The World Wide War on Drugs #5 - Het begin van het einde?

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Mexico captures alleged Zetas gang founder 'El Mamito'
Jesus Rejon Aguilar, a Mexican army deserter, was wanted in the slaying of U.S. federal agent Jaime Zapata. Officials say he helped create the brutal paramilitary Zetas gang.


By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
July 5, 2011
Reporting from Mexico City— Mexican officials on Monday announced the capture of one of the country's most wanted fugitives, an army deserter who authorities say helped create the vicious Zetas gang and is suspected in the slaying of a U.S. federal agent.

Mexican federal police paraded Jesus Rejon Aguilar before reporters early Monday, a day after he was caught — not in the Zetas stronghold of northeastern Mexico but barely an hour outside Mexico City.

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Mexico: 34,612 Drug War Deaths; 15,273 In 2010
MEXICO CITY — A total of 34,612 people have died in drug-related killings in Mexico in the four years since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared an offensive against drug cartels, officials said Wednesday.

The killings reached their highest level in 2010, jumping by almost 60 percent to 15,273 deaths from 9,616 the previous year.[..]

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Colorado and Washington enjoy their marijuana moment

Marijuana users and activists celebrated the drug's legalisation in Colorado and Washington as landmark victories on Wednesday but uncertainty over the federal government's response tempered jubilation.

Voters in both states on Tuesday approved amendments legalising the recreational use of marijuana, historic decisions that reflect growing disenchantment across the US with the decades-old "war on drugs".

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Felipe Calderon calls for review of drug policy in wake of US cannabis vote

Outgoing Mexican president Felipe Calderon joined three Central American peers in calling for a review of regional drug policy Monday following the legalization of marijuana possession by two US states last week.

Calderon was speaking in Mexico City after a previously planned meeting on drug policy with the leaders of Honduras, Belize and Costa Rica.

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BC Marijuana Legalization Could Bring In Billions: Activists

VANCOUVER - It's a bounty that almost does grow on trees.

A new study has rung in British Columbians' pot purchases at about half a billion dollars each year, leading its pro-legalization researchers to argue current laws mean the province is missing an opportunity to harvest tax revenues.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University have quantified the retail value of black market marijuana sold only to British Columbians for the first time, pegging its value at between $443 million and $564 million annually.

"What's important is to get a sense of how many people are using marijuana in B.C., and how much they're using, and how much that's worth," said Dan Werb, the study's lead author and co-founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. "That data drives policy."

The study comes as part of a growing campaign of health, legal and law experts to persuade politicians in B.C. to look at alternatives to the current system they argue fuels gang violence and does nothing to reduce drug use.

The campaign has gained momentum after Washington State and Colorado voted earlier this month to legalize, sell and tax marijuana, and the study's researchers are already watching lessons from the incoming implementation.

Using data from Health Canada and the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., the researchers found the population of marijuana users to be about 366,000 and the retail cost to be about $7.50 per gram.

They used data about how often and how much is used in conjunction with those figures to determine the size of the illegal provincial market.

The paper doesn't specifically estimate tax revenues.

"But what it does is lay the groundwork and points to a few ways policy-makers could start looking at tax revenues," Werb said.

He cited government data from Washington State, which lays out the fiscal impact of the marijuana ballot initiative, and noted the population of weed users in B.C.'s neighbour to the south is estimated at 363,000 — a very similar number to B.C.

Initiative 502 puts in place a 25 per cent tax on pot sales, and the government anticipates that starting two years from implementation, the state will bring in tax and licensing revenues nearing half a billion each year.

The coalition contends that B.C., too, could rake in $2.5 billion over five years.

In Washington, 55 per cent of taxes will go to health care, 25 per cent to drug abuse treatment and medication, one per cent for cannabis-related research and the remainder will be general revenue.

"It would allow revenues that are currently being used towards the enforcement of cannabis laws be diverted perhaps towards the organized crime unit or other enforcement interventions that would target higher-level traffickers," Werb suggested of B.C.

Two economists at the University of British Columbia agree that millions in tax revenues would likely be generated from regulated pot sales, though they suggested caution be taken in estimating the enormity of the windfall.

Prof. Werner Antweiler said economic principles suggest that taking weed off the black market and into a regulated system would lower the overall price of the product — though not its demand — and therefore generate less.

But he also noted the 25 per cent tax created by Washington seems to be at the low-end of what he might expect to see applied to marijuana.

He said that in Canada, taxes on tobacco account for 81 per cent of the retail price — largely to account for high health-care costs associated with lung cancer, and because governments are trying to dissuade its purchase.

Putting a larger, so-called sin tax on marijuana would not tread new ground, added Prof. Kevin Milligan.

He said the result of the tax would be similar to what happens with environmental taxation, which is called a "double dividend."

"The point of the tax is you get less illegal activity, and some revenue you can do something with," he said. "It could potentially benefit B.C. taxpayers."

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World's biggest independent drug use survey is launched

Global Drug Survey collects detailed information about what drugs people use, why and how often

The world's biggest independent survey of drug use, collecting detailed data on the drug experiences of tens of thousands of people, launches on Thursday.

The Guardian, along with a range of media partners across the globe, is supporting the survey, which asks participants about what drugs they use, why they take them and how often, and what the social, medical and legal consequences of their drug use are.

Drugs covered by the survey include cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis, ketamine, mephedrone, alcohol, tobacco, "legal highs" and prescription medicines such as temazepam, Viagra and opioid painkillers.

You can access the 2013 drug survey here.

Last year's survey was completed by 15,500 respondents. The results, published in March and reported all over the world, provided a comprehensive, up-to-date picture of people's drug habits and experiences.

The 2013 survey, which is online and takes about 20 minutes to complete, is anonymised and confidential. It is conducted by Global Drug Survey (GDS), an independent, self-funded data mapping agency.

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War on drugs: Campaigning countess winning support to change world laws

Amanda Feilding, the countess of Wemyss and March, is being taken seriously in her quest to change drug policy across the world after years of being portrayed as an eccentric aristocrat

The proud owner of a country estate and an aristocratic title, Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March, might seem an unlikely campaigner for the reform of laws criminalising recreational drugs. But no one can say she hasn't put the hours in.

For the past 15 years, as part of the Beckley Foundation, which she set up in 1989, Feilding has hosted seminars, promoted research and lobbied the powerful in the name of legalisation. At one stage the Daily Mail became sufficiently alarmed to ask: "Is the countess just an amusing and irrelevant eccentric? Or could she be a real danger to society?" Feilding was clearly amused by that suggestion.

On 5 December, she will oversee the launch of a new global initiative to deal with what she tells the Observer is "the real danger to society" – a counterproductive war on drugs that allows a deadly criminal culture to thrive across the globe.

With the support of an array of politicians, stars, academics and artists, the campaign will be launched with a documentary film, Breaking the Taboo, at Google's premises in London and New York. It is supported by Virgin and by Avaaz, a campaigning community with 16 million members. The website asks people to recognise that the war on drugs has failed and that the cost of fighting it is unbearable for many countries, while the availability and range of drugs increases every year. It asks people to urge governments to promote new policies based on scientific evidence.

Supporters include former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Switzerland, Poland and the US, and Feilding hopes that a fundamental global review of drugs laws is closer than ever before.

"For 15 years I have been working away with opinion-formers," said Feilding. "But now it is time to get politicians onside. Politicians will not move unless they are driven by the people. We need a grassroots movement of people saying that our children will be better looked after if the government regulates the supply of drugs, rather than leaving it to criminals.

"It has been a long journey, but I think the climate is fundamentally different from even two years ago. We are on the cusp of a big change."

Breaking the Taboo tells the stories of addicts and random victims of drug gang violence. It also features the former president of Colombia, César Gaviria, whose brother was kidnapped and sister murdered.

Change is coming, Feilding believes, because the belief that drugs policy is not working has gone mainstream. "Now it's people like Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and the president of Guatemala saying it's time for a change," she said.

Earlier this year Feilding was invited by Otto Pérez Molina, the president of Guatemala, to advise the government on drugs policies that will cut the level of drug-related violence and corruption that blight the country. Guatemala is one of many transit countries in Central America where rival gangs compete and bribe officials as they move cocaine and other drugs from South America to the US.

Feilding's journey to the forefront of the campaign to reform drugs policy began in 1960, when she first smoked cannabis at Oxford University, beginning a lifelong fascination with the benefits of altering the consciousness and a desire to understand the dangers.

Her foundation undoubtedly has its radical side, exploring the idea that some drugs could enhance understanding and creativity. A major part of the foundation's work has been to fund experiments into the use of psychoactive drugs. That research – carried out at Imperial College and University College, London, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore – has suggested that MDMA, LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) can all have benefits for psychological health.

"In this time when there is so much psychosis, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, the NHS cannot afford to give everyone two years of therapy. We need to find better and faster ways to treat people and psychoactive drugs with skilled therapists could be the answer," she said.

However, the main concern has been the question of legalisation. The Beckley Foundation has consistently promoted the reform of global drugs policy, using money raised from donors such as the financier George Soros. Regular policy seminars have taken place in the House of Lords and featured scientists and policy specialists from all over the world.

Some of those talks led to unwanted headlines. The government's adviser on drugs, Professor David Nutt, was forced to resign when he suggested at a Beckley event that alcohol and tobacco were far more dangerous than cannabis and, in a separate incident, said taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse-riding.

Perhaps conscious of how her past may be perceived, Feilding emphasises that she believes in the strict regulation of drugs rather than nonregulation. "We are not talking about selling things in Tesco. There should be no advertising and no selling to minors. Some things might only be sold on prescription," she said.

Her vision of Britain includes cannabis farmers' markets, such as in Barcelona; the prescription of heroin for addicts, as takes place in Switzerland; or the use of psychoactive drugs for marriage counselling, which has happened in the US. "Right now we have a completely unregulated market controlled by criminals. Everyone would be much safer in a regulated society than the unregulated one that exists now," she said. After 15 years making the argument, Feilding thinks the world might finally be listening.

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Uruguayan Deputies Say Legalize All Drugs

Even as Uruguay considers a groundbreaking proposal from President Jose Mujica to legalize state-regulated marijuana cultivation and sales, parliamentarians from most of the leading political factions in the country are calling on the government to go even further and legalize all drugs in a bid to blunt the power of and threat from illicit drug traffickers.

The comments came in interviews solicited by and published in the Uruguayan news weekly Busqueda and appeared in its November 22 issue.

The war on drugs has been "a resounding failure" because it has "fortified crime," said Independent Party Deputy Ivan Posada. Forty years of drug war has created a reality where there exist "true international enterprises dedicated to the traffic in drugs," which can only be effectively combated by "establishing the legalization of the traffic of all drugs," he said.

The legalization of marijuana sales and cultivation (use and possession are already legal in Uruguay) proposed by Mujica and his Broad Front (Frente Amplio) government is "doomed to failure" because it is only a half-measure and not a global strategy, Posada sniped.

The war on drugs approach "will fall sooner or later in this century," said Deputy Jose Bayardi of the Artigist Tendency (Vertiente Artiguista), a social democratic current within the Broad Front. "The only solution there is to defeat the drug trade is the legalization of all psychoactive drugs," he said.

"There will come a moment in which all the drugs that are today illegal -- heroin, cocaine, etc. -- will be administered in the same manner, with an informative pamphlet," said Bayardi, a former defense minister. "Then, the individual will take the responsibility for doing with them what he wishes. We are going down this path. Sooner rather than later, we will arrive, and then we will really be fighting the drug trade," he said.

The steps the government is taking to legalize and regulate marijuana sales and cultivation "are a beginning, a point of departure" on a path where "the state will regulate all drugs," said Broad Front Deputy Sebatian Sabini, who chairs the Commission on Addiction in the Uruguayan House of Representatives. "As a society, we aren't ready to discuss it, but in the long run we have to do it, also for public health reasons. We can carry the same analysis of the drug trade that leads us to legalize marijuana on to base, to cocaine," he said.

National Alliance Deputy Pablo Itturralde said what was needed first was a an educational campaign illuminating the dangers caused by drug abuse. "After that, if someone wants, he can consume what he will," he said.

Marijuana users aren't the problem, Itturalde said. "If there is a drug that is implicated in public safety, it is paste base," he said. "Marijuana users are peace and love people." [Ed: Paste base is also known as "pasta de cocaína," thought of similarly to crack cocaine, and is considered Uruguay's most worrisome drug problem.]

The leader of the House of Representatives, Deputy Jorge Orrico, also said that the way to fight the drug trade is to "legalize all drugs," although he caviled about paste base because of its negative effects. "Of all the other substances, I have no doubt because the business works in clandestinity. At the least, we can diminish the mafia," he said.

While the talk of legalization of all drugs cuts across the political spectrum in Uruguay, at this point it is only the legalization and regulation of marijuana commerce that is on the legislative agenda. But it sure looks like many Uruguayans are interested in looking further.

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Mexicaanse heldin ontvoerd, gemarteld en geëxecuteerd

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De 'Mexicaanse heldin van de 21ste eeuw' is niet meer. Maria Santos Gorrostieta werd ontvoerd, gemarteld en uiteindelijk geëxecuteerd. De 36-jarige harde tante zette als burgemeester haar leven op het spel door de strijd aan te gaan met de almachtige drugsbendes. Twee moordpogingen had ze al overleefd, de derde werd haar fataal.

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Drug wars in Mexico - in pictures

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Mexican president Felipe Calderon has stepped down, six years after launching a crackdown on his country's drug cartels in December 2006. Since then, more than 50,000 people have been killed

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Mexico drug war continues to rage in region where president fired first salvo

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It was in this remote region that the outgoing Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, launched the first stage of what would become a nationwide military offensive against organised crime. Days after taking office in December 2006, he deployed battalions of masked troops and heavily armed federal police – first a few thousand in his home state of Michoacán and eventually 50,000 across the country. He even wore a military uniform when he appeared at a Michoacán army base to cheer on the soldiers.

The message was simple: after decades of playing down the growing power of the drug cartels, it was time for the Mexican state to flex its muscles.

But as Calderón leaves office, the reality of life in Tierra Caliente (Hot Land) offers a stark rebuke to his strategy. The flow of drugs northward appears to have continued unabated despite a string of cartel bosses being captured or killed in the years since he launched the offensive.

In that time, at least 60,000 people – possibly 100,000 – have been killed in violence across Mexico. Thousands more have disappeared. Scores of judges, journalists, politicians and local mayors have been assassinated, and the armed forces have been accused of systematic torture and abuse. The number of deaths appears to have plateaued in the past year, but the experience of Tierra Caliente suggests a falling murder rate is not necessarily any indication that the government is winning.

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In this part of Michoacán, the immediate result of Calderón's offensive was a surge of violence as the military presence exacerbated a power struggle between rival groups of narcos.

"Instead of helping, it produced more violence," observes one young professional in a small Tierra Caliente town.

That phase ended when the Caballeros beat off their rivals, and set about consolidating control. As a general in the region recently admitted, the recent relative calm owes more to the group's victory over its rivals than it does to the efforts of the federal forces.

"What Los Caballeros Templarios is doing is maintaining tight control on organised crime in this area," General Miguel Angel Patino told the Associated Press. "The dominance allows the area to stay quiet, to a certain point."

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Even if there were popular support for a confrontation, there are few incentives for local mayors to stand up to organised crime. Earlier this month, Maria Santos Gorrostieta, the former mayor of Tiquicheo, was dragged from her vehicle in front of her young children. Her body was found later with signs of torture. It was the third attempt on her life.

When Michoacán's governor obliquely blamed the caballeros for the murder, they responded with banners and pamphlets that denied the charge. They went on to allege that they had helped to get him elected last year as part of a secret pact made with his close associates that included getting the vote out in the Tierra Caliente. Now, the banner claimed, they merely wanted him "to tell us directly whether we can expect some return on our investment".

Calderón has consistently argued that taking the war to the cartels was the only way to stop Mexico becoming a "narco-state," but in this part of the country, the caballeros have already taken control of areas of everyday life that have nothing to do with the production or shipment of drugs. Locals say the cartel decides when the mango or lemon harvest should start, according to its reading of market trends. Farmers who cannot wait for the best prices must sell their fruit in secret, at considerable personal risk.

The caballeros are also said to have become the preferred option for sorting out disputes among members of the community, ranging from the disagreements over boundary fences to unpaid debts or a violent husband.

One witness describes how a cartel representative courteously welcomes disputing parties into his office and delivers his judgment without so much as a hint of a threat. "There is no need for that," the witness says. "Everybody knows what could happen."

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The Truce On Drugs

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It seems very unlikely that the momentum for legalization will stop on its own. About 50 percent of voters around the country now favor legalizing the drug for recreational use (the number only passed 30 percent in 2000 and 40 percent in 2009), and the younger you are, the more likely you are to favor legal pot. Legalization campaigns have the backing of a few committed billionaires, notably George Soros and Peter Lewis, and the polls suggest that the support for legalization won’t simply be confined to progressive coalitions: More than a third of conservatives are for full legalization, and there is a gender gap, with more men in favor than women. Perhaps most striking of all, an organized opposition seems to have vanished completely. In Washington State, the two registered groups opposing the referendum had combined by early fall to raise a grand total of $16,000. “We have a marriage-equality initiative on the ballot here, and it is all over television, the radio, the newspapers,” Christine Gregoire, the Democratic governor of Washington, told me just before the election. When it comes to marijuana, “it’s really interesting. You don’t hear it discussed at all.” A decade ago, legalization advocates were struggling to corral pledges of support for medicinal pot from very liberal politicians. Now, the old fearful talk about a gateway drug has disappeared entirely, and voters in two states have chosen a marijuana regime more liberal than Amsterdam’s.

These votes suggest what may be a spreading, geographic Humboldt of the mind, in which the liberties of pot in far-northern California, and the unusually ambiguous legal regime there, metastasize around the country. If you live in Seattle and sell licensed marijuana, your operation could be perfectly legal from the perspective of the state government and committing a federal crime at the same time. It is hard to detect much political enthusiasm for a federal pot crackdown, but the complexities that come with these new laws may be hard for Washington to simply ignore. What happens, for instance, when a New York dealer secures a license and a storefront in Denver, and then illegally ships the weed back home? Economists who have studied these questions thoroughly say that they can’t rule out a scenario in which little changes in the consumption of pot—the same people will smoke who always have. But they also can’t rule out a scenario in which consumption doubles, or more than doubles, and pot is not so much less prevalent than alcohol.

And yet the prohibition on marijuana is something more than just a fading relic of the culture wars. It has also been part of the ad hoc assemblage of laws, treaties, and policies that together we call the “war on drugs,” and it is in this context that the votes on Election Day may have their furthest reach. When activists in California tried to fully legalize marijuana there in 2010, the most deeply felt opposition came from the president of Mexico, who called the initiative “absurd,” telling reporters that an America that legalized marijuana had “very little moral authority to condemn a Mexican farmer who for hunger is planting marijuana to sustain the insatiable North American market for drugs.” This year, the reaction from the chief strategist for the incoming Mexican president was even broader and more pointed. The votes in Colorado and Washington, he said, “change somewhat the rules of the game … we have to carry out a review of our joint policies in regard to drug trafficking and security in general.” The suggestion from south of the border wasn’t that cocaine should be subject to the same regime as marijuana. It was: If we are going to rewrite the rules on drug policy to make them more sensible, why stop at only one drug? Why go partway?

Something unexpected has happened in the past five years. The condemnations of the war on drugs—of the mechanized imprisonment of much of our inner ­cities, of the brutal wars sustained in Latin America at our behest, of the sheer cost of prohibition, now likely past a trillion dollars—have migrated out from the left-wing cul-de-sacs that they have long inhabited and into the political Establishment. “The war on drugs, though well-intentioned, has been a failure,” New Jersey governor Chris Christie said this summer. A global blue-ribbon panel that included both the former Reagan secretary of State George Shultz and Kofi Annan had reached the same conclusion the previous June: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies.” The pressures from south of the border have grown far more urgent: The presidents of Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Belize, and Costa Rica have all called for a broad reconsideration of the drug war in the past year, and the Organization of American States is now trying to work out what realistic alternatives there might be.

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Politie 'steelt' 75 kilo hennep van drugsbende

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Advocaat Henk Brink noemde de handelwijze van de politie maandag onaanvaardbaar. De raadsman zegt dat zijn cliënt door de politie onnodig in gevaar is gebracht en meent dat het Openbaar Ministerie daarom het recht op vervolging heeft verspeeld.

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Een lange reeks onopgeloste liquidaties in de Brabantse onderwereld toont volgens advocaat Brink aan dat het Openbaar Ministerie geen benul heeft van het risico dat is genomen door de partij softdrugs stiekem mee te nemen.

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'Geliquideerde man Diemen was bekende van Badr Hari'

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Het is de tweede liquidatie onder criminelen in korte tijd in de buurt van Amsterdam. Anderhalve week geleden werd in Badhoevedorp Remco H. doodgeschoten. Ook hij was een bekende van de politie.

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Op maandag 3 december 2012 13:16 schreef Tarado het volgende:

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Is niet een War on maar meer onderling als ik het goed begrijp

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Op maandag 3 december 2012 13:22 schreef Tarado het volgende:

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War on drugs gaat van de regering(en) uit en een drugsoorlog is onderling, wie waar dood aan gaat heb ik ik het niet over maar het is niet hetzelfde

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Op maandag 3 december 2012 13:28 schreef Tarado het volgende:

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Oorspronkelijk wel ja maar dan nog heb je verschil in het geweld tussen regeringen en bendes en bendes onderling

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Op maandag 3 december 2012 13:39 schreef Tarado het volgende:

[..]

mij wel

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Heeding Calls For ‘Less Prohibitionist’ Approach, UN Agrees To Reconsider Global Drug Policy

n response to a resolution from Latin American countries lamenting the failure of the drug war, the United Nations General Assembly voted last week to reconsider the international approach to drug policy during a special session.

In proposing the summit to the UN in September, then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon (who left office Dec. 1) questioned the U.S.-led war on drugs, and said the UN should lead a debate over a “less prohibitionist” approach. Last year he suggested that countries should consider drug legalization among the possible alternatives. Calderon made clear, however, that they “won’t cede an inch” in cracking down on gangs.

Columbian President Juan Manuel Santos said during the meeting that it is the UN’s duty to “determine – on an objective scientific basis – if we are doing the best we can or if there are better options to combat this scourge.” He also said that Colombia would be open to legalization if other countries were to also do so, and Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has outright endorsed legalization in the past. Reuters reported in September:

. Mexico and Colombia are two of Washington’s firmest allies in Latin America and both work closely with U.S. anti-drug efforts. While the subject of legalization was discussed at an Americas-wide summit in Colombia attended by U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this year, raising the once-taboo subject at the 193-nation meeting in New York amounts to an escalation of the debate.

At the time of this initial proposal, Reuters reported that Obama “ruled out any major changes on drug laws,” but that was before two U.S. states passed ballot initiatives to legalize and regulate marijuana like alcohol – prompting global discussion about how these state laws will change drug policy, and a warning statement from the the head of a UN drug agency that the United States will be violating international drug treaties.

Obama has not provided any public response to the passage of the two state laws, and both the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration have largely hedged in revealing how they plan to respond to the laws’ implementation, saying only that federal enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act “remains unchanged.” The laws have also prompted several members of Congress to propose an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act that would exempt those states that have passed laws from the act’s marijuana provisions. Other members of Congress have simply asked the federal government not to prosecute those in compliance with the new state marijuana laws – an approach they have rejected with respect to medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal.

Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has also expressed a desire to move “beyond the drug war” and says he plans to focus more on reducing violence.

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Tientallen arrestaties in groot Twents drugsonderzoek

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Speakers at R.I. forum on marijuana, drug policy say 'war on drugs' is failing



PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The war on drugs has not only failed, it has been disastrous for thousands of youth and families, who have been jailed, kicked out of school and denied meaningful work.

That was the consensus of dozens of experts at a conference Saturday sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance and the Rhode Island Drug Policy Working Group. The one-day forum drew 300 policymakers, law enforcement personnel and community advocates to Alumnae Hall at Brown University.

The speakers here agreed that the war on drugs, launched by President Nixon in the early 1960s, has not accomplished any of its goals: it hasn't reduced the quantity of drugs on the market, it hasn't decreased drug use among the young and it hasn't reduced the violence associated with drug cartels.

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85 arrestaties bij dancefeest Utrecht

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Zeker 85 bezoekers zijn opgepakt bij het dancefeest Time Warp, dat in de nacht van zaterdag op zondag werd gehouden in de Jaarbeurs in Utrecht. Verreweg de meesten hadden drugs gekocht, verkocht of in bezit. Eén man is opgepakt omdat hij een beveiliger had bedreigd, een ander verkocht valse toegangskaarten.

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David Cameron urged to take 'now or never' step on drugs reform

Cross-party committee says prime minister should set up royal commission on Britain's failing drug laws

David Cameron should urgently set up a royal commission to consider all the alternatives to Britain's failing drug laws, including decriminalisation and legalisation, an influential cross-party group of MPs has concluded.

The Commons home affairs select committee says after taking evidence from all sides of the drug debate, including from Russell Brand and Richard Branson, that "now, more than ever" there is a case for a fundamental review of all UK drug policy. "This is a critical, now-or-never moment for serious reform," they say.

Among the recommendations contained in a report published on Monday, the MPs say Home Office and health ministers should be sent to Portugal to examine its system of replacing criminal penalties for drug use with a new emphasis on treatment. They say the Portuguese example clearly reduced public concern about drug use and was backed by all political parties and the police.

The MPs also suggest the British government should fund a detailed research project monitoring the recent legalisation of marijuana in the American states of Washington and Colorado and the proposed state monopoly of cannabis production and sale in Uruguay.

The committee visited Colombia, the US and Portugal as part of their year-long inquiry.

In the report the MPs say: "We recommend the establishment of a royal commission to consider the best ways of reducing the harm caused by drugs in an increasingly globalised world.

"In order to avoid an overly long, overly expensive review process, we recommend that such a commission be set up immediately and be required to report by 2015."

Ministers should at the same time instigate a public debate in Britain on all the alternatives to current drug policy as part of the royal commission, recommends the report, Drugs: Breaking the Cycle. The government also needs to initiate a discussion within the United Nation's commission on narcotic drugs, including the possibility of legalisation and regulation – to tackle and reduce the harms from the global drug trade at home and abroad.

Government sources were dismissive of the move to a royal commission, insisting that drug use in Britain was at the lowest level since records began: "Our current laws draw on the best available evidence and as such we have no intention of downgrading or declassifying cannabis.

"A royal commission on drugs is simply not necessary. Our cross-government approach is working … We will respond more fully to the report in due course."

But the committee's chairman, the former Labour minister Keith Vaz, said that was no longer sustainable: "After a year scrutinising UK drugs policy, it is clear to us that many aspects of it are simply not working and it needs to be fully reviewed. We cannot afford to kick this issue into the long grass. We have recommended that a royal commission be set up with an end-date of 2015."

He said drugs cost thousands of lives and billions of taxpayer pounds annually: "This is a critical, now-or-never moment for serious reform. If we do not act now, future generations will be crippled by the social and financial burden of addiction."

Although ministers moved immediately to dismiss the call for a royal commission, the hard-hitting report from one of parliament's most influential select committees is indicative of a growing consensus at Westminster that reform of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act is long overdue.

It follows a six-year study by the UK Drugs Policy Commission that called for decriminalisation of possession of small amounts of illicit drugs and a new forum for all three main party leaders to reach a consensus on reform.

The report's recommendations echo many of the findings of the committee's last major inquiry into drugs in 2002, when Cameron was a member, which called for a less punitive approach to cannabis and ecstasy.

The new report "regrets" the government's decision in 2008 to toughen the law on cannabis possession but only on the chairman's casting vote after the issue split the committee. The rest of the report was endorsed by a majority of the MPs, with the Conservative Mark Reckless voting with Labour and Liberal Democrats while his Tory colleagues dissented.

The call for a royal commission, which has been a longstanding Liberal Democrat policy, was also welcomed by experts. Martin Barnes of Drugscope, the leading independent information centre on drugs, said that the debate had been too often clouded by polarised positions, partial evidence and anecdote.

"This is a situation that has not been helped when policy-makers and politicians are fearful of being accused of being 'soft' on drugs or their views and intentions distorted," said Barnes.

"A royal commission, with a clear timetable, would help break this impasse – but it will require robust terms of reference and a credible membership. There is already a substantial body of argument and evidence on reforming drug policy – including the recent report by the UK Drug Policy Commission – so any commission will need authority and momentum behind it to achieve change."

The detailed findings of the 151-page report say that the 2002 report's recommendation for a reassessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act was rejected by ministers on the grounds it conflicted with Britain's international obligations to curbing the global drug trade: "The message from Colombia and other supplier and transit states is clear – what the international community is currently doing is not working," says the report. "We are not suggesting that the UK should act unilaterally in these matters, but our government's position must be informed by a thorough understanding of the global situation and possible alternative policies."

The MPs' report also makes detailed recommendations to "break the cycle" of drug addiction, including improved treatment in prisons and the community and for early intervention with better education and preventive work. On the recent explosion of "legal highs" or new psychoactive substances, the MPs say that retailers, including "head shops" and online sellers should be liable for the harms caused by the untested substances they have sold, including for related deaths.

The committee says that Britain's approach to the laundering of drug money has also been far too weak and new legislation is needed to extend the personal liability of senior bankers found to be involved.

The MPs make detailed recommendations to combat the supply of drugs in prisons, including mandatory drug testing on arrival and release, and a new drive for recovery-based treatment behind bars.

On the drug treatment programme in the community said more use should be made of residential treatment and buprenorphine as alternatives to the widespread use of methadone as a heroin substitute.

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HSBC schikt voor 1,9 miljard dollar in verband met witwaspraktijken

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Uit onderzoek door een commissie van de Amerikaanse Senaat bleek eerder dat HSBC miljarden dollars van Mexicaanse drugskartels witwaste. Ook zou de bank Amerikaanse handelssancties hebben geschonden door zaken de doen in landen als Iran. Met de schikking wordt een strafzaak afgekocht, meldt AP.

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Op vrijdag 14 december 2012 18:59 schreef Reya het volgende:
http://www.standaard.be/a(...)DMF20121214_00402090

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War on Drugs: Clegg breekt met Cameron

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Goed nieuws uit Groot-Brittannië: Nick Clegg heeft helemaal niets met David Camerons steun voor de oorlog tegen drugs. "The drug war is lost", aldus de vice-premier van de liberale democraten.

Het gebeurt niet vaak dat ik het eens ben met de eurofiele voorman van de LibDems, maar dit is dan toch echt één zo'n dag waarop dit wél het geval is. De reden? Clegg gelooft dat de Britse regering de strijd tegen drugs nooit en te nimmer kan winnen:

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Government urged to consider serious drugs law reform

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Keith Morris, who was British ambassador to Colombia from 1990 to 1994, made his comments to the Guardian newspaper after the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee recommended an urgent Royal Commission to review the UK drug laws earlier this week.

Prime Minister David Cameron instantly rejected the proposal, supported by many experts in the field, but coalition partner and Deputy PM Nick Clegg believes change is needed.

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Nick Clegg said on 14 December 2012: "We can't be complacent, we owe it to the many many children in this country who still get snarled up by drugs, whose education chances are blighted by drugs, whose health is damaged by drugs, we owe it to them to constantly restlessly look for better ways of dealing with the scourge of drugs."

He continued: "After all, this is a war, the war on drugs, in which over 2,000 people are losing their lives in Britain every year, in which one in five 11 to 15-year-olds in this country now say they're trying drugs, where young people now are telling us that it's easier to get hold of drugs than it is to get hold of alcohol or tobacco.

"I think those facts alone suggest that, yes of course we should do the good work that we are doing as a coalition government, but we should also be open-minded enough to look at whatever alternative approaches help us help those children more effectively in the future.

"My own view is that we simply cannot be content with the way things are. The worse thing to do is to close your mind off from doing even better," said the Deputy PM.

David Cameron has rejected Mr Clegg's calls for a review of drugs laws and the findings of the Select Committee, proclaiming existing policy satisfactory. But critics say he is burying his head in the sand to avoid controversy.

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Regering Mexico: aanpak drugsbendes heeft gefaald

De aanpak van drugskartels in Mexico heeft geleid tot een stijging van het geweld. Dat heeft de Mexicaanse minister van binnenlandse zaken Miguel Angel Osorio Chong dinsdag gezegd. Hij hekelde het beleid van ex-president Felipe Calderon, omdat 'de financiële middelen voor de verbetering van de veiligheid zijn verdubbeld, maar de misdaad is toegenomen'.

"De stijging van het aantal moorden is bij ons een van de hoogste ter wereld", zei Osorio Chong. "De afgelopen jaren zijn door geweld in verband met de georganiseerde misdaad duizenden mensen om het leven gekomen en duizenden mensen verdwenen."

Calderon, die op 1 december aftrad, heeft herhaaldelijk gezegd dat de Mexicaanse autoriteiten 25 van de 37 meestgezochte drugsbazen heeft opgepakt. Hij kreeg daarbij hulp van de Verenigde Staten.

Osorio Chong en de nieuwe Mexicaanse president Enrique Peña Nieto hebben gezegd de strategie van Calderon aan te willen passen en de focus meer te willen leggen op het verminderen van de misdaden tegen gewone burgers en niet zozeer op het vermoorden of oppakken van drugsbazen. Nu de nieuwe regering er bijna drie weken op heeft zitten, zijn er echter nog maar weinig details bekend over de nieuwe aanpak. Het lijkt er op dat er maar weinig significante veranderingen gaan plaatshebben.

Mexico wordt opgedeeld in vijf regio's, die elk hun eigen veiligheidsbeleid krijgen. De problemen variëren per regio en de opdeling zorgt ervoor dat er voor iedere regio specifieke tactieken kunnen worden ontwikkeld. Daarnaast moet er een nieuwe paramilitaire politiemacht van zo'n tienduizend agenten worden opgericht. Het is echter niet bekend op welke termijn deze politiemacht opgericht wordt en hoe er agenten aangetrokken gaan worden.

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Brandweer slaat alarm na ontdekking xtc-lab Kerkrade

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De brandweer in Kerkrade heeft alarm geslagen na de ontdekking van een xtc-laboratorium in een boerderij. De brandweer maakt zich zorgen vanwege de mogelijke explosieve en gevaarlijke stoffen, die gebruikt worden voor de productie van de drug. Dat meldt het Limburgs Dagblad.

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Tarantino compares the War on Drugs to slavery

Iconic film director Quentin Tarantino believes that US drug policy, and the subsequent mass incarceration of African Americans, is comparable to pre-Civil War slavery. In an interview about his latest movie—Django Unchained, which documents the story of a freed slave, played by Jamie Foxx—Tarantino points out that the hierarchies of racial injustice have shifted but not wholly improved. “This whole thing of…this ‘War on Drugs,’ and the mass incarcerations that have happened pretty much for the last 40 years has just decimated the black male population,” says the filmmaker. “It’s slavery…it’s just slavery through and through, and it’s just the same fear of the black male that existed back in the 1800s.” He adds that the US prison system, which currently houses staggeringly disproportionate numbers of black men, mirrors the structure and appearance of slavery. “Especially having even directed a movie about slavery, and you know the scenes that we have in the slave town, the slave auction town, where they’re moving back and forth,” he says, “Well that looks like standing in the top tier of a prison system and watching the things go down. And between the private prisons and the public prisons, the way prisoners are traded back and forth.” African Americans throughout the US are 13 times more likely to face jail for the same drug-related offenses as white people, according to a 2011 statement by the NAACP; at 13% of the US population, they currently make up 53.5% of all imprisoned drug offenders, despite drug use being fairly evenly divided across racial lines.

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Feds: 4 Texas officers guarded cocaine shipments

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McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Three South Texas lawmen including the son of a prominent county sheriff will likely spend the weekend in custody on charges accusing them and another officer of accepting thousands of dollars in bribes to guard shipments of cocaine.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Dorina Ramos set bond at $100,000 Friday for Mission Police officer Jonathan Trevino, 29, and Hidalgo County Sheriff's deputies Fabian Rodriguez, 28, and Gerardo Duran, 30. The same bond was set a day earlier for their alleged co-conspirator Mission Police officer Alexis Espinoza.

Ramos said it was unlikely that pre-trial services could arrange for their release if any of the men posted bond before Monday.

Prosecutors say the four were members of a task force called the Panama Unit that fights drug trafficking. Instead of combatting the drug trade, prosecutors say the four provided protection for it.

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Xtc-pillen, GHB en vuurwapens in huis politiechef Kekerdom

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In het huis van politiechef Jan Petter, die zichzelf en twee anderen in september van dit jaar doodschoot in Kekerdom, heeft de politie 186 xtc-pillen, amfetamine en een hoeveelheid van de partydrug GHB gevonden. Ook had hij verschillende oudere vuurwapens in huis.

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Eerder was al bekend dat in de woning van de inspecteur in Kekerdom een hennepkwekerij met 224 plantjes stond en dat hij tegen de regels in zijn dienstwapen in huis bewaarde.

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'Toezicht defensie op Curaçao onvoldoende'

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Het toezicht en de sociale controle van werknemers van defensie die tijdelijk op Curaçao verblijven, is onvoldoende. Dat zegt Wim van den Burg, voorzitter van de militaire vakbond AFMP, in reactie op de arrestatie donderdag van een 28-jarige bewoner van Curaçao die betrokken zou zijn bij cocaïnehandel naar Nederland. De drugs werden uitgevoerd via de Nederlandse marinekazerne Parera op het eiland.

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Colombia Army Probes Alleged Drug Trafficking Ring Within Its Ranks

g 25 kilos of pot on a Hercules plane and Maj. Edisson Javier García was arrested with 79 kilos in a vehicle.

The Attorney General's Office has also launched an investigation, Pinzón told reporters, adding that "there is zero tolerance for any criminal activity" within the armed forces.

"The investigation must be thorough to uncover the entire network," Navas said.

The first signs of the existence of a drug ring inside the army emerged last week when 25 kilos of marijuana were discovered on a military plane transporting a squad of soldiers from the conflictive southwestern province of Cauca to the Tolemaida military base in central Colombia.

Maj. García was then caught Tuesday with 79 kilos of pot in the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca.

García, who was taking courses required for promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel, was transporting the drugs in a vehicle on the Pan American Highway.

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Op woensdag 5 december 2012 17:02 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Nederland staat de laatste tijd bol van de anti-drugs propaganda:

[..]

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Ruim dertig arrestaties en forse drugsvondst in Den Haag

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Een langlopend drugsonderzoek in de regio Den Haag heeft dit jaar 31 arrestaties van verdachten, ruim vijfduizend xtc-pillen en ruim 150 kilo cocaïne opgeleverd. Het onderzoek begon vorig jaar al en inmiddels zijn vier arrestanten veroordeeld, meldt de politie vanochtend.

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Mexico's top cop resigns ahead of shake-up

Plagued by rumours of corruption, Luis Cardenas Palomino has posted an open letter of resignation on Facebook.

Luis Cardenas Palomino, one of the most senior Mexican federal police officials, has rejected charges of corruption as he announced that he will resign on December 31.

"After 23 years of public service, I have made the decision to move into the private sector," Cardenas, the top cop in charge of regional security, wrote in an open letter posted on Facebook on Saturday.

Cardenas Palomino faces no charges of wrongdoing, but under his watch there was a shoot-out in June between police in the Mexico City airport that killed three officers, and an attack by federal police in August on a US diplomatic vehicle that wounded two US agents.

"As a public official, I have been exposed to criticism, much of it empty and unfounded," including charges of corruption, he said.

"I leave this institution with my head held high, without having committed any act of which I must repent," Cardenas Palomino wrote.

The federal police is being reorganised as part of a major security overhaul by Mexico's new president, Enrique Pena Nieto.

Mexico's congress passed a law last week that closed the ministry of Public Security, a pillar in the fight against drugs under former president Felipe Calderon.

The federal police will now be under the control of the ministry of interior.

Pena Nieto, who took office December 1, runs Latin America's second biggest economy that is also engaged in a relentless drug war that has killed more than 60,000 people in the last six years.

In June federal police smuggling drugs from Peru killed three agents who attempted to arrest them at the Mexico City international airport. Cardenas Palomino eventually replaced all 348 officers responsible for airport security.

In August, federal police opened fire on on what turned out to be a car with diplomatic plates. The attorney general's office has charged 14 federal police officers with attempted murder, while five police commanders have been
accused of lying in the case.

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Colombia's "Widow of the Mafia" Assassinated

Lorena Henao Montoya, known as the "Widow of the Mafia," was murdered after assassins on a motorcycle strafed her car with bullets in the province of Armenia, just the latest chapter in a widening drug war.

Henao Montoya, age 43, was the widow of Ivan Urdinola, and the sister of Orlando Henao Montoya, alias "the Overall Man." Both men were heads of the now-defunct Norte Del Valle Cartel (NDVC), which according to US authorities smuggled more than 500 tons of cocaine from Colombia. Urdinola died in prison in February 2002 under suspicious circumstances, perhaps poisoned. His wife Lorena had herself been imprisoned on drug-related charges, after being arrested in Panama in 2004. She was been released in May 2011 after serving a sentence for conspiracy, fraud and bribery. Her daughter with Urdinola, Emma, aged just 23, is in prison for murder.

InSight Crime Analysis

There are various theories as to the motives behind the killing of Lorena Henao. One is that relatives of her ex-husband wanted properties that she controlled. Another theory is that some of her relatives in the powerful Henao criminal clan, who make up part of the Machos gang which now works with the Urabeños, saw her as an obstacle to business.

National Police Chief General Jose Roberto Leon Riaño said the police were working on the theory that she as killed as part of pending debts and problems with the Rastrojos.

Her murder is almost certainly linked to the wider drug war along the Pacific coast after the surrender to US authorities of Javier Calle Serna, alias "Comba." Comba has delivered to US authorities much of the internal workings of the Rastrojos, the powerful drug syndicate that he led. This has resulted in widespread violence in Rastrojos strongholds with rival traffickers settling accounts and seeking to take over territory, as the criminal gang implodes.

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Burgemeester Van der Laan: 'Dit was wild west'

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De dodelijke schietpartij van zaterdagavond in de Staatsliedenbuurt in Amsterdam verdient de kwalificatie 'wild west'. Dat zei burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan van Amsterdam zondag in het tv-programma Buitenhof. Ook zijn twee motoragenten 'van heel dichtbij' beschoten, maar zijn ze er 'gelukkig goed van af gekomen'.

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Mexico Considers Legalizing Marijuana

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The Mexican Congress was presented a bill in November that would legalize marijuana use, production, and sale from within the country. Government leaders told Reuters that they are one of multiple Latin American countries unhappy about the U.S. policy of prohibition:

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Italian council chief blocks filming of anti-mafia TV series in Naples suburb

Angelo Pisani refuses to allow cameras into Scampia for follow-up to Gomorrah film, criticising 'exaggeration' of problems

The northern Neapolitan suburb of Scampia is notorious for its drug wars, clan battles and ever-growing casualty list. But the long-suffering area was at the centre of a rather different kind of conflict at the weekend after a war of words erupted between its local politicians and Italy's most prominent anti-mafia campaigner over the filming of a follow-up television series to the 2008 hit film Gomorrah.

In what he said was an attempt to protect the area and its inhabitants from disproportionately bad publicity, Scampia's local council chief, Angelo Pisani, will not allow cameras into the neighbourhood for the making of the upcoming drama, which is to be called Gomorrah after Roberto Saviano's chilling exposé of the Neapolitan underworld, which in turn spawned Matteo Garrone's film.

"It is time to say enough of the exploitative use of Naples and this area in particular," Pisani told the Corriere del Mezzogiorno. "The constant exaggeration – only of the negative things, which exist, it cannot be denied – solves nothing; on the contrary, it worsens the problems and confirms the stigma."

The mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, said that while he played no part in Pisani's decision, he supported it. "We are tired of seeing Scampia reduced … to a place of conquest for the warring Camorra, as if nothing else existed in Scampia beyond the drug-pushing and the feuding clans," he said, likening the Gomorrah effect on the local area to a "negative media brand" that he claimed had left locals "exasperated".

To Saviano, however, the Naples-born writer and scourge of the Camorra, this smacked of little more than "pure, sly censorship" aimed at deflecting attention from the problems of Scampia and politicians' inability to solve them.

"How can you want to block the recounting of the contradictions of a place which, actually, should be at the forefront of national interest every day?" he wrote in a savage column for La Repubblica. Saviano, who has played a supervisory role in the 12-part series, accused local politicians of "shifting attention from the problem to the recounting of the problem". He added: "When nothing changes because of incompetent management, it is better [for politicians] that the organs of the press, writers' pens and directors' TV cameras remain silent, switched off, idle and still."

Filming for the television series, the work of production companies Fandango and Cattleya for Sky Italia, is set to begin within weeks. Saviano's book, published in 2006, and Garrone's subsequent film, were credited with exposing the work of the powerful Neapolitan mafia to the world.

But Scampia, scene of continuing bloody turf wars between rival Camorra factions over multimillion-pound drug markets, remains deeply troubled. Last week, one of the area's most notorious fugitives, Antonio Mennetta, 28, was arrested in a villa near Salerno. On the run from murder and criminal conspiracy charges since September, he was described by police as the head of the powerful Girati clan of Scampia.

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Op zaterdag 5 januari 2013 17:15 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Inside Story Americas - Has Bolivia's coca-growing scheme worked?

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Bolivia Says They Have Evidence That US Is Plotting To Destabilize Nation

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“There is so much evidence to hand over to the President of the USA to say to him: Stop harassing the Bolivian government, stop politically cornering and ambushing us!” Quintana stressed. He added that investigations into drug-trafficking and human rights abuses would reveal a “permanent battle” waged by the US to impede progress in Bolivia.

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The country’s US ambassador was ejected in 2008 after being accused of plotting against the Bolivian government by President Evo Morales. The US quickly followed suit, removing its Bolivian ambassador.

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A significant bone of contention in these tensions is drug-trafficking in Bolivia. A damning report released by the American government last year ranking Bolivia, along with Venezuela and Burma, as “failing demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.”

President Morales denied the findings, accusing the US of hypocrisy and calling the illicit drugs trade with Latin America the US’ “best business.”

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Bolivia scores coca leaf victory at UN

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Bolivia says that it has been re-admitted to the UN's anti-narcotics convention after persuading member states to recognise the right of its indigenous people to chew raw coca leaf, which is used in the making of cocaine.

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, had faced opposition from Washington in his campaign against the classification of coca as an illicit drug.

"The coca leaf has accompanied indigenous peoples for 6,000 years," said Dionisio Nunez, Bolivia's deputy minister of coca and integrated development, on Friday. "Coca leaf was never used to hurt people. It was used as medicine."

The leaf was declared an illegal narcotic in the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, along with cocaine, heroin, opium and morphine and a host of chemical drugs.

Bolivia withdrew from the convention a year ago and said it would not rejoin unless coca chewing was decriminalised.

The country's condition for rejoining the convention met resistance from 15 countries, including the United States and the rest of the G8 group of industrial nations, according to UN spokeswoman Arancha Hinojal.

But the objections received by the United Nations ahead of Thursday's midnight deadline fell far short. In order to block Bolivia's return to the convention a full third of its signatories - or 63 - needed to object.

Among nations objecting were Germany, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, Britain, Japan, The Netherlands and Portugal. Notably, neither Peru nor Colombia, the world's two other cocaine-producing nations, filed objections. Nor did any other South American nation.

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Decriminalise drugs, inquiry by cross-party peers says

The possession and use of all illegal drugs should be decriminalised, a cross-party group of peers has said.

The least harmful should be regulated and sold in licensed shops, with labels detailing risks, the group concluded.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform (APPG) said criminal sanctions did not combat drug addiction, and only marginalised users.

A recent call by MPs for a royal commission on drug decriminalisation was rejected by the prime minister.

Mr Cameron's official spokesman said: "The prime minister's very strong, clear view is that the approach we currently have is the right one and is working."

The APPG - comprising two Conservatives, two Labour peers, one Liberal Democrat and four crossbenchers - took evidence from 31 experts and organisations, including the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

While the supply of the most dangerous substances should remain banned, users caught with a small quantity of any drug should not be penalised, it said.

"The Misuse of Drugs Act is counter-productive in attempting to reduce drug addiction and other drug harms to young people," said group chairwoman Baroness Meacher.

The 1971 act was in desperate need of reform, the group said.

'Relatively safe'

"What we're saying is there are drugs a great deal safer than alcohol and tobacco," Baroness Meacher told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Citing "legal highs" available as substitutes for ecstasy, she said: "If those much safer drugs were provided - say, in a chemist, very carefully labelled - at least you'd know what was in it.

"At the moment 60 million ecstasy tablets are sold every year to young people, all through criminal gangs and the illegal dealers.

"What we're saying is if young people are going to buy these things, is it not better that they know exactly what is in them? They will not be contaminated because they will be provided through legal channels. And the young people will in fact be relatively safe."

In support of decriminalising the use of all drugs, the report made reference to the model in Portugal, where there has been a fall in the number of young addicts under a form of decriminalisation.

The group said: "Some young people will always want to experiment and they are at real risk if they can only buy the less harmful drugs from the same dealers who are trying to push the most harmful ones.

"The illegal dealers also have a clear incentive to adulterate their product to increase their profits."

The chief executive of the charity DrugScope, Martin Barnes, said: "Today's report adds yet further weight and support for a review of drug legislation and the Misuse of Drugs Act.

"DrugScope supports the recent call by the Home Affairs Committee for a Royal Commission - which has the potential to secure cross-party support - to look at options for reform, including decriminalisation.

"While there is positive evidence of an overall decline in drug use, the drug market and related harms is changing, not least the emergence of so-called 'legal highs'. The emphasis should be on public health, prevention and education but it is also right to question whether current legal frameworks and approaches to enforcement are effective in addressing drug use and harms."

The drugs charity Release welcomed the report by the APPG and said: "The evidence shows that decriminalisation will reduce the harm related to drug use.

"The research we have published as part of our campaign calling for decriminalisation shows that drug use hasn't significantly increased in any of the countries that have already taken this measure."

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Drug Abuse Resistance Education

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The D.A.R.E. program is consistent with the "zero-tolerance orthodoxy of current U.S. drug control policy." According to researcher Dr. D. M. Gorman of the Rutgers University Center of Alcohol Studies, it supports the ideology and the “prevailing wisdom that exists among policy makers and politicians."[40] It also meets the needs of stake holders such as school districts,[41] parents, and law enforcement agencies. "D.A.R.E. America also has been very successful in marketing its program to the news media through a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign that highlights its popularity while downplaying criticism."[29]

Psychologists at the University of Kentucky concluded that "continued enthusiasm [for D.A.R.E.] shows Americans' stubborn resistance to apply science to drug policy."[42]

Marsha Rosenbaum, who headed the West Coast office of the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy reform organization, provided an opinion for a 1999 Village Voice article, "In D.A.R.E.'s worldview, Marlboro Light cigarettes, Bacardi rum, and a drag from a joint are all equally dangerous. For that matter, so is snorting a few lines of cocaine." D.A.R.E. "isn't really education. It's indoctrination."[43] Rosenbaum also stated, "Part of what makes D.A.R.E. so popular is that participants get lots of freebies. There are fluorescent yellow pens with the D.A.R.E. logo, tiny D.A.R.E. dolls, bumper stickers, graduation certificates, D.A.R.E. banners for school auditoriums, D.A.R.E. rulers, pennants, D.A.R.E. coloring books, and T-shirts for all D.A.R.E. graduates."[43]

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Drug policy must change, urges police chief [VIDEO]

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The government's drugs strategy in England and Wales is not working because it focuses too much on criminal prosecutions, a police chief has told the BBC.

Tim Hollis of Humberside Police says responsibility for drug policy should be moved from the Home Office to Health.

His words come on the same day as the British Medical Association called for addicts to be treated the same way as people with any other illness.

Mark Easton reports.

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Legalization's Biggest Enemies

Meet the drug warriors working to roll back hard-won advances in marijuana policy

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The marijuana legalization initiatives that triumphed in Washington and Colorado this past fall faced surprisingly little organized opposition. Money tells the story: Washington's pro-legalization initiative I-502 raised more than $6 million dollars from supporters, while the campaign against it pulled less than $16,000. In Colorado, meanwhile, proponents of Amendment 64 raised more than $2 million dollars, outdoing opponents, who raised about half a million. The anti-drug lobbyist groups that came out en masse against California's legalization initiative Proposition 19 in 2010 were hardly visible in either state, partly because the prison-industrial complex wields less political power there.

So what happens now? The biggest immediate threat to legalization in Washington and Colorado is the federal government, but even the feds might be hard-pressed to stomp out reform. "While there are actions the federal government and its U.S. Attorneys could theoretically take to – in the short term – impede the full implementation of a legal retail cannabis market in Colorado, Washington, and potentially elsewhere, the reality is that federal officials ultimately lack the manpower, public support, and as a consequence, the political will to – in the long term – turn back cannabis legalization," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "The genie is already out of the bottle, and it cannot be put back in."

But before marijuana legalization spreads from Washington and Colorado to other states, it will have to get past a group of hardened drug warriors, many of whom have developed a personal interest in maintaining prohibition. While most of these ideologues lack the authority to actually change laws, their larger purpose is to maintain the marijuana propaganda machine and push back against pro-legalization rhetoric. Here are the top five people threatening to halt the state-by-state legalization domino effect that many pot activists hope is coming soon:

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3. Michele Leonhart

Employees in what has been called the "arrest and prosecution industry" from the Drug Enforcement Agency down to local police chiefs and district attorneys often rely on the drug war not just for their paychecks, but their sense of purpose. As the DEA's chief administrator, Michele Leonhart is in charge of making sure the fight is on, regardless of where the facts lie. At a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing this June, Leonhart revealed the department's rigidity when she repeatedly, absurdly refused to acknowledge that marijuana is less harmful than other drugs, like heroin. Video of the exchange between Leonhart and Representative Jared Polis (D-Colorado) quickly went viral. The head of America's top drug agency simply refused to acknowledge what most Americans accept as simple truth: That different health risks are associated with different substances. Rather than make a fact-based case for DEA policy, Leonhart revealed the great lengths to which her organization will go to avoid conceding any ground.

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War On Drugs Has Not Been Worth The Costs: Poll

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Only one in five Americans think that America's war on drugs has been worth the costs, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

According to the new poll, 53 percent of Americans say that the war on drugs has not been worth the costs, while only 19 percent say it has been. Another 28 percent are not sure. Among political independents, the drug war is even less popular. The term "costs" in the survey was not defined, so respondents could have been considering both qualitative and quantitative costs of the war on drugs.

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The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Jan. 14-15 among 1,000 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, though that inherent variation does not take into account other potential sources of error, including statistical bias in the sample. The poll used a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance. Additional crosstabs for the poll are available here.

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Senate Judiciary Chair Declares Defeat In War On Drugs

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The Senate’s most senior member lamented the utter failure of the so-called “War on Drugs” and other draconian criminal justice policies Wednesday morning. During an address on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s 2013 agenda, Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) expressed alarm over high rates of imprisonment, harsh mandatory minimum sentences and federal crackdowns of marijuana laws legal under state law. “We have imprisoned people who should not be there and we have wasted money that should be spent on other things,” he said.

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Call off war on drugs, leader of Guatemala tells the west

Otto Pérez Molina says regulated narcotics market must be introduced to forestall threat to democracy from drug cartels

The west's "war on drugs" has failed and continuing with prohibition will only cost more lives, the Guatemalan president, Otto Pérez Molina, declares in an interview in the Observer.

In a further sign that the global consensus on drugs is fragmenting, Pérez Molina will use a debate at this week's Davos forum in Switzerland to attack the international community for its support for prohibition, and to call for a regulated narcotics market.

"I believe western countries fail to understand the reality that countries such as Guatemala and those of Central America have to live in," said Pérez Molina. "There has been plenty of talk, but no effective response. I believe, ultimately, that this is due to a lack of understanding on the part of western countries."

He said western leaders must look beyond their domestic agendas. "A message should be sent to the leaders of the countries with the biggest drug markets. They must think not only of… the context of their country, but of what is happening in the world, in regions such as Central America, where this destruction, this weakening of democracy, is happening. They must be open to recognising that the struggle against drugs, in the way it has been conducted, has failed."

Up to 400 tonnes of cocaine are transited through Guatemala each year, up from seven tonnes in 2008, because US-led operations in the Caribbean and the Pacific have prompted the cartels to seek alternative trafficking routes.

Pérez Molina said the cartels now pose a serious threat to the Guatemalan state. "Drug traffickers have been able to penetrate the institutions in this country by employing their resources and money," he said. "We are talking about the security forces, public prosecutors, judges. Drug money has penetrated these institutions and it becomes an activity that directly threatens the institutions and, therefore, the democracy of countries."

He said the cartels were getting stronger. "The flow of arms towards Central America from the north and deaths in our country have grown."

He does not favour full legalisation of narcotics but is arguing for the introduction of a regulated drugs market. His comments come shortly after two US states, Colorado and Washington, voted to legalise marijuana. He predicted that attitudes within the US government would see the country soften its stance on prohibition.

"There is going to be a change away from the paradigm of prohibitionism and the war against drugs, and there is going to be a process that will take us towards regulation. So I would expect a more flexible and more open position from President Obama in his second term."

Pérez Molina also said he has a message for western drug users. "They should reflect not only on the harm to their own health, but also on the deaths that enable them to consume that cocaine."

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George Soros backs Guatemalan president's call to end war on drugs

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros said the war on drugs had endangered political stability and security in many countries

George Soros has thrown his support behind the president of Guatemala's efforts to end the war on drugs.

Soros, who is best know for leading a run on the pound in 1992 that forced the UK out of the European exchange rate mechanism, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that world leaders had their best chance in at least two decades to rethink their approach to drugs.

"Drug policy has endangered political stability and security in many countries, and not just in Latin America," he said, citing Mali as one of several African countries to suffer.

Soros told a press conference that austerity was encouraging politicians, even in the US, to rethink the war on drugs. "Incarceration is hugely expensive … The cost of alternatives is smaller than the cost of incarceration," he said.

The billionaire philanthropist was speaking alongside the Guatemalan president, Pérez Molina, who announced that he would host a meeting of Latin American leaders to discuss the issue in June. The gathering will involve several groups including the Berkeley Foundation and Soros's own organisation. "Prohibition, this war on drugs, has seen cartels grow and the results are not what we looked for," Molina said. "There is a new trend towards drugs now – not war, but a new perspective and a different way of dealing with the problem."

Molina is determined to use Davos to shift the focus of the drugs debate from morality to science. He told the Observer last week that drug money had penetrated Guatemala's judicial system and security forces, and that he favoured a regulatory approach to drugs, rather than the extremes of a full-blown war on drugs or a policy of liberalisation.

Yasmin Batliwala, chair of Westminster Drug Project, agreed that politicians must tackle the problem by helping users rather than punishing them. "Drug dependency should be seen as a health and social problem, not a crime. Offenders with drug dependency and mental illness should be sent into treatment rather than to prison," she said.

"It is time to take drug dependency out of law enforcement and into the health framework, where it belongs. The war on drugs has failed and it is clear that we need a new approach at both a national and a global level."

Soros admitted that he did not know what the best solution to the problem was. "The answer will only be found by trial and error," he said.

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Briton Lindsay Sandiford sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug trafficking

Grandmother from Redcar was arrested in May after Bali police said they found £1.6m-worth of cocaine in her suitcase

A British woman has been sentenced to death after attempting to smuggle £1.6m-worth of cocaine into Bali.

Lindsay Sandiford, a 56-year-old grandmother, originally from Redcar in Teesside, was arrested for drug trafficking in May last year after local police said they found almost 5kg of cocaine in the lining of her suitcase.

There were gasps of surprise in Denpasar district court as the sentence was handed down; the prosecution had sought a 15-year prison term, not the death penalty, but the judge ruled that Sandiford's attempted crime had damaged Bali's image.

Sandiford wept as judges handed down the sentence, covering her face with a scarf as she left the courtroom to return to prison. She earlier told the court she was forced into taking the drugs into the country by gangsters who were threatening to hurt one of her children, saying "the lives of my children were in danger".

Sandiford is now expected to appeal within the next 14 days. If all legal avenues are exhausted she could ask the president for clemency. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has granted clemency to four drug offenders on death row since taking office in 2004.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said: "We can confirm that a British national is facing the death penalty in Indonesia. We remain in close contact with that national and continue to provide consular assistance. The UK remains opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances."

Delivering the sentence, a panel headed by Judge Amser Simanjuntak said Sandiford had damaged the image of Bali as a tourist destination and weakened the government's anti-drug programme. "We found no reason to lighten her sentence," he said.

In her witness statement earlier in the trial, Sandiford expressed regret for her actions. "I would like to begin by apologising to the Republic of Indonesia and the Indonesian people for my involvement. I would never have become involved in something like this but the lives of my children were in danger and I felt I had to protect them," she said.

During the trial, her lawyer read out a statement from her son that said: "I love my mother very much and have a very close relationship with her. I know that she would do anything to protect me. I cannot imagine what I would do if she was sentenced to death in relation to these charges."

Reprieve, a legal action charity, said Sandiford was a vulnerable target for drugs traffickers, pointing to an expert report from Dr Jennifer Fleetwood that was put before the court. Fleetwood concluded that Sandiford's vulnerability would have made her an ideal target for drugs traffickers, noting that: "There is … evidence to suggest that a trafficker would seek someone who was vulnerable. Having reviewed extracts from Lindsay's medical records I know that Lindsay has a history of mental health issues … This may have unfortunately made her an attractive target for threats, manipulation and coercion."

Harriet McCulloch, an investigator at Reprieve, said Sandiford maintained that she only agreed to carry the package to Bali after receiving threats against the lives of her family. "She is clearly not a drug kingpin – she has no money to pay for a lawyer, for the travel costs of defence witnesses or even for essentials like food and water," she said. "She has co-operated fully with the Indonesian authorities but has been sentenced to death while the gang operating in the UK, Thailand and Indonesia remain free to target other vulnerable people."

Martin Horwood, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, where Sandiford lived previously, said the sentence came as a shock, as Indonesian prosecutors had not sought it.

"The days of the death penalty ought to be past. This is not the way that a country that now values democracy and human rights should really be behaving," he told BBC News. "When the prosecutors asked for something less than the death sentence, for a custodial sentence, then I guess I'm afraid some of us perhaps relaxed a little and this has come as a real shock that the judges have actually delivered a sentence which is obviously much, much harsher than the one that was actually requested by prosecutors."

Three other Britons were alleged to be involved in the same plot to smuggle drugs into Bali. Julian Ponder faces being executed by firing squad if found guilty of playing a role in the smuggling scheme when his verdict is given on Wednesday. He is accused of receiving the drugs in Bali, but claimed he was trapped.

His lawyers said he was told Sandiford was delivering a present for his child's birthday and, when he met her to receive the gift, police officers arrested him. His partner, Rachel Dougall, 38, from Brighton, received a one-year jail sentence in the Denpasar district court last month. She had already been in jail for eight months awaiting trial and could be reunited with her daughter by April.

Property developer Paul Beales, a long-time Bali resident, was also spared a harsh sentence when judges gave him four years for possession of a small amount of hashish.

Indonesia has one of the strictest drug policies in the world, with about 40 foreigners on death row convicted of drug crimes, according to a March 2012 report by Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Five foreigners have been executed since 1998, all for drug crimes, according to the institute. There have been no executions in the country since 2008, when 10 people were put to death.

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OM eist maximale straf, hasjbaas gevlogen

Met 8 jaar cel heeft het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) dinsdag voor de rechtbank in Arnhem de hoogst mogelijke straf geëist tegen een 38-jarige Arnhemse hasjbaas, hoewel die inmiddels in Marokko woont en niet uitgeleverd kan worden.

Justitie beschuldigt Ahmed C. van het invoeren en doorverkopen van 65.000 kilo hasj en het witwassen van 23,5 miljoen euro tussen 2005 en 2008. Zijn 49-jarige halfbroer Khalid el B, die altijd al in Marokko verbleef, moet wegens het witwassen van minstens 9 miljoen euro 4 jaar cel opgelegd krijgen, vindt de aanklager.

De officier van justitie gelooft dat C. een enorme internationale hasjhandel bestierde en dat hij de winsten gebruikte voor huizen, auto's, hotels, schepen en investeringen in nieuwe transporten. 'Kijk je naar de enorme schaal van deze zaak, dan verbleken zogenaamd gevestigde hasjcriminelen als Willem Holleeder en wijlen Charles Zwolsman bij deze verdachte', stelde de aanklager.

Hoewel de officier niet aantoont dat C. zelf ooit een gram hasj aanraakte, bewijzen onder meer een aangetroffen hasjboekhouding, telefoonverkeer, onderschepte transporten door anderen, geldstromen en verhullende leenconstructies dat C. spin in dit hasjweb was, vindt het OM.

De winsten werden witgewassen in huizen in Nederland, Spanje en Marokko, via bankrekeningen van de halfbroer en met voorgenomen investeringen in bizar luxe jachten. 'Ik ben van plan om 23 miljoen en 9 miljoen van de heren te plukken in aparte zaken, hoewel ik denk dat C. inmiddels genoeg hotels heeft om zich zelfs dan nooit meer zorgen te maken.'

Volgens advocaat Bart Nooitgedacht, die in de zaak twee keer succesvol wraakte, moet de rechtbank de zaak meteen naar de prullenbak verwijzen omdat justitie allerlei spelregels heeft overtreden. Zo niet, dan is de zaak volgens hem überhaupt niet te bewijzen omdat de aanklager van alles aanneemt zonder dat er deugdelijk bewijs is. Als de rechtbank daar anders over denkt, vindt hij dat de halfbroers alsnog een vrijgeleide moeten krijgen om hun verhaal te komen doen zonder het risico dat ze direct achter slot en grendel verdwijnen.

De uitspraak wordt in februari verwacht.

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Nederland blijft spil in drugshandel

^{Nederland is Europa's 'hoofdproducent' van harddrugs}

Of het nu gaat om de internationale handel in cocaïne, cannabis of XTC, Nederland is en blijft een sleutelrol vervullen. Dat blijkt uit een rapport van Europol.

België en Nederland zijn een belangrijke doorvoerhaven voor cocaïne, zo staat in het rapport.

Beide landen vervullen ook een belangrijke rol in de internationale handel in hasj. Nederland heeft ook een belangrijke rol in de handel van methamfetamine naar Scandinavië.

'Hoofdproducent' van harddrugs
Nederland wordt ook door veel andere Europese landen aangeduid als het land bij uitstek waar xtc vandaan komt. Nederland is Europa's 'hoofdproducent' van de harddrug, zo stelt Europol.

Europol meldt verder dat Chinese bedrijven en groothandels in Nederland de doorvoer van synthetische drugs binnen de Europese Unie faciliteren, doordat ze gebruik maken van een netwerk van Chinese gemeenschappen. Ook neemt het aantal verdachten van Marokkaanse afkomst in de handel in synthetische drugs toe.

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De puurste en goedkoopste coke te vinden in Nederland

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'Het is belangrijk dat we een beter beeld krijgen van de impact van drugshandel op de Europese samenleving en economie', verklaarde eurocommissaris Cecilia Malström van Binnenlandze Zaken in het voorwoord het belang van het onderzoek.

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Amerikaanse gevangenissen barsten uit hun voegen

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Het rapport maakt duidelijk dat steeds meer gevangenen veroordeeld zijn voor inbreuken op de immigratiewet en wapenbezit, maar dat de grootste groep achter slot en grendel zit voor relatief onbeduidende drugsmisdrijven. Deze aanpak doet de misdaadcijfers niet dalen, waarschuwt CRS-analist Nathan James, auteur van het rapport.

Hij verwijst naar misdrijven waarbij iemand anders de plaats van de gearresteerde inneemt. "Als je een serieverkrachter opsluit, kan je er zeker van zijn dat hij niet meer zal toeslaan en dat er hoogstwaarschijnlijk ook niemand zijn plaats inneemt. Maar bij een drugdealer ligt dat anders. Het is niet zeker dat de drughandel stopt als je een dealer oppakt", legt James uit.

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Fears of violence creeping into Mexico City

War on drugs has largely stayed away from the capital, but now police are warning it could spread.

The war on drugs in Mexico has largely stayed away from its capital city. But now some police chiefs are warning the violence could spread.

On Sunday, 18 suspected members of La Familia cartel were arrested in connection to recent killings in Mexico City's suburbs.

Adam Raney reports.

Fears of violence creeping into Mexican capital

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Colombiaanse FARC wil legalisering drugs

(Novum/AP) - De rebellenbeweging FARC heeft de Colombiaanse regering woensdag opgeroepen de kweek van marihuana, papaver en coca te legaliseren, evenals de persoonlijke consumptie van drugs afkomstig van deze planten. De hoofdonderhandelaar van de FARC bij de vredesgesprekken met de regering, Ivan Marquez, presenteerde het voorstel als onderdeel van het standpunt dat de rebellen innemen in de gesprekken.

"De legalisering van de consumptie samen met een goede scholing van jongeren, zoals dat in het verleden is gebeurd met tabak en alcohol, kan ook met cocaïne worden gedaan", zei Marquez. Hij zei ook dat Colombia, tegelijk met de legalisering, het probleem moet oplossen 'van de boeren die uit economische noodzaak coca verbouwen'.

De FARC heeft lang geld verdiend aan de kweek van coca, het basisingrediënt van cocaïne, om zijn gewapende strijd te financieren. De Colombiaanse en andere regeringen beschuldigen de FARC ervan betrokken te zijn bij illegale drugshandel, waaronder het smokkelen van drugs naar Venezuela. De rebellen ontkennen die beschuldigingen. Deskundigen betwijfelen of voor een vredesakkoord lokale FARC-commandanten die geld verdienen aan de drugshandel overgehaald kunnen worden ermee te stoppen.

President Juan Manuel Santos heeft gezegd open te staan voor een debat over de legalisering van drugs. Hij heeft de Verenigde Staten en andere ontwikkelde landen opgeroepen hun verantwoordelijkheid te nemen als grootste consumenten van illegale drugs.

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Marijuana Bills introduced in Congress: Efforts Surge to Reform Marijuana Laws

Driven by a groundswell of public opinion, Colorado and Washington state last November became the first states in the U.S. to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. That wave of support, it now seems clear, has echoed through the U.S. Congress, which Tuesday formally questioned the federal government’s prohibitionist drug policy in the form of marijuana reform bills.

Representatives Jared Polis, D-Colo., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., introduced two separate bills that would drastically change U.S. marijuana laws by addressing what they say are the human and fiscal costs associated with marijuana-related arrests.

It’s not the first time marijuana reform bill have been introduced in Congress, but Tuesday’s measures are considered historic in scope and give further momentum to a marijuana legalization movement that has surged recently from Colorado to Washington to Latin America.

The Polis bill, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act, would call on the federal government to regulate marijuana much like it does alcohol. Under the measure, cannabis growers would have to obtain a federal permit in states that legalize the drug. The bill does not force any state to legalize pot, but it does allow states that approve recreational and medical marijuana regulatory systems to operate without the fear of crackdowns from the Drug Enforcement Administration. The measure would also transfer authority to regulate marijuana from the DEA to a renamed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana and Firearms.

“In my short time in Congress, and certainly over the last few decades, Americans have increasingly come to the conclusion that the drug war is a failed policy,” said Polis. “While substance abuse is a real problem we need to address, we need to address it increasingly as a public health issue more than a criminal issue.”

The Blumenauer bill, meanwhile, would create a taxation framework for pot similar to that in place for tobacco and alcohol. The Marijuana Tax Equity Act would impose an excise tax of 50% on the “first sale” of marijuana, from growers to processors or retailers. The measure would also tax pot producers $1,000 annually and other marijuana-related businesses $500. Blumenauer said that imposing such a tax would help lower the national deficit while providing funds for drug treatment centers and law enforcement units.

“There is an opportunity for us to make, at a minimum, a $100 billion difference over the next 10 years,” said Blumenauer.

There were 1.5 million drugs arrests made in the U.S. in 2011, according to the FBI. Of those arrests, over 660,000 were for possession of marijuana. The enforcement of federal marijuana laws, including incarceration, costs at least $5.5 billion annually, according to study by the CATO Institute. In New York state alone, the estimated cost of marijuana related arrests surpasses $75 million every year, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit that supports drug policy reform.

Passage of the two bills remains a long shot, according to analysts, but Rep. Blumenauer said the measures are just the beginning of a Congressional push to reform what he calls “antiquated, ineffective and, in some cases, nonsensical federal policies and laws.” Blumenauer pointed to a growing swell of support for marijuana reform measures among his colleagues on Capitol Hill.

In December, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he intends to hold hearings on the conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws. And Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, D-Calif., is soon expected to introduce a measure that would allow states to establish pot policies without federal interference.

“These are the first two of what will probably be eight, 10 bills or more,” said Blumenauer, referring to Tuesday’s measures. Added Polis: “There is growing support within the Democratic caucus and also within the Republican caucus for reexamining the future of the drug war.”

The sudden flurry of federal action on cannabis comes as national polls highlight an outpouring of support for marijuana legalization in recent years. A Gallup poll in October showed that a record high 50% of Americans believe marijuana should be legal. By contrast, just over 30% of Americans held the same view in 2000. Support for medical marijuana is even stronger. A 2012 Gallup poll indicated that 70% of Americans believe it should be legal for a doctor to prescribe pot to reduce pain and suffering.

“Congress is frequently a lagging indicator for public opinion,” said Polis. “Public opinion is that it should be up to states and local governments how to deal with marijuana—it’s just a question of how we’re going to catch up, not if.”

Congressmen Blumenauer And Polis Move To End The Federal Prohibition Of Marijuana

Congressmen Blumenauer And Polis Move To End The Federal Prohibition Of Marijuana

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PvdA wil gemeentelijke wietplantages toestaan

Minister Ivo Opstelten (Veiligheid en Justitie) moet zijn verzet tegen de plannen voor gemeentelijke wietplantages opgeven. Daarvoor pleit de PvdA. Gemeentelijke kwekerijen zullen volgens de partij een oplossing bieden voor de georganiseerde misdaad.

PvdA-Kamerlid Myrthe Hilkens zei vrijdagmorgen op Radio1 dat de partij Opstelten er niet toe wil bewegen om onmiddellijk met dat experiment te beginnen, want 'dat ligt wel wat complexer'. 'Wat wij zouden willen is dat er een moment zou komen waarop we in één klap kunnen overstappen op een nieuw beleid', aldus Hilkens.

'Het kabinet is daar tot nu toe te verdeeld over geweest. Mijn partij wil wel gaan praten met die gemeenten die al hebben aangegeven niet onwelwillend te staan tegenover eigen wietteelt.'

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Recordvangst hasj in Westland

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Video Een vondst van 6,5 duizend kilo hasj in het Westland; volgens de politie en het Openbaar Ministerie een recordvangst.

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Grenades go off near U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

NUEVA LOREDO, Mexico, Feb. 8 (UPI) — Three grenades exploded in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just outside the U.S. Consulate, rattling the neighborhood but causing no injuries, officials said.

The grenades apparently were used in a fight Thursday between members of the Zetas drug cartel and the Gulf cartel, which is trying to reclaim the territory, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Fighting between the two groups, one-time allies, has left a string of burned-out homes and bodies. Sources told the Morning News seven people have been killed in recent days, including three Americans.

Nuevo Laredo, an entry into Texas via Interstate 35, is known as the Zetas’ headquarters.

The Morning News said the Gulf cartel is believed to be backed by the Sinaloa crime organization as it tries to eliminate the Zetas and control the profitable drug route into the United States.

“Things will only heat up,” one person, speaking anonymously, told the newspaper. “This thing goes in waves, and we’re about to see a huge wave.”

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Federal Prosecutors Will Go After Washington And Colorado Marijuana Distributors

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Federal prosecutors will crack down on recreational marijuana dispensaries and growers even in states where they are legal, U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told a Canadian news magazine this week. The statement appears to be the first from a federal official to state explicitly that the federal government will prosecute dispensaries and producers once they are licensed in Washington and Colorado. During an interview on 20/20, President Obama told Barbara Walters only that the federal government has “bigger fish to fry” than going after recreational users, but did not address those who produce or distribute marijuana. MacLean’s reports:

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Peru Plans to Reduce Coca Production First Time in Eight Years

Peru plans to destroy coca bushes this year at a faster pace than growers expand output as the government seeks to curtail cultivation that has expanded for six straight years.

The government will eradicate a record 22,000 hectares (54,363 acres) of coca plants this year, which will reduce the size of the crop by 6 percent, Carmen Masias, the nation’s drug czar, told reporters in Lima.

Peru’s cultivation of the plant used to make cocaine increased 2 percent to 62,500 hectares in 2011, according to the United Nations, even after the government removed about 10,000 hectares of bushes. The Andean nation, which previously relied solely on foreign aid to finance eradication, will contribute 40 percent of this year’s $30 million budget to expand the program, Masias said. Total spending on the drug fight will rise 16 percent to $278 million.

“Eradication is completely indispensable but must go hand in hand with development” of alternative crops, such as cocoa and palm oil, Masias said. The U.S. government, the main source of drugs aid to Peru, agreed last year to provide $135 million through 2017 for alternative development, she said.

President Ollanta Humala’s government removed about 14,000 hectares of coca bushes last year, 40 percent more than in 2011, to slow growth in a crop that the United Nations says now rivals Colombia’s as the world’s largest.

The drive to curtail cultivation will be extended to the valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro Rivers, an area of jungle in the south of the country where holdout members of the Shining Path, a Maoist insurgency group, are active, Masias said.

The government is also removing coca bushes for the first time in the Monzon valley in northern Peru, where the crop has been grown for the drug trade for 80 years, she said.

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Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail

How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it

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The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit – but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses.

People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greedheads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching­ sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated­ with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder – well, aiding and abetting it, anyway.

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That nobody from the bank went to jail or paid a dollar in individual fines is nothing new in this era of financial crisis. What is different about this settlement is that the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this particular kind of criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC might undermine the world economy. "Had the U.S. authorities decided to press criminal charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference to announce the settlement, "HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized."

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Police chief of Mexico border city is missing

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The police chief of the violent Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo is missing, authorities said Monday.

Tamaulipas state prosecutors said they have opened an investigation into the whereabouts of Roberto Balmori Garza, police chief of the city across the border from Laredo, Texas.

Tamaulipas prosecutors said in a brief statement that state officials in Nuevo Laredo will be in charge of the investigation.

Local media reported that two of Balmori Garza's brothers were found shot dead Sunday inside the trunk of a car in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon. One of his brothers was a federal investigator, media reported.

Tamaulipas prosecutors' spokesman Ruben Dario said Balmori Garza disappeared over the weekend. He said he couldn't give any other information on the case or confirm the media reports of the death of Balmori Garza's brothers.

Nuevo Laredo, a stronghold of the Zetas drug cartel, has been the scene of bloody drug-gang turf battles since the beginning of the year.

Two years ago, gunmen killed a retired army general who had been police chief of Nuevo Laredo for a month. Two of his bodyguards also were slain and two suffered wounds.

The Zetas, known for its viciousness, has been fighting its former ally, the Gulf cartel, in Mexico's northeast since early 2010.

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Mexican drug cartels penetrate southern Europe

BRUSSELS – One of Mexico’s largest and most dangerous drug cartels has expanded its activities throughout the world, including Spain, Italy and the Western Balkans.

“The reach of drug trafficking cartels, in particular the Sinaloa cartel, is one that is frankly global,” said the US deputy assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, Brian Nichols, on Thursday (8 November) in Brussels.

American media cite the cartels as reaping billions in profits from hubs stationed only in and around the United States.

But the Sinaloa cartel retains a special status.

In 2010, it allegedly infiltrated the Mexican government, placing informants to secure territory inside the country and to take out rivals. Some, working in conjunction with local crime lords, have already been arrested in Spain and in Italy.

Speaking to journalists in Brussels, Nichols said the cartel is principally interested in moving cocaine but also has interest in marijuana, methamphetamines and ecstasy.

“In terms of their presence in southern Europe, I think they are looking for an entry point, they are looking for markets where they can move their products,” said Nichols.

The globalised nature of the drug cartels has pushed national enforcement authorities to work closer together.

Nichols said the US is engaged with the Dutch and the UK in the Caribbean. Agents from Italy, Spain and the UK in Central America are working closely with US rule of law and counter-narcotic experts to investigate and crack down on the networks.

“Most of the leads we follow up on in Europe are developed in the Americas, whether it’s Mexico or Columbia or Peru,” said Nichols.

The Mexicans are not the only ones with an acute business interest in the Western Balkans. Colombians and Peruvians are also making in-roads.

“People in Western Balkans are talking to their suppliers in Mexico, in South America,” said Nichols.

The joint efforts of crime fighting units from across the globe is a relatively new phenomenon.

South American countries, for instance, are partnering investigations in the Western Balkans and sharing their knowledge and intelligence. “[It] previously is not something you would have seen,” said Nichols.

EU secret police

But in Europe, some elusive cross-border investigations and police networks have been in place for at least two decades.

An inquiry by a handful of members from the left-leaning group in Germany’s Bundestag received some insight into activities over the summer after pressing the government for information for over two years.

According to their research, the Dutch launched an International Working Group on Police Undercover Activities (IWG) in 1989. The group has grown.

Agents from all around Europe allegedly meet to exchange experience on all matters related to the covert deployment of police officers.

A source familiar with the group told the deputies that one such meeting in 2007 included “police authority representatives from European states, as well as from Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA.”

Germany’s federal government told the deputies in May that its own foreign agents are carefully selected and take on considerable risks “that put their lives and health in danger.”

German officials also stated they rely on the dedication and specialist expertise of the agents when it comes to combating the most serious of crimes like human trafficking, with some organised crime syndicates or networks are involved in murder and kidnappings.

“[This] can only be opposed effectively by the German state if there are such officers who express a willingness to undertake covert operations,” the federal government told the deputies.

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Man zwaargewond door meerdere politiekogels bij drugsactie

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De man sloeg op de vlucht na een geplande drugsactie van de politie. Toen hij er in zijn auto vandoor ging, zette de politie met de nodige wagens de achtervolging in. Op de rotonde bij de Merwedelaan en Rijnstraat ramde de man een andere auto. De inzittenden daarvan raakten niet gewond.

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Mexico, Central America discuss war on drugs

San Jose (US), Feb 20 (AFP) Leaders of Mexico and Central America gathered today for a summit focused primarily on the relentless violence sweeping the region from the US-backed war on drug trafficking.

The United States says 90 per cent of the cocaine shipped there from South America passes through Mexico and Central America. In Mexico alone some 70,000 people have died in drug-related violence since the government deployed army troops to fight drug cartels.

Central America in the 1980s was ravaged by civil wars, and now finds itself again awash in blood as its serves as a gateway to the north, with penetration from Mexican cartels and grinding poverty that makes lucrative drug trafficking a lure hard to resist.

The violence has mainly affected an area known as the Northern Triangle. It is formed by Honduras, likened to one big airport for clandestine drug flights; Guatemala, penetrated by the most bloodthirsty of the drug cartels, Los Zetas; and El Salvador, which is enjoying a respite after a truce among street gangs.

The summit here in the capital of Costa Rica will be attended by Mexico's new president, Enrique Pena Nieto, Guatemalan President Otto Perez and President Porfirio Diaz of Honduras. It was not clear if Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua or Ricardo Martinelli of Panama will show up. Guatemala's Perez has called in recent international forums such as the Davos meeting in Switzerland for a change in strategy, saying the US-backed hardline approach is yielding nothing but dead bodies. He has suggested legalising drugs to remove the profit motive.

Pena Nieto has not commented on this idea. But he has promised a new strategy based on better cooperation among countries and more intelligence work, although he has kept army troops deployed in the war on drugs.

The countries at the summit will also discuss how to boost trade. Trade between Mexico and its smaller neighbours to the south has already quintupled over the past decade to USD 8.2 billion, according to the Mexican finance ministry.

This will be the Mexican president's first trip outside the country since taking power in December.

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Rethinking Drug Policy Assumptions

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Contrary to the above assumption, the “Iron Law of Prohibition” states that prohibition leads to higher dosage levels and more dangerous modes of administration. These consequences follow naturally from the illegal market. Black marketeers want to pack as much of an outlawed substance as possible into the minimum volume, which is the definition of a high-dosage level; and purchasers, because of the inflated black market price, want the biggest bang for their buck. Similarly, because injecting is so efficient a way of using an expensive substance, there is an economic motivation to use this more dangerous means of administration.

Under Prohibition, the United States went from a nation of drinkers of safe beer (low-dosage alcohol) to drinkers of higher-dosage and often contaminated whiskey. After Prohibition the country gradually returned to its preference for beer. Similarly, over time users have gone from smoked opium to injected heroin; from low-dosage cocaine in the original Coca-Cola to inhaled powdered cocaine to crack; and from lower THC levels in marijuana to higher levels. In addition, because marijuana is bulky and has a strong odor it has the black market disadvantages of taking up a lot of space and being relatively easy to detect. This drives up the price of marijuana relative to cocaine and heroin, and creates an economic incentive for users to switch from soft to hard drugs.

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A major study published in American Psychologist back in 1990 contradicted the assumption that drugs hook victims. Its findings, summarized in the studys Abstract, have long been known, but are startling to many non-experts, and are worth quoting here:

. The relation between psychological characteristics and drug use was investigated in subjects studied longitudinally, from preschool through age 18. Adolescents who had engaged in some drug experimentation (primarily with marijuana) were the best-adjusted in the sample. Adolescents who used drugs frequently were maladjusted, showing a distinct personality syndrome marked by interpersonal alienation, poor impulse control, and manifest emotional distress. Adolescents who, by age 18, had never experimented with any drug were relatively anxious, emotionally constricted, and lacking in social skills. Psychological differences between frequent drug users, experimenters, and abstainers could be traced to the earliest years of childhood and related to the quality of parenting received. The findings indicate that (a) problem drug use is a symptom, not a cause, of personal and social maladjustment, and (b) the meaning of drug use can be understood only in the context of an individuals personality structure and developmental history. It is suggested that current efforts at drug prevention are misguided to the extent that they focus on symptoms, rather than on the psychological syndrome underlying drug abuse.

In other words, instead of saying that drugs hook victims, a better causal model for drug abuse is to say that people with significant problems self-medicate. In addition, this description of drug use fits with what we know about adolescence. That is, in our individualistic culture, adolescence is a time of experimentation with different options during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Teenagers work summer or part-time jobs, and they are exposed to courses in a variety of disciplines so that they can make informed career decisions. Dating is an institution that provides young people with experience in forming, maintaining, and dissolving intimate relationships, so that they have a basis for selecting a life partner. In a similar way, teen experimentation with forbidden psychoactive substances can be seen as a way of learning their effects so that people can decide whether to use them in the future.

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'Drugsafval kan leiden tot ecologische ramp'

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Staatsbosbeheer zegt dat de kans op een ecologische ramp reëel is nu steeds vaker drugsafval in de natuur wordt aangetroffen. Het gaat om overblijfselen van de fabricage van synthetische drugs, die vaak bestaan uit vaten met zuren en chemicalieën.

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Kustwacht verhindert drugstransport in Cariben

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De toestel spotte vorige week tijdens een routinevlucht een verdacht vaartuig waarna de Amerikaanse kustwacht werd ingeschakeld. Toen die naderde brachten de verdachten de boot met circa 500 kilo drugs tot zinken.

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De onderschepping had plaats in het kader van de operatie Martillo. Hierin proberen een aantal landen in de regio een eind te maken aan de drugssmokkel.

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US drugs prosecutors switch sides to defend accused Colombian traffickers

After working to take down cartels, former officials say America's 'war on drugs' is misguided and the human cost too high

US prosecutors and other senior officials who spearheaded the war against drug cartels have quit their jobs to defend Colombian cocaine traffickers, saying their clients are not bad people and that United States drug policy is wrong.

Senior former assistant US attorneys and Drug Enforcement Administration agents are turning years of experience in investigating, indicting and extraditing narcos to the advantage of the alleged traffickers they now represent.

"I'm not embarrassed about the fact that I changed sides," said Robert Feitel, a Washington-based attorney who used to pursue traffickers and money launderers at the Department of Justice. "And I'm not shy about saying that no one knows better how a prosecutor thinks. That's what people get when they come to me. There are lots of hidden things to know about these cases."

The fence-jumpers include Bonnie Klapper, who was feted for taking down the Norte del Valle cartel, Leo Arreguin, who headed the DEA's office in Bogota, and reportedly former members of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Ice. They work in separate legal practices with their own clients, not as a group.

In interviews with the Guardian, Feitel and Klapper spoke of recognising the humanity of their clients and called for alternatives to a four-decade-old "war on drugs" which costs billions of dollars and incarcerates thousands.

Feitel (pictured) called for cocaine and cannabis to be legalised and complained that extradited drug suspects were treated worse than Guantanamo Bay detainees. "I don't think I could ever be a prosecutor again. The human drama that I see on this side is sometimes more than I can bear."

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How the Sinaloa cartel “won” Mexico’s drug war

Sixty thousand lives later, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's crew remains in tact -- and could be getting stronger

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Compared to its humble beginnings in the 1980s, when it controlled only a single Pacific trafficking route into Arizona, the cartel’s territorial expansion has been staggering. Key areas it now controls include most of Mexico’s Pacific coast states and parts of central Mexico.

Even more impressive is its global reach. Sinaloa operatives have been arrested from Egypt to Argentina and from Europe to Malaysia. Properties attributed to El Chapo Guzmán have been seized in Europe and South America. US law enforcement reports that the group is now present in all major American cities. Recent US court documents involving the case of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, Mayo Zambada’s son, even suggest the Sinaloa cartel now controls the cocaine trade in Australia.

Earlier this month, Chicago named El Chapo Guzmán public enemy number one, the first to receive that title since the citys legendary crime boss, Al Capone.

Sinaloas share in the drug market is titanic. Even by the most sober estimates, Mexican drug trafficking amounts to over $6 billion per year, with El Chapos Sinaloa cartel controlling an estimated half of that market, raking in billions each year.

No wonder Forbes has listed El Chapo Guzmán on its annual list of billionaires since 2009.

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Noorwegen: heroïne-roken gedogen

Noorwegen wil het roken van heroïne gaan gedogen. De regering hoopt het aantal overdoses te kunnen terugdringen door drugsverslaafden van het injecteren van de drug af te krijgen.

Het land kent een van de hoogste percentages drugsverslaafden in heel Europa. Jaarlijks komen er meer mensen om door drugsgebruik dan door verkeersongelukken: 262 tegen 168 in 2011. Ongeveer eenderde van die sterfgevallen kwam door heroïne.

Chinezen

In Noorwegen zijn tussen de 8800 en 12.500 heroïneverslaafden, waarvan het grootste deel de drug spuit. Verslaafden kiezen vaak voor injecteren, omdat het goedkoper is, bovendien is de roes sneller en heviger. Dergelijk gebruik werd de laatste jaren oogluikend toegestaan.

Het roken van heroïne (chinezen) is minder gevaarlijk dan injecteren: behalve dat er een kleinere hoeveelheid voor nodig is, is de kans op overdraagbare ziektes kleiner. Minister Støre van Gezondheid vindt daarom dat chinezen ook gedoogd moet worden.

Niet legaal

Støre benadrukt dat gedogen niet betekent dat de drug legaal wordt. "Ik ben pragmatisch. Het gaat mij om de resultaten", zei hij op televisie. "Als injecteren meer risico's geeft, dan is het beter om roken ook te gedogen."

Volgens Støre staat een meerderheid van het Noorse parlement achter de plannen.

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Theresa May orders study into which drug laws work in other countries

Review will look at 'depenalisation' in Portugal, but home secretary rejects MPs' call for rapid royal commission on reform

An international "what works" study of drug laws, including Portugal's policy of scrapping criminal penalties for personal possession, has been ordered by the home secretary, Theresa May.

But she has rejected a call from the Commons home affairs select committee for a rapid royal commission to report by 2015 on how to reform Britain's 40-year-old drug laws.

The international review, to be led by the Liberal Democrat Home Office minister, Jeremy Browne, will include a visit to Portugal where the policy of "depenalisation" with its strong emphasis on getting users into treatment rather than jail clearly impressed MPs. The Portuguese policy stops short of decriminalisation as trafficking and dealing in drugs remain illegal and subject to strong police enforcement action.

The study will also look at the effects of the recent decisions in the American states of Washington and Colorado to legalise marijuana for recreational as well as medicinal use. It will also look at the international response to the rapid emergence of new psychoactive drugs or "legal highs" which have been appearing on the market at the rate of more than one a week.

The move represents a significant official acknowledgement of the recent shift in the Westminster consensus towards drug policy reform, as well as the more radical approach of the Lib Dem ministers in the coalition.

"The government does not believe there is a case for fundamentally re-thinking the UK's approach to drugs – a royal commission is simply not necessary," says May's official response to the MPs.

"Nonetheless, we must continue to listen and learn from emerging trends, new evidence and international comparators. In particular we will build on the commitment in the drug strategy to 'review new evidence of what works in other countries and what we can learn from it' and conduct a study on international comparators to learn more from the approach in other countries," says May.

The home secretary's official response says the government has no intention of decriminalising drugs but adds that any debate of alternative approaches should be focused on clear evidence and analysis.

She adds that the review will look at a number of countries that cover "a spectrum of approaches" to drug policy and assess their effectiveness in cutting drug use and reducing harm to individuals and communities. Its terms of reference will include looking at best practice as well as the different legal responses to the emergence of "legal highs". Britain has a system of temporary banning orders for the new psychoactive drugs which remain legal to possess but not sell or import while a full evaluation is carried out.

Browne said drugs were illegal because they were dangerous and destroyed lives and blighted communities.

"Drug usage remains at its lowest level since records began with National Treatment Agency statistics published yesterday showing that the number of heroin and crack cocaine users in England has fallen below 300,000 for the first time," said the minister responsible for crime prevention.

"We have listened carefully to the recommendations made by the home affairs select committee and will shortly undertake an international study to gather evidence on successful approaches that other countries are taking."

Drug reform policy groups, including Release and Transform, both responded to the announcement on Twitter by questioning how open-minded the home secretary could remain while ruling out decriminalisation before the study got under way.

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"Drug reform policy groups, including Release and Transform, both responded to the announcement on Twitter by questioning how open-minded the home secretary could remain while ruling out decriminalisation before the study got under way".

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Former DEA chiefs worry Obama abandoning drug war

Eight former directors of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said in an open letter published Tuesday (PDF) that they’re worried the Obama administration is abandoning the war on drugs by allowing Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana.

“Our earlier attempts to have the Attorney General announce that he will enforce the Controlled Substances Act in Colorado and Washington have fallen upon deaf ears,” former DEA administrator Peter Bensinger said in an advisory sent to Raw Story. “Sadly, at this point we can only conclude that it is probably not Eric Holder’s decision.”

All eight former DEA chiefs — John Bartels, Peter Bensinger, Robert Bonner, Thomas Constantine, Asa Hutchinson, John Lawn, Donnie Marshall and Francis Mullen — addressed their letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who will question Attorney General Eric Holder during a Wednesday session of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bensinger, who ran the drug war under the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, added that if the Obama administration fails to sue officials in Washington and Colorado to stop legalization in its tracks, it essentially means Holder “is willing to abandon his responsibilities as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States.”

The letter coincides with a statement by the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board, which urged the Obama administration on Tuesday to stand up for America’s international obligations to uphold marijuana prohibition.

Critics of marijuana prohibition, on the other hand, point to the social harms caused by criminalizing millions of people around the world every year for using a substance that’s less harmful than society’s intoxicant of choice, alcohol. A 2010 study published in the medical journal Lancet ranked alcohol as the most harmful inebriating drug of all, even above heroin and crack cocaine. Tobacco, similarly, was ranked roughly as damaging to society as cocaine.

Despite the latest science on drug abuse and the potential medical value of marijuana-based drugs, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 considers marijuana to be a Schedule I drug with no medical value whatsoever. That scheduling means the U.S. government considers the herb to be more dangerous than substances like oxycodone, morphine and opium.

DEA officials who signed the letter to Leahy and Grassley also warned that officials in Colorado and Washington who engage in the legalization rulemaking process are committing felony crimes.

“Indeed, those who carry out the Colorado and Washington legislation are aiding and abetting violation of federal law, itself a felony under federal law,” former DEA administrator Robert Bonner wrote. “This may not be the perfect storm, but it can only lead to the perfect train wreck. That is why we are urging Attorney General Holder, as he did in the case of the Arizona immigration law, to file a lawsuit challenging the Colorado and Washington laws without delay.”

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, sees things differently. “The former DEA chiefs’ statement can best be seen as a self-interested plea to validate the costly and failed policies they championed but that Americans are now rejecting at the ballot box,” he said in an advisory. “They obviously find it hard to admit that – at least with respect to marijuana – their legacy will be much the same as a previous generation of agents who once worked for the federal Bureau of Prohibition enforcing the nation’s alcohol prohibition laws.”

The Department of Justice has not announced whether any such lawsuits are forthcoming, continually saying that a review of the matter is underway. President Obama, who’s admitted to smoking marijuana as a young man, has previously said he does not support drug legalization of any kind, but as a state senator in Illinois in 2004 he called the war on drugs “an utter failure” and backed removing criminal penalties for small marijuana possession offenses.

It’s not clear if Obama’s views have evolved since then. Nevertheless, Obama said in December that he does not support legalization “at this point,” but added that the government has “bigger fish to fry” than adults who consent to using marijuana in states that permit it. His administration, however, has doggedly pursued merchants that sell marijuana in states that have legalized the drug for medical use.

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The letter coincides with a statement by the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control Board, which urged the Obama administration on Tuesday to stand up for America’s international obligations to uphold marijuana prohibition.

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United Nations says changing U.S. marijuana laws violate international drug conventions

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Cannabis decriminalisation measures across the United States, including the medical use of marijuana in California, have been sharply criticised by the United Nations, which has warned Washington they violate the international drug conventions.

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Steeds meer jongeren met alcoholvergiftiging

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Van 2007 tot 2010 bleef het aantal alcoholvergiftigingen redelijk stabiel, maar de laatste jaren laten een forse stijging zien. Vooral jongens tussen de 15 en 19 jaar gaan zich te buiten aan grote hoeveelheden alcohol. In deze categorie doet zich grootste stijging voor.

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De Tweede Kamer ging afgelopen week akkoord met een verhoging van de leeftijd waarop jongeren alcohol mogen drinken van 16 naar 18 jaar.

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De recente cijfers bewijzen de noodzaak van deze verhoging, zegt staatssecretaris Van Rijn in Brandpunt. 'Alcohol onder de 18 is niet normaal, naar die nieuwe sociale norm moeten we toe', aldus Van Rijn.

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Europese drugsmarkt groeit als gevolg van crisis

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Er zijn twee redenen voor de verontrustende groei. Ten eerste gaan meer jongeren drugs verkopen en produceren om geld te verdienen. Vooral zelfgekweekte cannabis blijft populair. Ten tweede zorgt de crisis er voor dat overheden gaan besparen op het drugsbeleid, vooral op behandelingsmogelijkheden en schadebeperkende maatregelen.

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Schutters richten bloedbad aan in badplaats Mexico

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Twee mannen openden het vuur in de bar; een van hen met een machinegeweer, de ander met een handvuurwapen. Over de toedracht van de moorden is nog niets bekend. Mexico wordt al jaren geteisterd door geweldsuitbarstingen, die vaak voortkomen uit drugshandel. Meer dan 70.000 Mexicanen zijn sinds 2007 omgekomen door drugsgerelateerd geweld.

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U.N. development chief flags failings of "war on drugs"

(Reuters) - There is increasing evidence that the war on drugs has failed, with criminalization often creating more problems than it solves, said Helen Clark, the head of the United Nations Development Program.

Speaking ahead of Thursday's presentation of the UNDP's 2013 Human Development Report, Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister, said Latin American leaders should be encouraged to develop different policies to tackle the drug scourge.

"I've been a health minister in my past and there's no doubt that the health position would be to treat the issue of drugs as primarily a health and social issue rather than a criminalized issue," Clark told Reuters in an interview.

"Once you criminalize, you put very big stakes around. Of course, our world has proceeded on the basis that criminalization is the approach," she added.

Clark did not prescribe remedies to the Latin American governments but said they should "act on evidence," noting that she favoured treating drugs as a public health problem.

In recent years, many Latin American governments have begun to openly challenge the 40-year orthodoxy of the U.S.-led "war on drugs" that seeks to stamp out the cultivation and distribution of drugs like marijuana and cocaine.

Clark declined to comment on the responsibilities the United States should shoulder in any new drug policy and advised Latin American governments against adopting an "us-and-them" stance when dealing with the United States and consumer countries.

UNDP spokeswoman Christina LoNigro later said in a statement that Clark had not criticized the U.S. policy on the so-called war on drugs.

"She was speaking about the negative effects the drug trade has had on development in some Latin American countries in the context of the Human Development Report," she added.

BLOODSHED

Frustrated by ceaseless bloodshed and a perception that the United States has not done enough to curb its own drug consumption, many leaders in the region are now speaking openly about the possibility of legalizing drugs.

In Mexico, more than 70,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since the start of 2007.

Supported by the United States, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who left office in December, launched a military offensive on drug gangs soon after taking office in late 2006. Rather than quelling the violence, killings rose and Calderon gradually moved away from his hardline stance.

At the U.N. General Assembly in September, Calderon and the leaders of Colombia and Guatemala - traditionally three of the most reliable U.S. partners on drug control - called on world governments to explore new alternatives to the problem.

In Latin America and other regions, calls are growing for new thinking on how to combat the trade in illicit drugs and the resulting bloodshed, Clark noted.

They have said "that the approach being followed has failed so we need a fresh set of eyes on this as well. And I think the debate going on at the regional level is a very, very useful one," Clark said, referring to Latin America.

The latest UNDP report argues that growing prosperity in the traditionally poor global south is driving gains in human development there. As a result, it said, "stronger voices from the south are demanding more representative frameworks of international governance."

Among those demands are growing calls to redraw the battle lines of the "war on drugs."

"To deal with drugs as a one-dimensional, law-and-order issue is to miss the point," Clark said. She stopped short of calling for outright legalization, but said the focus should be on keeping illegal profits out of criminal hands.

"We have waves of violent crime sustained by drug trade, so we have to take the money out of drugs," she said.

One of the arguments for legalizing drugs is that it would take away a key source of revenue for traffickers.

"The countries in the region that have been ravaged by the armed violence associated with drug cartels are starting to think laterally about a broad range of approaches and they should be encouraged to do that," said Clark.

"They should act on evidence," she added.

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Steve Katz Arrested: New York State Assemblyman Charged With Marijuana Possession

A New York State assemblyman who has opposed medical marijuana legislation was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of marijuana after he was pulled over for speeding this week.

In a statement released Friday, authorities reported that state police discovered Steve Katz had a "small bag" of marijuana in his possession during a traffic stop on the New York State Thruway around 10 a.m. Thursday.

A New York State Trooper noticed the smell of marijuana after stopping the 59-year-old assemblyman for driving 80 miles per hour in 65 mph zone. Katz was taken into custody and charged with possession before being released.

The arrest is particularly curious since Katz, who represents parts of Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties, voted against the legalization of medical marijuana in June. As the New York Times notes, the Republican assemblyman also serves on New York's Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Committee.

Katz addressed the "unfortunate incident" during a press conference Friday.

"This should not overshadow the work I have done over the years for the public and my constituency,” Katz told reporters. "I am confident that once the facts are presented that this will quickly be put to rest."

The assemblyman was first elected to represent New York's District 94 in 2010, and was reelected in 2012 for another two-year term. He is expected to appear in court for the possession charge on Mar. 28.

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As UN Orders Expanded Global Drug War, Critics Fight Back

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Among the most prominent and vocal opponents of the UN’s ongoing narcotics machinations is Socialist Bolivian President Evo Morales (shown), who slammed the global prohibition regime as a failure. Even former Soviet Communist diplomat-turned planetary drug czar Yury Fedotov, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (ODC), admitted as much when he said "the overall prevalence of drug use is not decreasing.” Morales, however, went much further.

Speaking to the 56th session of the UN CND on Monday, the fiery South American leader said the international war has caused soaring violence and is being used as an "instrument of geopolitical domination." In typical fashion, Morales also took swipes at the U.S. government, which under Obama has expanded its ruthless, unconstitutional campaign of terror throughout Latin America under the guise of fighting the UN-mandated drug war. Morales slammed what he termed the “political use" of the drug war by "certain powers.”

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While Morales was busy denouncing the UN-mandated drug war, a prominent U.S.-based organization known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) was in Vienna making its case for total legalization of all drugs. The increasingly influential coalition of lawmen — judges, prosecutors, police officers, and others; people who have served on the front lines of the “war” and know what it really is — sent a four-member delegation to the UN summit.

LEAP Executive Director Neill Franklin, a 34-year law enforcement veteran of the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department, says that ending drug prohibition would reduce violence, eviscerate the cartels, protect taxpayers, and more. He told The New American that UN mandates on the drug war were having a negative effect, and that it was time to call it quits when it comes to having the international organization ordering national governments to wage endless war on unapproved substances.

“We live in a global society in which each country is impacted by the actions of every other. This is particularly true in the war on drugs where the mandates of the UN system of drug prohibition greatly restrict the types of reforms countries can enact,” Franklin explained in an e-mail. “We're talking about a quickly adaptable multinational system of trade powered by forces that are more powerful than some countries — and a substantial part of the national economy of others.”

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Critics of the failed UN-mandated prohibition approach often point to Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs — everything from marijuana to cocaine and heroin — about a decade ago. Studies show that since then, drug abuse has been cut in half already. Drug-related crime has also plummeted. Indeed, around the world, and especially in Latin America and parts of Europe, the Portuguese model is being seen as increasingly promising — especially when compared to the unconstitutional U.S. drug war mandated by the UN in direct conflict with the American Constitution.

Other elements that came under fierce criticism at the Vienna summit were outlandish UN claims that U.S. states were not free to set their own policies on marijuana. Citing invalid international treaties purporting to mandate a planetary war on drugs, the global body’s top drug warriors blasted voters in states like Colorado and Washington for legalizing the controversial plant for recreational use.

Even the 20 or so states that have nullified unconstitutional federal statutes by approving cannabis for medicinal use were attacked by the UN, which claimed it “warned” the Obama administration to crack down on the phenomenon. However, as Thomas Jefferson and the U.S. Supreme Court, among others, have explained, the federal government cannot expand its powers simply by ratifying treaties, and the Constitution does not provide any authority to regulate substances — that is why alcohol prohibition required an amendment.

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Marseille in ban blind geweld waarbij verkoolde lijken op straat worden gedumpt


Samen met het Slovaakse Kosice is Marseille dit jaar de culturele hoofdstad van Europa. Juist nu kampt de tweede stad van Frankrijk met een plaag van zwaar straatgeweld, dat doet denken aan de meedogenloze Mexicaanse drugsoorlog. Vorig jaar waren er minstens 24 moorden door het gangstergeweld. De voorbije twee weken vielen er weer vijf doden. De moorden dragen vaak dezelfde schrikwekkende stempel: het slachtoffer wordt op straat met kogels doorboord en vervolgens in brand gestoken. Verkoolde lichamen zijn immers lastiger om te identificeren.


Het was gangsterbaas Faris Berrahma die de methode voor het eerst introduceerde in het straatgeweld in Frankrijk. Het leverde hem de bijnaam 'Le Rôtisseur' op ('rôtir' betekent 'braden'). Op 24 april 2006 werd Berrhama zelf vermoord door rivaliserende bendes. In Bar des Marroniers was hij naar de voetbalmatch Lyon-AC Milan aan het kijken toen liefst tien gemaskerde schutters het vuur openden. Berrahma werd dodelijk getroffen door negen kogels. Ook twee van zijn kompanen kwamen om bij de bloedige aanslag.

Neergeschoten voor gevangenis
Hierdoor laaide de gangsteroorlog (die rond drugs, wapentrafiek en invloed draait) alleen maar op. Die wordt nu meer en meer op straat uitgevochten. Vorige week werd een gangster, die nog maar net was vrijgelaten uit de Baumettes-gevangenis, vlak voor de uitgang van de gevangenis neergeschoten. Enkele dagen werden twee jongeren van 21 jaar afgeslacht op de openbare weg. Een andere jongere werd gewond bij de nietsontziende schietpartij in de Cité des Bleuets. Vrijdag werd dan weer een verkoold lijk aangetroffen, wat een drugsrazzia van de politie ontketende. De identificatie van het verkoolde slachtoffer is bijna onmogelijk en daarom deed de politie een oproep om vermiste personen te komen aangeven.

Kalasjnikovs
De lokale autoriteiten stonden lang machteloos tegen het buitensporige geweld. Aanvalswapens als Kalasjnikovs zijn erg geliefd bij de straatbendes. De boeven kunnen ze al voor enkele honderden euro's aanschaffen in het illegale wapencircuit. De laatste tijd boekte de politie dankzij een gerichter antwoord wel enkele successen.

Reactie Hollande
De regering van de erg onpopulaire president François Hollande (volgens de laatste peiling is liefst 70 procent van de Fransen ontevreden over zijn beleid) blijft niet bij de pakken zitten. Vorig jaar besliste Parijs al om extra agenten te sturen naar de gewelddadige havenstad, maar nu Marseille ook nog eens cultruele hoofdstad van Europa wordt en het imago onbesmeurd zou moeten blijven, voert minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Manuel Valls de druk nog op. Er werden nog eens 240 agenten ter versterking naar Marseille gestuurd en de eerste resultaten zijn volgens Valls al zichtbaar gezien de grote hoeveelheden drugs die in beslag werden genomen. Ook het systeem met verklikkers werpt meer en meer vruchten af. Zo hopen de agenten stilaan het op de criminelen verloren terrein weer terug te winnen.

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Russia Looks to Increase Influence in Latin America Drug War

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Russia is to step up multilateral cooperation in counternarcotics operations in Latin America, in what may also be a play to increase its geopolitical influence in the region.

The director of Russia's Federal Narcotics Service, Viktor Ivanov, announced plans to work with several Latin American countries in carrying out joint counternarcotics operations, training law enforcement agencies, improving user rehabilitation facilities, and helping develop common anti-drug policies.

Much of that investment will be in Nicaragua, where Russia is setting up an anti-drug training center, which will see Russian law enforcement experts train agents from seven countries in areas such as tactics and use of technology.

Ivanov also announced plans to increase security cooperation with Peru, and, in the coming year, begin training, information exchange, and joint monitoring of trafficking operations.

Ivanov added that Moscow police had identified trafficking routes into Russia in which cocaine is concealed in plantain shipments leaving Ecuador or in Colombian flowers shipped to Russia from via the Netherlands. He also highlighted West Africa as an increasingly popular transit point.


InSight Crime Analysis

Russia plays a central part in the global drug trade, but primarily as the world's largest consumer of heroin, which is generally trafficked in from Asian countries such as Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, according to European police force Europol, it also has a growing consumer market for cocaine. Europol also identified the former Soviet countries around Russia as possibly the next emerging entry point for cocaine into Europe.

However, the reasons for Russia's attempts to increase its influence in Latin America may also have a geopolitical angle. In an October 2012 tour of the region, Ivanov suggested his intention was to develop an alternative multilateral consensus around tackling drug trafficking that bypasses US dominance both in Latin America and in Asia.

In the past, Ivanov has criticized the US government's "heavy-handed methods of militarizing the region," in tackling drug trafficking. However, his suggested drug control strategies do not stray far from conventional thinking and the policies emanating from Washington and seem more focused on rivaling US influence than changing tack in the drug war.

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Silk Road: the online drug marketplace that officials seem powerless to stop

Authorities around the world know about the website, but closing it is another matter – partly because it uses Bitcoins

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Mark Johnson* rifles through his mail as he gets home from work. Among the usual bills is a small padded envelope. Though it doesn't have his name on, it's the package he's most interested in: inside lie two grams of, he hopes, relatively pure MDMA.

Johnson has no idea who has sent him the envelope: he has never met his dealer, and never will. The delivery was facilitated through a website called Silk Road, an underground eBay-like site which has become the core marketplace for buying and selling drugs online – and despite law enforcement authorities across the world being fully aware of its operation they have, so far, been powerless to stop it.

The site has been shrouded in secrecy even since it was founded in February 2011, but research due to be formally published later this year tracked its growth during six months of last year. Over those months, sales on the site doubled, hitting $1.7m a month.

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Op maandag 25 maart 2013 15:28 schreef BlueRoom het volgende:

[..]

laatste 2 kunnen natuurlijk zelf ook toetreden tot de markt, slecht argument dus

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Politie knoeit met afgeluisterde gesprekken in drugszaak

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Uit het gepubliceerde vonnis blijkt dat verbalisanten verslag maakten van een gesprek waarbij de telefoon niet eens werd beantwoord. “NN man zegt dat ie een half boekje heeft gekregen”, staat er als weergave van een gesprek waarbij de telefoon niet werd opgenomen. In gesprekken waaruit blijkt dat de verdachte koper is van drugs wordt hij opgevoerd als dealer. En als een vrouw de telefoon opneemt, wordt dit in het verbaal toegeschreven aan de mannelijke verdachte.

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De officier van justitie Sylvia Kubicz omschreef de valse processen-verbaal op de zitting als een vergissing en als een vormverzuim van geringe betekenis. De rechters zeggen de officier van justitie absoluut niet te volgen in haar standpunt. Volgens de rechtbank zijn de onjuistheden in de verbalen klaarblijkelijk doelbewust opgesteld.

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Follow the Money: How Former Anti-Drug Officials Ridiculously Still Say Pot Is Dangerous in Order to Make a Lot of Cash

Former DEA agents and cops are lobbying for tougher drug laws that make them rich.

When eight former DEA chiefs signed a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month, demanding that the feds crack down on Washington and Colorado, the states which voted last November to legalize marijuana, there was more than just drug-war ideology at stake. There was money.

Two of the elder drug warriors, Peter Bensinger (DEA chief, 1976–1981) and Robert DuPont (White House drug chief, 1973–1977), run a corporate drug-testing business. Their employee-assistance company, Bensinger, DuPont & Associates, the sixth largest in the nation, holds the pee stick for some 10 million employees around the US. Their clients have included the biggest players in industry and government: Kraft Foods, American Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, the Federal Aviation Administration and even the Justice Department itself.

“These are not just old drug war architects pushing a drug war model they’ve pushed for 40 years,” says Brian Vicente, a Denver lawyer and co-author of Colorado’s Proposition 64, which legalized marijuana for recreational use. “These guys are asking Eric Holder to pursue prohibition policies that line their own pockets.”

Bensinger and DuPont both deny money is their motive. “It’s true we might benefit from keeping marijuana illegal,” says DuPont. But he argues it's equally true that marijuana legalization could benefit his bottom line, putting forth the old drug-war line that legalization would create more users. “The more success legalization has, the better it is for our business because they are creating a problem for employers,” he says. “That would be smart for us.” DuPont also points out that only 15% of their business is made up of training employers to detect the warning signs of drug and alcohol abuse and supplying third-party testing. But both men are involved in industry-controlled lobbying groups like the Drug & Alcohol Industry Testing Association, which backed the Drug Testing Integrity Act of 2008, outlawing products that help people beat drug tests and keeping their business healthy.

By inserting themselves into the legal-pot debate, Bensinger, DuPont and other drug warriors benefit by promoting their own legacies and bolstering their own business, lobbying and consulting interests—even in the face of an increasingly skeptical public. A 2011 Gallup survey showed that half of Americans favor legalizing weed. “This letter that they signed is their attempt to once again become relevant within the public policy debate that has largely turned its back on such archaic viewpoints,” says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the pro-marijuana nonprofit, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

The time-honored revolving door between government and business swings fast and often. It can be straightforward, like the appointment of banking behemoth Goldman Sachs' alumni as economic policymakers by recent presidential administrations. But when it comes to the drug war, the family tree is more like a thicket of interests among law enforcement, federal and state prisons, pharmaceutical giants, drug testers and drug treatment programs—all with an economic stake in keeping pot illegal.

Bensinger and DuPont are longtime allies of the marijuana prohibition group that sent the letter to Holder, Save Our Society from Drugs (SOS), which was founded by Mel Sembler, a Florida shopping-mall magnate, and his wife, Betty. The Semblers also founded Straight Inc.—a drug-treatment program that used sleep deprivation, beatings and psychological abuse to treat 10,000 teenage patients, in nine states, from 1976 to 1993, at $1,400 a month plus a $1,600 per patient evaluation fee, raking in millions. Straight wasshut down after investigations in state after state corroborated the hundreds of complaints. But the Semblers, longtime major Republican Party fundraisers, retain their influence as behind-the-scenes bankrollers of the anti-drug faction.

The department of the White House drug czar, otherwise known as the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), is another arm of the government’s war on drugs that can be lucrative to incumbents. Andrea Barthwell, MD, former deputy drug czar during President George W. Bush’s first term and his point person against medical marijuana, has earned a living both treating drug addicts and lobbying against policies that weaken marijuana laws—and cut into her own bottom line.

As a past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM)—a group that opposes medical marijuana, and whose members’ business model could be threatened by legalized marijuana, since two-thirds of its clientele are court-ordered pot users trying to avoid jail time—Barthwell has been one of its fiercest attack dogs. In ASAM campaigns against Oregon and Illinois’ medical marijuana initiatives, she called those who favor medical marijuana “cruel” and “snake oil salesman.” She denounces this pain-relief and anti-nausea approach for patients with cancer and AIDS because, she claims, it is unregulated and unproven (the Institute of Medicine declared medical marijuana useful in 2003, and since then many studies, and many more users, attest to its benefits.)

Yet Barthwell was happy to jump from the ONDCP to the payroll of GW Pharmaceutical in 2005, lobbying for the Canadian company’s Sativex—a liquefied marijuana spray, extracted from whole plant cannabis, for the same pain benefits. Even as the American Medical Association and federal lawmakers maintain that pot has no medicinal value, Big Pharma is applying for dozens of cannabis-based new medicines in order to take hold of of the $1.8 billion medical marijuana industry, as NORML’s Paul Armentano pointed out five years ago in the Huffington Post.

Barthwell, like Bensinger and DuPoint, also has a financial stake in the prohibition treatment culture. She is founder and CEO of EMGlobal LLC, parent company of the Chicago-based Two Dreams Outer Banks drug treatment center, and is also a director of Catasys Inc., which provides substance abuse programs and behavioral health management services to companies, health plans and unions—a role for which she received $77,994 in compensation in 2011.

When it comes to the drug war, money rolls into whichever corporate pockets are willing to play ball, whether it’s big-time lobbyists or broadcast TV networks. Barry McCaffrey—President Clinton’s second-term drug czar and a former Army general, who also signed the recent letter to Holder—was in charge of the purse strings at ONDCP. He oversaw a money-soaked, ham-handed propaganda campaign: In 1999, his office hired PR giant Fleishman-Hillard (at $10 million a year), which encouraged TV networks to slip anti-drug messages into sitcoms and dramas in exchange for ad time worth millions. The secret effort allowed networks to avoid running PSAs, freeing up airtime for paid ads. Networks also gave the ONCDP advance copies of scripts to review. It’s estimated that between 1998 and 2000, the networks received up to $25 million in benefits.

At the same time, McCaffrey was sharpening his stick for the battle against medical marijuana, flatly denying that patients in pain could receive relief from pot. After he left the drug czar’s job, he went on the payroll of military contractors, promoting their interests in the Iraq war as a frequent talking head on national network TV, never disclosing his financial ties.

Lobbying your former employer—whether it’s the government itself or taxpayers who foot the bill—is the No. 1 way one-time public servants can serve themselves. The same is true of current state-paid employees, like cops and other law enforcement personnel whose job it is to crack down on illegal weed smoking. As Armentano notes, federal grants that target illegal drug use are a major source of funding for local police coffers, paying for new hires, equipment and coveted overtime pay.

John Lovell, a lobbyist for police associations in Sacramento, California, not only obtains those grants, he is a front-line fighter on behalf of the cops to keep pot illegal. When California weighed Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana in 2010, Lovell helped manage the opposition campaign. During the fight, according to a reviewof lobbying contracts by Republic Report, Lovell’s company received $386,350 from police groups, including the California Police Chiefs Association. The same report noted that Lovell helped local police departments apply for drug war money from President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In 2009 and 2010, state police groups sought some $75 million from the feds to conduct a Campaign Against Marijuana Planting. Lovell represented one such group.

Indeed, law enforcement agencies around the country could lose as much as $11 billion in taxpayer money if marijuana prohibition is repealed, according to Harvard economics professor Jeff Myron. Weed arrests account for half of all drugs arrests in the US. The tangled money trail can seem at times like something from a smoke-filled Cheech and Chong plot.

In 2009, the California Police Chiefs Association posted on their website a position paperagainst pot for pain, courtesy of a group called Friends of the DEA. “Requiring the DEA unequivocally to take a ‘hands-off’ approach, no matter how egregious the dispensary’s practices, will not serve the best interests of patients. Uncontrolled proliferation of dispensaries will seriously undercut our FDA drug approval system and deprive patients of important regulatory protections,” the group argued. What the paper didn’t note was that Friends was a lobbying group headed by Michael Barnes, a former Bush appointee to the drug czar’s office, as first pointed out by CounterPunch that year. The nine-page, heavily footnoted position paper was written by none other than Andrea Barthwell, MD, the promoter of Sativex, which is likely to receive FDA approval soon.

Among the biggest financial winners from the war on pot are private prisons and the army of DEA agents, local deputies and SWAT teams who help fill them up. Since 1980, federal prisons have ballooned some 790% because of the war on drugs, which began in earnest the previous decade. Private prison companies have seen their business soar. Corrections Corporation of America (CAA), the largest operator in the US, with 60 facilities and a 90,000-bed capacity, had $1.7 billion in tax-payer-funded revenue last year. The GEO Group, a worldwide player with 53,000 beds, pulled in $1.6 billion in government-funneled revenue.

In its 2010 annual report, CAA is fairly transparent about its stake in the anti-drug battle: “Any changes [in laws] with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.” Last year, both companies stuffed millions of dollars into the pockets of Washington lobbyists to pressure lawmakers to maintain the status quo, as revealed in an investigation by Laura Carlsen in March's Counter Punch magazine.

“My most powerful adversity is the police-prison industry,” says former cop–turned–drug policy specialist Howard Woolridge, who lobbies lawmakers for marijuana reform for Citizens Opposing Prohibition. “They can say, ‘If you don’t vote for more prohibition, we will tell people you are soft on drugs on and soft on crime.’ The Fraternal Order of Police is looking out for their 326,000 members’ paychecks. If they say you’re soft on crime, they can move upward of 2% of the electorate. In a close election, that’s victory and defeat.”

Vincente doesn’t doubt that the Bensingers, Bathwells and McCaffreys are fervent believers in their anti-pot mission, even as they earn their living on its front lines or flanks. The same people who wrote to Holder battled Vincente's initiative as well. “It’s what they do—they get together and sign letters,” he says. For the older fighters, says Paul Armentano of NORML, “Their motivation is the fact their failed polices have been proved wrong. All they have is the ability to try to intimidate a couple of high-ranking officials. Most of America has moved on.”

Attorney General Eric Holder may recognize this. He has told members of the Senate that the Obama administration is still formulating its policy toward the states that legalized pot. “We are considering what the federal response to those new statutes will be,” Holder said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week. “We will have the ability to announce what our policy will be relatively soon.” So far he has not answered the drug warriors' letter.

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Spaanse agenten runnen drugsbende

Spaanse opsporingsautoriteiten hebben op het Canarische eiland Fuerteventura een drugsbende opgerold die werd gerund door politieagenten. Negen dienders van de Guardia Civil zijn opgepakt, samen met elf burgers. Dat werd woensdag bekendgemaakt.

De autoriteiten verdenken de bende van grootschalige smokkel en handel in hasj, afkomstig uit Marokko. De betrokken agenten waren gestationeerd in de toeristische centrum van Corralejo in het noorden van Fuerteventura. Behalve van drugsmokkel worden ze ook verdacht van onder meer marteling, afpersing en belastingfraude.

De bende kon worden opgerold, nadat twee agenten waren betrapt op het strand, terwijl zij een boot met 1000 kilo drugs aan het uitladen waren.

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Homegrown crystal meth industry sparks west Africa crime wave

Clandestine methamphetamine laboratories discovered in Nigeria signal disturbing new chapter in regional drug trade

One May evening last year, as a tropical downpour lashed Lagos, Nigerian drug enforcement agents received the tipoff that would lead to a game-changing bust. Hours earlier, Baez Benitez Milan, a car dealer from Paraguay, had entered the country, telling airport officials that this, one of Africa's most notoriously gridlocked, chaotic cities, was ideal for plying his motor trade.

Instead, he drove to an unfinished, weed-choked building on the deserted outskirts of town, and holed up there for weeks. When agents eventually stormed the building, they found an amphetamine-producing factory capable of churning out 25kg of white crystal meth powder, or "ice", every few hours. Benitez Milan was, in fact, a Colombian drug runner named Gonzalo Osorio, whose skills in the rapid setup of clandestine laboratories commanded a $38,000 (£25,000) weekly fee. The factory, one of an intended three, was among the earliest to be discovered in west Africa, and signalled a disturbing new chapter in the regional drug trade.

For the past decade, west Africa's creek-lined coast has been a pipeline for trafficking South American cocaine to Europe and Asia. About $1.25bn of illicit trade has passed through annually, responsible in part for destabilising huge swathes of the region, from Mali's recent turmoil to the narco-state of Guinea-Bissau. But now homegrown criminal syndicates that previously earned cuts by providing mules for Latin American cartels are cooking up their own slice of the global drug pie. Their narcotic of choice is methamphetamine, a highly profitable powder concocted using readily available and legal ingredients.

"This is the next niche for criminal groups in west Africa because you can easily cook it at home, and you can easily adjust it for supply and demand. It is slowly but surely spreading in the region," said Pierre Lapaque, head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime in west Africa, whose latest report highlights the rising trade.

Four large-scale crystal meth labs have been discovered in Nigeria. Shipments of precursor chemicals have been seized in neighbouring Benin and Togo and in Guinea officials discovered huge vats used to cook MDMA, a similar synthetic drug.

Bola, a lanky drug baron with twitching hands who is based in downtown Lagos, said only local wrestlers bought synthetic drugs when he started peddling eight years ago. "It was difficult to sell. Now the guys selling [meth] to big boys and foreigners in the VIP dens can no longer come to areas like this because they will be robbed. Everybody knows they make big money," he said.

Behind Bola's stifling, corrugated iron shop selling dusty cartons of soft drinks is a warren of cramped brick-walled rooms barely high enough to stand up in. Ghoulish in the occasional shard of sunlight piercing through the haze, dealers and glassy-eyed users slump on wooden benches, hunch over chessboards or incessantly chop and wrap mounds of crystalline powder.

Most international orders come from South Africa and more recently Asia "because many people are afraid to go. The punishment there if they should catch you … " Bola mimed a knife across his throat, indicating the death penalty.

A kilo of meth exported to south-east Asia, where some countries have reported a 250% increase in traffickers from west Africa arrested over five years, brings in $45,000. In Bola's den, poorer users pay $1.20 for a single hit.

Crystal meth was traditionally brewed by US biker gangs but laws were tightened in 2005, curbing production. Thousands of miles away, there was unintended fallout. "Cocaine trafficking was falling because we were making record seizures. Suddenly we started making more and more interceptions of methamphetamine leaving the country, but nothing at all was coming in. We realised criminals had started making it within our borders," said Mitchell Ofojeyu, an official at the heavily guarded headquarters of Nigeria's drug enforcement agency.

Some worry the effects of this new trade will spill over into local communities, raising the spectre of rising crime and health problems.

"The warning signals are there that this really is a problem that could run amok in years ahead if comparable resources aren't devoted to the human consumption side," said Alan Doss, a senior adviser at the Geneva-based Kofi Annan Foundation.

For now, widespread unfamiliarity among the local population has sometimes got in the way of curbing the trade. When Nigerian officials discovered their first meth factory, they wanted to storm the site immediately.

"We didn't realise the chemicals were so poisonous. It was our international partners who told us: 'Look, you basically have to kit yourself up as if you're going to the moon'," said Ofojeyu.

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Op zondag 31 maart 2013 21:00 schreef 16meter het volgende:

[..]

Dat zou het hele probleem oplossen.

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Mexican drug cartels move deeper into US to tighten grip on narcotics market

Cartel threat looms so large that a Mexican kingpin is Chicago's public enemy No 1 – despite never setting foot in the city

Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the US border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States – an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world's most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.

If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels' move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering.

Cartel activity in the US is certainly not new. Starting in the 1990s, the ruthless syndicates became the nation's No 1 supplier of illegal drugs, using unaffiliated middlemen to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and heroin beyond the border or even to grow pot here.

But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the US cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the mid-west, south and northeast.

"It's probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime," said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office.

The cartel threat looms so large that one of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins – a man who has never set foot in Chicago – was recently named the city's public enemy No 1, the same notorious label once assigned to Al Capone.

The Chicago crime commission, a non-government agency that tracks crime trends in the region, said it considers Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman even more menacing than Capone because Guzman leads the deadly Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in Chicago and in many cities across the US

Years ago, Mexico faced the same problem – of then-nascent cartels expanding their power – "and didn't nip the problem in the bud," said Jack Killorin, head of an anti-trafficking program in Atlanta for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. "And see where they are now."

Riley sounds a similar alarm: "People think, 'The border's 1,700 miles away. This isn't our problem.' Well, it is. These days, we operate as if Chicago is on the border."

Border states from Texas to California have long grappled with a cartel presence. But cases involving cartel members have now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Ky., and rural North Carolina. Suspects have also surfaced in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

Mexican drug cartels "are taking over our neighborhoods", Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane warned a legislative committee in February. State police commissioner Frank Noonan disputed her claim, saying cartels are primarily drug suppliers, not the ones trafficking drugs on the ground.

For years, cartels were more inclined to make deals in Mexico with American traffickers, who would then handle transportation to and distribution within major cities, said Art Bilek, a former organized crime investigator who is now executive vice president of the crime commission.

As their organizations grew more sophisticated, the cartels began scheming to keep more profits for themselves. So leaders sought to cut out middlemen and assume more direct control, pushing aside American traffickers, he said.

Beginning two or three years ago, authorities noticed that cartels were putting "deputies on the ground here," Bilek said. "Chicago became such a massive market … it was critical that they had firm control."

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Grote partij drugsafval in bos bij Oisterwijk aangetroffen

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In een bos bij Oisterwijk in Noord-Brabant zijn in de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag 41 vaten met drugsafval gevonden. Een vat lekte. Dat meldde de politie woensdag. Wie de vaten heeft gedumpt, is nog niet bekend.

In Noord-Brabant zijn de afgelopen maanden vaker vaten met afval van synthetische drugs gevonden. Zo was er half maart een vondst bij Waspik en eind januari bij Alphen, ten zuidwesten van Tilburg.

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Op woensdag 3 april 2013 10:22 schreef waht het volgende:
Normale bedrijven dumpen ook wel eens afval, vaak nog legaal ook.

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How Iran Won the War on Drugs

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For much of the twentieth century, Iran’s strategy for curbing drug addiction looked a lot like Afghanistan’s current one: stopping the flow of narcotics and destroying crops. When, in the early 1970s, it became clear that this method wasn’t working, Iranian authorities adopted policies that focused more on prevention and treatment, with promising results.

But the 1979 revolution changed all that, and the Islamic government it brought to power implemented strict zero-tolerance narcotics laws. The regime, which saw drug use not as a medical or public health issue but as a moral shortcoming, believed that addiction and abuse could be beaten out of the public through punitive measures. Penalties for addicts included fining, imprisonment, and physical punishment; drug dealers and smugglers were often considered to be “at war with God” and executed. By the late 1980s, the government was sending thousands of addicts to prison camps, where they were supposed to detoxify and atone for their sins through forced labor.

These draconian social measures against drug users and dealers were matched with similarly aggressive operations to prevent the flow of opiates across the border from Afghanistan. By the late 1980s, an estimated 50 percent of Afghan opiate production was passing through Iranian territory, and the Iranian markets were flooded with Afghan opium, heroin, and morphine. Starting in the early 1990s, Tehran constructed more than 260 kilometers of static defenses -- including concrete dams that blocked mountain passes, anti-vehicle berms, trenches, minefields, forts, and mountain towers -- at a cost of over $80 million. By the late 1990s, more than 100,000 police officers, army troops, and Revolutionary Guardsmen were committed to antinarcotic operations.

Yet both the social policies and the border fortifications were fruitless. Although the Iranian authorities seized nearly eight times the amount of narcotics in 1999 than they had in 1990, they could not keep up with the expansion of Afghan opium production, which rose in those years from approximately 1,500 metric tons to roughly 4,500. Iran also found that the number of intravenous drug users was growing. Ironically, the prisons and camps where addicts were expected to kick their habits became epicenters of drug use, in which people learned how to inject heroin and shared primitive infection-prone needles.

The rise in malignant drug use brought with it more deaths, more cases of addiction, and, most embarrassingly for Irans leaders, a full-blown HIV/AIDS epidemic. After years of blaming the Wests moral turpitude and decadence for the virus, Irans leadership had to face an outbreak at home, fueled by its own failed antinarcotic policy. By the late 1990s, in some provinces, double-digit percentages of heroin users were falling prey to the disease. In 2005, biological surveillance data from the Kermanshah province showed a 13.5 percent HIV prevalence rate among the adult prison population.

These setbacks prompted a complete turnaround in Irans approach to fighting narcotics. Instead of focusing on punishing addicts and trying to stop the drug supply, Iran decided to try to reduce the harm of narcotics and the demand for them. By 2002, over 50 percent of the countrys drug-control budget was dedicated to preventive public health campaigns, such as advertisement and education. Irans conservative and previously intransigent leadership opened narcotics outpatient treatment centers and abstinence-based residential centers in Tehran and the provinces.

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'They stole our dreams': blogger reveals cost of reporting Mexico's drug wars

Exclusive: Anonymous author of celebrated Blog del Narco speaks for first time about the risks – and reveals she is a woman

For three years it has chronicled Mexico's drug war with graphic images and shocking stories that few others dare show, drawing millions of readers, acclaim, denunciations – and speculation about its author's identity.

Blog del Narco, an internet sensation dubbed a "front-row seat" to Mexico's agony over drugs, has become a must-read for authorities, drug gangs and ordinary people because it lays bare, day after day, the horrific violence censored by the mainstream media.

The anonymous author has been a source of mystery, with Mexico wondering who he is and his motivation for such risky reporting.

Now in their first major interview since launching the blog, the author has spoken to the Guardian and the Texas Observer – and has revealed that she is, in fact, a young woman.

"I don't think people ever imagined it was a woman doing this," said the blogger, who asked to use pseudonym Lucy to protect her real identity.

"Who am I? I'm in my mid-20s, I live in northern Mexico, I'm a journalist. I'm a woman, I'm single, I have no children. And I love Mexico."

This is the first time Lucy has spoken directly about the motivations for running a blog which could cost her her life. In the early days, her male colleague who manages the technical side engaged in a few short, anonymous email exchanges with reporters, but neither has spoken out since.

The telephone interview was arranged through an anonymous intermediary. The Guardian then took steps to verify that Lucy was in control of the blog.

She said she wanted to show the truth of what was happening to help turn the page. "I'm in love with my culture, with my country, despite all that's going on. Because we're not all bad. We're not all narcos. We're not all corrupt. We're not all murderers. We are well educated, even if many (foreign) people think otherwise."

She and her colleague live in daily fear of retribution, either from the cartels or government forces. She revealed that a young man and woman tortured, disembowelled and hung from a bridge in September 2011 – murders which shocked even atrocity-hardened Mexicans – were collaborators on the blog. "They used to send us photographs. That was very hard, very painful." The threats, she said, have recently become more serious.

Despite those fears, however, Lucy has written a book that gives an inside account of the blog and provides the most gruesome, explicit account yet of the mayhem that the cartel wars have brought to Mexico. Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside Mexico's Violent Drug War, is now on sale in English and Spanish, and documents a full year of killings from 2010, a pivotal year.

"I did the book to show what was happening," she said. "When I finished, I was able to breathe, because I had worried about being killed before finishing. But the book is there, it's there on paper, a testament to what we have suffered in Mexico in these years of war."

Adam Parfrey, head of the independent Washington-based publisher Feral House, which specialises in taboo topics, said the book would be bound in a police-tape type band as warning of its contents. "It's gruesome and horrible. It goes far beyond anything I've ever dealt with. It's an important element of what's happening in our southern neighbour."

The inside account of Blog del Narco comes at a sensitive time. President Barack Obama is due to visit Mexico in early May for talks with his counterpart, Enrique Peña Nieto, who since taking office last December has tamped down confrontations with the drug lords and the ensuing media attention.

Even so, drug-related violence claimed nearly 3,200 lives in his administration's first three months, according to government figures, and in recent weeks killings have spiked along the border, and even in the tourist city of Cancún. Cartels are increasingly sending agents to live and work in US cities such as Chicago, according to a recent AP investigation.

The legalisation of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has intensified pressure on the US government to review its four-decade-old "war" on marijuana, cocaine and other narcotics, much of it trafficked through Mexico.

After President Felipe Calderón declared his own war on Mexico's drug cartels in 2006, sparking turf battles between groups like Sinaloa, La Línea and the Zetas, and bloody interventions by the police and armed forces, who have been accused of siding with criminals. More than 70,000 people died and 27,000 disappeared by the time he finished his term last year.

Intimidation of journalists – dozens have been murdered, often sadistically – neutered news coverage by newspapers, radio and television stations. Massacres, kidnappings, corruption, even pitched battles in city centres, often went unreported.

Blog del Narco sprang up three years ago to fill the vacuum left by cowed journalistic colleagues who could not even report vital information such as narco roadblocks and kidnappings.

Over time, Blog del Narco acquired multiple sources, including drug gangs, and became indispensable reading, drawing more than 3m hits monthly. It provides bulletins, pictures and video of abductions, shootouts, executions and the discovery of bodies as well as severed human heads, limbs and torsos. One video showed cartel members interrogating a captured rival and then decapitating him.

Critics accuse the blog of being a public relations forum for drug dealers, but Lucy said the material showed reality and helped families identify missing relatives. "If it wasn't for the blog often bodies wouldn't be identified."

Narcos occasionally sent photos of them partying with pop stars, but the blog refused to publish such material, she said. The blog takes advertising from car and mobile-phone makers, among others. Lucy has told no friends about her clandestine activity. "My close family knows. No one else."

The blog had come under repeated cyber-attack – the government was more aggressive than narcos in this regard, Lucy said – but the main concern was being identified and captured, either by narcos or government forces who have been accused of multiple abuses.

"We change where we live every month. We've been in basements. It's very difficult. We hide our equipment in different places. If the authorities get close we run."

A sign left by the young couple disembowelled in 2011 in the state of Tamaulipas said the bloggers were next. Lucy had not met the couple but received material from them via email. A few days later, another contributor was killed. A keyboard, mouse and sign mentioning the blog were strewn over the corpse. "It's very painful. But they believed this work was necessary."

Lucy said it was too soon to judge Peña Nieto's administration but that she had already noted one change. In contrast to Calderón-era officials, who cowed journalists with threats and bribes, the new government appeared to want to do it through repressive laws, she said. The government denies wanting to stifle the media.

"We have thought about quitting the blog thousands of times. But we haven't, because we have to get the message out. They have stolen our tranquility, our dreams, our peace." Lucy said she was tired of living in fear but had no plans to give up the blog. It has spawned other anonymous blogs carrying similar material.

The revelation she was female would surprise many, said Lucy. "It's a strong blow to Mexican machismo and the idea women are weaker, more delicate. There is an expectation for women to always look pretty. But we're much more than that."

She tried to relax, she said, with music, coffee and cigarettes. She missed having a normal life. "My only boyfriend is the blog. A whole phase of my life – boyfriends, going to parties, hanging out with friends – I've missed it. Getting married, having babies – there's not been time to think of any of that."

Lucy hoped the book, which focuses on 2010 and 2011, will stand as a historical record. In addition to stomach-turning photographs, it includes a glossary of terms such as encintado – the binding of a victim with duct tape – and encobijado – wrapping a murdered person in a blanket or sheet. It will initially be on sale only in the US but the publisher, Feral House, hopes Mexican booksellers will stock it.

Lucy said she had recently take a paying job but would continue the blog.

"My plans for the future? To live. That's my hope for the short, medium and long term."

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First ‘magic mushroom’ trial for depression treatment hits stumbling block

The world’s first clinical trial designed to explore using a hallucinogen from magic mushrooms to treat people with depression has stalled because of British and European rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.

David Nutt, president of the British Neuroscience Association and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said he had been granted an ethical green light and funding for the trial, but regulations were blocking it.

“We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs,” he told a neuroscience conference in London on Sunday.

He has previously conducted small experiments on healthy volunteers and found that psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, has the potential to alleviate severe forms of depression in people who don’t respond to other treatments.

Following these promising early results he was awarded a £550,000 (about $849,000 Canadian) grant from the UK’s Medical Research Council to conduct a full clinical trial in patients.

But psilocybin is illegal in Britain, and under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances it is classified as a Schedule 1 drug – one that has a high potential for abuse and no recognised medical use.

This, Nutt explained, means scientists need a special licence to use magic mushrooms for trials in Britain, and the manufacture of a synthetic form of psilocybin for use in patients is tightly controlled by European Union regulations.

Together, this has meant he has so far been unable to find a company able to make and supply the drug for his trial, he said.

“Finding companies who could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence, which can take up to a year and triple the price, is proving very difficult,” he said.

Nutt said regulatory authorities have a “primitive, old-fashioned attitude that Schedule 1 drugs could never have therapeutic potential”, despite the fact that his research and the work done by other teams suggests such drugs may help treat some patients with psychiatric disorders.

Psilocybin – or “magic” – mushrooms grow naturally around the world and have been widely used since ancient times for religious rites and also for recreation.

Researchers in the United States have seen positive results in trials using MDMA, a pure form of the party drug ecstasy, in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

“What we are trying to do is to tap into the reservoir of under-researched illegal drugs to see if we can find new and beneficial uses for them in people whose lives are often severely affected by illnesses such as depression,” Nutt said.

The proposed trial would involve 60 patients with depression who have failed two previous treatments.

During two or three controlled sessions with a therapist, half would be given a synthetic form of psilocybin, and the other 30 a placebo. They would have guided talking therapy to explore negative thinking and issues troubling them, and doctors would follow them up for at least a year.

Nutt secured ethical approval for the trial in March.

In previous research, Nutt found that when healthy volunteers were injected with psilocybin, the drug switched off a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is known to be overactive in people with depression.

“Even in normal people, the more that part of the brain was switched off under the influence of the drug, the better they felt two weeks later. So there was a relationship between that transient switching off of the brain circuit and their subsequent mood,”, he said. “This is the basis on which we want to run the trial.”

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Is The War On Drugs Nearing An End?

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Much of the movement in public opinion toward marijuana use has been driven not necessarily by the arguments drug reformers have made for years -- that it is safer than alcohol, that we waste too much money on incarceration, that drug use is a victimless crime -- but by simple generational change, said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University.

"Younger generations are much more supportive of having choices, they've had much more experience with it, and also in general on many social issues, people are getting more libertarian, more open to less restriction," he said.

When Blendon studied public opinion on the drug war in the mid-1990s, the results were clear: although the American public believed the drug war was failing, they still thought of using drugs as morally wrong and worthy of punishment.

It was a time when Nancy Reagan's maxim -- just say no to drugs -- was still treated as gospel. But two decades later, Blendon said, there are simply too many people who have tried marijuana themselves to believe in that.

According to the Pew survey, 48 percent of Americans say they have smoked weed themselves, up 10 percent from a decade ago. Fifty percent of Americans, meanwhile, say smoking marijuana is not a moral issue, compared to 32 percent who believe that it is. That's a mirror image of the 50 percent moral opposition and 35 percent indifference Pew found just seven years ago.

The shift has come fast, Pew found. In just the past three years, pro-legalization sentiment has spiked 10 percent. And a relatively new phenomenon has emerged: it's not just liberals or libertarians speaking out. Increasingly, it is the names most identified with conservatism.

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Drugskartels Mexico willen Europa veroveren

Mexicaanse drugskartels proberen een sleutelpositie in te nemen op de Europese markt. Dat maakte de politiedienst Europol vrijdag bekend. Grote kartels als Los Zetas zijn bovendien betrokken bij mensenhandel en ze smokkelen wapens van Europa naar Zuid-Amerika.

De afgelopen decennia zijn Mexicaanse drugskartels een centrale rol gaan spelen in de internationale georganiseerde misdaad. De groepen zijn extreem gewelddadig. Toch zijn er in Europa tot nu toe slechts enkele geweldsincidenten geweest waarbij de kartels betrokken waren. Een daarvan was een moordpoging, meldt Europol.

De politieorganisatie wil voorkomen 'dat het niveau van bruut geweld dat we in Mexico zien zich ook voordoet in Europa', aldus Europol-directeur Rob Wainwright. 'We zullen ervoor zorgen dat de Mexicaanse kartels geen voet aan de grond kunnen krijgen in Europa.'

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Respect State Marijuana Laws Act Introduced In Congress

NEW YORK -- Republicans and Democrats in Congress are coming together in defense of states' rights -- and marijuana.

Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-Calif.) introduced a bipartisan bill on Friday to protect marijuana users and businesses from federal prosecution when they are following state laws. The Respect State Marijuana Laws Act would shield both medical and recreational pot users.

"This bipartisan bill represents a common-sense approach that establishes federal government respect for all states’ marijuana laws. It does so by keeping the federal government out of the business of criminalizing marijuana activities in states that don’t want it to be criminal," said Rohrbacher, in a statement.

Despite promising not to go after medical marijuana dispensaries, the Obama administration has raided hundreds of them. Federal officials are still trying to make up their minds, moreover, about how to respond to recently passed referendums in Colorado and Washington state that legalized marijuana outright.

Rohrbacher's bill should take away any doubt: It would say that residents of states that take steps to reform drug laws on their own shouldn't be subject to federal harassment.

A Pew Poll released last week showed that a broad majority of Americans, even when they don't agree with legalizing marijuana, believe the federal government should not step in to punish users in states that do. Sixty percent of Americans said the federal government should not meddle in states that legalize pot.

"Marijuana prohibition is on its last legs because most Americans no longer support it," said Steve Fox, national political director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "This legislation presents a perfect opportunity for members to embrace the notion that states should be able to devise systems for regulating marijuana without their citizens having to worry about breaking federal law."

The bill is cosponsored by Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Don Young (R-Alaska), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Rohrbacher, whose state has a large medical marijuana program, has previously introduced legislation seeking to reclassify marijuana at the federal level as a drug that does have medical uses.

The bipartisan makeup of the bill's cosponsors reflects increasing support among Republicans for ending or shifting the country's war on drugs. In the past two months, for example, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has called for lessening marijuana penalties and evangelical media titan Pat Robertson has announced his support for outright legalization.

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Afghanistan: high expectations of record opium crop

UN report reveals rapid growth of poppy farming as western troops get ready to withdraw, which reflects badly on Britain

Twelve years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is heading for a near-record opium crop as instability pushes up the amount of land planted with illegal but lucrative poppies, according to a bleak UN report.

The rapid growth of poppy farming as western troops head home reflects particularly badly on Britain, which was designated "lead nation" for counter-narcotics work over a decade ago.

"Poppy cultivation is not only expected to expand in areas where it already existed in 2012 … but also in new areas or areas where poppy cultivation was stopped," the Afghanistan Opium Winter Risk Assessment found.

The growth in opium cultivation reflects both spreading instability and concerns about the future. Farmers are more likely to plant the deadly crop in areas of high violence or where they have not received any agricultural aid, the report said.

Opium traders are often happy to provide seeds, fertilisers and even advance payments to encourage crops, leaving farmers who do not have western or government agricultural help very vulnerable to their inducements.

At the same time the more powerful figures in the drugs trade, from traffickers to corrupt government officials, who take over half the profit from each kilo of opium, have shrinking opportunities to earn money from Nato or international aid contracts – and may be preparing a war chest for upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.

"Opium cultivation is up for the third successive year, and production is heading towards record levels," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Afghanistan head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "People are hedging against an insecure future both politically and economically."

Just 14 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces are now "poppy free", down from 20 in 2010. In three provinces, the spring sowing was the first time this decade that farmers had risked an attempt at growing opium.

The only figures showing a fall in cultivation, for western Herat province, may actually be due to a statistics blip. The UN was forced to use external data last year instead of the satellite images that are usually the basis of poppy growing calculations, and local officials protested heavily that the opium crop there had been overestimated.

If this year's poppy fields are harvested without disruption, the country would likely regain its status as producer of 90% of the world's opium. Afghanistan's share of the deadly market slipped to around 75% after bad weather and a blight slashed production over the past two years.

But the decline in opium production also drove up prices, to a record $300 a kilogramme. Prices have now slipped by over $100 but are still far above historic levels, helping tempt more farmers to turn land over to poppy.

It seems unlikely that the poor harvests of the last year will be repeated; there have been no reports of blight and the exceptionally bitter winter of 2011-12 was followed this year by a milder one, creating expectations of a large crop.

The increase has come despite a marked improvement in Afghanistan's specialised counter-narcotics units, Lemahieu said. Fear of eradication has become a far more significant reason for farmers to stick to legal crops than in the past, the report found.

But overall the government and aid community has not prioritised efforts to cut back a crop and trade that feeds global markets for heroin, Lemahieu said, despite its corrosive effect on security, corruption and trust in Kabul.

Typical of the official neglect are the 22 "national priority programmes" drawn up by Kabul to focus aid money and diplomatic efforts on its key development concerns including justice and education. Counter-narcotics was not one of them, nor has it been put at the heart of the other programmes.

"We need to have counter-narcotics dealt with seriously by the entire government as well as the aid community," Lemahieu said. "One of the big missing links here is providing for the communities themselves."

Eradication programmes that do not provide farmers with benefits such as healthcare and education, and support growing other crops will just push the Taliban or other insurgent groups that do tolerate or encourage poppy production, he added.

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Organised crime worth $90bn year in East Asia

UN report says drug trafficking accounts for more than third of illegal transnational trade every year.

Organised crime gangs dealing in fake goods, drugs, human trafficking, and the illicit wildlife trade earn nearly $90bn annually in East Asia and the Pacific, a UN report reveals.

In a report released on Tuesday, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said drug trafficking accounted for more than a third of the illegal transnational trade.

The report, named "Transnational Organised Crime in East Asia and the Pacific: A Threat Assessment", says that as much as $16.3bn worth of heroin and $15bn of methamphetamine are traded annually in the region.

"These transnational criminal activities are a global concern now," Jeremy Douglas, a regional representative of the UN agency, said in a statement.

"Illicit profits from crimes in East Asia and the Pacific can destabilise societies around the globe," Douglas said.

He said that the profits could be used to buy properties and companies, and used for bribery.

The UN representative urged "a co-ordinated response" to address the problem.

Sandeep Chawla, the UNODC deputy executive director, said the report opened the window on "the mechanics of illicit trade: the how, where, when, who and why of selected contraband markets affecting this region".

"It looks at how criminal enterprises have developed alongside legitimate commerce and taken advantage of distribution and logistics chains," he said at the launch of the first comprehensive study on transnational organised crime threats in region in Sydney.

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"It is a fight that we cannot lose," Broussard said.

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Update: Heftige maatregelen in lokale 'war on drugs'


WOERDEN - De gemeente Woerden gaat samen met het Openbaar Ministerie en de lokale politie harddrugsgebruikers registreren. Hier gaat een preventieve werking vanuit, volgens de betrokkenen. Ook kan er hulpverlening aangeboden worden en door een betere registratie hoopt de politie een verband tussen criminaliteit en harddrugsgebruik te kunnen leggen.

Het zogenaamde project Achilles gaat zich richten op de klanten van drugsdealers. Er zullen dossiers worden aangemaakt van klanten rond drugsdealers en deze kunnen worden ingezet in een eventuele strafzaak tegen de dealer. Minderjarige harddrugsgebruikers en ouders met minderjarige kinderen kunnen een bezoek van Bureau Jeugdzorg verwachten. Inmiddels heeft de gemeente 360 brieven gestuurd naar mensen die zich op een bestellijst (lijst telefoonnummers in het bezit van groep drugsdealers, veel van deze nummers worden ook wekelijks bestookt met sms'jes).

Een gemeentewoordvoerder licht de plannen toe aan de redactie:

"Het accent in dit drugsbeleid tussen gemeente, politie en Openbaar Ministerie verlegt zich van de drugsdealer naar de drugsgebruiker. Zonder gebruikers geen dealers en vice versa. Harddrugs zijn illegaal en het is strafbaar om te gebruiken."

De eerste acties hebben al plaats gevonden in Woerden. Van een zogenaamde 'bestellijst' van een drugsdealer zijn alle telefoonnummers nagetrokken en hebben deze mensen (en bedrijven) een brief gehad. "Dat is een heftige maatregel maar ook een hele effectieve", vervolgt de woordvoerder. "Op de 360 brieven die zijn verstuurd, kregen we al 60 reacties. Natuurlijk van mensen die verontwaardigd waren op deze lijst voor te komen, maar ook van ouders en bedrijven. Dat bedrijf gaat het nu bespreekbaar maken op de werkvloer."

Uit de brief die is verstuurd naar 360 adressen:

"Tijdens een politieonderzoek is een op uw naam geregistreerd telefoonnummer in een drugsbestellijn van een drugsdealer aangetroffen. Wij hebben geconstateerd dat er meerdere malen contact is geweest met de drugsdealer."

Op het einde van de brief: "Mocht u van mening zijn deze brief onterecht te hebben ontvangen, verzoeken wij u een afspraak te maken met de politie om een verklaring af te leggen."

In een convenant dat eind najaar is gesloten tussen deze drie partijen is afgesproken hoe er met deze gegevens om zal worden gegaan. "Het primaire doel is bewustwording en preventie, niet het criminaliseren van de gebruiker. Maar die kans bestaat natuurlijk altijd. Harddrugs zijn illegaal."

Uit het persbericht van de gemeente:

Drugsbestrijding staat landelijk en lokaal op de agenda van de overheid. Waar de landelijke overheid zich vooral richt op de georganiseerde criminaliteit en preventieve voorlichting, biedt project Achilles in Woerden een werkwijze voor lokaal beleid. Achilles richt zich met name op de drugsgebruiker en spreekt deze direct aan.

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ms1973
Beste mensen, ook ik ben zwaar gedupeerd door deze doorgeschoten actie, waarover ik uiteraard zeer ontstemd ben.

Ik beken, ik heb in een ver verleden wel eens zon bestellijn gebeld. En ook ik ontvang nog regelmatig de sms'jes met de nieuwe bestelnummers. Ik heb wel eens geprobeerd om daar vanaf te komen door een bericht terug te zenden met het verzoek mijn nummer te verwijderen. Dat lukt helaas niet aangezien mijn telefoonnummer kennelijk bij meerdere dealers bekend is en de nummers van (potentiële) klanten onderling worden uitgewisseld. En nee, een verandering van nummer is vanwege zakelijke motieven niet wenselijk.

De inhoud van de brief die is ontvangen impliceert dat ik tot op heden drugs zou gebruiken. DIT IS NIET WAAR! Het vervelende is nu dat ik door mensen in mijn directe omgeving hier op word aangesproken en dit mijn verder prettige leven onder grote druk zet.

Zojuist heb ik vernomen dat de brief eveneens naar een bedrijfsadres is verzonden. De houder van het telefoonnummer is daarmee eveneens in grote problemen gekomen en kan mogelijk ontslag tegemoet zien. Dat kan naar mijn mening toch niet de bedoeling zijn van deze maatregel? En daar is dan kennelijk een half jaar over nagedacht... Elke idioot kan bedenken wat de vergaande gevolgen voor de ontvanger van de brief kunnen zijn!

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Op woensdag 17 april 2013 16:22 schreef waht het volgende:

[..]

Of het prima is vraag ik me af, dat het effect kan hebben weet ik zeker.

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op zaterdag 20-04-2013 om 08:54:35 Happy 4/20 #FourTwenty! reageer retweet

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Obama Makes Major Moves To End The War On Drugs!

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — President Barack Obama’s new strategy for fighting the nation’s drug problem will include a greater emphasis on using public health tools to battle addiction and diverting non-violent drug offenders into treatment instead of prisons, under reforms scheduled to be outlined by the nation’s drug czar Wednesday.

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the National Drug Control Policy, is scheduled to release Obama’s 2013 blueprint for drug policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Millions of people in the United States will become eligible in less than a year for treatment for substance abuse under the new health care overhaul.

Read more: http://globalgrind.com/ne(...)etails#ixzz2ROXKii8t

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The strategy also includes a greater emphasis on criminal justice reforms that include drug courts and probation programs aimed at reducing incarceration rates. It also will include community-based policing programs designed to break the cycle of drug use, crime and incarceration while steering law enforcement resources to more serious offenses, according to details of the strategy released by Kerlikowskes office.

Read more: http://globalgrind.com/ne(...)etails#ixzz2ROXWQP00

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Prison governors hit out at war on drugs

Prison governors have joined the ever-growing list of professional associations and celebrities calling for a rethink of the war on drugs, in a further sign of a sea-change in attitudes.

The Prison Governors Association (PGA) has backed the Time to Count the Costs initiative – a campaign calling for international drug law reforms backed by figures like Richard Branson.

"The blanket prohibition on Class A drugs allows criminals to control both the supply and quality of these drugs to addicts who turn to crime to fund their addiction," Eoin McLennan-Murray of the PGA said.

"The Prison Governors' Association believe that a substantial segment of the prison population have been convicted of low level acquisitive crimes simply to fund that addiction.

"The current war on drugs is successful in creating further victims of acquisitive crime; increasing cost to the taxpayer to accommodate a higher prison population and allowing criminals to control and profit from the sale and distribution of Class A drugs."

Count the Cost is backed by Human Rights Watch, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the former president of Brazil.

A recent appeal by rap music mogul Russell Simmons saw a range of celebrities join the campaign, including Susan Sarandon, Justin Bieber, Harry Belafonte, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey, Will Smith, Ron Howard and Mark Wahlberg.

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Minstens tien doden bij schietpartijen in Mexico

Bij gevechten tussen vermoedelijke leden van een drugskartel en leden van een burgerwacht zijn zondag in het westen van Mexico minstens tien mensen om het leven gekomen. Zeven gewonden liggen met schotwonden in het ziekenhuis.

Dat melden de krant La Reforma en het lokale nieuwsagentschap Quadratin op basis van politiebronnen.

Gewapende mannen vielen 's ochtends in Tepalcatepec en Buenavista Tomatlán, in de deelstaat Michoacán, leden van de burgerwacht aan.

Eenheden van deze zelfbenoemde gemeentepolitie namen in februari de controle over deze plaatsen over. Naar eigen zeggen beschermen ze de inwoners tegen de drugkartels, maar er zijn ook aanwijzingen dat ze zelf banden onderhouden met de onderwereld.

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Steeds meer doden in drugsstrijd Afghanistan

De strijd tegen de papaverteelt in Afghanistan eist steeds meer levens. In 40 dagen tijd zijn 131 doden gevallen onder veiligheidstroepen en burgermedewerkers die hielpen bij de vernietiging van de papavervelden.


Dat heeft de Afghaanse viceminister voor Drugsbestrijding Mohammad Ibrahim Azhar dinsdag gezegd. Het dodental is ongeveer twee keer zo hoog als in dezelfde periode vorig jaar.

Uit opiumpapaver wordt opium gewonnen. Afghanistan is de grootste producent. Voor de Afghaanse boeren is het gewas erg lucratief en ze verzetten zich dan ook tegen de vernietiging van papavervelden. Ook de Taliban verdienen aan de papaverteelt.

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Have We Lost the War on Drugs?

After more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market.

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—Mr. Becker is a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1992. Mr. Murphy is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Both are senior fellows of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

_{A version of this article appeared January 5, 2013, on page C1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: HaveWeThe War Lost On Drugs?.}

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Bust of "over-the-hill" Aspen drug gang pits local cops against feds

ASPEN — When Montgomery Chitty was arrested during the bust of a senior-citizen cocaine ring in 2011, there were more titters about an "over-the-hill" drug gang operating in this celebrity-studded, laissez-faire resort town than there was outrage over the smuggling of hundreds of kilos of cocaine.

From the luxury Gucci and Fendi shops in the heart of the town to the murky interior of the iconically funky Woody Creek Tavern up the valley, the fact that there are big lots of drugs being bought, sold and consumed where the world comes to party isn't much of an eyebrow-raiser.

But Chitty's prosecution and conviction have raised angst of another sort.

In a town that prides itself on having no cops devoted to busting drug dealers and that views drunken driving as a bigger threat to public safety than cocaine, Chitty has become emblematic of a long-standing quandary.

Aspen is locked in a war over drugs because the town isn't part of the war on drugs.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency doesn't trust the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office and, to a lesser extent, the Aspen Police Department, so the DEA keeps investigations and busts as secret from those agencies as it does from drug dealers. The feds' excuse is that local law enforcement officials are not to be trusted: They are too chummy with dealers, and Chitty is a prime example of those too-close ties.

When Chitty's quickly dubbed "over-the-hill" gang was busted after a 15-month investigation that included wiretaps and surveillance cameras, it was as much a surprise to Aspen law enforcement as it was to those arrested — by design.

"Our extensive and prolonged investigation showed relationships between persons who had active arrest warrants and members of the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office," said DEA agent Jim Schrant.

Local officers counter that it is hard to be in a town the size of Aspen and not be acquainted with just about everyone, including those who, it turns out, sell drugs. That doesn't mean officers are turning a blind eye to drug problems.

But the local departments have policies in place that eschew undercover drug investigations, that don't condone the use of drug users as undercover informants and that put the focus of local law enforcers' jobs on public safety.

In that context, armed drug agents operating in secret in Aspen are viewed as a menace.

"Community safety can be jeopardized by these people," Pitkin County Commissioner Michael Owsley said about federal drug agents.

That became a very open controversy in 2005 when federal agents stormed two downtown bars and eateries during a busy happy hour. In a locally unpopular show of force and weapons, the agents arrested kitchen workers who were dealing drugs.

Local law officers knew nothing about the operation until calls started coming in from the public that armed men were on the downtown mall.

Fast-forward to 2011 and the arrest of the golden-years gang. Ten Aspen and Los Angeles-area residents — mostly in their 60s and 70s — were arrested for dealing about 200 kilos of cocaine over an eight-year period.

Chitty, 61, ended up being the only one who went to trial and the only one who received a lengthy sentence.

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Cocaine flows through Sahara as al-Qaida cashes in on lawlessness

Young Malians risk their lives to earn big money transporting drugs across desert

As the daily power cut struck Timbuktu, the town and surrounding desert were plunged into a sandy, grey darkness. Mohamed – a 31-year-old native of the town dressed in rich, deep blue cloth that engulfed his head in the traditional Tuareg style – seemed to shrink further into the shadows. He tipped ash into a saucer as he talked and smoked, telling his story for the first time.

"I didn't know cigarette trafficking was illegal," he said, exhaling into the black. "I smoke, everyone here smokes, so it didn't seem serious. But when I started transporting cocaine … I'm a Muslim, I knew it was wrong."

In 2009 Mohamed, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, joined a team that drove packages of cocaine across the Sahara. He and his boss – who introduced him to the illicit trade in cigarettes as a young apprentice – were lured into the business by the apparent wealth of Moroccan and Algerian narco-traffickers whom they encountered in desert towns.

"When we transported cigarettes, I would be paid around 100,000 CFA francs [about £130] for each trip. With cocaine, I earned 1 million," Mohamed explained. "We would drive through the desert in convoys, and each car would earn roughly 18m CFA – the driver, security man and I would all be paid a fee, and my boss would keep the rest."

It is impossible to estimate how many young Malians are, like Mohamed, drawn into drug trafficking by the prospect of earning big money in short periods. In a region where youth unemployment and poverty are high, the prospect of travelling for days at a time through one of the most inhospitable terrains on earth offers little deterrent.

"It was hard, but there was no other way I could earn that kind of money," said Mohamed. "Our routes were never fixed, but we would drive 24 hours a day, without stopping, until we got there. We would eat tinned food, and prepare tea in the car. The most important thing was to get there as quickly as possible."

The UN estimates about 18 tonnes of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $1.25bn (£800m), crosses West Africa every year – nearly 50% of all non-US-bound cocaine. Most of it originates in Columbia, Peru and Bolivia, and travels to west Africa on private jets, fishing boats and freighters along the notorious "Highway 10" — the shortest route between the continents along the 10th parallel of latitude.

Now the role of al-Qaida-linked Islamists – who controlled northern Mali from early 2012 until they were ousted by French and African troops this year – is fuelling fears for the potential of the drug trade to destabilise the region.

"There is hard evidence of the link between al-Qaida and cocaine trafficking in the Sahara," said Dr Kwesi Aning, director of academic affairs and research at the Kofi Annan international peacekeeping training centre in Ghana. "In the beginning, the trade was mainly dominated by Tuaregs and middlemen who guided traffickers to water and fuel dumps in the desert. But after al-Qaida got involved around 10 years ago, we saw a massive increase in the quantities of cocaine involved. They had the networks, and they had the logistical know-how."

Experts say the lack of law enforcement in the Sahara has allowed both Islamism and the cocaine trade to flourish, with vast, inhospitable, mountainous desert borders all but impossible to police. Many in Mali also accuse successive regimes of the now ousted president Amadou Toumani Touré of being deeply complicit in the trade.

The region's lawlessness was blamed for the 2009 "Air Cocaine" incident, when a Boeing 727 believed to have been carrying up to 10 tonnes of cocaine was found burnt-out in the Malian desert. In 2010, a Malian police commissioner was convicted in connection with attempts to build an airstrip in the desert for future landings. And in the same year, the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency reported that a plane from Venezuela had landed in Mali, and that its cargo was driven by 4x4 vehicles to Timbuktu before authorities lost track of the convoy.

"You have to bear in mind that we are talking about the middle of nowhere," said Pierre Lapaque, representative of the United Nations office on drugs and crime (UNODC) regional office for west and central Africa. "It's a huge piece of sand where you can easily cross borders without knowing it. It is a serious challenge for law enforcement.

"On top of that, these are countries where law enforcement officers are poorly trained, poorly equipped and corrupt, and were logistics don't work. Put that together, and it's a nice opportunity for criminals," he added.

The Nigerian former president Olusegun Obasanjo, commissioner for the recently formed West Africa Commission on Drugs, said: "These criminal groups have the money to buy influence, which makes it difficult to apprehend them. It is affecting the normal operations of civil, military and paramilitary officials. [Drug traffickers] are even paying for political campaigns."

Mohamed said traffickers were highly organised and had well-established means of making their presence even harder to detect. "We waited to collect the drugs at a place between the mountains in the desert called 'al-Hanq' he explained. "The drugs were transported there by camels which travelled across the desert without a guide. The camels were trained by being starved and taken through the same route repeatedly, and fed when they arrive at al-Hanq, until they learned to do the journey alone.

"We would continue in convoys of 4x4s, but we had ways of hiding," Mohamed added. "A reconnaissance vehicle would always go ahead, with no drugs on board, and alert us to any obstacles. We would put grease on the car and stick sand on it as a camouflage, that way it's impossible to see from a distance in the desert."

Lapaque said: "We have heard about camels being trained to carry drugs. These are criminal groups which are well organised, and you have to understand that they have a business approach. They are weighing the potential risks against profits, which are really huge."

Mohamed said he had learned the risks first hand, and has now left the business after his convoy was attacked by heavily armed bandits. "We had stopped to repair a problem with the car, when a car mounted with weapons opened fire on us," he said. "I ran three hundred metres on foot until the shooting stopped, but three of my colleagues and all the attackers were killed. Two vehicles were burnt completely. It scared me so much, I told my boss I didn't want to be involved any more."

Mohamed said his boss is now a senior figure in the drug trade, with a mansion in the Nigerien capital, Niamey. In Timbuktu, the presence of drug chiefs is an open secret, he says, although many were forced to flee during the war.

"Everyone knows who in Timbuktu is doing drug trafficking, even the government," Mohamed said. "When senior officials [in the last government] came to Timbuktu, the drug traffickers were the ones who provided them with 36 brand new 4x4s."

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Barack Obama calls for 'new realities' and improved US-Mexico relations

President follows talks with counterpart Peña Nieto with speech that includes prediction of successful immigration reform

President Barack Obama called for a positive re-evaluation of the US-Mexico relationship on Friday, in an emphatically upbeat speech in Mexico City. Obama expressed strong confidence that immigration reform in the US would become a reality before the end of the year.

"It is time to put old mind sets aside and time to recognize new realities," Obama said, in a speech to hundreds of Mexican students interspersed with political leaders. The relationship, he said, should not be defined by threats but by shared prosperity.

This message of mutual respect, partnership and economic potential has dominated Obama's two-day visit to Mexico, which began on Thursday with a meeting with the country's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

In the press conference that followed, the emphasis on the economy dovetailed with an effort to defuse underlying tensions over America's role in Mexico's drug wars, by stressing that US collaboration would be respectful of the new government's promise to prioritize reducing violence rather than going after the cartels.

Obama's speech, which was delivered in the impressive setting of the National Anthropology Museum, was filled with eulogies to Mexican cultural and historical figures, from the painter Frida Kahlo to the Independence hero Miguel Hidalgo. Periodic phrases delivered in Spanish – such as "Es un placer estar entre amigos," or "It is a pleasure to be among friends" – earned cheers.

But the speech also contained much that seemed designed to convince the president's domestic audience that Mexico's economic potential should allay fears generated by the bipartisan initiative on immigration reform that is currently making its way through Congress. Obama said he was "absolutely convinced" that reform could be passed this year.

While the president called on Mexicans to put aside their traditional vision of the US as either disrespectful of national sovereignty or isolationist, he put most stress on the need for the US to go beyond the perceptions created by headlines about violence and concerns about border security.

"Mexico is a nation that is in the process of remaking itself," Obama said, before praising everything from pro-competition legislative reforms to trade figures and the fact that most Mexicans now identify themselves as middle class. "The long-term solution to the challenge of illegal immigration is a growing, prosperous Mexico that creates more jobs and opportunity right here."

The Mexican government has studiously avoided commenting in any depth on the possibility of an immigration reform, but Obama's message still fitted easily with President Peña Nieto's own efforts to persuade Mexicans that, as the government slogan goes, "This is Mexico's Moment". This also involves redirecting attention away from the continuing violence of the drug wars that are killing around 1,000 people every month.

Obama did briefly touch on security issues, although this was primarily to promise that he is working hard to curb American demand for illegal drugs and weapons trafficking that he recognized is fuelling the killing.

Following the speech, Obama met representatives of the business community in private before flying on to Costa Rica. After meeting with the Costa Rican president, Laura Chinchilla, he is due to join leaders from Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama at a gathering of the Central American Integration System.

Obama is reportedly preparing to be rather tougher on the Central Americans than the Mexicans, calling for enhanced security cooperation as well as improvements in human rights and democratic reforms.

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Latin America growth key for war on drugs - Obama

President Barack Obama has said the war on drugs will not be effectively won unless the economies of Latin American countries are strengthened.

Mr Obama was speaking in Costa Rica, where he is due to attend a summit of Central American leaders.

They are expected to discuss ways of tackling increasing violence generated by drug cartels operating in the area.

Most of the cocaine produced in South America is smuggled through the region before it reaches the US.

At a joint news conference with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla on Friday, Mr Obama said criminal organisations prosper in economically vulnerable countries:

"The stronger the economies and the institutions for individuals seeking legitimate careers, the less powerful those narco-trafficking organisations are going to be," Mr Obama said.

The Costa Rican president called for a review of the current approach to the drugs problem in the region.

"Costa Rica doesn't have an army and cannot allow to come to a situation of war with the drugs cartels," she said.

'Common enemy'

Mr Obama began a three-day tour of the region in Mexico on Thursday, and arrived in the Costa Rican capital, San Jose, on Friday.

He will take part in a summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA), which includes Dominican Republic and all seven Central American countries - Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

Central America has become increasingly engulfed in the violence generated by the illegal drugs trade.

Local gangs are being employed by the Mexican cartels to bring the drug from South America.

These organisations are also involved in human trafficking, arms smuggling and other forms of crime.

The US has security co-operation agreements with several countries in Central America and Mexico, which it intends to renew.

The summit will also discuss trade and economic co-operation.

Costa Rica and other countries are expected to request favourable conditions to buy gas from the US. Guatemala is expected to raise the issue of immigration.

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Marijuana smokers march in their thousands in Mexico City - video

Thousands march through the streets of Mexico City on Saturday for the 13th annual global marijuana march. The recreational use of marijuana is already legal in Mexico, with users able to carry 5g without fear of arrest. Although, unprecedented growth in local and international demand for illegal drugs is contributing to escalating violence, as gangs battle over their share of Mexico's billion-dolllar illicit drugs industry

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Legal highs: international drugs gangs 'expanding into growing market'

Head of US overseas drug enforcement bureau says officials lack tools needed to keep up with rapidly expanding market

International criminal gangs are rapidly expanding into the burgeoning market for newly minted legal highs, while law enforcement agencies lack the tools needed to keep up, the head of the US's overseas drug enforcement has warned.

Governments have struggled to keep up with the rapidly growing market for new psychoactive substances, as banning a new drug can require a complex legislative process - and many of these drugs remain legal in some countries, said Brian Nichols, assistant secretary at the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

"These types of drugs are what transnational criminal networks are increasingly moving towards. Traditional drugs like marijuana are not as much in favour – they are bulky and hard to transport. Heroin and cocaine are very important but drug addiction is moving to the illicit use of pharmaceuticals and new substances like GBH," he told the Guardian

"This is the growing threat. The use of traditional drugs is declining in the UK and the US, cocaine use is dropping, but prescription drug abuse is growing and new substance abuse is growing. "

Websites offering new psychoactive substances, marketed as "bath salts" or "plant foods", are proliferating, thanks in part to the failure of law enforcement agencies to keep up with the range of new chemicals. Dealers remain a step ahead of the law by slightly altering the formula for known molecules such as MDMA (ecstasy), ketamine or LSD, to create new drugs. They can be far more dangerous than traditional drugs, because they have not been widely tested on the street and because the difference between a dose that supplies a high and one that results in fatality can be extremely small.

What was once a cottage industry has rapidly evolved, with labs and factories in China, Europe and the US manufacturing the chemicals on an industrial basis, churning out hundreds of tonnes of the compounds and selling them over the internet. It is this massive expansion of the trade that has attracted the attention of international drugs gangs, who use their expertise in trafficking traditional drugs such as heroin and cocaine to move into a new and lucrative market, said Nichols.

"There was a period of time in the US when you had new substances each week. Now you have by some counts well over 200 psychoactives [that] have been identified. It's my belief there are many more out there. We do not have people testing everything they come across," Nichols warned.

As with some other areas of international crime, such as wildlife trafficking, for which Nichols is also responsible, the rise of the internet has been a central factor.

"Cybercrime means people can order up crime online. It is a greater globalisation [of crime] than we have ever seen before," said Nichols.

But many of the buyers do not realise how dangerous the substances they are taking can be. "Some of these party drugs are an incredible high at the right dosage, but if you take [a fractional amount more] then you have an incredible toxin," Nichols said.

Nichols wants other countries to follow the lead of the US by bringing in legislation to fast-track the banning of new drugs. In the US, a process known as the scheduling of analogues allows drugs that are similar in effect or chemical make-up to existing illegal drugs to be banned without a lengthy process.

He also called for much more international co-operation in tracking and identifying new drugs and trying to prevent their distribution.

"One of the efforts we are pioneering in the UK and other partners in the G8 is encouraging the World Health Organisation to dedicate increased resources to identifying and scheduling of new psychoactive substances [and] create a more robust regime." He said there would also be an emphasis on demand reduction and treatment as well as preventing the sale and use of such drugs, and that help would be made available to countries lacking expertise in these areas.

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Op donderdag 9 mei 2013 16:09 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

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Laten we gewoon bij voorbaat alle middelen verbieden waar je lol aan zou kunnen hebben, dus het is verboden tenzij toestemming van de regering. Toestemming kan worden verkregen wanneer het product door een naamloze vennootschap wordt gemaakt en/of het de arbeidsproductiviteit van de gebruiker verhoogt.

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Asian nations pledge to step up war on drugs

China and five Southeast Asian nations vowed on Thursday to boost cooperation in the fight against illegal drugs, which they warned posed a "significant threat" to the region.

YANGON: China and five Southeast Asian nations vowed on Thursday to boost cooperation in the fight against illegal drugs, which they warned posed a "significant threat" to the region.

The pledge came at the end of a meeting of ministers or representatives from Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam in the Myanmar capital Naypyidaw.

"Consumption and production of narcotic drugs continues to grow rapidly within the region and worldwide, constituting a significant threat to the East Asian region," according to a joint statement adopted at the meeting.

The countries agreed to tighten cross-border cooperation, step up alternative development programmes and share experience in drug use prevention, treatment and public awareness raising exercises.

The region has seen a surge in production of amphetamine-type stimulants in recent years.

Myanmar recently pushed back by five years its goal of eliminating drug production by 2014, following a rebound in poppy cultivation in the impoverished country, which is emerging from decades of military rule.

Myanmar is the world's second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, and a major source of methamphetamine pills in the region, the UN said in a report in December.

Myanmar's drugs trade is closely linked to long-running insurgencies in remote areas bordering Thailand, Laos and China -- known as the golden triangle -- with rebels widely thought to use drug profits to fund operations.

As part of its reform drive, Myanmar's quasi-civilian government has reached tentative peace deals with most major armed ethnic groups.