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

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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.”