The World Wide War on Drugs #5 - Het begin van het einde?

quote:

Op woensdag 3 april 2013 10:22 schreef waht het volgende:
Normale bedrijven dumpen ook wel eens afval, vaak nog legaal ook.

quote:

How Iran Won the War on Drugs

quote:

For much of the twentieth century, Iran’s strategy for curbing drug addiction looked a lot like Afghanistan’s current one: stopping the flow of narcotics and destroying crops. When, in the early 1970s, it became clear that this method wasn’t working, Iranian authorities adopted policies that focused more on prevention and treatment, with promising results.

But the 1979 revolution changed all that, and the Islamic government it brought to power implemented strict zero-tolerance narcotics laws. The regime, which saw drug use not as a medical or public health issue but as a moral shortcoming, believed that addiction and abuse could be beaten out of the public through punitive measures. Penalties for addicts included fining, imprisonment, and physical punishment; drug dealers and smugglers were often considered to be “at war with God” and executed. By the late 1980s, the government was sending thousands of addicts to prison camps, where they were supposed to detoxify and atone for their sins through forced labor.

These draconian social measures against drug users and dealers were matched with similarly aggressive operations to prevent the flow of opiates across the border from Afghanistan. By the late 1980s, an estimated 50 percent of Afghan opiate production was passing through Iranian territory, and the Iranian markets were flooded with Afghan opium, heroin, and morphine. Starting in the early 1990s, Tehran constructed more than 260 kilometers of static defenses -- including concrete dams that blocked mountain passes, anti-vehicle berms, trenches, minefields, forts, and mountain towers -- at a cost of over $80 million. By the late 1990s, more than 100,000 police officers, army troops, and Revolutionary Guardsmen were committed to antinarcotic operations.

Yet both the social policies and the border fortifications were fruitless. Although the Iranian authorities seized nearly eight times the amount of narcotics in 1999 than they had in 1990, they could not keep up with the expansion of Afghan opium production, which rose in those years from approximately 1,500 metric tons to roughly 4,500. Iran also found that the number of intravenous drug users was growing. Ironically, the prisons and camps where addicts were expected to kick their habits became epicenters of drug use, in which people learned how to inject heroin and shared primitive infection-prone needles.

The rise in malignant drug use brought with it more deaths, more cases of addiction, and, most embarrassingly for Irans leaders, a full-blown HIV/AIDS epidemic. After years of blaming the Wests moral turpitude and decadence for the virus, Irans leadership had to face an outbreak at home, fueled by its own failed antinarcotic policy. By the late 1990s, in some provinces, double-digit percentages of heroin users were falling prey to the disease. In 2005, biological surveillance data from the Kermanshah province showed a 13.5 percent HIV prevalence rate among the adult prison population.

These setbacks prompted a complete turnaround in Irans approach to fighting narcotics. Instead of focusing on punishing addicts and trying to stop the drug supply, Iran decided to try to reduce the harm of narcotics and the demand for them. By 2002, over 50 percent of the countrys drug-control budget was dedicated to preventive public health campaigns, such as advertisement and education. Irans conservative and previously intransigent leadership opened narcotics outpatient treatment centers and abstinence-based residential centers in Tehran and the provinces.

quote:

'They stole our dreams': blogger reveals cost of reporting Mexico's drug wars

Exclusive: Anonymous author of celebrated Blog del Narco speaks for first time about the risks – and reveals she is a woman

For three years it has chronicled Mexico's drug war with graphic images and shocking stories that few others dare show, drawing millions of readers, acclaim, denunciations – and speculation about its author's identity.

Blog del Narco, an internet sensation dubbed a "front-row seat" to Mexico's agony over drugs, has become a must-read for authorities, drug gangs and ordinary people because it lays bare, day after day, the horrific violence censored by the mainstream media.

The anonymous author has been a source of mystery, with Mexico wondering who he is and his motivation for such risky reporting.

Now in their first major interview since launching the blog, the author has spoken to the Guardian and the Texas Observer – and has revealed that she is, in fact, a young woman.

"I don't think people ever imagined it was a woman doing this," said the blogger, who asked to use pseudonym Lucy to protect her real identity.

"Who am I? I'm in my mid-20s, I live in northern Mexico, I'm a journalist. I'm a woman, I'm single, I have no children. And I love Mexico."

This is the first time Lucy has spoken directly about the motivations for running a blog which could cost her her life. In the early days, her male colleague who manages the technical side engaged in a few short, anonymous email exchanges with reporters, but neither has spoken out since.

The telephone interview was arranged through an anonymous intermediary. The Guardian then took steps to verify that Lucy was in control of the blog.

She said she wanted to show the truth of what was happening to help turn the page. "I'm in love with my culture, with my country, despite all that's going on. Because we're not all bad. We're not all narcos. We're not all corrupt. We're not all murderers. We are well educated, even if many (foreign) people think otherwise."

She and her colleague live in daily fear of retribution, either from the cartels or government forces. She revealed that a young man and woman tortured, disembowelled and hung from a bridge in September 2011 – murders which shocked even atrocity-hardened Mexicans – were collaborators on the blog. "They used to send us photographs. That was very hard, very painful." The threats, she said, have recently become more serious.

Despite those fears, however, Lucy has written a book that gives an inside account of the blog and provides the most gruesome, explicit account yet of the mayhem that the cartel wars have brought to Mexico. Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside Mexico's Violent Drug War, is now on sale in English and Spanish, and documents a full year of killings from 2010, a pivotal year.

"I did the book to show what was happening," she said. "When I finished, I was able to breathe, because I had worried about being killed before finishing. But the book is there, it's there on paper, a testament to what we have suffered in Mexico in these years of war."

Adam Parfrey, head of the independent Washington-based publisher Feral House, which specialises in taboo topics, said the book would be bound in a police-tape type band as warning of its contents. "It's gruesome and horrible. It goes far beyond anything I've ever dealt with. It's an important element of what's happening in our southern neighbour."

The inside account of Blog del Narco comes at a sensitive time. President Barack Obama is due to visit Mexico in early May for talks with his counterpart, Enrique Peña Nieto, who since taking office last December has tamped down confrontations with the drug lords and the ensuing media attention.

Even so, drug-related violence claimed nearly 3,200 lives in his administration's first three months, according to government figures, and in recent weeks killings have spiked along the border, and even in the tourist city of Cancún. Cartels are increasingly sending agents to live and work in US cities such as Chicago, according to a recent AP investigation.

The legalisation of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has intensified pressure on the US government to review its four-decade-old "war" on marijuana, cocaine and other narcotics, much of it trafficked through Mexico.

After President Felipe Calderón declared his own war on Mexico's drug cartels in 2006, sparking turf battles between groups like Sinaloa, La Línea and the Zetas, and bloody interventions by the police and armed forces, who have been accused of siding with criminals. More than 70,000 people died and 27,000 disappeared by the time he finished his term last year.

Intimidation of journalists – dozens have been murdered, often sadistically – neutered news coverage by newspapers, radio and television stations. Massacres, kidnappings, corruption, even pitched battles in city centres, often went unreported.

Blog del Narco sprang up three years ago to fill the vacuum left by cowed journalistic colleagues who could not even report vital information such as narco roadblocks and kidnappings.

Over time, Blog del Narco acquired multiple sources, including drug gangs, and became indispensable reading, drawing more than 3m hits monthly. It provides bulletins, pictures and video of abductions, shootouts, executions and the discovery of bodies as well as severed human heads, limbs and torsos. One video showed cartel members interrogating a captured rival and then decapitating him.

Critics accuse the blog of being a public relations forum for drug dealers, but Lucy said the material showed reality and helped families identify missing relatives. "If it wasn't for the blog often bodies wouldn't be identified."

Narcos occasionally sent photos of them partying with pop stars, but the blog refused to publish such material, she said. The blog takes advertising from car and mobile-phone makers, among others. Lucy has told no friends about her clandestine activity. "My close family knows. No one else."

The blog had come under repeated cyber-attack – the government was more aggressive than narcos in this regard, Lucy said – but the main concern was being identified and captured, either by narcos or government forces who have been accused of multiple abuses.

"We change where we live every month. We've been in basements. It's very difficult. We hide our equipment in different places. If the authorities get close we run."

A sign left by the young couple disembowelled in 2011 in the state of Tamaulipas said the bloggers were next. Lucy had not met the couple but received material from them via email. A few days later, another contributor was killed. A keyboard, mouse and sign mentioning the blog were strewn over the corpse. "It's very painful. But they believed this work was necessary."

Lucy said it was too soon to judge Peña Nieto's administration but that she had already noted one change. In contrast to Calderón-era officials, who cowed journalists with threats and bribes, the new government appeared to want to do it through repressive laws, she said. The government denies wanting to stifle the media.

"We have thought about quitting the blog thousands of times. But we haven't, because we have to get the message out. They have stolen our tranquility, our dreams, our peace." Lucy said she was tired of living in fear but had no plans to give up the blog. It has spawned other anonymous blogs carrying similar material.

The revelation she was female would surprise many, said Lucy. "It's a strong blow to Mexican machismo and the idea women are weaker, more delicate. There is an expectation for women to always look pretty. But we're much more than that."

She tried to relax, she said, with music, coffee and cigarettes. She missed having a normal life. "My only boyfriend is the blog. A whole phase of my life – boyfriends, going to parties, hanging out with friends – I've missed it. Getting married, having babies – there's not been time to think of any of that."

Lucy hoped the book, which focuses on 2010 and 2011, will stand as a historical record. In addition to stomach-turning photographs, it includes a glossary of terms such as encintado – the binding of a victim with duct tape – and encobijado – wrapping a murdered person in a blanket or sheet. It will initially be on sale only in the US but the publisher, Feral House, hopes Mexican booksellers will stock it.

Lucy said she had recently take a paying job but would continue the blog.

"My plans for the future? To live. That's my hope for the short, medium and long term."

quote:

First ‘magic mushroom’ trial for depression treatment hits stumbling block

The world’s first clinical trial designed to explore using a hallucinogen from magic mushrooms to treat people with depression has stalled because of British and European rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.

David Nutt, president of the British Neuroscience Association and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said he had been granted an ethical green light and funding for the trial, but regulations were blocking it.

“We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs,” he told a neuroscience conference in London on Sunday.

He has previously conducted small experiments on healthy volunteers and found that psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, has the potential to alleviate severe forms of depression in people who don’t respond to other treatments.

Following these promising early results he was awarded a £550,000 (about $849,000 Canadian) grant from the UK’s Medical Research Council to conduct a full clinical trial in patients.

But psilocybin is illegal in Britain, and under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances it is classified as a Schedule 1 drug – one that has a high potential for abuse and no recognised medical use.

This, Nutt explained, means scientists need a special licence to use magic mushrooms for trials in Britain, and the manufacture of a synthetic form of psilocybin for use in patients is tightly controlled by European Union regulations.

Together, this has meant he has so far been unable to find a company able to make and supply the drug for his trial, he said.

“Finding companies who could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence, which can take up to a year and triple the price, is proving very difficult,” he said.

Nutt said regulatory authorities have a “primitive, old-fashioned attitude that Schedule 1 drugs could never have therapeutic potential”, despite the fact that his research and the work done by other teams suggests such drugs may help treat some patients with psychiatric disorders.

Psilocybin – or “magic” – mushrooms grow naturally around the world and have been widely used since ancient times for religious rites and also for recreation.

Researchers in the United States have seen positive results in trials using MDMA, a pure form of the party drug ecstasy, in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

“What we are trying to do is to tap into the reservoir of under-researched illegal drugs to see if we can find new and beneficial uses for them in people whose lives are often severely affected by illnesses such as depression,” Nutt said.

The proposed trial would involve 60 patients with depression who have failed two previous treatments.

During two or three controlled sessions with a therapist, half would be given a synthetic form of psilocybin, and the other 30 a placebo. They would have guided talking therapy to explore negative thinking and issues troubling them, and doctors would follow them up for at least a year.

Nutt secured ethical approval for the trial in March.

In previous research, Nutt found that when healthy volunteers were injected with psilocybin, the drug switched off a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is known to be overactive in people with depression.

“Even in normal people, the more that part of the brain was switched off under the influence of the drug, the better they felt two weeks later. So there was a relationship between that transient switching off of the brain circuit and their subsequent mood,”, he said. “This is the basis on which we want to run the trial.”

quote:

Is The War On Drugs Nearing An End?

quote:

Much of the movement in public opinion toward marijuana use has been driven not necessarily by the arguments drug reformers have made for years -- that it is safer than alcohol, that we waste too much money on incarceration, that drug use is a victimless crime -- but by simple generational change, said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University.

"Younger generations are much more supportive of having choices, they've had much more experience with it, and also in general on many social issues, people are getting more libertarian, more open to less restriction," he said.

When Blendon studied public opinion on the drug war in the mid-1990s, the results were clear: although the American public believed the drug war was failing, they still thought of using drugs as morally wrong and worthy of punishment.

It was a time when Nancy Reagan's maxim -- just say no to drugs -- was still treated as gospel. But two decades later, Blendon said, there are simply too many people who have tried marijuana themselves to believe in that.

According to the Pew survey, 48 percent of Americans say they have smoked weed themselves, up 10 percent from a decade ago. Fifty percent of Americans, meanwhile, say smoking marijuana is not a moral issue, compared to 32 percent who believe that it is. That's a mirror image of the 50 percent moral opposition and 35 percent indifference Pew found just seven years ago.

The shift has come fast, Pew found. In just the past three years, pro-legalization sentiment has spiked 10 percent. And a relatively new phenomenon has emerged: it's not just liberals or libertarians speaking out. Increasingly, it is the names most identified with conservatism.

quote:

Drugskartels Mexico willen Europa veroveren

Mexicaanse drugskartels proberen een sleutelpositie in te nemen op de Europese markt. Dat maakte de politiedienst Europol vrijdag bekend. Grote kartels als Los Zetas zijn bovendien betrokken bij mensenhandel en ze smokkelen wapens van Europa naar Zuid-Amerika.

De afgelopen decennia zijn Mexicaanse drugskartels een centrale rol gaan spelen in de internationale georganiseerde misdaad. De groepen zijn extreem gewelddadig. Toch zijn er in Europa tot nu toe slechts enkele geweldsincidenten geweest waarbij de kartels betrokken waren. Een daarvan was een moordpoging, meldt Europol.

De politieorganisatie wil voorkomen 'dat het niveau van bruut geweld dat we in Mexico zien zich ook voordoet in Europa', aldus Europol-directeur Rob Wainwright. 'We zullen ervoor zorgen dat de Mexicaanse kartels geen voet aan de grond kunnen krijgen in Europa.'

quote:

Respect State Marijuana Laws Act Introduced In Congress

NEW YORK -- Republicans and Democrats in Congress are coming together in defense of states' rights -- and marijuana.

Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-Calif.) introduced a bipartisan bill on Friday to protect marijuana users and businesses from federal prosecution when they are following state laws. The Respect State Marijuana Laws Act would shield both medical and recreational pot users.

"This bipartisan bill represents a common-sense approach that establishes federal government respect for all states’ marijuana laws. It does so by keeping the federal government out of the business of criminalizing marijuana activities in states that don’t want it to be criminal," said Rohrbacher, in a statement.

Despite promising not to go after medical marijuana dispensaries, the Obama administration has raided hundreds of them. Federal officials are still trying to make up their minds, moreover, about how to respond to recently passed referendums in Colorado and Washington state that legalized marijuana outright.

Rohrbacher's bill should take away any doubt: It would say that residents of states that take steps to reform drug laws on their own shouldn't be subject to federal harassment.

A Pew Poll released last week showed that a broad majority of Americans, even when they don't agree with legalizing marijuana, believe the federal government should not step in to punish users in states that do. Sixty percent of Americans said the federal government should not meddle in states that legalize pot.

"Marijuana prohibition is on its last legs because most Americans no longer support it," said Steve Fox, national political director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "This legislation presents a perfect opportunity for members to embrace the notion that states should be able to devise systems for regulating marijuana without their citizens having to worry about breaking federal law."

The bill is cosponsored by Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Don Young (R-Alaska), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.). Rohrbacher, whose state has a large medical marijuana program, has previously introduced legislation seeking to reclassify marijuana at the federal level as a drug that does have medical uses.

The bipartisan makeup of the bill's cosponsors reflects increasing support among Republicans for ending or shifting the country's war on drugs. In the past two months, for example, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has called for lessening marijuana penalties and evangelical media titan Pat Robertson has announced his support for outright legalization.

quote:

Afghanistan: high expectations of record opium crop

UN report reveals rapid growth of poppy farming as western troops get ready to withdraw, which reflects badly on Britain

Twelve years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is heading for a near-record opium crop as instability pushes up the amount of land planted with illegal but lucrative poppies, according to a bleak UN report.

The rapid growth of poppy farming as western troops head home reflects particularly badly on Britain, which was designated "lead nation" for counter-narcotics work over a decade ago.

"Poppy cultivation is not only expected to expand in areas where it already existed in 2012 … but also in new areas or areas where poppy cultivation was stopped," the Afghanistan Opium Winter Risk Assessment found.

The growth in opium cultivation reflects both spreading instability and concerns about the future. Farmers are more likely to plant the deadly crop in areas of high violence or where they have not received any agricultural aid, the report said.

Opium traders are often happy to provide seeds, fertilisers and even advance payments to encourage crops, leaving farmers who do not have western or government agricultural help very vulnerable to their inducements.

At the same time the more powerful figures in the drugs trade, from traffickers to corrupt government officials, who take over half the profit from each kilo of opium, have shrinking opportunities to earn money from Nato or international aid contracts – and may be preparing a war chest for upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.

"Opium cultivation is up for the third successive year, and production is heading towards record levels," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Afghanistan head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "People are hedging against an insecure future both politically and economically."

Just 14 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces are now "poppy free", down from 20 in 2010. In three provinces, the spring sowing was the first time this decade that farmers had risked an attempt at growing opium.

The only figures showing a fall in cultivation, for western Herat province, may actually be due to a statistics blip. The UN was forced to use external data last year instead of the satellite images that are usually the basis of poppy growing calculations, and local officials protested heavily that the opium crop there had been overestimated.

If this year's poppy fields are harvested without disruption, the country would likely regain its status as producer of 90% of the world's opium. Afghanistan's share of the deadly market slipped to around 75% after bad weather and a blight slashed production over the past two years.

But the decline in opium production also drove up prices, to a record $300 a kilogramme. Prices have now slipped by over $100 but are still far above historic levels, helping tempt more farmers to turn land over to poppy.

It seems unlikely that the poor harvests of the last year will be repeated; there have been no reports of blight and the exceptionally bitter winter of 2011-12 was followed this year by a milder one, creating expectations of a large crop.

The increase has come despite a marked improvement in Afghanistan's specialised counter-narcotics units, Lemahieu said. Fear of eradication has become a far more significant reason for farmers to stick to legal crops than in the past, the report found.

But overall the government and aid community has not prioritised efforts to cut back a crop and trade that feeds global markets for heroin, Lemahieu said, despite its corrosive effect on security, corruption and trust in Kabul.

Typical of the official neglect are the 22 "national priority programmes" drawn up by Kabul to focus aid money and diplomatic efforts on its key development concerns including justice and education. Counter-narcotics was not one of them, nor has it been put at the heart of the other programmes.

"We need to have counter-narcotics dealt with seriously by the entire government as well as the aid community," Lemahieu said. "One of the big missing links here is providing for the communities themselves."

Eradication programmes that do not provide farmers with benefits such as healthcare and education, and support growing other crops will just push the Taliban or other insurgent groups that do tolerate or encourage poppy production, he added.

quote:

Organised crime worth $90bn year in East Asia

UN report says drug trafficking accounts for more than third of illegal transnational trade every year.

Organised crime gangs dealing in fake goods, drugs, human trafficking, and the illicit wildlife trade earn nearly $90bn annually in East Asia and the Pacific, a UN report reveals.

In a report released on Tuesday, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said drug trafficking accounted for more than a third of the illegal transnational trade.

The report, named "Transnational Organised Crime in East Asia and the Pacific: A Threat Assessment", says that as much as $16.3bn worth of heroin and $15bn of methamphetamine are traded annually in the region.

"These transnational criminal activities are a global concern now," Jeremy Douglas, a regional representative of the UN agency, said in a statement.

"Illicit profits from crimes in East Asia and the Pacific can destabilise societies around the globe," Douglas said.

He said that the profits could be used to buy properties and companies, and used for bribery.

The UN representative urged "a co-ordinated response" to address the problem.

Sandeep Chawla, the UNODC deputy executive director, said the report opened the window on "the mechanics of illicit trade: the how, where, when, who and why of selected contraband markets affecting this region".

"It looks at how criminal enterprises have developed alongside legitimate commerce and taken advantage of distribution and logistics chains," he said at the launch of the first comprehensive study on transnational organised crime threats in region in Sydney.

quote:

"It is a fight that we cannot lose," Broussard said.

quote:

Update: Heftige maatregelen in lokale 'war on drugs'


WOERDEN - De gemeente Woerden gaat samen met het Openbaar Ministerie en de lokale politie harddrugsgebruikers registreren. Hier gaat een preventieve werking vanuit, volgens de betrokkenen. Ook kan er hulpverlening aangeboden worden en door een betere registratie hoopt de politie een verband tussen criminaliteit en harddrugsgebruik te kunnen leggen.

Het zogenaamde project Achilles gaat zich richten op de klanten van drugsdealers. Er zullen dossiers worden aangemaakt van klanten rond drugsdealers en deze kunnen worden ingezet in een eventuele strafzaak tegen de dealer. Minderjarige harddrugsgebruikers en ouders met minderjarige kinderen kunnen een bezoek van Bureau Jeugdzorg verwachten. Inmiddels heeft de gemeente 360 brieven gestuurd naar mensen die zich op een bestellijst (lijst telefoonnummers in het bezit van groep drugsdealers, veel van deze nummers worden ook wekelijks bestookt met sms'jes).

Een gemeentewoordvoerder licht de plannen toe aan de redactie:

"Het accent in dit drugsbeleid tussen gemeente, politie en Openbaar Ministerie verlegt zich van de drugsdealer naar de drugsgebruiker. Zonder gebruikers geen dealers en vice versa. Harddrugs zijn illegaal en het is strafbaar om te gebruiken."

De eerste acties hebben al plaats gevonden in Woerden. Van een zogenaamde 'bestellijst' van een drugsdealer zijn alle telefoonnummers nagetrokken en hebben deze mensen (en bedrijven) een brief gehad. "Dat is een heftige maatregel maar ook een hele effectieve", vervolgt de woordvoerder. "Op de 360 brieven die zijn verstuurd, kregen we al 60 reacties. Natuurlijk van mensen die verontwaardigd waren op deze lijst voor te komen, maar ook van ouders en bedrijven. Dat bedrijf gaat het nu bespreekbaar maken op de werkvloer."

Uit de brief die is verstuurd naar 360 adressen:

"Tijdens een politieonderzoek is een op uw naam geregistreerd telefoonnummer in een drugsbestellijn van een drugsdealer aangetroffen. Wij hebben geconstateerd dat er meerdere malen contact is geweest met de drugsdealer."

Op het einde van de brief: "Mocht u van mening zijn deze brief onterecht te hebben ontvangen, verzoeken wij u een afspraak te maken met de politie om een verklaring af te leggen."

In een convenant dat eind najaar is gesloten tussen deze drie partijen is afgesproken hoe er met deze gegevens om zal worden gegaan. "Het primaire doel is bewustwording en preventie, niet het criminaliseren van de gebruiker. Maar die kans bestaat natuurlijk altijd. Harddrugs zijn illegaal."

Uit het persbericht van de gemeente:

Drugsbestrijding staat landelijk en lokaal op de agenda van de overheid. Waar de landelijke overheid zich vooral richt op de georganiseerde criminaliteit en preventieve voorlichting, biedt project Achilles in Woerden een werkwijze voor lokaal beleid. Achilles richt zich met name op de drugsgebruiker en spreekt deze direct aan.

quote:

ms1973
Beste mensen, ook ik ben zwaar gedupeerd door deze doorgeschoten actie, waarover ik uiteraard zeer ontstemd ben.

Ik beken, ik heb in een ver verleden wel eens zon bestellijn gebeld. En ook ik ontvang nog regelmatig de sms'jes met de nieuwe bestelnummers. Ik heb wel eens geprobeerd om daar vanaf te komen door een bericht terug te zenden met het verzoek mijn nummer te verwijderen. Dat lukt helaas niet aangezien mijn telefoonnummer kennelijk bij meerdere dealers bekend is en de nummers van (potentiële) klanten onderling worden uitgewisseld. En nee, een verandering van nummer is vanwege zakelijke motieven niet wenselijk.

De inhoud van de brief die is ontvangen impliceert dat ik tot op heden drugs zou gebruiken. DIT IS NIET WAAR! Het vervelende is nu dat ik door mensen in mijn directe omgeving hier op word aangesproken en dit mijn verder prettige leven onder grote druk zet.

Zojuist heb ik vernomen dat de brief eveneens naar een bedrijfsadres is verzonden. De houder van het telefoonnummer is daarmee eveneens in grote problemen gekomen en kan mogelijk ontslag tegemoet zien. Dat kan naar mijn mening toch niet de bedoeling zijn van deze maatregel? En daar is dan kennelijk een half jaar over nagedacht... Elke idioot kan bedenken wat de vergaande gevolgen voor de ontvanger van de brief kunnen zijn!

quote:

Op woensdag 17 april 2013 16:22 schreef waht het volgende:

[..]

Of het prima is vraag ik me af, dat het effect kan hebben weet ik zeker.

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op zaterdag 20-04-2013 om 08:54:35 Happy 4/20 #FourTwenty! reageer retweet

quote:

Obama Makes Major Moves To End The War On Drugs!

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — President Barack Obama’s new strategy for fighting the nation’s drug problem will include a greater emphasis on using public health tools to battle addiction and diverting non-violent drug offenders into treatment instead of prisons, under reforms scheduled to be outlined by the nation’s drug czar Wednesday.

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the National Drug Control Policy, is scheduled to release Obama’s 2013 blueprint for drug policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Millions of people in the United States will become eligible in less than a year for treatment for substance abuse under the new health care overhaul.

Read more: http://globalgrind.com/ne(...)etails#ixzz2ROXKii8t

quote:

The strategy also includes a greater emphasis on criminal justice reforms that include drug courts and probation programs aimed at reducing incarceration rates. It also will include community-based policing programs designed to break the cycle of drug use, crime and incarceration while steering law enforcement resources to more serious offenses, according to details of the strategy released by Kerlikowskes office.

Read more: http://globalgrind.com/ne(...)etails#ixzz2ROXWQP00

quote:

Prison governors hit out at war on drugs

Prison governors have joined the ever-growing list of professional associations and celebrities calling for a rethink of the war on drugs, in a further sign of a sea-change in attitudes.

The Prison Governors Association (PGA) has backed the Time to Count the Costs initiative – a campaign calling for international drug law reforms backed by figures like Richard Branson.

"The blanket prohibition on Class A drugs allows criminals to control both the supply and quality of these drugs to addicts who turn to crime to fund their addiction," Eoin McLennan-Murray of the PGA said.

"The Prison Governors' Association believe that a substantial segment of the prison population have been convicted of low level acquisitive crimes simply to fund that addiction.

"The current war on drugs is successful in creating further victims of acquisitive crime; increasing cost to the taxpayer to accommodate a higher prison population and allowing criminals to control and profit from the sale and distribution of Class A drugs."

Count the Cost is backed by Human Rights Watch, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the former president of Brazil.

A recent appeal by rap music mogul Russell Simmons saw a range of celebrities join the campaign, including Susan Sarandon, Justin Bieber, Harry Belafonte, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey, Will Smith, Ron Howard and Mark Wahlberg.

quote:

Minstens tien doden bij schietpartijen in Mexico

Bij gevechten tussen vermoedelijke leden van een drugskartel en leden van een burgerwacht zijn zondag in het westen van Mexico minstens tien mensen om het leven gekomen. Zeven gewonden liggen met schotwonden in het ziekenhuis.

Dat melden de krant La Reforma en het lokale nieuwsagentschap Quadratin op basis van politiebronnen.

Gewapende mannen vielen 's ochtends in Tepalcatepec en Buenavista Tomatlán, in de deelstaat Michoacán, leden van de burgerwacht aan.

Eenheden van deze zelfbenoemde gemeentepolitie namen in februari de controle over deze plaatsen over. Naar eigen zeggen beschermen ze de inwoners tegen de drugkartels, maar er zijn ook aanwijzingen dat ze zelf banden onderhouden met de onderwereld.

quote:

Steeds meer doden in drugsstrijd Afghanistan

De strijd tegen de papaverteelt in Afghanistan eist steeds meer levens. In 40 dagen tijd zijn 131 doden gevallen onder veiligheidstroepen en burgermedewerkers die hielpen bij de vernietiging van de papavervelden.


Dat heeft de Afghaanse viceminister voor Drugsbestrijding Mohammad Ibrahim Azhar dinsdag gezegd. Het dodental is ongeveer twee keer zo hoog als in dezelfde periode vorig jaar.

Uit opiumpapaver wordt opium gewonnen. Afghanistan is de grootste producent. Voor de Afghaanse boeren is het gewas erg lucratief en ze verzetten zich dan ook tegen de vernietiging van papavervelden. Ook de Taliban verdienen aan de papaverteelt.

quote:

Have We Lost the War on Drugs?

After more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market.

quote:

—Mr. Becker is a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1992. Mr. Murphy is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Both are senior fellows of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

_{A version of this article appeared January 5, 2013, on page C1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: HaveWeThe War Lost On Drugs?.}

quote:

Bust of "over-the-hill" Aspen drug gang pits local cops against feds

ASPEN — When Montgomery Chitty was arrested during the bust of a senior-citizen cocaine ring in 2011, there were more titters about an "over-the-hill" drug gang operating in this celebrity-studded, laissez-faire resort town than there was outrage over the smuggling of hundreds of kilos of cocaine.

From the luxury Gucci and Fendi shops in the heart of the town to the murky interior of the iconically funky Woody Creek Tavern up the valley, the fact that there are big lots of drugs being bought, sold and consumed where the world comes to party isn't much of an eyebrow-raiser.

But Chitty's prosecution and conviction have raised angst of another sort.

In a town that prides itself on having no cops devoted to busting drug dealers and that views drunken driving as a bigger threat to public safety than cocaine, Chitty has become emblematic of a long-standing quandary.

Aspen is locked in a war over drugs because the town isn't part of the war on drugs.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency doesn't trust the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office and, to a lesser extent, the Aspen Police Department, so the DEA keeps investigations and busts as secret from those agencies as it does from drug dealers. The feds' excuse is that local law enforcement officials are not to be trusted: They are too chummy with dealers, and Chitty is a prime example of those too-close ties.

When Chitty's quickly dubbed "over-the-hill" gang was busted after a 15-month investigation that included wiretaps and surveillance cameras, it was as much a surprise to Aspen law enforcement as it was to those arrested — by design.

"Our extensive and prolonged investigation showed relationships between persons who had active arrest warrants and members of the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office," said DEA agent Jim Schrant.

Local officers counter that it is hard to be in a town the size of Aspen and not be acquainted with just about everyone, including those who, it turns out, sell drugs. That doesn't mean officers are turning a blind eye to drug problems.

But the local departments have policies in place that eschew undercover drug investigations, that don't condone the use of drug users as undercover informants and that put the focus of local law enforcers' jobs on public safety.

In that context, armed drug agents operating in secret in Aspen are viewed as a menace.

"Community safety can be jeopardized by these people," Pitkin County Commissioner Michael Owsley said about federal drug agents.

That became a very open controversy in 2005 when federal agents stormed two downtown bars and eateries during a busy happy hour. In a locally unpopular show of force and weapons, the agents arrested kitchen workers who were dealing drugs.

Local law officers knew nothing about the operation until calls started coming in from the public that armed men were on the downtown mall.

Fast-forward to 2011 and the arrest of the golden-years gang. Ten Aspen and Los Angeles-area residents — mostly in their 60s and 70s — were arrested for dealing about 200 kilos of cocaine over an eight-year period.

Chitty, 61, ended up being the only one who went to trial and the only one who received a lengthy sentence.

quote:

Cocaine flows through Sahara as al-Qaida cashes in on lawlessness

Young Malians risk their lives to earn big money transporting drugs across desert

As the daily power cut struck Timbuktu, the town and surrounding desert were plunged into a sandy, grey darkness. Mohamed – a 31-year-old native of the town dressed in rich, deep blue cloth that engulfed his head in the traditional Tuareg style – seemed to shrink further into the shadows. He tipped ash into a saucer as he talked and smoked, telling his story for the first time.

"I didn't know cigarette trafficking was illegal," he said, exhaling into the black. "I smoke, everyone here smokes, so it didn't seem serious. But when I started transporting cocaine … I'm a Muslim, I knew it was wrong."

In 2009 Mohamed, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, joined a team that drove packages of cocaine across the Sahara. He and his boss – who introduced him to the illicit trade in cigarettes as a young apprentice – were lured into the business by the apparent wealth of Moroccan and Algerian narco-traffickers whom they encountered in desert towns.

"When we transported cigarettes, I would be paid around 100,000 CFA francs [about £130] for each trip. With cocaine, I earned 1 million," Mohamed explained. "We would drive through the desert in convoys, and each car would earn roughly 18m CFA – the driver, security man and I would all be paid a fee, and my boss would keep the rest."

It is impossible to estimate how many young Malians are, like Mohamed, drawn into drug trafficking by the prospect of earning big money in short periods. In a region where youth unemployment and poverty are high, the prospect of travelling for days at a time through one of the most inhospitable terrains on earth offers little deterrent.

"It was hard, but there was no other way I could earn that kind of money," said Mohamed. "Our routes were never fixed, but we would drive 24 hours a day, without stopping, until we got there. We would eat tinned food, and prepare tea in the car. The most important thing was to get there as quickly as possible."

The UN estimates about 18 tonnes of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $1.25bn (£800m), crosses West Africa every year – nearly 50% of all non-US-bound cocaine. Most of it originates in Columbia, Peru and Bolivia, and travels to west Africa on private jets, fishing boats and freighters along the notorious "Highway 10" — the shortest route between the continents along the 10th parallel of latitude.

Now the role of al-Qaida-linked Islamists – who controlled northern Mali from early 2012 until they were ousted by French and African troops this year – is fuelling fears for the potential of the drug trade to destabilise the region.

"There is hard evidence of the link between al-Qaida and cocaine trafficking in the Sahara," said Dr Kwesi Aning, director of academic affairs and research at the Kofi Annan international peacekeeping training centre in Ghana. "In the beginning, the trade was mainly dominated by Tuaregs and middlemen who guided traffickers to water and fuel dumps in the desert. But after al-Qaida got involved around 10 years ago, we saw a massive increase in the quantities of cocaine involved. They had the networks, and they had the logistical know-how."

Experts say the lack of law enforcement in the Sahara has allowed both Islamism and the cocaine trade to flourish, with vast, inhospitable, mountainous desert borders all but impossible to police. Many in Mali also accuse successive regimes of the now ousted president Amadou Toumani Touré of being deeply complicit in the trade.

The region's lawlessness was blamed for the 2009 "Air Cocaine" incident, when a Boeing 727 believed to have been carrying up to 10 tonnes of cocaine was found burnt-out in the Malian desert. In 2010, a Malian police commissioner was convicted in connection with attempts to build an airstrip in the desert for future landings. And in the same year, the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency reported that a plane from Venezuela had landed in Mali, and that its cargo was driven by 4x4 vehicles to Timbuktu before authorities lost track of the convoy.

"You have to bear in mind that we are talking about the middle of nowhere," said Pierre Lapaque, representative of the United Nations office on drugs and crime (UNODC) regional office for west and central Africa. "It's a huge piece of sand where you can easily cross borders without knowing it. It is a serious challenge for law enforcement.

"On top of that, these are countries where law enforcement officers are poorly trained, poorly equipped and corrupt, and were logistics don't work. Put that together, and it's a nice opportunity for criminals," he added.

The Nigerian former president Olusegun Obasanjo, commissioner for the recently formed West Africa Commission on Drugs, said: "These criminal groups have the money to buy influence, which makes it difficult to apprehend them. It is affecting the normal operations of civil, military and paramilitary officials. [Drug traffickers] are even paying for political campaigns."

Mohamed said traffickers were highly organised and had well-established means of making their presence even harder to detect. "We waited to collect the drugs at a place between the mountains in the desert called 'al-Hanq' he explained. "The drugs were transported there by camels which travelled across the desert without a guide. The camels were trained by being starved and taken through the same route repeatedly, and fed when they arrive at al-Hanq, until they learned to do the journey alone.

"We would continue in convoys of 4x4s, but we had ways of hiding," Mohamed added. "A reconnaissance vehicle would always go ahead, with no drugs on board, and alert us to any obstacles. We would put grease on the car and stick sand on it as a camouflage, that way it's impossible to see from a distance in the desert."

Lapaque said: "We have heard about camels being trained to carry drugs. These are criminal groups which are well organised, and you have to understand that they have a business approach. They are weighing the potential risks against profits, which are really huge."

Mohamed said he had learned the risks first hand, and has now left the business after his convoy was attacked by heavily armed bandits. "We had stopped to repair a problem with the car, when a car mounted with weapons opened fire on us," he said. "I ran three hundred metres on foot until the shooting stopped, but three of my colleagues and all the attackers were killed. Two vehicles were burnt completely. It scared me so much, I told my boss I didn't want to be involved any more."

Mohamed said his boss is now a senior figure in the drug trade, with a mansion in the Nigerien capital, Niamey. In Timbuktu, the presence of drug chiefs is an open secret, he says, although many were forced to flee during the war.

"Everyone knows who in Timbuktu is doing drug trafficking, even the government," Mohamed said. "When senior officials [in the last government] came to Timbuktu, the drug traffickers were the ones who provided them with 36 brand new 4x4s."

quote:

Barack Obama calls for 'new realities' and improved US-Mexico relations

President follows talks with counterpart Peña Nieto with speech that includes prediction of successful immigration reform

President Barack Obama called for a positive re-evaluation of the US-Mexico relationship on Friday, in an emphatically upbeat speech in Mexico City. Obama expressed strong confidence that immigration reform in the US would become a reality before the end of the year.

"It is time to put old mind sets aside and time to recognize new realities," Obama said, in a speech to hundreds of Mexican students interspersed with political leaders. The relationship, he said, should not be defined by threats but by shared prosperity.

This message of mutual respect, partnership and economic potential has dominated Obama's two-day visit to Mexico, which began on Thursday with a meeting with the country's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

In the press conference that followed, the emphasis on the economy dovetailed with an effort to defuse underlying tensions over America's role in Mexico's drug wars, by stressing that US collaboration would be respectful of the new government's promise to prioritize reducing violence rather than going after the cartels.

Obama's speech, which was delivered in the impressive setting of the National Anthropology Museum, was filled with eulogies to Mexican cultural and historical figures, from the painter Frida Kahlo to the Independence hero Miguel Hidalgo. Periodic phrases delivered in Spanish – such as "Es un placer estar entre amigos," or "It is a pleasure to be among friends" – earned cheers.

But the speech also contained much that seemed designed to convince the president's domestic audience that Mexico's economic potential should allay fears generated by the bipartisan initiative on immigration reform that is currently making its way through Congress. Obama said he was "absolutely convinced" that reform could be passed this year.

While the president called on Mexicans to put aside their traditional vision of the US as either disrespectful of national sovereignty or isolationist, he put most stress on the need for the US to go beyond the perceptions created by headlines about violence and concerns about border security.

"Mexico is a nation that is in the process of remaking itself," Obama said, before praising everything from pro-competition legislative reforms to trade figures and the fact that most Mexicans now identify themselves as middle class. "The long-term solution to the challenge of illegal immigration is a growing, prosperous Mexico that creates more jobs and opportunity right here."

The Mexican government has studiously avoided commenting in any depth on the possibility of an immigration reform, but Obama's message still fitted easily with President Peña Nieto's own efforts to persuade Mexicans that, as the government slogan goes, "This is Mexico's Moment". This also involves redirecting attention away from the continuing violence of the drug wars that are killing around 1,000 people every month.

Obama did briefly touch on security issues, although this was primarily to promise that he is working hard to curb American demand for illegal drugs and weapons trafficking that he recognized is fuelling the killing.

Following the speech, Obama met representatives of the business community in private before flying on to Costa Rica. After meeting with the Costa Rican president, Laura Chinchilla, he is due to join leaders from Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama at a gathering of the Central American Integration System.

Obama is reportedly preparing to be rather tougher on the Central Americans than the Mexicans, calling for enhanced security cooperation as well as improvements in human rights and democratic reforms.

quote:

Latin America growth key for war on drugs - Obama

President Barack Obama has said the war on drugs will not be effectively won unless the economies of Latin American countries are strengthened.

Mr Obama was speaking in Costa Rica, where he is due to attend a summit of Central American leaders.

They are expected to discuss ways of tackling increasing violence generated by drug cartels operating in the area.

Most of the cocaine produced in South America is smuggled through the region before it reaches the US.

At a joint news conference with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla on Friday, Mr Obama said criminal organisations prosper in economically vulnerable countries:

"The stronger the economies and the institutions for individuals seeking legitimate careers, the less powerful those narco-trafficking organisations are going to be," Mr Obama said.

The Costa Rican president called for a review of the current approach to the drugs problem in the region.

"Costa Rica doesn't have an army and cannot allow to come to a situation of war with the drugs cartels," she said.

'Common enemy'

Mr Obama began a three-day tour of the region in Mexico on Thursday, and arrived in the Costa Rican capital, San Jose, on Friday.

He will take part in a summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA), which includes Dominican Republic and all seven Central American countries - Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

Central America has become increasingly engulfed in the violence generated by the illegal drugs trade.

Local gangs are being employed by the Mexican cartels to bring the drug from South America.

These organisations are also involved in human trafficking, arms smuggling and other forms of crime.

The US has security co-operation agreements with several countries in Central America and Mexico, which it intends to renew.

The summit will also discuss trade and economic co-operation.

Costa Rica and other countries are expected to request favourable conditions to buy gas from the US. Guatemala is expected to raise the issue of immigration.

quote:

Marijuana smokers march in their thousands in Mexico City - video

Thousands march through the streets of Mexico City on Saturday for the 13th annual global marijuana march. The recreational use of marijuana is already legal in Mexico, with users able to carry 5g without fear of arrest. Although, unprecedented growth in local and international demand for illegal drugs is contributing to escalating violence, as gangs battle over their share of Mexico's billion-dolllar illicit drugs industry

quote:

Legal highs: international drugs gangs 'expanding into growing market'

Head of US overseas drug enforcement bureau says officials lack tools needed to keep up with rapidly expanding market

International criminal gangs are rapidly expanding into the burgeoning market for newly minted legal highs, while law enforcement agencies lack the tools needed to keep up, the head of the US's overseas drug enforcement has warned.

Governments have struggled to keep up with the rapidly growing market for new psychoactive substances, as banning a new drug can require a complex legislative process - and many of these drugs remain legal in some countries, said Brian Nichols, assistant secretary at the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

"These types of drugs are what transnational criminal networks are increasingly moving towards. Traditional drugs like marijuana are not as much in favour – they are bulky and hard to transport. Heroin and cocaine are very important but drug addiction is moving to the illicit use of pharmaceuticals and new substances like GBH," he told the Guardian

"This is the growing threat. The use of traditional drugs is declining in the UK and the US, cocaine use is dropping, but prescription drug abuse is growing and new substance abuse is growing. "

Websites offering new psychoactive substances, marketed as "bath salts" or "plant foods", are proliferating, thanks in part to the failure of law enforcement agencies to keep up with the range of new chemicals. Dealers remain a step ahead of the law by slightly altering the formula for known molecules such as MDMA (ecstasy), ketamine or LSD, to create new drugs. They can be far more dangerous than traditional drugs, because they have not been widely tested on the street and because the difference between a dose that supplies a high and one that results in fatality can be extremely small.

What was once a cottage industry has rapidly evolved, with labs and factories in China, Europe and the US manufacturing the chemicals on an industrial basis, churning out hundreds of tonnes of the compounds and selling them over the internet. It is this massive expansion of the trade that has attracted the attention of international drugs gangs, who use their expertise in trafficking traditional drugs such as heroin and cocaine to move into a new and lucrative market, said Nichols.

"There was a period of time in the US when you had new substances each week. Now you have by some counts well over 200 psychoactives [that] have been identified. It's my belief there are many more out there. We do not have people testing everything they come across," Nichols warned.

As with some other areas of international crime, such as wildlife trafficking, for which Nichols is also responsible, the rise of the internet has been a central factor.

"Cybercrime means people can order up crime online. It is a greater globalisation [of crime] than we have ever seen before," said Nichols.

But many of the buyers do not realise how dangerous the substances they are taking can be. "Some of these party drugs are an incredible high at the right dosage, but if you take [a fractional amount more] then you have an incredible toxin," Nichols said.

Nichols wants other countries to follow the lead of the US by bringing in legislation to fast-track the banning of new drugs. In the US, a process known as the scheduling of analogues allows drugs that are similar in effect or chemical make-up to existing illegal drugs to be banned without a lengthy process.

He also called for much more international co-operation in tracking and identifying new drugs and trying to prevent their distribution.

"One of the efforts we are pioneering in the UK and other partners in the G8 is encouraging the World Health Organisation to dedicate increased resources to identifying and scheduling of new psychoactive substances [and] create a more robust regime." He said there would also be an emphasis on demand reduction and treatment as well as preventing the sale and use of such drugs, and that help would be made available to countries lacking expertise in these areas.

quote:

Op donderdag 9 mei 2013 16:09 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

Laten we gewoon bij voorbaat alle middelen verbieden waar je lol aan zou kunnen hebben, dus het is verboden tenzij toestemming van de regering. Toestemming kan worden verkregen wanneer het product door een naamloze vennootschap wordt gemaakt en/of het de arbeidsproductiviteit van de gebruiker verhoogt.

quote:

Asian nations pledge to step up war on drugs

China and five Southeast Asian nations vowed on Thursday to boost cooperation in the fight against illegal drugs, which they warned posed a "significant threat" to the region.

YANGON: China and five Southeast Asian nations vowed on Thursday to boost cooperation in the fight against illegal drugs, which they warned posed a "significant threat" to the region.

The pledge came at the end of a meeting of ministers or representatives from Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam in the Myanmar capital Naypyidaw.

"Consumption and production of narcotic drugs continues to grow rapidly within the region and worldwide, constituting a significant threat to the East Asian region," according to a joint statement adopted at the meeting.

The countries agreed to tighten cross-border cooperation, step up alternative development programmes and share experience in drug use prevention, treatment and public awareness raising exercises.

The region has seen a surge in production of amphetamine-type stimulants in recent years.

Myanmar recently pushed back by five years its goal of eliminating drug production by 2014, following a rebound in poppy cultivation in the impoverished country, which is emerging from decades of military rule.

Myanmar is the world's second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, and a major source of methamphetamine pills in the region, the UN said in a report in December.

Myanmar's drugs trade is closely linked to long-running insurgencies in remote areas bordering Thailand, Laos and China -- known as the golden triangle -- with rebels widely thought to use drug profits to fund operations.

As part of its reform drive, Myanmar's quasi-civilian government has reached tentative peace deals with most major armed ethnic groups.

quote:

Beroep OM in grote drugszaak strandt

Door een fout van justitie is het hoger beroep tegen een hoofdverdachte in een omvangrijke drugszaak voortijdig gestrand. De verdachte in kwestie gaat daardoor vrijuit.

De in totaal vijf verdachten werden eerder door de rechtbank in Rotterdam ook al vrijgesproken, wegens gebrek aan bewijs. De officier van justitie had forse celstraffen geëist en ging in hoger beroep. In de zaak tegen de betrokken hoofdverdachte is daarin een fout gemaakt, zo heeft het gerechtshof in Den Haag vastgesteld. Het proces tegen de overige verdachten kan gewoon doorgaan.

De zaak draait om de invoer van 1017 kilo cocaïne, die was verstopt tussen een lading whisky. De scheepscontainer was afkomstig uit Trinidad. Na de onderschepping in de haven van Rotterdam werden de pakketten cocaïne vervangen door dummy's. De politie liet de container zijn weg vervolgen, om op die manier de ontvangers in beeld te krijgen. De eindbestemming bleek een loods in Amsterdam-Noord.

Appèlakte
Als de officier van justitie in hoger beroep gaat, zoals in deze zaak, moet hij een zogeheten appèlakte opstellen. In de akte in de zaak tegen de hoofdverdachte staat dat de verdachte beroep heeft aangetekend en niet het Openbaar Ministerie (OM). 'Het beroep is daarom niet geldig', aldus een woordvoerster van het hof. Het OM heeft de fout zelf onder de aandacht van het hof gebracht.

De advocaat van de verdachte, Richard van der Weide, is tevreden met de consequenties die het hof aan de fout heeft verbonden. 'Maar erg slordig is het wel'', vindt de raadsman. 'Het gaat hier om een megazaak, niet om een winkeldiefstal. Zoiets mag eigenlijk niet gebeuren. Als ik zo'n fout zou maken, had ik direct een joekel van een klacht aan mijn broek.'

quote:

Inside San Pedro Sula – the most violent city in the world | World news | guardian.co.uk

City in Honduras has a murder rate of 173 per 100,000 residents, reportedly the highest in the world outside a war zone


No matter the time of day or night, morticians stand guard by the gate of the city morgue, waiting for the next body to be released so they can offer their services to grieving families. In the most violent city in the most violent country in the world, they never have to wait for long.

"Satan himself lives here in San Pedro," says one nervous mortician who asks to be identified only as Lucas. "People here kill people like they're nothing more than chickens."

Last year, an average of 20 people were murdered every day in Honduras, a country of just 8 million inhabitants, according to the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (NAUH). That's a murder rate of 85.5 per 100,000 residents, compared with 56 in Venezuela, 4.78 in the US and 1.2 in the UK.

In San Pedro Sula, the rate is 173, reportedly the highest in the world outside a war zone. The city is the country's manufacturing and commercial hub. Dozens of maquiladoras – export assembly plants – churn out New Balance T-shirts and Fruit of the Loom boxer shorts for markets abroad. It should be a bustling place, but there is little movement on the streets and the air is tense. At newsstands, headlines cry out details of the previous day's grisly crimes. Few cars have number plates; most have black-tinted windows.

The small number of police patrolling the streets breed more fear than security among residents, given the extreme levels of corruption within the national force that reportedly go all the way to the top.

Honduras is caught in a vortex of crime – drug trafficking, gang wars, political upheaval and fierce land disputes matched by equal doses of impunity and corruption.

The same mix of factors has helped make Latin America the world's deadliest region. Although it is home to just 8% of the world's population, UN figures show that it accounts for 42% of all homicides worldwide. According to the Mexican thinktank Citizen Council on Public Safety and Criminal Justice, all but one of the 20 cities with the highest homicide rates in the world are in Latin America. The exception is New Orleans.

But nowhere does the violence seem as out of control as in Honduras.

Violence began to flare in the early 2000s and has risen steadily since the country took on a bigger role in the drug routes from South America to the US. About 80% of the cocaine headed for America passes through Honduras, according to the US state department. An already frail state has been further weakened by the infiltration of organised crime and a 2009 coup, after which reports of human rights abuses against supporters of the deposed president rocketed. At the same time rival street gangs known as maras – many of whose members were deported from US jails – battle to control local drug markets and extortion rackets.

Lucas has been preparing cadavers for burial since he was 15 and remembers when most of the people he worked on had died naturally. "Today that's rare. We see people with six to 10 bullet wounds, dismembered, decapitated," he says.

Victims are mechanics, students, farmers, journalists, bus drivers and business people. On 19 April, the top money laundering prosecutor was shot dead; on 2 May, a leading criminal investigator of car thefts was murdered. "There seems to be no one who is off limits," says Steven Dudley, co-director of Insight Crime, a thinktank dedicated to security and organised crime in Latin America.

The first line of defence for officials questioned about high murder rates is to dispute the numbers. "It's a smear campaign," says José Amilcar Mejía, the police chief of San Pedro Sula. He claims the census numbers are wrong, that murder figures for the city include bodies brought from elsewhere, even though the Violence Observatory gets its information from official figures. The security ministry has since prohibited police from giving interviews and spokesmen can only divulge information about arrests, raids and other police operations. Crime reports are to be kept under wraps.

One root of the problem is police corruption, from soliciting bribes to theft, extortion and murder. In at least five cases, police officers have been implicated in death-squad style killings of gang members, according to the Associated Press. Public outrage over the alleged participation of several officers in the 2011 murder of the son of the rector at the NAUH led to an attempt to purge the police. But some officials who failed the tests were later promoted.

The national police chief, Juan Carlos "El Tigre" Bonilla, has been accused of three extrajudicial killings and implicated in 11 other deaths and disappearances. Despite the allegations and the fact that the US – a big donor in the fight against drug trafficking – has refused to work with Bonilla, President Porfirio Lobo confirmed him in his post.

But the police are trying to clean up their image. Bonilla will be one of 400-plus officers subjected to "confidence tests", including drug testing and polygraphs, and on Tuesday the security ministry announced a shuffle of top police posts.

A lack of confidence in the police and other authorities, and the fact that only a fraction of crimes are investigated and the perpetrators punished, leads people to take matters into their own hands. "There is zero institutionality here, the police and investigators are useless," says Gustavo Irias, of the Tegucigalpa-based Democracy Studies Centre. "And impunity generates new violence."

Motives were determined in just 41% of murders last year; of those nearly a quarter were attributed to a settling of scores, the Violence Observatory says.

"When people have no recourse, the answer becomes, 'Can I get a bigger gun?'" says Dudley.

For Lucas at the morgue in San Pedro, bigger guns keep him busy, but he is considering trying his luck in another country, like hundreds of thousands of other Hondurans who emigrate every year to Mexico, the US and beyond. He's confident his skills will be put to use, wherever he ends up: "There are dead people everywhere, right?"

Bron: www.guardian.co.uk

quote:

Greek addicts turn to deadly shisha drug as economic crisis deepens | World news | guardian.co.uk

Growing popularity of 'cocaine of the poor' in Athens has overwhelmed public health authorities already under strain

Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis tearing Greece apart or shisha, the drug now known as the "cocaine of the poor". What everyone does accept is that shisha is a killer. And at ¤2 or less a hit, it is one that has come to stalk Greece, the country long on the frontline of Europe's financial meltdown.

"As drugs go, it is the worst. It burns your insides, it makes you aggressive and ensures that you go totally mad," said Maria, a former heroin addict. "But it is cheap and it is easy to get, and it is what everyone is doing."

The drug crisis, brought to light in a new film by Vice.com, has put Athens's health authorities, already overwhelmed by draconian cuts, under further strain.

The drug of preference for thousands of homeless Greeks forced on to the streets by poverty and despair, shisha is described by both addicts and officials as a variant of crystal meth whose potential to send users into a state of mindless violence is underpinned by the substances with which the synthetic drug is frequently mixed: battery acid, engine oil and even shampoo.

Worse still, it is not only readily available, but easy to make – tailor-made for a society that despite official prognostications of optimism, and fiscal progress, on the ground, at least, sees little light at the end of the tunnel.

"It is a killer but it also makes you want to kill," Konstantinos, a drug addict, told Vice. "You can kill without understanding that you have done it … And it is spreading faster than death. A lot of users have died."

For Charalampos Poulopoulos, the head of Kethea, Greece's pre-eminent anti-drug centre, shisha symbolises the depredations of a crisis that has spawned record levels of destitution and unemployment. It is, he said, an "austerity drug" – the best response yet of dealers who have become ever more adept at producing synthetic drugs designed for those who can no longer afford more expensive highs from such drugs as heroin and cocaine.

"The crisis has given dealers the possibility to promote a new, cheap drug, a cocaine for the poor," said Poulopoulos at a centre run for addicts in Exarcheia, the anarchist stronghold in Athens. "Shisha can be sniffed or injected and it can be made in home laboratories – you don't need any specialised knowledge. It is extremely dangerous."

Across Greece, the byproducts of six straight years of recession have been brutal and cruel. Depression, along with drug and alcohol abuse, has risen dramatically. Delinquency and crime have soared as Greece's social fabric has unravelled under the weight of austerity measures that have cut the income of ordinary Greeks by 40%. Prostitution – the easiest way of financing drug addition – has similarly skyrocketed.

"Desperation is such that many women agree to engage in unprotected sex because that way they'll make more money," said Eleni Marini, a British-trained psychologist with Kethea. "Shisha has been linked to a very intense sexual drive but it attacks your ability to think straight and we're seeing a lot more pregnancies among drug addicts who engage in prostitution." Last year, two sex workers gave birth on the streets of Athens.

In a climate of pervasive uncertainty –where suicides have also shot up and the spread of HIV infections has assumed epidemic proportions – drug addicts (a population believed to be around 25,000 strong), have become increasingly self-destructive. And, experts say, young Greeks marginalised by record rates of unemployment - at 64% Greece has the highest youth unemployment in the EU – are leading the way.

"The crisis has created a widespread sense of pessimism," said Poulopoulos. "For those who might have quit drugs there is now no incentive. Instead, there's an atmosphere of misery where people knowing they won't find work are becoming a lot more self-destructive. In Athens, where the economic crisis has hit hardest, shisha is part of that."

Greece's conservative-dominated coalition has tried to deal with the problem by driving drug users and other homeless people out of the city centre – a series of controversial police operations has swept central streets, clearing crowded doorways and malls.

"But with such actions, authorities are only sweeping the problem under the carpet," said Poulopoulos, a UK-trained social worker whose oversight of Kethea has won plaudits internationally. "What, in reality, they are really doing is marginalising these people even more by pushing them into the arms of drug dealers who offer them protection."

Just when the demand for help has never been greater, state-funded organisations such as Kethea have had their budgets slashed by a third at the request of the "troika" of — the EU, ECB and IMF — keeping the debt-stricken Greek economy afloat.

Since the outbreak of the crisis in 2009, Kethea has lost 70 of its 500 staff.

The cuts come despite studies showing that for every euro invested in programmes such as Kethea, the state saves about ¤6 in costs to the criminal justice and healthcare systems. "The cuts we have witnessed are a false economy, a huge mistake," said Poulopoulos.

On the streets of Athens, the breeding ground of shisha, there is rising fear that austerity not only doesn't work, it kills.

Bron: www.guardian.co.uk

quote:

Senate passes medical marijuana legislation, sends measure to Quinn

SPRINGFIELD-The idea of Illinoisans turning to pot to treat severe illnesses moved closer to reality Friday after the Illinois Senate approved the medicinal use of marijuana over GOP objections it would encourage more serious drug use.

The Senate's 35-21 vote, which followed an emotional debate that lasted more than 90 minutes, moves the legislation carried by state Sen. William Haine (D-Alton) to Gov. Pat Quinn.

The governor has said he is "open-minded" toward the measure, which if enacted would make Illinois the 19th state to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana. Quinn's office had no immediate response following Friday's vote.

"We are confident a strict, controlled implementation of this for those who suffer pain with the diseases and conditions listed in the act can be well served," Haine said. "Many of us have anecdotal evidence of the value of this. Doctors' groups have endorsed this, nurses.

"It is a substance, which is much more benign than, for example, powerful prescription drugs such as Oxycontin, Vicodin and the rest. The scourge of these drugs is well known. This is not true of the medical use of marijuana," said Haine, a former state's attorney from Downstate Madison County.

Friday's roll call came together on the strength of mostly Democratic votes, though three Republicans joined in supporting Haines' legislation, as well. They were Sens. Pamela Althoff (R-McHenry), Jim Oberweis (R-Sugar Grove) and Dave Syverson (R-Rockford).

Under Haine's four-year pilot program, users would have to suffer from one of 33 ailments or diseases, including cancer, HIV/AIDS and ALS, and have a doctor's prescription before they would be allowed to purchase and possess 2.5 ounces of marijuana during a 14-day period.

The plan would authorize 22 growers across Illinois and permit 60 dispensaries where users could purchase the plant.

Users, growers and sellers would have to undergo fingerprinting and criminal background checks. Employers and landlords could bar medicinal marijuana use in their workplaces and buildings. And, users would have to undergo field sobriety tests if police suspect they are driving under the influence of medical cannabis and could lose their driving privileges and privileges to use pot for their illnesses.

"This thing is filed with one check after the other on the possibility of abuse," Haine said. "It allows cultivation of this substance, which can relieve the terrible pains suffered by people. And they won't have to go to the dark side to get it. It'll be grown here in Illinois, not somewhere else."

The plan is opposed by the Illinois Sheriffs Association and the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Illinois State Police remained neutral, leaving no law-enforcement agency in support of Haine's legislation

One by one, opponents stood to predict the state couldn't adequately regulate or police a new marijuana growing and distribution industry that would provide approved users 13 joints a day, and that the drug's legally accepted use would encourage people to turn toward more illicit narcotics.

In one of the debate's most moving moments, state Sen. Kyle McCarter (R-Lebanon) choked up noting that the pain of an ill patient who might benefit from marijuana is miniscule compared to the pain of a parent who loses a child from drug abuse. McCarter's 21-year-old daughter died from an accidental drug overdose.

"For every touching story we've heard about benefits of those in pain, I remind you today there are a thousand times more parents who'll never be relieved from the pain of losing a child due to addiction, which in many cases started with the very illegal, FDA-unapproved, addiction-forming drug you're asking us to make a normal part of our communities," McCarter told his colleagues, his voice breaking. "As one of those dads, I ask you to vote no."

quote:

Organization of American States launches groundbreaking drug policy report exploring alternatives to the war on drugs

quote:

On Friday, 17 May, in Bogotá, Colombia, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza will present Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos with the groundbreaking outcomes of a high level drug policy review. Mandated by 34 heads of state – including the US - at the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, this report marks the first time in history that a high level multilateral agency has given serious consideration to the failings of current policies and potential alternative approaches, including decriminalisation and legal regulation.

quote:

. “We welcome the reports from this ground-breaking high level initiative. Drug policy reform has been a taboo issue for decades - but for the first time representatives from 34 countries across the Americas have had the courage to break that taboo and envision real alternatives to the war on drugs. It is a clear acknowledgement that the global prohibition has failed to deliver what was promised and that a range of alternatives should be meaningfully explored.”

. “The heads of State across the hemisphere who initiated the project can be proud of the fact that it has produced a set of four plausible scenarios, including one for the legal regulation of cannabis and other drugs - including the necessary reform of international law. And that, far from than being a disaster - the regulation scenario foresees a shift to legal regulation capable of producing positive outcomes.”

quote:

Western leaders study 'gamechanging' report on global drugs trade

Review by Organisation of American States on illicit drugs 'could mark beginning of the end' of prohibition


European governments and the Obama administration are this weekend studying a "gamechanging" report on global drugs policy that is being seen in some quarters as the beginning of the end for blanket prohibition.

Publication of the Organisation of American States (OAS) review, commissioned at last year's Cartagena Summit of the Americas attended by Barack Obama, reflects growing dissatisfaction among Latin American countries with the current global policy on illicit drugs. It spells out the effects of the policy on many countries and examines what the global drugs trade will look like if the status quo continues. It notes how rapidly countries' unilateral drugs policies are evolving, while at the same time there is a growing consensus over the human costs of the trade. "Growing media attention regarding this phenomenon in many countries, including on social media, reflects a world in which there is far greater awareness of the violence and suffering associated with the drug problem," José Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the OAS, says in a foreword to the review. "We also enjoy a much better grasp of the human and social costs not only of drug use but also of the production and transit of controlled substances."

Insulza describes the report, which examines a number of ways to reform the current pro-prohibition position, as the start of "a long-awaited discussion", one that experts say puts Europe and North America on notice that the current situation will change, with or without them. Latin American leaders have complained bitterly that western countries, whose citizens consume the drugs, fail to appreciate the damage of the trade. In one scenario envisaged in the report, a number of South American countries would break with the prohibition line and decide that they will no longer deploy law enforcement and the army against drug cartels, having concluded that the human costs of the "war on drugs" is too high.

The west's responsibility to reshape global drugs policy will be emphasised in three weeks when Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, the president of Colombia, who initiated the review, arrives in Britain. His visit is part of a programme to push for changes in global policy that will lead up to a special UN general assembly in 2016 when the scenarios of the OAS are expected to have a significant influence.

Experts described the publication of the review as a historic moment. "This report represents the most high-level discussion about drug policy reform ever undertaken, and shows tremendous leadership from Latin America on the global debate," said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Foundation's Global Drug Policy Program, which has described its publication as a "game-changer".

"It was particularly important to hear president Santos invite the states of Europe to contribute toward envisioning a better international drug policy. These reports inspire a conversation on drug policy that has been long overdue."

The report represents the first time any significant multilateral agency has outlined serious alternatives to prohibition, including legal market regulation or reform of the UN drug conventions.

"While leaders have talked about moving from criminalisation to public health in drug policy, punitive, abstinence-only approaches have still predominated, even in the health sphere," said Daniel Wolfe, director of the Open Society Foundation's International Harm Reduction Program. "These scenarios offer a chance for leaders to replace indiscriminate detention and rights' abuses with approaches that distinguish between users and traffickers, and offer the community-based health services that work best for those in need."

In a statement, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which campaigns for changes in drug laws and is supported by the former presidents of several South American states, said that publication of the review would break "the taboo that blocked for so long the debate on more humane and efficient drug policy". The Commission said that it was "time that governments around the world are allowed to responsibly experiment with regulation models that are tailored to their realities and local need".

quote:

David Simon, creator of The Wire, says new US drug laws help only 'white, middle-class kids' | World news | The Observer

The award-winning creator of The Wire, David Simon, has emerged as a critic of the 'racial bias' in the US debate on the war on drugs

David Simon surged into the American mainstream with a bleak vision of the devastation wrought by drugs on his home town of Baltimore – The Wire, hailed by many as the greatest television drama of all time. But what keeps him there is his apocalyptic and unrelenting heresy over the failed "war on drugs", the multibillion-dollar worldwide crusade launched by President Richard Nixon in 1971.

When Simon brought that heresy to London last week – to take part in a debate hosted by the Observer – he was inevitably asked about what reformers celebrate as recent "successes" – votes in Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana.

"I'm against it," Simon told his stunned audience at the Royal Institution on Thursday night. "The last thing I want to do is rationalise the easiest, the most benign end of this. The whole concept needs to be changed, the debate reframed.

"I want the thing to fall as one complete edifice. If they manage to let a few white middle-class people off the hook, that's very dangerous. If they can find a way for white kids in middle-class suburbia to get high without them going to jail," he continued, "and getting them to think that what they do is a million miles away from black kids taking crack, that is what politicians would do."

If marijuana were exempted from the war on drugs, he insisted, "it'd be another 10 or 40 years of assigning people of colour to this dystopia."

Simon joined two film directors for a discussion onstage: Eugene Jarecki, in whose movie The House I Live In – on the toll of America's war on drugs – he features prominently, and Rachel Seifert, whose Cocaine Unwrapped charts the drug's progress from blighted "producer" countries to the addicts in Europe and the US.

The occasion was staged by the Observer and chaired by its editor, John Mulholland, as part of its campaign to address the global drugs crisis.

Simon took no prisoners. In his vision, the war on – and the curse of – drugs are inseparable from what he called, in his book, The Death of Working Class America, the de-industrialisation and ravaging of cities that were once the engine-rooms and, in Baltimore's case, the seaboard of an industrial superpower.

The war is about the disposal of what Simon called, in his most unforgiving but cogent term, "excess Americans": once a labour force, but no longer of use to capitalism. He went so far as to call the war on drugs "a holocaust in slow motion".

Simon said he "begins with the assumption that drugs are bad", but also that the war on drugs has "always proceeded along racial lines", since the banning of opium.

It is waged "not against dangerous substances but against the poor, the excess Americans," he said, and with striking and subversive originality, posited the crisis in stark economic terms: "We do not need 10-12% of our population; they've been abandoned. They don't have barbed wire around them, but they might as well."

As a result, "drugs are the only industry left in places such as Baltimore and east St Louis" – an industry that employs "children, old people, people who've been shooting drugs for 20 years, it doesn't matter. It's the only factory that's still open. The doors are open."

While his co-panellists sipped their water, Simon poured himself another glass of red wine as he continued. A bull of a man, a presence in any room – even one as large as the packed theatre in the colonnaded heart of Britain's scientific establishment.

"Capitalism," Simon said, "has tried to jail its way out of the problem" with the result that "the prison industry has been given over to capitalism. If we need to get rid of these people, we might as well make some money out of getting rid of them."

Jarecki, in a scathing portrayal of the American prison system in both his film and at Thursday's event, cited some statistics: "We have ravaged our poor communities," he said, some of which, African-American, counted "4,000 per 100,000 in jail, as compared with an average dose of around 300". Meanwhile, Simon said the police in some cities had "become an army of occupation that sends brothers and fathers to jail".

He described a logic to policing in Baltimore whereby "street-rips" in drug-infested areas make for easy arrests to achieve "cost-efficient" policing, while criminal activity other than drugs was ignored because prosecutions were laborious.

Simon said he had seen a decrease in arrests for non-drug offences from 70-90% to 20-40%, while drug-related arrests increased on some beats from 5,000 to 30,000 because, as Jarecki put it, "it's like shooting fish in a barrel".

"So the drug war," concluded Simon, "makes the city unsafe." But has it worked? "The drugs in my city are more powerful, cheaper and more available than ever before," replied Simon.

Simon said he had "no faith in our political leadership to ever address the problem. There is no incentive to walk away from law and order as a political currency." He said change would come, if it does, from jurors simply "refusing to send husbands, sons and fathers from their communities to jail … That is how prohibition [of alcohol] ended. They couldn't find 12 Americans who would send a 13th to jail for selling bathtub gin."

Simon regarded "legalisation" of drugs as "a word invented by advocates of the drug war to make the other side look goofy, saying 'everything should be legalised'. The issue is: how do we get out of here? And I say: decriminalisation. As with other controlled substances – taxed and regulated." He later said he did not think change would come of any moral decision, but because "someone just figures out: this is costing too much money".

From the audience, the Colombian ambassador to London, Mauricio Rodríguez, drew attention to his government's leadership of initiatives from Latin America to "completely redraw" a global strategy on drugs, with co-responsibility assumed by consuming countries, focusing on social and economic issues, and money laundering by banks. "Basta!" he said, "the Latin American countries have had enough." Such thinking had driven a recent report, which Rodríguez brandished, by the Organisation of American States, of which, he pointed out, the US is a member.

Simon replied that America had fought "proxy wars" across the world for decades, and the war on drugs in Latin America was among them. On the carnage in neighbouring Mexico, he said: "If 40,000 Mexicans are dead, we don't give a damn as long as it stays that side of the border – turn northern Mexico into an abattoir, so long as it doesn't get to Tucson. If we can fight to the last Mexican, for a suburban American to send their kid safely to junior high school, we will."

Bron: www.guardian.co.uk

quote:

The House I Live In director Eugene Jarecki on America's war on drugs - video interview

quote:

Documentary film-maker Eugene Jarecki, who has won two Grand Jury Prizes for Documentary at Sundance Film Festival, speaks to John Mulholland about his attempts to reform drug laws in the US. His documentary, The House I Live In, addresses the nation's policy to drugs and the role of the criminal justice system in shaping those attitudes

quote:

The Wire creator David Simon on what's behind the US war on drugs - extended video interview

quote:

Writer and ex-crime reporter David Simon, who created HBO TV drama The Wire, speaks to John Mulholland about capitalism, Margaret Thatcher and how anti-drug enforcement has evolved into social control. Simon features heavily in Eugene Jarecki's documentary The House I Live In, which explores the war on drugs in the US

quote:

Aanhoudingen in drugsonderzoek

Op verschillende plaatsen in en rond Rotterdam en in Eerbeek (Gelderland) heeft de politie dinsdag invallen gedaan in verband met een drugsonderzoek. Zes mensen zijn aangehouden, zo meldde de politie.

De politie viel onder meer binnen in een woonwagenkamp op het Terbregsehof in Rotterdam, in verschillende loodsen en een aantal woonhuizen. De panden worden nog doorzocht. Wat de zoektocht heeft opgeleverd, kan de politie daarom nog niet zeggen. Wel laat de politie weten dat meer aanhoudingen niet worden uitgesloten.

De zes mensen die zijn aangehouden, worden verdacht van handel in verdovende middelen.
Bron: Volkskrant

quote:

More than 280 'legal highs' now on European drugs experts' radar | World news | guardian.co.uk

EU drugs agency report reveals falling use of cannabis and cocaine across Europe is offset by relentless supply of new substances

More than 280 potentially harmful "legal highs" and other new psychoactive synthetic drugs are now being monitored by European drugs experts, representing what they describe as a fundamental shift in the market in illicit drugs.

The EU's drugs agency, in a joint report with Europol on new drugs entering the market, says 73 new drugs have become available in Britain and across Europe, and adds that there is now a firmly established thriving legal highs business with low risks and high profits operating through more than 690 online sites and specialised bricks-and-mortar head shops.

The report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (Emcdda) in Lisbon says the internet has created new routes for supply and use and the market is now less "structured around plant-based substances shipped over long distances to consumer markets in Europe".

It is published alongside Emcdda's 2013 annual survey in drug trends, and says there have been more positive developments in the use of more established drugs – with fewer new users of heroin, less injecting of drugs and declining use of cannabis and cocaine across Europe. However, the agencies add that any optimism must be tempered by concerns that youth unemployment and cuts in drug treatment services could lead to a re-emergence of old problems.

The drug experts say Britain still has the highest levels of cocaine consumption in Europe, and the largest number of heroin users in substitution treatment – 177,093 at the last count.

The EU report says that while 31% of adults in Britain say they have tried cannabis at some point, only 10.5% have smoked any in the past 12 months. Cannabis use among 15- and 16-year-olds in Britain has declined in recent years to about 21% of the age group and is ranked 10th out of 30 European countries. The drug experts say that despite the rise of new legal highs a large and relatively robust market remains for cannabis, albeit in a larger number of forms including more potent strains of herbal cannabis.

Cocaine consumption in Britain has also declined but still remains the highest in Europe, with 4.2% of adults saying they had used it in the previous 12 months.

The EU drug experts say they are encouraged that robust drug policies and record levels of treatment use of heroin, cocaine and cannabis have waned in recent years. But they add that a quarter – 85 million – of adults across Europe, and a third of British adults have used an illicit drug and that, by historical standards, drug use in Europe remains high.

They are also concerned that this limited progress is being offset by the relentless supply of new drugs. The number of new psychoactive substances being monitored by the EU drugs agency has exploded from 24 officially identified in 2009 to 73 notified for the first time in 2012 through its early warning system.

The joint report with Europol says that by the end of 2012 more than 280 new substances were being monitored and this upward trend has continued at the rate of more than one a week so far this year. More than half of the total reported since 2005 have appeared in the past two years. They are often sold openly as "legal highs", as "plant food" or "research chemicals" and marketed with names like Benzo Fury and Black Mamba, but others are sold illicitly. The drug experts say insufficient capacity for screening freight and postal packages make it very difficult to prevent new drugs entering Europe.

The drugs experts say the market is dominated by new illicit drugs, synthesised in laboratories in China and India, which mirror the effects of the most popular illicit drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy. But there are worrying signs that an increasing number are synthesised from more obscure chemical groups, making it harder to speculate on the long-term health impacts of their use. Some have already been linked to deaths.

The EU drugs agency and Europol say that the number of online shops selling the new drugs more than doubled from 314 in January 2011 to 693 in 2012. Last year the list of 73 substances was dominated by 30 synthetic cannabinoids, which mimic the effects of cannabis.

But the drugs experts say they also identified two different substances last year which were linked to more than 40 deaths in Europe: "The first, 4-MA (a stimulant) was being sold as amphetamine on the illicit market, while the second, 5-IT (reported to have both a stimulant and hallucinogenic effects), was being sold both on the legal high and the illicit market," says the agency's report. It issued a number of public health alerts about both substances.

The director of Emcdda, Wolfgang Götz, said: "Signs that current policies have found traction in some important areas must be viewed in the light of a drugs problem that never stands still. We will need to continue to adjust our current practices if they are to remain relevant to emerging trends and patterns of use in both new drugs and old." He said new policies were needed to meet a drugs problem that was in a state of flux and arose from a dynamic and rapidly evolving drugs market.

Emcdda says the proliferation of the new psychoactive substances has provoked a range of responses from governments across Europe. Some have used consumer safety or medicines legislation to control them, some use existing laws, while others have devised new laws to tackle them.

The report says that although there is no agreement on approach there is a general move to using the threat of prison to deter suppliers while choosing not to use criminal sanctions for those possessing a new substance for personal use. In Britain the temporary banning orders that are being used, pending a full assessment of new illicit drugs, do not make it illegal to possess them but it does include swingeing penalties for those who import or supply them.

Bron: www.guardian.co.uk