De War on Drugs in Mexico #4 - Hoe lossen we de oorlog op?

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Op donderdag 27 september 2012 22:07 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Nieuwsuur: Aandacht voor de War on Drugs op de Algemene Vergadering VN.

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Time for a tactical shift in the drug war

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Calderon argued that developed nations have a responsibility to approach the issue of drugs realistically, not just by considering a regulated drug market, but by viewing it as a public health problem.

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Those who have long called for a change in policy have applauded his bold call to action, while at the same time noting Calderon's emphatic plea to the UN was not actually mentioned in the official UN summary of his comments.

Sanho Tree, the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute of Policy Studies, commenting on the omission, said: "It sounds like a lot of censorship because fully half of his speech was devoted towards criticising the international war on drugs and the conventional approaches that have been undertaken, and yet when your read the official summary on the website it's as though it's been scrubbed of any type of criticism. In fact it makes him sound like a cheerleader it's actually quite offensive because future historians and journalists [...] will assume from the summary that there was really no criticism of the drug war."

Tree said the UN was also "very defensive" about reopening discussions on amending three related conventions which, he says "keep the international drug war locked in place".

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Nieuwe corruptiezaak bij Franse politie

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In Marseille, de tweede stad van Frankrijk, zijn twaalf agenten gearresteerd op verdenking van corruptie. Ze zouden geld en drugs hebben gestolen van criminele bendes. Het is de volgende smet op het imago van het Franse politiekorps.

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'Drugsbende achter aanval op CIA-agenten in Mexico'

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De Mexicaanse politieagenten die eind augustus een auto van de Amerikaanse ambassade onder vuur namen, hebben mogelijk gehandeld in opdracht van de georganiseerde misdaad. Dat heeft een Amerikaanse betrokkene dinsdag gezegd tegen persbureau AP.

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Los Angeles city council rescinds ban on pot shops but legal future is unclear

Repeal is a victory for pro-marijuana activists and cancer patients, but federal authorities have ordered shops to close

Los Angeles has repealed its ban on pot shops, granting a reprieve to the city's estimated 1,000 dispensaries but leaving their legal status in limbo.

The city council voted 11 to 2 on Tuesday to rescind the ban, which it had approved in July, following lobbying by the increasingly well-organised cannabis sector.

It was a victory for organisations and unions which represent pot shop owners and workers as well as activists who say they need they need medical marijuana to treat serious illnesses.

Bill Rosendahl, 67, a council member with diabetes, neuropathy and cancer, made an impassioned plea for the dispensaries. "Where does anybody go, even a councilman go, to get his medical marijuana?," he asked in a hoarse voice, his body gaunt. Doctors, he said, told him he might not have "much time to live".

However opponents, including police, council members and neighbourhood groups, said pot shops used the medical argument as cover to sell to recreational users, turning areas seedy and crime-ridden.

The vote will need to be repeated next week because it was not unanimous. It was triggered after pot shop advocates collected more than 20,000 signatures to include the issue in a March referendum.

The council opted to reverse the ban rather than face an expensive and possibly doomed referendum fight with a sector which has hired lawyers and lobbyists and formed groups such as Americans for Safe Access and the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance. The coalition has another powerful member in the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents workers at dozens of shops.

The city's pot shops remain in legal limbo. Federal statutes forbid the sale of marijuana, but California – along with 16 other states and the District of Columbia – permit medical marijuana. The apparent contradiction has become most apparent in LA where pot shops have proliferated to the point even some advocates say there are too many and that rogue operators give the rest a bad name.

Green-uniformed pot shop workers on the Venice boardwalk invite tourists into stores for consultations with doctors who diagnose ailments and write cannabis prescriptions.

Last week federal authorities raided several pot shops in the city and ordered dozens of others to close within two weeks.

One council member, Mitchell Englander, urged the city to use zoning laws to crack down on pot shops because they were not on a municipal list of approved land uses.

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Scandal Rocks Boston as City Realizes that Thousands of People Were Falsely Convicted for Drugs

Court administrators in Massachusetts are scrambling to set up special court sessions to address the cases of more than a thousand people imprisoned after being convicted of drug crimes based on lab evidence submitted by Annie Dookhan, the now disgraced former state crime lab analyst. Dookhan herself was arrested last Friday for her fraudulent work at the lab, as the scandal continues to reverberate across the state's criminal justice system.

According to State Police reports obtained by the Boston Globe , Dookhan has admitted not performing proper lab tests on drug samples for "two or three years," forging colleagues' signatures, and improperly removing evidence from storage. Citing the same reports, the Boston Herald reported that Dookhan had admitted to "intentionally turning a negative sample into a positive a few times" and to "dry-labbing" samples, where she classified samples as drugs without actually testing them.

"I messed up bad, it's my fault," Dookhan told police, explaining that "she did what she did in order to get more work done."

Dookhan's misconduct, which first came to light in June 2011, has already shaken the Dept. of Public Health, whose commissioner, John Auerbach, has resigned, as have two other managers at the Hinton Laboratories facility in Jamaica Plain where the lab was located. The crime lab was consolidated earlier this year into the Dept. of Public Safety as part of a budgetary move.

The incident has also raised the question of systemic issues affecting the crime lab. In internal emails leaked to the Globe , laboratory staff went on record as far back as 2008 describing "the situation in the evidence office [as] past the breaking point." That was before some of the now former management at Hinton took those positions, though not before Dookhan. The Globe article describes "a staff drowning in work, instances of misplaced evidence in crime cases, and mounting frustrations over the Patrick administration’s seeming indifference."

Attorney General Martha Coakley and the State Police charge that Dookhan's mishandling of drug evidence is a crime under the state's broadly written witness intimidation law. She is also charged with falsifying academic credentials for claiming a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, a degree which the school said it never issued.

Dookhan tested some 60,000 drug samples in 34,000 criminal cases during her nine years at the now shuttered lab. Some 1,141 people are currently serving drug sentences in state prisons or county jails in cases where she had a hand in testing the drug evidence. It is not known how many of those cases have been tainted by Dookhan's actions.

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Obama's 2012 Drug Strategy: The Same Old Same Old

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The Obama administration released its 2012 National Drug Control Strategy and accompanying 2013 drug budget Tuesday, and while the administration touted it as a "drug policy for the 21st Century," it is very much of a piece with anti-drug policies going back to the days of Richard Nixon.

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The federal government will spend more than $25 billion on drug control under the proposed budget, nearly half a billion dollars more than this year

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One area where treatment funding is unequivocally increased is among the prison population. Federal Bureau of Prisons treatment spending would jump to $109 million, up 17% over this year, while the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program for state prisoners would be funded at $21 million, up nearly 50% over this year.

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On the drug war side of the ledger, domestic anti-drug law enforcement spending would increase by more than $61 million to $9.4 billion, with the DEA's Diversion Control Program (prescription drugs) and paying for federal drug war prisoners showing the biggest increases. The administration anticipates shelling out more than $4.5 billion to imprison drug offenders.

But domestic law enforcement is only part of the drug war picture. The budget also allocates $3.7 billion for interdiction, a 2.5% increase over the 2012 budget, and another $2 billion for international anti-drug program, including assistance to the governments of Central America, Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan.

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"The president sure does talk a good game about treating drugs as a health issue but so far it's just that: talk," said Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and a former narcotics officer in Baltimore. "Instead of continuing to fund the same old 'drug war' approaches that are proven not to work, the president needs to put his money where his mouth is."

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Mogelijk groot succes Calderon met doden kartelbaas Los Zetas

De grote leider van Los Zetas lijkt gedood in een vuurgevecht met marinetroepen nabij de grens tussen de Mexicaanse staat Coahuila en de Verenigde Staten. Heriberto Lazcano – kortweg ‘El Lazca’ – zou zondagavond plaatselijke tijd zijn omgebracht.

Volgens AFP heeft de Mexcicaanse marine een verklaring afgegeven waarin wordt gezegd dat nog op de uitslag van een onderzoek wordt gewacht. Maar voorlopig forensisch bewijs duidt erop dat het gaat om ‘De Beul’; de machtigste man binnen het beruchte Mexicaanse drugskartel, aldus het Mexicaanse El PUniversal.

Mocht de volledige autopsie en identificatie zijn afgerond en bevestigen dat het om Lazcana gaat, geldt dit als een van de grootste overwinningen die president Felipe Calderon heeft geboekt in zijn reeds zes jaar durende oorlog tegen drugsbendes. Vorige maand werd al een belangrijke leider van het Golfkartel opgepakt.

Reuters meldt dat bij het vuurgevecht in het noorden van Mexico twee bendeleden zijn gedood. Er is “sterk bewijs” dat een van hen Lazcano is, aldus de marine. Hij geldt als een van Mexico’s meest gezochte criminelen en de VS hebben een prijs van 5 miljoen dollar gezet op het gevangennemen van ‘El Lazca’.

Los Zetas wordt gezien als een van de twee meest machtige drugkartels in Mexico en worden verantwoordelijk gehouden voor vele lugubere slachtpartijen in de almaar durende strijd met andere bendes. Vooral met het Golfkartel, waarvan Los Zetas zich afsplitste, wordt een bloedige strijd geleverd.

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Lichaam gedode leider drugskartel gestolen

MEXICO-STAD -
Een gewapende bende heeft het lichaam van een kopstuk van het gevreesde drugskartel Los Zetas dinsdag uit het mortuarium in het noorden van Mexico gestolen. Dat gebeurde een paar uur nadat Mexicaanse mariniers Heriberto Lazcano hadden gedood, zei de openbaar aanklager dinsdag.

De 38-jarige Lazcano, bijgenaamd 'de beul', werd maandag samen met een ander bendelid in Cohahuila, vlak bij de Amerikaans-Mexicaanse grens, in een vuurgevecht met mariniers doodgeschoten. Forensische tests en vingerafdrukken bevestigden dat het inderdaad om Lazcano ging.

De Amerikaanse regering had 5 miljoen dollar uitgeloofd voor tips die tot de aanhouding van Lazcano zouden leiden. Het Openbaar Ministerie in Mexico plaatste hem in 2011 op de lijst van 37 meest gezochte drugsbaronnen. Tips die tot zijn aanhouding zouden leiden, zouden 30 miljoen pesos (ongeveer 1,7 miljoen euro) kunnen opleveren.

Los Zetas geldt als een van de machtigste en gewelddadigste kartels van Mexico en houdt zich vooral bezig met drugssmokkel en mensenhandel. De bende werd eind jaren 90 opgericht door overlopers van de Mexicaanse speciale eenheden. De drugsoorlog in Mexico heeft inmiddels 60.000 mensen het leven gekost.

Bron

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Op dinsdag 9 oktober 2012 19:36 schreef Eagle_99 het volgende:

[..]

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Drug Charges Dropped Because Of Too Much Evidence

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A fugitive doctor charged in the nation’s largest prosecution of Internet pharmacies is getting off in part because there’s just too much evidence in his case: more than 400,000 documents and two terabytes of electronic data that federal authorities say is expensive to maintain.

Armando Angulo was indicted in 2007 in a multimillion dollar scheme that involved selling prescription drugs to patients who were never examined or even interviewed by a physician. A federal judge in Iowa dismissed the charge last week at the request of prosecutors, who want to throw out the many records collected over their nine-year investigation to free up more space.

The Miami doctor fled to his native Panama after coming under investigation in 2004, and Panamanian authorities say they do not extradite their own citizens. Given the unlikelihood of capturing Angulo and the inconvenience of maintaining so much evidence, prosecutors gave up the long pursuit.

“Continued storage of these materials is difficult and expensive,” wrote Stephanie Rose, the U.S. attorney for northern Iowa. She called the task “an economic and practical hardship” for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

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Op dinsdag 9 oktober 2012 21:56 schreef VeX- het volgende:
Ik ben toch wel verrast dat ze Z1 zo prompt toch te pakken hebben gekregen. Dat was een keiharde.

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Op dinsdag 9 oktober 2012 23:34 schreef waht het volgende:

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Dat wel, maar het zijn geen supermannen. Uiteindelijk delven ze allemaal het onderspit.

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Op dinsdag 9 oktober 2012 23:34 schreef waht het volgende:

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Dat wel, maar het zijn geen supermannen. Uiteindelijk delven ze allemaal het onderspit.

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Op dinsdag 9 oktober 2012 23:36 schreef Viajero het volgende:

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Klopt. En met elke die valt neemt de hoeveelheid cocaine af en moeten mensen in New York, London en Amsterdam maar met minder coke genoegen nemen. Toch?

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Op vrijdag 12 oktober 2012 16:17 schreef Deeltjesversneller het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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ATF Whistleblower Fired in Denny's Parking Lot For Exposing Corruption

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Cefalu was placed on administrative leave a year and a half ago after speaking out about Operation Fast and Furious. In 2009, he launched the website CleanUpATF.org in order for agents within ATF to blow the whistle on corrupt behavior anonymously due to the agency's history of retaliation against those who "jump their chain of command." His website is where bloggers and news reporters first saw allegations of gunwalking. The site is heavily monitored by the Department of Justice.

In the February 2012 issue of Townhall Magazine, Cefalu detailed the ATF corruption leading up to Fast and Furious and his retaliation case coming from inside the bureau that led to his firing this week.

Cefalu Termination

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My name is Vincent A. Cefalu. I am a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms under the U.S. Department of Justice. Welcome to our nightmare. I say our because dozens of us cant write a single article, and I have been asked and am privileged to speak on behalf of my peers who have not had the opportunity to voice their concerns related to ATF mismanagement, particularly with Operation Fast and Furious. This grotesquely dangerous and reckless operation should have never been considered, much less allowed to occur. It employed the unprecedented practice of allowing fi rearms to be transferred to violent criminals without any interdiction effort at all, in hopes of somehow later identifying high-level Mexican cartel members. But it was the pattern of gross mismanagement that had been allowed to exist in ATFand that I witnessedwhich fostered an environment that unleashed this operation, violating public trust on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

At no time in my career prior to becoming a complainant against my own agencythe agency I love and have been honored to serve could I have ever been convinced I would be the poster boy for whistleblowers and challenges to corrupt government. As a young Marine military policeman, I was thrilled, proud and honored to be in law enforcement. I never considered it work....

But I ended up the lead agent in a case with huge vendetta overtones by my state and local counterparts, where members of an ad hoc task force insisted on fast-tracking wiretap attempts against the suspects. I refused. When I reported this officially, senior management retroactively fabricated justifications for the actions they were preparing to take against me. This led to a network of frustrated agents and inspectors, which ultimately resulted in my being contacted regarding the gun-walking practices and cover-ups related to Fast and Furious. I took this information to Congress and advocated others to do the same.

In the 18 months leading up to Fast and Furious, Special Agent in Charge Bill Newells actions required that the agency had to pay out over a million dollars in settlements which should have led to his removal for the related conduct, had it ever been investigated and documented. Special Agent in Charge George Gillette had been disciplined multiple times, and his subordinates had logged dozens of complaints related to his incompetence and mismanagement. Had ATF dealt with them at the time, the Fast and Furious program would never have been undertaken. However, by attacking those who exposed corruption, ATF was able to keep their golden boys in place. This process was repeated all over the country (Newell has since been relocated to D.C. headquarters, but not fired). So pronounced was the mismanagement that ATF logged more complaints than either the DEA or FBI per agent. This is notable because the latter two are much larger agencies.

I write this article almost 6 years into the whistleblower process with ATF and only after millions of taxpayer dollars and countless hours of manpower have been expended by my agency to attack and discredit me and other whistleblowers.

The environment at ATF today is one where honest officers cannot act without fear of reprisal from dishonest officers. Such is this agent's story, and the story of many other whistleblowers, including those involved in Fast and Furious.

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Speed and the city: meet the Adderall-addled adults of New York

Adderall is capitalism's wonder-pill. It dulls your personality levels and optimises your productivity levels

New Yorkers, it's fair to say, have something of a reputation. They're brusque and they're brash and they will trample you with their ambition. But it's not something in the water that makes them like this; it's something a lot of them are swallowing with expensive bottles of Smartwater. It's Adderall.

Adderall is the brand name for a cocktail of amphetamines packaged up by big pharma for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This being a disorder that presents with extraordinary frequency in the US, particularly amongst the offspring of pushy parents. Type A-sorts intent on their kids getting straights As, even if it means putting them on Class As. Because, here's the thing: Adderall is basically legalised speed. And here's the other thing: Adderall works. Or rather, it makes you work. It makes you alert and focused and able to concentrate for hours on end.

Adderall works so well, in fact, that some doctors are advocating its use in schools, whether the kids have ADHD or not. This week the New York Times published an article about a Dr Michael Anderson, who prescribes Adderall to low-income schoolchildren struggling with their studies. Dr Anderson doesn't even believe ADHD is a legitimate illness, but he does believe that taking Adderall can help disadvantaged children compete with their more privileged peers. "We've decided as a society that it's too expensive to modify the kid's environment," he explains. "So we have to modify the kid."

There has been some justifiable outrage about Dr Anderson's standpoint. After all, doling out hardcore drugs to kids who aren't even legally able to buy a beer is deeply weird. But then again, so is America's attitude to drugs. This is a country that has spent 40 years and $1 trillion warring against drugs – or, rather, the "wrong" sort of drugs. This is a country that shuts its borders to anyone who has been convicted of taking a Class C drug. And yet this is a country that not only tolerates certain Class A-type drugs, it actively embraces them.

Dr Anderson's unusual frankness has brought into relief what is an open secret about Adderall: it is widely and unashamedly used by large swaths of privileged America so they can work harder, faster, and longer. And I'm not just talking about college kids. While discussions of Adderall in the media focus overwhelmingly on its use in educational institutes, what you hear less about is the number of professionals who use it so they can put more hours in at the office. Indeed, demand for the magic pills is so rampant in New York that when the great Adderall drought of 2011 struck the city it triggered a thoroughly Gotham-ic panic. Normally stoic New Yorkers wept at pharmacist counters and The New York Observer set up a special Adderall Wire to keep tabs on where readers should try scoring. The Observer, let me stress, is not a fringe publication. It printed Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City" column and targets a "sophisticated readership of influential young urban professionals". Not drug addicts, mind, but influential young urban professionals.

One of the reasons America's well-paid classes are so in love with Adderall is that it is pathetically easy to get hold of. There is a reason they call a prescription a 'script over here: find an accommodating doctor and you simply have to say the right words in the right order to get whatever you want. I've dabbled with Adderall before because of a banker-friend of mine who knew one such doctor. My friend worked at UBS from 5am to 7pm and went out in Manhattan from 11pm to 4am. When you're tired of London you may be tired of life, but when you're tired of New York you simply don't have enough Adderall. And this friend made sure she had enough.

Adderall, you see, is capitalism's wonder-pill. It optimises your productivity levels, it dulls your personality levels, and it turns you into the closest human approximation there is to a machine. And that's why, despite the fact that it's basically speed, despite the fact that it's ridiculously addictive, despite the fact that it can re-wire your brain and ruin your life, much of corporate America is A-OK with it.

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Zes jaar onderzoek: 'Bezit van softdrugs moet niet verboden zijn'

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Als het bezit van kleine hoeveelheden gecontroleerde drugs in de toekomst wordt toegestaan, zal dat geen ernstige toename in het drugsgebruik veroorzaken. Dat concluderen Britse deskundigen na zes jaar onderzoek.

Een onderzoeksteam van vooraanstaande Britse wetenschappers, politiemensen, academici en deskundigen heeft zes jaar lang de Britse drugswetten onderzocht. Geconcludeerd werd dat het tijd is om de decriminalisering te introduceren.

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Volgens de commissie is de huidige aanpak van de Britse regering te simplistisch. 'Het gebruik van drugs zorgt lang niet altijd voor problemen, maar dat wordt zelden door beleidsmakers erkend. De meeste gebruikers hebben geen last van noemenswaardige problemen. Onder sommige omstandigheden kan drugsgebruik zelfs ook voordelen hebben.'

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Brad Pitt Slams The Government's "War On Drugs" At His Film Screening!

Brad Pitt has made it no secret that he believes drugs should be legalized and at the screening for his new documentary, "The House I Live In," he spoke his mind on exactly what he thinks, and didn't hold back.

In a small theater, Pitt introduced the director Eugene Jarecki and he says:

My drug days are long since passed but it's certainly true that I could probably land in any city in any state and get you whatever you wanted. I could find anything you were looking for. Give me 24 hours or so. And yet we still support this charade called the drug war. We have spent a trillion dollars. It's lasted for over 40 years. A lot of people have lost their lives for it. And yet we still talk about it like it's this success.

The film takes a look at what President Richard Nixon coined "the war on drug abuse" in 1972 and examines how things have exploded by then. It also happens to be executively produced by our very own Russell Simmons!

That means it's worth the watch!

We love seeing celebs stand up for what they believe in! Go Brad!

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Africa and the War on Drugs – a review by Stephen Ellis

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Stephen Ellis is Professor in the African Studies Centre, University of Leiden.

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Islamic terrorists with interests in the cocaine trade have taken over northern Mali. Fuelled by narco-dollars, they are threatening further mayhem. Perhaps these same people are also the brains behind human trafficking through the Sahara to Europe, another source of misery.

Something along these lines is probably the most widely diffused message concerning the drug trade in Africa today.

It is the sort of image that Neil Carrier and Gernot Klantschnig seek to rectify by supplying us with a short, tightly organised and well informed book that provides a dispassionate view of Africa’s long relationship with psychoactive substances. Their account provides historical depth and, above all, it strives to understand the matter from an African standpoint.

The two authors, both academics with extensive experience researching the drug trade in East and West Africa respectively, discuss a wide range of relevant matters from different parts of sub-Saharan Africa in just 138 pages of text. As befits the African Arguments series, their book, while fair in its approach, is polemical in intent. Its declared target is the war on drugs that began when President Richard Nixon declared “total war” on America’s “public enemy number one” in 1972.

The war on drugs waged by successive US governments for 40 years has failed to eliminate drug consumption in the USA. It is probably the main reason for the country’s grotesque level of imprisonment, which now stands at over two million people behind bars, more than the number held in Stalin’s gulag at its height. Many professionals involved in the fight against drugs, whether law-enforcement officers or public health professionals, believe that the campaign was lost long ago.

Destroying drug production in one area simply pushes up the price of drugs in consumer markets, thereby creating higher profits for dealers. Disrupting a supply route induces traders to find a new one. Most damaging of all, the war on drugs has caused ruling elites in some states to develop close connections with professional criminals, notably in Latin America.

The ultimate nightmare for US policy-makers is of drug traders making common cause with political militants. Hence the fevered images of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the official designation adopted by a militant group of Algerian origin that currently enjoys influence in northern Mali and adjacent regions of the Sahara.

People who follow world affairs quite closely, but who are not professional Africanists, probably first became aware of Africa’s role in the international drug trade when the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) produced a string of reports and statements in the late 2000s pinpointing a surge in exports of cocaine from South America to West Africa, and most notably to Guinea-Bissau, which soon gained a reputation as a “narco-state”.

The UNODC, as its name tells us, is dedicated to the study of the relationship between the drugs business and its criminal aspects. Although UNODC reports are written in a restrained bureaucratic style and make careful use of statistics, their law-and-order approach inevitably trails in its path other documents and newspaper articles that make extravagant use of a familiar vocabulary concerning “scourges”, “menaces” and “drug barons”. Close your eyes and you may think of Al Pacino in the film Scarface, transposed to Africa.

While trade in cocaine and heroin receives the most international attention, Carrier and Klantschnig take care to provide extensive information on the historical use, trade and cultivation of other drugs including notably cannabis and khat as well as the internationally legitimated stimulants alcohol and caffeine. They tell us that probably the main pharmaceutical threat to the health of African societies comes from pirated or fake prescription drugs, although this is not a subject they pursue at any length.

Their general thrust is to contest the widespread view that the trade in cocaine and heroin is in itself a deadly threat to Africa. Concentration on this trade obscures the question of local addiction to dangerous drugs, which appears to be quite high in South Africa and parts of East Africa. The policy of suppression adopted at American behest in Nigeria, for example, is ineffective in suppressing the trade and draws attention away from debates on local consumption and other domestic aspects of drug use and abuse.

Many Africanists, generally sympathetic to African societies and sceptical of both the moral justification and the effects of America’s insistence that other countries follow its lead in the war on drugs, will probably agree with the sentiments expressed by Carrier and Klantschnig in this book, the best general introduction to its subject by some way. Nevertheless, in the opinion of this reviewer the two authors rather underestimate the degree of political involvement in drug trading by African governments.

The one case they examine in detail is that of Guinea-Bissau, whose politics was marked by violent competition between rival factions long before large cargoes of cocaine started arriving in the country from South America. So it was, but few observers doubt that the wish to maintain pole position in the cocaine trade has now added to the problem by providing a massive incentive to new struggles. In South Africa, a chief of police has been convicted of having passed confidential information to a leading drug dealer whom he had befriended.

The drug trade perhaps risks becoming a source of sometimes violent political competition in Africa to a degree the two authors seem rather reluctant to conceive. Still, thanks to this book future debates can now assume a breadth and depth that has been lacking to date.

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Medical marijuana: disabled veteran's appeal could change US drugs policy

Michael Krawitz was denied treatments after the VA learned of his prescription but advocates see promise in a recent hearing

A disabled veteran has told an appeals court that the department of veteran affairs policy on medical marijuana has caused him pain and significant economic harm, in a development campaigners say is a positive step in the battle to push for the drug's reclassification.

Michael Krawitz, one of five plaintiffs involved in a legal case before the court of appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit, told the Guardian that the VA denied him pain treatment after they discovered he had been prescribed medical marijuana while abroad.

He told the court in an affidavit that the withdrawal of care by the department, which has rated him 100% permanently disabled and thus eligible for all medical treatment under its auspices, has meant he now has to travel 130 miles from his home to see a doctor for pain relief.

Krawitz, 49, who is the executive director of Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access, said: "The bottom line is its unethical to take away someone's pain treatment. This conflicts with standards of medical care."

Krawitz sustained his injuries in a car accident while serving in the US air force, which has left him suffering debilitating pain.

The case, the result of a long-standing battle by medical marijuana advocates to reclassify the drug, is the first time in 20 years that scientific evidence regarding the therapeutic benefits of cannabis will be heard by a federal court.

This current case "looks more promising" than previous efforts, because of the court's focus on Krawitz and the request for more details, according to the ASA.

Joe Elford, the chief counsel with ASA, said: "It clearly demonstrated that the court is taking this case very seriously."

"This is something that demonstrates real harm to a real individual and that individual is Michael Krawitz.

"He is 100% disabled and supposed to get all his medical treatment from the VA. But because of the VA's policy on medical marijuana, which is clearly motivated by the schedule 1 status, that cannot happen."

After an initial oral hearing last week, the court ordered Americans for Safe Access, a advocacy group for medical marijuana use and research to file a brief in order to "clarify and amplify the assertions made [by] Michael Krawitz regarding his individual standing", and to "more fully explain precisely the nature of the injury that gives him standing".

ASA said they hope that if they can demonstrate that Krawitz was harmed by a federal policy that says medical marijuana has no medical value, they may also get the court to rule on the merit of the case. In that case, it would decide whether the scientific evidence is enough to reclassify the drug from its current status as a schedule 1 substance – as a dangerous drug on a par with heroin – to that of a safe drug that can be used in medicine.

The issue of "standing", of which the court sought more details, is a legal concept that restricts the right to sue to those who are directly harmed by what they are fighting and can get relief from a legal ruling. No plaintiffs were involved in the last appeal of the Drug Enforcement Agency's classification of the drug, and it was thrown out of court over the issue of standing.

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'Kunstroof heeft link met drugsdeal Antwerpen'

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Met de opbrengst van de schilderijen moet de rekening voor de mislukte drugsdeal worden vereffend, heeft een hooggeplaatste buitenlandse politiefunctionaris gezegd tegen Ton Cremers, voormalig hoofd beveiliging van het Rijksmuseum.

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Could drug decriminalization save Brazil’s slums?

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Brazil has been struggling with drug violence for years. The problem got so bad that the country passed a law in 2006 to distinguish between dealers and users in handing out sentences, meant to reduce the overwhelming pressure on the justice and jail systems and to better single out dealers. But since then, the number of Brazilians in prison for drug charges has more than doubled and its total prison population has grown by 37 percent, according to official statistics.

Now, a prominent Brazilian think tank called the Igrapé Institute has released a surprising list of policy proposals to address the problem. The think tank had organized a special committee called Pense Livre (“think free” in Portuguese) to rethink the country’s drug policy. Its four-point plan, translated by the folks at Riorealblog and flagged today by GlobalVoices, starts with drug decriminalization:

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Global 'war on drugs' a failure, experts' group says

WARSAW - The Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP), a new international lobby group for liberalization, called Wednesday for what it termed the failed war on drugs to be replaced by policies oriented to regulation and prevention.

Studies by the commission since it was convened in 2010 claim that rather than stemming the global drug trade the costly war on drugs has seen it thrive in recent decades, with tragic consequences for public health and security.

"The global war on drugs is driving the HIV/AIDS pandemic among people who use drugs" and are reluctant to seek medical help for fear of incarceration, a commission statement said as it launched debate in Warsaw.

"Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption," it added.

According to the commission, the worldwide supply of illicit opiates like heroin has ballooned by more than 380 percent in recent decades "from 1,000 metric tons in 1980 to more than 4,800 metric tons in 2010," despite massive hikes in funds aimed at fighting drug trafficking.

Former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria said part of the solution lies in "moving the (anti-narcotics) budget of countries from jails and the police to prevention."

"The way we are working in Colombia -- for example in Medellin and in Bogota -- it's through prevention campaigns (…) with families, with teachers who are also really in favor of prevention," he told reporters, highlighting progress made in cities dominated by notorious cartels.

Commission members include ex-presidents from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico struggling to cope with the violence spawned by cartels as well as notables like Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa and Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson.

Gaviria also insisted on the need to lobby the US Congress "to say we need you to debate and to change your laws, otherwise the violence in Latin America, Mexico and Central America will be out of hand and we will lose."

GCDP chair and former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso called on governments to "experiment with different models of legal regulation of drugs, such as marijuana, similar to what we already have with tobacco and alcohol."

Stressing that regulation was not the same as legalization, he urged "all kinds of restrictions and limitations on the production, trade, advertising and consumption of a given substance in order to deglamourize, discourage and control its use."

"Drug abusers may harm themselves and their families, but locking them up is not going to help them," he added.

According to Gaviria these kinds of changes could come sooner than expected: "Almost all presidents think the (existing) policy should be changed. There is no support for prohibition anymore, not even in the US."

"No US official talks about defending prohibition as a policy. I haven't heard of anyone. They've just stopped talking about it," he revealed. — Agence France Presse

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Spain Study Confirms Hemp Oil Cures Cancer Without Side Effects

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The medical science is strongly in favor of THC laden hemp oil as a primary cancer therapy, not just in a supportive role to control the side effects of chemotherapy. The International Medical Verities Association is putting hemp oil on its cancer protocol. It is a prioritized protocol list whose top five items are magnesium chloride, iodine, selenium, Alpha Lipoic Acid and sodium bicarbonate. It makes perfect sense to drop hemp oil right into the middle of this nutritional crossfire of anti cancer medicines, which are all available without prescription.

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.According to Dr. Robert Ramer and Dr. Burkhard Hinz of the University of Rostock in Germany medical marijuana can be an effective treatment for cancer.[v] Their research was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Advance Access on December 25th of 2007 in a paper entitled Inhibition of Cancer Cell Invasion by Cannabinoids via Increased Expression of Tissue Inhibitor of Matrix Metalloproteinases-1.

The biggest contribution of this breakthrough discovery, is that the expression of TIMP-1 was shown to be stimulated by cannabinoid receptor activation and to mediate the anti-invasive effect of cannabinoids. Prior to now the cellular mechanisms underlying this effect were unclear and the relevance of the findings to the behavior of tumor cells in vivo remains to be determined.

Marijuana cuts lung cancer tumor growth in half, a 2007 Harvard Medical School study shows.[vi] The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University who tested the chemical in both lab and mouse studies.

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The Economic Case Against Drug Prohibition

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_{Source: The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 4, (Autumn, 1995), pp. 175-192}

This paper discusses the costs and benefits of drug prohibition. It offers a detailed outline of the economic consequences of drug prohibition and a systematic analysis of the relevant empirical evidence. The bottom line is that a relatively free market in drugs is likely to be vastly superior to the current policy of prohibition.

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Mexican Cartels Have Enslaved at Least 55,000 People, Investigation Claims

How many people have been enslaved by Mexico's drug cartels and forced to work at gunpoint for these gangs?

At least 55,000 according to information compiled by Animal Politico, a Mexican news site which has just published a special report on forced labor in Mexico's drug war.

The interactive report called Esclavos del Narco, or Narco Slaves, discusses how cartels force children to sell drugs in street corners and how Central American immigrants making their way to the U.S. face the stark choice of carrying drugs across the border or being murdered in cold blood.

There is also a section devoted to 36 young professionals –mostly engineers- who have gone missing in the past four years.

According to Animal Politico's investigation, these engineers have been abducted by cartels who have forced them to build private cellphone networks across Mexico. Such networks are used by cartels to communicate with each other safely, avoiding eavesdropping from police or rival groups.

The Animal Politico investigation is part of a broader series on the slaves of organized crime in Latin America, coordinated by Insight Crime.

This series also includes an investigation that depicts how gangs in Guatemala prostitute women, and an article that shows how marxist rebels in Colombia force civilians to join their ranks.

"In Latin America, the word slavery tends to conjure images of indigenous people subjected to forced labor at the end of a whip, and auctions of African men and women just off the slave ships," writes Insight Crime reporter Sibylla Brodzinsky.

"Today the images are different: women locked in brothels, deceived, tied up and forced to serve as sex slaves; migrants kidnapped, forced under threat to take up weapons and work as hitmen, 12, 13 and 14-year-old children carrying an automatic rifle in the name of some organization or another."

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Britse kinderen krijgen coke met Halloween

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Britse kinderen die woensdagavond ter gelegenheid van Halloween langs de deuren gingen voor snoep in het plaatsje Royton hebben cocaïne gekregen in plaats van zoetigheid. De politie heeft een 23-jarige man gearresteerd.

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Bolivian radio owner set on fire

Masked men made an horrific attack on the owner and editor of a Bolivian radio station by pouring petrol on him and setting him ablaze. Fernando Vidal, 78, is now in intensive care after suffering severe burns to his head, chest, stomach and arms.

Staff at Radio Radio Popular in Yacuiba, near the Argentine border, told how four men wearing masks burst into the offices with canisters of petrol. After pouring the fuel on station equipment, they then threw it on to Vidal.

He was conducting an interview with two women on drug smuggling in the border region when the attack occurred.

One of the station's journalists, Esteban Farfán - who is Vidal's son-in-law - said Vidal had been critical of politicians in Gran Chaco province. He believed the attack was politically motivated.

The following day, police said three men had been arrested in connection with the attack on Vidal, a former major of Yacuiba.

Described as being in a serious, but stable condition, Vidal was able to speak to reporters in hospital: "I deeply thank the solidarity of all my friends, colleagues, co-workers and journalists and ask them to keep up the work of bringing forth the evidence and revealing the truth."

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Three US states poised to legalise cannabis and defy 'war on drugs'

Washington, Oregon and Colorado set to allow recreational use

Three US states are set to legalise recreational cannabis use this week in votes that could have major implications for the country's war on drugs.

Alongside their choice for president, residents of Washington, Oregon and Colorado – a swing state – will be asked on Tuesday whether they want to decriminalise cannabis.

If the measures are passed, adults over 21 would be able to possess, distribute and use small amounts. Cannabis for authorised medical use is already permitted and regulated by each state, even though it is against federal law.

Support is particularly strong in Washington and Colorado, but a "yes" vote in any of the states would be interpreted by the Department of Justice as an act of defiance against the federal government's war on drugs – the national law enforcement programme that spends $44bn a year struggling to stem the tide of illegal drugs in the US.

In June 2011, however, the Global Commission on Drug Policy declared that the war on drugs had failed.

In a swing state such as Colorado, putting the liberal measure on the ballot could even help to keep the battleground state – narrowly won for Barack Obama in 2008 – on the president's side. Obama has taken a soft line on medical cannabis use.

If recreational use is approved, a new drug industry would inevitably boom and the states expect a tax bonanza from the income generated. Colorado plans to spend the first $40m a year on schools, although the state's largest teachers' union is firmly against legalisation. A yes vote would allow the possession and private use of up to an ounce of cannabis, but it would not be legal to smoke a joint in the street. "But that's already what people do here anyway, so it won't make any difference. Anyone who's been to a concert in this state will know no one's arrested for pot," said Laura Chapin, who runs the "no" campaign in Colorado. Denver and the ski town of Breckenridge decriminalised cannabis for private recreational use in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Chapin, who is a Democrat, admitted she had not heard of any dramatic ill effects as a result, but said legalising it statewide was a different matter: "It effectively establishes Colorado as the cannabis capital of the United States. And it will increase access to the drug for our kids."

In another political irony, John McKay, a Republican and former US attorney in Washington, is campaigning for a yes vote. Criminalisation of cannabis had been "an abject failure", he said, adding that "millions and millions of Americans" illegally smoke cannabis, with the proceeds going to illegal cartels. McKay believes that controlling a legal trade would make it safer.

Several former senior police officers have also come out in favour. However, operators of medical cannabis dispensaries are divided. Some believe it would ease the taboo around pot, while improving quality. Others fear a threat from new competition or from the federal government blocking the law and launching a wider crackdown.

"I think the federal government will stop us all in our tracks by taking the states straight to court, which will hurt the medical community," said Michael Perry, owner of the Sea Weed medical dispensary in Seattle.

Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado Republican congressman, argues that prohibition of alcohol did not work in the 1920s – consumption flourished, as did violence and extortion. He said: "Cannabis can be used safely and responsibly by adults. Limited law enforcement resources should not be wasted on this, they should be used on preventing crimes that harm others."

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U.S. cities become hubs for Mexican drug cartels’ distribution networks

CHICAGO — A few miles west of downtown, past a terra-cotta-tiled gateway emblazoned with “Bienvenidos,” the smells and sights of Mexico spill onto 26th Street. The Mexican tricolor waves from brick storefronts. Vendors offer authentic churros, chorizo and tamales.

Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood is home to more than 500,000 residents of Mexican descent and is known for its Cinco de Mayo festival and bustling Mexican Independence Day parade. But federal authorities say that Little Village is also home to something else: an American branch of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.

Members of Mexico’s most powerful cartel are selling a record amount of heroin and methamphetamine from Little Village, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. From there, the drugs are moving onto the streets of south and west Chicago, where they are sold in assembly-line fashion in mostly African American neighborhoods.

“Chicago, with 100,000 gang members to put the dope on the street, is a logistical winner for the Sinaloa cartel,” Jack Riley, the DEA’s special agent in charge of the Chicago field division, said after a tour through Little Village. “We have to operate now as if we’re on the Mexican border.”

It’s not just Chicago. Increasingly, as drug cartels have amassed more control and influence in Mexico, they have extended their reach deeper into the United States, establishing inroads across the Midwest and Southeast, according to American counternarcotics officials. An extensive distribution network supplies regions across the country, relying largely on regional hubs like this city, with ready markets off busy interstate highways.

One result: Seizures of heroin and methamphetamine have soared in recent years, according to federal statistics.

The U.S. government has provided Mexico with surveillance equipment, communication gear and other assistance under the $1.9 billion Merida Initiative, the anti-drug effort launched more than four years ago. But critics say that north of the border, the federal government has barely put a dent into a sophisticated infrastructure that supports more than $20 billion a year in drug cash flowing back to Mexico.

The success of the Mexican cartels in building their massive drug distribution and marketing networks across the county is a reflection of the U.S. government’s intelligence and operational failure in the war on drugs, said Fulton T. Armstrong, a former national intelligence officer for Latin America and ex-CIA officer.

“We pretend that the cartels don’t have an infrastructure in the U.S.,” said Armstrong, also a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and now a senior fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. “But you don’t do a $20 billion a year business . . . with ad-hoc, part-time volunteers. You use an established infrastructure to support the markets. How come we’re not attacking that infrastructure?”

A reported 8.9 percent of Americans age 12 or older — 22.6 million people — are current users of illegal drugs, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — up from 6.2 percent in 1998. Demand for and the availability of illegal drugs is rising.

Charles Bowden, who has written several books about Mexico and drug trafficking, said policy failures have exacerbated the problems. The war on drugs is over, he said. There are more drugs in the U.S. of higher quality and at a lower price.

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Colorado and Washington enjoy their marijuana moment

Pot users celebrate historic victory – but drug's continuing illegality under federal law promises confusion

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

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

A coalition of pot shop dispensaries, civil rights advocates and former law enforcers argued that legalisation would hit drug cartels' profits, boost state tax revenues and reduce the mass incarceration of African Americans and Latinos.

"I really think this is the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition, not only in the US, but in many countries across the world, including the UK," said Sean McAllister, a former assistant attorney general in Colorado who supported the change. "We didn't just legalise it – we created a regulatory system."

Norm Stamper, a former Seattle police chief and member of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said he was very happy. "After 40 years of the racist, destructive exercise in futility that is the war on drugs, my home state of Washington has now put us on a different path."

Beau Kilmer, co-director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Centre, called the votes groundbreaking.

Once the elections are certified – which could take up to two months – personal possession of up to an ounce (28.5 grams) of marijuana will be legal for anyone aged 21 or over in Washington and Colorado. Pot, previously available for medicinal purposes at dispensaries, will be sold and taxed at state-licensed stores.

Washington still bans personal cultivation, but Colorado will allow six plants per person. Neither state allows public use. Voters in Oregon rejected legalisation in their state.

Social media erupted with jokes and puns, many focusing on Denver's nickname as the Mile High City and Colorado's official song, Rocky Mountain High.

Questions abound over whether Colorado and Washington will become Amsterdam-style magnets for marijuana tourism, and over how federal authorities will respond.

The justice department said federal law making pot illegal remained unchanged. The Obama administration has used federal law to crack down on dispensaries in California and elsewhere, making some Colorado and Washington dispensaries nervous of a backlash. "We don't know what's going to happen – no clue," said one Denver store owner, declining to be named.

McAllister, the former assistant attorney general, predicted that Obama, secure in a second term, would leave Colorado alone because its regulations were tighter and clearer than the nebulous regulations which left California's open to abuse.

State leaders had opposed the legalisation but promised to respect the vote.

"This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through," said the Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper. "That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don't break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly."

Mike Coffman, a re-elected Republican congressman, told the Guardian: "I need to see what other states are doing but clearly if there is a sentiment that is moving nationally to legalise marijuana, then I certainly respect the decisions by the states. And I would support the forming of legislation at the federal level. But I don't know if I'm there yet. I need to study and see what the other states are doing."

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Mexico says marijuana legalization in U.S. could change anti-drug strategies

MEXICO CITY — The decision by voters in Colorado and Washington state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana has left President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto and his team scrambling to reformulate their anti-drug strategies in light of what one senior aide said was a referendum that “changes the rules of the game.”

It is too early to know what Mexico’s response to the successful ballot measures will be, but a top aide said Peña Nieto and members of his incoming administration will discuss the issue with President Obama and congressional leaders in Washington this month. The legalization votes, however, are expected to spark a broad debate in Mexico about the direction and costs of the U.S.-backed drug war here.

Mexico spends billions of dollars each year confronting violent trafficking organizations that threaten the security of the country but whose main market is the United States, the largest consumer of drugs in the world.

With Washington’s urging and support, Mexican soldiers roam the mountains burning clandestine plantations filled with marijuana destined for the United States. Mexico’s police and military last year seized almost as much marijuana as did U.S. agents working the Southwest border region.

About 60,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence, and tens of thousands arrested and incarcerated. The drug violence and the state response to narcotics trafficking and organized crime has consumed the administration of outgoing President Felipe Calderon.

“The legalization of marijuana forces us to think very hard about our strategy to combat criminal organizations, mainly because the largest consumer in the world has liberalized its laws,” said Manlio Fabio Beltrones, leader of Peña Nieto’s party in Mexico’s Congress.

Peña Nieto’s top adviser, Luis Videgaray, said Thursday that his boss did not believe that legalization was the answer. But Videgaray said Mexico’s drug strategies must be reviewed in light of the legalization votes.

“Obviously, we can’t handle a product that is illegal in Mexico, trying to stop its transfer to the United States, when in the United States, at least in part of the United States, it now has a different status,” Videgaray told a radio station Wednesday.

Videgaray added that legalization “changes the rules of the game in the relationship with the United States” in regards to anti-drug efforts.

“I think more and more Mexicans will respond in a similar fashion, as we ask ourselves why are Mexican troops up in the mountains of Sinaloa and Guerrero and Durango looking for marijuana, and why are we searching for tunnels, patrolling the borders, when once this product reaches Colorado it becomes legal,” said Jorge Castaneda, a former foreign minister of Mexico and an advocate for ending what he calls an “absurd war.”

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Grote drugsvangst in Paraguay

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De politie heeft zondag in Paraguay aan de grens met Brazilië zo'n 1700 kilo cocaïne in beslag genomen. Onder de 19 arrestanten zou zich ook Ezequiel de Souza bevinden, de meestgezochte crimineel van het Zuid-Amerikaanse land.

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

Mexican president urges officials in North and Central America to 'explore all possible alternatives' to reduce cartels' influence

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

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

Calderon made no direct mention of the election-day results in the United States. He said that "organized crime poses the most serious threat currently facing the states and societies of our region" and delivered a list of 10 resolutions for combating the drug trade.

"[We] urge the authorities in consumer countries to explore all possible alternatives to eliminate exorbitant profits of criminals," Calderon said.

US citizens consume 3,700 tons of marijuana annually, with at least 40% of that amount coming from Mexico, according to a report by the independent Mexican Institute for Competitiveness. The report, called "Si los vecinos legalizan" ("If the neighbours legalize"), estimated that Mexican drug cartels would lose more than $1bn in annual income if Washington state alone legalized marijuana.

Under the new laws in Washington and Colorado, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is legal. Regulations pertaining to the growth and sale of marijuana are to be put in place over the next year.

The possession of marijuana remains illegal under federal statutes, and the Obama administration has given no sign that it plans to curtail drug arrests or the prosecution of drug crimes.

The call Monday by Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the presidents of Belize, Costa Rica and Honduras is the most significant Latin American reaction yet to the 6 November decisions by voters in Colorado and Washington.

The Mexican administration that takes office next month has already questioned how it will enforce a ban on growing and smuggling a drug legal under some state laws.

Tens of thousands have died in Mexico since Calderon declared a militarized war on drugs in December 2006, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.

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MMFlint twitterde op woensdag 14-11-2012 om 00:00:13 War on Drugs: stupid? cruel? insane? Or all three? Check out Kickstarter for @CodeWestFilm http://t.co/hrNCsBSd & http://t.co/KDylbWMQ reageer retweet

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Latin America looks to Europe for drug fighting models

CADIZ, Spain, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Latin American countries are turning to Europe for lessons on fighting narcotics abuse after souring on the prohibition-style approach of the violent and costly U.S.-led war on drugs.

Until recently, most Latin American countries had zero-tolerance rules on drugs inspired by the United States.

But now countries from Brazil to Guatemala are exploring relaxing penalties for personal use of narcotics, following examples such as Spain and Portugal that have channelled resources to prevention rather than clogging jails.

Latin America is the top world producer of cocaine and marijuana, feeding the huge demand in the United States and Europe. Domestic drug use has risen and drug gang violence has caused carnage for decades from the Mexican-U.S. border to the slums of Brazil.

On Thursday, Uruguay's Congress moved a step closer to putting the state in charge of distributing legal marijuana. On the same day a leftist lawmaker in Mexico presented a bill to legalise production, sale and use of marijuana.

While the Mexican bill is unlikely to pass, it reflects growing debate over how to fight drug use in a country where 60,000 people have died since 2006 in turf battles between drug traffickers and clashes between cartels and security forces.

Even top world cocaine producer Colombia, a stalwart U.S. partner in drug crop eradication campaigns and with one of the toughest anti-drug laws in Latin America, is hinting at change.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday it was worth exploring the Portuguese model, one of the most liberal drug policies in the world.

"The experience that you have had with drug consumption policies is very interesting to us. The entire world is looking for new ways to deal with the problem. I hope to learn more and more about the experience you have had," he said on a visit to Lisbon.

Santos stopped in Portugal on his way to the Ibero-American summit in the Spanish city of Cadiz. Leaders there on Saturday called for analysing a shift toward regulating drug use rather than criminalising it.

Portugal decriminalised all drug use in 2001 to combat a serious heroin problem that had caused an outbreak of HIV/Aids among drug users. The shift has been hailed as a success story as consumption levels dropped below the European average.

"The positive evaluation of Portugal's model has taken away the fear in Latin America over reforms," said Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute, which advocates the liberalisation of drug laws in Latin America.

Spain - where drug consumption soared in the 1980s after the end of the Franco dictatorship - has tried to fight high cocaine use by emphasizing treatment programmes for addicts and declining to prosecute possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use.

Jelsma said cannabis initiatives such as Uruguay's have built on the experience in Catalonia and the Basque Country, in northern Spain, where the courts tolerate marijuana cultivation for personal use by members of social clubs.

FRUSTRATION OVER FOUR COSTLY DECADES

U.S. elections on Nov. 6, when Colorado and the state of Washington legalized cannabis in defiance of federal laws, sharpened frustration among Latin American leaders.

"While in our countries a peasant is persecuted and jailed for growing half a hectare...in those two U.S. states now you can simply grow industrial amounts of marijuana and sell them with complete liberty. We cannot turn a blind eye to this huge imbalance," Mexican President Felipe Calderon told the Ibero-American summit on Saturday.

Calderon, whose military crackdown on drug cartels set off an orgy of violence in Mexico, expressed fatigue with calling on the United States and Europe to curtail drug use, saying U.S. drug consumers alone fuelled Mexico's drug war to the tune of $20 billion a year.

He said the legalisation of pot in Colorado and Washington marked a paradigm shift.

"We have to ask what alternatives there are. Perhaps less money and less appetite would be generated if there was another way to regulate drugs," he said.

Ibero-American Secretary-General Enrique Iglesias said there was consensus in Latin America that the so-called war on drugs was not working, and called for new approaches to the problem.

Colombia, Peru and Bolivia produce the bulk of the world's cocaine. Mexico and Paraguay are the two biggest marijuana producers in the world, with the latter largely supplying its neighbours Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

The shift in Latin America thinking on drugs dates to a 2009 report by the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico who said that billions of dollars poured into four decades of U.S.-led crop eradication efforts had merely pushed drug growing from one region to another.

Calderon's speech in Cadiz was just the latest in a growing chorus of challenges to U.S. drug policies.

At a summit of American leaders in April, U.S. President Barack Obama faced vocal doubts from his southern counterparts over anti-drug policies.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez has openly proposed decriminalising certain drugs. Guatemala, Mexico's neighbour to the south, has been torn apart by drug violence and corruption by narcos has deeply penetrated government institutions.

Ten years ago the United States might have reacted with alarm to the shift in Latin America. But Obama's administration has refrained from openly criticising changes in drug laws, partly because U.S. attitudes are also in flux.

NEW ROADS TO EUROPE

Spain was long a gateway for South American cocaine into Europe, although experts suggest cocaine trafficking is now moving through southeastern and eastern Europe, along Balkan routes and into harbours in Latvia and Lithuania.

The European drug monitoring agency EMCDDA said in its annual report cocaine seizures in Europe peaked at 120 tonnes in 2006 and had declined since to 61 tonnes in 2010.

Spain remains the country that reports the highest number of cocaine seizures but they have also fallen there as authorities stepped up policing of the southern coast.

Still, Spain is concerned over the potential for Latin American traffickers to set up European operations on its territory.

In August, Spanish police arrested four members of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, one of world's biggest criminal organisations. One of them is a cousin of Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, the head of the cartel and Mexico's most wanted man.

Look who's Breaking The Taboo

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Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this groundbreaking new documentary uncovers the UN sanctioned war on drugs, charting its origins and its devastating impact on countries like the USA, Colombia and Russia. Featuring prominent statesmen including Presidents Clinton and Carter, the film follows The Global Commission on Drug Policy on a mission to break the political taboo and expose the biggest failure of global policy in the last 50 years.

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http://www.nationofchange(...)osecution-1353341582

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In light of the marijuana legalization measures passed in Washington and Colorado, 18 members of Congress are asking the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration not to take enforcement action against any individual complying with state law, while two others introduced a bipartisan bill Friday to formally exempt states with marijuana laws from the federal counterpart.

In a letter to the two agencies Friday, U.S. House members from states with marijuana legalization laws, as well as civil rights champions including Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA), John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), implored federal officials to permit states to serve as the “laboratories of democracy” and implement a drug policy that may finally eliminate disproportionate racial impact and get to the root of public health and safety problems associated with the illicit marijuana trade:

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Gemeente mag aanpak coffeeshop zelf invullen

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Gemeenten mogen zelf hun beleid rond coffeeshops en drugsoverlast gaan bepalen. Dat schrijft minister Ivo Opstelten maandag in een brief aan de Tweede Kamer. Voor het hele land gaat gelden dat bezoekers van coffeeshops moeten aantonen dat ze in Nederland wonen, maar gemeenten mogen zelf bepalen wanneer ze dat beleid gaan handhaven.