The World Wide War on Drugs #11 - User 2600 is baaasssss

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http://nos.n'Zeker in woonwijken willen mensen van coffeeshops af'l/nieuwsuur/artikel/2200872-zeker-in-woonwijken-willen-mensen-van-coffeeshops-af.html

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De Rotterdamse burgemeester Ahmed Aboutaleb wil een alternatief voor coffeeshops. Hoe het alternatief er precies uit moet zien weet hij nog niet, maar hij heeft wel ideeën. Bijvoorbeeld via internet, een stichting, een staatswinkel of een 'joint-automaat'. Als dat lukt, kunnen coffeeshops gesloten worden.

Volgens de burgemeester zijn er per dag 25.000 mensen die cannabis kopen. In Rotterdam kan dat in 36 coffeeshops. "Het grootste probleem is dat een deel van die shops in woonwijken staat. Daar willen veel bewoners vanaf. Soms staat zo'n winkel middenin een woonstraat."

En dat veroorzaakt overlast. Een coffeeshop mag legaal cannabis verhandelen en verkopen, maar toch is het vaak ook een plek waar illegale dingen gebeuren. 70 tot 75 procent van de exploitanten komt in aanraking met criminaliteit, blijkt uit een onderzoek van Bureau Intraval uit 2005. "Deze exploitanten komen in aanraking met de politie, soms voor zware criminaliteit zoals wapenhandel."

Legale wietverkoop zonder coffeeshops moet kunnen, vindt Aboutaleb. "Het is een wereld die we zelf hebben gecreëerd. We geloven dat die redelijk valide is, maar je kan er toch af en toe je vraagtekens bij plaatsen."

Extra stap

Het idee voor een alternatief voor coffeeshops wordt gekoppeld aan de aangekondigde proef met door de overheid gereguleerde wietteelt. De proef draait om de 'achterdeur' van de verkoop van wiet: de inkoop. Formeel mogen coffeeshops geen cannabis inkopen, terwijl de verkoop wel is toegestaan.

Bij het experiment wordt ook de inkoop gelegaliseerd. Daarbij wordt de wiet landelijk geteeld en vervolgens verspreid onder zes tot tien gemeenten. Op die manier wordt gekeken of de criminaliteit afneemt en of de wiet daarnaast minder schadelijke stoffen bevat.

Rotterdam wil ook graag meedoen, en heeft hiervoor al eerder een plan ingediend bij toenmalig minister Opstelten van Veiligheid en Justitie.

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Op donderdag 2 november 2017 09:28 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

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Wordt er een plan bedacht om de criminaliteit rondom drugs ( wiet teelt) te verminderen, krijg je dit soort nutteloze opmerkingen die er voor zorgen dat je het weer regelrecht terug de criminaliteit induwt.

O en ja als je in wapens handelt ben je wel een hele zware crimineel natuurlijk hahahaha

LEGALIZE

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Op donderdag 2 november 2017 09:42 schreef eNGine10 het volgende:

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Ik snap je bericht niet zo goed. Het is toch een begrijpelijk plan van Aboutaleb? Tenminste, ik zie niet waarom de verkoop niet door de overheid zou kunnen gebeuren.

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. Bijvoorbeeld via internet, een stichting, een staatswinkel of een 'joint-automaat'. Als dat lukt, kunnen coffeeshops gesloten worden.

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Op donderdag 2 november 2017 10:21 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

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Het lost het probleem niet op maar crieert andere problemen,

De coffeeshop geeft ook de mogelijkheid om daar je jointje te roken en als dat verdwijnt zal dit naar de straat verplaatsen, denk dat ze daar in woonwijken nog minder op zitten wachten.

Via internet, dan via de post opsturen komt er maar weinig op plek van bestemming aan denk ik.

Een stichting of staatswinkel maken de wiet duurder door extra kosten en verplaats daardoor de verkoop naar de straat of in de achterkamertjes bij mensen thuis, lijkt me ook niet wenselijk.

En de joint automaat heeft ook geen lang leven vermoed ik, die zal met regelmaat gekraakt worden.

Mijn inziens is de enige juiste manier via de coffeeshop met meer controle en goede afspraken.

En ja er kan best gekeken worden naar de plaatsing van coffeeshops.

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Op donderdag 2 november 2017 09:28 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

[..]

[..]

Wordt er een plan bedacht om de criminaliteit rondom drugs ( wiet teelt) te verminderen, krijg je dit soort nutteloze opmerkingen die er voor zorgen dat je het weer regelrecht terug de criminaliteit induwt.

O en ja als je in wapens handelt ben je wel een hele zware crimineel natuurlijk hahahaha

LEGALIZE

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Welkom bij De industrie: over Drugsland Nederland

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De Industrie is een online interactieve documentaire en podcastserie die laat zien hoe drugs overal zijn en iedereen er mee te maken heeft - van elektricien tot pizzakoerier, van boer tot burgemeester. Luchtig, humoristisch en soms banaal, biedt De industrie in kleine persoonlijke verhalen een inkijkje in hoe de drugindustrie in Nederland in elkaar zit. En hoezeer onder- en bovenwereld verweven zijn in het leven van alledag.

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The impact of the 'war on drugs' for female 'mules'

University of Kent research on women working as drug 'mules' has found they aren't victims of their sex but of the trade, and its illegal status.

University of Kent research on women working as drug 'mules' has found they aren't victims of their sex but of the trade, and its illegal status.

Dr Nayeli Urquiza Haas of the University's Kent Law School compared different legal developments and strategies in Europe and Latin America.

Globally, women who traffic drugs across borders are over-represented in prison in relation to their limited role in the trade. Dr Urquiza Haas found attributing victim status to women who traffic drugs is used to minimise prison sentences if they are arrested and charged.

But she suggests this legal bias, born from pre-conceived judgments and expectations about women's behaviour, distracts law and policy-makers from paying attention to the negative effects of punitive drug control laws and the so-called 'war on drugs'.

Her research examined how courts fail to consider how drug mules, among other participants in the drug trade, endure precarious work conditions in foreign countries; disregarding the conditions which make them more vulnerable to exploitation.

Dr Urquiza Haas says gender does play a role but only in the same way as in any other 'workplace' where sexism and poverty may restrict women's access to safe working conditions.

Dr Urquiza Haas presented her research at a workshop bringing together international researchers, activists and practitioners from the field of global drug policy reform in Budapest, Hungary, earlier this year.

Vulnerability Discourses and Drug Mule Work: Legal Approaches in Sentencing and Non-Prosecution/Non-Punishment Norms is published in a special issue of The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice dedicated to international advances in research and policy regarding drug mules and couriers.

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Mexican troops waging war on drug gangs not punished for rights abuses – report

Research shows most abuses go unsolved and unpunished despite reforms letting civilian authorities investigate and prosecute such crimes

The vast majority of human rights abuses allegedly committed by soldiers waging Mexico’s war on drug gangs go unsolved and unpunished despite reforms letting civilian authorities investigate and prosecute such crimes, a report said on Tuesday.

The Washington Office on Latin America study, described as the first comprehensive analysis of military abuse investigations handled by the attorney general’s office, found there were just 16 convictions of soldiers in the civilian judicial system out of 505 criminal investigations from 2012 through 2016, a prosecutorial success rate of 3.2%.

Moreover, there were only two “chain of command responsibility” convictions for officers whose orders led to abuses, it said.

The report said factors that hinder civilian investigations of the military include parallel civilian and military investigations, limited access to troops’ testimony and soldiers tampering with crime scenes or giving false testimony.

“This militarized public security model has negatively impacted Mexico’s criminal justice system. The civilian justice system faces challenges – including military authorities’ actions resulting in the obstruction or delay of investigations – which limit civilian authorities’ ability to sanction soldiers implicated in crimes and human rights violations,” the group said.

The attorney general’s office, the defense department and other government offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The military has played a central role in the war on drug cartels since at least late 2006, when newly installed President Felipe Calderón deployed soldiers across the country to fight the gangs. The militarized offensive has continued under the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

During that time there have been numerous accusations of serious human rights violations by soldiers, such as torture, killings and forced disappearances.

Critics say the Mexican military is not trained to carry out policing activities. However, many police departments in the country are seen as corrupt, outgunned and even in cahoots with organized crime gangs, and thus unreliable allies against the cartels.

One high-profile rights case involving the military was the 2014 killing of 22 suspected criminals by soldiers in the central town of Tlatlaya. The military initially claimed they died in a fierce firefight, but evidence suggested there was no protracted shootout and some of the dead appeared to have been killed in cold blood.

Seven soldiers were accused of homicide, but the charges were thrown out by civilian courts due to lack of evidence. In August of this year, a judge ordered an investigation into whether army commanders played any role in the killings.

The report said Tlatlaya was an example of a case in which military investigators had access to the crime scene and soldiers’ testimony before civilian authorities.

“The Tlatlaya case illustrates that holding military and civilian investigations concurrently delays and obstructs justice … [and] shows that in military jurisdiction, cases of grave human rights violations also go unchecked or remain unpunished,” the report said.

Reforms in 2014 changed how allegations of abuses by the military can be investigated, including the right to conduct a civilian investigation in such cases and for victims to participate.

Among the 16 successful prosecutions of soldiers carried out by the attorney general’s office are convictions for the cover-up of a human rights violation and desecration of a corpse; forced disappearance; homicide; injuries and trespassing, and rape, the report said.

The two “chain of command” convictions the study found were of a lieutenant colonel and a second lieutenant in two forced disappearance cases in in the northern states of Chihuahua and Nuevo León.

The Washington Office on Latin America said the report was based on three main sources: interviews with human rights groups and lawyers, right-to-information requests that yielded information including on convictions of soldiers, and collaboration with journalists who created a website on the issue, Cadenademando.org (Spanish for “chain of command”).

It added that it was “possible” there may have been more convictions than the 16 it documented, but authorities did not report them in response to right-to-information requests.

The United States has supported Mexico’s security efforts through the multibillion-dollar Merida Initiative, including outfitting the military with helicopters and training security forces. According to the report, more than $521m in counter-drug assistance has flowed from the US defense department to the Mexican military since 2008.

The report calls for measures from both Mexico and the United States to bolster the Mexican judicial system. It also urges Washington to condition aid money on improvements in the human rights record of Mexican security forces and to enforce US laws barring funding of units known to have committed gross rights violations.

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Grondstof voor 15 miljoen xtc-pillen in loods woonwijk Tilburg

TILBURG - De politie heeft woensdag tijdens een grote tweedaagse actie tegen drugs in Tilburg 3200 liter hulpstoffen voor de drug MDMA (xtc) gevonden. De vaten met de zeer brandbare en explosieve stoffen stonden in een loods aan de Lambert de Wijsstraat.

Uit deze grondstoffen zouden zo’n 15 miljoen xtc-pillen gedraaid kunnen worden. De politie heeft het spul in beslag genomen. Er is niemand aangehouden. Dinsdag werden tijdens deze actie, Operatie Impact, vijf mannen aangehouden, van wie drie in België.

Tijdens Operatie Impact deden speciale teams van de politie invallen in tientallen plaatsen in Brabant en Limburg. Naast grondstoffen voor synthetische drugs werden dinsdag ook vuurwapens gevonden.

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Mexico drug cartel's grip on politicians and police revealed in Texas court files

Los Zetas pumped money into elections in the border state of Coahuila but the detailed testimonies have been met with official denial and public apathy

The accusations made in three Texas courtrooms were staggering. Witness after witness described how a notorious drug cartel pumped money into Mexican electoral campaigns and paid off individual politicians and policemen in the border state of Coahuila to look the other way as hundreds of people were massacred or forcibly disappeared.

The Texas court testimonies – gathered in a report released this week by the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law and Fray Juan de Larios Diocesan Human Rights Centre in Coahuila – give one of the most complete accounts so far of how organized crime has attempted to capture the institutions of democracy in Mexico’s regions.

The report prompted outrage among activists who have worked with victims of violence. But the accusations were met with sharp denials from Mexican politicians and a pointed lack of interest from judicial officials.

The Mexican public, meanwhile, mostly shrugged, even as the country endures its most violent year on record and the crackdown on organised crime seems unlikely to end anytime soon.

“The lack of action from government is to be expected,” said Jorge Kawas, a security analyst in the city of Monterrey. “But the lack of outrage by Mexicans is just disheartening.

“We’ve become numb to excessive violence. There’s no leadership in government or in the streets and Mexican media is practically useless for holding power accountable.”

Allegations that Mexican politicians have acted in cahoots with drugs cartels have been common for decades, though such accusations have seldom resulted in thorough investigations, let alone criminal convictions. Even after sworn testimony in US courts has described corruption, Mexican officials appear unwilling to act.

“For Mexicans, it’s always sad to hear that the real investigations against crime and corruption in Mexico have to be done elsewhere in order for them to actually mean something or obtain a result,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos.

Mexico’s militarized crackdown on drug cartels over the past decade has cost more than 200,000 lives and left more than 30,000 missing. But by its own terms, it has been a failure: 2017 is shaping up to be the country’s the most violent year on record.

Los Zetas, a band of elite soldiers who became cartel enforcers and then established their own criminal empire, have been weakened in recent years after their senior leaders were kidnapped or killed and the group split into rival factions.

But from 2006 to 2014 the group terrorised swaths of north-eastern Mexico. In Coahuila, an arid state butting up against Texas, Los Zetas killed hundreds of people and burned their bodies before scattering the ashes in the desert.

The cartel carried out a string of massacres, including a 2011 rampage through the town of Allende which left about 300 dead.

They also spent millions on bribery, according to testimony gathered in this week’s report and given in separate criminal trials between 2013 and 2016.

“The Zetas paid bribes and integrated police officers into their hierarchy to ensure the cartel would be able to continue their illicit operations without resistance,” it said.

“Witnesses described a level of Zeta control which extended to city police chiefs, state and federal prosecutors, state prisons, sectors of the federal police and the Mexican army, and state politicians.”

The report also quoted explosive accusations made in US courts that Los Zetas paid off a pair of Coahuila state governors and pumped millions into state elections elsewhere in the country.

Some observers urged caution, saying witness statements alone – especially from those cooperating the authorities – were not enough to establish guilt.

“These guys clearly have a motive to blame others, to incriminate others. Whatever they’re saying should be read within this context,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst.

“It’s hard to believe that in the Zetas’ peak years [in Coahuila state], 2010, 2011, 2012, they had no connections with the state apparatus in Coahuila,” he added. “Did it go to the top? I’m not sure.”

Javier Garza, former editor of the Coahuila newspaper El Siglo de Torreón said that such questions would probably go unanswered by Mexican authorities. “These statements were told under oath so supposedly what they’re saying is true, but it’s never been corroborated because nobody in Mexico investigated.”

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Morgues shut doors as ultra-violent Mexican state is overwhelmed by bodies

Stench of decomposing corpses leads workers to shut down mortuaries in Guerrero where violence has also emptied villages and forced buses off the road

Violence in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero has emptied entire villages, closed schools and forced bus companies off the road.

Now it has shut down the state’s overcrowded morgues as workers walked off the job, saying the stench of hundreds of decomposing bodies had become unbearable.

“Lots of nausea. Lots of nausea,” state employee Laura Reyna Benjamín said of the smell to Televisa. “It makes you not want to eat because the stench really sticks with you.”

Bodies have arrived in such numbers that morgues in the state have neither the space to store them nor the personnel to carry out autopsies, workers told local media.

In the state capital Chilpancingo, 200 kilometres south of Mexico City, at least 600 bodies are being stored in a space designed to take 200, according to the Reforma newspaper.

Between eight and 10 bodies have been arriving daily at morgues in the state, according to Reforma, while the state has registered 1,919 homicides so far this year – already at least 100 more than last year.

More than a decade after Mexico launched a militarized crackdown on organized crime, violence has continued to surge across the country, and 2017 looks set to be the country’s most murderous year since such statistics were first compiled in 1997.

“This problem isn’t exclusive to Guerrero. It’s national,” said Father Mario Campos, a Catholic priest and social activist in the impoverished La Montaña region of Guerrero. “Our society has been battered by the narcos and our institutions are not responding or doing their jobs.”

Guerrero sits south of Mexico City, and includes Pacific beach resorts such as Acapulco and an impoverished mountain hinterland that includes some of the country’s poorest regions.

“People are unable to make ends meet so they get involved with criminal groups because they pay them,” Campos said.

Opium poppies have long been cultivated in the state, but amid growing demand for heroin from US consumers, local crime groups have shifted to the production and sale of heroin – in turn fueling more violence as criminal groups dispute control of production zones and transportation routes to markets north of the border.

Guerrero has long suffered violence, repression, and rule by local strongmen; it has also been the setting for some of Mexico’s most notorious crimes. In 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college were kidnapped by local police and presumably killed after they were handed over to drug traffickers.

Analysts say that government tactics have also inadvertently helped fuel the violence: law enforcement efforts targeting mafia leaders have led to the splintering of the previously dominant Beltrán Leyva cartel, unleashing a new round of conflict as rival factions vie for power.

At least 50 criminal groups now operate in the state, according to Guerrero’s attorney general, Javier Olea.

Insecurity and threats against teachers – often targets for extortion – forced at least 100 schools to close earlier this month around the city of Chilapa, one of the main poppy-growing areas.

Bus services to the city have also been suspended after the murders of at least 10 drivers. Public transport is reportedly a major method of moving drugs out of the region.

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Brazil must legalise drugs – its existing policy just destroys lives

For decades, guns and imprisonment have been the hallmarks of Brazil’s war against the drug trafficking. But the only way to beat the gangs is to stop creating criminals, says a top Brazilian judge



^{Luís Roberto Barroso}

The war raging in Rocinha, Latin America’s largest favela, has already been lost. Rooted in a dispute between gangs for control of drug trafficking, it has disrupted the daily life of the community in Rio de Janeiro since mid-September. With the sound of shots coming from all sides, schools and shops are constantly forced to close. Recently, a stray bullet killed a Spanish tourist. The war is not the only thing being lost.

For decades, Brazil has had the same drug policy approach. Police, weapons and numerous arrests. It does not take an expert to conclude the obvious: the strategy has failed. Drug trafficking and consumption have only increased. Einstein is credited with a saying – though apparently it is not his – that applies well to the case: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

In a case still before the Brazilian supreme court, I voted for decriminalising the possession of marijuana for private consumption. The case has been suspended and no date has been set for its resumption. I also proposed to open a broad debate on the legalisation of marijuana, to begin with – and then, if successful, cocaine. The subject is extremely delicate, and the outcome hinges on a decision from the legislature.

Drugs are an issue that has a profound impact on the criminal justice system, and it is legitimate for the supreme court to participate in the public debate. So here are the reasons for my views.

First, drugs are bad and it is therefore the role of the state and society to discourage consumption, treat dependents and repress trafficking. The rationale behind legalisation is rooted in the belief that it will help in achieving these goals.

Second, the war on drugs has failed. Since the 1970s, under the influence and leadership of the US, the world has tackled this problem with the use of police forces, armies, and armaments. The tragic reality is that 40 years, billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of prisoners and thousands of deaths later, things are worse. At least in countries like Brazil.

Third, as the American economist Milton Friedman argued, the only result of criminalisation is ensuring the trafficker’s monopoly.

With these points in mind, what would legalisation achieve?

In most countries in North America and Europe, the greatest concern of the authorities is users and the impact drugs have on their lives and on society. These are all important considerations. In Brazil, however, the principal focus must be ending the dominance drug dealers exercise over poor communities. Gangs have become the main political and economic power in thousands of modest neighbourhoods in Brazil. This scenario prevents a family of honest and hard-working people from educating their children away from the influence of criminal factions, who intimidate, co-opt and exercise an unfair advantage over any lawful activity. Crucially, this power of trafficking comes from illegality.

Another benefit of legalisation would be to prevent the mass incarceration of impoverished young people with no criminal record who are arrested for trafficking because they are caught in possession of negligible amounts of marijuana. A third of detainees in Brazil are imprisoned for drug trafficking. Once arrested, young prisoners will have to join one of the factions that control the penitentiaries – and on that day, they become dangerous.

Moreover, each place in prison costs 40,000 reais (£9,174) to create and 2,000 reais a month to maintain. Worse still, within a day of one man being arrested, another is recruited from the reserve army that exists in poor communities.

The insanity of this policy is striking: it destroys lives, generates worse outcomes for society, is expensive, and has no impact on drug trafficking. Only superstition, prejudice or ignorance could make someone think this is effective.

For these reasons, I believe we should consider alternative means of combating drugs, not least better planning, expert engagement and greater attention to the experiences of other countries. We should consider the possibility of dealing with marijuana as we deal with cigarettes: a licit product, regulated, sold in certain places, taxed, and subject to age and advertisement restrictions, warning notices and campaigns discouraging consumption. In the past two decades, cigarette consumption in Brazil has more than halved; fighting in the light of day, with ideas and information, has brought better results.

We cannot be certain that a progressive and cautious policy of decriminalisation and legalisation will be successful. What we can affirm is that the existing policy of criminalisation has failed. We must take chances; otherwise, we risk simply accepting a terrible situation. As the Brazilian navigator Amyr Klink said: “The worst shipwreck is not setting off at all.”

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Bill for legalised supply of opium, marijuana cleared for Parliament

Patiala MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi’s private Bill to seek legalisation of certain intoxicants, such as opium and marijuana, has been cleared by the legislative branch of Parliament, a statement issued by him here informed on Wednesday.

A proposed legislation to legalise and start regulated supply of traditional intoxicants such as opium and marijuana (cannabis) is likely to be placed in front of Parliament as a Private Member’s Bill in the coming winter session.

Patiala MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi’s Bill to seek legalisation of the “non-synthetic” intoxicants has been cleared by the legislative branch of Parliament, a statement issued by him informed on Wednesday. Gandhi hopes this winter session the amendment for the NDPS Act will be tabled before the Parliament and hopefully the Act shall be amended to provide relief to common drug user through cheap, regulated and medically supervised supply of traditional and natural intoxicants like ‘afeem’ and ‘bhukki’ (opium) “to get society rid of dangerous and killing medical and synthetic drugs”.

Also read | Punjab govt complete failure on drugs, says Dharamvira Gandhi

Gandhi, who won as Aam Aadmi Party candidate but has since been suspended from the party, is seeking to amend the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act 1985. This is the second Bill by Gandhi to be accepted for tabling in the Parliament, the first being the Sikh Marriage Bill 2016 that has already been tabled in the Parliament.

The reason for bringing up this amendment to the NDPS Act, says Gandhi, is that “the 30 years’ period of enactment and implementation of NDPS Act has produced results contrary to the desired results”. “Thirty years down the line, where do we stand? The fact of the matter is that the NDPS Act has not only failed in achieving its professed goals, but this ‘War on Drugs’ has delivered results directly opposite to what it aimed to achieve. There can be no better verdict and/or evaluation of such punitive drug laws than frank admission statement of the United Nations Conference on 12th March, 2009, admitting that ‘the war on drugs has failed’,” the statement added.

Dr Gandhi described the intentions behind the enactment that the “NDPS Act was enacted in order to meet then UN Conventions on Drug Policy... The objective was to prevent rampant drug use in society, as it was believed drugs and intoxicants degrade the moral character of individuals and destabilize well-ordered society.”

“Most drugs were made illegal. Anyone found using or possessing such substances was prescribed harsh punishments, and large amounts of money was invested in the enforcement of drug restrictions and punishments handed out herewith. Plants and chemicals used in the manufacture of drugs were strictly controlled, and drug enforcement agencies spent large amounts of money and time ensuring that drugs were eradicated from society,” he added.

“But the ‘war on drugs’ had led to the creation of a dangerous drug mafia, hundreds of scores of human rights violations and innumerable precious lives destroyed.”

“As the common man’s recreational substances were made unavailable, the newer, more potent, addictive and dangerous alternative drugs flooded the markets. Heroin replaced opium, cocaine replaced cannabis, and so on. As the drug business involves huge super profits, on one hand it creates rivalries spilling into gang wars and on the other hand it promotes ruthless and aggressive marketing, thus pushing more and more people into the drug world. Consequently, the petty traditional drug users are turning to the easily available and aggressively marketed more addictive and dangerous street drugs.”

He said statistics of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) indicate that number of drug users arrested contributes to 88% of those jailed under NDPS. “Traffickers and distributors are 2%. No financers have been arrested. The drug mafia operates with impunity, increasing the scale of its operations.”

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Gemeenten trekken één lijn tegen drugsoverlast

VLISSINGEN - De dertien Zeeuwse burgemeesters trekken één lijn bij de bestrijding van drugsoverlast. Ze hebben hierover afspraken gemaakt in overleg met de politie en het Openbaar Ministerie.

Tot nu werd in de ene gemeente strenger opgetreden dan in de andere. Bij het aantreffen van meer dan een halve gram harddrugs wordt voortaan zonder meer overgegaan tot het sluiten van een pand omdat er dan wettelijk gezien sprake is van een handelshoeveelheid.

Directe sluiting

Bij het aantreffen van softdrugs werd in sommige gemeenten eerst een waarschuwing gegeven. Voortaan zal ook hier eerder worden overgegaan tot directe sluiting. Bij meer dan 5 gram softdrugs is sprake van een handelshoeveelheid. De hoeveelheid softdrugs, de mate van professionaliteit en de criminele achtergrond van betrokkene(n) wegen mee bij de beslissing een woning, loods of ander pand te sluiten.

Een pand kan voor maximaal 24 maanden worden gesloten.

Duidelijkheid

,,Het beleid is een gezamenlijke vuist tegen ondermijnende criminaliteit. Het biedt duidelijkheid naar de handhavers en zeker ook naar de overtreders van de wet'', aldus de Zeeuwse burgemeesters in een gezamenlijk persbericht.

Ook in het handhaven van de regels voor coffeeshops kiezen de burgemeesters voor een gemeenschappelijke aanpak. Overigens zijn alleen in Vlissingen, Terneuzen en Goes nog coffeeshops met een gedoogverklaring open.

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The US Coast Guard is operating floating prisons in the Pacific Ocean, outside US legal protections

If you've followed the War on Terror at all, you're almost certainly familiar with the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — a US prison that exists outside the realm of the US justice system.

Now, it turns out, there's a secret US detention system in the War on Drugs, too — and this one is aboard US Coast Guard cutters sailing in the Pacific Ocean.

In an effort to staunch the flow of cocaine and other hard drugs from South America to Central America and points north, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed farther and farther from the shore in the Pacific Ocean. When these cutters capture a boat carrying drugs, the smugglers are brought onto the ships and kept shackled to the deck, sometimes outside in the elements, until the Coast Guard makes arrangements for them to be transported back to the US for trial.

But this isn't a wait of just a few hours or days. Often, these waits can last weeks or months, according to new reporting from The New York Times. Coast Guard officials say they can do this because the drug smugglers aren't under arrest until they reach US shores, but some of the worst cases are drawing criticism even from Coast Guard officials.

Seth Freed Wesslernov reported this story for The Times. He says a combination of US agreements with Latin American countries and the US Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act allows the US to take this action. Wesslernov spoke with The World's Carol Hills about his reporting and these "floating Guantánamos" on the Pacific Ocean.
The Coast Guard usually has a reputation for being the good guys out there — rescuing people, apprehending bad guys. We've done stories about that. I take it it's a little bit more complicated?

It is. The Coast Guard has a broad mission. It does search and rescue, enforces fisheries laws. It enforces drug laws on the oceans and, what few people know, is that the US Coast Guard has actually been deployed in recent years deep into the Pacific Ocean to interdict drug smugglers moving between South America — Colombia, Ecuador — and Central America, where the drugs — often cocaine — are dropped off and then often moved up through Mexico. These Coast Guard ships are deployed deep into the Pacific —sometimes thousands of miles from the nearest US port, where they're detaining suspected smugglers and holding them aboard these Coast Guard cutters. What I found in my reporting is that detainees, men who are moving cocaine in the Pacific Ocean.
You write about some Ecuadorians who are out there transporting drugs and they end up shackled for many, many days on a Coast Guard boat. Give us the quick thumbnail sketch of this one guy, in particular, Jhonny Arcentales, and how he ended up there?

He is a fisherman from a coastal town in Ecuador and was having a particularly, economically, rough year and made a decision to take a job smuggling cocaine off of the coast of Ecuador. He really didn't know all that much about what he was doing.

As he was moving this cocaine on a boat with three other men, another Ecuadorian man and a Colombian man, they were approaching Central America, approaching Guatemala and the US Navy and Coast Guard intercepted that boat and pulled these men off. For the next 70 days, Mr. Arcentales and the other man he was detained with were held — always chained by their ankle to the deck of a ship or to a cable running along one of these large Coast Guard or Navy ships — for 70 days. He was moved from ship to ship as these Coast Guard cutters went about their patrols, picking up more cocaine in the Pacific Ocean.

So this guy, Arcentales, and another guy — they're on a ship. This is a Coast Guard ship and they're basically exposed to the elements and basically shackled and not getting much food. How can the Coast Guard get away with keeping people under those conditions when the men haven't even been charged?

The Coast Guard makes the argument that these people are not formally under arrest until they get to the United States. They're simply being held, while the Coast Guard deals with the logistical challenges of trying to get these men onto shore — into an airplane and flown to Florida, where they'll be prosecuted.

Courts have generally bought the government's argument. The argument by the Coast Guard and by federal prosecutors that these logistical delays are legitimate, as it's hard enough to get people back. The reality is that when the Coast Guard has had to move people more quickly, they do. Very often, detainees are brought to port in one of these cutters, then placed in a hidden room in a helicopter hangar or in a room below deck and hidden there for the day while the Coast Guard cutter refuels or the Coast Guard crew get a bit of a break and then are brought back out to sea.

So there are these delays that people in the Coast Guard — Coast Guard officials I interviewed — though really are actually unreasonable, considering that they're near an airport. Somebody could be put on a plane and brought back to the United States. As we've made this decision to prosecute more and more people, these delays have grown longer and longer.

What we're seeing now is sort of carting people around ... carting suspected drug smugglers around the ocean an average of 18 days — very often longer than that — as the government waits to transport people to courts in Florida.

Now Donald Trump's chief of staff, General John Kelly, he played a key role in expanding the reach of the Coast Guard in this way.

Well, John Kelly was in charge of Southern Command, the Department of Defense area of operation in Latin America that's in charge of managing the drug war in Latin America. He was the head of Southern Command between 2012 and 2016 then retired. Under the Trump administration, he became head of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard.

On two occasions he has had a role in these operations. And John Kelly has really been a proponent of the idea. He's called drug smuggling in Central America an existential threat to the United States. And the idea that we need to push our borders outward farther and farther away from our actual borders in order to defend the homeland, that's led to this effort to interdict drugs far, far away from the United States in places where drug smugglers actually really have very little idea where their drugs are headed. So, Johnny Arcentales and the other men that I've spoken to know, they're not thinking about where these drugs are going. The drugs are moving from South America to Central America as far as they're concerned. It's out of their control after that, but we're arresting people in international waters, often on foreign boats, thousands of miles from the United States.
So the Coast Guard is arresting these people in these boats and it's not clear whether the drugs on these boats are going to the US?

Ultimately, most of the cocaine on these smugglers' small boats is probably headed for the United States. But some of it may be going to other markets, to European markets, to Australian markets or elsewhere. It's not always clear that the drugs are coming here and, in fact, the circuit court in California has said that the US can't prosecute these cases unless they can prove that the drugs were headed to the United States — that they actually intended to to show up there. And that's one of the reasons why federal prosecutors prefer to bring these cases to Florida, where that burden of proof is not required.
Whatever happened to Johnny Arcentales? How many days was he out there on this ship?

He was picked up in September of 2014. And for the next 70 days, he was held aboard a series of Coast Guard cutters and Navy frigates as he was moved around the Pacific Ocean. He describes the experience of feeling like he really might disappear.

He didn't know that he was going to be brought to the United States, wasn't being allowed to call his family — wondering, "does my family think I died?" He was ultimately brought to shore in Central America and told "you're going to be handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration now" and brought to the United States to face prosecution after more than two months held aboard these ships.

He was brought to the United States, charged criminally under drug trafficking laws and was sentenced to 10 years to a decade in federal prison. He's now in a federal prison in New Jersey.

The community he comes from on the central coast of Ecuador, many men have left on these smuggling trips. More than a year ago, there was a major earthquake in Ecuador that left families in dire economic straits. Since then, there have been more and more people leaving. In fact, his son-in-law decided not long after that earthquake to take one of these jobs and left home. He didn't tell anyone and disappeared. Days later, was picked up by the Coast Guard. He was also sentenced to a decade in US federal prison.

The question about the legality of the US Coast Guard's detention practices has not been raised, in an international context, in criminal courts. In the United States, when defense attorneys have tried to argue that the conditions amount to inhumane treatment, some cases judges have agreed. But they've said there's nothing we can really do about it. The law does not allow for us to throw this case out.
What about the shame factor?

This is a practice of detention that until now hasn't really been known.

I wrote to dozens of men and received letters back from many of these men who'd been detained on these Coast Guard ships, describing the conditions of their confinement. Describing what sounded to me like real terror for them on the high seas. Those are stories that hadn't been told before.
Are they allowed to use a proper bathroom?

No the bathrooms on these boats are very different, ship to ship. They're provided essentially buckets to use as toilets on some of the boats. And these men are then required to clean out the buckets themselves and dump them off the edge of the ship. They describe that as a really terrible disgusting process. And the Coast Guard says "our ships aren't equipped as detention centers. We don't have facilities here. This is what we've got."

In fact, I spoke to Coast Guard commanders who are really uncomfortable about the conditions on their ship — and uncomfortable about the amount of time people are held.

I have evidence of people being held for upwards of 70 days. A Coast Guard official told me people have been held for 90 days. But the Coast Guard has no clear rules about how long they can hold people.
When you talk to Coast Guard officials and ask them about these things that you've researched and found out, what do they say? Are they proud of this or are they a little bit wary of what's going on?

Many of the Coast Guard officials that I talked to were really uncomfortable about the detention conditions and the amount of time that people were being held during their detention. I really felt that officials thought people need to be moved off the boats more quickly and, again, are uncomfortable about the conditions that they have to hold people in.
Have you talked with the families?

Yes. Many families, in fact, believe that their loved ones — husbands, fathers, sons — had disappeared. It's not unheard of for fishermen to disappear in the sea.

For these fishermen, the ocean is the geography of their life. And so when I talked to Arcentales, for example, about the sea, he said to me "the ocean used to be a place that for me represented freedom. But now it's like a prison in the open ocean."

And all of these men say "we understand that we've broken laws. We understand that we made these decisions. We understand that we're going to be punished for this." The question that they raise is "how are we in the United States right now?"

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After marijuana, are magic mushrooms next to be decriminalised in California?

Mayoral candidate near San Francisco seeks signatures to put decriminalisation on statewide ballot next year, saying drug could offer healing at time of crisis

As California prepares for the legalisation of recreational marijuana in 2018, one man is pushing for the state to become the first to decriminalise magic mushrooms.

Kevin Saunders, a mayoral candidate for the city of Marina, just south of the San Francisco Bay, has filed a proposal that would exempt adults over the age of 21 from any penalties over possessing, growing, selling or transporting psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms.

If he can get 365,880 voter signatures by the end of April 2018, the California Psilocybin Legalization Initiative will be placed on the statewide ballot.

Saunders thinks that now is the right time because, he says, the drug can help bridge the current political divide and restore a sense of community.

“The world is really hurting and everybody is at a loss about what’s going on right now with Trump, Brexit, the refugee crisis and everything else. I’m at a loss at what to do politically, but the only thing I feel like we could do is get psilocybin into more people’s hands,” he said.

“It deflates the ego and strips down your own walls and defences and allows you to look at yourself in a different light,” he said, adding: “It could allow people to figure out what to do and could revolutionise the way we treat those with depression, addiction and cluster headaches.”

A profound magic mushroom experience helped Saunders get over a “debilitating five-year heroin addiction” in 2003, when he was 32. “I got to the root of why I made a conscious decision to become a heroin addict; I’ve been clean almost 15 years.”

California is one of eight states where voters have legalised marijuana for recreational use, even though it’s still included in the federal government’s list of schedule 1 drugs. Saunders and Kitty Merchant, who is co-author of the measure and his fiancee, believe that magic mushrooms – also listed as schedule 1 drugs – are the next logical step.

“I think we have learned a lot from marijuana and we are ready as a society,” he said.

So far, they have about 1,000 signatures, but plan to ramp up signature-gathering efforts in early December at college campuses and events like the medical marijuana summit The Emerald Cup. Eighty-five thousand signatures will trigger hearings at the state capitol.

Merchant and Saunders are not the first couple to propose legalising mushrooms. The husband and wife team Tom and Sheri Eckhert announced earlier this year that they were pushing for a similar ballot measure in Oregon, hoping to make it the first state in the US to legalise the drug.

They have taken a more conservative approach than Saunders has, aiming for a 2020 ballot and seeking to legalise the drug to be taken only in licensed centres under the supervision of a certified facilitator. Individuals would not be able to just buy the mushrooms and consume them at home as they can with marijuana.

“It’s not only amazing for mental health, there’s also a lot of potential for self-development and creative work,” Tom Eckhert told Vice in July.

Their efforts run in parallel to several promising clinical trials in which psychedelic mushrooms have been used to successfully treat severe depression, anxiety and addiction.

Robin Carhart-Harris, who has been studying the use of psilocybin to tackle treatment-resistant depression at University College London, believes that it is a “logical inevitability” that the drug will become available to patients.

However, such legalisation will only take place once final phase 3 clinical trials are completed and the drug is approved by the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. To standardise the dose, the psilocybin would have to be administered in capsule or pill form.

“Depression is such a major problem and it’s not being treated effectively at the moment. A lot of patients aren’t seeing results with traditional antidepressants,” Carhart-Harris said, adding that psilocybin could be a legal medicine – to be administered in clinics – within the next five years.

Although magic mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs in terms of the number of people who require emergency medical treatment, according to last year’s Global Drug Survey, they still carry risks.

“They are drugs with very low toxicity and very low abuse potential,” said psychiatrist Adam Winstock, founder of the Global Drug Survey, who said that if you take into account how often people take them, they are safer than cannabis.

“The only difference being the potential for mushrooms to distort your perceptions, cognition, emotions in a way that is totally outside of most people’s real of normal experience. For a minority of people, taken in the wrong situation, that could be terrifying.”

Winstock said he’d prefer to see a well-regulated market for magic mushrooms where you’d have to show a letter from a doctor saying you were not receiving any acute mental health care or medications. Buyers should also be given advice on how to use the drug, what the effects are and given links to online services to manage difficult situations if they arise.

“I would get people to treat mushrooms with the respect they deserve,” he said.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a not-for-profit group focused on ending the “war on drugs”, would not comment on the specific proposals in California and Oregon, but its director of legal affairs, Tamar Todd, said: “We certainly agree that nobody should be arrested or incarcerated simply because they possessed or used drugs.”

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Gemeenten vrezen dat ze te weinig ruimte krijgen om met wietteelt te reguleren

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Volgens burgemeester Depla zijn 'gevarieerde experimenten belangrijker dan welke gemeenten mogen meedoen'. Hij waarschuwt voor het risico van één variant. Als die mislukt 'zien tegenstanders hun gelijk bevestigd en ligt het debat weer jaren stil'.

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Feds: Philly officer sold drugs stolen by corrupt Baltimore police squad

Federal agents arrested a Philadelphia police officer Tuesday, accusing him of conspiring with officers in Baltimore to sell cocaine and heroin seized from that city’s streets.

Prosecutors say that Eric Troy Snell, 33, earned thousands of dollars serving as a conduit between corrupt members of a Baltimore police task force who stole the drugs and his brother, who sold them in Philadelphia.

Investigators also have accused Snell of threatening the children of a Baltimore officer who pleaded guilty in the case.

His arrest is the latest in a widening police corruption scandal that has rocked Maryland’s largest city, resulting in the arrests of eight members of an elite gun task force there who prosecutors have accused of robbing and extorting drug dealers for years.

A Philadelphia police spokesman said that Snell — a three-year veteran of the force who had been assigned to the department’s 35th District in Northwest Philadelphia — would be suspended for 30 days with intent to dismiss.

Snell began his police career in Baltimore before arriving in Philadelphia in 2014. It was at the police academy in Maryland that he met Jemell Rayam, a fellow officer and his primary contact with the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force.

The squad had been deployed to crack down on the proliferation of illegal guns in that city. But prosecutors now say that Rayam and several cohorts, including two commanding sergeants, used their positions to rob drug dealers and pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars uncovered while searching homes and cars of suspected criminals.

According to Snell’s indictment, the Philadelphia officer set up an October 2016 meeting between his brother, who is not named in court filings, and Rayam to arrange for the sale of cocaine seized by the task force.

After Snell’s brother sold the drugs, the officer allegedly deposited $1,000 in proceeds in Rayam’s bank account, keeping $1,000 for himself. Several similar transactions followed over the next two months, the indictment alleges.

Rayam, arrested along with six other officers in March, pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy last month.

But in recorded jailhouse phone conversations referenced in court filings, Snell allegedly pressured Rayam to keep his name out of the ongoing investigation.

“Snell told Rayam to ‘stand tall’ and said he would ‘keep an eye’ on Rayam’s kids, which Rayam perceived as a threat to harm Rayam’s children if Rayam told authorities about Snell’s illegal drug trafficking,” the indictment says.

Snell made his initial appearance Tuesday in federal court in Baltimore on drug conspiracy charges. It was not immediately clear whether he had retained a lawyer.

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Op maandag 27 november 2017 15:31 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
His arrest is the latest in a widening police corruption scandal that has rocked Maryland’s largest city, resulting in the arrests of eight members of an elite gun task force there who prosecutors have accused of robbing and extorting drug dealers for years.

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Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 00:51 schreef Odaiba het volgende:
Deze strijd is (jammer genoeg) echt nooit te winnen, tenzij je alle mensen weet te overtuigen niet aan die troep te beginnen en dat gaat dus nooit lukken.

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DEA approves synthetic marijuana while cracking down on real marijuana

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While most of the country was preparing to get high on some Thanksgiving turkey last week, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) quietly granted a Schedule II classification to the drug Dronabinol, a synthetic THC nasal spray. The classification means the government officially recognizes its medicinal potential and will allow it to be prescribed, sold and federally regulated.

Non-synthetic THC, which is the active chemical compound in marijuana, remains classified as a Schedule I drug. As such, the government believes it is potentially dangerous and has no medicinal value.

Insys Therapeutics, the company which developed Dronabinol, will now enjoy a monopoly on the treatment of cancer patients who experience nausea from chemotherapy thanks to the DEA.

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With Insys facing no competition in the market, they will price the medication between $1,000 to $2,000 per month.

All of this comes after years of well documented legal maneuvering and market manipulation by the pharmaceutical firm.

Last year Insys spent $500,000 to stop Arizona's recreational cannabis measure. They argued that pot businesses would be bad for public health and endanger children. Less than five months after defeating the legalization effort, they announced to shareholders that the DEA had given them approval to launch Syndros, the market name for Dronabinol.

Insys also happens to manufacture fentanyl, a painkiller that is 50 times stronger than heroin and is driving the national opioid crisis. Six former Insys executives were recently arrested for bribing doctors to prescribe fentanyl to patients who didn't need it, including Insys founder Dr. John N. Kapoor, who stepped down after the charges were filed.

"I am confident that I have committed no crimes and believe I will be fully vindicated after the trail," Kapoor said in his resignation letter.

That product is a Transmucosal Immediate Release Fentanyl known as Subsys which was meant to treat cancer patients, but prescribed widely to those who did not have cancer.

Insys is now working on a synthetic version of Cannabidiol to treat a variety of ailments in children. That substance, which is also an oral solution, is currently in various stages of clinical trials in the FDA's approval process.

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Internet-facilitated drugs trade

An analysis of the size, scope and the role of the Netherlands

The potential role of the Internet in facilitating drugs trade first gained mass attention with the rise and fall of Silk Road; the first major online market place for illegal goods on the hidden web. After Silk Road was taken down by the FBI in October 2013, it was only a matter of weeks before copycats filled the void.

Today, there are around 50 so-called cryptomarkets and vendor shops where anonymous sellers and buyers find each other to trade illegal drugs, new psychoactive substances, prescription drugs and other goods and services. But it is not just the obscure parts of the Internet where drugs are on offer. There are numerous web shops, easily found by search engines, which offer new psychoactive substances, often labelled as 'research chemicals'.

The Netherlands occupies a crucial position in European illicit drug markets. Data from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction suggested it is the main producer of MDMA, ecstasy and herbal cannabis and a key distribution hub for cannabis resin and cocaine. Whether the pivotal role of the Netherlands also extends online, has yet been unclear.

The Netherlands Ministry of Security and Justice commissioned RAND Europe to provide a firmer evidence base to this phenomenon and, in particular, the role of the Netherlands. This report analyses the size and scope of Internet-facilitated drugs trade both on the so-called clear and hidden web, paying special attention to the Netherlands, and delineates potential avenues for law enforcement for detection and intervention.

Key Findings

Monthly revenues from drugs on cryptomarkets are in the double-digit million dollars

Of all products and services on offer, this study found that 57 per cent of listings across the eight analysed cryptomarkets offered drugs. The results indicate that these cryptomarkets generated a total monthly revenue of $14.2m (¤12.6m) in January 2016, $12.0m (¤10.5m) when prescription drugs and alcohol and tobacco are excluded (lower-boundary estimate). An upper-boundary estimate for monthly drug revenues via visible listings on all cryptomarkets would be $25.0m (¤22.1m) and $21.1m (¤18.5m) when prescription drugs and alcohol and tobacco are excluded. Cannabis, stimulants and ecstasy were responsible for 70 per cent of all revenues on the analysed cryptomarkets. No information was identified on revenues on the clear net. The values are based on EUR/USD exchange rate of 1.14 as of April 2016.

Cryptomarkets are not just an 'eBay for Drugs'

Large 'wholesale' level transactions (those greater than $1,000) are important for cryptomarkets, generating nearly one quarter of overall revenue both in September 2013 and in January 2016. Based on these findings it is likely that many cryptomarket customers are drug dealers sourcing stock intended for offline distribution.

Most revenues are generated by vendors who indicate they are operating from Anglo-Saxon countries or Western Europe

Most vendors appeared to be operating from the United States (890), followed by the United Kingdom (338), and Germany (225). Vendors indicating they ship from the United States generated 36% per cent of all drug revenues within our sample. Other Anglo-Saxon (Canada and the United Kingdom) as well as Western European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, France) also generate substantial proportions of revenues.

Revenues from vendors operating from the Netherlands are by far the largest on a per capita basis

Revenues to vendors reporting to operate from the Netherlands on cryptomarkets accounted for 8 per cent of total drug revenues. On a per capita basis, revenues to vendors operating from the Netherlands were 2.4 times higher than those from the United Kingdom and 4.5 higher than those from the United States.

Vendors and buyers on online markets seem to have similar characteristics

Traditional investigation techniques applied in the drug chain, postal detection and interception, online detection and online disruption are potential law enforcement strategies in the detection and intervention of Internet-facilitated drugs trade. In addition, international cooperation and coordination (and the accompanying legal challenges), capacity and resources and (technical) capabilities could play a facilitating role in deploying the different strategies to tackle Internet-facilitated drugs trade.

There are four broad categories of modes of detection and intervention

Traditional investigation techniques applied in the drug chain, postal detection and interception, online detection and online disruption are potential law enforcement strategies in the detection and intervention of Internet-facilitated drugs trade. In addition, international cooperation and coordination (and the accompanying legal challenges), capacity and resources and (technical) capabilities could play a facilitating role in deploying the different strategies to tackle Internet-facilitated drugs trade.

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Op dinsdag 28 november 2017 17:17 schreef Adept het volgende:

[..]

Oftwel, zorgen dat het leven zo leuk en vermakelijk in elkaar steekt dat het niet in je opkomt