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

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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.

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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.'

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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

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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

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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."

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

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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.

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. “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.”

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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".

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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

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Blunder: CDA'er verwart shisha (waterpijp) met Griekse drug sisa



CDA'er Peter Oskam uitte vandaag zijn zorgen in de Kamer over shishalounges. Volgens de politicus wordt daar de goedkope Griekse drug 'shisha' gerookt. 'Gebruikers onder invloed kunnen zeer gewelddadig worden', meent hij. Aanleiding voor zijn vragen was echter een reportage van RTL over de Griekse drug 'sisa'.

Staatssecretaris Fred Teeven van Veiligheid en Justitie maakte in het vragenuur aan Oskam het verschil duidelijk tussen shisha en sisa. De eerste, shisha, is het roken van tabak met een smaakje in een waterpijp, een gebruik uit Arabische landen dat inderdaad in grote steden in Nederland veel voorkomt. De tweede, sisa, is een verslavende Griekse drug die in Nederland niet of nauwelijks wordt gebruikt. Het weerhield de CDA'er er niet van de staatssecretaris te vragen toch de inhoud van waterpijpen te controleren.

De vergissing is opmerkelijk omdat Oskam zijn vraag inleidde met anekdotes over zijn bezoek aan shishalounges in Rotterdam. 'In Rotterdam en Utrecht blijken shishalounges, een soort ontmoetingsplekken voor gebruikers, als paddenstoelen uit de grond te schieten.' Volgens hem wilden de uitbaters van de rooktenten niet duidelijk zeggen wat voor substantie er wordt gerookt. Op geen enkel moment tijdens zijn werkbezoek besefte Oskam dat het hier niet de Griekse drug betrof.

De vergissing werd pas duidelijk nadat Teeven Oskam er vandaag op wees. Dat was echter geen reden voor het CDA om de spraakverwarring toe te geven en de kwestie te laten rusten. Op de site van de partij staat een groot nieuwsbericht over de zorgen van Oskam en over wat hij vindt dat er moet gebeuren. 'Shisha blijkt een goedkope drug, die je naar believen kan mengen, die zeer verslavend is en die gevaar oplevert voor de maatschappij en voor de volksgezondheid.'

@tofikdibiGebruikertje?

Oskam riep de minister op om samen met de ministers van Volksgezondheid en van Economische Zaken een onderzoek te starten naar de gevaren voor de gezondheid van deze drug, zo staat te lezen op de site. Staatssecretaris Teeven zegde uiteindelijk toe navraag te zullen doen naar de inhoud van de waterpijpen.

Op Twitter kreeg de vergissing nog een staartje. Het CDA verspreidde het eigen nieuwsbericht online, tot ongeloof van sommige andere twittergebruikers. Voormalig GroenLinks-politicus Tofik Dibi twitterde: 'Hahaha, wereldvreemd.' Waarop Oskam reageerde: '@TofikDibi Gebruikertje?'

Tweets goede leerschool the message is clear. Shisha ongezond niet gevaarlijk. Komt onderzoek Voedsel en Warenautoriteit en SISA NIET DOEN

Na meerdere tweets aan zijn adres ziet Oskam zijn vergissing in. Hij twittert: 'Tweets zijn een goede leerschool, the message is clear. Shisha is ongezond, niet gevaarlijk. Komt onderzoek Voesdel en Warenautoriteit en SISA NIET DOEN.'

Zie hieronder een reportage van Vice.com over de drug sisa en het toenemende aantal verslaafden in de Griekse hoofdstad Athene.
Bron: Volkskrant

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Wordt het nu veilig in Honduras, het land met meeste de moorden ter wereld?

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Het is nogal een belofte van de man met de zonnebril, die op de binnenplaats van de gevangenis in Honduras staat. 'Het gaat allemaal ophouden: alle misdaad, al het geweld, alles!' En in een ander blok van dezelfde gevangenis, belooft iemand met een zakdoek voor zijn gezicht ongeveer hetzelfde. De twee grootste bendes van het land hebben een wapenstilstand gesloten. Maar komt er dan ook echt een einde aan het geweld in een van de gevaarlijkste landen ter wereld?

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Geen gevangenisstraf voor Somaliërs voor overladen onlang verboden drug qat

Vier Somaliërs die op 4 februari in Oosterhout zijn betrapt bij het overladen van de drug qat van een Engelse naar een Nederlandse bestelbus, hoeven niet meer naar de gevangenis. De rechtbank in Breda veroordeelde hen donderdag namelijk tot een celstraf gelijk aan de tijd die ze in voorarrest hebben doorgebracht (115 dagen).

Het is een van de eerste vonnissen in een qat-zaak sinds de softdrug in januari werd verboden. De officier van justitie had een half jaar gevangenisstraf geëist voor de invoer van qat, maar de rechtbank vindt alleen het bezit van de verboden blaadjes bewezen.
Bron: Volkskrant

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'Hepatitis C vormt wereldwijde tijdbom'

Onder druggebruikers woedt al een felle epidemie van hepatitis C, en als regeringen hun beleid niet aanpassen, dreigen miljoenen mensen over de hele wereld slachtoffer te worden, zeggen gezondheidsexperts.

Volgens de Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie sterven nu al jaarlijks minstens 350.000 mensen aan de gevolgen van hepatitis C, dat chronische leverschade veroorzaakt. De Global Commission on Drug Policy, die onder meer voormalige presidenten, VN-toplui en mensenrechtenactivisten verenigt, waarschuwt dat harde antidrugswetgeving wereldwijd helpt om de epidemie te verspreiden.

10 miljoen besmet
In een nieuw rapport schat de commissie dat van de 16 miljoen mensen wereldwijd die drugs injecteren, er 10 miljoen besmet zijn met de ziekte. In landen met de hardste drugswetgeving is meer dan 90 procent besmet.

Landen als China (1,6 miljoen), Rusland (1,3 miljoen) en de VS (1,5 miljoen) tellen de hoogste concentraties onder druggebruikers.

'We hebben een nieuw drugsbeleid nodig', zegt Michel Kazatchkine, speciale VN-gezant voor hiv/aids in Oost-Europa en Centraal-Azië. 'Geldstromen moeten van de strijd tegen drugs naar volksgezondheid en preventie gestuurd worden. De hoogdringendheid van de situatie kan niet genoeg benadrukt worden. Dit moet even ernstig genomen worden als de hiv/aids-epidemie.'

Mislukte strijd
De commissie en andere organisaties pleiten al langer voor een einde van de 'oorlog tegen drugs'. Ze voeren aan dat die alleen maar grote sommen geld gekost heeft en ontelbare levens heeft geëist, maar ook gemeenschappen heeft ontwricht. Hij is vooral mislukt in zijn opzet: een einde maken aan de drugshandel van miljarden dollars.

Vorig jaar al toonde de commissie aan hoe de marginalisering van druggebruikers de verspreiding van hiv/aids in de hand werkt. Het fenomeen is vooral duidelijk in Oost-Europa en Centraal-Azië, de enige regio in de wereld waar het aantal hiv-infecties blijft stijgen, hoofdzakelijk door het delen van naalden onder druggebruikers.

Net als hiv/aids wordt ook hepatitis-C overgedragen via contact met bloed en dus ook via besmette naalden. Maar in tegenstelling tot hiv/aids heeft de ziekte veel minder aandacht gekregen. 'Ik haat het om de twee ziektes te vergelijken en te zeggen dat de ene erger is dan de andere', zegt Kazatchkine. 'Maar als je naar de absolute cijfers kijkt, zoals besmetting onder druggebruikers, dan liggen die hoger. Men is er zich op alle niveaus te weinig van bewust, van de overheid over de gezondheidszorg tot de druggebruikers zelf.'

Harm reduction
Het rapport toont aan hoe zogenaamde harm reduction-programma's in Schotland succesvol blijken om de ziekte terug te dringen. De programma's zijn niet repressief, maar proberen de schade te beperken die met druggebruik gepaard gaat, zoals criminaliteit en gezondheidsproblemen. Maar die programma's moeten wel erg toegankelijk zijn, benadrukt het rapport. Gelijkaardige programma's in Litouwen bereiken bijvoorbeeld maar een klein aantal druggebruikers.

Eerstelijnsmedewerkers in Oost-Europa, dat een van de hoogste concentraties van besmettingen heeft in de wereld, zijn pessimistisch over de strijd tegen de ziekte. 'Het zal zeker nog erger worden voor het weer beter wordt', zegt Dasha Ocheret van het Eurasian Harm Reduction Network. 'Meer dan 95 procent van de druggebruikers in de regio zijn besmet, de epidemie is er al tien jaar en er zijn bijna geen vooruitzichten op behandeling.'
Bron: Volkskrant

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Turks centrum Drunen dicht na vondst drugs en wapen

Het centrum van de Stichting Turkse Cultuur in Drunen is vrijdag gesloten nadat de politie er een vuurwapen en 200 gram hasj had gevonden. De huur is opgezegd, liet de gemeente Heusden weten.

Er werden vrijdag twee mannen (29 en 53 jaar) aangehouden. Het zijn de voorzitter van de stichting, die volgens de Kamer van Koophandel emancipatie- en integratiewerk verricht, en zijn zoon. Bij de mannen thuis werden 217 munitiepatronen gevonden.
Bron: Volkskrant

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Obama Administration Has Spent Nearly $300 Million Cracking Down On Medical Marijuana: Report

_{The Huffington Post | By Nick Wing & Luke Johnson Posted: 06/13/2013 6:16 pm EDT | Updated: 06/13/2013 6:30 pm EDT}

An analysis from pro-medical marijuana group Americans For Safe Access found that President Barack Obama's administration has spent nearly $300 million on combatting medical marijuana in states that have legalized the drug.

The report calculates the total amount of federal spending on medical marijuana intervention at $289 million over Obama's four-and-a-half years in the White House. According to the analysis, the Drug Enforcement Administration alone spent 4 percent of its budget in 2011 and 2012 cracking down on medical marijuana across 20 states. Taken as a whole, Obama's participation makes up the majority of what ASA says is a $483 million war of lawsuits, indictments and asset forfeiture attempts waged by the Department of Justice under the past three presidents.

The group claims that over 1 million Americans are using medical marijuana, and 34 percent of Americans live in a state where its medical use is legal. ASA's report comes on the heels of a separate study from California's chapter of NORML that found medical marijuana charges responsible for a total of over 480 years in prison sentences in the state, where cannabis has been legal for medical use since 1996. That number will likely grow when the Department of Justice hands down a prison sentence for medical marijuana provider Matthew Davies, who accepted a plea deal late last month.

The studies are just the latest figures that underscore Obama's aggressive war on pot. While Obama and members of his administration had left many marijuana reform advocates optimistic in the early stages of his first term, it quickly became clear that the new president was determined to ramp up the enforcement-focused approach to medical cannabis.

While the administration appears to have grown increasingly intolerant of marijuana, the nation appears to be going in the opposite direction. Public opinion polls have shown increasing support for a change in policy, whether it be legalizing pot for medical use or legalizing the drug altogether.

Bron: www.huffingtonpost.com

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Hackers helpen Nederlandse drugsbende in haven

Hackers hebben de websites van twee grote containerterminals in de haven van Antwerpen gehackt in opdracht van een Nederlandse drugsbende. In totaal zijn negen personen aangehouden, van wie zeven in Nederland.

Dat maakten justitie in Antwerpen en het Openbaar Ministerie in Nederland maandag bekend.

De drugshandelaren lieten de websites van de twee grote containerterminals in de haven van Antwerpen hacken. Zo konden ze de locatie en de verplaatsing van de containers met drugs manipuleren. Vervolgens verschenen chauffeurs van de bende eerder dan de reguliere transporteur op de kade om de drugscontainer af te halen.

Daarnaast werden computers van rederijen in België gemanipuleerd. Onder meer door het installeren van bepaalde software die in een bijlage van een e-mail was verborgen. De e-mails bleken afkomstig van een Nederlands IP-adres.

In België zijn twee ICT-experts aangehouden. Twee anderen worden nog (internationaal) gezocht.

Bij verscheidene huiszoekingen in België en Nederland werden onder meer grote partijen drugs, vuurwapens, kogelwerende vesten en grote geldsommen in beslag genomen.
Bron: Volkskrant

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'Colombianen prefereren goud boven cocaïne'

Gewapende bendes in Colombia werken tegenwoordig liever met goud dan cocaïne. Dit zegt de chef van de plattelandspolitie kolonel Hector Paez.

'De winsten in de goudhandel zijn vijfmaal groter dan de inkomsten uit cocaïne. Bovendien heb je 6 maanden en veel kennis nodig om cocaïne te produceren.

Daarentegen kun je in een illegale mijn in de Colombiaanse jungle wekelijks zo'n 2 kilogram goud naar boven halen', vertelde de hoge politiefunctionaris in een interview.

Goud is na olie en steenkool Colombia's belangrijkste exportproduct.
Bron: Volkskrant