heavily in the region about four years ago.
“We often talk about the Latinos, but what about the Africans involved? There are over 1,600 West Africans all over the world convicted for drug trafficking,” Mr Mazzitelli said in a telephone interview from his office in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

The new report will look at local criminal networks, which facilitate the passage of drugs through airports and organised human couriers to smuggle cocaine into Europe via commercial flights. These gangs take in about $450 million each year, according to Mr Mazzitelli. Antonio Costa, who heads the UNODC, will unveil the report at a three-day anti-drug trafficking conference that starts today in the island nation of Cape Verde, which has emerged as one of the main transit points for drug smugglers. The conference is being held by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).

The title of the conference, Drug Trafficking as a Security Threat to West Africa, shows that West African countries now recognise drug trafficking as a serious danger to their stability, Mr Mazzitelli said. Previously, Ecowas members considered the cocaine trade a problem primarily for governments in South America, the source of supply, and Europe, where the demand lies.
“This overall attitude has characterised the issue,” he said. But the thinking changed as West African countries watched cartels infiltrate their security forces and other state institutions.

“It can cause destabilisation for the government,” said Francis Munu, the head of crime and intelligence in the Sierra Leone police.
In July, Sierra Leone police seized an aircraft loaded with 700 kilograms of cocaine, which landed at the country’s international airport after taking off from Venezuela. Kemoh Sessay, the transportation and aviation minister, was dismissed from his post and is now under investigation. Mr Munu said suspects also included airport officials, police officers and business people.

“They are individuals, but when you put the whole scenario together you find that it’s organised crime,” he said. Police also arrested three Colombians, a Venezuelan, a Mexican and a US citizen, he said.
The case illustrates some of the challenges West African authorities face in fighting traffickers. So far, suspects have been charged with relatively minor offences, but not with drug smuggling. In fact, it was only after the arrests that the government pushed through legislation dealing specifically with cocaine trafficking.

Previously, anti-drug laws carried a maximum 20-year sentence. Only softer drugs, such as cannabis, are mentioned in the law, reflecting the state of drug use when the laws were enacted. Under the new laws, traffickers can face life imprisonment.
Mr Munu said police plan to charge the suspects using the new laws.
But Cristin Edwards, a defence lawyer for suspects including the Venezuelan George Arisabella, said the Sierra Leone constitution stipulates laws could not be applied retroactively.

Mr Mazzitelli said international law also forbade countries from charging criminals retroactively, but he added that the suspects could be charged with other serious offences that carry stiff penalties, such as money laundering.
Mr Edwards said he was hopeful his clients would go free. He accused police of carrying out a sloppy investigation, which saw more than 60 suspects arrested within a couple of days.

“You can get someone off on a technicality,” he said.
Mr Munu scoffed at the suggestion. “Somebody brings in a plane that is full of coke – no technicality can deny those facts. Perhaps he is making a bluff.”
But Mr Munu admitted that authorities in Sierra Leone were ill equipped to fight international criminal networks that have access to hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Our police systems here are very weak,” he said, calling on European countries to support West African agencies on the front lines in the battle against cocaine trafficking. “It’s a global menace, therefore it deserves a global response.”

At the Ecowas conference in Cape Verde, member states will make the same argument. Ministers will sign off on a political declaration and a plan of action to fight cocaine trafficking in the region, Mr Mazzitelli said.
The plan will include initiatives aimed at reforming the security and justice systems, which are notoriously corrupt in many countries in the region. It will propose measures to fight money laundering and build up the capacity of police to collect data on the drug trade. The plan will also put a dollar figure on such initiatives, and it will set benchmarks and a timeline to accomplish certain goals.

Governments are now building anti-drug strategies into their budgets to prove to donors that they are serious about taking on the drug dealers, Mr Mazzitelli said.
Countries must “take ownership” of the problem before asking for money from international donors, he said.
“These are the new rules of the game.”

New Law Allows Website Hosts To Just Say No To Drugs.

2008-10-25T12:47:00.001-07:00

Website hosting companies are moving swiftly to rid their servers of sites that advertise the illegal sale of controlled substances — including performance-enhancing drugs — even though legislation signed by President Bush last week, won't take effect for months.

The wide-ranging statute sets new standards for online pharmacies, including the requirement that a patient has to see a doctor and needs a prescription for a controlled substance, which can range from pain killers to some diet drugs, that would be part of a normal course of treatment. Online pharmacies also will have to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration, just like their brick-and-mortar counterparts, once the law goes into effect in April.

The impact of the new law is already being felt on sites that sell anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

"Previously, we just left them alone," says Christine Jones, general counsel for GoDaddy.com, a popular web-hosting company and the world's largest website domain name registrar. "We didn't have any laws behind us that allowed us to take them down."

GoDaddy.com has shut dozens of sites targeted by the new law, Jones says, although some remained functioning as of Thursday afternoon. Jones said GoDaddy.com isn't able to constantly monitor the 31 million domain names the company has registered or the thousands of websites it hosts, but it acts on tips from law enforcement, everyday web users and organizations that monitor such activity.

Other Internet hosting and registrar companies are moving in the same direction. Aaron Hollobaugh, spokesman for Hosting.com, says "illegal pharmaceutical companies will be added to our extensive list of organizations we deny service to." Steven Vine, deputy general counsel for Register.com, says he's still studying the details of the law, but believes it will enable his firm "to further help law enforcement while still providing for the privacy of our customers."

Federal and state authorities currently have to seek injunctions to get websites pulled, a process that could take months to wind through the courts. Once the new law is in place, state attorneys general or federal law enforcement can just give notice to a web-hosting or registrar company to shutter a rogue pharmacy.

"This is a law that will get implemented quickly," says DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney. "Most (web-hosting companies) are socially responsible, and they try to do the right thing."

Websites will still be able to advocate the use of controlled substances and provide pricing information. But once the site crosses into distribution, its operators will be violating the law. A person caught selling controlled substances over the Internet faces up to 10 years in prison — double the previous maximum penalty for unlawful distribution.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., drafted the legislation in response to the death of Ryan Haight, an 18-year-old high school honors student from California who overdosed on Vicodin in 2001. He purchased the painkiller from an online pharmacy without having met with a physician concerning an ailment for which Vicodin might have been a treatment.

DEA officials say they realize the law, which will alter the Controlled Substances Act, won't be a panacea: Those pushing drugs can have their site hosted outside the USA, putting them out of reach of federal authorities.

"Is this the overall solution? No," DEA spokesman Courtney says. "But this is definitely a tool. Other countries are working with us. A lot of them recognize that this isn't just a drug issue, but a health issue as well."

Please Contact Your Local and National Politicians...‏.....

2008-10-21T13:36:00.001-07:00

Most LEAP members are asking for tasks they can accomplish to help achieve our goal. Here is one that will only take a few minutes and will have tremendous impact on our legislators and other politicians.

Copied below is a message we hope you will send out to every local and national politician you care about to see how they respond to your concerns about the war on drugs. A LEAP member recently sent out a similar set of email messages and was amazed by the responses he received! Please copy and paste the following message, fill in the politician’s name and your own contact information at the bottom, and send it via E or snail-mail to every candidate you are considering supporting on Election Day.

This is our chance to make LEAP known to many politicians at a time when they are likely to reply to you. Please include kristin.daley@leap.cc as a bcc on any messages you send so we can learn how many politicians we are contacting.

Thank you!

Dear (Politician) :

Before I cast my vote in the upcoming contest for your election, I must first pose a question to you:

Do you support and agree with the following statements and principles, based on the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) http://www.leap.cc:

After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 39 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled, making building prisons the fastest-growing industry in the United States. More than 2.3 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated, and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more, paralyzing our prison and court systems. Every year we choose to continue this war costs U.S. taxpayers another 70 billion dollars. Yet, despite all the lives destroyed and money wasted, illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier for our children to access than they were 38 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists grow richer, bolder, and more heavily armed. This is the very definition of a failed public policy.

This is not a war on drugs—it’s a war on people: our children, our parents, ourselves.

The first thing we must do is admit that most of the deaths, diseases, crimes, and addictions attributed to drug use are actually caused by drug prohibition. Prohibition has paradoxically increased the number of people in the US above the age of twelve who use illegal drugs from 4 million (two percent of the 1970 population) to 112 million (46 percent of the 2005 population), according to DEA statistics. In June, 2007, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously called for an end to the war on drugs and for drug abuse to be dealt with as a health issue. Once we adopt that approach, we can stop the horrors associated with prohibition by removing the profit motive generated within the drug culture.

How do we do that? We end drug prohibition. We legalize all drugs so we can regulate and control them and keep them out of the hands of our children, who now report that it is easier for them to buy illicit drugs than cigarettes or alcohol. As long as these dangerous drugs are illegal, we relinquish control to the street thugs and international cartels, which have enormous monetary incentives to hook our children.

I look forward to your response on this important issue. If I do not hear back from you, I will assume that this issue is not important to you, or that you do not support the principles of LEAP, and I will act accordingly on Election Day.

Thank You,

Your name

Your address

Your phone numbers

Your email address

NORML 2008 Conference: “The War on Pot Is a War on Young People”

2008-10-21T04:48:00.001-07:00

The War on Pot Is a War on Young People
NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano delivered this speech at NORML’s 2008 National Conference, “It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition” in Berkeley, California.

According to a 2005 study commissioned by the NORML Foundation, 74 percent of all Americans busted for pot are under age 30, and 1 out of 4 are age 18 or younger. That’s nearly a quarter of a million teenagers arrested for marijuana violations each year.

To put this bluntly, we now have an entire generation that has been alienated to believe that the police and their civic leaders are instruments of their oppression rather than their protection.

And the sad fact is: They’re right!

Why is this the case? And why, as a community, don’t we talk about it?

Young people, in many cases those under 18-years-of-age, disproportionately bear the brunt of marijuana law enforcement.

Demographically speaking, the above statement is a “no-brainer.” Yet this is hardly a fact that we as a reform community like to admit or emphasize. Instead, you’ll hear reformers argue that the war on pot is a war on patients — and at some level, it is. Or you’ll hear advocates proclaim that marijuana enforcement disproportionately impacts African Americans and Hispanics — and to some degree, it does. Attend enough of these conferences and you’ll inevitably hear that our movement needs better representation from women and minorities, both of whom face unique hardships because of the drug war, and that criticism is appropriate too. But, one thing you’ll most likely never hear is that our movement needs greater involvement from teenagers and young adults.

But we should — because for the young people in the audience, the war on pot smokers is really a war on you.

According to a 2005 study commissioned by the NORML Foundation, 74 percent of all Americans busted for pot are under age 30, and one out of four are age 18 or younger. That’s nearly a quarter of a million teenagers arrested for marijuana violations each year.

To put this bluntly, we now have an entire generation that has been alienated to believe that the police and their civic leaders are instruments of their oppression rather than their protection.

And the sad fact is: they’re right!

Why is this the case? And why, as a community, don’t we talk about it?

There are several reasons why young people are far more likely, statistically, to be busted for weed than those over age 30. Most obviously, young people are more likely than their counterparts to smoke pot, and toke more frequently. They’re also more likely to indulge in places that will inadvertently attract law enforcement’s attention: in parks, dorm rooms, cars, dimly lit parking lots. Let’s face it, most teenagers aren’t going to go home and smoke weed in their room while their parents are home, though if they did, it’s far less likely they’d ever be arrested for it (of course, it’s possible that their parents’ might face legal repercussions, but that’s another story.)

Young people are also more likely to have frequent interactions with sellers of weed, an activity that also increases their likelihood of one-day being arrested. Of course, it’s not that young people enjoy hanging around drug dealers, but it’s that young people typically have less disposable income, which means they have to buy their pot in smaller quantities on more frequent occasions.

Young people are also more likely to take risks — and they’re also more likely to commit traffic violations. Both these actions, though unrelated to marijuana per se, greatly increase the likelihood that young people will have face-to-face contact with law enforcement, and this contact often ends in a pot arrest.

So why then, if more than 650,000 Americans busted for weed annually are under age 30, don’t we spend more time talking about it? Easy, because we’ve let our opponents hi-jack the ‘kids’ issue.

There’s a saying among reformers that drug law reform is the ‘third rail’ of politics. If that’s true, then talking about drugs and kids is the ‘third rail’ of drug law reform. But it’s a ‘rail’ we need to start talking about.

Those who favor the continued prohibition of cannabis base their arguments on the false premise that the continued enforcement of said laws “protects our children.” This statement is nonsense. In fact, just the opposite is true.

The war on weed endangers the health and safety of our children. It enables young people to have unregulated access to marijuana — easier access than they currently have to legal, age-restricted intoxicants like alcohol and tobacco. It enables young people to interact and befriend pushers of other illegal, more dangerous drugs. It compels young people dismiss the educational messages they receive pertaining to the potential health risks posed by the use of ‘hard drugs’ and prescription pharmaceuticals because kids say: “If they lied to me about pot, why wouldn’t they be lying to me about everything else too.”

Most importantly, the criminal laws are far more likely to result in having our children arrested and placed behind bars than they are likely to in any way discourage them to try pot.

These are the facts, and it’s about time we start shouting them from the rooftops.

For three decades now, our opponents have framed this issue from the standpoint that they care more about the health and safety our young people than we do — that we’re just a bunch of self-centered pot-heads that are willing to sacrifice the lives of our young people so that we can catch a buzz. Well, it’s time for us to respond.

Yes, we do favor changing the marijuana laws. We care about protecting the health and safety of our children too. And by changing the laws, we are protecting the health and safety of America’s young people. After all, under prohibition it’s America’s young people that are being lied to; it’s our children that are being approached by drug dealers; it’s our children that are smoking pot in cars and putting their lives and others at risk to try and avoid the detection of their parents or the law; and it’s our children that are being busted in unprecedented numbers.

Finally, let me close with one final reason why we as a community must begin acknowledging this reality and that is this. Even though young people suffer the most under our current marijuana laws, they lack the financial means and political capital to effectively influence politicians to challenge them. Young people also lack the money to adequately fund the drug law reform movement at a level necessary to adequately represent and protect their interests.

In short, if we ever want the marijuana laws to change, that we as a community have to better represent the interests of young people, and we must do a better job speaking on their — and their parent’s — behalf.

We must also do a better job allying with organizations that speak on behalf of youth, particularly urban youth — who are most at risk of suffering from the lifetime hardships associated with a marijuana conviction. We must do a better job reaching out, engaging, and recruiting students to continue to take this issue seriously after they graduate college — and that includes offering them internships and employment once they’ve received their degrees. Finally, reformers must do a better job reaching out to the parents of young people, and urging them to become active members and financial contributors of the cannabis law reform movement.

They say it’s the so-called “parents movement” that derailed the “pot-progress” of the 1970s. Well then I say that it’s high time we recruited our own “NORML Parents” movement to finish the job once and for all.

Study: Drug Czar’s Billion Dollar Anti-Drug Ad Campaign is a Failure.

2008-10-16T02:32:00.001-07:00

This from Scott Morgan at Stopthedrugwar.org

The drug czar likes to claim that we criticize his ad campaign because we want more kids to use marijuana. Will he say the same about researchers hired by Congress?

Despite investing $1 billion in a massive anti-drug campaign, a controversial new study suggests that the push has failed to help the United States win the war on drugs.
A congressionally mandated study released today concluded that the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign launched in the late 1990s to encourage young people to stay away from drugs "is unlikely to have had favorable effects on youths."

In fact, the study's authors assert that anti-drug ads may have unwittingly delivered the message that other kids were doing drugs, inadvertently slowing measured progress that was being made to curb marijuana use among teenagers.

"Youths who saw the campaign ads took from them the message that their peers were using marijuana," the report suggests as a possible reason for its findings. "In turn, those who came to believe that their peers were using marijuana were more likely to initiate use themselves." [ABC News]

Ironically, if reformers actually wanted more kids to use marijuana, we’d support the drug czar’s ad campaign. His propaganda appears to have encouraged use among those viewing the ads, even as marijuana use among America’s youth was decreasing overall. Based on the data, it's entirely possible that youth drug use would be even lower – and U.S. taxpayers would be $1 billion richer – if the drug czar had never run these ads in the first place.

Honduran President Calls For Legalizing Drug Use.

2008-10-16T01:35:00.001-07:00

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras: Honduran President Manuel Zelaya says drug consumption should be legalized to stop violence related to trafficking.

Zelaya says that "instead of pursuing drug traffickers, societies should invest resources in educating drug addicts and curbing their demand." He proposes establishing mechanisms for legalizing drug use.

Zelaya spoke Monday at a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean anti-drug officials. He did not say whether he would introduce legislation to legalize drugs in Honduras.

Rodolfo Zelaya, head of the Honduran congressional commission of drug trafficking, rejected the president's comments. He told meeting participants he was "confused and stunned by what the Honduran leader said."

The Big Question: Why is opium production rising in Afghanistan, and can it be stopped?.

2008-10-14T19:36:00.001-07:00

The Big Question: Why is opium production rising in Afghanistan, and can it be stopped?

Tuesday, 14 October 2008

Why are we asking this now?

Nato and the US are ramping up the war on drugs in Afghanistan. American ground forces are set to help guard poppy eradication teams for the first time later this year, while Nato's defence ministers agreed to let their 50,000-strong force target heroin laboratories and smuggling networks.

Until now, going after drug lords and their labs was down to a small and secretive band of Afghan commandos, known as Taskforce 333, and their mentors from Britain's Special Boat Service. Eradicating poppy fields was the job of specially trained, but poorly resourced, police left to protect themselves from angry farmers. All that is set to change.

How big is the problem?

Afghanistan is by far and away the world's leading producer of opium. Opium is made from poppies, and it is used to make heroin. Heroin from Afghanistan is smuggled through Pakistan, Russia, iran and Turkey until it ends up on Europe's streets.

In 2008, in Afghanistan, 157,000 hectares (610 square miles) were given over to growing poppies and they produced 7,700 tonnes of opium. Production has soared to such an extent in recent years that supply is outstripping demand. Global demand is only about 4,000 tonnes of opium per year, which has meant the price of opium has dropped. in Helmand alone, where most of Britain's 8,000 troops are based, 103,000 hectares were devoted to poppy crops. if the province was a country, it would be the world's biggest opium producer.

In 2007, the UN calculated that Afghan opium farmers made about $1bn from their poppy harvests. The total export value was $4bn – or 53 per cent of Afghanistan's GDP.

Is it getting better or worse?

There was a 19 per cent drop in cultivation from 2007 to 2008, but bumper yields meant opium production only fell by 6 per cent. Crucially, the drop was down to farmers deciding not to plant poppies, and that was largely a result of a successful pre-planting campaign, led by strong provincial governors, in parts of the country that are relatively safe.

Only 3.5 per cent of the country's poppy fields were eradicated in 2008. High wheat prices and low opium prices are also a factor in persuading some farmers to switch to licit crops.

In Helmand, one of the most volatile parts of Afghanistan, production rose by 1 per cent as farmers invested opium profits in reclaiming tracts of desert with expensive irrigation schemes. Opium production was actually at its lowest in 2001. The Taliban launched a highly effective counter-narcotics campaign during their last year in power. They used a policy of summary execution to scare farmers into not planting opium. Many analysts attribute their loss of popular support in the south, which contributed to their defeat by US-led forces in late 2001, to this policy.

How are the drugs linked to the insurgency?

The Taliban control huge swaths of Afghanistan's countryside, where most of the poppies are grown. They tax the farmers 10 per cent of the farm gate value of their crops. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said the Taliban made about £50m from opium in 2007.

They also extort protection money from the drugs smugglers, for guarding convoys and laboratories where opium is processed into heroin. The UN and Nato believe the insurgents get roughly 60 per cent of their annual income from drugs. The Taliban and the drug smugglers also share a vested interest in undermining President Hamid Karzai's government, and fighting the international forces, which have both vowed to try and wipe out the opium trade.

What about corruption?

The vast sums of drugs money sloshing around Afghanistan's economy mean it is all too easy for the opium barons to buy off corrupt officials.

Most policemen earn about £80 a month. A heroin mule can earn £100 a day carrying drugs out of Afghanistan. Most Afghans suspect the corruption reaches the highest levels of government. President Karzai is reported to have called eradication teams to halt operations at the last minute for no apparent reason.

When an Afghan counter-narcotics chief found nine tonnes of opium in a former Helmand governor's compound, he was told not burn it by Kabul – but he claims he ignored the order.

President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is widely rumoured to be involved in the drugs trade – an allegation he denies. The New York Times claimed US investigators found evidence that he had ordered a local security official to release an "enormous cache of heroin" discovered in a tractor trailer in 2004. Privately, Western security officials admit they suspect that a number of government ministers are drug dealers.

Where does that leave the international community?

Right across Afghanistan, the government is corrupt and Afghans are fed up. The police organise kidnappings. Justice is for sale. Violence is spreading and people don't feel safe. The progress promised in 2001 hasn't been delivered.

Education is a rare success. There are now more than six million children at school, including two million girls, compared with less than a million under the Taliban.

But the roads which link the country's main cities aren't safe. Taliban roadblocks are increasingly normal. UN convoys are getting hijacked.

A report published by 100 charities at the end of July warned violence has hit record highs, fighting is spreading into parts of the country once thought safe, and there have been an unprecedented number of civilian casualties this year.

General David McKiernan, the US commander of almost all the international forces in Afghanistan, insited to journalists at a press conference on Sunday that Nato isn't losing. The fact he had to say it suggest public perception is otherwise. He also said that everywhere he goes, everyone he speaks to is "uniformly positive" about the future. Those people must be cherry-picked.

Crime in the capital, Kabul, is rising. The Taliban broke 400 insurgents out of Kandahar jail this summer, and they attacked the provincial capital in Helmand last weekend. People are frustrated at the international community's failures and scared that the Taliban are coming back.

What does that mean for the future?

President Karzai has touted peace talks with the Taliban through Saudi intermediaries. The international community maintains it will support the Afghan government in any negotiations, but privately diplomats admit that if they opened talks tomorrow they would not start from a "perceived position of strength".

General David Petraeus is about to take command at CentCom, which includes Afghanistan, and he is expected to focus on churning out more Afghan soldiers and engaging tribes against the insurgents.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, it remains to be seen whether Asif Ali Zardari will rein in his intelligence service and crack down on the Taliban safe havens in the Pakistani tribal areas, which they rely on to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

There are also elections on the horizon. The international community is determined that they must go ahead, despite the obvious security challenges, and anything the Afghan candidates do should be seen in the context of securing people who can deliver votes.

Does the war on drugs undermine the war on terror?

Yes

*Working to eradicate poppies will remove farmers' best source of income and turn them against Nato

*Using resources to fight against the entrenched poppy trade diverts them from the war with the Taliban

*Corruption in government means that battling opium turns the mechanism of the state against our forces

*In the end, an Afghanistan without opium production will be much less prone to the influence of the Taliban

*Money from the international drugs trade may find its way to terrorists outside of Afghanistan

*Removing the source of corruption will strengthen the country's institutions in the long term

Support H.R 6680 End The Madness

2008-10-14T19:07:00.001-07:00

Urge your member of Congress to support H.R.6680, a bill that repeals the national syringe funding ban. If enacted, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of taxpayer dollars.

Subject: Please Support H.R. 6680, which repeals the national syringe funding ban

Dear [Decision Maker],

Please personalize your message

I urge you to co-sponsor and support H.R. 6680, the bi-partisan "Community AIDS and Hepatitis Prevention Act of 2008." This bill repeals the federal prohibition that prevents states from using their share of HIV/AIDS prevention money on syringe exchange programs. If enacted, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of taxpayer dollars.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American Medical Association, National Academy of Sciences, American Public Health Association, and numerous other scientific bodies have found that syringe exchange programs are highly effective at preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases. Moreover, seven federal reports have found that increasing access to sterile syringes saves lives without increasing drug use.

The lifetime cost of treating just one person who contracts HIV/AIDS can be as high as $600,000. This cost is often borne by taxpayers. In contrast, syringe exchange programs can prevent thousands of new HIV/AIDS cases at very little cost. Thus, funding syringe exchange programs saves both lives and taxpayer money.

As many as 300,000 Americans could contract HIV/AIDS or hepatitis C over the next decade because of a lack of access to sterile syringes. This essentially makes the national syringe ban a death sentence for drug users, their partners and children. I strongly urge you to co-sponsor and support H.R. 6680.

For your ready to fill in form please visit Drug Policy Alliance here

Journalists Targeted In Latest Mexico Drug Violence.

2008-10-13T19:19:00.001-07:00

As drug-related violence continues to worsen across the border in Mexico, journalists are being increasingly targeted.

Mexico's widening war with drugs has claimed more than 3,000 lives this year alone. On Sunday, assailants opened fire on the US consulate in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, reports the Associated Press. Nobody was injured in that attack, but on Saturday gunmen killed six young men at a family party in the gang-plagued Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, reports AP.

Saturday night's mass shooting was the second in the border state of Chihuahua in less than a week. Just before midnight Thursday, gunmen opened fire in a bar in the city of Chihuahua, killing 11 people.

The most recent violence underscores yet another frightening dimension in the violence: the targeting of journalists, the San Antonio Express reports.

A newspaper editor, a columnist, police officers, and bar patrons were among those killed in separate acts of violence this week in the unrelenting drug war that has claimed 3,500 lives across the country this year.

Miguel Angel Villagomez, the editor of La Noticia de Michoacan newspaper in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas on the Pacific coast, was kidnapped late Thursday after leaving the newsroom, said a Michoacan police spokesman.

David Garcia Monroy, a columnist at El Diario de Chihuahua newspaper, was among the 11 people killed by gunmen in a bar in the northern city of Chihuahua late Thursday, said Chihuahua police spokesman Eduardo Esparza.

The killings were the latest acts of aggression against Mexican journalists, who are increasingly pressured by narcotics cartels to tone down coverage of the country's brutal drug war.

Behind the surging violence is a shift in the way drugs are delivered to the United States, away from Colombian distribution channels to networks in Mexico, the Atlanta Constitution Journal points out.

The transformation of narcotics trafficking to the Mexican networks started shifting in the 1990s.... Increased interdiction of the Colombian-Cuban delivery routes and the opening of the United States' border to trade handed the Mexicans an opportunity.

The Colombians realized they could hire them out [to transport drugs] and reduce the risk," said Jim Martin, a federal prosecutor in Atlanta who has handled drug cases for nearly 30 years.

Today, Mexico is the key to the Western Hemisphere's lucrative drug trade, the Atlanta Constitution Journal adds.

Mexican distribution rings supply about 90 percent of the cocaine, 80 percent of the methamphetamine and half of the marijuana used in the United States, estimates Rodney G. Benson, the agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Atlanta. A huge proportion of the payload headed for the Atlantic seaboard, the Southeast and the Midwest flows through Atlanta's interstates, a federal report said this year.

And drug cartels are fighting viciously over that trade, Reuters adds.

Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, head of the Pacific-coast Sinaloa cartel, has declared war on the local drug baron, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, and sent his foot soldiers to drive out the Juarez cartel. The Gulf cartel based around the Gulf of Mexico coast has joined the fight.

The Sacramento Bee points out that the wave of violence has "put the country at the top of some of the most infamous lists in the world: the country with the most kidnappings, the most violent crimes, the most journalists killed in the Western Hemisphere."

The Sacramento Bee adds that a widespread crackdown has done little to stop the violence.

When President Felipe Calderón took office two years ago, he declared war on the drug cartels and made the fight against crime his No. 1 priority. He sent the army first to his home state of Michoacán, then to the states of Monterrey, Sinaloa and several cities along the US border. Virtually militarizing the country, however, has not brought about the expected results.

José Reveles, an investigative journalist with the Mexican newspaper El Financiero, claims the Calderón government has lost control of the situation. "The delinquents are organized, and the government is disorganized," he says. "Organized crime is challenging the government, and its only response is to react."

Not surprisingly, the spiraling violence has led to a sharp downturn in tourism to Mexico, NBC San Diego reports.

As the body count rises south of the border in the drug cartel war, businesses are also drained of their lifeblood.

Although the weakened economy has had an impact, many say the fear of violence in border cities is to blame. Tourism in cities like Tijuana and Rosarito is about 70 percent down since last year....

[The mayor of Rosarito, Hugo Torres] along with other Mexican mayors say usually the mainstream media does not report that violence in Baja, California is among drug dealers and not against tourists. The mayor said those who were killed in his city were either involved in the drug trade or had a criminal history.

Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade.

2008-10-13T09:24:00.001-07:00

Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai’s brother, in 2001. Both say accusations of drug trafficking are politically motivated.

WASHINGTON — When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.

Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs, Mr. Jan later told American investigators, according to notes from the debriefing obtained by The New York Times. He said he complied after getting a phone call from an aide to President Karzai directing him to release the truck.

Two years later, American and Afghan counternarcotics forces stopped another truck, this time near Kabul, finding more than 110 pounds of heroin. Soon after the seizure, United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to a participant in the briefing.

The assertions about the involvement of the president’s brother in the incidents were never investigated, according to American and Afghan officials, even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.

Both President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region that includes Afghanistan’s second largest city, dismiss the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes.

“I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be,” the president’s brother said in a recent phone interview. “I am a victim of vicious politics.”

But the assertions about him have deeply worried top American officials in Kabul and in Washington. The United States officials fear that perceptions that the Afghan president might be protecting his brother are damaging his credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress his government, which has been under siege from rivals and a Taliban insurgency fueled by drug money, several senior Bush administration officials said. Their concerns have intensified as American troops have been deployed to the country in growing numbers.

“What appears to be a fairly common Afghan public perception of corruption inside their government is a tremendously corrosive element working against establishing long-term confidence in that government — a very serious matter,” said Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, who was commander of coalition military forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and is now retired. “That could be problematic strategically for the United States.”

The White House says it believes that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drug trafficking, and American officials have repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother is a political liability, two senior Bush administration officials said in interviews last week.

Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. In meetings with President Karzai, including a 2006 session with the United States ambassador, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief and their British counterparts, American officials have talked about the allegations in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks.

“We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there,” one official said. But President Karzai has resisted, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. “We don’t have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment,” a White House official said. “That allows Karzai to say, ‘where’s your proof?’ ”

Neither the Drug Enforcement Administration, which conducts counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, nor the fledgling Afghan anti-drug agency has pursued investigations into the accusations against the president’s brother.

Several American investigators said senior officials at the D.E.A. and the office of the Director of National Intelligence complained to them that the White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter. But White House officials dispute that, instead citing limited D.E.A. resources in Kandahar and southern Afghanistan and the absence of political will in the Afghan government to go after major drug suspects as the reasons for the lack of an inquiry.

“We invested considerable resources into building Afghan capability to conduct such investigations and consistently encouraged Karzai to take on the big fish and address widespread Afghan suspicions about the link between his brother and narcotics,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, who was the coordinator for Afghanistan and Iraq at the National Security Council until last year.

It was not clear whether President Bush had been briefed on the matter.Humayun Hamidzada, press secretary for President Karzai, denied that the president’s brother was involved in drug trafficking or that the president had intervened to help him. “People have made allegations without proof,” Mr. Hamidzada said.

Spokesmen for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

An Informant’s Tip

The concerns about Ahmed Wali Karzai have surfaced recently because of the imprisonment of an informant who tipped off American and Afghan investigators to the drug-filled truck outside Kabul in 2006.

The informant, Hajji Aman Kheri, was arrested a year later on charges of plotting to kill an Afghan vice president in 2002. The Afghan Supreme Court recently ordered him freed for lack of evidence, but he has not been released. Nearly 100 political leaders in his home region protested his continued incarceration last month.

Mr. Kheri, in a phone interview from jail in Kabul, said he had been an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and United States intelligence agencies, an assertion confirmed by American counternarcotics and intelligence officials. Several of those officials, frustrated that the Bush administration was not pressing for Mr. Kheri’s release, came forward to disclose his role in the drug seizure.

Ever since the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, critics have charged that the Bush administration has failed to take aggressive action against the Afghan narcotics trade, because of both opposition from the Karzai government and reluctance by the United States military to get bogged down by eradication and interdiction efforts that would antagonize local warlords and Afghan poppy farmers. Now, Afghanistan provides about 95 percent of the world’s supply of heroin.

Just as the Taliban have benefited from money produced by the drug trade, so have many officials in the Karzai government, according to American and Afghan officials. Thomas Schweich, a former senior State Department counternarcotics official, wrote in The New York Times Magazine in July that drug traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. “Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government,” he said.

Suspicions of Corruption

Of the suspicions about Ahmed Wali Karzai, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, an Illinois Republican who has focused on the Afghan drug problem in Congress, said, “I would ask people in the Bush administration and the D.E.A. about him, and they would say, ‘We think he’s dirty.’ ”

In the two drug seizures in 2004 and 2006, millions of dollars’ worth of heroin was found. In April 2006, Mr. Jan, by then a member of the Afghan Parliament, met with American investigators at a D.E.A. safe house in Kabul and was asked to describe the events surrounding the 2004 drug discovery, according to notes from the debriefing session. He told the Americans that after impounding the truck, he received calls from Ahmed Wali Karzai and Shaida Mohammad, an aide to President Karzai, according to the notes.

Mr. Jan later became a political opponent of President Karzai, and in a 2007 speech in Parliament he accused Ahmed Wali Karzai of involvement in the drug trade. Mr. Jan was shot to death in July as he drove from a guesthouse to his main residence in Kandahar Province. The Taliban were suspected in the assassination.

Mr. Mohammad, in a recent interview in Washington, dismissed Mr. Jan’s account, saying that Mr. Jan had fabricated the story about being pressured to release the drug shipment in order to damage President Karzai.

But Khan Mohammad, the former Afghan commander in Kandahar who was Mr. Jan’s superior in 2004, said in a recent interview that Mr. Jan reported at the time that he had received a call from the Karzai aide ordering him to release the drug cache. Khan Mohammad recalled that Mr. Jan believed that the call had been instigated by Ahmed Wali Karzai, not the president.

“This was a very heavy issue,” Mr. Mohammad said.

He provided the same account in an October 2004 interview with The Christian Science Monitor. Mr. Mohammad said that after a subordinate captured a large shipment of heroin about two months earlier, the official received repeated telephone calls from Ahmed Wali Karzai. “He was saying, ‘This heroin belongs to me, you should release it,’ ” the newspaper quoted Mr. Mohammad as saying.

Languishing in Detention

In 2006, Mr. Kheri, the Afghan informant, tipped off American counternarcotics agents to another drug shipment. Mr. Kheri, who had proved so valuable to the United States that his family had been resettled in Virginia in 2004, briefly returned to Afghanistan in 2006.

The heroin in the truck that was seized was to be delivered to Ahmed Wali Karzai’s bodyguard in the village of Maidan Shahr, and then transported to Kandahar, one of the Afghans involved in the deal later told American investigators, according to notes of his debriefing. Several Afghans — the drivers and the truck’s owner — were arrested by Afghan authorities, but no action was taken against Mr. Karzai or his bodyguard, who investigators believe serves as a middleman, the American officials said.

In 2007, Mr. Kheri visited Afghanistan again, once again serving as an American informant, the officials said. This time, however, he was arrested by the Karzai government and charged in the 2002 assassination of Hajji Abdul Qadir, an Afghan vice president, who had been a political rival of Mr. Kheri’s brother, Hajji Zaman, a former militia commander and a powerful figure in eastern Afghanistan.

Mr. Kheri, in the phone interview from Kabul, denied any involvement in the killing and said his arrest was politically motivated. He maintained that the president’s brother was involved in the heroin trade.

“It’s no secret about Wali Karzai and drugs,” said Mr. Kheri, who speaks English. “A lot of people in the Afghan government are involved in drug trafficking.”

Mr. Kheri’s continued detention, despite the Afghan court’s order to release him, has frustrated some of the American investigators who worked with him.

In recent months, they have met with officials at the State Department and the office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking to persuade the Bush administration to intervene with the Karzai government to release Mr. Kheri.

“We have just left a really valuable informant sitting in jail to rot,” one investigator said.

The Drug Czar’s Legacy of Failure, by the Numbers.

2008-10-13T05:27:00.001-07:00

Two new reports by public policy expert Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at George Mason University, highlight the ineptitude of U.S. marijuana policy during the Bush Administration.

The reports – one analyzing marijuana use rate statistics and the other examining the explosion in court-ordered marijuana treatment admissions – directly contradict the White House drug czar’s office’s frequent claims of success in reducing marijuana use rates.

There’s little question that this administration’s Office of National Drug Control Policy has spent its tenure consumed with a singular obsession with marijuana and marijuana users, but the breadth of their failure to make any meaningful impact in this area is stunning.

The drug czar, John Walters, likes to claim that teen marijuana use rates have declined 25 percent under his watch – which, lo and behold, is exactly the benchmark his office set in 2002 – but it simply doesn’t hold up, as Gettman’s analysis shows.

If you look at overall marijuana use rates, you see that the number of monthly marijuana users barely even budged from 14.6 million users in 2002 to 14.5 million users in 2007. In other words, Walters created 127 separate anti-marijuana TV, radio and print ads, 34 marijuana-focused press releases, 50 reports detailing the dangers of marijuana – while marijuana arrests ratcheted from 697,000 in 2002 to 872,000 in 2007 – and all us taxpayers have to show for it is a tiny decline in frequent marijuana users.

Gettman’s second report examines the startling rise in marijuana treatment admissions – a trend the drug czar frequently points to as evidence that contemporary marijuana is dramatically different and magnitudes more dangerous than the comparatively harmless stuff baby boomers enjoyed in their youths.

Again, Gettman’s analysis proves what most of us suspected – the drug czar’s claim is nonsense. There has been a marked jump in marijuana treatment admissions over the past 15 years or so, but it has been fueled almost entirely by referrals from the criminal justice system. In fact, only 45 percent of these admissions even met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) criteria for marijuana dependence. Marijuana users, presented with a choice between jail or treatment, logically choose treatment, and then the drug czar turns around and uses that as evidence that marijuana is prohibitively dangerous. But these folks never had a problem with marijuana. They had a problem with getting arrested for marijuana.

For those who follow marijuana policy reform closely, Gettman’s conclusions may not be so earth shattering – there’s already a general consensus among experts that the Office of National Drug Control Policy operates in a realm divorced from reality. The significance of Gettman’s contribution here is in quantifying the failures of this administration’s marijuana policies. Thanks to a heated culture war and an inattentive press, this drug czar got away with a lot of this nonsense, but his replacement should take note: Americans are sick of this war on marijuana users, and they’re sick of the tortured logic, manipulated statistics and bald-faced lies used to justify it.

The next drug czar will be held accountable for her actions; Gettman’s work offers a blueprint for how we should judge her success.

US Officials Fear Terrorist Links With Drug Lords

2008-10-13T05:23:00.001-07:00

By CURT ANDERSON MIAMI (AP) — There is real danger that Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida and Hezbollah could form alliances with wealthy and powerful Latin American drug lords to launch new terrorist attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Extremist group operatives have already been identified in several Latin American countries, mostly involved in fundraising and finding logistical support. But Charles Allen, chief of intelligence analysis at the Homeland Security Department, said they could use well-established smuggling routes and drug profits to bring people or even weapons of mass destruction to the U.S.

"The presence of these people in the region leaves open the possibility that they will attempt to attack the United States," said Allen, a veteran CIA analyst. "The threats in this hemisphere are real. We cannot ignore them."

Added U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operations chief Michael Braun: "It is not in our interest to let that potpourri of scum to come together."

Their comments came at a two-day conference on the illegal drug threat in the Americas hosted by the U.S. Southern Command and the 35,000-member AFCEA International, a trade group for communications, intelligence and national security companies.

Much as the Taliban tapped Afghanistan's heroin for money, U.S. officials say the vast profits available from Latin American cocaine could provide al-Qaida and others with a ready source of income. The rebel group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has long used drug money to pay for weapons, supplies and operations — and is also designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.

"We've got a hybrid that has developed right before our eyes," Braun said.

Latin America's drug kingpins already have well-established methods of smuggling, laundering money, obtaining false documents, providing safe havens and obtaining illicit weapons, all of which would be attractive to terrorists who are facing new pressures in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Allen, of the Homeland Security Department, said there was currently a "low probability" of cooperation between terrorists and drug organizations, but the "fertile ground" of Latin America — where government corruption is common and institutions often weak — means that the possibility deserves renewed U.S. attention.

"It would be an unprecedented act. But we cannot rule it out," he said.

The officials said the key to preventing such an alliance is increasing cooperation between government agencies and with nations in the region. They singled out for praise the governments of Mexico and Colombia for making huge strides against drug groups, while criticizing Venezuela for its failure to do so.

Braun said the DEA can be a particularly critical component because of its wide use of human informants and telephone wiretaps to track those in the drug trade. Those sources often provide tips about other types of crime and could be key to identifying terrorists in Latin America.

"They use the same money launderers, the same document forgers," he said. "You are naturally going to bump up against terrorist organizations."

L.E.A.P Use the link for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

2008-10-13T05:11:00.001-07:00

http://leap.cc/cms/index.php

Mission Statement:-

Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is made up of current and former members of law enforcement who believe the existing drug policies have failed in their intended goals of addressing the problems of crime, drug abuse, addiction, juvenile drug use, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into this country and the internal sale and use of illegal drugs. By fighting a war on drugs the government has increased the problems of society and made them far worse. A system of regulation rather than prohibition is a less harmful, more ethical and a more effective public policy.

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

LEAP's goals are:

To educate the public, the media, and policy makers, to the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug abuse and the crimes related to drug prohibition and
To restore the public's respect for law enforcement, which has been greatly diminished by its involvement in imposing drug prohibition.

LEAP's main strategy for accomplishing these goals is to create a constantly enlarging speakers bureau staffed with knowledgeable and articulate former drug-warriors who describe the impact of current drug policies on: police/community relations; the safety of law enforcement officers and suspects; police corruption and misconduct; and the financial and human costs associated with current drug policies.

2008-10-13T05:03:00.001-07:00

The drug war in Mexico is going so horribly wrong that the State Department is warning Americans who may be thinking about traveling there:

Travel Alert

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of Consular Affairs

This information is current as of today, document.write(Date()+".") Fri Oct 10 2008 19:36:27 GMT-0400 (EDT).

Mexico

April 14, 2008

This Travel Alert updates information for U.S. citizens on security situations in Mexico that may affect their activities while in that country. This supersedes the Travel Alert for Mexico dated October 24, 2007, and expires on October 15, 2008.

Violence Along The U.S.-Mexico Border
-------------------------------------

Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade continues along the U.S.-Mexico border. Attacks are aimed primarily at members of drug trafficking organizations, Mexican police forces, criminal justice officials, and journalists. However, foreign visitors and residents, including Americans, have been among the victims of homicides and kidnappings in the border region. In its effort to combat violence, the government of Mexico has deployed military troops in various parts of the country. U.S. citizens are urged to cooperate with official checkpoints when traveling on Mexican highways.

What a disaster. If there were anything remotely effective about the war on drugs, don’t you think that trying this policy for several decades would have produced a better outcome than this? I mean, look at it. Seriously, just watch what’s happening. Is this the result you’d get from a drug policy that worked?

Ever since President Calderon took office a year and a half ago and began trying to crack down on drug trafficking, everything has gone to hell. It gets worse everyday because using war to attack the drug supply is a terrible policy that destroys everything except the drug supply. What other conclusion could you possibly reach given what’s taking place right before our eyes?

Mexican President Proposes Decriminalizing Small Amounts of Some Drugs, Including Marijuana and Cocaine despite U.S. Opposition

2008-10-04T19:55:00.001-07:00

New Law Would Prioritize Going after Major Drug Dealers and Violent Crime, not People who Use Drugs
International Drug Policy Expert Ethan Nadelmann Available for Comment on Significance and Impact of Proposal
For Immediate Release: Friday, October 3, 2008.Contact: Tony Newman (646)335-5384 or Ethan Nadelmann (646)335-2240

President Felipe Calderon on Thursday proposed decriminalizing small amounts of some drugs, including cocaine and marijuana. The legislation would offer treatment instead of incarceration for people who are struggling with drug addiction. A recent survey found that the number of Mexicans addicted to drugs doubled in the past six years to more than 300,000.

President Calderon has made a crackdown on Mexico’s drug cartels a cornerstone of his administration since taking office. He has sent 30,000 troops around the country to try to stop the violence. But armed attacks and executions have only increased with more than 3,000 people dying from violence related to drug prohibition this year alone.

The United States is already criticizing the new proposal. One official who did not want to be identified said they oppose the policy because it “rewards the drug traffickers and doesn’t make children’s lives safer.” Mexico’s Congress passed a similar decriminalization bill in 2006, but the bill was eventually dropped because of U.S. opposition and pressure.

Statement from Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (see description below).

“President Calderon’s proposal to decriminalize personal possession of illicit drugs is consistent with the broader trend throughout Western Europe, Canada and other parts of Latin America to stop treating drug use and possession as a criminal problem. But it contrasts sharply with the United States, where arrests for marijuana possession hit a record high last year – roughly 800,000 annually – and now represent nearly half of all drug arrests nationwide.

“Mexico is trying to make the right choices on law enforcement priorities; it’s time for the United States to do the same,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

“The White House Drug Czar John P. Walters should think twice before criticizing a foreign government for its drug policy, much less holding the United States out as a model. Looking to the United States as a role model for drug control is like looking to apartheid South Africa for how to deal with race. This country leads the world in per-capita incarceration rates, with less than five percent of the world’s population but almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. About 500,000 people are in U.S. prisons and jails today simply for violating a drug law; that's almost 10 times the total in 1980,” said Nadelmann.

27 Bodies Found After Suspected Drug Attacks In North Mexico

2008-10-04T18:35:00.001-07:00

Above :-The corpses of men in Tijuana, Baja California, northwest Mexico.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AFP) — Mexican police found eight bodies, two of them decapitated, in the northwestern border city of Tijuana, and 19 others after separate attacks further east in the border state of Chihuahua in the past 24 hours.

Border areas where rival drug cartels are battling for control of key routes into the United States are among the worst hit in escalating violence across Mexico this year in which almost 3,500 have died, according to local media.

Attacks have increased despite a government crackdown on drug-related violence including the deployment of 36,000 troops across the country.

Police in Tijuana found five bodies with their hands and feet tied and heads wrapped in tape on Friday, as well as two headless bodies and one other body, making a total of 42 dead in one week.

Gangland-style murders have escalated this week in the city across the border from San Diego, including the discovery of eight bodies Thursday, and a pile of 12 bodies found in a nearby area on Monday, local officials said.

In Chihuahua state a former district attorney and four local police were killed, including a woman, out of a total of 19 dead, officials said Friday.

In state capital Chihuahua, several armed men fired from a car on the former district attorney late Thursday, state authorities said.

"On seeing his attackers he tried to run away, but they followed him and shot him several times in the back," a state official said.

In Casas Grandes, north of Chihuahua city, police found the bodies of five men, each with a bullet in the head.

Meanwhile in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where more than 1,000 have been murdered this year, two local police were shot dead as they patrolled a residential area, state authorities said.

Four others, including two police, were also killed there on Thursday, and a former soldier and five others were killed in separate incidents in the past 24 hours.

A US resident of Ciudad Juarez, who last year put up signs calling on hitmen to avoid leaving bodies outside his house, was killed in his home Friday, police said.

Turning Schoolchildren Into Street junkies

2008-09-30T05:10:00.001-07:00

Ritalin is an amphetamine. In street lingo, it's called "speed." Selling speed to children is a felony, but feeding speed to children with a prescription is called "treatment." The practice of dosing children with powerful, mind-altering drugs is, in fact, a form of chemical abuse, yet it is tolerated today because it is framed in the language of medicine. Parents and teachers all too easily agree to the mass drugging of schoolchildren because it makes symptoms of ADHD seemingly go away. This drugging practice is, ultimately, pursued for the convenience of the children's caretakers and the profits of powerful drug companies, not out of any real concern for the health of the children.
Nutritional research has shown that the symptoms of ADHD can be completely reversed in 80 percent of children in just two weeks by eliminating processed foods and chemical food additives from their diets. The so-called "disease" of ADHD is really just an expression of behavior caused by extreme dietary imbalances. The entire theory of ADHD can also be completely shot down by simply handing an ADHD child an X-Box or Wii gaming system, after which the child will sit down and engage in extremely focused, attentive and mentally demanding gaming activities for as long as six hours without a single break, and without distraction. If there really were such as disease as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, such behavior would not be possible.
The truth is that ADHD kids aren't diseased at all: Most schools are simply boring beyond belief, and children don't learn well by being forced to sit still at their desks and listen to teachers ramble their way through meaningless memorization exercises dubbed "history" or "science" or whatever the topic may be. Children learn by doing things, and all that extra hyperactive energy has a useful function if it's channeled into experiential learning exercises.

Does Ritalin cause permanent health damage?

This new research about Ritalin stunting the growth of children does not answer the question of whether children ever regain their normal height and body weight, or whether Ritalin causes a permanent stunting of growth that cannot be reversed. It does make us wonder, however, whether a drug that stunts physical growth might also stunt the growth of brain cells and the nervous system, leading to intellectually stunted children at the same time that it produces physically stunted children.
In previous years, psychiatrists tried to argue that it wasn't Ritalin that caused the stunting of growth -- it was the ADHD disease itself, they claimed with a straight face! And thus, treatment with Ritalin was the only way to return children to "normal" growth.
This kind of twisted, circular logic typifies modern psychiatric medicine, which spontaneously invokes the existence of numerous psychiatric "disorders" at the exact coincidental moment that profitable pharmaceuticals become available to treat them. The logic of psychiatry goes like this: ADHD is a real disease because it's in the DSIM-IV manual (the bible of fictitious psychiatric disorders). ADHD is listed in the DSIM-IV because it's a real disease according to a group of Big Pharma-funded psychiatrists who made it up. Thus, ADHD is real because psychiatrists say is it!

'SWAT' Raids Often Target Innocent People

2008-09-29T19:36:00.001-07:00

Back in January i posted this dreadful story from Scott Morgan at Stopthedrugwar.org :-

'It has become a nauseating chore just to report on all the innocent people that get killed in the drug war. But until our public servants stop killing us to protect us from drugs, the reporting must continue:

Tarika Wilson, 26, was shot and her 1-year-old son was wounded when Lima police conducted a drug raid on their home Friday night, prompting members of the black community to organize a candlelight vigil and demand answers from police.

"They shot my daughter and her baby," Ms. Jennings said through tears while being consoled by other family members. "The police have to pay for what they did. They went in that home shooting and killed her." [Toledo Blade]

Tarika Wilson's boyfriend was arrested for marijuana and crack, but police haven’t reported how much they found. Something tells me this is because the amount is very small. Too small to justify shooting a baby. Similarly, they haven’t said a word about why Ms. Wilson was shot. If they had a good answer, we'd know by now what it is.

Here's the thing: when you hear about police shooting a baby and killing an innocent mother of six, you just know the drug war had something to do with it. Overwhelmingly, it is the drug war that sends adrenalin-charged cops into private homes with their fingers on the trigger of a machine gun. In a post-drug war world, babies and grandmas won't get shot in their houses by police. I can't wait.'

It would have been nice to report how things have improved in the 8 or 9 months since this tragedy, would have been but :-

In addition to killing an unarmed mother of six and shooting a baby, it turns out that the SWAT team in Lima, OH has been raiding innocent people quite regularly:

LIMA - More than a quarter of the 198 raids by the Lima Police Department SWAT team in the last seven years came up empty-handed without finding drugs, weapons, paraphernalia or money.

And nearly a third of the time, police do not find drugs or a weapon. Drugs alone were found in nearly two-thirds of the raids and a weapon, by itself, was found one-third of the time. [LimaOhio.com]

That’s a lot of innocent doors getting kicked in and a lot of innocent people having guns held to their head. Yet, the Lima PD actually thinks it’s something to be proud of:

"That means 68 percent of the time, we're getting guns or drugs off the street," said Maj. Kevin Martin, who called the numbers a success???.

Nothing could more perfectly illustrate the complete detachment that underscores a policy of routinely terrorizing innocent citizens. Think about this: the Lima officer who shot Tarika Wilson claimed that he killed her because he was startled by the sound of gunfire caused by his fellow officers shooting dogs elsewhere in the house. That is sort of thing that can happen during these raids, and they know it.

Thus, Maj. Martin’s statement reveals that Lima PD has learned nothing after killing Wilson and shooting her baby’s finger off. They are proud that 2/3 of the people whose lives they endanger in these raids turn out to be actual criminals. The rest just don’t factor into the equation. Not even little babies.

Botched Paramilitary Police Raids ("SWAT")

2008-09-29T19:32:00.001-07:00

DEAD Tanika Williams and Sincere Wilson – Lima, Ohio January, 2008
A SWAT team Burst into the home of Tanika Williams, her one year old son, and her boyfriend, and immediately opened fire. Tanika was killed, her son wounded, and even one of the family dogs was killed. While the SWAT team executed the raid at the proper address, their wanton use of excessive force cannot be justified by the undisclosed amount of marijuana and crack they purportedly found in the possession of the boyfriend.

Norma Saunders – Philadelphia, September 2007
Norma Saunders returned home from a family reunion to find her home trashed, her front door broken in, and her burglary alarm torn from the wall. Police officers had raided the house looking for drugs and weapons. The house they intended to hit was several houses away.

Virginia Herrick – Durango, Colorado, June 2007
77-year-old Virginia Herrick was surprised by a police task force in gas masks when they barged into her mobile home and threw her to the ground. Her home was ransacked and she was separated from the oxygen tank she needs to help her breath. Police later realized that they had the wrong house and apologized.

SERIOUS INJURY Kari Bailey, 23, and her 5-year-old daughter, Hayley – Stockton, California, May 2007
An eight-member code enforcement team investigating a complaint about drug use shot the Bailey's dog in the paw, and shrapnel from the bullet injured the Baileys. It was a wrong address.

Davis Family – Jacksonville, Florida, March 2007
Masked police officers burst into the Davis family home and ordered everyone to the ground while they ransacked the house looking for evidence of a drug crime. Willie Davis, grandfather of murdered DreShawna Davis, and his mentally disabled son were forced to the ground and watched helplessly as police tore apart the memorabilia from DreShawna's funeral. This show of paramilitary force was in response to the alleged sale of two crack rocks, an amount worth roughly $60.

DEAD Daniel Castillo Jr. – Wharton, Texas, February 2007
Police raided the home of Daniel Castillo Jr., age 17, in search of weapons and drugs. Daniel was awakened by his sister crying "don't shoot." When he entered the room to investigate, police officer Don Falks shot him in the face, killing him. Daniel had no criminal record, and no drugs or weapons were found.

DEAD Isaac Singletary – Jacksonville, Florida, January 2007
As the victim of a botched sting operation, Isaac Singletary was shot to death after reacting to two undercover officers posing as drug dealers. Believing that he was being confronted by armed criminals, Singletary brandished a gun, prompting police to open fire. Singletary was announced "completely innocent" by the Jacksonville sheriff.

DEAD Corporal James Dean – Leonardtown, Maryland, December 2006
Cpl. James Dean, an Army reservist, was killed by a Maryland State Police sharpshooter during a standoff that began when police intervened in Dean's apparent suicide attempt. Dean did fire some shots, so the case is complicated, but had not threatened anyone other than himself until the SWAT team arrived.

Salvador Celaya – Gilbert, Arizona, December 2006
Police raided the house of Salvador Celaya by mistake, causing a standoff with Celaya, who was 73 years old and suffers from Alzheimer's. Believing his home was under attack by criminals, Mr. Celaya fired on the police. He was eventually driven from his home by the fire which had started from a flashbang grenade thrown into his house by police. While no one was injured, the house did burn to the ground.

DEAD Kathryn Johnston – Atlanta, Georgia, November 2006
92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was killed by police during a raid conducted at the wrong house. Ms. Johnston fired at the police officers as they were breaking in through her living room window. Three officers were injured, but Ms. Johnston was struck 39 times and died at the scene.

DEAD Derek Hale – Wilmington, Delaware, November 2006
Retired marine Derek Hale was targeted by police due to his association with a motorcycle club. When a team of SWAT officers poured out of the black vans they had arrived in, Hale was told to raise his hands, but was tasered before being able to comply, then was tasered two more times and shot three times point blank in front of his friend and her two children. Police claimed he resisted arrest, however, all witnesses testified that he had been attempting to comply with the police but was unable to because of the three taser attacks. He had no criminal record and had served two tours in Iraq.

Durrell Jones – Sarasota, Florida November 2006
Police raided the home of Durrell Jones where he lived with his brother and four year old son. Police barged in both front and back doors with guns pointed. The family was forced to the ground and the house was searched before one of the officers realized they had raided on the wrong house.

DEAD Otto Zehm – Spokane, Washington, March 2006
Zehm, a 36-year-old mentally disabled janitor, stopped breathing and lapsed into a coma after being beaten, shocked with a taser weapon and placed on his stomach for an extended period of time while hogtied by a force of no less than seven police officers. He never regained consciousness and died two days later.

Margot Allen – Sugar Land, Texas, October 2006
A police SWAT team burst into the Allen home, set off a flash grenade, shot the family dog and arrested Allen's son and boyfriend. In their subsequent search of the house police were only able to find one small marijuana cigarette.

Anita Woodyear – Brownsville, Texas, September 2006
A police SWAT team burst into the home of Anita Woodyear, handcuffed her 11- and 12-year old and shot the family dog. Police justified the bust by evidence of the sale of a mere $60 worth of marijuana.

DEAD Cheryl Lynn Noel – Chicago, Illinois, January 2005
A police SWAT team raided the Noel family home after finding marijuana seeds in the trash outside their house. They broke into the house at 4:30am in full riot gear after setting off a flashbang grenade. Upon entering the bedroom and finding Mrs. Noel holding her legally licensed pistol, the officer fired three times, killing her in her bed.

Flexton Young – Bronx, New York, August 2006
Flexton Young, his wife and their four children were asleep when police broke down the door of their apartment on the fourth floor of 974 Anderson Ave at 6:00am. They ripped through the front door, tore off the closet door, and ripped both of the childrens' rooms to pieces. The search turned up one mostly smoked marijuana cigarette in an ashtray.

ASSAULTED Arlita Hines – Dale City, Virginia, July 2006
Police burst into the home of Arlita Hines, where she lives with her sister and nephews. They threw the family members to the ground and handcuffed them, tossed the house looking for drugs, but found none. Police later acknowledged they had raided the wrong house.

SHOT Guillermo Urquiza – McKinney, Texas, June 2006
Police claim Guillermo Urquiza solicited a hit man to kill a police officer, and raided Urquiza's home looking for evidence. Urquiza says he thought he was being invaded, so he grabbed a gun to defend himself. He didn't get off a shot, but the raiding SWAT team shot him multiple times. He was never indicted for hiring a hit man, but he was charged with shooting at the police. He was convicted of assault, and sentenced to five years in prison.

Steven Blackman – Fort Worth, Texas, June 2006
The raid on Steven Blackman's house began when police fired several rounds of tear gas into the house, and the SWAT team officers rushed in and broke down the back door. While they had the right address, they did not know that the man they were pursuing had not lived there for three years. The person they were looking for was suspected of mere possession.

SHOT Kenneth Jamar – Huntsville, Alabama, June 2006
51-year-old Kenneth Jamar, a semi-invalid with severe gout and a pacemaker, was shot several times and nearly killed in a SWAT raid on his home last June. Jamar was holding a gun when the SWAT team kicked down his bedroom door. Police were apparently looking for Jamar's nephew. Despite the fact that the address on the search warrant was incorrect (the address listed was that of the suspect's father), police insisted that the raid on Jamar's home was legal and that his home was the home they'd intended to raid all along.

Joy White – Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 2006
The home of Joy White and Bob Lazar was raided by a police SWAT team because they ran an online business specializing in the sale of chemicals for scientific activities. They count the Department of Homeland Security and several police and fire departments among their clients. Police handcuffed the couple and held them on suspicion of selling illegal fireworks. Police confiscated all materials and computers from the business, but could not tie White or Lazar to any illegal activity.

SERIOUS INJURY Elderly Couple – Horn Lake, Mississippi, March 2006
A man and a woman – both in their 80s – were injured as TACT team members secured their house although no drugs were found. The woman received a dislocated shoulder and the man received bruised ribs. Both were taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto. Police later admitted to hitting the wrong house.

DEAD Salvatore Culosi – Fairfax County, Virginia, January 24 2006
Dr. Salvatore J. Culosi was shot and killed by a member of the county police SWAT Team while being served with what should have been a routine documents search warrant. The officer involved was not disciplined and the county is refusing to reveal the information leading to the killing.

Chidester Family – Springville, Utah, January 2006
The County SWAT team manhandled a family when it erroneously raided their home. Lawrence Chidester was tackled and his face shoved into the ground and rocks although he was standing with his hands in the air repeatedly saying "I am not resisting." The Chidesters allege SWAT members threw him to the ground and pointed a gun at his head. Upon realizing their mistake the police left without apology.

ASSAULTED H. Victor Buerosse – Pewaukeep, Wisconsin, January 2006
68-year-old retired lawyer H. Victor Buerosse was the victim of a botched raid when a SWAT team burst into the wrong apartment. His continued pleas that the officers had the wrong place were answered by violence. In one instance, Mr. Buerosse was struck on the head with a police shield; he was also thrown into a closet door. This show of force was marshaled in response to a tip that small amounts of marijuana might be in the intended residence.

ASSAULTED Edwin and Catherine Bernhardt – Hallandale, Florida, February 2006
The police broke down the Bernhardt's door in a late-night raid, then threw the two of them to the floor and held them at gunpoint while the officers searched the house. Edwin had been nude, so the police made him wear a pair of his wife's panties. The couple was then taken to jail, and sat there for several hours until the police realized they had the wrong address.

Michelle Clancy and Robert DeCree – Paterson, New Jersey, December 2005
Police mistakenly burst into the home of Robert DeCree and his girlfriend Michelle Clancy instead of the intended target next door. Before acknowledging the mistake or relenting in their assault, they forced Clancy, her 65-year-old father and 13-year-old daughter to stand in the cold entryway for 20 minutes while they searched the house, and threatened to shoot DeCree and his barking dog.

David Scheper – Baltimore, Maryland, August 2005
Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, David Scheper armed himself with a Czechoslovakian pistol from his collection of firearm relics. The gun discharged accidentally into the ground before Scheper was seized by the police who had stormed the house. While the police found no evidence of illegal activity and acknowledged having made a mistake in entering Scheper's home, they nonetheless charged him for the weapons discharge. The charge was defeated in court.

DEAD Anthony Diotaiuto – Sunrise, Florida, August 2005
Sunrise police claimed that Diotaiuto had sold some marijuana, and because they knew he had a legal gun, decided to use SWAT. Neighbors claim that the police did not identify themselves. Police first claimed that Anthony pointed his gun at them, and later changed their story. Regardless, Anthony was dead with 10 bullets in him, and the police found a mere two ounces.

John Simpson – Nampa, Idaho, June 2005
Police threw a flashbang grenade through the window of John Simpson's home, stunning him and his wife. The intended target for the raid was the duplex next door. No one was injured in the raid but the Simpsons are currently seeking counseling for the trauma. The intended culprit was found with four ounces of marijuana next door.

ASSAULTED Sharon and William McCulley – Omao, Kauai, March 2005
Police officers entered the home of the McCulleys -- grandparents -- whom they suspected of marijuana dealing. One officer grabbed Sharon McCulley and threw her to the ground, handcuffed her and pressed his gun into her head, leaving a mark, while her grandchild was forced to lie near her. William McCulley, who walks with the aid of a walker, was also thrown to the floor, after which he began to flop on the floor due to shocks from an electronic device implanted in his spine to alleviate pain. Police searched the house and found no trace of illegal activity. The McCulleys sued the officers involved in federal court.

Enough is Enough: Petition to Stop the Reckless Drug Raids Poll: 66% Oppose Routine Use of SWAT Teams

2008-09-29T17:10:00.001-07:00

Stop the Deadly "No-Knock" Raids

Following are detailed recommendations from StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet) on policy reforms believed to be necessary to stem the epidemic of reckless police raids in America. For those who want to learn more about this issue, please see the 2006 report Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, by former Cato Institute analyst and current Reason Foundation writer Radley Balko. Also, click here for an archive of relevant coverage; and view complete results from the recent Zogby poll question that Stopthedrugwar.org commissioned here -- preview: 66% of likely American voters want it stopped.

Aggressive tactics include, but are not limited to:

unannounced "no-knock" entries;
entries that are announced in name only (e.g. do not allow a reasonable amount of time for a resident to answer the door);
use of battering rams;
use of flash-bang grenades;
unnecessary brandishing of weapons;
carrying unnecessarily heavy weaponry (e.g. assault rifles);
unnecessary shouting;
wearing of ninja-like, all-black uniforms, masks, or hoods;
unnecessarily scheduling raids very early in the morning or very late at night when residents are most likely to be startled or terrified;
unnecessary restraining or use of force against people or animals.

All of these should be prohibited for use in most non-emergency situations. Steps to restore the necessary arms-length relationship between police and the military should at a minimum include:

termination of direct military/police cooperation in drug enforcement;
termination of the provision of retired military surplus equipment to police forces, with at most rare and carefully-considered exceptions; and
recommitment to the separation of our military from our police forces that held for more than a century of our nation's history, and to that end the repeal or rescinding of Acts of Congress and Executive Orders that have diluted it.

The following criminal justice reforms, at a minimum, are needed to address the dilution of ethical standards that plagues today's criminal justice system:

requiring that officers conducting knock-and-announce warrants wait a reasonably sufficient time for a person inside to answer the door before executing a forced entry;
termination of per-arrest funding schemes for drug enforcement or per prisoner incarcerated, instead allocating enforcement resources based on academically-sound measures of overall public safety need;
abolition of federally-funded and multi-agency drug task forces, which have an extensive record of corruption and racial bias, and which undermine standards of accountability;
improving evidentiary standards to require corroborating evidence beyond the unsupported word of police officers or informants before any charges are brought or convictions obtained, or before a no-knock warrant may be issued except in very rare circumstances (but also recognizing that no-knock warrants should only be carried out in very rare circumstances);
requiring statutorily that evidence obtained through illegal searches be inadmissible in court;
requiring that presenting officers sign a sworn statement attesting that the warrant has not been brought before a judge before and declined, or if it has then providing documentation from the previous judge or judges as to why;
reforming asset forfeiture law to protect individuals who have not been convicted of the crime in question, and accruing all forfeiture proceeds to the general treasury of the state or federal government rather than the law enforcement agency or local government;
require that federal law enforcement agencies adhere to the ethical and procedural requirements that states and localities have put in place for their own agencies, in addition to federal requirements;
forbidding state or local police agencies from using federal or other multi-agency partnerships to circumvent the will of the legislatures that govern them;
limiting the immunity from civil damages that police agencies may enjoy in police raid cases;
for the sake of basic justice, establishing that persons who reasonably believe they or their families may be under deadly attack by criminals, and who take actions to defend themselves, are not considered to be guilty of crimes; and reviewing cases such as those of Edwin Delamora, Cory Maye and Eugene Barrett, who are currently incarcerated because of such circumstances; and
for victims of wrongful, mistaken or inappropriately conducted police raids to be entitled to financial compensation commensurate with their loss and suffering.

So that official bodies charged with overseeing our police agencies can effectively do their job, and for the sake of openness in the policy debate on these important issues, we call for:

the establishment of publicly-accessible databases of detailed information relating to search warrants and their manner of execution, omitting only the names of confidential informants;
for all law enforcement agencies to annually report key statistics related to search warrants (especially when they result in police killings) to state and federal justice agencies, which shall annually publish them;
for the jurisdiction of citizen police review boards to include the total circumstances of incidents, not only police officer misconduct;
for full information on incidents to be provided to review boards; and
for persons targeted by raids that resulted in injury, or of which the propriety has been questioned, and public advocates to have the right to unseal relevant warrants.

-- END --

Please send this message :- SWAT-Style Drug Raids Do More Harm Than Good

2008-09-25T04:16:00.001-07:00

Dear [Decision maker] Please personalize your message.

Imagine returning home after work to take a shower before an evening meeting. Suddenly, your door is broken down, your two Labrador retrievers are shot, and you are interrogated for hours while handcuffed in your boxer shorts as you watch your beloved dogs bleed to death before your eyes. It sounds like the twisted plot of a horror movie about a home invasion, but these events actually happened in Prince George's County, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C. on July 29, 2008, to Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and his family. If our cities' mayors cannot count themselves safe from the random violence associated with reckless drug raids based on bogus "tips" and rushed investigations, then no one in this country is safe. Obscene drug war tactics erode the people's trust and confidence in our own police departments -- ostensibly there for our service and protection. It's time to take a hard look at policing tactics. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has already taken a strong stance on related issues with its 2007 resolution calling for a "New Bottom Line" in U.S. drug policy, and this is one more piece of that puzzle. I urge you to condemn brutal, dangerous SWAT-style raids against people suspected of nonviolent drug law violations. The funds now used to pay for paramilitary weaponry would be better spent on expanding access to high quality drug treatment programs and other reforms outlined in the U.S. Conference of Mayors' New Bottom Line resolution.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

[Your address]

[City State Zip] Please feel free to go to The Drug Policy Alliance Network to fill a ready made form

Rachel Hoffman - A Cautionary Tale

2008-09-25T03:26:00.001-07:00

WHY RUSSIA SAYS NO TO METHADONE?

2008-09-23T21:45:00.001-07:00

Despite having nearly a million heroin addicts, with HIV spreading rapidly through that population, Russia's government has very tragically said no to methadone maintenance. According to a short video posted by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), 80% of all new HIV cases in Russia are due to needle sharing by injection drug users.

Mexicans' Drug Trade Fears Grow

2008-09-23T17:18:00.001-07:00

Mexicans are increasingly concerned about the impact the country's drugs trade is having on their lives, a BBC World Service poll suggests.

Few regions in Mexico are free of drug-related violence

Some 42% of the 1,266 Mexicans polled in seven cities said they felt less safe than they did a year ago. Fewer than 10% felt safer, while the rest felt about the same.

Other results from the survey point to growing anxiety about drugs trafficking in their country, which is the main transit point between Colombia - the world's largest supplier of cocaine - and the world's biggest market, the US.

Thirty-seven per cent of those surveyed said the influence of the drugs cartels had made them think of leaving Mexico
Drug trafficking was considered the second most important concern in their lives after corruption
Drugs came above worries about the economy, general crime, education and social inequality.

There has been a sharp rise in drugs-related violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

He has deployed more than 40,000 soldiers in several parts of the country in an attempt to curb the power of the cartels, which trade mostly in cocaine, but also in marijuana and heroin.

He says the violence is proof that his crackdown is working.

According to the survey results, an apparently contradictory picture emerges of whether Mexicans agree with the government's policy on fighting the drugs war.

More than half of those surveyed (53%) thought the government was doing better than last year
A strong majority (68%) agreed with the policy of involving the military in the fight against drug trafficking
More than half (58%) thought the war on drugs could be won.

However, an overwhelming majority (80%) thought the government should consider seeking other alternatives to end the problem. The respondents were also divided on whether the legalisation of drugs should be considered - 44% said yes, and 46% said no.

Violence worsening

Official figures for the violence show a major escalation since 2007.

So far this year there have already been around 3,000 deaths from drugs-related violence, compared to 2,700 in the whole of last year. Most of the deaths are caused by fighting between rival gangs or clashes with the security forces.

The northern state of Chihuahua, which includes the city of Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican-US border, has been the worst hit.

Other states badly affected are Sinaloa, Baja California, Guerrero and Michoacan.

The northern city of Culiacan in Sinaloa has been the scene of frequent violence, which is usually put down to infighting between the Sinaloa drug cartel and one of its main rivals, the Gulf Cartel.

On one notorious day in July, a group of heavily armed men shot dead 12 people in three separate shoot-outs within a period of eight minutes.

Those polled in Culiacan said they had been badly affected by the drugs violence.

Nearly three in four said they felt less safe than a year ago; about one in every two said they had been affected indirectly and about one in four said they knew someone who had been tempted by the world of drugs trafficking.

There are few regions of Mexico which have not been affected.

On 16 September, seven civilians were killed and 100 injured as a result of a grenade attack during Independence City celebrations in the western city of Morelia in Michoacan. The state governor blamed drug traffickers
On 12 September, more than 20 bodies were found dumped about 30 miles (48km) from Mexico City, apparently as a result of a battle between rival drugs gangs
On 29 August the decapitated bodies of 11 men were found in the state of Yucatan, which had until then largely avoided the violence.

According to figures from the government's public security office, there were a record 443 drug-related murders across the country in July alone.

High levels of drugs-related violence in Latin America are more commonly associated with Colombia than with Mexico.

But analysts say that with the demise of Colombia's Cali and Medellin cartels in the 1990s, it is now Mexican cartels which control, and fight over, the main cocaine routes.

Some observers even say the death rates in parts of Mexico are comparable to those in a war zone.

In Iraq, for example, there were 669 civilian deaths in June according to an NGO, Iraq Body Count. In Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch estimates there were 540 civilian deaths in the first seven months of 2008.

The survey suggests significant numbers of Mexicans across the country have personal experience of the violence.

Of those surveyed, 9% had been directly affected by drugs-related violence, and 32% indirectly affected. Another 16% knew someone who had been tempted to join drugs gangs in order to increase their personal income.

Many of the respondents (42%) attributed the boom in the drug cartels to unemployment and the poor state of the economy.

In total 1,266 Mexicans aged 18-64 from socio-economic group D and above were surveyed by telephone between 28 July and 20 August 2008. The poll was conducted in seven cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Hermosillo, Merida, Queretaro and Culiacan. The polling firm Synovate carried out the interviews for the BBC's Spanish American website, bbcmundo.com.

FBI Releases 2007 Crime in the United States Report.

2008-09-23T16:05:00.001-07:00

Record Number of Marijuana Arrests, 775,000 for Nothing More than Possession
DPA Statement: Throwing Good Money (and Lives) After Bad
For Immediate Release: Monday, September 22, 2008. Contact: Tony Newman (646)335-5384

According to the FBI’s 2007 Crime in the United States Report, released today, the police made more than 1.8 million drug arrests last year, more than three times the number of arrests for violent crime during the same period. 82.5 percent of drug arrests were for simple possession of an illegal drug. Only 17.5 percent were for sales or manufacturing. Almost 775,000 arrests were for nothing more than possession of marijuana for personal use, a 5 percent increase over 2006. Those arrested are separated from their loved ones, branded criminals, denied jobs, and in many cases prohibited from accessing public assistance for life.

The Following is a statement from Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

“For more than 30 years the U.S. has treated drug use and misuse as a criminal justice matter instead of a public health issue. Yet, despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent and millions of Americans incarcerated, illegal drugs remain cheap, potent and widely available in every community; and the harms associated with them -- addiction, overdose, and the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis -- continue to mount. Meanwhile, the war on drugs has created new problems of its own, including rampant racial disparities in the criminal justice system, broken families, increased poverty, unchecked federal power, and eroded civil liberties. Continuing the failed war on drugs year after year is throwing good money and lives after bad.

“It's time for a new bottom line for U.S. drug policy -- one that focuses on reducing the cumulative death, disease, crime and suffering associated with both drug misuse and drug prohibition. A good start would be enacting short- and long-term national goals for reducing the problems associated with both drugs and the war on drugs. Such goals should include reducing social problems like drug addiction, overdose deaths, the spread of HIV/AIDS from injection drug use, racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and the enormous number of nonviolent offenders behind bars. Federal drug agencies should be judged -- and funded -- according to their ability to meet these goals.

“Policymakers should especially stop wasting money arresting and incarcerating people for nothing more than possession of marijuana for personal use. There’s no need to be afraid of what voters might think; the American people are already there. Substantial majorities favor legalizing marijuana for medical use (70 percent to 80 percent) and fining recreational marijuana users instead of arresting and jailing them (61 percent to 72 percent). Twelve states have legalized marijuana for medical use and 12 states have decriminalized recreational marijuana use (six states have done both).”

View the full text for the FBI’s 2007 Crime in the United States Report here.

Afghan Opium Production Declines Slightly From Record Levels...........

2008-09-02T15:33:00.001-07:00

With the West's occupation of Afghanistan now nearing the seven-year mark and plagued by an increasingly powerful and deadly insurgency revitalized by massive profits from the opium trade, Western officials gained some small solace this week when the United Nations announced that opium production there had declined slightly from last year's record level. But the small decline comes as the Taliban and related insurgents are strengthening their grip on precisely those areas where opium cultivation is highest, and the light at the end of the tunnel is, at best, only a distant glimmer.

Afghan opium farmer

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008, released Tuesday, total Afghan opium production this year will be 7,500 metric tons, down 6% from last year's all-time record of 8,200 tons. Also, according to the survey, the amount of land devoted to opium production declined 19%. The UN said the total crop had decreased by a smaller number than the amount of land because farmers in key opium-producing provinces were producing bumper crops.

Afghanistan opium survey 2008

The UN attributed the decline in production to drought conditions and the efforts of a small number of Afghan governors and tribal and religious leaders to persuade farmers to give up the illicit crop. It also crowed that the number of opium-free provinces in the country had risen from 13 to 18, although it failed to mention that farmers in those provinces had, in many cases, merely switched from growing poppies to growing cannabis.

This year, almost all opium cultivation -- about 98% -- is now concentrated in seven provinces in south-west Afghanistan that house permanent Taliban settlements and are home to related trafficking groups that pay taxes to various Taliban factions on their opium transactions. The Taliban is making between $200 and $400 million a year off taxing poppy farmers and traders, Costa said earlier this year. In the report, Costa referred to Helmand province, one of the most Taliban-dominated in the country. "The most glaring example is Helmand province, where 103,000 hectares of opium were cultivated this year -- two thirds of all opium in Afghanistan," Costa wrote. "If Helmand were a country, it would once again be the world's biggest producer of illicit drugs."

The UN said that manual eradication played almost no role in the decline, affecting only about 3% of the crop. What manual eradication did accomplish was the deaths of some 77 anti-drug workers and police at the hands of insurgents and angry farmers. On Wednesday, Costa told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that he should abandon manual eradication as useless and even counter-productive.

Poppy seed capsule is 'lanced' to allow opium to ooze out.

While Afghan poppy production is down slightly, it still surpasses global demand for its illicit end products. And after several years of crops greater than global demand, it is likely that Afghan traders are sitting on huge stockpiles of opium, so even if production were to be slashed substantially, it would cause no significant disruption in the global markets for opium and heroin.

Still, with the war news from Afghanistan seemingly growing worse by the day, UN and Western officials were eager to jump on any good news they could find. "The opium flood waters in Afghanistan have started to recede," Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the Vienna-based UNODC, wrote in the report. "This year, the historic high-water mark of 193,000 hectares of opium cultivated in 2007 has dropped by 19 percent to 157,000 hectares."

The Bush administration welcomed the report, saying it provided vindication for its much-criticized anti-drug policies in the country. But a State Department spokesman told the Washington Post, "the drug threat in Afghanistan remains unacceptably high. We are particularly concerned by the deterioration in security conditions in the south, where the insurgency dominates."

Raw opium is gathered by farmers

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), in charge of efforts to provide alternative development for farmers as part of the broader US counter-drug and counter-insurgency strategy, also looked for the silver lining in the storm clouds over Afghanistan. Its efforts are "paying off for Afghanistan in the war against poppy production," it said in a press release Tuesday.

The British foreign office also joined the chorus, with FCO Minister Lord Malloch-Brown releasing a statement welcoming the report's findings. "This shows that the Afghan government's Drug Control Strategy is starting to pay dividends," he said.

Still, Malloch-Brown warned there is a long way to go. "However, there is no room for complacency," he said. "Afghanistan is still the world's biggest supplier of heroin. High cultivation levels are concentrated in the unstable south, where we are working with the government of Afghanistan, local governors, and international partners to build security and governance."

Other, non-governmental observers were much less sanguine about what the slight decline in opium production signified. "I don't think there has been any real progress made at all," said Raheem Yaseer, assistant director of the University of Nebraska-Omaha Center for Afghanistan Studies. "But there has been so much money and pressure invested that they feel they have to justify their efforts. It's true that cultivation has ended in some provinces, but other areas are compensating for that."

A large part of the problem is that too many important players are involved and profiting from the trade, said Yaseer. "There are lots of strong, powerful people involved -- influential people in the Afghan government, governors, parliamentarians, provincial police commanders -- and unless they are suppressed, nothing will change. There is lots of concern expressed, but the business is hot and everyone is making money," he said.

Yaseer also pointed to the increasing ability of insurgents to wreak havoc. "Security is horrible, it's getting worse and worse precisely in those growing areas, and where the security gets worse, there are more opportunities for the drug business," he said. "Everyone takes advantage of the lack of security and the chaos."

The UNODC reports provides only "false hope," said the Senlis Council, the Paris-based drugs and security nonprofit that has long proposed buying up illicit poppy crops and diverting them into the licit medicinal market as a means of getting a handle on illicit production and the support for political violence it provides.

"Opium is the cancer destroying the south of Afghanistan," said Emmanuel Reinert, the group's executive director in a Wednesday statement. "Current counter-narcotics policies are failing to address the loss of the southern provinces to the dual scourges of poppy production and terrorism."

The decrease in poppy cultivation will have a minimal effect on the drugs trade, given the exponential growth in opium production since 2002. "This decrease is no more than a ripple in the ocean," Reinert added. "Without an urgent change of direction in the country's counter-narcotics policies, the international community will be unable to prevent the consolidation of opium production in the south of the country, and the consolidation of the Taliban which is financed by the illegal drugs trade."

As this chart shows, opium production has doubled in 4 years since this chart was published

Instead of pushing farmers into the waiting arms of the Taliban and related insurgent groups by pursuing crop eradication, the West and the Afghan government should revisit the Senlis proposal, which was rejected out of hand when introduced in 2005, said Senlis policy analyst Gabrielle Archer. "It is clear that a long-term, sustainable solution is required to solve Afghanistan's opium crisis -- and prevent the insurgency's funding by illegal cultivation," she said. "Poppy for Medicine would allow farmers to diversify their crops, and give Afghanistan an opportunity to be part of a legal pharmaceutical industry. We need the Afghan people on our side if we are to be successful there, and this initiative could go a long way to winning back much-needed hearts and minds, which would be highly beneficial for our troops fighting there."

The hearts and minds of the Afghan population are turning increasingly against the West and the country's occupation by foreign troops, warned Yaseer, ticking off a seemingly endless series of incidents where Afghan civilians have been killed by coalition forces, the most recent being the reported deaths of 90 civilians -- 60 of them children -- in a NATO bombing raid last week. That raid prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to call this week for a reevaluation of the foreign military presence in his country.

Afghans burning U.S flag.

"Everyday there are new uproars in parliament and local councils," said Yaseer. "They say there is no difference between the Soviets and the coalition forces. They bombard whole villages in the middle of the night because they hear four or five Taliban are there. These killings keep happening all the time, and people are fed up with it. This is all developing very rapidly now. 'Why did you bring this war to Afghanistan?' the people ask. The gap between the people and the government is growing larger every day," Yaseer said.

With coalition military casualties on the rise, the Taliban grown fat off opium profits and ever more aggressive, and growing hostility to the West in the Afghan population, a minor down-turn in opium production doesn't look so impressive.

There is a very simple way to take Afghanistan and any of the other opium producing countries out of the picture, saving untold soldiers lives and countless $$$ millions, WE could grow, sell and ultimately control all production of the stuff ourselves, this would cut off every cent now going to fund the Taliban and other terrorist org's, but that would be common sense and we don't do that!, we will piss around in the Himalayas just long enough for an even closer country to develop the necessary skills to take over the opium/heroin market, someone like Mexico perhaps?

Joe Biden's Awful Record on Drug Policy.

2008-08-25T13:13:00.001-07:00

Among the likely choices for Obama's running mate, Joe Biden was not the person reformers were hoping to see on the democratic ticket. Radley Balko sums up Biden's drug war credentials:

…from a policy perspective, it’s a disaster. Biden has sponsored more damaging drug war legislation than any Democrat in Congress. Hate the way federal prosecutors use RICO laws to take aim at drug offenders? Thank Biden. How about the abomination that is federal asset forfeiture laws? Thank Biden. Think federal prosecutors have too much power in drug cases? Thank Biden. Think the title of a “Drug Czar” is sanctimonious and silly? Thank Biden, who helped create the position (and still considers it an accomplishment worth boasting about). Tired of the ridiculous steroids hearings in Congress? thank Biden, who led the effort to make steroids a Schedule 3 drug, and has been among the blowhardiest of the blowhards when it comes to sports and performance enhancing drugs. Biden voted in favor of using international development aid for drug control (think plan Columbia, plan Afghanistan, and other meddling anti-drug efforts that have only fostered loathing of America, backlash, and unintended consequences). Oh, and he was also the chief sponsor of 2004’s horrendous RAVE Act.

On the other hand, Biden has recently spoken out against the crack/powder sentencing disparity and introduced legislation to address that issue. Pete Guither also notes that Biden's votes on civil liberties issues have consistently improved over the years, which may be a sign that he's evolving in his thinking. But I see no evidence that Biden has ever stepped back in any meaningful sense from his rabid drug warring ways. If he's made any philosophical realignments on drug policy in general, he hasn't said so out loud.

Thus the silver-lining may be that as Vice President, Biden would no longer be serving on the judiciary committee, where he's exerted his influence in the form of the various atrocities outlined above. As VP he'd technically be losing his authority over drug policy issues, except to whatever extent Obama may seek his advice when selecting the drug czar and so forth. It's certainly possible that Obama's more enlightened views would prevail within his administration, or even that Biden's "tough on crime" credentials could provide cover for reform, but Biden would be a strange ingredient in the behind-the-scenes reform agenda that's so often attributed to Obama by liberal reformers. It was bad enough when Obama softened his reform positions to avoid attacks from the right. Will he now begin watching his step around his own running mate?

More S.W.A.T fatalities

2008-08-25T12:41:00.001-07:00

In the latest example of overzealous policing gone fatally awry, a member of a Lima, Ohio, police SWAT team shot and killed a young mother and wounded the child she was holding in her arms during a raid aimed at the woman's boyfriend, who was alleged to be selling drugs from the residence. Tarika Wilson, 26, was killed last Friday in an upstairs bedroom, shot twice by Lima police Sgt. Joseph Chevalia. Her one-year-old son, Sincere, was also shot, as were two pit bulls at the house. The child lost his left index finger, but his injuries are not life-threatening. One of the pit bulls was killed.

In the week since the incident, Lima police have failed to provide any details on what led up to the shooting, except to say they were executing a drug search warrant for Wilson's boyfriend, Anthony Terry. Terry was arrested at the scene and charged with possession of crack cocaine, which, along with marijuana, was found at the house.

Lima police did, however, engage in some preemptive apologetics. "This is a terrible situation that resulted from a very dangerous situation that occurs when a high-risk search warrant is executed," Lima Police Chief George Garlock said.

Garlock did not explain what made the search warrant "high-risk," nor did he explain why he sent a SWAT team to raid a home where officers knew children were present. In addition to her one-year-old, Wilson was the mother of five other children between 3 and 8 who lived at the house.

Officers tossed at least one stun grenade before charging the residence, but that explosion took place outside because officers knew children were present. "Because of the possibility that we had children in there, they were not lobbed inside," Garlock said.

Lima police have turned the investigation of the incident over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation because the shooting involved a Lima police officer. That investigation is expected to take several weeks.

By mid-week, the FBI announced that it was joining the investigation. But angry family and community members are not waiting for answers. A crowd of more than 300 people marched with family members from a community center to the home where the killing took place to express their outrage and from there to the police station.

"Remember that baby who is in a hospital and that woman laying on a slab being dissected because the Lima police overstepped their bounds," Brenda Johnson, executive director of the community center, told the crowd before the march began. Ms. Johnson said it was reckless for police to raid a home with so many children inside. "This time it was someone else's child," she said. "Next time it could be your child, your grandchild."

According to next door neighbor and Wilson cousin Junior Cook, police "broke down the door and started shooting." He also denied that Terry sold drugs from the house. "No one ever came and knocked on that door or bought drugs there," Cook said.

"Not all the police are bad. Some of them have children," Pastor Arnold Manley of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church told the crowd. "But the majority of the ones in Lima are."

Residents and community activists have vowed to march every Saturday until justice is done. On Monday, more than 200 of them showed up at a heated meeting with police officials and the city council to demand action.

"The man who shot her, he's not a suspect? What if that was me?" shouted Quintel Wilson, the victim's brother. "Where would I be? Locked up. No bond! Victim is the word here."

"We're going to see that justice is done," said Bishop Richard Cox, an official with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Councilman Tommy Pitts, chair of the council's safety services committee, said Lima police have long targeted blacks. "This comes as no surprise to me," he said about the shooting.

That the resort to heavily-armed, paramilitarized SWAT teams to do routine drug search warrants can result in civilian fatalities should come as no surprise to anyone who follows their use. In 2006, Cato Institute analyst Radley Balko produced an authoritative report on the topic, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, that showed dozens of cases of people killed or brutalized during such raids.

The raids continue despite little sign of public support for them. StoptheDrugWar.org (publisher of this newsletter) last October commissioned a Zogby poll that found that two-thirds oppose the use of SWAT-style teams in routine drug raids. Now, from Ohio, comes one more reason to oppose them.

NORML To Drug Czar "Now that we have your attention"

2008-08-20T12:46:00.001-07:00

More than 100 readers have posted comments in support of NORML’s recent guest editorial, “Criminalization of Marijuana Must End,” which appeared inThe Hill’s influential ‘Congressional Blog.’ Editors at The Hill inform NORML that it’s the highest volume of readers’ response they’ve ever received on any commentary on any topic!

So it’s hardly surprising that the Drug Czar’s office has grudgingly and belatedly offered their two-cents worth in a factually bereft editorial entitled “Marijuana Decriminalization Bill Ignores the Facts.” It’s an unintentionally amusing essay — though judging by the comments it appears that few people, if anyone, have actually bothered to read it — topped off by this half-baked claim, “[L]egalizing marijuana [is] a topic more often heard in college dorms at 2 o’clock in the morning than in the hallowed halls of our Congress.”

Excuse me, but if debating the merits of America’s failed cannabis policy is, in the Drug Czar’s opinion, a topic only appropriate for midnight musings, then why is the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy straining their already diminished intellectual capacities responding to this discussion in The Hill (which, last time I checked, was not a publication frequently read by college students in their dorm rooms at 2 am)??!!

Of course, I suppose The Hill should thank their lucky stars that the Drug Czar responded at all, given that no representatives from the ONDCP, CADCA, or other ‘pro-prohibition’ groups will ever agree to engage with NORML in a face-to-face debate in a public forum. I mean, it wasn’t all that long ago that federal officials were distributing a guidebook, “How to Hold Your Own in a Drug Legalization Debate,” that recommended that prohibition advocates decline invitations to publicly debate drug policy issues.

My how times have changed!

If the Drug War Works, Why Did Teen Access to Marijuana Increase This Year?

2008-08-17T06:04:00.001-07:00

Today, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) released a new study that perfectly demolishes one of the central myths underlying the war on drugs. The National Survey on American Attitudes on Substance Abuse shows that youth access to marijuana has increased significantly in the past year:

According to the report, half of the 16- and 17-year-olds surveyed said their peers use marijuana more than tobacco. More teens say it’s easier to acquire marijuana than beer. And there’s a 35% increase from last year in the number of teens who say they can buy marijuana within an hour and a 14% increase in the number of teens who say they can find it in a day. [MPP]

It almost speaks for itself. Nothing could more directly obliterate the false notion that the war on marijuana is reducing youth access. Just days ago, the drug czar stood on a California mountaintop proudly pronouncing the importance of marijuana eradication. He's bent over backwards to explain that reductions in youth marijuana use provide proof that the war on marijuana is working.

What then can be said about marijuana's ever-increasing availability to young people? Rather obviously, recent declines in youth marijuana use owe nothing to the brutal and controversial tactics the drug czar is duty-bound to defend. After another year of dead dogs,dead informants and dead cops, marijuana is more available to our children than ever before. If fewer of them are using, then that is because they don't feel like it, not because they don't know where to get any.

Of course, the drug war supporters at CASA must have realized how badly their data reflects on marijuana prohibition, so they cooked up one the most embarrassingly backwards statistics possible:

Teens who can obtain marijuana readily are more likely to use it. Forty-five percent of teens who say they can get marijuana in an hour or less have used the drug, compared to 10 percent of those teens who say it would take them a day to get it and less than one percent of teens who say they would be unable to get it.

Oh, mercy. Is it really necessary to explain that teens who smoke marijuana are more likely to know where to buy it? This is just a crime against the scientific method, a pathetic face-saving ruse to defend marijuana prohibition within a report that unintentionally – yet transparently -- humiliates the drug war status quo.

Today, the drug war's failure to keep drugs out of the hands of our young people has been revealed in stark, unambiguous terms. No, the debate won't end here, but it is moments like this that cause one drug warrior after another, after another to jump ship and admit that the whole thing is just a monumental travesty

MPP-TV Profiles in Marijuana Reform: Milton Friedman, Ph.d. ( pt 1)

2008-08-17T05:53:00.001-07:00

This weeks Corrupt Law Enforcers

2008-08-17T05:35:00.001-07:00

Thanks always to Stopthedrugwar.org

A tough week for jail and prison guards, and a pair of Virginia deputies could find themselves in trouble. Let's get to it:

In Wytheville, Virginia, the Smyth County sheriff has launched an internal probe after sworn affidavits for search warrants in a federal drug case linked two deputies to the subject of those warrants. Sheriff David Bradley would not confirm reports that one deputy had been fired and another suspended, nor were the deputies named. According to the affidavits, based in part on what the suspect unwittingly told confidential informants, one deputy, "Deputy A," "uses methamphetamine, cocaine, and prescription pills but his drug of choice is methamphetamine." The affidavit alleged that Deputy A scored from Anthony Richardson, former chief of the Damascus Police Department, who is currently facing multiple meth conspiracy and distribution charges in state court. "Deputy B," identified as a Smyth County Sheriff's narcotics investigator, "used to steal drugs and give them to [the suspect] to sell," according to the DEA's affidavit. No word on when or if a grand jury indictment is coming down.

In Clovis, New Mexico, a Curry County jail guard was arrested and fired August 7 for trying to smuggle drugs into the county jail. Former jail guard Julian Patrick Garcia, 36, is charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine, possession with intent to distribute marijuana, bringing contraband into a jail, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, attempt to commit a felony by furnishing drugs to a prisoner and a misdemeanor count of possession of drug paraphernalia. Garcia went down as a result of an internal investigation at the jail after officials heard allegations an inmate was arranging for drugs to be smuggled in. At last word, Garcia was trying to make a $56,000 bond.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, a state prison guard was arrested August 8 for allegedly smuggling drugs and tobacco into the Nebraska State Penitentiary. Andrew Myers, 23, faces a charge of providing contraband to an inmate. Myers had been under suspicion for two months. Prison officials said they believed he had taped the contraband to his body and delivered it to an inmate in return for $100.

In McAlester, Oklahoma, a former lieutenant at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary was sentenced August 8 to a series of suspended sentences after pleading guilty to felony drug charges. Marion Bess, 44, had faced up to life in prison. He had pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine; conspiracy to deliver/manufacture/possess a controlled dangerous substance -- which carries a sentence of from seven years to life -- and unlawful use of a communication facility, meaning a telephone. He also pleaded guilty to one more count of meth possession. He has to do five years on probation and go to drug treatment.

The Drug War In 100 Seconds

2008-08-16T15:52:00.001-07:00

Legalization is a Win-Win

2008-08-16T15:41:00.001-07:00

An August 5 article in Time Magazine, "Bolivia's Surprising Anti-Drug Success," observed that legal coca cultivation and the illicit cocaine trade are not the same thing. Despite increased tolerance for coca growing by the Bolivian government under President Evo Morales -- who came up through the ranks of the coca grower community himself to become Bolivia's first indigenous chief executive -- reporter Jean Friedman-Rudovsky notes that interceptions of illicitly grown coca destined for cocaine labs are up by 30% from 2007, and 11 tons of coca paste have been intercepted this first part of the year alone, more than in all of 2005 (the year before Morales took office), according to the country's Anti-Narcotics Special Forces (FELCN).

The point is an important one. Coca is a crop grown for generations in Bolivia and other Andean nations, and it is one that is economically needed. Cocalero leaders from Bolivia and Peru spoke eloquently to their situation, their needs -- and their rights -- at our Latin America conference convened in Mexico in 2003. Coca-based tea and candies and even soap given out by conference attendees made the point directly -- coca is not cocaine, cocaine's origin in the coca leaf notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, the article stopped there, and didn't ask the logical next question: Will Bolivia's increased drug control achievements actually reduce the global supply of cocaine?

coca leaves drying by highway, Chapare region of Bolivia (photo by Chronicle editor Phil Smith, 2007)

If history and economics are guides, the answer is "no." From 1995 to 2000, for example, Bolivian coca cultivation declined from 51,000 hectares to only 8,000, according to State Dept. estimates. Growing went from 117,000 to 41,000 in neighboring Peru at the same time. But Colombian coca growing rose from 54,000 to 139,000 hectares -- not completely erasing the Bolivian and Peruvian reductions, but mostly erasing them. Meanwhile, US retail cocaine prices, adjusted for purity and inflation, are just a fifth of what they were in 1981, the year the DEA's price-tracking program started.

For the shift in coca growing from country to country to be so much greater than the overall change can only mean that demand is the dominant factor at work, not enforcement. For cocaine prices to drop so incredibly too, shows that eradication, interdiction and domestic policing all combined aren't even making a dent -- suppliers simply anticipate the losses by sending more, and they can afford it.

Bolivian farmers deserve better than harassment over a traditional crop they economically need, making the Morales administration's tolerance of coca growing just. But supply-side anti-drug efforts are futile in term of the ultimate goal, and people around the world affected by cocaine and the illegal trade deserve better too. Only global legalization can stop the violence and corruption that characterize the illegal drug trade. Addicted users will also feel freer to seek help when they are not considered criminals, and will be less likely to do harm to themselves or others in the meanwhile.

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