The World Wide War on Drugs #10 - Dag ter Bestrijding van Drugs

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Wiet stelt Colorado voor personeelsprobleem

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DrugsInDebat twitterde op maandag 24-04-2017 om 19:05:01 Als politie niet de helft van de tijd achter plantjes aan moetzouden ze niet van die lange diensten hoeven draaien… https://t.co/KagaCTObEF reageer retweet

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Grote drugsactie in Leeuwarden, politie valt huizen binnen | NOS

In Leeuwarden is de politie met tachtig agenten zeven huizen en een bedrijf binnengevallen. Er zijn acht mensen opgepakt. De verdachten zouden betrokken zijn bij handel in harddrugs.

Medewerkers van defensie hielpen bij de actie; zij zochten met speciale apparatuur naar verborgen ruimten waar belastend materiaal kan liggen. Ook zijn drugshonden ingezet.

"We kwamen de verdachten op het spoor na klachten van inwoners. De criminele club stond onder leiding van een man en een vrouw. Het zijn bekenden van ons", zei politiechef Reijenga in het NOS Radio 1 Journaal.

Het is niet duidelijk hoeveel drugs verhandeld werden, maar volgens de politiechef was er een groot bedrag mee gemoeid. "De verdachten leverden harddrugs aan tweehonderd mensen in Leeuwarden."

Op de acht locaties waar vanochtend een inval was, zijn twee zware automatische vuurwapens, drugs, twaalf auto's, administratie, vuurwerk en geld in beslag genomen.

Bron: nos.nl

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'Unnecessary' painkillers could leave thousands addicted, doctors warn

Prescriptions for powerful opioid painkillers have doubled from 12m to 24m in past decade, NHS Digital figures reveal

Powerful and potentially addictive opiate painkillers are being handed out too readily, leading doctors have warned after it emerged that the number of times the drugs are being prescribed in the UK has doubled in the past decade.

The Faculty of Pain Medicine and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society said they were worried about the high and growing use of opioid drugs such as codeine and tramadol – while other experts warn that hundreds of thousands of patients could be addicted to them.
Pills that kill: why are thousands dying from fentanyl abuse?
Read more

Dr Barry Miller, dean of the Faculty of Pain Medicine, said that the increase in the prescription rates of painkillers in the UK should be “met with concern”, adding: “While some of the increase can be attributed to an improved understanding of the effectiveness of these medications by medical professionals, we are concerned by reports of unnecessary prescription.”

NHS Digital figures released last week showed that prescriptions of opioids have doubled in the past decade, with the number of prescriptions issued rising from 12m in 2006 to 24m in 2016. One of the highest increases in prescriptions was for oxycodone, which shot up from 387,591 to 1.5m – a 287% rise – over that period. There was a 236% increase in prescriptions for morphine sulphate and a 143% rise for fentanyl.

“Our greater understanding of these medications can improve the quality of life for tens of thousands of patients in the UK living with complex pain. However, all NHS staff prescribing these medications need to ensure they are not doing more harm than good,” said Miller, whose organisation represents anaesthetists who specialise in the relief of acute, chronic and cancer pain.

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Trump is planning to effectively kill the office that has traditionally spearheaded the ‘War on Drugs’

The Trump administration plans to cut 96% of the budget of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), effectively eliminating the federal agency that has traditionally been used to spearhead the war on drugs, according to multiple media reports.

The White House Office of Management and Budget’s proposed fiscal year 2018 budget reduces the funding request for ONDCP from $388 million in 2017 to $24 million, according to a leaked memo first reported by CBS News.

The cuts would eliminate approximately half ONDCP’s staff, around 33 employees, as well as “intelligence, research and budget functions at the agency, as well as the Model State Drug Laws and Drug Court grant programs,” CBS reported Friday.

“These cuts are frankly heartbreaking and, if carried out, cause us to lose many good people who contribute greatly to ONDCP’s mission and core activities,” Acting Director Richard Baum wrote in an email to ONDCP staff obtained by CBS.

Baum added that news is “discouraging,” but told staff “not to panic” and that “events are unfolding.”

In addition, the budget proposes to eliminate multiple grant programs administered by ONDCP, including the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program and the Drug-Free Communities Support program, which the memo called “duplicative of other efforts across the Federal government and supplant State and local responsibilities.”

OMB FY18 proposed budget cuts to @ONDCP44: pic.twitter.com/RYrML0tNFq

— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) May 5, 2017

Staff was notified of the budget cuts on Friday. Baum, who was aware of the impending cuts last week, had reportedly been lobbying Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, to keep the agency’s budget intact.

In February, when rumors first began circulating that Trump might cut ONDCP’s budget, a coalition of medical and drug policy organizations sent a letter to Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, urging for ONDCP to remain at the center of efforts to fight drug use.

“At a time when drugs now kill more people than firearms or car crashes, it is more important than ever for ONDCP to remain a strong voice in the White House and a visible presence nationally,” the letter read.

But some drug policy experts are cautiously optimistic at the agency’s elimination.

“Unfortunately, the ONDCP has a history of advancing predominatively counter-productive policies,” Grant Smith, deputy director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, told Business Insider, noting that DPA has supported the “dismantling” of the agency.

Smith noted that elimination of the agency could actually accelerate efforts to treat drug use as a public health, rather than criminal issue, if it means less funding for programs like HIDTA.

But that depends, Smith said, on if the nation’s drug policy is in the hands of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has called for cracking down on drug offenders, or someone else.

The ONDCP was first created in 1988 by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act at the height of the crack epidemic and the so-called War on Drugs.

Tom Angell, the founder of pro- marijuana legalization group Marijuana Majority, told Business Insider that it was only during the last years of the Obama Administration, under the direction of then-ONDCP director Michael Botticelli, that the agency made positive efforts towards harm reduction and treatment policies. Traditionally, according to Smith, the agency has been at the forefront of efforts to prosecute and stigmatize drug use.

ONDCP’s proposed elimination comes after Trump signed an executive order in March to establish a national commission to address the opioid crisis, headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The commission, which was due to receive “administrative support” from ONDCP, was tasked with coming up with strategies to address the crisis.

Many experts said the president’s action is “underwhelming.”

The reports come one day after Rep. Tom Marino announced that he was withdrawing from consideration for the appointment of ONDCP director, the position more informally known as the Drug Czar, after more than a month of speculation that he would serve. The Pennsylvania Republican was one of Trump’s earliest supporters in Congress.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Congress just blocked Jeff Sessions from messing with medical marijuana

Section 537: Justice Dept. can’t use its funds to interfere with the popular laws.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is clearly fired up to fight state marijuana laws. Unfortunately for him, Congress just doused his chances.

The recent 1,665-page spending bill maintains a provision that prevents the Department of Justice from using any of its funds to hamper state laws related to medical marijuana. The department cannot “prevent any of them from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana,” Section 537 of the bill reads.

The $1.1 trillion spending bill—the Consolidated Appropriations Act, H.R. 244 (PDF)—passed the Senate today with a 79-to-18 vote. The White House has signaled that Trump will sign it, which will keep the government running until September.

The section that ties the hands of the Department of Justice on medical marijuana enforcement is not new. It has been around since 2015. But it received little fanfare amid the Obama era, which took a lenient stance on enforcing federal marijuana laws in states that legalized use.

All that changed when Jeff Sessions took control of the Department of Justice. Sessions has repeatedly said he opposes legalization and signaled that he would abandon Obama’s lax enforcement position.

For instance, in an April 2016 Congressional Hearing, Sessions proclaimed that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” When Sessions was asked about enforcement this February at a press conference, he said:

. I am definitely not a fan of expanded use of marijuana. But states, they can pass the laws they choose. I would just say, it does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States, whether a state legalizes it or not.

With Section 537, Sessions can still go after recreational use of marijuana in the eight states that have passed such laws. But without funding, Sessions’ has little ability to fight the medical marijuana laws in 29 states and the District of Columbia.

In a press release, Robert Capecchi, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, supported the inclusion of Section 537 in the bill. He also pushed for permanent laws to protect state marijuana policies.

. Congress appears to be growing increasingly comfortable with states adopting their own marijuana policies. Unfortunately, spending prohibitions like these expire at the end of the fiscal year, so there is still a need for a long-term solution.

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Marijuana may be a miracle treatment for children with autism

MODI’IN, ISRAEL — When Noa Shulman came home from school, her mother, Yael, sat her down to eat, then spoon-fed her mashed sweet potatoes — mixed with cannabis oil.

Noa, who has a severe form of autism, started to bite her own arm. “No sweetie,” Yael gently told her 17-year-old daughter. “Here, have another bite of this.”

Noa is part of the first clinical trial in the world to test the benefits of medicinal marijuana for young people with autism, a potential breakthrough that would offer relief for millions of afflicted children — and their anguished parents.

There is anecdotal evidence that marijuana’s main non-psychoactive compound — cannabidiol or CBD — helps children in ways no other medication has. Now this first-of-its-kind scientific study is trying to determine if the link is real.

Israel is a pioneer in this type of research. It permitted the use of medical marijuana in 1992, one of the first countries to do so. It's also one of just three countries with a government-sponsored medical cannabis program, along with Canada and the Netherlands.

Conducting cannabis research is also less expensive here and easier under Israeli laws, particularly compared to the United States, which has many more legal restrictions.

Autism is one of the fastest-growing developmental disorders, affecting 1 in 68 children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its debilitating symptoms include impaired communication and social skills, along with compulsive and repetitive behaviors. Autism typically emerges in infancy or early childhood.

Advocates for combating the disorder are calling attention to it by declaring April National Autism Awareness Month.

Noa's mother has to feed and bathe her and change her diapers. Noa is unable to speak and often behaves aggressively. Yael, a mother of three with a full-time job in this city halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, has tried to find caretakers to help, but they don’t last long.

Only two medications have been approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration to treat the symptoms of autism. Both are antipsychotic drugs that are not always effective and carry serious side effects.

When Noa took them, “she was like a zombie,” Yael said. “She would just sit there with her mouth wide open, not moving.”

Noa is part of a study that began in January at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. It involves 120 children and young adults, ages 5 to 29, who have mild to severe autism, and it will last through the end of 2018.

Adi Aran, the pediatric neurologist leading the study, said nearly all the participants previously took antipsychotics and nearly half responded negatively. Yael desperately pushed Aran and other doctors to prescribe cannabis oil after a news report aired about a mother who illegally obtained it for her autistic son and said it was the only thing that helped him.

“Many parents were asking for cannabis for their kids,” Aran said. “First I said, 'No, there’s no data to support cannabis for autism, so we can’t give it to you.'”

He said that changed about a year ago after studies in Israel showed that cannabis helped children with epilepsy by drastically reducing seizures and improving behavior for those who also have autism. Epilepsy afflicts about 30% of autistic children, Aran said.

Mounting anecdotal reports of autistic children who benefited from cannabis also led Aran to pursue more scientific testing. After seeing positive results in 70 of his autistic patients in an observational study, Aran said, “OK we need to do a clinical trial so there will be data."

Study participants are given liquid drops like those mixed into Noa's sweet potatoes. They receive one of two different cannabis oil formulas, or a placebo. The oil does not cause a high because of low levels of THC, marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient.

Yael doesn't know if her daughter is receiving the cannabis or a placebo. Noa is calmer on some days since beginning the trial, she said, but on other days she's aggressive and irritable.

Even so, just being a part of the study gives Yael hope. “I had really come to a point where I no longer had the power — not physically, not emotionally,” she said.

More than 110 cannabis clinical trials are underway in Israel — more than any other country, according to Michael Dor, senior medical adviser at the Health Ministry’s medical cannabis unit.

Alan Shackelford, a Harvard-trained physician, sparked a surge in American interest in cannabis treatment for epileptic children in 2013, when he used medical marijuana to treat a young girl in Colorado and her seizures drastically decreased. He said he tried for years to conduct clinical trials in the U.S., but “I was meeting nothing but closed doors to study something that was so clearly beneficial.”

Shackelford said a colleague spent seven years trying to get approval from U.S. authorities to study cannabis treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. By contrast, Aran said it took Israel’s Ministry of Health six months to approve his clinical trial with autistic children.

“Israel leads the world in inquiries and studies on cannabis as a potential medical treatment,” said Shackelford, who recently launched an Israeli company to conduct research on medical cannabis here because of the restrictions he faced in the United States.

He said the U.S. government has funded $1.4 billion in marijuana research since 2008, but $1.1 billion of that went to studying addiction, withdrawal and drug abuse.

Aran cautioned against premature conclusions about cannabis as a treatment for autism, but he said many children have shown significant improvements. Some no longer hurt themselves or throw tantrums. Some are more communicative. Others were able to return to classes after they had been suspended for behavioral problems.

Tamir Gedo, CEO of Breath of Life Pharma, which provides the cannabis oil for the study, said one mother reported, "My child is speaking relentlessly. … He never spoke before. And he's 12 years old.”

One major concern is the long-term impact of prescribing cannabis to young patients, said Sarah Spence, co-director of the Autism Spectrum Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. “There certainly could be harm” to brain development, she said.

But opioids and antipsychotic drugs currently prescribed to children are more harmful, said Gedo. “These families have no other hope.”

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Violence in Mexico’s US-Fueled War on Drugs Escalates

Violence in the deadly drug war continues unabated as the U.S. opiate epidemic descends deeper into crisis.

Mexico’s deadly, militarized war on drugs — which has been exacerbated alongside the U.S. opiate epidemic — is seeing the rise of smaller gangs looking to control more lands for growing strong-strain poppies, leading to an intensified crackdown by the Mexican Army.

In the mountains of the violence-plagued state of Guerrero's Ciudad Altamirano, where the mayor was killed last year and a journalist gunned down in March, bodies are discovered on a near-daily basis.

Colonel Isaac Aaron Jesus Garcia, who runs a military base in the city, told Reuters that violence escalated two years ago when a third gang, Los Viagra, began a grab for territory.

For him, on the frontlines of the fight against heroin, the U.S. heroin epidemic coincides directly with the surge in opium production.

"The increase of consumers for this type of drug in the United States has been exponential and the collateral effect is seen here," he said.

Heroin use in the United States has risen five-fold in the past decade and addiction has more than tripled, with white people and working-class men the biggest users of the drug.

Army officials told Reuters that gangs use poppy varieties that produce higher yields and more potent opium from smaller plots, and that its higher value is driving violent competition between gangs.

But the campesinos caught in the drug war, who grow opium poppies to survive given that there are often few viable alternatives for growing profitable legal crops, are criminalized and subjected to the rules of both the state and organized crime groups.

"There aren’t many alternatives here," said a woman in Ciudad Altamirano to Reuters. Her husband grows poppies, and she explained that running a business of any kind means facing extortion by gangs.

The state’s crackdown against this epidemic is itself mired in macabre violence, and now, more than 10 years after then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon kicked off what is known as the drug war, little progress had been made in stamping out the production and trafficking of illicit drugs, while the military has a running list of accusations of human rights abuses against it.

After being elected president in December 2006, Calderon replaced traditional police with the military to fight against the powerful drug cartels in the country — with bloody consequences.

The military was thought to better deal with the established violent criminal groups and be less susceptible to corruption, which has long plagued the police force. But the military has since been accused of a number of human rights abuses, intensifying violent confrontations with criminal groups and creating tensions with locals in the regions where they are stationed.

President Peña Nieto has only picked off where Calderon left off, continuing a drug war that the Trans-Border Institute estimates has left a staggering 125,000 victims. The war has also seen ongoing disappearances, torture, rape and systematic impunity.

The militarized drug war also coincides with the crisis against journalists in the country, who often report on its resulting violence — only to be attacked, or as is often the case, murdered.

As one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, a lack of press freedom continues to give rise to a high murder rate of journalists, with five having already been killed in 2017 alone.

Like elsewhere, the drug war in Mexico has left a brutal trail of violence and repression.

And with few economic alternatives in the highlands of Guerrero, local people continue to suffer the consequences as authorities increasingly attempt to crack down on the drug crisis at the source of production in poor communities rather than the point of consumption in the United States.

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Sessions weighs return to harsher punishments for low-level drug crimes

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing policy changes set in place by the Obama administration that eliminated harsh punishments for low-level drug crimes and could direct federal prosecutors to again charge drug offenders with crimes carrying the most severe penalties, according to U.S. officials.

The change, if adopted, would overturn a memo by then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that instructed prosecutors to avoid charging low-level defendants with drug offenses that would trigger severe mandatory minimum sentences. Only defendants who met certain criteria, such as not belonging to a large-scale drug trafficking organization, a gang or a cartel, qualified for the lesser charges under Holder’s instructions.

If new charging instructions are implemented, it would mark the first significant move by the Trump administration to bring back the drug war’s toughest practices — methods that had fallen out of favor in recent years as critics pointed to damaging effects of mass incarceration.

[Read The Post’s series on the financial and human toll of the war on drugs]

“As the Attorney General has consistently said, we are reviewing all Department of Justice policies to focus on keeping Americans safe and will be issuing further guidance and support to our prosecutors executing this priority — including an updated memorandum on charging for all criminal cases,” Ian Prior, a department spokesman, in a statement to The Washington Post.

Sessions has recently peppered his speeches to law enforcement groups throughout the country with tough-on-crime rhetoric and urged Justice Department lawyers to prosecute more drug and gun cases.

The attorney general is considering having his prosecutors bring the most severe charges against drug traffickers, whether they are low-level defendants or not, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Sessions also may allow prosecutors to use more “enhancements” to make sentences even longer. Under what’s referred to as “Section 851” of the Controlled Substances Act, defendants charged with a federal drug, firearm or immigration crime may face enhancements if they have previously been convicted of a felony drug offense.

Holder told his prosecutors four years ago that they should stop using enhancements except in certain cases — such as when the defendant was involved in the use or threat of violence — in an effort, he said, to make punishments more fairly fit the crime.

[How Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the war on drugs]

Holder’s changes came in August 2013 during a growing push among lawmakers and civil rights groups to roll back the strict charging and sentencing policies created in the 1980s and 1990s at the height of the war on drugs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was one of the sponsors of bipartisan criminal-justice legislation that would have reduced some of the mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug crimes — a bill that Sessions opposed and helped derail.

“As a proponent of criminal justice reform, I continue to believe that ending mandatory minimum sentences will actually make it easier to focus on violent crimes which impact our communities,” Paul said last week in a statement to The Post.

The Holder memo was also supported by many of the U.S. attorneys in the Obama administration.

But some prosecutors across the country fought Holder’s broad effort to eliminate mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenders, saying it damaged their ability to build cases from the ground up against major drug organizations.

Holder, now a lawyer at Covington & Burling and chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, declined to comment.

But Holder’s former spokesman Matthew Miller said the Trump administration “couldn’t be making it more clear who it cares about and who it doesn’t.”

“If you are addicted to opiates, you’ll get White House attention and increased treatment options,” Miller said. “If you get picked up with crack in your pocket, you’ll get jail time and a mandatory minimum.”

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Mexico: 23.000 doden door geweld, en dat zonder oorlog | NOS

In Mexico zijn vorig jaar 23.000 mensen gedood. Dat is meer dan in Irak (17.000) en Afghanistan (16.000). Alleen in Syrië stierven vorig jaar meer mensen door geweld dan in het Noord-Amerikaanse land. Daar vielen 50.000 slachtoffers te betreuren, staat in een onderzoek van de invloedrijke Britse denktank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Drugskartels vechten in Mexico een bloedig conflict uit. Onder anderen journalisten en ambtenaren worden gericht vermoord. De kartels proberen regio's te zuiveren van rivaliserende bendes om zo het monopolie op de drugshandel te krijgen. De Mexicaanse kartels verdienen volgens een schatting van het Amerikaanse Homeland Security tussen de 19 en 29 miljard dollar per jaar.

Voor de oorlogen in Irak, Syrië en Afghanistan is in de internationale media veel aandacht. Mexico komt er in dat opzicht bekaaid vanaf. Een onderzoeker van de denktank zegt tegen CNN dat van de redenen is dat Mexico geen oorlog is in de politieke zin van het woord. "Er is geen politiek doel. Ze streven geen onafhankelijkheid na. Het beeld is anders: er zijn geen luchtaanvallen", zegt Jacob Parakilas. "Ook is het al gaande sinds het begin van de drugshandel in Amerika. In die zin is het geen nieuws."

IISS concludeert ook dat er steeds meer conflicten in steden worden uitgevochten. Waar vroeger over het algemeen in de bergen, bossen of de jungle werd gevochten, is het nu net zo normaal dat in de stad of in stedelijk gebied wordt gevochten. Een van de bekendste voorbeelden is Mosul. Ook de strijd tussen het Turkse regeringsleger en de Koerden speelt zich steeds meer in steden af.

In totaal kwamen vorig jaar naar schatting 157.000 mensen om in oorlogen, een daling van 10.000 slachtoffers. Syrië staat voor het vijfde jaar op rij bovenaan. Daarna volgen Mexico, Irak, Afghanistan en Jemen.

Bron: nos.nl

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How Russia Became the New Global Leader in the War on Drugs

This week, diplomats gathered at the United Nations in New York will adopt a document outlining the future of global drug policy — a text that may have been better in the eyes of many advocates if it weren't for one country: Russia. Moscow's rise as the most vocal proponent of the drug war not only affects the pace of change worldwide, it has also created a domestic HIV crisis, and coincided with allegations of corruption among top Russian drug officials.

The outcome document of the UN General Assembly's Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) was drafted in Vienna last month. There, at the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs, amid little media scrutiny, Russia was again able to employ the outsized influence, and the ability to meddle, that it has long enjoyed. VICE News spoke with nearly a dozen diplomats and national officials, and nearly all of them mentioned specific examples of Russian intransigence during negotiations, or alluded to the pall it cast over the consensus-based drafting process, a setup that effectively gave Russia a veto in many areas.

Central to Russia's interventions was an insistence that the words "harm reduction" not be included in the document. Since the last time the General Assembly met for a special session on drugs, in 1998 — when countries convened under the risible slogan "A Drug Free World - We Can Do It" — harm reduction methods, including needle exchange programs and opioid substitution therapies such as methadone, have become mainstream in many parts of the world, backed by countless studies showing their efficacy. Relevant UN agencies endorse the term, including the World Health Organization (WHO), which says it "strongly supports harm reduction as an evidence-based approach to HIV prevention, treatment and care for people who inject drugs."

"They postponed all negotiations about any changes in terms of effective treatment and effective intervention until the last minute... they said, 'This is too complicated, at this moment it's not acceptable,'" said one senior European drug official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the negotiations. "They deny evidence that we learned decades ago, that what you have to do is just introduce replacement therapy. They bullied everyone."

In the end, the outcome document did reference several aspects of harm reduction, including both needle exchange and substitution therapy, but the term itself was out. Conservative countries, including Russia, pushed for the inclusion of language that deferred to "national legislation" — a carveout that appears 18 times in the document — effectively giving member states the room to ignore what the document actually suggests.

Many countries will continue implementing the tenets of harm reduction regardless of the language member states choose. But for Russians themselves, Moscow's hardline drug policies have already had deadly repercussions.

Related: Here's How Zero-Tolerance Drug Policies Have Damaged Public Health Worldwide

Drug use in Russia exploded after the fall of the Soviet Union, though heroin addiction had already begun to grow among soldiers returning from Moscow's ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan, currently the world's largest producer of opium. Today, Russian officials estimate there are more than a million heroin users, though experts say the true number could be double, if not higher. Drug users are stigmatized and often turned away from hospitals. After flirting with decriminalizing small amounts of drugs, Russian law enforcement returned to locking up users, going so far as to raid nightclubs and urine-test everyone inside.

Much of the heroin in Russia today originates in Afghanistan, and Russian drug officials have repeatedly blamed the US and its NATO allies for destabilizing Afghanistan, which led poppy production in the country to soar.

"Over the past 14 years, since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghan heroin has killed more than 1 million people in Eurasia, including at least half a million Russian citizens," Russian drug czar Viktor Ivanov said in 2014. The Kremlin has blamed foreigners for both drug trafficking in the country and drug use by Russians.

Owing in large part to Russia's refusal to offer harm reduction programs, the country is now experiencing a full-blown crisis of HIV and other communicable diseases. In January, Russia passed a grim milestone, registering its millionth HIV-positive patient. The true number is likely at least 50 percent higher, according to the country's top HIV expert, who warned that 3 million people — more than 2 percent of Russia's population — could be infected within five years. According to the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, a Russian organization that advocates for changes to drug policy, up to 90 percent of injecting drug users in some cities are infected with Hepatitis C.

'They deny evidence that we learned decades ago... They bullied everyone.'

Vladim Pokrovsky, chief of Russia's federal AIDS center, has reported that 20 percent of drug users are HIV positive, as well as 10 percent of gay people. According to the UN, half of Russia's 100,000 new HIV cases last year were among injecting drug users. As rates increase, Pokrovsky warns that HIV could evolve into a generalized epidemic infecting all parts of Russian society.

In comparison, Western European countries that employ harm reduction have all but stopped HIV transmission among drug users, including those that inject substances like heroin, who traditionally have been most at risk. But Russia remains steadfast in its refusal to use substitution treatments like methadone or buprenorphine, both drugs considered "essential medicines" by the WHO for treatment of opioid addiction.

"To the Russians, these treatments implicitly mean you can go on using drugs, so it is incompatible with a world without drugs," said Michel Kazatchkine, the UNs Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

"Of course, the answer for me is that first, health should be the priority, health of the individual, and public health," said Kazatchkine. "Even if you feel that you are somehow in contradiction with some of your internal laws and policies, you should revise those policies and laws because of public health emergencies, not the opposite. But in Russia we end up with a strategy that is not an answer to the current epidemic."

In Vienna, Russia's opposition went far beyond simply excising the term harm reduction from the outcome document. Russian diplomats raised objections over references to the fast-acting opioid overdose drug Naloxone, and they continued to insist that the UN reference "scientific" evidence in its drug policy, instead of "evidence-based" findings. The distinction appears innocuous at first, but it reflects Moscow's privileging of "Narcology," its own controversial approach to drug use that dates to the Soviet Union, over research conducted by advocacy and human rights groups.

"Russian approaches to drug dependence are in contradiction to virtually all international scientific standards," said Daniel Wolfe, director of the International Harm Reduction Development Program at the Open Society Foundations. "Russian narcologists — their version of drug dependence specialists — have practiced such therapies as hypnotizing patients and telling them that something in their body will explode if they use drugs, 'flogging' therapy, and putting patients into comas and administering electric shocks. There is no evidence base or reputable science on any of these approaches."

'Russian narcologists — their version of drug dependence specialists — have practiced such therapies as hypnotizing patients and telling them that something in their body will explode if they use drugs.'

Though three quarters of the world's countries have insufficient access to controlled medicines for pain relief — in India alone, a half million cancer patients die every year with essentially no respite from pain — Russia pushed back in Vienna against language on allowing wider access to opioid painkillers, including cheaply produced morphine, for the dying. During negotiations over a separate resolution aimed at elevating gender in drug policy, Russia even objected to a reference to the UN's women's agency.

Mikhail Golichenko, a former legal officer at the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Russia, says Moscow's stance internationally reflects deep-seated domestic politics, rooted in nationalist rhetoric, and cast against what is seen as a West bent on allowing greater access to drugs.

"In a way the lack of effective drug treatment works as prevention for drug use, I heard this from many Russian drug officials during my time working with UNODC in Moscow," said Golichenko, who has litigated on behalf of Russian drug users at the European Court of Human Rights. "They say, 'These people are useless for society so it's better to sacrifice them and let them die.' The devastating condition of those that use drugs is a good lesson to society, to see how quickly they are decomposing."

Related: Drug Addicts Are Dying in Crimea Because They Can't Get Therapy

When Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in March 2014, one of its first moves was to end the region's harm reduction programs, which had provided opioid substitution regimes to some 800 users. Faced with the singular option of abstinence-based treatment, many patients returned to the streets and began injecting heroin again. "Patients have been taken hostage in Crimea," said Kazatchkine. Within a year, 80 to 100 people — up to 10 percent of those who had received substitution therapy — died, many of them from overdoses.

"The core point of the Russian drug policy is zero tolerance to drug use, and to prohibit any drug use even for drug treatment," said Golichenko. "We're in a situation where people using drugs have only one choice — either stop using drugs and come back to society, or continue using drugs and this case they will very fast reach an inevitable death from overdose or HIV or tuberculosis."

Russia is by no means the only country to push back against progressive drug policy language in UN texts. But even member states that are often mentioned alongside Russia, including China, and Iran, where hundreds of drug offenders are executed every year, do employ harm reduction. In its total opposition, Russia stands alone among the permanent five Security Council members, including the US, which has slowly attempted to shed its former status as top enforcer of drug war.

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Zo krijgt de term War on Drugs een heel andere betekenis | NOS

Soldaten, wapens, doden. Waarschijnlijk de eerste dingen die in je opkomen als je aan welke oorlog dan ook denkt. Wat als we je zeggen dat je daar 'drugs' ook aan toe kunt voegen?

In een groot drugslab in Brunssum is ongeveer 80 kilo aan Captagon-pillen gevonden. Hoewel nog lang niet zeker is of die ook echt voor het Midden-Oosten bestemd waren, is van dit soort pillen wel bekend dat strijders in Syrië ze gebruiken tijdens het vechten.

En dat drugsgebruik tijdens oorlogen is niet nieuw, ontdekten we na gesprekken met kenners. Een overzicht:

Van de Grieken en Romeinen weten we dat ze dronken ten strijde trokken. En als we de mythes moeten geloven, zaten de Vikingen aan de magische paddenstoelen, vertelt de Poolse historicus Lukasz Kamienski. Hij schreef het boek Shooting Up: A History of Drugs in Warfare.

En tijdens alle grote oorlogen in de afgelopen eeuw gingen drugs hand in hand met gevechten. Tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog mixten soldaten rum met vloeibare coke. Uit Nederland.

"Ja, die coke was toen nog niet illegaal", vertelt schrijfster Conny Braam. Ze schreef een boek over een cocaïnefabriek in Amsterdam tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog. "We waren de grootste producent, omdat we aan alle strijdende partijen konden leveren." De Engelsen, Fransen en de Duitsers: allemaal kregen ze 'onze' coke, omdat we redelijk neutraal in de oorlog stonden.

De bekendste drugsgebruikers: de nazi's tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Al voor de oorlog goed en wel was uitgebroken, zaten die al aan de methamfetamine, crystal meth, zoals we dat nu kennen. "Soldaten werden zo machines", vertelt Kamienski. "Dat was nodig om de Blitzkrieg-tactiek, snel en onverwachts toeslaan, te kunnen volhouden."

Zowel meth als cocaïne waren in de tijd van de Eerste en Tweede Wereldoorlog nog niet illegaal. Kamienski: "Ze waren net zo makkelijk te verkrijgen als vitamines nu."

"Na drie jaar in de Tweede Wereldoorlog kwam men erachter dat meth ernstige bijwerkingen had. Doden door overdoses, ongelukken met piloten en agressieve, onhandelbare soldaten. Het leger werd alerter op meth-gebruik onder soldaten, maar het gebeurde nog steeds."

Niet dat ze goede voorbeelden hadden, legt Kamienski uit: "Hitler was een junk. Hij kreeg van zijn persoonlijke artsen injecties met Eukodol, vergelijkbaar met heroïne. En hoewel minister van Propaganda Joseph Goebbels campagne voerde tegen drugsgebruik, was hij zelf verslaafd aan morfine."

Drugsgebruik kwam al veel voor in oorlogen tot dan, maar de Amerikanen deden er nog een schep bovenop in de Vietnam-oorlog. "Vietnam was echt anders. Daar was alles aanwezig. Marihuana, varianten van speed en anti-psychotica om de oorlog te kunnen bolwerken", zegt Kamienski.

Tijdens de Eerste Golfoorlog kondigden de Amerikanen zelfs aan dat piloten die extreem lang wakker moesten blijven voor bom-missies, aan een soort speed mochten zitten. "Die duurden soms wel 40 uur en om dan veilig te kunnen landen, werd wat genomen."

En ook nu dus, gebruiken strijders in bijvoorbeeld Syrië drugs. "Hoewel IS-terroristen onder strikte Sharia-wetgeving leven, zijn er tal van aanwijzingen dat ook zij gebruiken", zegt IS-onderzoeker Haroro Ingram. "Er is een groot verschil tussen wat IS-strijders achter gesloten deuren doen en wat ze aan de wereld vertellen."

Zij, maar ook andere strijders zouden aan Captagon zitten, een soort speed light. Die pil onderdrukt angst, zorgt ervoor dat je langer door kan en verlicht pijn.

Vandaag kwam Captagon in het nieuws, omdat er een grote lading van is gevonden in Brunssum. Zoals aan het begin van dit artikel gezegd, is nog niet duidelijk waar die lading voor bestemd was.

Het lijkt NOS-correspondent Sander van Hoorn sterk dat die klaar lag voor de 'markt' in het Midden-Oosten.

Bron: nos.nl

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Illegale viagra populair: 'vrije verkoop erectiepillen wenselijk' | NOS

Op een terras haalt een kennis opeens een aantal strippen viagra uit de binnenzak van zijn jas. "Wat kijk je raar? Deze zijn voor een vriend hoor", lacht hij. "Je weet toch wel dat viagra heel normaal is de laatste tijd? Veel van mijn vrienden gebruiken het."

Het is inderdaad een bekend beeld, zeggen verschillende gezondheidsorganisaties. Illegale viagra is populair onder mannen. Daar maken instanties zich zorgen over. Het Instituut voor Verantwoord Medicijngebruik pleit voor vrije verkoop van viagra in de apotheek.

Zeker 150.000 mannen gebruiken het erectiemiddel in Nederland, blijkt uit rioolwateranalyses van het Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM), terwijl maar zo'n 45.000 mannen er een recept voor hebben. Dat zou betekenen dat ongeveer 70 procent van de gebruikte erectiepillen in Nederland illegaal wordt verkregen.

Sommige mannen gebruiken viagra als ze onder invloed van drugs zijn. Een van de bijwerkingen van bijvoorbeeld xtc is namelijk het niet kunnen krijgen van een erectie, legt Ruud Coolen van Brakel, de directeur van het Instituut voor Verantwoord Medicijngebruik, uit. "En drugs werken ontremmend. Het zou me niet verbazen als ook het aantal soa's hierdoor toeneemt."

De illegale handel gaat via diverse wegen, legt Van Brakel uit. "Van onder de toonbank tot via het internet. De pillen zijn op veel verschillende plekken te krijgen." De populairste namaak-viagra is Kamagra.

Jonge mannen krijgen ook nauwelijks een recept voor viagra bij de huisarts, zekerniet als het om recreatief gebruik gaat. Mannen moeten echt bij de arts kunnen aantonen dat ze last hebben van erectiestoornissen. "Het zijn de middelen waar je liever niet om vraagt, maar illegaal gebruiken is heel gevaarlijk. Een arts kan je vertellen dat het schadelijk voor je is."

Dat bevestigt huisarts Robert Mol. "Bij jongere mannen wees ik het recept vaak af, of schreef een aantal van maximaal vier pillen voor." Ook hij heeft het gevoel dat viagra populairder is geworden onder jonge mannen.

Hij vindt dat de overheid iets aan het illegale circuit moet gaan doen. Eerder werd de prijs van legale erectiemiddelen al verlaagd, maar dat heeft geen effect gehad op de illegale verkoop.

Mol vindt dat legale viagra in de vrije verkoop moet komen, zodat mensen niet meer langs de huisarts hoeven. "Als medicatie als Brufen en Diclofenac in de vrije verkoop verkregen kan worden, dan vind ik dat dat bij erectiemiddelen ook moet kunnen. Door Brufen en Diclofenac vallen jaarlijks zelfs veel doden. En het grote voordeel van vrije verkoop is dat je het illegale circuit in één klap stillegt en de mensen die het kopen verzekert van kwaliteit."

Jaarlijks overlijden zeker 540 mensen in Nederland door langdurig gebruik van pijnstillers als Diclofenac en Ibuprofen/Brufen, blijkt uit onderzoek van Universiteit Twente en Medisch Spectrum Twente onder 52.000 gebruikers. Bij deze groep liepen 5100 een ernstige maagbloeding op, van hen overleden er 540.

Ook het Instituut voor Verantwoord Medicijngebruik pleit voor vrije verkoop. Dat heeft veel voordelen, zegt de woordvoerder. "Door de vrije verkoop kan de illegale verkoop worden tegengegaan, worden de gezondheidsrisico's door nep-medicatie kleiner, wordt de drempel verlaagd voor mannen die geen viagra durven te kopen uit schaamte en kan er een advies door de apotheker worden gegeven."

Het instituut pleitte vijf jaar geleden al eens voor de vrije verkoop, toen illegale viagra in opkomst was, maar er veranderde daarna niets.

Geneesmiddelen uit het illegale circuit brengen buiten de gebruikelijke risico's ook andere risico's met zich mee: die van een onbetrouwbaar product. "Bijvoorbeeld vervalste houdbaarheid en onzuivere grondstoffen. Deze risico's kunnen vergroot worden door het gebruik van drank, drugs of iemands gezondheidstoestand", zegt een woordvoerder van het Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu.

Het Nederlands Huisartsen Genootschap (NHG) is tegen het verstrekken van erectiepillen zonder doktersvoorschrift door de apotheek. "Wie houdt er dan toezicht op het verantwoord gebruik van een erectiepil?", vraagt Peter Luesink zich af. Hij is van de expertgroep Seksuele gezondheid van het NHG. "Voor mannen die een hersen- of hartinfarct hebben gehad in de zes maanden voor gebruik, of mannen die bepaalde medicatie gebruiken bij vernauwde kransslagaders, kan een erectiepil gevaarlijk zijn."

Veelvoorkomende 'normale' bijwerkingen bij viagra zijn hoofdpijn en blozen, minder voorkomende bijwerkingen zijn onder andere duizeligheid, braken en effecten op het gezichtsvermogen.

Iemand moet er volgens Luesink op toezien dat mannen in de risicogroep het middel niet gebruiken. "Daarnaast werkt het middel pas optimaal bij goede begeleiding. Het is geen pepmiddel waar je zomaar een erectie van krijgt."

Hoewel een erectiepil volgens Leusink een onschuldig middel is, adviseert hij jongeren om het middel niet te gebruiken. Bij recreatief gebruik is het helemaal niet effectief. De erectieproblemen worden er zelfs erger van, omdat ze er geestelijk afhankelijk van worden. En uit onderzoek blijkt dat je er later faalangst van kunt krijgen. En als ze het toch wél doen, dan is dat geen groot probleem. De bijwerkingen zijn minimaal en kortdurend.

Een jongen die Kamagra-erectiepillen verkoopt, vertelt dat hij een stijging ziet in het aantal jongeren dat de laatste tijd viagra bij hem koopt. "De laatste tijd gebruiken vooral veel jonge mannen." Hij verkoopt de pillen voor 5 tot 10 euro per stuk. "Het ligt eraan hoeveel ze er kopen."

Hij vertelt dat er verscheidene redenen zijn waarom de mensen bij hem viagra kopen. "Ik heb een vaste klant die zijn vriendin niet zo aantrekkelijk vindt, maar anderen willen bijvoorbeeld experimenteren."

Ook Peter (niet zijn echte naam) wilde experimenteren. "Ik wilde gewoon lol." Hij heeft het nu drie keer gedaan. "Ik dacht dat je dan uren door kon gaan en dat is natuurlijk ook zo", vertelt hij. "Maar na het hoogtepunt heb je toch minder zin om nog door te gaan. En dan zit je nog met die erectie die niet weggaat..."

Bron: nos.nl

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Schip met tonnen cocaïne aan boord onderschept bij Ecuador | NOS

Spanje heeft in een gezamenlijke actie met Ecuador een schip onderschept met 5,5 ton cocaïne aan boord. Het schip werd gisteren geënterd voor de kust van Ecuador, toen het op weg was naar Spanje.

Op zee waren Colombiaanse drugs bij het schip aan boord gebracht. De reis zou gaan via het Panamakanaal en de Atlantische Oceaan naar Spanje. Het transport was vermoedelijk geregeld door een drugsbende in Galicië in het noordwesten van Spanje.

De politie ging aan boord voor de kust van de Ecuadoraanse provincie Santa Elena. De twintig opvarenden zijn aangehouden. Onderschept werden 176 tassen met cocaïne die in de lading verborgen lagen.

Het politieonderzoek begon in januari, toen Spanje er lucht van kreeg dat een Zuid-Amerikaanse bende drugs zou verschepen naar Spanje.

Eergisteren was ook al een cocaïnetransport onderschept door de Spanjaarden, in samenwerking met de Amerikanen, Britten en Portugezen.

Bron: nos.nl

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Bekende Mexicaanse journalist doodgeschoten op straat | NOS

"Wonen in de staat Sinaloa is een risico, en journalist zijn is een extra risico", zei Javier Valdez onlangs in een interview over zijn werk. "We hebben geleerd te leven in tijden waarin de kogels om je oren vliegen."

Maar echt leren kun je dat niet: gisteren rond het middaguur werd Valdez, een van de bekendste journalisten van Mexico, in het centrum van de stad Culiacán doodgeschoten.

Weinig journalisten in Mexico weten meer van de wereld van de drugskartels dan Valdez wist. Hij schreef er niet alleen duizenden artikelen over, maar ook vele boeken.

En als geen ander kende hij de gevaren van zijn vak. Hij en zijn collega's van het weekblad Riodoce werden herhaaldelijk bedreigd en op hun redactie ontplofte al eens een handgraat die door onbekenden naar binnen was gegooid.

Het blad verschijnt in Culiacán, de hoofdstad van de noordwestelijke staat Sinaloa. Daar werd tot voor kort de dienst uitgemaakt door El Chapo, de leider van het gelijknamige kartel. Sinds diens uitlevering aan de VS eerder dit jaar is het geweld weer opgelaaid door een interne strijd over de opvolging.

Maar Mexicaanse journalisten zijn in het hele land potentiële slachtoffers. Valdez is al de zesde journalist die dit jaar wordt geëxecuteerd. Media in tal van staten worden onder druk gezet niet te publiceren over de drugscriminaliteit en met name niet over de relatie tussen politici en criminelen.

In de afgelopen 17 jaar zijn meer dan honderd journalisten vermoord. Slechts in drie gevallen zijn de daders gepakt en veroordeeld.

Bron: nos.nl

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Ik zocht een jaar naar een beter drugsbeleid. Dit vond ik

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Ik sprak tientallen mensen, las rapporten en studies, keek films en schreef tientallen stukken om uit te vinden hoe we de dure en schadelijke oorlog tegen drugs in Nederland kunnen beëindigen. Dit leerde ik daarbij.

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In New York sprak ik vorig jaar Werner Sipp, het hoofd van de International Narcotics Control Board van de Verenigde Naties. Zijn instituut houdt in de gaten of landen zich aan de internationale drugsafspraken houden en hij is daarmee de hoogste ambtenaar in de oorlog tegen drugs.

Ik vroeg hem of ik het recht heb met mijn lichaam te doen wat ik wil. Dat is volgens mij namelijk de kern van de zaak. Sipp: 'Dat is een interessante filosofische vraag, maar ik zou zeggen: nee, dat recht heb je niet. Want je hebt niet het recht om jezelf schade toe te brengen.'

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Limburgse boeren zetten drones in tegen wiet | NOS

In Limburg gaan boeren drones gebruiken in de strijd tegen criminelen die op maïsvelden stiekem hennepplantages houden. Tot afgelopen jaar voerde de politie met helikopters 'hennepvluchten' uit, maar daar is geen geld meer voor. Boeren nemen daarom het heft in eigen handen.

"De politie heeft vorig jaar besloten de vluchten te staken, omdat er weinig hennep meer gevonden werd. Wij en de boeren zijn bang dat de criminelen hier slim gebruik van maken en opnieuw gaan telen. Daarom gaan we zelf maar vliegen", zegt voorzitter Léon Faassen van de Limburgse Land- en Tuinbouwbond (LLTB).

"We willen alle akkers hennepvrij en daar gaan we samen met onze leden voor zorgen." Hennep die door de LLTB wordt gevonden, wordt in overleg met de politie verwijderd en vernietigd, meldt 1Limburg.

In de eerste week van september gaan de drones de lucht in. De LLTB gaat vijfhonderd percelen van ruim tweehonderd leden controleren. "Met één drone wordt dat een lange zoektocht", zegt Faassen. De LLTB roept mensen die in het bezit zijn van een drone daarom op om mee te werken.

Bron: nos.nl

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'Criminelen amper aangepakt door gebrek aan rechercheurs' | NOS

Criminelen worden amper aangepakt omdat er een groot gebrek is aan rechercheurs. Dat zeggen onderzoekers van de Politieacademie, die spraken met politieteams in Rotterdam-Delfshaven, De Kempen (Oost-Brabant) en Sneek.

Bovendien verloopt de communicatie binnen de politie niet goed. Als een wijkteam criminele activiteiten vermoedt, moet het daarmee naar een ander team. Dat verloopt zo moeizaam, dat politiemensen vaak weinig doen met hun vermoedens.

"De consequenties zijn fors. Criminelen krijgen riante kansen en er is nauwelijks of geen steun voor agenten die georganiseerde misdaad onder de aandacht brengen bij hun collega's", zeggen de onderzoekers.

Meer dan zeventig procent van de ondervraagde politiemensen zegt dat er in zijn werkgebied veel criminelen zijn die veel te weinig worden aangepakt. Tachtig procent zegt dat er veel meer tijd en geld beschikbaar zou moeten komen voor rechercheonderzoek naar de georganiseerde misdaad. Bijna driekwart van de wijkagenten wil meer inzet van rechercheurs.

De onderzoekers adviseren dat er in elk wijkteam minstens tien mensen zijn die zich constant bezig houden met het opsporen van misdaad.

De Nationale Politie zegt dat het onderzoek laat zien dat de balans tussen het politiewerk op straat en de opsporing nog verder moet worden uitgewerkt. "De uitkomsten bieden ons goede aanknopingspunten."

Bron: nos.nl

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Controle op drugs en mobieltjes in gevangenissen moet veel beter | NOS

De aanpak van smokkel in gevangenissen moet nog veel beter. Nog te vaak hebben gevangenen mobieltjes en drugs in hun cel, concludeert de Inspectie Veiligheid en Justitie.

Uit documenten van de Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen DJI bleek vorig jaar al dat er sinds 2012 steeds meer smokkelwaar in cellen terechtkomt.

Cellen worden niet stelselmatig gecontroleerd en gevangenispersoneel heeft zowel meer tijd als meer expertise nodig om cellen grondig te inspecteren, blijkt uit het inspectierapport.

Ook de middelen voor het opsporen van smokkelwaar zijn niet effectief genoeg. Met detectiepoorten, bagagedoorlichting en fouilleren kan niet alle smokkelwaar gevonden worden. Voorwerpen die in het lichaam zijn verstopt worden lang niet altijd ontdekt met een detectiepoort, zeker als deze niet van metaal zijn.

Mobiele communicatiemiddelen zoals telefoons- soms maar een vinger groot- en dongels zijn vaak ook zo klein dat ze niet gevonden worden.

Ook bij de begeleiding gaat het niet overal goed. Niet in alle inrichtingen staan gedetineerden onder toezicht terwijl ze na het vertrek van hun bezoek wachten op controle.

Na ambtelijk bezoek vindt geen controle van de gedetineerde plaats. Medewerkers vinden het wenselijk dat ook na ambtelijk bezoek steekproefsgewijs controle plaatsvindt.

De inspectie adviseert meer te investeren in nieuwe technologie. Ook moeten medewerkers intern meer communiceren.

Niet integer gedrag van personeel wordt volgens de inspectie wel aangepakt, maar ook hier verdienen enkele punten aandacht. De inspectie noemt "de rol van de vertrouwenspersoon, de periodieke herziening van de screening van medewerkers en het vergroten van kennis bij medewerkers over de richtlijnen rondom integriteit".

Verder moet er aandacht zijn voor de werkdruk. De ondernemingsraad van de Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen DJI stuurde onlangs al een brandbrief naar Dijkhoff over de extreem hoge werkdruk en de veiligheid van medewerkers en gedetineerden.

Justitie heeft inmiddels een verbeterplan opgesteld. Zo komen er naast drugshonden ook 'telefoonhonden' om mobieltjes op te sporen. Ook komt er een proef met scans die ook op Schiphol staan om nog beter te controleren op verboden spullen.

Dijkhoff maakte in september vorig jaar al bekend dat hij werkt aan een wetsvoorstel om bezoekers die telefoons en andere smokkelwaar de gevangenis binnenbrengen te kunnen bestraffen met een half jaar cel of een hoge geldboete.

Het binnenbrengen van illegale spullen als drugs en wapens is al strafbaar. Moeilijker is dat bij met telefoons. Eerst moet bewezen worden dat het gaat om crimineel handelen, zoals hulp bij het ontsnappen. Meestal blijft het daarom bij het ontzeggen van de toegang tot de gevangenis.

Bron: nos.nl

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Gids voor bewust gebruik van nieuwe drugs

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De populariteit van research chemicals als 4-FA en 1P-LSD is de afgelopen jaren enorm toegenomen in Nederland. Er is maar heel weinig bekend over die nieuwe psychoactieve stoffen (NPS). Daarom moet je ontzettend oppassen als je dergelijke drugs een keer wil proberen. De volgende stappen kan je volgen om de risico’s in ieder geval niet groter te maken dan dat ze al zijn.

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Canada eases steps to open supervised drug injection sites amid opioid crisis

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Canada’s government has made it easier to open supervised drug injection sites across the country, offering communities a lifeline as they battle an opioid crisis that has claimed thousands of lives in recent years.

New legislation passed this week streamlines the more than two dozen requirements previously needed to launch these facilities, which offer a medically supervised space and sterile equipment for people who use drugs intravenously.
War on prescription drugs: what if you depend on opioids to live a decent life?
Read more

“Solid evidence shows that, when properly set up and maintained, supervised consumption sites save lives, and they do it without increasing drug use or crime in the neighbourhood,” Jane Philpott, Canada’s health minister, told parliament this week.

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Music festivals want to let revellers test drugs before taking them

Organiser of events including Reading and Latitude hope to get support from police forces across country for radical scheme

One of Britain’s biggest music festival organisers hopes to allow people to test drugs on site before they take them as part of a radical scheme aimed at reducing drug-related deaths.

Melvin Benn, the head of Live Nation subsidiary Festival Republic, which organises events including the Reading and Leeds festivals, is seeking the support of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) and West Yorkshire police before launching the scheme.

Festivalgoers will be able to take their drugs to a testing tent run by the Loop, which usually conducts forensic testing of drugs seized by police. They will then tell them what is in the drugs before destroying whatever was handed over.

Benn, who also organises Latitude, V festival, Wireless and a host of other events, said: “We talked about it during the summer of last year and the reality is that I took a decision that unless and until the NPCC supported the principle of it, it was difficult for us to move forward on it.”

He said he had seen a draft of an agreement that would make it easier for forces across the country to support the initiative. He ruled out it being introduced at Download next month, but said: “We’ll see it this year for definite … at Leeds I’m pretty certain.

“It’s taken a long time and it won’t be at every festival, but where we think there is a need to do it we will be doing it.”
Secret Garden Party pioneers drugs testing service for festivalgoers
Read more

Last year, Lewis Haunch, 17, died after taking drugs at Leeds festival while two teenagers died at T in the Park in reportedly drug-related incidents.

The Loop ran the scheme for the first time last year when about 200 revellers tested their illegal drugs at Secret Garden Party in Cambridgeshire.

Fiona Measham, the Loop’s founder, hailed the initiativeas radical, adding: “It’s really exciting that police are prioritising health and safety over criminal justice at festivals.”

She believes up to 10 festivals will be involved this year, including a number of independent events, and hopes front-house testing will become commonplace in nightclubs and city centres.

West Yorkshire police’s assistant chief constable, Andy Battle, who leads the policing operation for Leeds, said they were “looking at the possibility of supporting the festival’s organisers”.

He added: “We can never condone the use of illegal drugs, but we recognise that some people will continue to take them and we need to adapt our approach in the interests of public safety.

“Consuming controlled drugs is inherently dangerous and the tragic consequences of this have been illustrated with drugs-related deaths at the event in recent years.

“We will continue to work closely with the onsite security team to target the possession and supply of controlled drugs and the criminal law will be applied appropriately as necessary.”

Commander Simon Bray, the lead for drugs at the NPCC, said a strong understanding of the implications on policing was required before testing could be endorsed. “We could not support initiatives that do not comply with the law or that have unintended negative consequences,” he said.

“Any proposal would need to be considered by the police force, local authority and health services with a view on its legal, scientific and possible health implications.”

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Kamala Harris Hits Jeff Sessions for 'Dark Ages' Drug Sentencing - Rolling Stone

Kamala Harris Hits Jeff Sessions for 'Dark Ages' Drug Sentencing

California Sen. Kamala Harris – who served as a prosecutor, district attorney and state attorney general before winning her seat in Congress – blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions' draconian new sentencing guidelines earlier this week.

Speaking at the Center for American Progress' Ideas Conference in Washington, D.C., Harris delivered one of the standout speeches of the event, widely viewed as a showcase for the Democrat's 2020 bench.

Sessions' recent memo ordering federal prosecutors to pursue the harshest sentences possible for low-level nonviolent drug offenders effectively declared the start of the War on Drugs II, Harris says.

"I saw the War on Drugs up close, and, let me tell you, [it] was an abject failure," she tells the audience. "It offered taxpayers a bad return on investment. It was bad for public safety. It was bad for budgets and our economy. And it was bad for people of color and those struggling to make ends meet."

Harris started her career as prosecutor in the East Bay at the height of the crack epidemic. Back then, she recalls, "there were so many of these nonviolent drug cases that we would do handoffs in a court house – we called them handoffs – that meant that these young baby prosecutors would be handed a file of a possession case, simple possession, and we'd have about five minutes to review it before we went to court. And then we would go in and argue for some sentence [for which] this person would be jailed."

Pursuing the toughest possible sentence for nonviolent drug offenders, a regular practice in Eighties and Nineties, had dire consequences: It overcrowded prisons and ruined lives. Stigmatized convicts had trouble getting jobs after they served their time, trapping them and their families in endless cycles of poverty. Sessions' new policy, Harris declares with authority, would take America "back to the dark ages."

Months before issuing the sentencing guidance, Sessions began laying the groundwork for it with another memo, which reversed an Obama-era directive phasing out the use of private prisons. The order, Sessions wrote in February, "impaired" the Bureau of Prison's "ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system."

If it wasn't clear at the time what America's "future needs" would be, it became so last week: The U.S. will be spending incredible sums of money, as it did in the past, to lock up nonviolent offenders.

"Let's be clear about private prisons: The business model is that you reap profit from incarcerating people," Harris says. "We should not be creating incentives to house people in prison, we should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison."

Harris' advice for the progressives huddled in this windowless ballroom at the D.C. Four Seasons is to push for more resources to treat addiction, the root cause of so many of these convictions, and to work to elect progressive prosecutors at the state and local level, where the "vast majority" of prosecutions occur.

"We need a national drug policy that finally treats substance abuse not as a crime to be punished but as a disease to be treated. We need to build on reforms, instead of reviving mandatory minimums or boosting bottom lines for private prisons, and we need to fund – not defund – the office of National Drug Control Policy," she finishes. "And we need this administration to understand that if they care about the opioid crisis in rural America as they say they do, they have also got to care about the drug-addicted young man in Chicago or East LA."

Bron: www.rollingstone.com

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Study finds mushrooms are the safest recreational drug

People taking mushrooms in 2016 needed medical treatment less than for MDMA, LSD and cocaine, while one of the riskiest drugs was synthetic cannabis

Mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs people take recreationally, according to this year’s Global Drug Survey.

Of the more than 12,000 people who reported taking psilocybin hallucinogenic mushrooms in 2016, just 0.2% of them said they needed emergency medical treatment – a rate at least five times lower than that for MDMA, LSD and cocaine.

“Magic mushrooms are one of the safest drugs in the world,” said Adam Winstock, a consultant addiction psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, pointing out that the bigger risk was people picking and eating the wrong mushrooms.

“Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.”

Global Drug Survey 2017, with almost 120,000 participants in 50 countries, is the world’s biggest annual drug survey, with questions that cover the types of substances people take, patterns of use and whether they experienced any negative effects.

Overall, 28,000 people said they had taken magic mushrooms at some point in their lives, with 81.7% seeking a “moderate psychedelic experience” and the “enhancement of environment and social interactions”.



Magic mushrooms aren’t completely harmless, notes Winstock. “Combined use with alcohol and use within risky or unfamiliar settings increase the risks of harm most commonly accidental injury, panic and short lived confusion, disorientation and fears of losing one’s mind.”

In some cases people can experience panic attacks and flashbacks, he added, so his advice for people thinking about taking them is to plan “your trip carefully with trusted company in a safe place and always know what mushrooms you are using”.

Even bad trips can have positive outcomes, according to a separate piece of research carried out by Roland Griffiths and Robert Jesse at John Hopkins Medicine.

In their 2016 paper they surveyed almost 2,000 individuals about their single most psychologically difficult or challenging experience with magic mushrooms. Of that group, 2.7% received medical help and 7.6% sought treatment for enduring psychological symptoms. Nevertheless 84% of those surveyed said they benefitted from the experience.

“In a way, it’s not really so surprising,” said Griffiths in a Q&A about the paper. “When we look back on challenging life events we wouldn’t choose, like a bout with a major disease, a harrowing experience while rock-climbing, or a painful divorce, sometimes we feel later that the difficult experience made us notably stronger or wiser. We might even come to value what happened.”

Outside of recreational use, magic mushrooms have been shown in clinical trials to treat severe depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Of the almost 10,000 LSD consumers who took part in GDS 2017, around 1% of them – 95 individuals – reported seeking emergency medical treatment, five times more than those who took magic mushrooms.

“LSD is such a potent drug,” said Winstock. “It’s so difficult to dose accurately when tabs you buy vary so widely. It’s easy to take too much and have an experience beyond the one you were expecting.”

He added that drug manufacturers are starting to incorporate novel super potent psychedelics such as NBOMe into tabs, which adds to the risk. He suggests making efforts to get a “reliable, trustworthy supply” and “always take a tiny dose to start”, waiting a few hours before taking more.

One of the riskiest drugs, according to the survey, was synthetic cannabis. Over one in 30 of users in the sample sought emergency medical treatment – the highest of any drug studied except crystal methamphetamine. That rises to one in 10 among people who use the drug at least 50 times per year. These figures echo the data from the previous year’s report.

Synthetic cannabis, sold as “spice” and “black mamba”, is an umbrella term for hundreds of chemical compounds that mimic the effects of THC, the active ingredient of cannabis, in the brain. These synthetic forms are often extremely potent, cheap and odourless, which has led to them flooding the market in the US and Europe. They’ve been particularly popular in prisons in the UK, where they’ve had a “devastating impact” and have been linked to deaths, serious illness and episodes of self-harm among inmates.

Brad Burge from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps) urged caution on relying on people’s self reports for data as people often take multiple drugs at the same time, so you can’t be sure which one is causing the problem.

He also highlighted that seeking emergency medical treatment means different things for different drugs. With a drug such as heroin, a trip to the emergency room is a life-or-death situation requiring resuscitation and medication. With LSD or mushrooms, a patient will receive supportive psychological reassurance.

“There is no known lethal dose for LSD or pure psilocybin,” he said.

Both Winstock and Burge said that the findings indicate a need for drug policy reform, with a focus on shifting psychedelics off the schedule one list of the most dangerous controlled substances.

“Drug laws need to balance the positives and problems they can create in society and well crafted laws should nudge people to find the right balance for themselves,” said Winstock.

“People don’t tend to abuse psychedelics, they don’t get dependent, they don’t rot every organ from head to toe, and many would cite their impact upon their life as profound and positive. But you need to know how to use them.”

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Trump complimenteert Duterte met drugsaanpak | NOS

De Amerikaanse president Trump heeft zijn Filipijnse ambtsgenoot Duterte gecomplimenteerd met zijn "fantastische aanpak van het drugsprobleem". Dat blijkt uit uitgelekte Filipijnse notulen van een telefoongesprek, die in handen zijn van Amerikaanse media.

Trump had dit telefoongesprek vorige maand met Duterte. De opmerking over het drugsprobleem was een van de eerste dingen die Trump zei tijdens het gesprek. De uitspraken zijn opvallend, omdat Duterte internationaal juist onder vuur ligt vanwege zijn harde aanpak van drugscriminelen.

Sinds het aantreden van Rodrigo Duterte in juni vorig jaar zijn naar schatting al rond de 8000 mensen gedood die in verband werden gebracht met drugs. De meesten zijn door de politie doodgeschoten, maar er worden ook doodseskaders ingezet.

In binnen- en buitenland is er veel kritiek op dat drugsbeleid. De VN pleit al langer voor een moordonderzoek naar het handelen van Duterte.

President Trump lijkt daar volledig aan voorbij te gaan: "Veel landen hebben een drugsprobleem. Wij hebben een probleem. Ik wilde even bellen om te zeggen dat je het goed aanpakt."

Bron: nos.nl

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Locoburgemeester Emmen dook drie weken onder na doodsbedreiging | NOS

Locoburgemeester Bouke Arends (PvdA) van Emmen en zijn vrouw hebben drie weken lang in Groot-Brittannië ondergedoken gezeten in verband met een doodsbedreiging. Die kreeg hij na de sluiting en sloop in januari van het clubhuis in Emmen van motorclub No Surrender.

De reden daarvoor was dat er structureel in drugs werd gehandeld. Ook was het er neergezet zonder dat er een bouwvergunning was afgegeven.

Bijna twee maanden na de sluiting van het clubhuis kreeg hij op een ochtend een telefoontje van de politie, zegt hij in een interview met RTV Drenthe. Die vertelde dat er een bedreiging was binnengekomen. Later die dag zou de politie opnieuw contact opnemen.

's Avonds, na een bezoek aan FC Emmen-FC Eindhoven, kreeg Arends te horen dat de bedreiging zo ernstig was dat hij beter niet meer thuis kon slapen. De politie kon niet zeggen van wie de bedreiging kwam.

Arends en zijn gezin maakten zich op voor een weekend bij Van der Valk in Emmen, maar in plaats daarvan werd hij naar een hotel ergens anders in Nederland gebracht.

Aan het eind van het weekend meldde zich de hoofdofficier van justitie in Noord-Nederland. Die vertelde dat de dreiging dermate serieus was dat Arends naar het buitenland moest vertrekken. "De dreiging was alleen op mij gericht, niet op mijn vrouw en kinderen", zei Arends tegen RTV Drenthe. "Ja, dan gaat er echt van alles door je heen."

Arends en zijn vrouw vertrokken de maandag daarna in een gepantserde auto naar Groot-Brittannië. Waarheen precies wil hij niet kwijt. De kinderen verbleven elders in Emmen.

Hij is boos en gefrustreerd over wat hem is overkomen. "Dit is toch Nederland en niet een of andere bananenrepubliek?"

Hij pleit voor fors meer geld voor het opsporingsapparaat. "Terrorisme is een probleem, maar de ondermijning van de rechtsstaat is zo mogelijk een nog een groter probleem."

Na drie weken Groot-Brittannië kregen Arends en zijn vrouw te horen dat er geen dreiging meer was en dat ze veilig naar huis konden terugkeren.

Arends zegt dat de gebeurtenissen een grote impact hebben gehad. Van de sluiting van het clubhuis heeft hij geen spijt. Hij zou het morgen precies zo doen. "Alleen zou ik dan na dreiging niet vertrekken. Het voelde als een vlucht en dat is frustrerend."

Er zijn berichten dat de bedreiging inderdaad uit de hoek van No Surrender kwam, maar dat wordt ten stelligste ontkend door de club.

"Wij doen alles volgens het boekje. Het is een hetze van het Openbaar Ministerie richting No Surrender. De bedreiging komt niet bij de motorclub vandaan, daar durf ik mijn hand voor in het vuur te steken", aldus voorman Henk Kuipers.

Bron: nos.nl

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Uruguay, the first country where you can smoke marijuana wherever you like

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Alicia Castilla was watering the plants in her garden on a quiet Sunday afternoon when five police patrol cars screeched to a halt outside her home. A team of 14 officers “armed to the teeth” stormed through her gate and arrested the mild-mannered, 66-year-old intellectual. They seized everything they could find: computers, her mobile phone, books, even an orange squeezer.

They also impounded the 29 cannabis plants she was watering and 24g of marijuana they found in her possession. She was taken to a police station where she spent the night handcuffed to a bench. “They treated me like the female version of Pablo Escobar,” Castilla told the Observer. But far from resembling the infamous Colombian drug lord who inspired the 2015 Netflix series Narcos, Castilla was a peace-loving, grey-haired author whose book Cultura Cannabis had become an unexpected bestseller. Like many Argentinian sexagenarians, she had recently retired to nearby Uruguay. The seized plants were for her personal use. “I make a living writing about marijuana, not selling it.”

Castilla’s arrest in 2011 sent Uruguay into shock. Although the consumption of recreational drugs had never been outlawed in a country that prides itself on its broad-mindedness and liberal institutions, its cultivation and sale remained forbidden. The author faced between two and 10 years behind bars.

Her imprisonment at the women’s prison in the town of Canelones became round-the-clock news. “I fell into a foul-smelling pit that reminded me of Midnight Express. Cockroaches crawled over the bed, there were rats the size of rabbits in the bathrooms.”

Castilla realised she had become a national celebrity when her fellow inmates broke into spontaneous applause on her arrival. The eldest of the 120 women imprisoned there, her fellow inmates nicknamed her “the reefer grandmother”, a moniker that was quickly picked up by the press.

Thousands marched to demand her release. The protests soon galvanised a longstanding demand for the full legalisation of recreational cannabis. “The media coverage was crazy. Legislators started bringing legal marijuana draft bills for me to look at in prison,” Castilla, now 72, recalls.

Her three-month incarceration (and the lengthy series of trials until the case was dismissed by Uruguay’s supreme court last year) finally paid off. The cultivation of cannabis was legalised in 2014, and in July Uruguay will become the first country in the world where its sale is legal across the entire territory.

“It’s important for Uruguay to advance towards a logical regulation of recreational marijuana,” says Eduardo Blasina, director of the recently inaugurated Cannabis Museum located in a large terracotta-coloured property in the old Palermo neighbourhood of Uruguay’s capital city, Montevideo.

“The law gives consumers access to certified, unadulterated marijuana,” says Blasina. “South America’s war against drugs has been absurd, with catastrophic results no matter which indicators you consider, including consumption. If Uruguay’s experience turns out positive, it will be easier for other countries such as Colombia or Mexico, mired in huge problems with powerful narcos, to find a better solution than the disastrous one implemented so far.”

For Laura Blanco, one of the most energetic campaigners for legalisation, Uruguay's unique history of never having prohibited the consumption of any drug was key. "We found this grey area in the law where consumption was legal but cultivation was not, so every time a marijuana-grower was taken prisoner it was reinforcing the message that the only place to obtain access to a legal substance was on the illegal market."

But not everyone is pleased with how legal marijuana is being implemented in Uruguay. "I'm happy because now you can plant without going to prison," says Juan Manuel Varela, the 28-year-old manager of MDAR (Spanish-language acronym for high-quality marijuana), one of the cannabis clubs that have been set up under the new legislation. "But like many things in Uruguay, the new law is a good idea that is being applied badly."

Cannabis activists such as Varela and Castilla are upset that the new law falls short of full legalisation. Home growers are required to register with the government for a permit that grants them a maximum of six plants, and cannabis clubs such as Varela's require permits for a maximum of 45 members who are allowed to withdraw only 40g per month from the club's crop.

Most controversial of all, when the law goes into full effect in July, legal marijuana will only be available at pharmacies. Though the price will be highly accessible, only $1.30 per gram compared with $3 on the street, consumers must register with the government first. They will then be required to identify themselves with a digital thumb scan to withdraw their weekly maximum of 10g.

The government has taken important precautions to prevent the registry falling into the wrong hands because of the privacy issues involved. Pharmacists will not be given the name of the client associated with each thumb scan. Only the amount of grams still available from each client's quota will be revealed on the pharmacy's screen. Additionally, only seven members of the government will have access to the full registry, and three of them will need to be present simultaneously in order to retrieve any names from it.

"It's like a police file they're building of planters and consumers," says Daniel Vidart, another long-time cannabis activist and author who met, fell in love with and married Castilla shortly after her release from prison six years ago.

The impressively spritely 96-year-old is a personal friend of Uruguay's former president, José "Pepe" Mujica, who introduced a series of liberal reforms during his 2010-2015 term in office, including same-sex marriage, abortion and the sale of state-controlled marijuana.

Vidart is highly critical of his friend's marijuana law. "This law actually stigmatises marijuana more than it legalises it," says Vidart, holding his wife Castilla's hand. "Why should there be a registry of marijuana consumers and not one of alcohol consumers? Alcohol is a much deadlier drug. This law continues considering that marijuana smokers are so dangerous that they need to be counted by the government. And a registry is more or less safe as long as you have a democratic government, but it could become a weapon against consumers should the political mood change."

The registry was opened at the beginning of May. So far about 3,500 people (out of Uruguay's population of 3.4 million) have signed up to buy marijuana at pharmacies. Additionally, since 2014 about 6,700 have signed up as home growers and 57 cannabis clubs have been set up, according to the government's Cannabis Regulation and Control Institute.

Despite the media attention, sales seem to be likely to get off to a slow start. "Only 30 of the country's 1,000 pharmacies have signed up to sell marijuana so far," says Alejandro Antalich, vice-president of the Uruguayan pharmacies association.

"Our society can be conservative, resistant to change, so there is still uncertainty and many pharmacists are waiting to see how the system works before signing up to sell. There is also fear of reprisals against pharmacies from corner drug traffickers upset at losing their clients."

Castilla also has mixed feelings about the new law. "I would like to see full freedom to plant in your own home," she says.

Has she registered to plant or buy? "No, I haven't." Is she still growing at home? "Yes, I am." Isn't she afraid of falling foul of the new law? "I don't think they'd dare come after me again," says Castilla with a twinkle in her eye.

quote:

Recreational drugs market should be managed by 'governments not gangsters', says expert

Steve Rolles argues the war on drugs has been a ‘spectacular failure’ and has led to ‘the most rapid expansion of drug use in human history’. His solution? Licensed high street venues...

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Over the 50-odd years the global war on drugs has been fought, it’s been a catalogue of failure on pretty much every level you’d care to examine – bar the bank balance of those profiting from the outcome. There may yet be another half century of futility and broken promises ahead of us, but one man has a vision of what a post-drug-war world could look like.

In his latest book, Legalizing Drugs: The Key to Ending the War, Steve Rolles, a senior policy analyst on drug policy with the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, provides a brief history of the global war on drugs, outlining the cost five decades of the policy has had on public health, the economy and human rights, and then goes on to suggest how the market should instead be “managed by governments, not gangsters”.

Approximately 247 million people now use drugs around the world, pumping money into a global industry worth more than $300bn (£233bn), according to a UN report from 2015, with a quarter of a billion adults worldwide having potentially taken illegal drugs such as cannabis, cocaine or heroin in 2014 alone.

The prohibition of drugs has had “little or no impact” on the rate of drug use, the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s annual report said last year, as the number of drug users had increased by almost 20 per cent between 2006 and 2013.

Last year also saw one of the world’s oldest general medical journals, The BMJ, call for the legislation of illicit drugs the first time. An editorial said prohibition laws had failed to curb either supply or demand, cut violence or reduce profits for organised crime. It went on to say the ban on the production, supply, possession and use of some drugs for non-medical purposes was causing immense harm.

In an interview with The Independent, Rolles, who has previously served as an adviser to the Global Commission on Drugs, argues that the “most striking thing about the war on drugs is its spectacular failings on its own terms”.

He says the idea behind the policy was to eradicate drugs from the globe in order to create a drug-free world by 2008, with the official slogan of the 1998 UN conference on the world drug problem being: “A Drug-Free World: We Can Do It.”

“Not only did that not happen but actually things continued to get worse so drug markets were founded, prevalence increased and all the problems related to drug use and illegal drug markets increased as well,” Rolles says. “For a policy that is specifically trying to eradicate drugs from the world, it has overseen the most rapid expansion of drug use in human history.”

The policy has instead backfired, he points out, leading to the creation of an “enormous illegal market where hundreds of billions every year are controlled by violent gangsters. So we have all of this crime and violence, both on UK city streets and around the world, which is fuelled by the illegal drug trade. We don’t have those issues with legal drugs. We don’t have tobacconists gunning each other down in the streets. All the problems associated with the vast illegal drug trade are essentially a result of prohibition.”

Instead of protecting the health of the public, the war on drugs has made drugs more dangerous, Rolles maintains. “It’s not deterring youth. It’s not preventing availability of access to drugs. It’s actually making drugs more dangerous.

“All drugs are fundamentally risky but when they’re produced and supplied through an illegal market they become more risky. People don’t know how strong they are, people don’t know what’s in them, their potency can vary wildly. All of the things that that the war on drugs is supposedly achieving in terms of protecting our health or protecting us from crime, it’s actually doing the opposite.”

Rather than continuing the war on drugs, Rolles argues that the drugs market could be reformed in a way that would leave it “managed by governments, not gangsters”. He advocates strict legal regulation from licensed vendors and different forms of regulation for different drugs, with greater restrictions placed on the more risky drugs.

His book outlines five tiers to regulate the drugs market. At the highest tier, the most risky drugs would only be available on prescription for people who are dependent users. The next tier down would be a pharmacy sales model, with a trained and licensed member of staff enforcing a code of practice in terms of age control or not selling to people who are intoxicated, but also available to give advice on health issues or refer people to other services if there are any concerns.

The third tier “is just more familiar licensed retailing, a bit like tobacconists or off licences,” Rolles explains, regulated in terms of opening hours and age access controls. The next model would “be a bit like pubs,” a licensed venue where people could consume drugs on the premises. “So it would be like pubs for alcohol or cannabis coffee shops in the Netherlands.

“You could imagine potentially extending that model to some other drugs. So perhaps membership-based clubs where you could buy and consume MDMA, for example, or perhaps an opium den model where you could go to licensed premises where you can smoke opium.”

The least regulated model would “be basically just a supermarket” for mild stimulants, such as cocoa or poppy tea, “very mild products that don’t really need much significant regulation at all over and above normal descriptions and sell-by dates and the usual stuff”.

Rolles believes regulating the drugs market would ‘‘make less risky drugs relatively more available and more risky drugs relatively less available. And in that way, over time, perhaps shepherd people towards safer products and safer behaviours. Prohibition tends to do the exact opposite. It tends to encourage the use of the most risky products but also encourages people to use them in risky ways and use them in risky environments. Regulation enables us to tilt the market in the opposite direction and encourage safer behaviours, safe products and safer using environments.”

Rolles goes on to describe how human rights have historically been marginalised in the enforcement of drug laws around the world.

“At its most extreme, the war on drugs can licence horrific state violence. At a less extreme level, it still can have awful impacts: mass incarceration in the US for example. We see grossly disproportionate penalties and enormous prison sentences for really quite trivial crimes. In a lot of countries you can be flogged or whipped or beaten for minor drug offences. In a number of countries you can actually be executed for trafficking offences. Countries like Iran are executing one or two people a day for drug offences on average and in places like China it’s even more.”

A significant portion of the prison population in the UK is there because of the war on drugs, Rolles points out, with “some estimates putting it as high as half the entire prison population in there being related to drug markets, or specifically drug offences”.

“Even though not everybody who uses drugs gets a criminal record, we do still have 27,000 people who are criminalised for cannabis possession alone. So tens of thousands of people in the UK are getting criminal records just for using drugs.”

The cost of the war on drugs is “carried by the most marginalised people in society,” he says, adding: “It tends to be young people, it tends to be people from socially deprived communities and it tends to be ethnic minorities. The people who are swept up in the enforcement net tend to be the ones whose drug use is more public.”

The “white middle-class dinner party set using cocaine doesn’t engage with the criminal justice system at all because the system never encounters them. It is a profoundly disproportionate racial make-up of people who are both stopped and searched, and if drugs are found on them then in terms of when they are actually prosecuted, we see a huge disproportionate number of young black men in particular finding their way into criminal records, criminality and prison.”

Cannabis drug reform is picking up pace around the world. It has been legalised in Uruguay, Canada and eight states in the US, including California, which Rolles points out is of a similar size to the UK.

Asked how likely it was for cannabis to be decriminalised in Britain, his response is measured: “Neither Labour nor the Conservatives are interested in cannabis legalisation. I wouldn’t expect legalisation of any drugs under the next government, but perhaps the one after that.”

So what would a post-drug-war world look like? “I don’t think society would look more different. It’s not as if people aren’t using drugs now and if they were legal everyone would be, ‘hurrah let’s go and take loads of drugs’. It doesn’t work like that.

“People who want to use drugs use them already and they are effectively freely available to anyone who wants them. The idea that prohibition is stopping that in any way is nonsense.”

quote:

Almost one in three drugs overdoses in Europe recorded in UK

Britain has Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts and problematic use of novel psychoactive substances, say reports by the European drugs agency

Almost one in three drugs overdoses in Europe were recorded in the UK as the continent’s rate of drug deaths rose for a third year in a row, according to the European drugs agency.

The annual report from the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction (EMCCDA) also said the UK had Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts, while separate research found a pattern of problematic use of novel psychoactive substances (NPSs) among poor communities.

Europe’s home affairs commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said: “Over 93 million Europeans have tried an illicit drug in their lives and overdose deaths continue to rise … I am especially concerned that young people are exposed to many new and dangerous drugs.”

The EMCCDA report aggregates data from the European Union’s 28 member states plus Turkey and Norway to give a broad picture of the continent’s drug markets, consumption trends and related harms.

It registered a total of 8,441 overdose deaths, mainly related to heroin and other opioids, in 2015 – a 6% increase on the 7,950 deaths across the 30 countries in 2014, with increases reported in almost all age groups.

The UK accounted for 31% of those deaths, with Germany in second place on 15%. Although the researchers noted there could be under-reporting in some countries, they said the size of Britain and Germany’s at-risk populations was a factor.

About eight in every 1,000 Britons are high-risk opioid users, the highest rate in Europe. In 2015, the year the EMCDDA’s researchers investigated, England and Wales recorded a 26% rise in heroin deaths.

In separate research published alongside the report, ECMDDA researchers said the UK and Hungary were the two countries that had seen “more extensive use of novel psychoactive substances” among low-income groups and problem drug users.

They noted that although data was patchy and numbers remained comparatively low, a number of national surveys indicated increasing NPS use among problem drug users, who were often taking them in conjunction with heavy use of other drugs such as heroin and alcohol.

A 2015 Public Health England survey of injecting drug users, cited by the research, found almost 9% of respondents had injected mephedrone in the past year. A survey of vulnerable populations in Scotland – including rough sleepers, mental health service users, at-risk young people and others – found in 2016 that 59% reported having used NPSs, of whom 74% had used them in the past year.

“NPS use mainly occurs in a context of polydrug use” and in most cases they “are very rarely reported to be the primary drug used” by high-risk users, the EMCDDA researchers said.

“More often they are are a secondary or tertiary drug, for example when the preferred substance is not available or to heighten the effects of other drugs. This means that it would be uncommon to find many high-risk users, with the exception of specific groups in Hungary and some areas of the United Kingdom.”

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State Supreme Court Justice Just Called for the Release of All Those in Prison for Cannabis

Amid the seemingly constant bad news about rising international tensions and the crushing police/surveillance state at home, one bright spot remains. Cannabis decriminalization keeps on sweeping the U.S. – as, according to polls, almost no one believes cannabis should be illegal.

It is well known that the war on drugs serves no purpose but to enrich and empower the police state and the corporatocracy. On the other hand, cannabis legalization has provided tremendous benefits to the people.

Medical cannabis is proving to successfully treat an ever-growing number of physical and mental ailments, without the side harmful side-effects of pharmaceutical products. While it is not a panacea, medical cannabis is giving life to children where before they were expected to die, allowing children to finally stop having debilitating seizures, and allowing war veterans to find treatment for PTSD where none other exists, to name just a few.

Freedom is even greater in the eight states that have legalized recreational cannabis use. If this weren’t enough, legal pot is providing incredible economic boosts, such as in Colorado where the cannabis industry is contributing more to the economy than all other industries.

More and more of those in government are getting it, and they’re not afraid to speak out or even act in the noblest of manners, such as Georgia Rep. Allen Peake who skirts the law to distribute Colorado medical cannabis to suffering children in his state.

Add Ohio Supreme Court Justice William O’Neill to the list. In a recent speech, the enlightened judge said cannabis should be legalized and all non-violent cannabis offenders should be released from jail.

O’Neill says legalization and prisoner release would generate $350 million that would be used to treat drug addiction instead of criminalizing it, as well as create a mental health network to combat addiction.

“Treat addiction like the disease it is in the name of compassion,” he said.

O’Neill is pondering a run for Ohio governor, but won’t make a decision until the end of the year. Even if he doesn’t run, his remarks inject some much-needed substance into the race, and should spur the candidates to put their positions on record.

Ohio legalized medical cannabis in Sept. 2016, although legal sales won’t begin for at least a year. Ohio will eventually have dispensaries and cultivation centers to provide medical products for a host of qualifying conditions.

O’Neill’s call to legalize all cannabis use, like alcohol and tobacco, and release non-violent cannabis “offenders” is a natural progression in rational thought. As far as drugs go, we know that alcohol and tobacco use kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, while no one has ever been known to die from the use of cannabis.

How can the State logically defend the legality of more dangerous drugs (with little to no medical benefit) while a harmless, medically beneficial one is illegal? If there is no rational basis, and cannabis were completely legalized, then it follows there is no rational basis for holding non-violent users and sellers of a natural plant in jail.

Pretty simple, but too many politicians still cling to the injustice of prohibition, even though we know the drug war was started to oppress minorities and suppress political dissent. They continue supporting the War on Drugs even though it has not achieved any of its stated goals, after five decades and $1 trillion being spent.

If Justice O’Neill ends up running for governor, his chances will certainly be boosted by calling for the freedom and economic boost that is legal cannabis.

Bron: thefreethoughtproject.com

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How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico

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The inside story of a cartel’s deadly assault on a Mexican town near the Texas border — and the U.S. drug operation that sparked it.

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There’s no missing the signs that something unspeakable happened in Allende, a quiet ranching town of about 23,000, just a 40-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas. Entire blocks of some of the town’s busiest streets lie in ruins. Once garish mansions are now crumbling shells, with gaping holes in the walls, charred ceilings, cracked marble countertops and toppled columns. Strewn among the rubble are tattered, mud-covered remnants of lives torn apart: shoes, wedding invitations, medications, television sets, toys.

In March 2011 gunmen from the Zetas cartel, one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, swept through Allende and nearby towns like a flash flood, demolishing homes and businesses and kidnapping and killing dozens, possibly hundreds, of men, women and children.

The destruction and disappearances went on in fits and starts for weeks. Only a few of the victims’ relatives — mostly those who didn’t live in Allende or had fled — dared to seek help. “I would like to make clear that Allende looks like a war zone,” reads one missing person report. “Most people who I questioned about my relatives responded that I shouldn’t go on looking for them because outsiders were not wanted, and were disappeared.”

But unlike most places in Mexico that have been ravaged by the drug war, what happened in Allende didn’t have its origins in Mexico. It began in the United States, when the Drug Enforcement Administration scored an unexpected coup. An agent persuaded a high-level Zetas operative to hand over the trackable cellphone identification numbers for two of the cartel’s most wanted kingpins, Miguel Ángel Treviño and his ​brother Omar.

Then the DEA took a gamble. It shared the intelligence with a Mexican federal police unit that has long had problems with leaks — even though its members had been trained and vetted by the DEA. Almost immediately, the Treviños learned they’d been betrayed. The brothers set out to exact vengeance against the presumed snitches, their families and anyone remotely connected to them.

Their savagery in Allende was particularly surprising because the Treviños not only did business there — moving tens of millions of dollars in drugs and guns through the area each month — they’d also made it their home.

For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Treviños but never acknowledged the devastating cost. In Allende, people suffered mostly in silence, too afraid to talk publicly.

A year ago ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together what happened in this town in the state of Coahuila — to let those who bore the brunt of the attack, and those who played roles in triggering it, tell the story in their own words. They did so often at great personal risk. Voices like these have rarely been heard during the drug war: Local officials who abandoned their posts; families preyed upon by both the cartel and their own neighbors; cartel operatives who cooperated with the DEA and saw their friends and families slaughtered; the U.S. prosecutor who oversaw the case; and the DEA agent who led the investigation and who, like most people in this story, has family ties on both sides of the border.

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Trimbos: onschuldig imago xtc niet terecht | NOS

De overheid moet meer gaan waarschuwen voor de risico's van xtc. Dat adviseert het Trimbos-instituut aan staatssecretaris Van Rijn van Volksgezondheid. Het instituut deed in opdracht van Van Rijn onderzoek naar de gevolgen van xtc-gebruik en concludeert dat "het onschuldige imago van de partydrug niet terecht is".

"Waar we ons zorgen over maken is dat onvoldoende gebruikers weten dat de drug veel gevaarlijker zijn dan het imago doet vermoeden", zegt Trimbos-onderzoeker Esther Croes. "Dus daar moet goed op worden gehamerd. Gebruikers moeten weten wat voor risico ze nemen." Croes noemt het een misvatting dat voorzorgsmaatregelen als het testen van de drugs de risico's kunnen wegnemen.

Volgens het Trimbos hebben mensen nu nog een te rooskleurig beeld van xtc, omdat er weinig wordt gesproken over momenten waarop het gebruik verkeerd uitpakte. De onderzoekers merkten dat slachtoffers zich vaak schamen en daardoor verzwijgen dat xtc de oorzaak was van hun klachten.

Het Trimbos onderzocht het aantal xtc-vergiftigingen en doden als gevolg van de drug tussen 2006 en 2015. Deze cijfers zijn afkomstig van acht peilstations in Nederland. "Daarmee is niet het hele land gedekt, maar als we alleen op basis van die cijfers kijken, dan zien we dat een op de 250 xtc-gebruikers acuut medische hulp heeft gezocht na xtc-gebruik. Dat is wel heel erg veel", zegt Croes.

De verschijnselen waarmee de gebruikers zich bij de medische posten melden variëren. Xtc-vergiftiging kan leiden tot angst en paniek, oververhitting, acute hartklachten of overlijden.

"We hebben geen overkoepelend cijfer van het aantal doden," zegt Croes, die met het Trimbos-instituut ook heeft gekeken naar de cijfers van het Nederlands Forensisch Instituut (NFI). "Dat zijn alleen de gevallen waarbij ook een strafrechtelijk onderzoek heeft plaatsgevonden." Op basis van die cijfers komt Croes uit op vijf tot tien xtc-doden per jaar.

Xtc is de populairste drug in Nederland, na cannabis. Uit cijfers uit 2015 blijkt dat een miljoen Nederlanders het middel wel eens hebben geslikt. Volgens recente cijfers van een Europees onderzoekscentrum wordt onder Nederlandse jongeren veel meer xtc gebruikt dan in andere Europese landen.

Bron: nos.nl

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Drie Nederlanders gearresteerd na miljoenenvondst cocaïne in Oostende | NOS

Drie Nederlanders en een Belg zijn gearresteerd na een grote drugsvondst in de haven van de Belgische stad Oostende. De politie ontdekte 1500 kilo cocaïne in een dubbele bodem van een oude vissersboot, schrijven Belgische media. De waarde van de partij onversneden cocaïne wordt geschat op 225 miljoen euro.

De vier zijn aangehouden in een langlopend onderzoek naar drugstransporten tussen Zuid-Amerika en Europa. In dat onderzoek hield de politie een tijdlang het schip, de Bounty II, in de gaten. Het lag afgemeerd aan de Baelskaai in Oostende. De boot zou zijn gebruikt door een internationale drugsbende.

Vrijdag beslist de onderzoeksrechter of de verdachten langer vast blijven zitten.

Bron: nos.nl

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Burgemeesters: aanpak misdaad Zuid-Nederland levert te weinig op | NOS

De politie en het Openbaar Ministerie schieten tekort in de strijd tegen de georganiseerde misdaad in het zuiden van Nederland. Dat concluderen tientallen burgemeesters uit Noord-Brabant en Limburg.

De NOS ondervroeg hen over de aanpak van zware criminaliteit, zoals xtc-productie, wietteelt en wapenhandel. Ruim veertig burgemeesters gaven een reactie.

Het merendeel van hen vindt dat politie en OM te weinig resultaat boeken. Er is niet genoeg mankracht om de problemen in het zuiden structureel aan te pakken.

"Lang niet alle gevallen van ondermijnende criminaliteit kunnen worden aangepakt", merkt burgemeester Jos Som van Kerkrade. Een Brabantse burgemeester constateert: "De inspanningen zijn niet zichtbaar."

Sinds 2014 zijn bij politie en Openbaar Ministerie zo'n 140 mensen extra ingezet in Zuid-Nederland, maar veel burgemeesters hebben het gevoel dat de omvang van zware criminaliteit in hun gemeente gelijk is gebleven of zelfs is toegenomen.

Het woord 'ondermijning' duikt vaak op als het over misdaad in Zuid-Nederland gaat. Met de term wordt georganiseerde criminaliteit bedoeld die het lokale gezag aantast, bijvoorbeeld door een vermenging van onder- en bovenwereld.

Politie en OM moeten te vaak keuzes maken, waardoor zaken blijven liggen. De onderzoeken naar criminelen zijn tijdrovend en het duurt lang voordat de rechter uiteindelijk een oordeel velt. Ook zien sommige burgemeesters "administratieve rompslomp" en vinden ze dat belangrijke informatie niet goed wordt gedeeld tussen de partijen die gezamenlijk misdaad bestrijden.

"Het is meer tegenwerken en verstoren dan daadwerkelijk oppakken van criminelen", stelt een van hen. "Er is gebrek aan capaciteit en mogelijkheden om echt door te pakken."

Soms zijn er sterke vermoedens van zware criminaliteit, maar ontbreekt het aan bewijs. Politie en OM staan dan machteloos. Verschillende burgemeesters zouden proactief willen optreden, maar missen nu de wettelijke grondslag. Een motorclubverbod zou bijvoorbeeld kunnen helpen, denken ze.

"Alle daadkracht die ik als burgemeester inzet, wordt te makkelijk betwist en soms ook door de rechter onderuitgehaald", klinkt het vanuit een kleine gemeente in Limburg. "Zo ondermijn je ook het gezag van burgemeesters."

Alle burgemeesters die reageerden kregen de afgelopen jaren in hun gemeente te maken met hennepteelt; de meesten ook met de productie van synthetische drugs. Dat brengt weer andere vormen van criminaliteit met zich mee, zoals witwassen, afval dumpen en in een enkel geval een liquidatie.

De meeste burgemeesters kregen de afgelopen paar jaar tussen de vijf en de twintig waarschuwingen over georganiseerde misdaad in hun gemeente. Een middelgrote gemeente in het zuiden ontving maar liefst 230 signalen.

De burgemeesters roepen een nieuw kabinet op om meer werk te maken van misdaadbestrijding in het zuiden. In februari vroegen de burgemeesters van Eindhoven, Helmond, Breda, Tilburg en Den Bosch al om extra geld en een "ondermijningswet" die het makkelijker moet maken om criminelen aan te pakken. Ook willen ze afgepakt vermogen van criminelen kunnen gebruiken om de misdaad in het zuiden te bestrijden.

Het Openbaar Ministerie erkent dat er meer nodig is om de misdaad in Zuid-Nederland effectief te bestrijden. "Behalve meer mensen, moeten we ook investeren in kwaliteit en innovatie", zegt hoofdofficier van justitie Nicole Zandee van Oost-Brabant. Ook het uitwisselen van informatie moet volgens haar beter.

Toch vindt ze dat er wel degelijk vooruitgang wordt geboekt in Zuid-Nederland. "Ik denk dat we de criminele industrie met de huidige aanpak op een behoorlijke manier verstoren", zegt Zandee. "Dat doen we met korte strafrechtelijke onderzoeken en het afpakken van crimineel geld."

Volgens haar is het een kwestie van de lange adem. "Als iets jarenlang heeft kunnen groeien, zul je ook jarenlang moeten werken om dat te bestrijden."

De NOS ondervroeg alle burgemeesters in Noord-Brabant en Limburg; 41 van hen gaven een reactie. Een groot deel wenste anoniem te blijven.

Bron: nos.nl