The World Wide War on Drugs #8 - Demonstraties in Mexico

MS-13 - Root Of All Evil

Reefer Madness (1936) Full Movie

Retired Police Captain demolishes the War on Drugs

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Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2013: Peter Hitchens - There is No War on Drugs

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Mexico: protests gather pace with fate of student teachers still unknown

Latest march sees thousands demand return of 43 students who went missing last month after being attacked by police

Pressure continues to mount on the Mexican authorities to find 43 student teachers who disappeared three weeks ago in the southern city of Iguala, many of them after being arrested by local police.

Thousands marched through the resort city of Acapulco on Friday calling for the return of the students alive in the latest in a series of protests around the state of Guerrero, where the events happened, as well as in other parts of the country and abroad.

At the same time police on horses with sniffer dogs are searching the hills around Iguala for signs of the students.

Since the students went missing on 26 September, after being attacked by municipal police and unidentified gunmen, at least 19 mass graves have been discovered in these hills.

Federal attorney general Jesús Murillo said on Tuesday that none of the 28 bodies found in the first five graves belonged to the missing students. No information has yet been made public about the bodies found in any of the others.

Friday’s march in Acapulco took place under stormy skies, filling the boulevard that rings the resort’s famous bay. It was headed by relatives of the disappeared, as well as a sizable contingent of other students from Ayotzinapa, the name of their famously radical teacher training college that is also in Guerrero.

With tension running high prior to the protest, the US embassy issued a warning to tourists to stay away from the march. The city’s authorities suspended classes at local schools, urged businesses to shut up shop, and citizens to stay at home.

The march, however, was notably peaceful with no sign of the kind of violence that has accompanied some previous demonstrations. On Monday protestors burned out government buildings in the city of Chilpancingo, the state capital.

Apparently worried that such events could reduce solidarity for their cause, some 300 students from the college spent Thursday sweeping and removing rubbish from the streets in Chilpancingo. One of the organisers told local newspaper El Sur that they wanted to show thanks to residents of the city for their support.

The case of the disappeared students has become a powerful symbol of the broader failure of municipal, state and federal authorities to contain the influence of organised crime in Guerrero, with striking parallels evident in several other parts of the country.

A local drug cartel that calls itself Guerreros Unidos had allegedly infiltrated the municipal government of Iguala from the mayor down. Mayor José Luis Abarca is now on the run.

This week the investigative TV news programme Punto de Partida broadcast testimonies of relatives of people disappeared at checkpoints at the entrance to Iguala. The check points were reportedly set up by the police and the cartel together in order to prevent rival gangs from entering the city.

Alejandro Ramos, of a local human rights group, told the programme that relatives of people disappeared in Iguala are beginning to tentatively come forward in the hope that their loved ones will now also be included in the search for the students.

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'Cannabisbeleid leidt tot corrumpering van hele maatschappij'


De regering-Michel I gaat het gebruik en bezit van alle drugs, zowel voor minder- als meerderjarigen, opnieuw vervolgen. Het staat haaks op de bevindingen van econoom Paul De Grauwe en toxicoloog Jan Tytgat. De Leuvense professoren pleitten voor legalisatie en regulatie van het cannabisgebruik. "Het cannabisbeleid leidt tot een corrumpering van de hele maatschappij."

Gedaan met het gedoogbeleid: op federaal niveau komt een nultolerantie op drugsbezit en -gebruik, zoals nu al het geval is in Antwerpen . Het staat haaks op de bevindingen van professoren Paul De Grauwe en Jan Tytgat, die op 9 oktober in het Hollands College van de KU Leuven bespraken wat een betere oplossing zou kunnen zijn.

De professoren evalueerden eerder dit jaar de drie belangrijkste doelstellingen van het gedoogbeleid: het aantal afhankelijke personen verminderen, een afname van fysieke en psychosociale schade en ten slotte "een daling van de negatieve gevolgen van het cannabisfenomeen voor de samenleving".

Tytgat noemde het hoog tijd voor een kritische evaluatie met betrekking tot de beleidsnota waarin het huidige cannabisbeleid staat. "We hebben vanuit onze expertise in bepaalde domeinen toch een aantal legitieme en valabele argumenten om te zeggen: zo kan het niet voort."


Consequenties van repressieve aanpak

De hoogste prioriteit die het parlement heeft gesteld, was de preventie van cannabisgebruik, waaruit eigenlijk een repressieve aanpak volgde. Maar hier komt de paradox: hoe intensiever de repressie, hoe schaarser de drug is, hoe hoger de prijs en hoe winstgevender de verkoop ervan. "De overheid is verplicht heel veel middelen te steken in het bestrijden van illegale verkoop, maar dat los je niet op, op die manier, want uiteindelijk is het effect van die aanpak buitengewoon klein. Ondanks de repressieve aanpak blijft de consumptie van cannabis stijgen", legde De Grauwe uit.

De repressieve aanpak heeft ook andere gevolgen. Een van die gevolgen is dat de hele sector in de criminele sfeer leeft: iedereen die daar actief is, is crimineel op een of andere manier, wat aangeeft dat hij niet terugdeinst voor criminele activiteiten. "Het leidt tot een corrumpering van de hele maatschappij, met enorme problemen van corruptie, waarbij drugsgeld wordt gebruikt. Op die manier destabiliseert de maatschappij en dat heeft alles te maken met het feit dat de productie en verdeling van cannabis illegaal is", stelde De Grauwe.


Gevaar voor volksgezondheid

Het beleid heeft ook negatieve invloeden op de volksgezondheid, zowel individueel als maatschappelijk. "Als ik terugkijk op de laatste 20 jaar met betrekking tot cannabis, dan zie ik dat het aantal cannabisdossiers en het aantal inbeslagnames van cannabisplanten die ik als deskundige gevraagd wordt te onderzoeken, in stijgende lijn gaan", waarschuwde Tytgat.

Inderdaad: door de repressieve aanpak is de controle op de kwaliteit, compositie en reinheid van de cannabis niet mogelijk. Ook het gebruik van pesticiden of voedingsstoffen is moeilijk te controleren. Zo kan het dat er in de illegale plantages slechte omstandigheden zijn en daardoor kan de cannabis schadelijke schimmels, bacteriën en andere vervuilingen bevatten.

"In 2013 zijn er al meer dan 1.000 illegale plantages opgedoekt en dan kennen we nog niet diegenen die onontdekt blijven. Als je dat in perspectief ziet met 10 of 20 jaar geleden, is dat werkelijk een vertienvoudiging. Dus dan kan je moeilijk beweren dat de federale beleidsnota effectief werkt en zijn doelstellingen haalt", benadrukte Tytgat.


Regulering? Eerst legaliseren

Volgens De Grauwe zijn er twee belangrijke elementen: legalisatie en regulatie van het cannabisgebruik. "Iets dat niet legaal is, kan je niet reguleren. De illegale drugs van vandaag kan je niet reguleren, precies omdat ze illegaal zijn", wist hij. De professor, tegenwoordig actief aan de London School of Economics and Political Science, voegde daaraan toe dat dat kan zoals in het biermodel of het tabaksmodel.

De Grauwe en Tytgat geen voorstanders van drugs, maar volgens hen worden ze moreel in een hoekje geduwd en ze moeten zich daarin defensief opstellen. "We willen de zaak liever op een pragmatische manier behandelen", klonk het in koor. Het probleem op deze wijze oplossen kan ertoe leiden dat "het crimineel karakter ervan kan verdwijnen".

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Psychedelic Mushroom Compound Found to Grow and Repair Brain Cells

You may know them as “shrooms”, “Magic mushrooms”, psilocybic mushrooms, or you may not know them at all. They are a natural plant that, like marijuana, is banned by the U.S. Government. But like marijuana, these mushrooms may not be without medical properties. Like marijuana, they could deserve a place on natural medicine shelves for their ability to treat depression, eradicate mental illness, and improve cognition – not in police evidence rooms.

According to research from the University of South Florida, psilocybin, the active component within psychedelic mushrooms, is able to grow new brain cells—potentially offering treatment for mental illness and improving cognition.

The study, published in Experimental Brain Research, says psilocybin is able to bind to special receptors in the brain that stimulate healing and growth. In the case of these mushrooms, brain cell growth occurs. In mice, the researchers found psilocybin to actually help repair damaged brain cells and cure or relieve PTSD and depression.

Lead researcher, Dr. Juan R. Sanchez-Ramos, tested the effects of psilocybin by training mice to fear an electric shock when they heard a noise associated with the shock. Then, by giving them psilocybin, the mice were able to stop reacting to the noise-trigger much faster than those mice not treated with the mushroom compound.

. “The proposition that psilocybin impacts cognition and stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis is based on extensive evidence that serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT) acting on specific 5-HT receptor sub-types (most likely the 5-HT2A receptor) is involved in the regulation of neurogenesis in hippocampus,” says Dr. Sanchez-Ramos according to NaturalNews. “The in vitro and in vivo animal data is compelling enough to explore whether psilocybin will enhance neurogenesis and result in measurable improvements in learning.”

Other research also shows that this same compound could greatly help with depression, helping the majority of participants in one study achieve great well-being.

Psilocybin is referred to as a “nootropic” agent, or one that has numerous functions in the brain that can improve hippocampus health. The hippocampus is part of the brain responsible for learning as well as converting short-term memory to long-term memory. New brain cells in the hippocampus from the psilocybin translates into a healthier and sharper brain overall.

The research on psychedelic mushrooms is limited—far more limited than the research on marijuana. Because these mushrooms are known for causing hallucinations, unguarded self-treatment isn’t recommended. However, this plant, like marijuana, does not deserve a place in the Schedule I classification of illegal substances. Like marijuana, the U.S. government has determined ‘shrooms as having no medicinal value’—an obviously-flawed determination.

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Op maandag 20 oktober 2014 17:17 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

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Dus in de VS heeft men medicinale wiet maar de onderzoekers van de mushrooms beweren hier dat wiet het geen medicische effecten hebben.

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Op maandag 20 oktober 2014 17:39 schreef OllieWilliams het volgende:

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"Net als marihuana zouden deze paddo's wel eens niet zonder medicinale werking kunnen zijn." niet + zonder = met

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Op maandag 20 oktober 2014 19:38 schreef OllieWilliams het volgende:

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Dieptriest is het. Nee, ronduit schandalig. Als je dingen op basis van schadelijkheid en maatschappelijke gevolgen verbiedt, dien je daar wetenschappelijke onderbouwingen voor te leveren. Wetenschap speelt momenteel geen enkele rol in het drugsbeleid, het wordt bijna religieus benaderd. "Drugs zijn slecht, dat is me altijd verteld dus het is zo. Waarom zouden ze anders illegaal zijn?"

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Afghan opium poppy yield hits all-time high

Farmers grew ‘unprecedented’ 209,000 hectares of opium poppy despite US spending $7.6bn on counter-narcotics efforts

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has hit an all-time high despite years of counter-narcotics efforts that have cost the US $7.6bn (£4.7bn), according to a US government watchdog.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported that Afghan farmers grew an “unprecedented” 209,000 hectares (516,000 acres) of opium poppy in 2013, surpassing the previous high of 193,000 hectares (477,000 acres) in 2007, said John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

“In past years, surges in opium poppy cultivation have been met by a coordinated response from the US government and coalition partners, which has led to a temporary decline in levels of opium production,” Sopko said in a letter to the secretary of state, John Kerry, the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, and other topUS officials.

“The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of those prior efforts,” he said on Tuesday.

Afghanistan produces more than 80% of the world’s illicit opium, and profits from the illegal trade help fund the Taliban insurgency. US government officials blame poppy production for fuelling corruption and instability, undermining good government and subverting the legal economy.

The US has spent $7.6bn on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since launching the programmes following the start of the 2001 war, it said.

Sopko said the UN drug office estimated the value of poppy cultivation and opium products produced in Afghanistan in 2013 at about $3bn, a 50% increase over the $2bn estimated in 2012.

“With deteriorating security in many parts of Afghanistan and low levels of eradication of poppy fields, further increases in cultivation are likely in 2014,” Sopko said in the letter.

He said affordable deep-well technology brought to Afghanistan over the past decade had enabled Afghans to turn 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of desert in south-west Afghanistan into arable land, much of it devoted to poppy production.

In a letter responding to the findings, the US embassy in Kabul said the rise in poppy cultivation and decline in eradication efforts by provincial authorities was “disappointing news”. It said American officials were helping Afghans develop the ability to lead and manage a long-term counter-narcotics effort.

The embassy said the fight against poppy cultivation had had an impact on growers, resulting in a change in where the crop is planted.

“Essentially, poppy cultivation has shifted from areas where government presence is broadly supported and security has improved, toward more remote and isolated areas where governance is weak and security is inadequate,” it said.

Michael Lumpkin, the assistant secretary of defence for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said in a letter in response that the Pentagon had supported counter-narcotics operations by other US government agencies but was not responsible for managing poppy eradication programmes.

“In our opinion, the failure to reduce poppy cultivation and increase eradication is due to the lack of Afghan government support for the effort,” Lumpkin said.

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Zij twitterde over drugskartels, de kartels twitterden haar moord

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Fuentes Rubio was in haar vrije tijd een van de personen achter 'Valor por Tamaulipas' (Moed voor Tamaulipas), een van de grootste burgerjournalistieke initiatieven van Mexico met meer dan 100 duizend digitale volgers op Facebook en Twitter. Onder haar alias Felina berichtte ze over aanslagen, ontvoeringen en andersoortig drugsgeweld. 'Sinds 12:25 uur zijn er explosies en vuurgevechten in Cañada/Fuentes. Pickups rijden met hoge snelheid door de straat', aldus een van haar berichten. Of: 'In Balcones, op de hoek van de Evereststraat, staan twee witte Fords met drie gewapende mannen eromheen.' Ook vroeg ze slachtoffers om via haar medium hun verhaal te delen.

Twitteraars als Felina zijn in het noorden van Mexico populair omdat nieuws over drugsgerelateerd geweld daar lang niet altijd de lokale en regionale media haalt. Volgens de Committee to Protect Journalists, een Amerikaanse non-profitorganisatie, komt dat mede omdat er sinds 2006 al 17 Mexicaanse journalisten werden vermoord die zich ooit kritisch uitlieten over drugskartels. Een gevolg is dat burgers voor wat betreft lokaal nieuws vrijwel volledig afhankelijk zijn van vaak anonieme burgerjournalisten, zoals Felina.

Een gegeven dat tot grote onvrede bij de plaatselijke kartels leidt, blijkt wel uit de ongeveer 35 duizend euro die anderhalf jaar geleden beschikbaar werden gesteld in ruil voor de ware identiteit van Felina en haar collega's bij 'Valor por Tamaulipas'.

Maar ondanks de prijs op haar hoofd en aanhoudende bedreigingen bleef haar echte naam altijd geheim, totdat ze vorige week woensdag - volgens Mexicaanse websites bij toeval - werd ontvoerd samen met twee andere artsen. Toen haar kidnappers vervolgens op haar telefoon keken, zagen ze met wie zij eigenlijk te maken hadden, waarna ze besloten een punt te maken.

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Burgemeester liet studenten Mexico verdwijnen

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De burgemeester van Iguala, in het zuidwesten van Mexico, en zijn vrouw zijn verantwoordelijk voor de verdwijning van 43 studenten bijna een maand geleden. Deze beschuldiging uitte het Openbaar Ministerie woensdag. Het stel zou de plaatselijke politie en leden van de criminele organisatie Guerreros Unidos instructies hebben gegeven de jongeren te laten verdwijnen omdat zij een toespraak van de vrouw wilden verstoren.

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Uruguay’s superstar president bows out – but will his liberal marijuana laws survive?

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Overnight, the passage of the law turned Uruguay’s president, José Mujica, into an international progressive superstar. During his five-year presidency, Mujica, 79, revitalised Uruguay’s economy, slashed poverty from almost 21% to 11.5% and legalised abortion, making his country the first and only one in South America so far to do so. (Elsewhere in Latin America, abortion is available only in Cuba and in Mexico City).

But those gains could be challenged by his successor, who will be decided among front-runner Tabaré Vázquez, a 74-year-old oncologist from Mujica’s own Frente Amplio (Broad Front) party; Luis Lacalle Pou, 41, an energetic conservative from the Partido Nacional (National party); and Pedro Bordaberry, 54, who is likely to throw his votes behind Pou in what opinion polls suggest will be a tightly fought second round between him and Vázquez on 30 November.

The two front-runners have already said that they will tinker with the marijuana law if elected, while Bordaberry, who the pollsters predict will take 18% of the vote, makes it clear that he has no time for it.

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Surprising source offers signs the global ‘war on drugs’ may be ending

William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs summed up the key idea underpinning the shift at the United Nations on Oct. 9:

. Things have changed since 1961. We must have enough flexibility to allow us to incorporate those changes into our policies … to tolerate different national drug policies, to accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalize entire categories of drugs.


The statement is hugely significant as it represents a new diplomatic doctrine and a potential tipping point in efforts to end the disastrous “war on drugs” that has lasted six decades.

It recognizes that immediate reform of the UN drug control conventions (the core of which is the 1961 Single Convention), while necessary, is not yet feasible. But it acknowledges that UN conventions should never serve as a barrier to improving global drug policies and that different policies will work for different regions and nations. Lastly, it accepts that member states can reinterpret the conventions in response to new scientific evidence and with careful regard to other international human rights norms and obligations — as Uruguay has done in the case of cannabis regulation.

The United States was a key architect of the international control system, begun in 1909, and has traditionally served as chief proselytizer for a repressive prohibitionist model globally. Although it initially rejected the 1961 Single Convention as too weak relative to its predecessor treaties, the United States soon embraced it as a useful mechanism to rally nations towards the global war on drugs, formally launched in the 1970s. The United States soon worked to strengthen the convention through successor treaties, funding initiatives and aggressive bilateral drug diplomacy.

Now that the United States has openly rejected the role of key bilateral enforcer the UN will likely cease to be a forum where states are pressured to pursue the war on drugs orthodoxy. Instead, it can become a forum that facilitates cooperation and discussion on a new range of policy approaches.

The main obstacle to this change will likely remain Russia and a coalition of conservative states that are reticent to move away from a militarized and repressive police response. Nevertheless, Russia, despite a strong grip on the UN drug control apparatus, will struggle to enforce its vision due to the post-Ukraine diplomatic freeze and a general recognition that Russia’s domestic drug policies have fuelled incarceration, human rights abuses and a HIV epidemic.

As states approach the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs, Brownfield’s framework provides a practical way forward. It allows states to push ahead with various national regulatory reforms, including regulated markets around the recreational use of certain drugs. It focuses diplomatic effort on preserving the ‘core’ of the conventions — nothing to do with national cannabis or coca leaf prohibitions, and everything to do with regulating licit markets for pain medicines.

And it focuses enforcement efforts on minimizing the impact of illicit markets through effective targeting of criminal gangs, rather than blanket enforcement of impossible global prohibitions. Finally, it allows regions to move ahead with case-specific policies that reflect their local needs, rather than acting as agents of a self-destructive global ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy.

The UN and member states are moving toward a more nuanced understanding that places the drug conventions within broader contexts of human rights, indigenous rights and other frameworks of health and human empowerment. As Brownfield points out, part of this shift is driven by the need to make rational determinations of resource allocation and interpret implementation of the conventions accordingly.

The United States federal government does not believe making U.S. states comply with drug conventions on cannabis is a good use of resources. Other nations should make similar, case specific, determinations.

Legal reform of the international drug conventions is certainly required but only prior national reforms will make that process seem necessary and inevitable to member states.

The course outlined in the Brownfield doctrine appears the best strategy to ensure the survival and modernization of the global drug control framework for the immediate future.

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Schippers vindt dat drugstests leiden tot 'schijnveiligheid'

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Het invoeren van drugstests op festivals vindt Schippers echter 'helemaal geen optie' omdat de tests geen absolute veiligheid kunnen garanderen.

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Mexican cartel boss vows to fight to the death instead of surrendering

Net may be closing on Knights Templar leader Servando Gómez, alias La Tuta, as he releases rambling online video message

The fugitive leader of one of Mexico’s most violent and bizarre drug cartels has said that he regrets choosing a life of crime, but vowed that he would never let himself be taken alive.

“I have committed many crimes like an idiot, and I will have to pay for them when the time comes, but I don’t plan to do that on this earth,” said a man who identifies himself as Servando Gómez, alias La Tuta, in a 24-minute recording, posted on social media. “I am not going to give myself up. I am going to fight until the end.”

The Knights Templar cartel, or Caballeros Templarios, gained notoriety for its signature blend of extreme violence with faux medieval rituals and a rhetoric of social justice.

The cartel once trafficked large quantities of drugs and iron ore, while imposing a reign of terror throughout its main bastion in the Tierra Caliente, or Hot Lands, in the western state of Michoacán. The group was severely weakened after the rise of an armed vigilante movement in the region prompted federal forces to step up efforts against the Knights Templar.

With all the other major cartel leaders now dead or in prison, the recording, first posted on the internet late on Tuesday, appears to confirm reports that the circle is now closing in on La Tuta.

“Just like they say I am alone, hiding in the sierra, riding a donkey and I haven’t seen any of my women for a year,” says Gómez, who in the course of the rambling message complained that authorities had detained members of his family who had nothing to do with the drugs trade.

Interior minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong appeared to accept the authenticity of the recording when he told reporters that it showed “a cornered criminal who recognises that the state has been effective.”

In the recording, Gómez appears resigned to being tracked down by the authorities, but he also accuses the government of protecting other narcos – and rival groups which have risen to occupy the power vacuum left by his cartel’s demise.

He reserves particular venom for the new rural police set up in an effort to control the vigilante movement.

“For 10 years we fucked over Michoacán,” the voices announces, while expressing regrets at having led the Knights Templar. “Now they are arming more criminals than there were before.”

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In 1996, Downey was diagnosed with lung cancer and had one of his lungs removed. He did a complete about-face on the issue of tobacco use, going from a one-time member of the National Smokers Alliance to a staunch anti-smoking activist. He continued to speak against smoking until his death from lung cancer in 2001
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5fc_1370833748#gLE52mXmE1HXxFra.99

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Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work

Eight month study shows legalisation policies do not result in wider use, and the US should be watched with interest

The Home Office comparison of international drug laws, published on Wednesday, represents the first official recognition since the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act that there is no direct link between being “tough on drugs” and tackling the problem.

The report, which has been signed off by both the Conservative home secretary, Theresa May, and the Liberal Democrat crime prevention minister, Norman Baker, is based on an in-depth study of drug laws in 11 countries ranging from the zero-tolerance of Japan to the legalisation of Uruguay.

The key finding of the report, written by Home Office civil servants, lies in a comparison of Portugal, where personal use is decriminalised, and the Czech Republic, where criminal penalties for possession were introduced as recently as 2010.

“We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country,” it says. “The Czech Republic and Portugal have similar approaches to possession, where possession of small amounts of any drug does not lead to criminal proceedings, but while levels of drug use in Portugal appear to be relatively low, reported levels of cannabis use in the Czech Republic are among the highest in Europe.

“Indicators of levels of drug use in Sweden, which has one of the toughest approaches we saw, point to relatively low levels of use, but not markedly lower than countries with different approaches.”

Endless coalition wrangling over the contents of the report, which has taken more than eight months to be published, has ensured that it does not include any conclusions.

However, reading the evidence it provides, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Home Office civil servants who wrote it seem to have been impressed that a health-based rather than a criminal justice-based approach is where effective policies lie.

It also, rather remarkably, says that the experiments in legalisation now under way in the US states of Washington and Colorado, and in Uruguay, should be watched with interest. This is a world away from the “war on drugs” rhetoric that has formed the mainstay of the political debate on drugs in the past four decades.

The report, Drugs: International Comparators, documents in great detail the experience of Portugal, where personal use was decriminalised nearly 11 years ago and those arrested for drugs are given the choice of going before a health “dissuasion commission” or facing a criminal justice process.

“Trend data from Portugal shows how levels of drug use changed in the years following decriminalisation in 2001. Although levels of drug use rose between 2001 and 2007, use of drugs has since fallen to below 2001 levels. It is clear that there has not been a lasting and significant increase in drug use in Portugal since 2001,” the report says.

At the same time, it notes there have been significant reductions in the number of drug users diagnosed with HIV and Aids at a time when drug-related deaths have remained stable: “These outcomes cannot be attributed to decriminalisation alone, and are likely to have been influenced by increases in the use of treatment and harm reduction,” it says, stressing that it is difficult to disentangle the impact of decriminalisation from wider improvements in drug treatment and harm reduction over the same period.

Nevertheless, it firmly rejects claims that decriminalisation in Portugal has led to a spike in drug use. It goes on to contrast Portugal with the Czech Republic, where an evaluation found that there was no significant decline in the availability of drugs following the implementation of stricter laws in 2010.

On the situation in Colorado, Washington and Uruguay, the Home Office says their experimental policies which legalise production, supply and recreational use of cannabis have the common aim of disrupting organised crime and exercising greater control over the use of cannabis.

“The American states have a market-driven approach, with lighter regulation than Uruguay and fewer limitations on consumption and use. Uruguay, which has growing concerns about organised crime, has a stronger role for the state, with limitations in size of the market, the strains and potency of cannabis, and the quantity that an individual can purchase in a month.”

Crucially, the report adds: “It is too early to know how these experiments will play out, but we will monitor the impacts of these new policies in the coming years.”

The report examines various harm reduction initiatives in 11 countries, including the use of drug consumption rooms, the prescription of heroin under medical supervision, and prison-based needle exchange programmes. In particular it found evidence that heroin prescribing, including in three limited trials in Britain, can be effective.

There is no overall conclusion to the report, but in its last paragraph the Home Office authors reflect that the lack of any clear correlation between “toughness” of approach and levels of drug use demonstrates the complexity of the issue: “Achieving better health outcomes for drug users cannot be shown to be a direct result of the enforcement approach.”

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Op donderdag 30 oktober 2014 23:07 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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*lachen inhouden...*

Papierversnipperaar, dit fragment mag zeker in de OP erbij!

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Ministers high on their war on drugs need a speedy cure

A psychology of macho law-making dominates British drugs policy – in defiance of both public opinion and common sense

The government should ban all reports on drug legalisation. They get you hooked on rage. Evidence-based reform is a gateway substance to common sense. Just send a message: no thought means no.

Parliament’s response to this week’s report on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act shows that psychoactive substances are the last taboo to afflict Britain’s elite. It has got over past obsessions with whipping, hanging, sodomy and abortion, but it is still stuck on drugs. There is no point in reading the latest research on drugs policy worldwide. It is spitting in the wind. The only research worth doing is on why drugs policy reduces British politicians to gibbering wrecks.

In 2000 the Police Foundation committee chaired by Lady Runciman (on which I served) proposed an end to imprisonment for “soft” drug possession and cultivation, together with lower penalties for hard drugs. In particular we pointed to the nonsense of classifying half-safe drugs such as ecstasy with heroin, suggesting that the latter was no more harmful than the former. It was pretty mild stuff.

Tony Blair’s Downing Street went ape. What would they say at the Daily Mail, then ruling Britain much as the pope rules Ireland? Blair’s aide Alastair Campbell ordered the hapless home sectary, Jack Straw, to rubbish our report over the weekend before it was even published.

In the event the report was welcomed by the Mail, as well as by the Express, the Telegraph and more liberal papers. The Mail on Sunday even published a poll showing 60% of people in favour of decriminalising cannabis. Such was Straw’s embarrassment that he later partly climbed down. Cannabis law enforcement was eased, but the sense of panic surrounding the subject remained. There has been no liberalisation since.

It did not matter that the law was almost 30 years old and had manifestly failed to suppress narcotic use or abuse. It did not matter that most of the press were in favour of reform, or that at the time, eight Tory shadow ministers admitted to having taken drugs.

Today it still does not matter that a 2012 ComRes poll showed three quarters of MPs in favour of reform. An Observer poll last month showed 52% of the public wanting US-style legalisation of medical and recreational marijuana, while a Sun poll this week had 71% accepting that the “war on drugs” had not worked. The Sun itself concluded: “We can’t just carry on with the status quo.”

If the Archangel Gabriel came down from heaven and said decriminalising drugs would end war, banish poverty, reduce obesity and defeat child sex abuse, it would make no difference to a British cabinet. David Cameron might have favoured reform before taking office, as he will doubtless favour it after leaving – in common with many world leaders. When he has power to do something about it, he runs scared. The great taboo tightens its iron grip on his throat, as it does on that of his ambitious home secretary, Theresa May.

This week’s report is another reminder of the limits of the criminal law in telling people how to order their own lives. It finds no correlation between the toughness of a country’s penalties and drug consumption. You can nudge but you cannot ban. Besides, illegality imposes huge burdens on the justice system, prisons and the health service. A 2009 report by the charity Transform suggested legalisation could save as much as £14bn, while taxing cannabis, as the US has started doing, could raise £1.3bn. Better by far to spend this money on countering addiction and policing the drugs market.

It is foolish to deny that drug abuse can cause harm, as does the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and other substances. This is not an issue. The issue is the capacity of the law to mitigate it. “Sending a message” may make ministers feel tough, but it is clearly wrecking thousands of lives and enriching criminals. Cameron pleads that “our drugs strategy is working”. That some areas of consumption are falling – in tough and tender regimes alike – does not make the policy a good one. Drug abuse is about physical and mental health. It should no more be about crime than is obesity or alcoholism.

The Independent yesterday asked, “Is Britain ready to grow up?”. I fear the answer is no. I cannot face more reports on how much more humane are the drugs policies of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Colorado and Uruguay. I give up reading of the hell that criminalisation – abetted by an antediluvian UN – inflicts on the people of Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Pretending to ban cocaine production may delight rightwing opinion, but it exacts a ghastly price from people in producer countries.

As for the government proposal to ban “legal highs”, the Home Office appears not to have heard of the internet. The BBC revealed last August that there are now 23 distinct online operators on the dark web, covering about 250 products. This market has doubled in size in the past year, with heaven knows what unregulated junk flooding the mail.

The best deterrent to drug misuse is publicity, just as the best cure is treatment. Instead Theresa May and her political colleagues (including Labour) are the drug dealers’ useful idiots. To leave young people to the mercy of pushers and adulterators is the real crime. The chaotic nature of these markets causes more harm than do the substances themselves. Nor does the liberal Home Office minister Norman Baker, who backs reform, have a coherent strategy. He wants to “crack down on the Mr Bigs and criminal gangs”. I can hear them laughing. His job should be to regulate them out of business.

The psychology of repressive law-making and its appeal to political machismo is the most sinister branch of public life. The belief of those in power that they can command private behaviour with the flick of a law or the cosh of a penalty is fantasy. I once hoped that sheer embarrassment at the harm they cause might shame Britain’s politicians down the road increasingly taken by those in the rest of Europe and north and south America.

But no. May could not even bring herself to publish her own department’s factual survey on the drugs market for three months of infighting with Baker and the Lib Dems. Britain will soon be to drugs what Ireland is to abortion, in a dark ages zone. Unlike Ireland it cannot even blame religion, only stupidity.

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Op donderdag 30 oktober 2014 15:39 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work

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UK government’s drug laws survey was suppressed, Lib Dem minister says

Norman Baker says Tories did not like evidence gleaned as deputy prime minister Nick Clegg criticises foot dragging over report that says tough laws make no difference

A groundbreaking Home Office report which concluded that tougher enforcement of drug laws does not lead to lower levels of drug use was “suppressed” by the Conservatives, a Liberal Democrat minister has said.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat Home Office drugs minister, said the report, published on Thursday, had been suppressed not by the home secretary, Theresa May, but by the Conservatives.

In support, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said there had been a lot of “foot dragging” over the publication of the report but urged the Tories to “have the courage just for once to break some of the taboos about Britain’s ineffective drug laws”.

The deputy prime minister accused Downing Street of being frightened to open its eyes to the way in which Britain’s drugs laws leads to 2,000 deaths a year while “the pushers, the Mr Bigs and the criminal gangs get richer and richer”.

The government’s first evidence-based survey examined international drug laws and said there was no evidence that tough enforcement of laws on personal possession led to lower levels of drug use. The Home Office document brings to an end 40 years of almost unbroken official political rhetoric that only harsher penalties can tackle the problem caused by the likes of heroin, cocaine or cannabis.

The report was signed off by May and Baker and was published on Thursday alongside an official expert report calling for a general ban on the sale and trade in legal highs, although Baker has said it had been ready for publication since July.

The Lib Dem Home Office minister said: “The reality is that this report has been sitting around for several months. I’ve been trying to get it out and I’m afraid that I believe that my coalition colleagues who commissioned the report jointly don’t like the independent conclusions it’s reached.

“It was suppressed, not by Theresa May, it was suppressed by the Conservatives and the reality is that it has got some inconvenient truths in it.”

Baker said the international comparisons demonstrated that “banging people up and increasing sentences does not stop drug use”. He said the last 40 years had seen a drugs debate in Britain based on the “lazy assumption in the rightwing press that if you have harsher penalties it will reduce drug use, but there is no evidence for that at all”.

Baker added: “If anything the evidence is to the contrary.”

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, he said some Conservative colleagues did not like the evidence that had come out but “if you see a tree, it is a tree”.

Downing Street insisted the report did not reach the conclusions Baker claimed and accused him of a desperate spinning operation.

In a statement, Number 10 said: “This report provides no support whatsoever for the Lib Dem’s policy of decriminalisation. In fact, it clearly states that it would be inappropriate to draw those kind of conclusions.

“The Lib Dem policy would see drug dealers getting off scot-free and send an incredibly dangerous message to young people about the risks of taking drugs “As the report makes very clear, the Government’s approach already provides a good balance between enforcement and treatment, drug use is plummeting as a result and there is simply no chance that we will entertain such a reckless change of course .”

Clegg, speaking on LBC, said: “I think the Tories have a misplaced, backward-looking, outdated view that the public would not accept a smarter approach on how to deal with drugs. The argument I have made to them privately and publicly is pluck up the courage to face up to the evidence that what we are doing is not as effective as it should be, there are lessons we can learn from other countries and if you are anti-drugs you should be pro-reform. Have the courage for once just to break some of the taboos.”

He said: “We have got to get away from this facile view that talking tough solves this problem. It is a betrayal of those 2,000 families of those that die every year in our country.”

Clegg said he had unsuccessfully pressed his Conservative colleagues to set up a royal commission, but then persuaded them to undertake an international comparative study that had finally been published after “lots and lots of foot dragging”.

He stressed that he was not advocating decriminalisation of drugs, saying he did not support a free-for-all, but wanting more criminalisation of the pushers.

“I hope today’s report is a wake-up call to Ed Miliband and David Cameron to open their eyes and actually get on with changing things so we can help the addicts to break their habit and really get the criminals that should be behind bars in prison.”

Michael Ellis, a Tory member of the home affairs select committee, accused Baker of naked political posturing and being pro-drugs, adding Baker was acting in desperation as his party fell behind the Greens in opinion polls.

Baker added that wider societal factors, such as a more risk-averse generation of young people who suffered fewer alcohol problems and were healthier, contributed to the general downward trend in drug use.

The international report documents in detail the successes of the health-led approach in Portugal, combining decriminalisation with other policies, and shows reductions in all types of drug use alongside falls in drug-related HIV and Aids cases.

The Home Office international research paper on the use of illegal drugs, which redeems a Lib Dem 2010 election pledge for a royal commission to examine the alternatives to the current drug laws, also leaves the door open on the legalisation experiments in the American states of Washington and Colorado, and in Uruguay. It said: “It is too early to know how they will play out but we will monitor the impacts of these new policies in the years to come.”

Regarding legal highs, Baker said the government would look at the feasibility of a blanket ban on new compounds of psychoactive drugs that focused on dealers and the “head shops” that sell tobacco paraphernalia rather than users.

“The head shops could be left with nothing to sell but Rizla papers,” Baker said. “The approach of a general ban had a dramatic effect on their availability when it was introduced in Ireland, but we must ensure that it will work here.”

A ban would apply to head shops and websites. Legal highs are currently banned on a temporary 12-month basis as each new substance arrives on the market. Legislation is possible before the election but not certain.

The new blanket or generic ban would not be accompanied by a ban on the possession or use of the new psychoactive substances, which often mimic the effects of traditional drugs. This would remain legal.

It is expected the expert report on legal highs will recommend a threshold for substances to be banned so that those with minimal psychoactive effects – such as alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee – would not be caught by the proposed new ban.

The report firmly rejects a New Zealand style-approach of regulating head shops and other sales outlets for legal highs.

Publication of both reports has been held up for months as interminable negotiations between the two coalition parties have gone on over every detailed issue.

Baker has repeatedly warned of the dangers of legal highs, citing evidence that some cannabinoids synthesised in chemical labs are 100 times more powerful than traditional strains of cannabis.

The expert report says there were 60 deaths related to new psychoactive substances in 2013 – up from 52 the year before.

It also considers basing future controls on the effect on the brain rather than the current test of their chemical structure.

Frontline health staff are also urged to receive strengthened training to deal with their effects.

Danny Kushlik, of the Transform drugs charity which campaigns for drug legalisation, said the international report represented a landmark in British drugs policy since the introduction of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act that is still in force today.

“This is a historic moment in the development of UK drug policy. For the first time in over 40 years the Home Office has admitted that enforcing tough drug laws doesn’t necessarily reduce levels of drug use,” said Kushlik.

“It has also acknowledged that decriminalising the possession of drugs doesn’t increase levels of use. Even more, the department in charge of drugs prohibition says it will take account of the experiments in the legal regulation of cannabis in Washington, Colorado and Uruguay.

“Pragmatic reform will only happen if there is cross-party support for change and we can assume now that the Labour party can engage constructively on this previously toxic issue.”

A Home Office spokesperson, responding to the evidence of the international report, said: “This government has absolutely no intention of decriminalising drugs. Our drugs strategy is working and there is a long-term downward trend in drug misuse in the UK.

“It is right that we look at drugs policies in other countries and today’s report summarises a number of these international approaches.”

Earlier this year the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, pledged to abolish prison sentences for the possession of drugs for personal use – including class-A substances such as heroin and cocaine. He urged David Cameron to look at issues such as decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs.

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Nederland krijgt enorme cheque met Amerikaans drugsgeld



Nederland krijgt 3 miljoen dollar van de Amerikaanse overheid vanwege de hulp met het bestrijden van grootschalige drugshandel. Nederland deelt mee in de opbrengst van het onderzoek, dat drie jaar duurde.

Het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie assisteerde sinds 2009 bij een grootschalig onderzoek naar internationale drugshandel, operatie Pac Rim. Het onderzoek duurde drie jaar en vond plaats in verschillende landen, waaronder de VS, Nederland en Colombia.

ZIE OOK: Topman drugskartel opgepakt tijdens voetbalwedstrijd

Bij het onderzoek in Nederland, waarbij de Nederlandse politie assisteerde, werd 6 miljoen euro gevonden. Die opbrengst deelt de VS nu met Nederland. De Amerikaanse ambassadeur heeft Nederland (letterlijk) een grote cheque gegeven. Het geld gaat naar de begroting van Justitie.

In totaal leidde het onderzoek tot inbeslagname van meer dan 175 miljoen dollar cash. Ook werden er bezittingen met een waarde van 850 miljoen dollar in beslag genomen. Er werden 37 mensen aangeklaagd en 26 veroordeeld.

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Norman Baker resigns as Home Office minister with parting shot at May

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Coalition relations hit a new low on Monday night when the Liberal Democrat Norman Baker resigned as a Home Office minister after likening his experience working under Theresa May to “walking through mud”.

In a sign of the loveless nature of the coalition in the final six months before the general election, Baker announced his resignation in an interview with the Independent apparently without notifying the home secretary.

Nick Clegg, who will on Tuesday announce a replacement for Baker as minister for crime prevention with responsibility for drugs policy, alerted Downing Street earlier in the day.

Baker announced he had decided to stand down after a row over drugs policy with the home secretary showed there was little support for “rational evidence-based policy” in the Home Office. He had criticised May for sitting for three months on an official report which showed that tougher enforcement of drug laws does not lead to lower levels of drug use.

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Burgemeester opgepakt in zoektocht naar vermiste studenten Mexico

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De burgemeester van de Mexicaanse stad Iguala, waar op 26 september 43 studenten verdwenen na rellen, is dinsdag opgepakt. Hij was voortvluchtig.

Dat meldt de BBC op basis van lokale media. Jose Luis Abarca zou in Mexico-Stad zijn aangehouden. De autoriteiten spraken eerder al het vermoeden uit dat de burgemeester en zijn vrouw verantwoordelijk zijn voor de ontvoeringen.

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Jaarbericht Nationale Drug Monitor 2013/2014 verschenen

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De jaarlijkse update van de Nationale Drug Monitor is verschenen. Naast de laatste cijfers over gebruik van alcohol, tabak, drugs en slaap- en kalmeringsmiddelen, wordt ook een overzicht geboden van de laatste ontwikkelingen in wetgeving en beleid en alcohol- en drugsgerelateerde criminaliteit.

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Voorbereiding grootschalige illegale wietteelt wordt strafbaar

Mensen die meewerken aan voorbereidingen van grootschalige illegale wietteelt kunnen straks worden vervolgd.

Een meerderheid in de Eerste Kamer schaarde zich dinsdag achter het wetsvoorstel van minister Ivo Opstelten (Veiligheid en Justitie), maar coalitiepartner PvdA steunt het niet.

''De effectiviteit van de wet is zo gering ten opzichte van de huidige wet dat er geen positief oordeel kan komen'', zei Guusje ter Horst (PvdA). Ook D66, SP, GroenLinks en 50PLUS zijn tegen het plan.

Volgens Margreet de Boer (GroenLinks) wordt met het wetsvoorstel ''verwijtbare naïviteit'' strafbaar. Kan een vrachtwagenchauffeur die kunstmest aflevert bij een loods ook vervolgd worden als later blijkt dat er een hennepkwekerij is gevestigd, vroeg De Graaf zich af.

Het gaat om gevallen wanneer ''elk weldenkend mens het handelen achterwege had gelaten'', aldus de minister, dus om ''verwijtbaar wegkijken''. Onoplettendheid en onachtzaamheid vallen hier volgens Opstelten niet onder.

Een motie van de PvdA om een commissie in te stellen die het Nederlandse softdrugsbeleid tegen het licht moet houden, wees Opstelten van de hand. ''Ik heb geen behoefte aan een commissie.''

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California Voters Deal Blow To Prisons, Drug War

California approved a major shift against mass incarceration on Tuesday in a vote that could lead to the release of thousands of state prisoners.

Nonviolent felonies like shoplifting and drug possession will be downgraded to misdemeanors under the ballot measure, Proposition 47. As many as 10,000 people could be eligible for early release from state prisons, and it's expected that courts will annually dispense around 40,000 fewer felony convictions.

The state Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that the new measure will save hundreds of millions of dollars on prisons. That money is to be redirected to education, mental health and addiction services -- a novel approach that reformers hope will serve as a model in the larger push against mass incarceration.

The approval of the ballot measure could also help California grapple with massive overcrowding in its state prisons, which are still struggling to release enough inmates to comply with a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court order.

Although California once led the nation in tough-on-crime policies, like the state's infamous three-strikes felony law, Proposition 47 has led in every poll conducted since it was certified in June. The measure's supporters have been an eclectic bunch, from conservatives like Newt Gingrich and business tycoon B. Wayne Hughes Jr. to liberal performers like John Legend and Jay-Z.

The most vocal opponents of Proposition 47 were law enforcement officials who warned that the measure could make it harder to prosecute felony gun theft or possession of date-rape drugs.

At the same time, a few scattered law-and-order voices, like San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, did come out in favor of the proposition, dismissing those concerns.

Reformers also vastly outspent law enforcement officials and their allies. The main coalition in favor of Proposition 47 raised $7 million as of mid-October, buoyed by contributions from the likes of Hughes, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and a foundation backed by the financier George Soros.

Californians Against Proposition 47, meanwhile, garnered less than $500,000 in the same time period. The state prison guard union -- often a formidable force in debates over mass incarceration -- sat the ballot measure debate out.

"The country seems to have come to a different place [...] I think, most fundamentally, because crime is down," Keith Humphreys, a drug addiction expert who supported the measure, told The Huffington Post in October. "When people are not feeling terrified, they're more willing to back off on the tough-on-crime stuff."

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Saudi Arabia and Lebanon launch crackdown on “digital drugs” sold as MP3s

Authorities in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have moved to clamp down on so-called “digital drugs” – audio files which claim to get you high.


The theory that you can buzz off “binaural beats” has largely been dismissed by scientists, but Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper is reporting that Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi is pushing to ban the use of the audio files, which can be downloaded for a few dollars each. Saudi Arabia’s national drug control bodies are also having “urgent meetings” to try and prevent their spread, as Arab News reports. The panic follows a similar response in the United Arab Emirates in 2012, when a leading police official called for binaural beats to be dealt with like cannabis and ecstasy.

“Binaural beats” are said to work by playing two pure tones through headphones that combine to make a third ‘phantom’ tone, which induces an altered state. The type of high depends on which track you buy, with companies like i-Doser giving you the option to design your own trip for specific effects.

Most scientists are sceptical of the power of “digital dosing”, pointing out that there is virtually no evidence about their effects yet. Michael Casey, a computer science and music professor at Dartmouth College, told VICE News: “The idea that binaural beats or this very simple sound phenomenon is having an impact on a direct medical condition or a cognitive state such as sleep or increased focus is still a matter of further research at this point.”

We know you want to give it a whirl, so dip into some binauraul beats below.

DIGITAL DRUGS - Binaural beats - WARNING High Intensity

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Raad Amsterdam wil experiment gereguleerde wietteelt

Burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan van Amsterdam heeft donderdag de gemeenteraad toegezegd te willen lobbyen voor een experiment met gereguleerde wietteelt. Een grote meerderheid in de raad stemde vandaag voor een motie die de burgemeester oproept voorbereidingen te starten voor zo'n experiment.

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Van der Laan waarschuwde niet te hard van stapel te lopen door alvast te gaan experimenteren. 'Als we het doen, moeten we geloofwaardig blijven. Alvast een beetje beginnen zou ons kwetsbaar maken. Tempo maken met beleid voorbereiden is beter dan gaan provoceren. Ook Utrecht, Heerlen en Eindhoven zijn nog niet verder dan de planfase', zei Van der Laan.

twitter:

jdscee twitterde op donderdag 06-11-2014 om 21:35:41 Silk Road 2.0's alleged owner arrested as drugs website shuttered by FBIhttp://t.co/XOn3dYAEINSilk Road 3 won't be far away. #warondrugs reageer retweet

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Hickenlooper unveils next year's Colorado budget and taxpayer rebates

DENVER - There is some good news for taxpayers. Gov. John Hickenlooper's proposed $26.8 billion Colorado budget, unveiled Monday afternoon, includes two rebates for taxpayers.

Taxpayer rebates totaling $167.2 million are mandated by Colorado Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, assuming current law and the September forecast by the Office of State Planning and Budget.

A $30.5 million rebate for new marijuana taxes is coming. Total state marijuana revenue was different than what was projected in the election blue book for 2013's Proposition AA. Because the estimate was off, under TABOR, the state must refund the money being collected or ask voters again to keep it.

Hickenlooper said he'll let the legislature decide the nuts and bolts of the rebate.

"It will be important to engage the legislature when the session begins on the issue of marijuana rebates, and at this time, it would be unwise for the state to plan to spend any of those funds in advance of that discussion," Hickenlooper said.

Meanwhile, current revenue projections indicate a $136.6 million refund for revenue above the Referendum C cap in Fiscal Year 2015-16. If they materialize, the rebates would go out under existing formulas via tax credits or sales tax refunds when people file their 2016 taxes.

The budget allocates substantially increased funding for K-12 education -- some on a one-time basis -- continues strong support for higher education, and secures funding to complete construction projects already underway.

In Fiscal Year 2015-16, the General Fund will provide additional funding for transportation per the provisions of Senate Bill 09-228. The budget allocates $102.6 million under the statute's formulas.

"Colorado's economic activity continues to outperform the national expansion," Hickenlooper said. "Total employment and personal income have steadily increased for several years running. The state's unemployment rate stands at 4.7 percent, the lowest since 2008. Looking ahead, the most likely scenario is for the momentum to continue at a steady pace."

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Op zaterdag 8 november 2014 20:52 schreef heiden6 het volgende:
SFL End the Drug War Event in Serbia Stormed by Neo-Nazis

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Betogers blokkeren luchthaven Acapulco om verdwenen studenten

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Betogers hebben maandag de ingang van aankomst- en vertrekhallen van de internationale luchthaven van de Mexicaanse badplaats Acapulco geblokkeerd. Ze demonstreren vanwege de 43 studenten die in september in de plaats Iguala verdwenen.

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The legalisation of marijuana isn't just about liberal values - it's about dollars

The tax revenues from marijuana in states where it has been legalised are relatively sizeable - is this one of the reasons why many places are consenting to pro-marijuana legislation?

On Tuesday, Oregon, Alaska and Washington D.C. voted in favour of pro-marijuana legislation. A vote in Florida won 58% support, falling just short of the required 60% threshold. Nearly 18 million Americans now live in states where marijuana is fully legal.

So, why is it that legislatures and voters in red states favourably lean towards what, on paper at least, would seem to be a liberal issue? One reason (at least when it comes to governments) might be to do with money.

One of the states they now join is Colorado, where marijuana was legalised (with some restrictions) last year. On average, the state now gets more tax revenues from the plant than from alcohol.

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NYPD will stop arresting people for minor marijuana offenses

In policy shift, NYPD officers will soon have option to issue court summonses rather than arrest those caught with less than 25 grams of cannabis in open view

The New York police department, the largest in the US, will stop arresting people in possession of small amounts of marijuana, in a marked policy change that mayor Bill de Blasio said reflects his campaign promise to repair frayed relations between officers and the city’s minority communities.

Starting next week, NYPD officers will have the option to issue court summonses rather than arrest those caught with less than 25 grams of pot, the mayor and the NYPD police commissioner William Bratton announced during a joint press conference on Monday afternoon.

“When an individual is arrested, even for the smallest possession of marijuana, it hurts their chances to get a good job; it hurts their chances to get housing; it hurts their chances to qualify for a student loan,” DeBlasio said. “It can literally follow them for the rest of their lives and saddle young people with challenges that for many are very, very difficult to overcome.”

Under the new policy, people caught burning or smoking weed in public still face arrest. Other exceptions include those with outstanding warrants and people who can’t provide proper identification, Bratton said. If a police officer decides to issue a summons, the person will be given a ticket to appear in court and sent on their way. Officers will seize the marijuana, and take it back to the station for processing.

The fine for a first offense will be $100, which can go up to $250 for a second offense. Bratton said official guidelines would be released on Tuesday, and the policy would go into effect on 19 November. Officers are to undergo training this week.

The new policy is a sharp pivot from the “broken windows” crime-fighting strategy Bratton champions: tough enforcement of low-level crimes to stop offenders from committing more serious ones in the future. But he said on Monday he welcomes the opportunity to direct more resources to fighting serious, violent crime.

The policy is expected to curb the tens of thousands of arrests for low-level pot possession the NYPD makes each year. Research shows such arrests disproportionately affect black and Latino residents, even though white residents are as likely to use marijuana.

In the first eight months of 2014, 86% of the people arrested for marijuana possession were blacks and Latinos, according to the Marijuana Arrest Research Project.

Advocates offered lukewarm praise of the new policy, warning that summonses still entangle New Yorkers in the criminal justice system. A missed court date may result in arrest.

“We’re glad to see the consequences of a marijuana offense won’t include handcuffs and jail time,” said New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman in a statement on Monday.

“But we’re still concerned that too many New Yorkers will become involved with the court system because of a small amount of marijuana. And because there is no required reporting on the demographics of who is issued summonses, we won’t be able to track the racial disparities that result from the new initiative.”

Summonses do not require race or ethnicity reporting, so it will be difficult to identify who police are ticketing.

The city’s five district attorneys met with the mayor and the police commissioner to discuss the new policy on Monday, Bratton said, adding that he believed all supported the move.

Earlier this year, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office announced it would stop prosecuting small-scale marijuana cases. In a memo, the district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, said the policy aimed to keep nonviolent offenders – who are disproportionately young men of color – out of the criminal justice system.

In response, Bratton said at the time that the city’s police officers would continue to enforce the law. On Monday, De Blasio said the disagreement between the district attorney and Bratton had been overstated.

In 1977, New York state legislature decriminalised the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Despite this, New York City persisted as the marijuana arrest capital of the world, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a reform advocacy group.

Inimai Chettiar, director of the Justice Program with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, said the city’s action is reflective of a broader shift in criminal justice policy that moves away from the tough-on-crime measures of past decades, which resulted in record-level incarceration rates.

“This is very emblematic of a larger movement across the country that’s supported by conservatives and law enforcement alike,” she said. “Across the country there really is a unique bipartisan consensus that we need to focus law enforcement and criminal justice resources on the most serious offenders as opposed to low-level offenders … I think that this policy really positions New York as a leader in this area.”

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Afghan opium crop set for record high

Helmand province remains country’s top opium-cultivating province, with drug money financing Taliban operations

The opium crop in Afghanistan will hit a new high this year, the United Nations has said, presenting a challenge to the country in tackling the trade that fuels the Taliban-led insurgency.

Opium cultivation has risen 7% year on year to 224,000 hectares, and production in 2014 may reach 6,400 tonnes – a 17% increase – according to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Afghanistan’s southern provinces, which have been disproportionately affected by the recent surge in violence, continued to drive overall production, with a 27% increase in yields.

In Helmand province, where British forces operated and the UK government spearheaded eradication efforts, opium cultivation appears to have stabilised. Nevertheless, it still remained the country’s top opium-cultivating province.

The report confirms how the international community’s efforts to reduce opium production in Afghanistan have been met by dismal failure. After the Taliban seized power in 1996, production rapidly grew. It fell back in 2001 – when the Taliban leader Mullah Omar declared opium to be un-Islamic. Since the US-led invasion of 2001 and the Taliban’s exit from Kabul, it has inexorably risen.

The money from opium sales finances Taliban operations, and also serves as a source of systemic corruption inside the Afghan government.

With much of the country slipping out of central control, eradication by local governors decreased by 63%. The number of fatalities during the campaign also dipped from 143 in 2013 to 13 in 2014.

The figures showed counter-narcotics efforts had failed, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, director for policy analysis and public affairs at the UNODC, said, but there was hope for success under the new government.

“[Changing] the economic incentives away from the illicit economy to the licit economy, now that’s a hell of a task, but that’s exactly what indeed this new government seems to stand for,” he said.

President Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated in late September, following months of tension followingafter a disputed election. The political wrangling has accelerated a sharp economic downturn caused by the withdrawal of foreign troops.

“For him the criminalisation of the economics and politics of Afghanistan is one of the main problems. It penetrates everything and anything he [Ghani] wants to achieve,” Lemahieu said.

A recent report by the US watchdog found that the opium economy employs 411,000 Afghans with jobs – more than the fledgling Afghan national security forces. The poppy industry still makes up 4% of Afghanistan’s estimated gross domestic product (GDP).

Ghani has a comprehensive plan to tackle the drug problem, Lemahieu said, including creating incentives for farmers to plant alternative crops and prosecuting smugglers.

The president, who wrote a book on how to fix failed states, has said the key to opium eradication is jobs. He has also suggested cotton could replace opium if the west scrapped tariffs on Afghan textiles. Poor Afghan farmers, however, point out that they can make far more money from opium than from other crops such as wheat.

The failure of the eradication campaigns has inspired some Afghanistan experts, such as the former UK ambassador to Afghanistan Sir William Patey, to come out endorsing legalisation of the drug.

“If we cannot deal effectively with supply, then the only alternative would seem to be to try to limit the demand for illicit drugs by making a supply of them available from a legally regulated market,” he said earlier this year.

The US has spent $7.6bn (£4.8bn) on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since ousting the Taliban in 2001, according to the US government watchdog for reconstruction, and ending Afghanistan’s illicit drug trade was listed as one of the reasons for deploying British troops to Afghanistan.The country remains the world’s biggest supplier of opium, producing 90% of illicit opiates.

Ethan Nadelmann: Why we need to end the War on Drugs

quote:

“The reason some drugs are legal and others are not has nothing to do with science or health or the risk of drugs, and everything to do with who uses, and is perceived to use, certain drugs,” says Nadelmann during his TedGlobal talk. “If the principal smokers of cocaine were affluent older white men and the principal users of Viagra were young black men, using Viagra would land you time behind bars.”

quote:

Gouverneur verleent eigen zoon gratie na veroordeling drugsbezit

quote:

Mike Beebe, de gouverneur van de Amerikaanse staat Arkensas, is van plan gratie te verlenen aan iemand die gestraft werd voor het bezit van marihuana. Het is niet zomaar een veroordeelde, het is zijn zoon.

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Mexico at breaking point as anti-government anger escalates

Corruption and violence threaten to destabilise country after mass murder of students and scandal over presidential home

Mexico is facing an escalating political crisis amid growing fury over a mansion built for the presidential family and the disappearance and probable massacre of 43 student teachers.

The two apparently unrelated issues have fed the widespread perception that unbridled political corruption is the underlying cause of the country’s many problems – ranging from stunted economic growth to a breakdown of law and order that has left parts of the country at the mercy of murderous drug cartels.

“The drama of Mexico is about impunity,” said leading political commentator Jesús Silva-Herzog. “This is not about the popularity or unpopularity of the president, that is irrelevant. It is about credibility and trust and, at its root, it is about legitimacy.”

Thousands of protestors are expected to join a mass demonstration planned for Thursday in Mexico City to protest over the disappearance of the students by municipal police in collusion with a local drug gang in the southern city of Iguala six weeks ago.

But the latest focus for anti-government anger is a video released late on Tuesday night by first lady Angélica Rivera in an attempt to mitigate a scandal over a multi-million minimalist white residence built to measure for her and President Enrique Peña Nieto in one of Mexico City’s most exclusive barrios.

The house is still owned by a subsidiary of a company with a long history of obtaining lucrative contracts from Peña Nieto administrations, dating back to his term as governor of the state of Mexico.

In her address, Rivera, a former telenovela star, said she was going to sell her interests in the house, but vehemently insisted there had never been any strings attached.

“I don’t want this to continue to be a pretext for offending and defaming my family,” she said.

Rivera said she had been paying for the house from the fruits of her labour earned during a 25-year long career within TV giant Televisa that ended in 2010 with the payment of 88.6 million pesos ($6.5m) and the transference of property of another luxurious residence that backs onto the controversial new mansion.

She said she had already paid about a third of the cost of the new home worth 54 million pesos ($4m), in accordance with a contract signed with the company over eight years.

She said she had met the company’s owner, who also happens to be a personal friend of the president, “like I meet many businessmen, professionals, and artists.”

The existence of the house was revealed 10 days ago by the website of leading Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui.

But the the first lady’s attempt to turn the page of the scandal was met with widespread skepticism.

“There have always been rumours, but we have never before had documents that suggest that a president in office has participated in illegal operations,” commentator Silva-Herzog said, adding that he expected the unanswered key question to further fuel public skepticism and anger.

“This is the worst possible moment for a scandal of this kind.”

Rivera’s attempt to shake off the suggestion of wrong-doing came as the president adopted a new combative stance in the face of intensifying protests triggered by the disappearance of the 43 students in the southern city of Igualá on 26 September.

The students went missing after being arrested by municipal police who also participated in a series of attacks during the night that left six people dead.

Over time the focus of the protests has moved from demands for the return of the students alive, to disbelief at the government’sfailure to crack down on widespread collusion between law enforcement agencies and drug mafias.

The disappearance of the students has sparked numerous demonstrations in many parts of the country, which have been much more widespread than protests prompted by allegations of fraud in Peña Nieto’s electoral victory in 2012.

Unlike during the previous wave of dissent, the current protests have expressed anger at perceptions of corruption across the entire political class that is viewed as corrupt, not just Peña Nieto.

Peña Nieto had previously adopted a conciliatory tone, expressing sympathy for the victims’s families and promising a full and thorough investigation, but on Tuesday he used a speech to denounce violent outbreaks in some of the numerous demonstrations in recent weeks.

The violence, he said, “appears to respond to a general interest to destabilise and, above all, attack the national project that we are pushing forward”.

The harder line echoes some calls in the national press by commentators such as Ricardo Alemán who has begun regularly urging politicians to discard their “fear of governing”, and crack down radical elements in the demonstrations.

Other analysts, however, detect a menacing tone in the president’s words.

Silva-Herzog drew parallels with the language used by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, who governed at the time of the watershed 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in which scores – and possibly hundreds – of pro democracy students were killed by government forces in Mexico City.

“It is dangerous because it polarizes the climate,” he said. “The solution has to start by recognizing the legitimate foundations of the collective irritation. The country has good reason to be angry.”

With Thursday’s key demonstration approaching on the 104th anniversary of the Mexican revolution, the authorities announced the cancellation of the annual military parade that usually fills the capital’s central streets on that day.

quote:

Groot protest in Mexico om verdwenen studenten

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In de hoofdstad Mexico-Stad gooiden betogers molotovcocktails naar de oproerpolitie al voordat de demonstraties begonnen. Gewonden zijn er volgens de politie niet gevallen.

De sfeer werd grimmig toen drie verschillende protestmarsen het centrale plein in de hoofdstad bereikten. Daar ging onder meer de beeltenis van president Enrique Pena Nieto in vlammen op.

Sommige actievoerders botsten buiten het presidentieel paleis met de politie, die massaal aanwezig was om het gebouw te beschermen.

De verdwenen studenten werden op 26 september door de politie in de plaats Iguala meegenomen en overgeleverd aan een drugsbende. Sindsdien ontbreekt elk spoor. Sommige actievoerders droegen spandoeken met opschriften als ''de staat heeft het gedaan''. Ook familieleden van de verdwenen studenten liepen mee.

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US judge sentences 'El Chapo' Guzmán associate to 22 years in prison for drug crimes

In sentencing Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez, judge said he wanted to send a stern message to Hernandez and other Mexican cartel traffickers

A US judge sentenced a reputed lieutenant of captured Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman to 22 years in prison on Monday for his role in a $1b conspiracy to traffic narcotics to Chicago and other cities.

In sentencing Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez, Chief US District Judge in Chicago Ruben Castillo said he wanted to send a stern message to Hernandez and other Mexican traffickers. Hernandez, 58, is one of 11 alleged traffickers indicted in Chicago, including Guzman himself. Hernandez was the first to be sentenced.

“I tell you on behalf of all citizens of Chicago ... we are tired of this drug trafficking,” Castillo told Hernandez, who minutes earlier apologized to the court and US government and asked Castillo to take pity on him.

The case is regarded as one of the US government’s most important against Mexican cartels. Guzman remains jailed in Mexico and Mexican authorities haven’t said if they might extradite him to Chicago.

The spotlight during and in the lead-up to Hernandez’s sentencing was on the credibility of two Sinaloa cartel associates-turned-government witnesses, Pedro and Margarito Flores.

Secret recordings and other evidence provided by the twin brothers in 2008 led to the Chicago indictments of Hernandez and 10 others, including Guzman and the Flores twins themselves.

Hernandez, of Mexico, was the first up for sentencing. He pleaded guilty to possessing drugs with intent to distribute.

Hernandez was a close friend of Guzman, using his logistical skills to ship tons of heroin and cocaine by train from Mexico to Chicago concealed in bogus furniture cargo, according to the Flores brothers.

But defense lawyers accused the brothers of exaggerating Hernandez’s rank in the cartel to curry favor with US prosecutors and ensure the lowest possible prison terms for themselves.

The twin brothers sought to hoodwink federal agents even after they agreed to cooperate, they allege.

Lawyers for Hernandez also cited court documents indicating the brothers – while behind bars working with the feds –had someone hide up to $2.5m in cash. From jail, they also allegedly bought a $100,000 Bentley as a gift for Pedro Flores’ wife.

Prosecutors say the Flores brothers cut deals with Guzman, Hernandez and others in the Sinaloa cartel to distribute drugs in the United States with Chicago as the operational hub.

The brothers claimed they sold up to two tons of cocaine a month in Chicago alone by 2007. They also supplied eight other cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.

In statements unsealed recently, the Flores twins said they know assassins would try to kill them and their families if the cartel ever discovered where they are being held in protective custody.

twitter:

ggreenwald twitterde op dinsdag 25-11-2014 om 14:41:37 The movement to end the evils of drug criminalization has global momentum - proud to join the Advisory Board of @LEAPBrasil reageer retweet

quote:

Mexican authorities accused of persecuting peaceful protesters

Eleven demonstrators charged with attempted murder and riot after mass protest in capital over disappearance of 43 students

Human rights groups have accused Mexican authorities of using arbitrary detentions, trumped-up charges and excessive force in an attempt to quell a mass protest movement unleashed by the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 students.

The complaints centre on the indictment for attempted murder, criminal association and rioting of 11 protesters who were arrested after masked youths clashed with police in the central Zócalo square, following a huge and mostly peaceful march through the capital last Thursday.

Supporters of the 11 accused insist that they had nothing to do with the violence, alleging that several of the detainees were arrested later, during an aggressive police operation to disperse the crowd.

“There is no evidence that they did anything other than attend the march,” said Fernando Ríos of the Mexican human rights network All Rights for Everybody. “What we do know is that the police used excessive force as they cleared the Zócalo.”

Ríos said human rights groups fear the crackdown is associated with a recent statement by President Enrique Peña Nieto, who accused violent protesters of “kidnapping” the wave of indignation triggered by the disappearance of the 43 students after they were arrested by police in the southern city of Iguala.

“This is more than an attack on freedom of expression,” Ríos said. “It is an effort to discourage people from demonstrating for the truth and for justice in the face of an inoperative, ineffective state that only pretends to be acting in the case [of the students].”

The eight men and three women arrested on Thursday are now being held in high-security jails hundreds of miles from Mexico City. The detainees – most of whom are students – include a 47-year-old Chilean doctoral student, whose case has prompted demonstrations in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

In an interview on Radio Fórmula on Monday, the interior minister, Miguel Ángel Osorio, insisted that any detainees not involved in the violence “have nothing to worry about”.

He added that the police “passed from tolerance to action” in the face of violence at the march because “a majority of Mexicans are asking for a stop to this kind of behaviour”.

Videos and testimonies documenting the aggression of the police at some distance from the battles in front of the presidential palace have been widely circulated on social media.

These include the account of Layda Negrete, one of two lawyers behind a hit documentary called Presumed Guilty which exposed systematic abuses of due process in Mexico’s capital city.

After being pushed against shop fronts by riot police forcing back the mass of peaceful demonstrators, Negrete says officers shouted, “fucking bitches, is this why you wanted to come out and march?” while they attacked her and three other women with their truncheons and shields.

“It is very worrying that a march to repudiate crimes committed by police ended with more crimes committed by police,” the lawyer said.

quote:

Weer toeristen dood na mogelijk gebruik witte heroïne in Amsterdam

quote:

Dat meldt de politie woensdag. Het gaat om twee mannen van 20 en 21 jaar. De politie denkt dat ze de witte heroïne hebben aangeschaft terwijl ze dachten dat het cocaïne was.

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11 Burned Bodies Found in Troubled Mexican State

Eleven beheaded bodies were found Thursday in Mexico's troubled southern state of Guerrero, a region still reeling from the apparent massacre of 43 students.

The grisly discovery came as President Enrique Pena Nieto prepared to unveil a new security strategy in response to a wave of protests that erupted after a police-backed gang confessed to killing the 43 students.

In the latest carnage to hit Guerrero, 11 bodies were dumped on a road near the town of Chilapa following reports of a shootout, state and municipal officials said.

"In addition to being executed, the 11 people were decapitated and subsequently some were burned," said a state government official who requested anonymity.

A note was left near the bodies with a message addressed to the criminal group "Los Ardillos" (The Squirrels), with the words "here's your trash," the official said.

A state police officer said the bodies had high-caliber bullet wounds. The victims appeared to be in their 20s.

Chilapa is 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Ayotzinapa, where the teacher-training college of the 43 students is located.

Authorities say the aspiring teachers, all young men, were rounded up by municipal police in the city of Iguala on September 26.

The case has become a tragic example of collusion between local authorities and organized crime in Mexico, a country struggling with drug violence that has left 100,000 people dead or missing since 2006.

On the eve of his announcement, Pena Nieto said the Iguala case was a "turning point for the nation."

"It is only a constructive, positive attitude that will allow us, society and government, to build the Mexico that we want and that we want to project to the entire world," he said.

Pena Nieto is expected to push for passage of dormant anti-corruption legislation and announce an overhaul of the country's municipal police forces.

Prosecutors say Iguala's mayor ordered his police force to confront a group of students over fears they would disrupt a speech by his wife.

Guerreros Unidos gang henchmen confessed to killing the students and incinerating their bodies after officers turned them over.

Pena Nieto will not be the first Mexican president to seek to reform the police.

Some 400,000 federal, state and municipal police forces across the country have undergone anti-corruption exams with polygraph tests, a system that began under his predecessor, Felipe Calderon.

The interior ministry said this month that 13 percent of municipal officers failed the exam, compared to 10 percent of state and six percent of federal forces.

The non-government organization Common Cause said this week that 42,214 federal, state and municipal police staff are still working despite failing the "control de confianza" (trust test).

"We have made it clear to governors ... that they must remove them from their positions," Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong. "None of them can be in the streets today, in any state, in any town."

When he took office in December 2012, Pena Nieto vowed to reduce the everyday violence besetting the country.

But he maintained the controversial militarized strategy of Calderon, who deployed 50,000 troops against the drug cartels in 2006.

Pena Nieto launched a crime prevention program, which officials acknowledged will take years to show results, and created a 5,000-strong militarized police force, the gendarmerie.

In an editorial, the national daily El Universal noted that past governments launched anti-crime measures in response to public discontent, with some positive results.

"But the depth of the problem is so large that these actions have not changed an indisputable fact in the perception of people, that crime continues to grow," it said.

"This time, the State's response will have to be stronger."

quote:

President Mexico grijpt in na studentendrama

De Mexicaanse president Enrique Peña Nieto gooit het veiligheidsapparaat van zijn land op de schop. Daarmee probeert hij een einde te maken aan de corruptie en de georganiseerde misdaad de kop in te drukken. Aanleiding is vooral de verdwijning van en vermoedelijke moord op 43 studenten twee maanden geleden.

Peña Nieto kondigde vandaag een reeks wijzigingen in de grondwet aan. Zo wil hij dat de gemeentepolitie verdwijnt en wordt vervangen door de landelijke politie. Verder moet de centrale regering meer bevoegdheden krijgen om lokaal in te grijpen als het gemeentelijke apparaat geïnfiltreerd blijkt door georganiseerde bendes.

Door de verdwijning van de studenten in de staat Guerrero eind september werden verbanden blootgelegd tussen criminelen, politie en politici. Zo is de voormalige burgemeester van de Mexicaanse plaats Iguala, waar de 43 studenten verdwenen, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, gearresteerd en officieel van moord en doodslag beschuldigd.

Pena Nieto werd twee jaar geleden gekozen omdat hij bezwoer de rust in het land te zullen herstellen. Sinds 2007 zijn al 100 duizend mensen om het leven gekomen in de oorlog tussen allerlei drugsbendes. Sinds de verdwijning van de studenten eist de bevolking dat hij zijn belofte gestand doet.

Opnieuw mensen vermoord

Vandaag nog zijn elf nieuwe lichamen gevonden, de meeste onthoodfd, aan de kant van de weg in het zuidwesten van Mexico. Volgens het Openbaar Ministerie werden de lichamen gevonden in Chilapa, in dezelfde provincie waar de studenten zijn ontvoerd.

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'Doing life when no one died': Prop 47 ends 'insane' drug penalties in California

Public defenders applaud ballot initiative’s passage after decades under harsh three-strikes law offering ‘strong incentive to arrest’


Russell Griffith, a deputy public defender in the Los Angeles crucible known as Compton, had strong words to describe the criminal justice system: “inhumane”, “stupid”, “insane”, and “completely screwed up”.

Seated on the eighth floor of Compton’s courthouse, his view obstructed by bulletproof glass, the veteran attorney let rip in an outspoken interview this week, denouncing a system in which he has worked for 25 years.

Griffith cast California’s network of police, courts and jails, the embodiment of the rule of law, as a cross between Kafka and Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, which he lauded as an accurate depiction of judicial dysfunction.

“Everyone has gone along with this big lie – our own version of the cheque is in the post,” said Griffith, who is paid by the state to represent those who cannot afford an attorney. “Everyone is part of this giant system that funds the machine – I’m including us, public defenders. We have all had our bread buttered by this. And it has been at the expense of generations of Latino and, above all, African American men.”

He was excoriating California’s draconian sentencing policies and America’s war on drugs, follies which produced needless mass incarceration, he said.

But during a tour of the courthouse, a 14-storey structure which towers over a landscape of gritty bungalows and discount stores, the public defender kept cracking a smile.

The reason was the legal thunderclap resounding through the corridors he considered a second home. “It’s a game changer,” said Griffith, 57. “In this job you lose most of the time. But now you actually have the law in your favour. It’s all gravy.”

He was referring to Proposition 47, a ballot initiative which Californians approved on 4 November in a rare victory for progressives on the day conservative Republicans swept congressional races across the US.

The measure reduces penalties for drug and other non-violent crimes, triggering instant releases for hundreds of inmates and shortening jail time for potentially tens of thousands of others. Combined with other reforms, it effectively ends America’s most notorious tough-on-crime experiment.

In 1994, California’s three-strikes law required courts to impose harsh sentences on habitual offenders. Dozens of other states subsequently adopted their own versions, fuelling an explosion in the US jail population, which grew from around 300,000 in 1986 to more than 2.4 million by 2014, rivaling China for the world’s highest incarceration rate. African Americans were jailed at nearly six times the rate of white people.

Compton, a poverty-stricken 10-square mile city of 97,000 souls in south LA, filled a disproportionate number of prison bunks. This, after all, was home to the rap group NWA, which scorched into popular culture with the double platinum album Straight Outta Compton, featuring tracks like Fuck Tha Police and Gangsta Gangsta. Bullet holes pockmarked the courthouse.

Griffith, paid by the state to defend clients who could not afford their own lawyers, watched the system flip from excessive lenience – in the 1970s you could kill and get just three years – to excessive harshness. “When three-strikes came in, that’s when everything became completely insane,” he said. “People were doing life for cases where no one died.”

Gun possession triggered ever-longer mandatory terms, regardless of whether the gun was unloaded and stuck in a waistband, or loaded and stuck in someone’s face. Possessing heroin or crack cocaine became a felony.

“It gave cops an enormously strong incentive to arrest people because they were cheap statistics,” Griffith said.

Police routinely testified that upon their approach, “startled” suspects “dropped” rocks of crack cocaine, a lie giving a legal pretext to search, said Griffith. “It kept the whole machinery going.”

Police got collars, courts got cases and prisons – which multiplied exponentially – got inmates. “These were largely victimless crimes. Incarcerating people on drugs charges is just absurd. But it was essentially funding the system.”

Carole Telfer, 60, another veteran public defender, said felony convictions condemned vulnerable people to unemployment and lack of federal assistance after lengthy terms inside. “It just ruins their life,” she said. “You can’t in good conscience handle all these cases and say it’s fair.”

Griffith said a zip code lottery compounded injustice. In heavily black and latino areas like Compton and Inglewood, juries were sceptical of police testimony and prosecutors tailored cases accordingly, resulting in lighter sentences. Locals nicknamed Compton the “love court” for its relatively sympathetic hearings.

Griffith called it a model of cooperation and camaraderie between clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges. Wealthy areas like Torrance and Long Beach, in contrast, were more polarised and imposed heavier sentences. “Old white people sending a message: don’t come to our town or you’ll get screwed. Venue is everything.”

Both lawyers have been victims of crime. Griffith was badly beaten and robbed. Telfer had a shotgun pointed at her during a robbery. As citizens, they said they wanted dangerous people kept off the streets. Focusing on largely harmless drug users diverted police from chasing murderers, rapists, and child molesters, they said.

Both believe California’s lock-’em-up spree blurred the distinction between bad people and people who had done bad or stupid things. “Draconian sentencing seems inhumane. We’re saying this person is beyond redemption,” said Griffith.

Defence lawyers may be expected to say such things, but the nation’s top law-enforcer, attorney general Eric Holder, said much the same when changing federal jail policy last year.

California voters, fed up with huge prison bills and emboldened by low crime rates, also agree. In 2012, they approved proposition 36, which eased the three-strikes law, and earlier this month they approved proposition 47. It reclassifies common drug violations and certain thefts – about a quarter of all crimes - from potential felonies to misdemeanours. Inmates serving felony sentences for such offences have a three-year window to apply for reduced sentences.

An estimated 40,000 are eligible. In Compton, 115 have already been freed, with more due as the courts work through the backlog. Telfer is the designated attorney for such cases, which means continuous calls from clients and their relatives. Her phone rang about two dozen times while she spoke to the Guardian.

“We’re kind of inundated,” she said.

Prosecutors are unhappy. Jackie Lacey, the LA county district attorney, said in a phone interview she agreed with reclassifying minor offences as misdemeanours but said the new law created new problems.

A felony charge encouraged offenders to do drug rehab if offered as an alternative to jail, but a misdemeanour strips that incentive because county jails have no space for those charged with lesser offences. “Just a few minutes and they’re out. You have removed that leverage,” said Lacey.

The law also raises the hurdle for proving dangerousness, meaning prosecutors may struggle to keep violent offenders inside. “There are unintended consequences here,” she said. Even so, the DA pledged to apply the law as the will of the people.

Compton’s public defenders shared concerns about addicts skipping rehab and also about thieves feeling emboldened to steal goods valued up to $950, a misdemeanour.

But it was a small price, said Griffith, for correcting a system which jailed generations of essentially harmless people. “It’s a brave new world. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do: getting people out of custody who are supposed to be out of custody.”

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Global Drug Survey 2015: why you should tell us what you take

Help us in this scientific research to find out the world’s drug consumption patterns. See what we learned from last year’s study and what we hope to find out in this one

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For the last few years the Guardian has been collaborating with the Global Drug Survey to find out about what drugs people take, how and why. If you have not already done it then you can take the survey here.

Last year 80,000 people from across the globe completed the survey on their drug usage, making it the largest research project of its kind. It gives us a wealth of information about how people were approaching the consumption of substances both legal and illegal.

quote:

The aim of this year’s survey is to to reach 120,000 people. It has been launched in partnership with media organisations in20 different countries and has been translated into 10 separate languages.

The study will, as always, look at prevalence, price, purity, value for money and the proportion of people seeking medical treatment but there are a few specific areas that will be explored this year including:

Performance enhancing drugs - weight loss agents and anabolic steroids
Cognitive enhancers - Ritalin, modafanil and atomoxetine use among students and working people
The dark net - now Silk Road has closed, how are people buying drugs online?
Nitrous oxide - the risks of neurological harm from this drug
E-cigarettes - whether these might be used for something other than nicotine
Why do people stop using different drugs - and when?

Completing the survey will help us cover a subject which is, for obvious reasons, often shrouded in secrecy. The researchers do not track or store IP addresses, browser types, or other identifying information. As always though, caution is suggested when sending information over the internet.

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Op een na grootste drugsvondst ooit in haven Rotterdam

De douane heeft in de Rotterdamse haven zeker drieduizend kilo cocaïne gevonden. Het is de op een na grootste vangst ooit in de Rotterdamse haven, zo meldt het Openbaar Ministerie zondag.

De smokkelwaar werd vrijdag ontdekt bij een Rotterdams havenbedrijf in een container met cassaves, eetbare wortelknollen, die uit Costa Rica kwam. De drugs zaten in 3.003 pakketten met een brutogewicht van in totaal 3.500 kilo.

De cocaïne heeft een straatwaarde van ruim 120 miljoen euro en is inmiddels vernietigd.

In de haven van Rotterdam is tot nu toe één keer een grotere drugsvangst gedaan. In 2005 werd ruim 4.200 kilo cocaïne verstopt in enorme haspels gevonden.

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State-run marijuana sales plan survives as left wins Uruguayan election

quote:

Tabare Vazquez won Uruguay’s presidential election on Sunday in a show of support for the leftist coalition that has governed the country for the past decade and allows the government to proceed with its plan to create the world’s first state-run marijuana marketplace.

Vazquez, a 74-year-old oncologist who was president from 2005 to 2010, topped center-right rival Luis Lacalle Pou of the National Party 53% to 40%.

The runoff vote drew international attention after Lacalle Pou promised to undo much of the pioneering plan to put the government in charge of regulating the production, distribution and sale of marijuana on a nationwide scale.

Vazquez said he would proceed with it, unless it produced negative results.

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Mens consumeert al miljoenen jaren alcohol

Onze voorvaders consumeerden vermoedelijk al miljoenen jaren geleden alcohol. Dat blijkt uit Amerikaans onderzoek. De conclusie haalt eerdere aannames onderuit; er werd altijd gedacht dat mensen pas negenduizend jaar alcohol consumeerden.

De biologen van het Sante Fe College in Gainesville (Verenigde Staten) bekeken wanneer in de evolutie het enzym ADH4 opdook. Dat enzym is nodig om alcohol af te kunnen breken. Het blijkt dat de voorvaders van de mens al zeker tien miljoen jaar geleden het enzym in hun lichaam hadden.

Dat gaf een evolutionair voordeel. Zo'n 15 miljoen jaar geleden veranderde het klimaat drastisch, en daarmee ook de leefomgeving van onze voorvaders in Oost-Afrika. Als gevolg daarvan gingen zij meer fruit eten dat op de grond was gevallen, in plaats van fruit dat zij uit bomen plukten. Gevallen fruit bevat meer ethanol - een alcoholsoort - en dankzij het enzym kon dat worden afgebroken na consumptie. Andere diersoorten konden dat niet.

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Heroïnetesten te koop in Amsterdam

In zeker dertig smartshops in Amsterdam zijn vanaf vrijdag testen te koop die kunnen aantonen of gekochte drugs witte heroïne bevatten. Dit moet voorkomen dat er nog meer slachtoffers vallen door het gebruik van de harddrugs.

Dat zei burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan vandaag tegen de gemeenteraad. Ook zijn er speciale teams op straat die de testen - die 2 euro per stuk kosten - bij zich hebben. Via matrixborden, posters, flyers en social media worden bezoekers van de stad gewezen op de mogelijkheid de drugs te controleren.

Mocht er sprake zijn van heroïne, dan wordt verzocht contact op te nemen met de GGD. Op die manier hoopt de gemeente de dealer te kunnen opsporen.

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UN: parents of missing Mexican student teachers are at risk and need protection

High Commission for Human Rights says parents and protesters have been put at risk by a social media campaign to ‘vilify and insult’ their sons

The UN High Commission for Human Rights has warned that the parents of 43 Mexican students who disappeared after they were attacked by police have been put at risk by a campaign to demonise their missing sons.

Javier Hernández, the representative in Mexico for the UN High Commission, told the Guardian that the parents – and protesters calling for justice – needed protection amid a campaign to denigrate the trainee teachers who vanished 10 weeks ago.

“Some are starting to vilify and insult the disappeared students and demonise their parents and their demands,” said Hernández. “The vast wave of protest generated by the case of the 43 students needs to be protected.”

The disappearance of the students – apparently at the hands of corrupt local police in league with a criminal gang – has triggered a wave of demonstrations against violence and criminality enabled by the country’s deep-rooted political corruption. More protests are planned in the country’s capital on Saturday.

Several previous marches in the city ended with outbreaks of violence – fuelled by heavy handed police tactics and the alleged presence of agents provocateurs among the protesters.

The street fighting has partly drawn attention away from the collective disgust at the collusion between criminals and local authorities, which lay behind the attack on the students on 26 September in the southern city of Iguala. The students were set upon by police – allegedly acting on the orders of the local mayor – and then handed over to a local drug gang called Guerreros Unidos.

Fernandez said he was particularly worried about jeers and insults directed at the missing students posted on social networks.

“Unfortunately, these attitudes are affecting the way demonstrations are being handled and the police response to the violence in some of the protests,” he said.

Hostile reaction to the students has often focused on the radical reputation of their teacher training college in the town of Ayotzinapa. Two of the country’s most famous guerrillas from the 1970s studied at the college, and the curriculum includes classes on “social struggle”. The disappeared students had gone to Iguala, two hours’ drive away, to commandeer buses to use in a later protest.

The anti-student tweets included dismissals of the missing as “bloody vandals”, alongside racist slurs and references to their poverty. Numerous jokes have used the government’s announcement that it believes the students were probably massacred in a rubbish dump and burned on a huge funeral pyre. One this week read: “The Hunger Games: Ayotzinapos in Flames”.

Hernandez visited Ayotzinapa earlier this week to support the families there, and he called upon other organizations to make similar gestures. He also warned that arbitrary arrests at protests threatened people’s right to protest.

The families and their supporters have called on the government to ensure that the students are returned alive, but the protests have tapped into anger over general violence and impunity.

Emiliano Navarrete, whose 17-year-old son José Angel is one of the missing, said: “People feel impotent and angry for good reason. The president has to take responsibility. The army was there and it did nothing. The federal government knew what kind of government there was in Iguala. It knew Iguala was a clandestine cemetery.”

Omar Garcia, one of several Ayotzinapa students who survived the attack, said the incident had crystalised the widespread sense that political corruption was driving Mexico’s descent into violence. Garcia has received death threats since the incident but played down the risk he faced. “We are all vulnerable before the alliance of organized crime and the state,” he said.

Fury at the government’s handling of the investigation has been further fueled by its failure to acknowledge the depth of its own crisis of credibility.

Leading the efforts to contain the damage to Mexico’s international image, the undersecretary for multilateral affairs and human rights, Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo, rejected accusations that the government has been too focused on its economic agenda to tackle violent crime and corruption.

“[The disappearance of the 43 students] is a big challenge but it does not mean we were not working on these issues before,” he told the Guardian. “It sounds a warning and tells the people, the government, and the private sector that economic reforms will never bear their fruit if rule of law does not prevail.”

Last week President Enrique Peña Nieto announced a 10-point package of measures he promised would strengthen the rule of law. Several were focused on corruption in local police forces. None addressed federal responsibility.

There has still been no serious explanation of why soldiers based in Iguala did not intervene to help the students during the attack, little more than a mile from their barracks.

Guillermo Valdez, a former head of the national intelligence agency, told the Guardian it was unlikely that the security services were not fully aware of longstanding accusations that the mayor of Iguala headed a kind of co-government in the city with Guerreros Unidos.

“It’s very likely they knew,” he said.

The president’s invocation of the chant “Todos Somos Ayotzinapa”, or “We Are All Ayotzinapa”, during his announcement also prompted derision during the last mass protest on Monday.

The president has yet to visit either Ayotzinapa or Iguala. On Thursday, he made his first visit to Guerrero since the disappearance of the students. While inaugurating a new bridge, he called for “a collective effort to move forward so that we can truly leave behind this painful movement”.

Some analysts suggest the government’s strategy centres on the hope that the movement has peaked and will begin to fade away.

“It seems they are trying to buy a little time with the measures, hoping that things will calm down a bit over the Christmas holidays,” said Valdez. “It is a serious error not to address the problem of credibility because [even if things do calm down] another event like Iguala will fire things up again.”

Saturday’s march will be headed by parents and students from Ayotzinapa, but the protest has also drawn mass support from independent trade unions and campesino groups – as well as students and human rights campaigners.

“[The parents’] presence is the constant reminder that the government is not fulfilling its most basic functions,” he said. “The government and the political class lacks moral standing, and the parents are overflowing with it.”

The movement is also mining Mexican history for symbols that reflect the tradition of the struggle for justice. Saturday’s march coincides with the 100th anniversary of the entrance into Mexico City of the most popular figures from the Mexican revolution, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa.

“The date symbolizes a lot. It contains the message that people are looking for real change,” says student leader Garcia, who will head the protest in Mexico City.

Garcia says the movement is currently seeking to harness the anger in a common agenda of clear demands, a difficult task given the multiplicity of visions; it is not yet clear how much can be achieved.

“The 26th of September is already a historic date,” he said. “Everything goes out of fashion, but we are not going to go away.”

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Burgemeester Mexico had eigen politiekorps

De omstreden oud-burgemeester José Velázquez van de Mexicaanse plaats Iguala had een 'schaduwpolitie' met agenten die alleen verantwoording aan hem aflegden.

Het gaat om tussen de negentig en honderd agenten die niet op de loonlijst van de politie stonden, maar wel politietaken uitvoerden en mogelijk zelfs misdaden pleegden.

Dat zei Jorge Hurtado van het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken tegen de krant La Jornada.

Velázquez is beschuldigd van onder meer moord op 43 studenten die eind september verdwenen in de staat Guerrero. De studenten werden door de politie in Iguala meegenomen en overgeleverd aan een drugsbende, die ze heeft gedood. Mogelijk waren de agenten van de 'schaduwpolitie' daarbij betrokken.

Het privekorps bestond uit gewapende mannen die geen vertrouwenstest hadden ondergaan, wat in Mexico verplicht is. Volgens de regering heeft de politie-eenheid van Velázquez corruptie en geweld in het gebied in de hand gewerkt.

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B.C. Judge Gives Absolute Discharge for Man Caught Growing 414 Pot Plants

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A judge has given an absolute discharge to a man charged with trafficking marijuna after police raided his Lions Bay home and found 414 marijuana plants, although almost half most were seedlings.

Michael Santos, an audio engineer with no criminal record, pleaded guilty to possessing about three kilograms of marijuana for trafficking.

The police raid took place on Feb. 28, 2013, when a battering ram was used to break the front door when no one immediately answered at Santos’ rental home, where he lived with his wife and two children.

[...]

But the judge granted Santos’ request for an absolute discharge, noting Santos was an otherwise law-abiding, respected member of the community and a good family man, so his crime was one of very low moral culpability, akin to violating a regulation.

“His conduct was not dangerous or antisocial and recent polls suggest that a majority of Canadians do not believe such conduct should be the subject of criminal sanctions,” the judge said.

The judge added that law makers should seriously consider amending or repealing Canada’s marijuana laws, to bring them in line with today’s values.

“When it becomes common for persons of good character to willingly and knowingly conduct themselves in violation of a law, which is widely seen to be unwarranted or unjust or unfair, this should cause those who enact our laws and who are tasked with enforcing or upholding the law to give serious consideration to the repeal or amendment of that law to bring it into accord with modern social values,” Challenger said.

_{- Read the entire article at Metro.}

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Houston Police Chief Calls Drug War A 'Miserable' Failure, Says Feds Need To Lead Reform

The drug war is a "miserable" failure and the federal government needs to take the lead on reforming marijuana policy, Houston Police Chief Charles McLelland said Friday in a radio interview.

"Most of us understand, we do believe, those of us that are law enforcement executives, that the war on drugs, the 1980 drug policies, was a miserable failure, there's no doubt about that," McLelland said to Dean Becker, host of "Cultural Baggage," a radio show focused on the war on drugs.

Law enforcement needs to find the "most efficient and effective" ways to keep communities safe, McLelland said, and in order to do that, "we have to think differently about crime, crime prevention, drug rehabilitation, substance abuse, mental illness -- there's a whole host of things that we need to treat differently than we did 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago."

McClelland is the police chief of a city that's home to more than 2 million people, and is the fourth most populous city in the U.S., behind New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The drug war, he said, has "disproportionately criminalized a certain segment of our population," namely young minority men. "It has a trickle-down effect, that a lot of young men who are minorities, in their early 20s, have a felony conviction on their resume, and now they're unemployable. And we wonder why they don't have jobs, they're not working, they're not contributing to society in a productive way, but we've put them in a position to where the odds are stacked against them."

According to a recent study from the American Civil Liberties Union, while black and white Americans use marijuana at about the same rate, across the nation in 2010, blacks were nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession. In Texas that same year, blacks were about twice as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana, and Texas was second only to New York for the most arrests for marijuana in the U.S.

"Have we ... stopped the flow of drugs coming from other countries into the United States?" McLelland asked. "I would say we've done very little because of our appetite and consumption. If there was not a market here in the United States, people would not be bringing drugs and contraband into our country."

Indeed, while the U.S. government spent between $40 billion and $50 billion a year fighting the war on drugs between 2000 and 2010, American spending on illicit substances remained about the same at about $100 billion per year, according to a recent RAND report.

During the interview, McLelland also called for the federal government to take the lead on reforming marijuana policies and not simply leave it up to states to change their laws. To date, 23 states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, and four states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana.

"In my opinion, the federal government must take the lead into setting our drug policies, otherwise you will have all of these different states or different local, state governments coming up with different policies when it comes to certain drugs such as marijuana," McLelland said.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, the federal government classifies marijuana as one of "the most dangerous" drugs available, "with no currently accepted medical use," alongside heroin and LSD. McLelland explained that law enforcement is part of the executive branch of government, and as long as the federal government continues ban marijuana, it puts police departments in a bind.

"The federal government still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, and it's a federal crime; it's very difficult for states to do that in a way that it doesn't put law enforcement in conflict with enforcing their oath of office," McLelland said. "And that's why the federal government has to decide: Is marijuana just as dangerous as cocaine, heroin? I don't know, but they're going to have to do that. And if it's something that should be changed, then take it off the list [of banned substances]."

Several lawmakers have introduced legislation that would significantly decrease the federal government's ability to interfere with state-legal marijuana operations or that would fully legalize marijuana at the federal level. And while Congress has failed to pass any of those bills, attitudes are changing rapidly on marijuana policy.

While Texas has legalized neither medical nor recreational marijuana, marijuana prohibition in the state appears to be on shifting ground. Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson announced that beginning in October her office wouldn't pursue criminal charges against first-time offenders in possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana. And Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said earlier this year that while he doesn't support full legalization, he does support decriminalization of marijuana use.

Even in the historically conservative state of Texas, McLelland said, he believes marijuana policy could be changing soon, and a majority of state voters appear to agree with him. A 2013 survey from Marijuana Policy Project found 58 percent of state voters support making recreational marijuana legal for adults and regulating the substance like alcohol. An even higher percentage of voters supported removing criminal penalties for possession.

"I do think that you're going to see some movement, and even here in the state of Texas -- and we have been known to be a little conservative here just as a state -- but the support and growing interest in changing some of our marijuana laws, even from Gov. Perry, shows you that people are beginning to think about this issue differently, and they know that we've got to do something different than what we're doing."

_{Listen to the full interview here.}

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NWS / Hongaarse premier wil drugstest voor journalisten en politici

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"De drugsmaffia is in ons land een groeiende bedreiging", zei de Hongaarse premier tijdens een interview op de Hongaarse radio. "We moeten daartegen strijden met de meest draconische straffen en procedures."

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The Federal War on Medical Marijuana is Over

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Good news for medical pot smokers: The $1.1-trillion federal spending bill approved by the Senate on Saturday has effectively ended the longstanding federal war on medical marijuana. An amendment to the bill blocks the Department of Justice from spending money to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries or patients that abide by state laws.

"Patients will have access to the care legal in their state without fear of federal prosecution," Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), a supporter of the rider known as the Hinchey-Rohrbacher amendment, said in a statement. "And our federal dollars will be spent more wisely on fighting actual crimes and not wasted going after patients."

The Department of Justice last year pledged not to interfere with the implementation of state pot laws, but the agency's truce left it with plenty of room to change its mind. Earlier this year, for instance, the DOJ accused the Kettle Falls Five, a family in Washington State, of growing 68 marijuana plants on their farm in Eastern Washington, where pot is legal. Members of the family face up to 10 years in jail—or at least, they did; the amendment may now stop their prosecution.

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Iran Criticized for Executing Drug Offenders

Six international human rights groups have petitioned the United Nations to freeze its counternarcotics aid to Iran until that country abolishes the death penalty for drug offenses.

In a jointly signed Dec. 12 letter released Wednesday by the groups, they argue that the freeze is justified because of “the widening gulf between Iran’s rhetoric and the realities of the justice system.”

Iran executes more prisoners than any other country except China, with 500 to 625 executed last year, according to United Nations estimates. At least half of the condemned were convicted of drug trafficking.

Yury Fedotov, chief executive of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, a Vienna-based agency that has provided millions of dollars to Iran’s counternarcotics efforts, has been in discussions with Iranian officials about the executions, which are at odds with the agency’s human rights guidelines.

Under international law, Iran and other countries with the death penalty are required to impose it only for the “most serious crimes,” which do not include drug offenses.

Even though some senior Iranian officials have spoken out against capital punishment for drug crimes, there have been signs that the pace of executions has accelerated this year.

Iran, a conduit for opium trafficking from neighboring Afghanistan, has one of the world’s harshest drug laws. It imposes mandatory death sentences for making, trafficking and possessing specified quantities of opium, opiates and other drugs, like methamphetamines.

On Dec. 4, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Human Rights Council, said in an interview with the France 24 news channel that “nobody is happy” about the number of executions and that he would like to see Iran’s drug punishment softened. “We are crusading to change this law,” he said.

Rights groups say in their letter, which is addressed to Mr. Fedotov, that a few days before Mr. Larijani’s interview, 18 convicted offenders had been hanged in Iran, and that this year at least 318 had been put to death, a pace that would surpass the 331 drug convicts executed in 2013.

“This increase in the execution rate belies Mr. Larijani’s reassuring rhetoric and U.N.O.D.C.’s lauding of ‘potentially favorable developments’ on this issue,” reads the letter by the groups.

The letter was signed by Human Rights Watch, Reprieve, Iran Human Rights, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Harm Reduction International and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, named after an Iranian lawyer who was assassinated in Paris in 1991.

There was no immediate comment from Mr. Fedotov’s office about the letter. Phone and email messages left with the agency’s spokeswoman, Preeta Bannerjee, were not immediately returned.

Iran has given mixed messages on capital punishment.

When the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, criticized Iran in March for what he called its failure to improve human rights — including the use of capital punishment — Mr. Larijani’s brother, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, the chief of the Iranian judiciary, chastised him for the remarks.

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Black truffles contain 'bliss molecules' not unlike those found in cannabis

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All animals, including humans, possess endocannabinoid systems responsible for feeding, energy expenditure, memory, and pain regulation. The production of endocannabinoids is one characteristic that distinguishes animals from plants. When someone smokes weed, phytocannabinoids produced by cannabis actually mimic the body’s endocannabinoids.

New research from Italy now shows that truffles, the highly prized and insanely expensive fungi, also produce endocannabinoids. Truffles grow underground near oak trees and can ultimately fetch $1500 per pound. That truffles produce endocannabinoids is just the latest evidence that fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. Plants, animals and fungi all share a common ancestor, and increasingly it appears that fungi are much more akin within the evolutionary tree to humans than say, lettuce. (I certainly feel more simpatico with truffles than turnips or kale, don’t you?)

The endocannabinoid content of truffles may be one of the reasons that humans prize them, since these compounds are active at incredibly small doses and the aroma of fresh truffles feels quite intoxicating.

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Mexican vigilante leaders give themselves up after gun battle

Two rival leaders and their followers from western state of Michoacán give themselves up after gun battle that left 11 dead

Two rival vigilante leaders and dozens of their followers from the western state of Michoacán have given themselves up to the authorities in the wake of a gun battle between their groups that left 11 people dead and fuelled fears that a major government operation was failing to control the drug war hotspot.

Luis Antonio Torres, nicknamed “Simón El Americano”, surrendered on Tuesday along with nine of his men at a prearranged pick up point. He was flown to jail in a navy helicopter to face judicial hearings. El Americano’s sworn rival, Hipólito Mora, gave himself up three days before along with 26 of his followers.

One of Mora’s sons was among those who died in the shootout on 16 December, which took place at a barricade set up by his group in his hometown of La Ruana, in the long-conflictive region of the Tierra Caliente, or the Hot Land.

Alfredo Castillo, the presidential envoy in charge of the federal security operation in the state, celebrated the voluntary incarceration of the vigilantes as evidence that Michoacán’s institutions have been immeasurably strengthened in recent months.

“We secured the surrender of these people to the courts without a shot being fired or any shootouts,” Castillo said after the detention of El Americano. “What has been achieved today would have been unthinkable a year ago.”

Castillo said he hoped a further 19 vigilantes involved in the shootout two weeks ago will also give themselves up in the coming days. He also sort to down play the shootout, saying it was not a public security issue but one of “social conflict”.

The armed vigilante groups emerged in the Tierra Caliente in 2013, claiming that government inaction in the face of a reign of terror imposed in the region by the Caballeros Templarios, or Knights Templar, drug cartel gave them no other option for protecting their communities.

With the situation threatening to degenerate into a regional civil war, the government flooded the area with federal forces in January this year. A subsequent uneasy alliance with the vigilantes lead to a series of important arrests and deaths of Caballeros leaders that left the cartel seriously weakened.

But violence in the state has continued as government efforts to institutionalise the vigilantes into a rural police force have struggled in the face of deep rivalries between some of the leaders. The new rural police has also been damaged by multiple accusations that a significant number of commanders and officers have links to the Caballeros or other gangs operating in the region.

Both El Americano and Mora joined the new rural police. Both have blamed each other for the gun battle in La Ruana. Mora has repeatedly accused El Americano of links to the traffickers.

Mora spent two months in jail earlier this year accused of killing two of El Americano’s associates, but the charges were dropped.

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Fourth man’s death linked to ‘Superman’ ecstasy batch

Police offer temporary amnesty to anyone who comes forward with pink or red tablets featuring ‘S’ emblem

A fourth man has died in less than two days from what police fear is a potentially fatal batch of ecstasy being sold on British streets.

A temporary drug amnesty has been offered to anyone who surrenders the red or pink tablets of ecstasy, inscribed with a Superman-style “S” in their centre, to a police station, accident and emergency department or fire station.

Police say they are not offering a general drug amnesty but the ecstasy tablets, thought to be to blame for the four deaths and one hospital admission, are “potentially so dangerous we need to remove them from the streets to prevent further deaths”.

Supt Louisa Pepper from Suffolk police said: “Please don’t be worried about any sort of prosecution because we genuinely just want the drugs off the streets. We view this particular drug as especially dangerous and want to prevent further deaths and save lives.”

The fourth death in Telford on Friday follows the deaths of two young men in Suffolk within hours of each other on Thursday morning, with another admitted to hospital in a serious condition.

Gediminas Kulokas, a Lithuanian labourer, died on New Year’s Day – his 24th birthday – after collapsing at his Ipswich home. Kulokas’s 22-year-old friend Donatas was admitted to hospital at the same time in a serious condition after taking the same drug.

Kulokas died less than three hours after another man, 20-year-old John Hocking, also a labourer, who died in nearby Rendlesham, near Woodbridge.

The first victim of the rogue batch of drugs is thought to be a Lithuanian factory worker Eustace Ropas, 22, who died on Christmas Eve at his home, also in Ipswich.

Natasha Mumby, Kulokas’s partner, has described how she desperately tried to resuscitate him after he stopped breathing.

“We were at the flat having a few quiet drinks to celebrate New Year’s Eve and his birthday in the early hours,” she said. “I went to bed at 2am and woke up a few times because he and his friend were making a bit of noise. I had no idea that they had been taking drugs.

“Every time I got up to tell them to keep quiet, they were looking the worse for wear. His friend popped out and when I checked on Gediminas, he was breathing in a funny way. I propped him up and went back to bed,” she said. “I then came back in the lounge because he was not making the breathing noise any more. He was just sitting there not breathing.”

Police believe the drug taken by all five men could have a similar chemical mix to dangerous ecstasy pills with a similar appearance that were in circulation in the Netherlands last month.

In December, the Dutch Trimbos drug addiction clinic issued a warning about the pills, which have a high concentration of a chemical known as PMMA instead of MDMA, which is the usual main drug component of ecstasy pills.

PMMA is dangerous because the chemical takes longer to work than MDMA. The delay can cause users who do not know they have taken a different variety of ecstasy to overdose because they think their first pills have not worked.

Dutch media reported on at least two PMMA-related deaths in the Netherlands in 2013.

Both drugs are stimulants, causing an energy boost and feelings of affection for other people, but PMMA is far more toxic, with an overdose of just 50mg having potentially fatal consequences.

Harry Shapiro, director of communications at Drugscope, said a possible explanation for the increased use of PMMA and the closely related chemical PMA in ecstasy was a crackdown in Cambodia on the production of safrole, a key ingredient in MDMA production, causing drug manufacturers to turn to other ingredients.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that there were no deaths from PMA or PMMA in 2009 or 2010, but that this jumped to 20 in 2012. By 2013, there were 29 deaths connected to the drugs.

The Irish drugs website Drugs.ie says that between December 2013 and May last year, six people in Ireland were found to have had PMMA in their systems when they died.

In 2011 the Scottish Drug and Crime Enforcement Agency released a warning about PMMA after a spate of deaths.

It was also believed to be the cause of a series of deaths across Europe at around the same time.

Speaking at the time, DI Tommy Crombie, drugs co-ordinator at the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, warned: “PMMA and other harmful substances could be present in many illicit drugs including powders, products sold as legal highs and ecstasy tablets in all sorts of colours and with all sorts of logos. Like all illicit drugs, there is no way to tell what’s in them until it’s too late.”

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Johann Hari: ‘I failed badly. When you harm people, you should shut up, go away and reflect on what happened'

He was the Independent’s star columnist whose lying and cheating destroyed his career. Now Johann Hari is back, with a book about drug-taking – including his own. But will anyone believe a word of it?

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When I heard that Johann Hari had written a book about the war on drugs, two immediate concerns sprang to mind. The first was whether anyone would trust a word he wrote.

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“I think that’s totally right,” Hari agrees. “I did not want to write a 400-page polemic about the drug war. I didn’t want to have an argument about it, I wanted to understand it.” For that matter, he admits, “It’s struck me that, actually, polemic very rarely changes people’s minds about anything.” He says so as a former columnist? “A recovering former columnist, yes.” He laughs. “It’s not just that polemic doesn’t change people’s minds. It says nothing about the texture of lived experience. People are complex and nuanced, they don’t live polemically.”

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Hari went to Vancouver to meet a psychology professor, Bruce Alexander, who had been similarly puzzled, so had replicated the original experiments. This time, instead of experimenting on solitary rats locked in empty cages, he offered the choice of clean or drugged water to rats kept in what he called Rat Park, a kind of rat heaven full of wheels and coloured balls and delicious food, and other rats to play and mate with. When these rats tried heroin, they weren’t very interested.

“They just didn’t like it. None of them overdosed. Even more strikingly, he then took rats that had become addicted in the isolated cages, and put them into Rat Park. And they almost immediately stopped using. What Alexander had found is that we’ve fundamentally misunderstood what addiction is. It isn’t a moral failing. It isn’t a disease. Addiction is an adaptation to your environment. It’s not you; it’s the cage you live in.”

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Superman ‘ecstasy’ pill deaths are result of ‘illogical and punitive drugs policy’

Former government adviser Dr David Nutt says ban on MDMA has resulted in more dangerous drugs coming on to market

The deaths of four men who had taken pills they thought were ecstasy are the result of the government’s “illogical and punitive drug policy”, a former drugs tsar has said.

Dr David Nutt, who advised the last government on drug policy until 2009, said the policy had targeted the production and sale of MDMA, only to see it substituted by a more toxic substance.

MDMA is the chemical name for ecstasy, but the pills bearing a Superman emblem that have been linked to four recent deaths – three in Suffolk and one in Telford – are believed to have been made with a high concentration of the chemical PMMA.

Suffolk police said on Monday that they had seized more than 400 pills matching the description of those believed to have been taken by two Ipswich men stashed in a public place in the city.

Writing for the Guardian, Nutt, who was sacked as the government’s senior drug adviser in 2009 after criticising its decision to toughen the law on cannabis, said PMMA and its close relative PMA have been responsible for most of the deaths – amounting to more than 100 – attributed to ecstasy by the media in recent years.

“Their re-emergence is directly due to the international community’s attempts, via UN conventions, to stop the use of MDMA by prohibiting its production and sale,” he wrote. “The emergence of the more toxic PMA following the so-called ‘success’ in reducing MDMA production is just one of many examples of how prohibition of one drug leads to greater harm from an alternative that is developed to overcome the block.”

Nutt, the Edmond J Safra professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, compared the situation to the rise in demand for more poisonous hooch after alcohol was prohibited in the US during the 1920s and the rise in production and injecting of heroin after smoking opium was banned.

He explained that the UN banned a number of precursor chemicals to MDMA, including safrole. As safrole supplies dropped, drug makers switched to chemically similar aniseed oil. “Unfortunately, the product that results from using the MDMA production process with aniseed oil is PMA or PMMA,” he wrote. “Hence, these substances only exist because of the blockade of MDMA production. That in itself wouldn’t particularly matter if they were not more toxic than MDMA.”

Nutt said there should be testing facilities for users, without fear of prosecution, like those in the Netherlands, or safe doses of pure MDMA should be available to registered users. “In the meantime, we should accelerate the testing of seized tablets and make public their contents and strengths on internet databases, so that all users can check what they might be taking,” he wrote.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “MDMA, PMA and PMMA are all illegal class A drugs. They destroy lives, cause misery to families and communities, and this government has no intention of decriminalising them. No drug-taking can be assumed to be safe.”

The chief superintendent of Suffolk police, Jon Brighton, said the seizure of 400 pills on Sunday night was a significant development in its investigation into the deaths of the two Ipswich men.

“If these prove to be the same as those linked to these cases, we will have gone a significant way towards reducing the risk of further serious injury or deaths linked to this particular ecstasy pill,” he added.

A man has been charged and two men have been bailed after arrests made as part of the investigation into the deaths.

A 19-year-old Ipswich man, Adrian Lubecki, has been charged with being concerned in the supply of ecstasy and possession with intent to supply a class B drug. He appeared at Ipswich magistrates court on Monday and was remanded in custody.

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The Superman pill deaths are the result of our illogical drugs policy

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Here’s why most people who use drugs don’t become addicts, according to science

Drug use is common, drug addiction is rare. About one adult in three will use an illegal drug in their lifetime and just under 3m people will do so this year in England and Wales alone. Most will suffer no long-term harm.

There are immediate risks from overdose and intoxication, and longer-term health risks associated with heavy or prolonged use; damage to lungs from smoking cannabis or the bladder from ketamine for example. However most people will either pass unscathed through a short period of experimentation or learn to accommodate their drug use into their lifestyle, adjusting patterns of use to their social and domestic circumstances, as they do with alcohol.

Compared to the 3m currently using illegal drugs there are around 300,000 heroin and/or crack addicts while around 30,000 were successfully treated for dependency on drugs in England in 2011-12, typically cannabis, or powder cocaine.

A powerful cultural narrative focusing on the power of illegal drugs to disrupt otherwise stable, happy lives dominates our media and political discourse, and shapes policy responses. Drug use is deemed to “spiral out of control”, destroying an individual’s ability to earn their living or care for their children, transforming honest productive citizens into welfare dependent, criminal “families from hell”.

This is a key component of the Broken Britain critique of welfare and social policy advanced by the Centre for Social Justice and pursued in government by the CSJ’s founder Iain Duncan Smith in his role as secretary of state for work and pensions. However, the narrative has resonance far beyond the political arena and underpins most media coverage of drug addiction and the drug storylines of popular culture.
Most drug users are ..?

In reality the likelihood of individuals without pre-existing vulnerabilities succumbing to long-term addiction is slim. Heroin and crack addicts are not a random sub set of England’s 3m current drug users.

Addiction, unlike use, is heavily concentrated in our poorest communities – and within those communities it is the individuals who struggle most with life who will succumb. Compared to the rest of the population, heroin and crack addicts are: male, working-class, offenders, have poor educational records, little or no history of employment, experience of the care system, a vulnerability to mental illness and increasingly are over 40 with declining physical health.

Problem cannabis use is less concentrated among the poor, but is closely associated with indicators of social stress and a vulnerability to developing mental health conditions.

Most drug users are intelligent resourceful people with good life skills, supportive networks and loving families. These assets enable them to manage the risks associated with their drug use, avoiding the most dangerous drugs and managing their frequency and scale of use to reduce harm and maximise pleasure. Crucially they will have access to support from family and friends should they begin to develop problems, and a realistic prospect of a job, a house and a stake in society to focus and sustain their motivation to get back on track.

In contrast the most vulnerable individuals in our poorest communities lack life skills and have networks that entrench their problems rather than offering solutions. Their decision making will tend to prioritise immediate benefit rather than long-term consequences. The multiplicity of overlapping challenges they face gives them little incentive to avoid high risk behaviours.

Together these factors make it more likely that, instead of carefully calibrating their drug use to minimise risk, they will be prepared to use the most dangerous drugs in the most dangerous ways. And once addicted, motivation to recover and the likelihood of success is weakened by an absence of family support, poor prospects of employment, insecure housing and social isolation.

In short what determines whether or not drug use escalates into addiction, and the prognosis once it has, is less to do with the power of the drug and more to do with the social, personal and economic circumstances of the user.
Heads in the sand

Unfortunately the strong relationship between social distress and addiction is ignored by politicians and media commentators in favour of an assumption that addiction is a random risk driven by the power of the drug.

It does happen. But the atypical experience of the relatively small number of drug users from stable backgrounds who stumble into addiction and can legitimately attribute the chaos of their subsequent lives to this one event drowns out the experience of the overwhelming majority of addicts for whom social isolation, economic exclusion, criminality and fragile mental health preceded their drug use rather than being caused by it.

Viewing addiction through the distorting lens of the minority causes policy makers to misunderstand the flow of causality and pushes them towards interventions focused on changing individual drug-using behaviour and away from addressing the structural inequality in which the vulnerabilities to addiction can flourish.

Until we re-frame our understanding of drug addiction as more often the consequence of social evils than their root cause, then we are doomed to misdirect our energy and resources towards blaming the outcasts and the vulnerable for their plight rather than recasting our economic and social structures to give them access to the sources of resilience that protect the rest of us.

The ConversationBy Paul Hayes, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

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Christie: The war on drugs has failed, treat NJ heroin addiction as an illness

To combat New Jersey’s growing heroin and opioid crisis, Gov. Chris Christie says the state needs to embrace a dramatically different approach to substance abuse, but cautioned that he will not write a blank check to get it there.

In his time as governor, heroin and opioid abuse have surged into the spotlight, claiming at least 740 lives in New Jersey alone last year, while tens of thousands of others sought treatment, many of their lives broken by addiction. Irrespective of how the state arrived at such an unenviable position, in Christie’s eyes, government has a role in making sure those shackled by addiction get the help they need.

In an interview with NJ Advance Media, Christie said that means changing course, to a system that values treatment over incarceration. The War on Drugs has failed, he says, and it’s time to move on.

“I think what we’ve seen over the last 30 years is it just hasn’t worked,” he said. “And there are some people who make one bad choice to try drugs one time and their particular chemistry leads them to be an addict from the minute they try it. So we need to treat it as a disease. And not having mandatory incarceration for non-violent offenders but having mandatory treatment is something that’s going to yield a much greater result for society in general and for those individuals in particular.“

According to federal data, treatment centers in the Garden State have been operating near or slightly above capacity for several years. While the number of available treatment slots has increased over the last decade, so has demand, one that is increasingly being driven by heroin and prescription opioids.

In 2010, the state estimated 37 percent of people seeking substance abuse treatment in New Jersey didn’t receive it. Since then, the number of heroin-related deaths has increased by 160 percent, while the number of people in treatment for heroin or opioids has only increased by 15 percent.

To that effect, Christie says New Jersey is falling short. There aren’t enough available residential treatment beds for adults battling substance abuse. Getting into what does exist can be a confounding maze of dead-ends and frustrating questions. If you do find a bed, odds are your insurance carrier won’t pay.

Christie says the state needs to step up to fix this, but just as importantly, the private sector does as well.

“I don’t want to build a bunch of new state facilities. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do from a fiscal perspective or for the long-term treatment of these folks,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to have local government agencies, the counties in particular do a better job…to say, ‘here’s where you go, here’s the options for detox that are available, here is non-residential that’s available, here’s residential that’s available,’ and help them connect those dots. I think we need to do a better job at that.”

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Law Championed by Joe Biden Leads to More Ecstasy Deaths

The quarterly social research magazine Contexts has an article by Tammy Anderson, author of Rave Culture: The Alteration and Decline of a Philadelphia Music Scene, in its Fall issue about the 2003 Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act, championed by then-Sen. Joe Biden. The law was intended to reduce deaths due to the use of ecstasy, a pill that contains MDMA, usually cut with caffeine or some other drug. How deadly is ecstasy? Statistics are hard to come by. Sixty-three people were reported to have died from ecstasy used in 2000. Many more die from, say, alcohol poisoning every way—the ecstasy death rate might be as low as one per million users.

Nevertheless, the perceived exoticism and danger of the drug, exaggerated by media accounts of young people’s deaths, led Joe Biden to add penalties to venues that knowingly cater to drug users, a primary component of the RAVE Act, in a misguided and typical fashion for government. And, as typical for a government solution, the RAVE Act came with “unintended consequences” that did the opposite of what legislators hoped the bill would do. Instead of reducing vulnerability to ecstasy, the law increased that vulnerability by criminalizing the simple things that make ecstasy even safer, like dance floor patrols, cool down rooms, even free water. The responsibility to stay safe is on the drug user—to know before taking a drug that it may require rehydrating before feeling dehydratring, cooling down once in a while, and so. But that certainly doesn’t preclude venues from offering tools to make drug use even safer too. It’s being a good Samaritan and its good business too. When given the choice, drug users prefer to go to venues that cater to their use rather than venues that will toss them into an alley when they’re throwing up from a bad drug trip.

That happened to one drug user according to Anderson, because the club believed, not wrongly, that if they offered medical assistance they would be held liable for her drug use. That’s what Joe Biden has wrought on drug users that don’t happen to be his children because of his obsession with the war on drugs. Contexts reports:

. The 2003 RAVE Act places young ravers at great risk of harm. Because the act treats raves’ cultural traits as evidence that promoters are permitting drug use and sales, it places festival stakeholders in a bind over how to protect ravers without being shut down. For example, rave promoters are perceived to sanction drug use if they permit cultural props such as glow sticks, lollypops, and massage oils to be sold at their event, or if they provide chill rooms and free bottled water to ravers. Since MDMA use (in either its Ecstasy or Molly varieties) and dancing at raves can produce extreme dehydration, critics interpret the distribution of free bottled water as a sign that promoters are trying to hydrate, and therefore accommodate, ravers’ drug use. Promoters even told me that “rave” language on flyers or other promotional materials could serve as evidence of a legal violation.

. If they offer drug intervention services, such as drug testing and education, promoters may be at even greater legal risk. Rotondo died from MDMA toxicity; a MDMA/Methylone combination killed Russ. Had drug testing and education been offered at EZoo, Rotondo might have learned not to take so many hits of Molly and Russ would have learned that his Molly had been mixed with extremely dangerous methylone (“bath salts”).

From my first drug experience I’ve always been sure to research and talk with friends about every drug I thought about taking. Legalizing MDMA would make drug use even safer by allowing simple education to win over the anti-drug propaganda privileged in an environment where drugs are criminal.

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Mexican firebrands mount call for self-rule: 'It’s time for the people to take power'

Away from the spotlight of protests over the disappearance of 43 student teachers, Guerrero may prove a much more serious challenge to state authority

Milling around the front steps of the town hall, about 20 men with shotguns began the night watch sipping coffee from styrofoam cups and munching cakes.

The atmosphere was relaxed, but the message was one of revolution.

“It’s time for the people to take power,” said Jésus, one of the guards. “The government has not been able to fulfill its role – and the people are waking up.”

Over the past three months, dozens of town halls across Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero have been taken over by members of an amorphous movement calling for “popular government”. The protesters – some of whom are armed – have also called for the army to close its bases and leave the region.

Guerrero is a state steeped in a history of rebellion: it was the setting for some of the first uprisings of the Mexican revolution, and home to the country’s most famous rural guerrilla army of the 1970s.

But the current wave of unrest was triggered by the disappearance last September of 43 student teachers in the city of Iguala, after they were attacked by municipal police in league with a local drug cartel.

Anger over the case has prompted months of street protests against President Enrique Peña Nieto. But away from the spotlight, the growing calls for self-rule in Guerrero may prove a much more serious challenge to state authority.

“We took over the town hall as way of pressuring the government to do more to find the missing students, but this goes further now,” said Jésus, outside Tecoanapa’s town hall. “We are dismantling the old institutions.”

That kind of talk resonates particularly loudly in the region around Tecoanapa: 17 of the missing students grew up in towns and villages of the Costa Chica, a remote and poverty-stricken region which stretches from the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur down to the Pacific Ocean.

The victims include the two eldest sons of Doña Oli Parral who, like many parents of the disappeared, have grown tired of peaceful protest and polite calls for justice.

“We shout our slogans and it makes no difference. The government doesn’t listen to us,” she said, sitting in her spartan home in the village of Xalpatlahuac, just outside Teconapa. “If they want peace then give back the kids.”

In the Costa Chica, the occupations are led by a group of radical teachers’ unions and the Union of Organized Peoples of Guerrero (UPOEG), a network of vigilantes formed two years ago to combat the killings, kidnapping and extortion by drug gangs in the area.

“The narcos did with us what they wanted. People were intimidated, frightened, and desperate,” says Huricel Cruz, a teacher and former student at the radical Ayotzinapa training college where the 43 missing students were enrolled. “Then the people took control and things calmed down.”

The Guerrero militias emerged alongside other vigilante movement in the neighbouring state of Michoacán, although there are important differences.

The Michoacán groups are less ideological, revolve more clearly around local strong men, and are more regularly accused of ties to criminal gangs. Michoacán is also the stage for a high-profile government security operation which broke up one of the country’s most notorious crime syndicates – known as the Family – but has failed to consolidate peace.

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The Hunting of Billie Holiday

How Lady Day found herself in the middle of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics’ early fight for survival.

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Why animals eat psychoactive plants

Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, learns about drunk elephants, the stoned water buffalo, and the grieving mongoose.

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After sampling the numbing nectar of certain orchids, bees drop to the ground in a temporary stupor, then weave back for more. Birds gorge themselves on inebriating berries, then fly with reckless abandon. Cats eagerly sniff aromatic “pleasure” plants, then play with imaginary objects. Cows that browse special range weeds will twitch, shake, and stumble back to the plants for more. Elephants purposely get drunk off fermented fruits. Snacks of “magic mushrooms” cause monkeys to sit with their heads in their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker. The pursuit of intoxication by animals seems as purposeless as it is passionate. Many animals engage these plants, or their manufactured allies, despite the danger of toxic or poisonous effects.

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Jamaica poised to relax cannabis laws

Several restrictions on ‘ganja’ use could go up in smoke as island’s politicians back bill to establish licensing authority

The Jamaican cabinet has approved a bill that would decriminalise possession of small amounts of cannabis and pave the way for a legal medical marijuana industry, the justice minister has said.

Mark Golding said he expected to introduce the legislation in the Senate this week. Debate could start this month in the country where the drug, known popularly as “ganja”, has long been culturally entrenched but illegal.

The bill would establish a cannabis licensing authority to deal with the regulations needed to cultivate, sell and distribute the herb for medical, scientific and therapeutic purposes. “We need to position ourselves to take advantage of the significant economic opportunities offered by this emerging industry,” he said.

It would make possession of 2 ounces (56g) or less an offence that would not result in a criminal record. Cultivation of five or fewer plants on any premises would be permitted. Rastafarians, who use marijuana as a sacrament, could also legally use it for religious purposes for the first time in Jamaica, where the spiritual movement was founded in the 1930s.

For decades, debate has raged on the Caribbean island over laws governing marijuana use. But now, with several countries and US states relaxing their laws on the herb, Jamaica is advancing reform plans.

Golding said the government would not soften its stance on drug trafficking and it intended to use a proportion of revenues from its licensing authority to support a public education campaign to discourage pot-smoking by young people and mitigate public health consequences.

The director of the national Cannabis Commercial and Medicinal Research Taskforce said he expected the bill to be passed soon in parliament, where Portia Simpson Miller’s governing party holds a 2-1 majority. “This development is long overdue,” Delano Seiveright said.

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Crystal meth per drone, en het komt niet uit de hitserie Breaking Bad

Het had zo een bizarre scene kunnen zijn uit de hitserie Breaking Bad: Mexicaanse narcobazen die per drone hun drugs de VS insturen als tegenwicht voor de 99 procent pure methamfetamine van scheikundeleraar Walter White. Maar het is geen fictie. De Amerikaanse grenspolitie moet vanaf nu rekening houden met alles, na de drugsvlucht die eindigde op een parkeerplaats bij de grensovergang San Ysidro.

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Marihuana-drone stortte neer op gevangenis

Een drone gevuld met marihuana is medio december neergestort op een gevangenis in Hamburg. Dit gebeurde in een poging de drugs via de lucht naar binnen te smokkelen.

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Despite a Crackdown, Use of Illegal Drugs in China Continues Unabated

BEIJING — Despite the crowds and the risk of arrest, the African man standing outside an Adidas outlet here one recent wintry evening was brazen in his pitch.

“Hey man, you want to smoke something?” he asked a passer-by, before offering his wares: cocaine, ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine, all highly illegal in China.

The man was but one of several drug dealers who are a fixture in Sanlitun, one of Beijing’s diplomatic districts, just down the block from a police station. Their presence would seem to defy the Chinese government’s ambitious claims of a six-month crackdown on drugs that is underway in 108 cities.

Last week, the Ministry of Public Security announced that the Chinese police had arrested 60,500 suspects on drug offenses and seized more than 11 metric tons of narcotics since the latest operation, called “Ban drugs in hundreds of cities,” began in October, according to the Xinhua state news agency. Around 180,000 drug users had been punished by mid-December, including more than 55,000 sent to government-run rehabilitation centers, Xinhua said.

But for all the reported successes of China’s expanding antidrug campaigns — which last year included the arrest of celebrities like the son of the movie star Jackie Chan and the burning of 400 tons of methamphetamine ingredients — some analysts question whether the police are winning significant, lasting victories in what the authorities have called a “people’s war.”

China’s growing prosperity has turned recreational drug use into an $82 billion annual domestic business, according to the National Narcotics Control Commission. There are 2.76 million drug users registered with the Chinese government, three-quarters of them under 35. Yet even the police admit that such figures convey only a fraction of the drug problem. In October, Liu Yuejin, director general of the government’s anti-narcotics division, estimated the actual number of addicts at roughly 13 million, half of whom are suspected of using methamphetamine, up from nine percent of addicts who were suspected of using that drug in 2008.

“China is facing a grim task in curbing synthetic drugs, including ‘ice,’ which more and more of China’s drug addicts tend to use,” he said, using the street name for crystal methamphetamine, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. China has some of the world’s harshest drug laws: those caught trafficking large amounts of drugs can face the death penalty, and the police have the authority to send casual drug users to compulsory drug rehabilitation centers, which human rights groups say are little more than labor camps.

Although heroin is the most commonly used illegal drug among rural Chinese, the country’s booming cities have become major markets for methamphetamine. A study of sewage in four megacities, published last year in the international journal Science of the Total Environment, reported that meth was omnipresent in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In Beijing, the greatest concentration was found at a treatment plant serving the city’s highest density of nightclubs and bars, while China’s wealthy coastal cities in the south were determined to have the highest total consumption of meth, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine, according to the study.

Drug use also spans the breadth of Chinese society. In December, 41 government officials in the southeastern province of Yunnan were expelled from the Communist Party after failing drug tests. A few months earlier, a 17-year-old girl in the southern province of Jiangxi posted photos on social media of herself and friends snorting ketamine at a nightclub in the province of Jiangxi. She was detained.

Perhaps the most shocking example of China’s huge drug trade exploded into the public consciousness in December 2013, when 3,000 paramilitary police officers raided a small village on the coast of Guangdong Province and arrested 182 people, including the former party secretary and 13 other officials. Nearly three tons of meth were seized from the village. “Meth is popular because any illegal lab or factory in the mainland can make it,” said Lu Lin, the director of the China Medical Dependency Research Institute at Peking University in Beijing.

Some of the key ingredients in meth are derived from the herb ephedra sinica, known as ma huang in Mandarin, a staple of traditional Chinese medicine used for treating colds and coughs. Experts say much of the country’s meth is produced in southern China, though the authorities prefer to blame Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar and Laos. Consistently absent from their accusations is North Korea, a close ally that some experts believe churns out vast quantities of meth trafficked into China’s northeast.

For years, Beijing residents have wondered how dealers were able to sell their wares so openly near a police station in the Sanlitun district, home to many embassies, bars, and restaurants popular with expatriates. A crackdown scattered the men last spring, but during a recent stroll through the neighborhood, it was clear they have not gone far.

Sun Zhongwei, a former narcotics officer turned lawyer, dismissed the suggestion that the dealers were officially tolerated. “If Chinese police had spotted them, they’d have been arrested,” he said. “It’s impossible for the police to see them and not act upon it. That would be considered an act of negligence.”

But drug users in China say the police operate in a bureaucracy programmed to follow orders from above. In some cities, the police allow dealers to operate undisturbed — until they need to fill a quota, according to He Mukun, a former addict and drug counselor in Yunnan. Mr. He said the police in Yunan rarely arrested drug dealers, preferring to use them as informants during crackdowns. “The police think, ‘In the future, when my boss gives me an assignment to catch drug users, what happens if I can’t find any?’ ” he said. “But if a cop knows a drug seller, he can just ask for a bunch of names. You get huge numbers that way.”

Indeed, the eye-popping statistics from the Ministry of Public Security appear intended to impress: In a five-month crackdown last year, the police were said to have “totally uncovered” 50,827 drug cases, arrested 56,989 suspects and seized 26.5 tons of drugs, an increase in seizures of 126.8 percent over the same period a year earlier.

Despite those numbers, the nation’s drug problem continues unabated. On Tuesday, the Chinese government for the first time acknowledged the existence of performance goals in law enforcement. According to Xinhua, the party’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee demanded that officials “firmly abolish” quotas.

As for drug traffickers higher up the chain, Mr. He, the drug counselor, suggested that some were politically connected and, thus, protected. “The police usually can’t touch them,” he said.

But in an interview, one Beijing dealer said things were changing. “Before, because of our connections, we would always be alerted a few months ahead of a crackdown,” said the dealer, who asked not to be identified. “Now they just happen.”

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Wietkwekerij Zaltbommel levert 2 miljoen euro per oogst op

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ZALTBOMMEL - In een bedrijfspand in Zaltbommel is dinsdag een zeer grote hennepkwekerij met 30.000 planten aangetroffen, een van de grootste die ooit in Gelderland is ontdekt, misschien zelfs wel de grootste.

Maar wat levert dat op?

Volgens een arrest van de Hoge Raad uit 2010 wordt uitgegaan van 28,2 gram hennep per plant bij een prijs van 2,37 euro per gram. Dat betekent dat één oogst in Zaltbommel ruim 2 miljoen euro zou hebben opgeleverd. Een andere bron geeft een bedrag van 3,28 per gram, dat is en gemiddelde op basis van vergelijking van verschillende meldingen van het Coördinatiepunt Nationaal Netwerk Drugsexpertise van het KLPD. Dan kom je uit op bijna 2,8 miljoen euro per oogst.

De grootste hennepkwekerijen die de laatste jaren zijn ontdekt:

3/12/14 - Duiven: 6000 planten
21/10/14 - Dodewaard: 22.000 stekjes en 280 moederplanten (straatwaarde: 1 miljoen)
5/11/13 - Duiven: 2500 planten
23/9/13 - Nijmegen: 420 grote planten en 3825 stekjes
3/4/13 - Ruurlo: bijna 4500 planten
6/3/13 - Buren: 14.000 hennepstekken
20/2/12 - Huinen (bij Putten): 2850 planten
20/5/11 - Ede: 2700 planten
26/8/09 - Overasselt: 10.000 planten en 15.000 stekken
18/6/08 - Alphen: ruim 4000

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Burgerinitiatief van BNN tegen strafblad bij te veel pillen op zak

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Festivalgangers en clubbezoekers zouden voortaan straffeloos meerdere xtc-pillen voor eigen gebruik op zak mogen hebben. Daarvoor pleit het BNN-progamma Spuiten en Slikken. Het heeft ruim 41.000 handtekeningen verzameld om dit pleidooi kracht bij te zetten; genoeg voor een burgerinitiatief waardoor de Tweede Kamer het onderwerp moet bespreken. De handtekeningen worden vandaag in Den Haag aangeboden.

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Internationaal onderzoek naar vermiste Mexicaanse studenten

Er komt een internationaal onderzoek naar de moord op 43 Mexicaanse studenten. Die zijn sinds eind september vermist en vermoedelijk vermoord door een drugskartel op bevel van een burgemeester.

Half februari begint het onderzoek, meldt de Inter-Amerikaanse Mensenrechtencommissie vrijdag.

De families van de studenten wilden graag dat er meer en onafhankelijk onderzoek gedaan zou worden naar de verdwijning. De overheid verklaarde afgelopen dinsdag de studenten dood en leek daarmee de zaak af te doen.

Nu zullen erkende, Spaanstalige mensenrechtenexperts de zaak gaan onderzoeken, aldus de commissie. De nabestaanden zijn overigens ook nog van plan om naar de VN te stappen.

De ouders vinden dat de regering probeert om de zaak af te sluiten voor die naar behoren is opgelost. "We hebben niet genoeg bewijs om dit te accepteren", zei een van de ouders dinsdag.

Iguala

De studenten verdwenen eind september tijdens een protest in de stad Iguala. Vermoedelijk hebben politiemensen ze op bevel van de burgemeester van Iguala ontvoerd tijdens een demonstratie. De studenten zijn vervolgens overgeleverd aan een drugsbende.

Een van de leden van die bende heeft verklaard dat hij de opdracht van zijn baas kreeg om de jongeren te vermoorden. De bendeleden zou zijn verteld dat het om leden van een rivaliserende bende ging.

Er zijn zo'n negentig mensen opgepakt in de zaak, onder wie veel agenten. Ook de burgemeester van Iguala zit vast.

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Hennepkwekerijen tappen meer stroom af

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De bijna 4700 hennepkwekerijen die vorig jaar zijn opgerold, hebben voor 147 miljoen kilowattuur stroom afgetapt. Dat is meer dan in 2013, toen nog voor 140 miljoen kWu werd gestolen. Dat meldt Netbeheer Nederland.

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Rotterdam onderschepte 7575 kilo cocaïne in 2014

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Vorig jaar is rond de 9 duizend kilo harddrugs in beslag genomen in de Rotterdamse haven. Het overgrote deel betrof cocaïne: 7575 kilo. De drugs zijn onderschept door het Hit and Run Cargoteam (HARC). Dat meldt het Openbaar Ministerie vandaag.

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Marseille housing estate sealed off after police car shot at

About 100 special forces dispatched to area after police shot at while responding to reports of gang members firing Kalashnikovs into air

A housing estate in Marseille was sealed off after gunmen shot at a police vehicle hours before the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, was due to visit the city.

Residents reported that about 10 young hooded gunmen were patrolling the streets of the Castellane estate on scooters on Monday morning, looking for a rival gang and firing Kalashnikovs into the air.

When the first police vehicle arrived at the estate, another gang member who was posted inside one of the estate’s tower blocks shot at it with a sniper rifle.

About 100 special forces police were dispatched to search the area, where about 7,000 people live. Riot police were posted at entrances to the estate and a creche was evacuated.

Later on Monday, police reportedly found seven Kalashnikovs and about 20kg of cannabis as well as a large sum of money in an apartment in Castellane. Police were still searching for the gunmen.

The gunfire happened as Pierre-Marie Bourniquel, the departmental director of public security, was checking that the area was safe before the prime minister’s visit.

Valls was due in Marseille to congratulate local officials and police on their clampdown on crime in the city. He was expected to be accompanied by the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, and the education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.

Le Figaro reported that Bourniquel and an accompanying police chief had come under fire as they arrived at the estate in a police car with its siren on. The shots passed two or three metres from the vehicle and no one was injured.

Police said the shooting was linked to a dispute over a drug deal between two rival gangs.

Bourniquel told Agence France-Presse that he and other officers were in three vehicles that were targeted: “We were shot at when we got there. We were in clearly marked police cars.”

The 1960s housing estate where the French footballer Zinedine Zidane grew up is in one of Marseille’s notorious crime-ridden suburbs.

Drug traffickers regularly turn parts of the estate into no-go areas for police and outsiders, and local authorities plan to demolish at least one high-rise block in an attempt to make the area easier to monitor and control.

Last week the local infants’ school was broken into, and the neighbouring primary school was set alight over the Christmas period.

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Amend UN Treaties to End Drug Prohibition

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We, the People of the World, petition the United Nations and the Signatory nations of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and two corollary UN drug prohibition treaties, to Amend the Treaties, ending the war on drugs and providing for a health-, harm-reduction and human rights- oriented convention much like that proposed by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. See http://www.tiny.cc/leap_treaty

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Op donderdag 12 februari 2015 18:57 schreef Tism het volgende:

[..]

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Liquidatiegolf Amsterdam groeit uit tot onoverzichtelijk conflict

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De liquidatiegolf in Amsterdam is een nieuwe fase ingegaan. Wat begon met een ruzie tussen twee groepen over een verdwenen partij drugs uit de Antwerpse haven is inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een onoverzichtelijk conflict tussen meerdere, kleine groepen criminelen. Dat zegt Hanneke Ekelmans, lid van de korpsleiding Amsterdam, in een interview met de Volkskrant. Ze is verantwoordelijk voor de opsporing.

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Mexico police barricaded in station over labour dispute clash with federal agents

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A revolt by local police who barricaded themselves inside a station for nearly two weeks in a labour protest erupted in a clash that wounded at least five federal agents in southern Mexico on Friday.

Between 250 and 300 local police officers have been hunkered down in the station in the town of Santa María Coyotepec for the last 13 days to demand raises and better working conditions, the Oaxaca state government said in a statement.

They shot at federal police who tried to remove them on Friday, the government alleged. Five federal agents were wounded in the legs by bullet shrapnel, but their lives were said not to be in danger.

Some of the local officers contended it was not them but rather federal agents who opened fire in the pre-dawn confrontation.

“The federal police tried to get in through the main door, but my companions reacted and the clash began,” said a policeman inside the compound who gave his name as only Luis for fear of possible reprisals.

Jeyco Pérez, identified as one of the leaders of the revolt, told Milenio TV that they were only using shields to defend themselves and had not fired weapons.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the local officers carrying batons and riot shields, but no weapons were readily visible. The entry to the station was barricaded with a truck and metal fencing.

The locals captured at least three federal officers but later released them.

One, Mauricio Villela, said he was not harmed during his seven hours of captivity. He denied that it was federal police who opened fire, saying, “We did not shoot.”

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Chemopatiënten kweken stiekem cannabis

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Duizenden ernstig zieke Nederlanders kunnen bij de apotheek 'staatswiet' krijgen. Die werkt bij veel patiënten niet goed. Sommigen telen daarom zelf wiet. Ook Rudolf Hillebrand. Tot de politie kwam.

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The UK needs common sense about ketamine

^{David Nutt}

Ketamine is a vital medicine, and restricting it has harmed patients without cutting recreational use. Britain should stand up to the UN’s failed ‘war on drugs’

Ketamine is a unique anaesthetic and analgesic that has unfortunately become a popular and harmful recreational drug. Last year, in an attempt to reduce recreational use, and on the recommendation of its Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), the UK government decided to ban all ketamine-like drugs (analogues) and also put ketamine itself under greater controls.

These changes were opposed by many scientists who saw the analogue ban as anti-scientific, and by many doctors and vets who feared that the greater controls would reduce ketamine use with consequent increase in patients suffering. Our fears turned out to be true. For example, the Glastonbury festival medical team who use ketamine for emergency anaesthesia (eg for burns) were last year denied supplies.

The increased restrictions also failed to take account of the advances in prescribing options provided by the Patient Group Directive legislation, which improves access to vital medicines by allowing trained nurses and other practitioners to prescribe. On Tuesday, the Home Office was told by the ACMD of this oversight, and hopefully the regulations will soon be changed to allow ketamine to be used optimally.

These issues highlight the perverse damage that can occur with the current simplistic legal-based approaches against recreational drug use. They damage research and harm patients, yet have little if any effect on recreational use. Now the misuse of ketamine in some other countries could lead to an even more outrageous decision: the banning of ketamine as a medicine world-wide. The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (UNCND) is proposing this at its next meeting in March. This recommendation is being pursued despite opposition from the World Health Organisation that argues ketamine is a vital medicine. Ketamine is the only anaesthetic that does not cause respiratory depression and one that has proven utility in emergency situations, war zones and in surgery for children. This is not the first time that the faceless “war on drugs” bureaucrats in the UN are trying to get a drug banned to justify their existence – but surely it must be the last?

The prospect of denying the long-proven therapeutic benefits of ketamine to people, particularly children in pain, is one I am sure we would all find abhorrent. We need to remember that because many countries blindly follow UN guidance to ban all strong opioids under UN conventions, 80% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to adequate opioid analgesia, one of the great socio-medical scandals of the past century.

Ketamine also has a major and growing role to play in the control of patients with chronic pain. Moreover ketamine is probably the most significant innovation in the treatment of resistant depression in the past 40 years. It can produce rapid remission of symptoms in suicidal patients and is also being tested in treatment-resistant PTSD.

To stop the clinical and research use of ketamine would be madness but this is what would happen if the UK approves and implements the UNCND recommendation. This would mean that every doctor and hospital that wished to use ketamine would need their own special licence to do so. We know that only four hospitals in the country have such a licence and to get one costs about £6,000 and takes a year or more.

The idea that banning ketamine will stop recreational use is ludicrous, given that similar bans on heroin and cocaine have not impacted misuse. Unless our scientific and medical leaders stand up to the UNCND, researchers and patients will suffer. We need to remember that the UK medical community successfully lobbied the government to reject the 1961 UN recommendation to ban heroin when many other countries went along with it and so eliminated it as a medicine. UK patients have benefited from this powerful painkiller whereas patients in other countries have suffered. We can insist that common sense over ketamine prevails and that our medical leaders demand a similar exemption be applied to ketamine in the UK if the UN proposal is endorsed.

But we should do more. It is time to stop the UNCND pursuing its failed “war on drugs”. This serves its goals of maintaining its significant international profile and job security, but it has been a costly failure in terms of the rest of humanity, particularly because of the perverse effects to deny proven pain-control treatments to much of the world’s population. Surely it is now time for the UK, one of the founders of the World Health Organisation and a leader in international health policy, to rectify this cruelty: stopping it worsening by opposing the ketamine ban would be the first step.

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Hacker from Anonymous says he was charged after refusing to help FBI

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A 28-year-old hacker currently serving a six-month prison sentence for computer crimes now says that authorities asked him to help the United States gather information on Mexican drug cartels, then charged him with dozens of counts after he refused.

Fidel Salinas of Texas started his half-year prison sentence last Friday, according to court documents obtained by RT, three months after he accepted a plea deal that saw him owning up to a single count of accessing without authorization the computer system of Hidalgo County in 2012. The activity was part of an operation that authorities say involved the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

This Wednesday, however, Wired reported that Salinas said ahead of surrendering to US Marshals last week that the agreement he reached with the Department of Justice was hardly the first time that the two had discussed a deal.

According to Wired, Salinas told journalist Andy Greenberg that agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation attempted to recruit him to assist with the FBI’s own intelligence gathering operations in 2013. After Salinas shot them down, he soon found himself being charged with dozens of counts through no fewer than four indictments filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

In May 2013, Greenberg wrote this week, the FBI interrogated Salinas for six hours, during which they allegedly asked him to harness his cyber skills in order to help federal authorities gather intelligence on Mexican drug cartels — a previous target of Anonymous.

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Life after El Chapo: kingpin's arrest spells new era in Mexican drug war

The capture last year of Joaquín Guzmán barely seems to have affected the Sinaloa cartel’s core business, but behind the scenes trouble may be brewing

The fortune-teller smiled as she gazed out towards the distant peaks of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.

“The mountains are glowing red and it will be a good harvest,” she predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop of marijuana – and the cash bonanza it will bring.

This is Mexico’s own golden triangle. Straddling the northern states
of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua, the Sierra has been a stronghold of
the country’s drug trade for as long as anyone can remember. Its deep
canyons and dense pine forests have harboured narcos
and hidden plantations of marijuana and opium poppies for decades.

It’s a world the fortune-teller knows well: over the years, she said she had often used her gift to help local people – locating a lost kilo of opium
paste or comforting the girlfriends of slain traffickers.

The arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán on 22 February 2014 was hailed
by the Mexican and US authorities as the one of the biggest blows to
the drug trade in decades. But a year on, the core business of
Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel seems hardly affected. “As long as there are people who want the drugs this will never stop, whoever goes to prison,” the seer said.

Overall, seizures of drugs from Mexico heading into the US remain much
as they were before Guzmán’s arrest. The Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) has reported only small changes in the way the cartel operates. And after a brief burst of triumphalism in the days
after Guzmán’s arrest, the Mexican government now rarely mentions the
Sinaloa cartel at all.

“Chapo’s capture has not produced any major changes here,” said Ismael
Bojórquez, the director of the Sinaloa investigative weekly Ríodoce.
“The cartel structure continues to work just as before.”

Not that everybody in Sinaloa accepts that view.

“Things are calm, yes, but it feels like the calm before the storm,” said a local music producer who specialises in narcocorridos – accordion-driven ballads often commissioned by traffickers to glorify their exploits. Like the psychic – and others interviewed for this article – he was wary of being identified, because his work often brings him into contact with members of the criminal underworld.

Sinaloa’s Coordinator of Public Security, who previously headed military operations in the state, insists that Chapo’s capture has not had any major impact on security over the past year. “Things not only have not got worse,” retired General Moisés Melo Garcia said, “but high impact crimes have been falling in Sinaloa, thanks to improved coordination between the federal and state forces.”

But over the past year, unease in Sinaloa has been magnified by the lack of
clarity over the cartel’s reconfiguration since Guzmán’s arrest.

For all his mythical status – forged by a dramatic prison escape in
2001 and the Sinaloa cartel’s subsequent attempt to take over territories across the country from other cartels – Guzmán was not so much the boss of bosses as the highest profile figure in a triumvirate of veterans.

The other two were Juan José Esparragoza, known as El Azul (“the blue one”), who reportedly died in June and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who is still at large.

Many assumed El Chapo’s arrest would prompt Zambada’s seamless succession to power, but the 67-year-old narco has apparently come under intense pressure in recent months: several close collaborators, including one of his sons, have been arrested and he has reportedly come close to capture several times.

Even in the state capital Culiacán – once his undisputed home
territory – El Mayo has appeared unable to respond to an incursion by
a former protege of Chapo called Dámaso López, who is said to have made
inroads into street-level dealing in the city.

The record producer noted that López appeared to be backing his
ambitions with an aggressive string of promotional narcocorridos with
lyrics that are becoming increasingly bellicose.

In Culiacán, some believe El Chapo could eventually be replaced by one of his sons, Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán, but others dismiss him as too inexperienced to take full control.

Analysts, law enforcement sources and cartel contacts agree generational change is contributing to the unease: traditionalists often point to the hotheaded and exhibitionist tendencies of such narco “juniors”, whose inherited power and wealth contrast with the rags-to-riches struggles of their fathers.

And then there is the wild card of Rafael Caro Quintero. A founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara cartel, Quintero spent 28 years in jail for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, but was unexpectedly released in 2013 – to the disgust of the US government – and promptly disappeared. Today the ageing narco is said to be hiding out somewhere in the golden triangle, intent on reimposing old school narco order in Sinaloa.

“There is no logic to what is happening,” the record producer said. “The sense I get is of an atmosphere of pending war.”

Luís agrees. He spent 10 years as one of El Chapo’s gunmen, loading drugs on to planes heading to the US as well as torturing and killing cartel members who stepped out of line.

Luis has retired and complains of nightmare flashbacks to his days as a killer, but he still keeps in contact with the few members of his old crowd who are still alive. They tell him all is not well in the cartel.

“Before all the cows went in one direction. Now there are too many cowboys,” he said, sipping a beer and fiddling with a joint. “There will always be drugs moving, for as long as it is not legal, but I see a lot of weakness, a lot of internal disputes and mistreatment of the local population and that creates problems too.”

Luis said that while the police were as accommodating as ever, new tactics being used by the federal government were causing problems.

Time was, he said, when soldiers would help cartel members load up drug shipments “for a beer and a woman”. Now, however, he said army units were rotated so often that deals with corrupt commanders had to be constantly renegotiated.

Worse still, he added, the government was increasingly depending on special operations forces, which have proved stubbornly resistant to making any deals with the cartels. Naval special operations units, working closely with the DEA, have been responsible for almost all the key arrests in Sinaloa, including Chapo’s.

María, a well-dressed middle-aged lady who spoke freely once assured of anonymity, also described considerable nervousness at the “peaceful end of the business”. A close relative of María’s trafficed cocaine independently, she said, but still depended on the cartel to keep order in the state.

“The youngsters wanting to come in are more violent, they don’t have what it takes,” she said. “El Señor [El Mayo] is looking weak, but he is very astute and we are hoping that he has an ace up his sleeve.”

Memories are still fresh of the all-out war that erupted in Sinaloa in 2008 following a violent split between Chapo and his one-time allies in the Beltrán Leyva family, leaving many in the area particularly attuned to signs of internal tension in the cartel. Their concerns are only reinforced by events elsewhere in Mexico: hardly a day goes by in the southern state of Guerrero without reports of atrocities committed in the turf wars between splinter groups of the once-mighty Beltrán Leyva cartel.

“The Sinaloa cartel is not a good thing, but it is better than the others,” said one taxi driver in the city. “We don’t want another war.”

His immediate concern, however, was a lack of cash in Culiacán linked by many to El Chapo’s capture.

A financial adviser at a bank in the city agreed: “The Sinaloan economy depends, in large part, on these guys. It’s their cash and investments that provide the work,” he said.

He added that El Chapo’s arrest and tighter restrictions on cash transactions had led to a notable contraction in the past year, though he expected this to ease once the cartel had found new creative ways of laundering its money.

Agriculture and the tourism industry have long been favoured routes for laundering money, he said, but he expected new construction projects would become the preferred way to clean dirty money.

“In Sinaloa we are all betting on the good guys and the bad guys doing business,” he said.

Javier Valdez, a reporter at Ríodoce, specialises in stories about the way daily life in Sinaloa has become increasingly invaded by narco economics and culture. “The narcos have domesticated us,” Valdez said. “They are in our lives and we are ever more resigned to that destiny.”

The government’s failure to provide security or prosperity only adds to this sense of dependence on an underworld that relies on both barbaric violence and managerial agility to adapt to new market conditions.

The DEA’s 2014 National Threat Assessment notes a steady rise in heroin seizures on the US south-west border that reached 2,200kg (4,850lb) in 2013 – more than four times the amount intercepted in 2008.

This appears to be a response to growing US demand, but could also reflect opium paste’s portability compared with large bricks of marijuana. In Sinaloa growers in the Sierra Madre describe increased poppy production for just those reasons.

Local people with connections to the drug trade also describe a surge in the number of crystal meth labs. The DEA report notes that almost all the methamphetamine on sale in the US was produced in Mexico, with seizures on the border nearly tripling between 2009 and 2013 to reach about 11,500kg. The report also cites increasingly sophisticated techniques, which include dissolving the drug in solvents to smuggle it across the border disguised as flavoured drinks or hidden in windshield wiper reservoirs.

Meanwhile, marijuana seizures dropped suddenly in 2013. Some newspaper reports have ascribed this to the legalisation of the drug in some US states, but local producers say it has more to do with years of falling prices and greater vigilance by the army, which complicates the transport of large shipments.

All of which leads journalists such as the director of Ríodoce to conclude that the Sinaloa cartel is well on the way to completing its reformation for the post-Chapo era.

“It is a period of transition and there will always be bumps along the way,” Bojórquez said. “But this is a business group with a worldwide reach and it is looking pretty strong.”

Bojórquez speculates that the cartel’s resilience may also also owe something to backroom negotiations with Mexican politicians, who he believes are desperate to find a way to close down the drug wars, which have killed about 100,000 people around Mexico.

At least one Sinaloan politician from the governing Institutional Revolutionary party appeared to agree. “The only way to do this is for the big boys to sit down with the big boys and make a deal,” he said.

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VVD-campagne start in mineur door integriteitsaffaires

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Donderdag kreeg de partij een nieuwe klap te verwerken: de vorige week al afgetreden VVD-fractievoorzitter van de gemeente Stichtse Vecht is nu in hechtenis genomen. Zij maakt deel uit van een groep van acht arrestanten die wordt verdacht van hennepteelt en witwassen. De ex-politica mag geen contact hebben met de buitenwereld. Zij moest al eerder aftreden omdat ze wordt verdacht van het lekken van geheime informatie uit een vertrouwenscommissie aan een partijgenoot.

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Mexicaanse drugsbaron 'La Tuta' opgepakt

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De drugsbaron stond aan het hoofd van het Tempeliers-kartel, een quasireligieus crimineel netwerk dat voorheen de hele staat onder controle had. Zo had het de macht over de politie en de handel die in de staat werd gedreven. De gang wist zelfs de internationale haven Lazaro Cardenas te veroveren en zo miljoenen op te strijken met het illegaal mijnen van erts.

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UK should begin decriminalising drugs, say Richard Branson and Nick Clegg

Virgin founder and deputy prime minister argue that ‘war on drugs’ has failed and urge UK to follow Portuguese example

Sir Richard Branson and Nick Clegg are urging the UK to begin decriminalising the use and possession of almost all drugs, following the example of Portugal.

The Virgin founder and deputy prime minister are to address a conference on fighting drug addiction on Wednesday, and in a Guardian article they argue that the “war on drugs” has failed.

“As an investment, the war on drugs has failed to deliver any returns,” they write. “If it were a business, it would have been shut down a long time ago. This is not what success looks like.

“The idea of eradicating drugs from the world by waging a war on those who use them is fundamentally flawed for one simple reason: it doesn’t reduce drug taking.

“The Home Office’s own research, commissioned by Liberal Democrats in government and published a few months ago, found there is no apparent correlation between the ‘toughness’ of a country’s approach and the prevalence of adult drug use.

“This devastating conclusion means that we are wasting our scarce resources, and on a grand scale.”

Branson has always made a point of not endorsing party politics, but is willing to endorse specific campaigns, and as a member on the global commission on drugs policy has called for an international rethink on drugs laws.

In their article, they argue: “The status quo is a colossal con perpetrated on the public by politicians who are too scared to break the taboo.”

Portugal decriminalised all drugs at the turn of the century. In the nearly 15 years since, the country has seen drug abuse drop by half, with the money previously spent on prohibition enforcement spent instead on reconnecting drug addicts with society.

In Clegg’s clearest endorsement of the Portuguese experiment, they say: “We should look to Portugal which removed criminal penalties for drug possession in 2001.

“Portugal’s reforms have not – as many predicted – led to an increase in drug use. Instead, they have allowed resources to be re-directed towards the treatment system, with dramatic reductions in addiction, HIV infections and drug-related deaths.

“Drugs remain illegal and socially unacceptable, as they should be, but drug users are dealt with through the civil rather than the criminal law.

“Anyone who is arrested for drug possession is immediately assessed and sent for treatment or education. If they fail to engage, they have to pay a fine.”

Portuguese citizens are allowed to purchase and possess 1g of heroin, 2g of cocaine, 25g of marijuana leaves or 5g of hashish.

They write: “The Portuguese system works, and on an issue as important as this, where lives are at stake, governments cannot afford to ignore the evidence. We should set up pilots to test and develop a British version of the Portuguese model.”

But the Centre for Social Justice, a charity closely associated with the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, claimed charities on the front line in the struggle against drug addiction are opposed to decriminalisation.

In recent CSJ research, nearly three-quarters of charities surveyed were concerned about the effect cannabis use had on their clients and families. More than half (56%) felt the decriminalisation of cannabis would lead to an increase in its use. Less than a quarter (23%) thought it would not.

Commenting on the findings, Christian Guy, director of the CSJ, said: “Drug addiction is ripping Britain’s poorest communities apart. Our network of 300 front-line charities sees this on a daily basis.

“Many are right to be worried that liberalising cannabis laws will lead to more people taking drugs and developing harder use.

“Politicians need to listen to these experts. They are the people who witness the devastating impact of drugs in our poorest neighbourhoods day in, day out.”

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Mexico arresteert opnieuw leider groot drugskartel

De Mexicaanse politie heeft de leider van het beruchte drugskartel Los Zetas opgepakt. Het is Omar Trevino Morales. Hij was de baas van het kartel sinds de arrestatie van zijn broer in juli 2013.

Morales werd woensdagochtend (plaatselijke tijd) aangehouden in de stad Monterrey. Hij was een van de meest gezochte misdadigers in het land. Zijn arrestatie komt enkele dagen na de aanhouding van een andere bendeleider, Servando Gomèz van het Tempelierskartel.

Het kartel Los Zetas, dat voor een groot deel bestaat uit goedgetrainde gedeserteerde militairen, staat bekend als zeer gewelddadig. Het wordt onder andere verantwoordelijk gehouden voor de moord op 72 immigranten in San Fernando in 2010.

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ChristenUnie blokkeert legaliseren softdrugs bij herziening belastingsysteem

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De ChristenUnie zal niet instemmen met een nieuw belastingstelsel waar de legalisering van softdrugs een onderdeel is.

Dat zegt ChristenUnie-leider Arie Slob vrijdag tegen NU.nl. Zaterdagochtend volgt een uitgebreid interview.

D66 presenteerde onlangs een initiatiefwetsvoorstel om de wietteelt te reguleren. Op deze manier wordt de 'achterdeur' van coffeeshops legaal, waardoor er ook belasting over geheven kan worden.

D66-leider Alexander Pechtold liet vervolgens weten het plan op tafel te willen leggen bij de onderhandelingen over een nieuw belastingsysteem, de komende tijd een van de grootste uitdagingen voor het kabinet.

Zowel D66 als de ChristenUnie horen bij de "constructieve" oppositiepartijen die met de coalitie hierover meepraten.

Als het aan Slob ligt kan Pechtold zijn wietplan dus thuis laten. "Als je bij D66 binnenloopt dan zit je meteen met je hoofd in de wietdampen", stelt hij.

"Die partij heeft het belastingplan gekoppeld aan het softdrugsbeleid. Wij zien het als een gezondheidsvraagstuk, zij als een financieel vraagstuk. Maar ik zou geen geld willen verdienen aan de verslaving van anderen. Daar sta ik diametraal tegenover."

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Fractielid stapt op na 'nieuwe corruptieverdenking' VVD

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De mannen worden ervan verdacht de benoeming van de burgemeester in de gemeente Stichtse Vecht te hebben beïnvloed in het voordeel van VVD'er Rob Bats. De verdenking is bijvangst in het onderzoek naar fractievoorzitter Kathalijne de Kruif van de VVD in Stichtse Vecht.

Zij werd vorige maand aangehouden op verdenking van het handelen in hennep en het witwassen van drugsgeld. De VVD in de gemeente liet dinsdag weten dat 'mevrouw De Kruif heeft aangegeven dat het niet in het belang van de gemeente, de inwoners, de gemeenteraad, haar partij en haarzelf is als zij nog langer politiek actief is'.

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Drugsdeal met Cees H. doet VVD-bewindslieden das om

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De zaak rond Cees H. kwam maandag in een stroomversnelling nadat bekend werd dat het betalingsbewijs was opgedoken van de overeenkomst met H. Daarmee werd ook het bewijs geleverd dat Opstelten niet de waarheid sprak in de Tweede Kamer. De drugscrimineel H. incasseerde 4,7 miljoen gulden, en niet 1,25 miljoen zoals Opstelten vorig jaar beweerde.

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Hooijmaijers wil dat justitie 'zijn omkopers' voor de rechter daagt

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Vandaag krijgt de ex-gedeputeerde van de provincie Noord Holland te horen hoe lang justitie wil dat hij moet zitten. De rechtbank veroordeelde hem in 2013 tot 3 jaar cel, omdat hij zich had laten omkopen, geld had witgewassen en valsheid in geschrifte had gepleegd. Uit de tenlastelegging van het OM blijkt dat justitie hem in hoger beroep verwijt dat hij voor circa 1,2 miljoen euro aan giften en beloften voor betalingen heeft ontvangen.

157 Zangeres zonder Naam Mexico

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Irish Es are smiling – ecstasy and other drugs temporarily legal in Ireland

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Possession of ecstasy and other drugs is currently legal in Ireland, but only for a day, after a court ruling on Tuesday morning.

A written judgment released by the Republic’s court of appeal said part of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, which allows certain substances to be controlled, is unconstitutional, meaning all government orders banning substances such as ecstasy and magic mushrooms are void – and it is not an offence to possess them.

Specifically, the court found that the act was being added to via ministerial order and without consulting the Oireachtas (both houses of the Irish parliament) and deemed this unconstitutional.

The appeal court’s ruling came in favour of a man who was prosecuted for possession of methylethcathinone, which was among a number of substances put on the controlled drugs list in 2010.

Stanislav Bederev denied the charge of having the substance for supply in 2012, and then brought a high court challenge in Dublin seeking to stop his trial, claiming that additions to the 1977 act were unconstitutional.

Bederev’s legal team argued it was not lawful to put the substance on the controlled drug list because there are no principles and policies guiding the introduction of such rules – and specifically no consultation with the Irish parliament.

The Irish government now has to force through emergency legislation in its parliament on Tuesday evening in response to the ruling.

The emergency law won’t come into place until the Republic’s second chamber, the Seanad, endorses the legislation. Following that the country’s president, Michael D Higgins, will have to gave his approval.

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Prescription drugs involved in 82% of overdose deaths, Victoria coroner says

Overdose deaths involving prescription drugs twice as common as those involving illegal ones and increasing rapidly, medical conference told

The number of deaths associated with prescription drugs used to treat stress, anxiety and insomnia are increasing at a “frightening” rate, a coroner has told attendees at a medical conference in Melbourne.

Prescription drugs were involved in 82% of the 384 overdose deaths investigated by the Victorian coroner’s court in 2014, Audrey Jamieson told the International Medicine in Addiction conference on Saturday.

This was 6% higher than the rate of deaths involving prescription drugs in 2011, she said, and almost double the number of deaths in which illicit drugs were involved.

Benzodiazepines were most commonly implicated in toxic deaths, Jamieson said, a class of drugs which includes the medicine more commonly known as Xanax, Serepax and Valium, prescribed for anxiety, panic and sleep disorders.

The drugs were involved in 55% of overdose deaths investigated by the court last year, compared with 49.7% four years ago.

“It’s frightening,” Jamieson said.

“Benzodiazepines as a contributor to mixed-drug toxic deaths is there, you can see it in the statistics. I hardly ever investigate a matter where the cause of death is mixed drug use where a benzodiazepine isn’t seen.”

Opioids, used to treat pain, were implicated in 48.4% of deaths, followed by antidepressants and antipsychotics.

Benzodiazepines contributed to a significant number of deaths involving alcohol, opioids, illicit drugs and antidepressants, the coroner said, highlighting the dangers of mixing substances.

As of February last year, Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Good Administration, rescheduled Xanax to make it a controlled drug – a substance deemed to have a high potential for abuse and addiction – which means restrictions have been placed on its prescription.

And while it was too early to see the impact of this on deaths and hospital admissions, Xanax was not the only prescription drug being abused by Australians, the conference heard.

Their widespread abuse meant the harms they caused were second only to alcohol, and were significantly greater than harm caused by illicit drugs, Associate Professor Nicholas Lintzeris, who is director of drug and alcohol services at South Eastern Sydney local health district, said.

The impact was being felt across socioeconomic and age groups, he said, as more people used them to cope with even the short-term stresses of life.

“Historically in Australia, people over 60 or 70 were not identified as a population that used drugs or alcohol, but that’s changing now with baby boomers getting older,” Lintzeris said.

“They’re the first generation to use alcohol and prescription drugs more widely, and it doesn’t look like they’re slowing down in their 70s and 80s.”

People expected to live longer and enter their later years pain-free, Lintzeris said.

There was a societal expectation that there was a pill for almost anything, and he said prescription monitoring systems to prevent “doctor shopping”, as well as better patient education about the risks and harms of prescription drugs, was needed.

Consumers needed to know that some prescription drugs, such as opioids, were highly addictive; that when taken in combination with other drugs such as alcohol, prescription drugs could be deadly; and that there were often non-drug alternatives, such as counselling or physiotherapy, that may work better for patients than drugs, he said.

Doctors also needed to reconsider prescribing so readily and widely, he said.

“We need much greater resilience in the community about what we can expect from healthcare and medicine,” Lintzeris said.

“There’s been over-reliance on medications to address those problems at the expense of talking therapy like counselling, and we also must look at how society is structured and how it may be causing harm.”

While sessions with a psychologist were currently subsidised by the government for conditions such as depression and anxiety, Lintzeris said no such subsidy for counselling occurred for patients suffering from chronic pain, making drugs too often the first choice for patients and doctors.

Speaking during a panel discussion on prescription drug abuse at the conference, Lintzeris called for government to force the pharmaceutical industry to make the harm profiles of drugs more readily available before they could be allowed into the market.

Dr Belinda Lloyd, who heads research at the Turning Point drug and alcohol centre in Melbourne, said it was important to ensure patients who needed pain and anxiety medications were not prevented from accessing them.

“It’s not about unduly limiting access to humane and proper healthcare, but we do need to balance that minimising risk of harm,” she said.

“We’ve seen a substantial increase in prescription drug availability and related harms in Australia. We need to enhance awareness of their risks.”

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Alaska police raid former TV anchor Charlo Greene's marijuana dispensary

Police served search warrants at marijuana activist Charlo Greene’s cannabis club after receiving reports of illegal sales but she reopened the next day

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Anchorage police served search warrants at marijuana activist Charlo Greene’s Alaska Cannabis Club after receiving reports of illegal marijuana sales.

The police took marijuana and impounded a Dodge Dakota and a Jeep Liberty on Friday, KTUU reported.

Greene is a former television reporter who gained notoriety when she quit her job on live TV in September with an expletive and announced she’s becoming an advocate to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Alaska.

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DEA Approves MDMA In Clinical Trials For Anxiety Patients

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has approved the first clinical trial of MDMA being used to treat patients with debilitating anxiety due to terminal illness, highlighting a changing attitude toward using psychedelic drug therapy on those with severe nervous disorders.

Communications Director Brad Burge at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) tells Al Jazeera America that the trial will test 18 subjects, each with proven life-threatening illnesses, in a non-hospital setting. The sessions will be monitored by on-site therapists to offer "support and conversation" to the patients. By pairing the drug with psychotherapy, MAPS hopes that the month-long trial will prove to lessen patients' anxiety symptoms associated with being terminally ill and create opportunity for more studies and trials to be conducted with psychedelic drugs. He explains that the trial is part of a larger $20 million plan to make MDMA an FDA-approved prescription medicine by 2021.

This trial is one of many that MAPS has overseen, including MDMA testing with sufferers of PTSD in addition to studies with LSD, Psilocybin ("magic mushrooms"), and the plant-based brew Ayahuasca, to lessen the symptoms associated with mental illnesses. A similar trial, brought to light by Vice earlier this year, studied the dissociative drug Ketamine and its effectiveness as an antidepressant.

It is the ultimate hope of MAPS that trials like these will prove the therapeutic quality of MDMA and other psychedelic drugs. Burge remains convinced that this is what "really good science shows, despite decades of propaganda and government misinformation."

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Brabantse burgemeesters vrezen machtige criminelen

De georganiseerde criminaliteit dreigt de baas te worden op sommige plekken in Nederland. Twee Brabantse burgemeesters waarschuwen in de Volkskrant voor de toenemende ondermijning van het gezag door criminelen.

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Criminelen uit de drugsscene en de vrouwenhandel delen de lakens uit in buurten, infiltreren in het openbaar bestuur en zetten het gezag onder druk. Burgemeesters worden stelselmatig bedreigd.

Zangeres Zonder Naam - Mexico

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UK: This Is What's Actually in Your Ecstasy

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You know those dance floor lifers you sometimes meet in the smoking areas of nightclubs, the greying men with sweat-logged shirts wrapped around their necks, blabbering through locked jaws about how much better pills were back in the day? They are all officially wrong.

The latest data on ecstasy – taken from pills seized by police in England and Wales between July and October of last year – reveals that the average pinger contains 108mg of MDMA, making them the strongest they've ever been in the UK.

For context, "back in the day" – i.e. during the Second Summer of Love, as rave took off here in the late-80s and early-90s – most pills were around the 80mg mark. Which, as it happens, is close to what's seen by ecstasy researchers as the "acceptable" dose (70-75mg) for an average-sized adult during one drug-taking session.

As recently as 2009, because law enforcement agencies managed to disrupt the supply chain of the precursor ingredients used to make ecstasy, most pills in the UK contained zero MDMA. Instead, largely because of a seizure in Cambodia in 2008 of 33 tons of the precursor chemical safrole oil – enough to supply the UK ecstasy market for five years – pills contained a mixture of BZP, speed or caffeine. They were basically duds, which is one of the reasons mephedrone sales reached the extraordinary heights they did.

It was the popularity of mephedrone, however, that helped to really open up the online drug trade, which – in turn – has enabled the mass supply of high quality ecstasy pills.

At Glastonbury Festival last year, all the pills seized contained MDMA, which is a pretty good sign of the current state of play. This potency surge also applies throughout Europe; in Holland, where most pills are made and where they've always been of higher quality than they are in Britain, the average strength is 140mg. In Spain, 120mg pills are the norm.

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Op woensdag 1 april 2015 14:50 schreef Prutzenberg het volgende:
Oeps!

Indiana's Controversial "Religious Freedom" Act Just Unintentionally Legalized Marijuana

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‘Minister verdraaide feiten over wietteelt’



Onderzoekers zijn niet te spreken over hoe hun publicaties over wietteelt door hun opdrachtgever, veelal het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie, zijn gepresenteerd. Dat leert een rondgang langs wetenschappers en onderzoekers.

Onwelgevallige publicaties zijn uitgesteld, conclusies selectief naar buiten gebracht (‘cherry picking’) en vraagstellingen zo gestuurd dat de uitkomst het beleid ondersteunt. Oud-minister Ivo Opstelten (VVD) gebruikte de rapporten om de harde aanpak van wietteelt te rechtvaardigen, maar het wetenschappelijk fundament daarvoor is brozer dan voorgesteld.

Twist

Zo zou het overgrote deel van de nederwiet naar het buitenland gaan. Elke poging van burgemeesters om wietteelt te reguleren veegde het ministerie er de afgelopen jaren mee van tafel. Zolang veel wiet de grens over gaat, is de gedachte, helpt regulering niet tegen illegale plantages en georganiseerde misdaad in Nederland.

Maar de KLPD-onderzoeker die in 2006 het rapport publiceerde waarop het ministerie de hoge exportschatting baseerde, kaartte intern aan dat dit niet de conclusie was uit zijn onderzoek. Daaruit bleek namelijk: we weten het niet. Diezelfde conclusie, getrokken door onderzoekers van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoeks- en Documentatiecentrum in een nieuwe exportschatting vorig jaar, werd door Opstelten eveneens verdraaid. Onderzoekers die aan het rapport meewerkten zeggen “teleurgesteld” te zijn.

Dat regulering strijdig is met de wet en met internationale verdragen, is een andere belangrijke pijler van het harde aanpak van wietteelt. Opstelten liet onderzoeksbureau Rand Europe in 2013 een overzicht maken van landen die wietteelt toestaan of ermee experimenteren. Het bureau zegt verbaasd te zijn over de twist die de oud-minister aan het rapport heeft gegeven. Zijn conclusie, dat regulering in andere landen minder ver gaat dan gedacht, stond er niet.

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Op zaterdag 11 april 2015 10:03 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

[..]

Ja maar totaal niet opgepakt door de oppositie waarmee we kunnen concluderen dat de zich progressief profilerende partijen ook niet meer dan een wassen neus zijn.

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Parents of missing Mexican students tour US to push for new investigation

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Velez, along with other family members of the missing Mexican students, are on a caravan tour of the United States, trying to raise awareness and support for further investigation into the attack, which took place 26 September in the city of Iguala.

The students, from Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa, a nearby teacher training academy known for its social activism, were detained by police, allegedly under orders from the local mayor. The police handed the students over to a drug gang called Guerreros Unidos, which massacred them, according to the official government account. Partial remains from at least one student were later found in a mass grave, after extensive forensics testing.

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Along with help in the search for answers, members of Caravana 43 are calling for an end to aid provided to Mexico under the Merida Initiative, a federal effort that has given $2.3bn to Mexico since 2008 to fight drug trafficking. Caravana 43 members say those funds are being used to suppress dissent, not fight drug cartels.

“The weapons that are given to Mexico through this plan are used to kill us, not help us,” said Velez.

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The DEA Has Been Secretly Buying Hacking Tools From an Italian Company

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The Drug Enforcement Administration has been buying spyware produced by the controversial Italian surveillance tech company Hacking Team since 2012, Motherboard has learned.

The software, known as Remote Control System or “RCS,” is capable of intercepting phone calls, texts, and social media messages, and can surreptitiously turn on a user’s webcam and microphone as well as collect passwords.

The DEA originally placed an order for the software in August of 2012, according to both public records and sources with knowledge of the deal.

The contract, which has not been previously revealed, shows that the FBI is not the only US government agency engaged in hacking tactics, but that the DEA has also been purchasing off-the-shelf malware that could be used to spy on suspected criminals.

This revelation comes just a week after USA Today uncovered a secret program with which the DEA collected the phone records of millions of Americans for more than 20 years, a program that pre-dated and inspired the NSA’s own bulk telephone collection program, suggesting that the drug agency is sort of a pioneer in the use of surveillance.

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Rotterdam klaar voor proef met gereguleerde wietteelt

Rotterdam is klaar voor een proef met gereguleerde wietteelt. Zodra het wettelijk mogelijk is, kan in de Maasstad binnen afzienbare tijd gereguleerd wiet verbouwd worden. Dat maakte de gemeente vandaag bekend in een persbericht.

De Rotterdamse gemeenteraad nam in november vorig jaar een motie aan voor de start van een experiment met gereguleerde wietteelt. Sindsdien is er een verkenning uitgevoerd naar de mogelijkheden om zo’n proef te starten. Het onderzoek richtte zich in eerste instantie op een proef door de gemeente, later kunnen één of meerdere erkende bedrijven de teelt overnemen.

Minder criminaliteit en beter voor de volksgezondheid

De gemeente wil met het invoeren van gereguleerde wietteelt de criminaliteit verminderen en de kwaliteit van het product verhogen. Dat zou beter zijn voor de gezondheid van de gebruikers. Ook denkt de gemeente dat de veiligheid in de stad verbetert als er minder illegale wietplantages in woonwijken staan. In de huidige situatie is de manier waarop er wiet wordt geteeld niet of nauwelijks te controleren.

Naar schatting kopen 25.000 Rotterdammers dagelijks wiet bij een coffeeshop. De hoeveelheid ligt tussen de 0,2 en 5 gram. Om aan de vraag van al deze wietgebruikers in Rotterdam te voldoen, is een oppervlakte van ongeveer zes voetbalvelden nodig voor het groeien, knippen en drogen van de wiet. In Rotterdam wordt jaarlijks voor zo’n 90 miljoen euro aan wiet verkocht.

Joint regulation

In 2013 tekenden 54 gemeenten de petitie ‘Joint Regulation’, waarmee ze toenmalig minister van Ivo Opstelten (Justitie en Veiligheid) opriepen wietteelt te reguleren, en als dat niet mogelijk was zou hij lokale experimenten moeten toestaan. Uit een rondgang van NRC Handelsblad (¤) bleek dat er eind vorig jaar nog maar weinig gemeenten gebruik maakten van de mogelijkheid om te experimenteren met gereguleerde wietteelt.

Naast Rotterdam zijn er in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Heerlen en Eindhoven wel concrete plannen gemaakt om een proef te starten met gereguleerde teelt. De gemeente Heerlen maakte in maart bekend dat het ‘praktisch mogelijk’ is om er te starten met gereguleerde hennepteelt.

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Douanemedewerker Rotterdamse haven gepakt voor cocaïnesmokkel

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Een 54-jarige medewerker van de douane in Rotterdamse haven is gisteravond aangehouden wegens drugssmokkel. Hij wordt in verband gebracht met de vondst van vierhonderd kilo cocaïne in een container uit Brazilië.

Dat meldt de politie. De man zou ook betrokken zijn geweest bij de invoer van een container met drieduizend kilo coke, in november vorig jaar. Dat was de op een na grootste vangst ooit in de Rotterdamse haven.

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The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think

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It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems manifestly true. Until I set off three and a half years ago on a 30,000-mile journey for my new book, Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Days of the War on Drugs, to figure out what is really driving the drug war, I believed it too. But what I learned on the road is that almost everything we have been told about addiction is wrong -- and there is a very different story waiting for us, if only we are ready to hear it.

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Professor Alexander argues this discovery is a profound challenge both to the right-wing view that addiction is a moral failing caused by too much hedonistic partying, and the liberal view that addiction is a disease taking place in a chemically hijacked brain. In fact, he argues, addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's your cage.

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Franse douane pakt ruim 2.000 kilo cocaïne in ‘historische’ drugsvangst

Leden van de Franse douane hebben een drugsvangst gedaan die nu al als “historisch” te boek staat. Woensdag namen zij een partij cocaïne van 2.250 kilo in beslag op een zeilboot in de buurt van Martinique, een eiland in de Caribische Zee. Dat heeft de Franse minister van Financiën Michel Sapin zaterdag laten weten, meldt AFP.

Op het vaartuig werden drie verdachten aangehouden, twee Spanjaarden en een Venezolaan. Het schip voer onder de Amerikaanse vlag, maar dat lijkt een dekmantel te zijn geweest. De Franse douane nam over heel 2014 in totaal 6.600 kilo cocaïne in beslag. De operatie van afgelopen week is daarmee een van de grootste drugsvangsten van Frankrijk aller tijden.

De operatie was het slotstuk van een twee jaar durend onderzoek van de douane. Hierbij werd samengewerkt met Spaanse en Britse inlichtingendiensten. De drugs hadden een straatwaarde van zo’n 100 miljoen euro. Sapin prees de samenwerking van landen bij dit soort operaties.

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'Te weinig resultaat aanpak drugshandel Brabant'

Burgemeester Noordanus van Tilburg vindt dat er veel te weinig vaart gemaakt wordt in de aanpak van georganiseerde criminaliteit in Brabant. Dat meldt Omroep Brabant op basis van geheime notulen van een topoverleg tussen verschillende instanties in december van vorig jaar.

Het openbaar bestuur probeert al enige tijd tegenmacht te organiseren om de drugshandel een halt toe te roepen. De meest in het oog springende manifestatie daarvan is de zogenaamde Taskforce Brabant; een samenwerking tussen de vijf grote steden, dat inmiddels is uitgebreid naar de provincies Brabant en Zeeland.

Vorig jaar ontving de Taskforce nog 1,8 miljoen euro aan subsidie, maar volgens Noordanus wordt er binnen het samenwerkingsverband veel gepraat, maar te weinig resultaat geboekt: 'Er moet meer garen op de klos.'

De georganiseerde criminaliteit, met name drugshandel, is een kolossaal probleem, zo weet Volkskrantverslaggever Jan Tromp. Hij doet al enige weken verslag van het bedreigde bestuur in Brabant: 'De Taskforce probeert de drugsmaffia te frustreren door 'korte klappen' uit te delen. Er wordt geprobeerd criminaliteit minder aantrekkelijk te maken door de drugsmaffia te hinderen, te frustreren en op te jagen.'

'Puinhoop'

Omdat de capaciteit altijd tekort schiet, moeten er keuzes worden gemaakt, weet Tromp: 'Er wordt gekozen voor invallen in XTC-labaratoria en hennepkwekerijen.' Die aanpak heeft de voorkeur van Noordanus, maar er is ook kritiek op de methode: 'Het is niet gericht op de grote jongens in de onderwereld, die blijven volgens velen buiten schot.'

Tijdens het overleg met onder meer de officier van Justitie Kim Tax en politiechef Peter Verschuur, zou Verschuur gezegd hebben dat hij het gevoel heeft dat hij 'het zicht kwijt is.' Omroep Brabant spreekt over een 'puinhoop door falende instanties.

'Puinhoop' is volgens Tromp een te zware term, maar dat de samenwerking moeizaam verloopt, lijkt aannemlijk: 'De gemeenten, provincie, politie, justitie en de belastingdienst zijn allemaal betrokken bij dit project. Die diensten kennen allemaal een eigen cultuur met een eigen bureaucratie. Dat maakt samenwerking lastig.'

De PVV in Brabant heeft een debat aangevraagd over de problemen rond de Taskforce.