The World Wide War on Drugs #6 -Is de zinloze "oorlog" over?

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Op dinsdag 29 april 2014 22:30 schreef marsmello het volgende:
Los Zetas is een kartel dat is opgericht uit (para)militairen die in Mexico juist tegen de drugskartels strijden.
Uhm???

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Op woensdag 30 april 2014 00:15 schreef marsmello het volgende:
OT: leuk om eens een kijkje te nemen op Silkroad cocaïne en andere drugs worden daar ook in grote volumes aangeboden.

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High time to end this immoral drugs war

Though he toyed with drug reform, David Cameron abandoned it for fear of hostile headlines. Yet the path from prohibition is a modern, conservative and radical step which makes sense politically, too

It is 43 years since Richard Nixon, in need of a public enemy to shore up support for his snarling style of uncompassionate conservatism, declared war on a new target. "America's public enemy No 1 is drug abuse," he declared, warning Congress that the problem of narcotics had "assumed the dimensions of a national emergency".

Having risen to national prominence as an anti-communist campaigner, Nixon's new foe was the counterculture. His stance was widely assumed to be an attack on the hippie culture he so despised, with academics, writers and rock stars promoting the use of hallucinogens, but the media was also full of stories of clean-cut young men returning from Vietnam as junkies.

Nixon pushed new funds towards drug control agencies and backed tougher sentencing and policing. Marijuana, ludicrously identified as a "gateway" drug to heroin, was placed in the most restrictive category. Meanwhile, the United States used its muscle to ensure that the rest of the world joined one of the most futile, destructive and immoral wars the human race ever inflicted upon itself.

While the Vietnam War fades into history, thousands of people still die and millions of lives are ruined annually in this insane fight against drugs. Fittingly, given that it was launched by a president who turned out to be a crook, the biggest beneficiaries have been the most lethal gangsters on the globe as they battle over the immense spoils of an illegal trade that crucifies families and corrodes communities.

For more than four decades, the world has been hooked on its own addiction to this ludicrous war. More than one trillion dollars have been wasted on a punitive response to the human desire to get high. Meanwhile, the planet's political leaders ignored the mounting and incontrovertible evidence of their terrible failure: the destroyed families, the decimated cities, the devastated countries along with the improving purity, the falling prices, the widening range of products.

Slowly but surely, the world has begun waking up. It took time: two years before the start of this century, the United Nations stupidly declared that we would have a drug-free planet by 2008, committing member states to eliminate or significantly reduce use of opiates, cannabis and cocaine in a decade. Instead, global opiate use rose by more than one-third, with big rises also for cocaine and cannabis. Last year, the British Medical Journal found that street prices had declined over the past two decades, while potency increased.

As Margaret Thatcher said, you can't buck the market. Like it or not, many people want to take drugs; it is estimated that they are used by 5 per cent of the planet's adults. The finest law enforcement agencies and massive funding are no match for smugglers when there are mark-ups of more than 16,000 per cent. Even in the most well-protected prisons, drugs are available, while the might of American and British militaries failed to stop poppy production tripling in Afghanistan in a decade. What hope of our island nation guarding 12,000 miles of coastline when one year's supply of cocaine for the entire market could fit in a single shipping container?

For libertarians, the state simply has no right to dictate to people what they put in their bodies. Their outrage is all the greater when presidents and prime ministers admit to using drugs, yet governments run prisons crammed with people caught doing the same drugs or selling them, who mostly could not afford decent lawyers. Or when alcohol is socially acceptable, but the use of substances deemed less harmful by scientists is illegal. This hypocrisy is one reason for the dangerous breach in trust between politicians and their electorates, just as it widens the gap between police and the public. Use of drugs is, of course, a victimless crime. Little wonder that chief constables and spy chiefs press the case for reform of our self-harming drug laws.

I have sympathy with these libertarian arguments. But ultimately only one fundamental question should govern drug policy: how can the state ensure that people who use these products do the least harm to themselves and society? If you ignore cultural or historic hang-ups, there can only be one answer – the legalisation and regulation of all drugs.

This idea is often portrayed by ostrich-like opponents as the promotion of a druggie free-for-all. Yet the reality of reform could not be further from this crude caricature. In fact, it is a highly conservative yet progressive cause, an issue unusually popular with younger voters and with the ability to reconnect the Tories with long-lost sections of the community.

Indeed, it is hard to think of another policy with the same potential to challenge popular conceptions of conservatism. As I proposed to the Prime Minister and some of his closest advisers, the issue of drug reform clearly fits the modernising blueprint for party and nation. The idea was toyed with in the early days of David Cameron's leadership, then abandoned amid fear of hostile headlines. Since then, the world – and the British media – has moved on. The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs is the annual get-together for combatants in the war on drugs. Member states discuss global drug controls and examine the effectiveness of the three key international treaties underpinning their mission.

Two years ago, the Czech Republic questioned the idea of illegality, suggesting that the UN adopt a new approach based on prevention and treatment rather than prohibition. This country has conducted a little-noticed experiment – decriminalising drugs for personal use under Vaclav Havel, then banning them, then decriminalising them again. A major study into this test case found that none of the key arguments for illegality stood up – but vast sums were frittered away that would have been better spent on treatment.

At this year's event in March, the Czechs were joined in pressing for an alternative stance by Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Uruguay. These are among the nations most damaged by drugs as feuding gangs fight over profits from transporting cocaine and heroin to North America and Europe. This cancerous trade now cuts through west Africa also; it was one reason for the recent collapse of Mali, as it fostered corruption and funded Islamic militants, in a clear case study of how this war on drugs backfires on development.

Uruguay is becoming the first country to legalise and regulate the production, sale and taxation of marijuana. As its courageous President, Jose Mujica, says, this measure targets the traffickers. "It's not a law supporting addiction," he told The Daily Telegraph. "It's a way of battling the black-market economy." Once, this would have provoked a furious response from Nixon's successors in the White House. But last year, the Organisation of American States issued a landmark report exploring the path from prohibition, reflecting concerns of leaders fed up with chaos and carnage in their countries.

The tide has even begun turning in the US, with two states legalising cannabis and two more set to follow after referendums later this year. California is expected to have a ballot in 2016 that, if successful, could spark the end of prohibition in bordering Mexico. As President Barack Obama says, it is wrong to have a law that is widely broken when only a select few get punished. "Middle-class kids don't get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do," he told The New Yorker in January.

The influential blogger Andrew Sullivan noted last year how the successful referendum campaigns in Colorado and Washington rebranded reform as a conservative measure. These campaigns were powered not by hippies seeking the right to smoke spliffs, but by parents concerned about children's safety. Advocates include such unlikely figures as Pat Robertson, the right-wing Christian evangelical, who said: "This war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."

These cannabis ballots are just the start. Mujica and other Latin leaders are now floating the idea of wider drug reform, while in the US the polls are shifting fast. A majority support legalisation of marijuana, a threefold increase in just 25 years. More significantly, two-thirds of Americans – including a majority of Republicans – favour greater emphasis on treatment rather than punishment for any drug use, with just a quarter wanting the focus on prosecuting users.

Drug dealers have also embraced the digital age, creating synthetic drugs sold online across borders. If the law steps in, chemists simply tweak composition to evade the ban – and there are thought to be some 250 of these new narcotics on the market. The Association of Chief Police Officers has pointed out the futility of constantly adding new drugs to the list of banned substances, given the speed with which the market provides replacements. New Zealand found a far better solution – clinical trials for toxicity, followed by strictly regulated sales from licensed vendors.

Although drug use is falling in Britain, this country still has the highest rates of drug use in Europe, with one in 12 adults and one in six older teenagers admitting having taken an illegal drug last year. All these people are putting their lives in the hands of dealers who use murder and mayhem to promote their illegal business. The tragic results are seen too often, such as with the spate of deaths of youngsters who thought they were taking ecstasy but were sold the far stronger para-Methoxyamphetamine (PMA).

Legalisation would replace this ultra-free market that exists to the benefit of the world's most vicious criminal groups with a system in which supply was controlled, products regulated and profits taxed. This is far safer for children, since parents will have more control than at present; it is safer for users, since the drugs can be tested for strength and purity; and it is safer for society, since it cuts off funding for the gangs that scar our cities and the cartels that carve up the world.

Current policies are staggeringly wasteful of taxpayers' cash, something that should always concern conservatives. One report found that more than £65bn is spent globally each year on enforcement – yet the booming illicit trade is the same size as the Danish economy, the 32nd biggest in the world. In Britain, annual public expenditure on treatment, policing and criminal justice in relation to drugs is £4.5bn, but the cost of cocaine has plummeted in recent years.

Drug reform should appeal to a Conservative Party seeking ways to connect with young and ethnic minority voters, who bear the brunt of street-enforcement strategies by police. These two groups are crucial to the party's long-term survival. Instead of resorting to misanthropic messaging and failed core-vote strategies aimed at frightened older generations, here is an issue offering something bold, conservative and modern that the party could take a lead on.

It makes sense on economic, political, social and moral grounds. It is also popular because, just as in the US, pressure for reform is growing in Britain. A poll by the campaign group Transform found that a majority favour permitting cannabis use, while four in 10 Britons favour total decriminalisation and more than two-thirds favour a comprehensive review of all drug policies. Support cuts across political divisions and embraces readers of all papers; some of the most fervent supporters are female readers of mid-market tabloids who see the damage done to families and communities.

Given the voices coming out in favour of reform, it is hardly even controversial these days. Ken Clarke MP, a relic from the jazz age, says that Britain is losing the war on drugs. In a chapter on drugs (which was later deleted) in his 1995 book Saturn's Children, Alan Duncan argued that the number of users would not increase following legalisation, while crime would fall quickly, as we saw following decriminalisation in Portugal. It is worth listening also to Labour's Bob Ainsworth, whose experiences as a Home Office minister turned him into an unlikely drugs campaigner; as he told me, the public are in a far more progressive place than politicians on this issue.

Prohibition is on its way out; one day, people will look back on it with as much bemusement as to the days when alcohol was banned in America. The Conservative Party should lead reform rather than continue to adopt a Canute-style stance against the tide of history. Already the Liberal Democrats are looking to set the pace, while Labour's shadow cabinet has discussed its position and the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, backs reform. The Tories, whose leader showed courage and realism before taking office with calls for "fresh thinking" on this subject, should seize the opportunity to outflank them by proposing a total overhaul of drug laws instead of continuing to fight Nixon's futile war.

After all, what could be more conservative than a policy that is tough on crime, cuts public spending, protects children, safeguards families and aids global security?

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Politie en justitie kunnen de strijd tegen de georganiseerde drugscriminaliteit niet aan.

"We werken er met man en macht aan, maar er is meer dan we aankunnen'', zegt landelijk officier synthetische drugs Neeltje Geldermans tegen het Brabants Dagblad.

Daarmee reageerde Geldermans op de vondst van twee lichamen maandag in Uden. ''We moeten werken met schaarse middelen. De politiek bepaalt de prioriteiten, ik kan alleen zeggen dat ik me zorgen maak.''

Peter Noordanus, burgemeester van Tilburg, erkende eerder al dat de inspanningen van politie en justitie weinig te werk stellen. Nog altijd vinden er veel dumpingen plaats van drugsafval in Noord-Brabant. Volgende week praat een Brabantse delegatie met minister Ivo Opstelten over de aanhoudende problemen.

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Deforestation of Central America rises as Mexico's war on drugs moves south

Swaths of rainforest affected by 'narco-deforestation' caused by landing strips and roads built by and for drug traffickers

According to Kendra McSweeney: "Drug trafficking is causing an ecological disaster in Central America." McSweeney, a geographer at Ohio State University, is the co-author of a recent report on the little-known phenomenon of "narco-deforestation" that is destroying huge tracts of rainforest that are already under threat from other quarters.

Viewed from the air, the tropical forests of Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua are scarred with landing strips and roads built illegally by the narco-traffickers for transporting drugs to the US, the leading world market. "These protected ecological zones have become the hub for South American cocaine," according to McSweeney, who stresses that the annual deforestation rate in Honduras more than quadrupled between 2007 and 2011, a boom-period for drug trafficking. In 2011 alone, 183 sq km of forest was destroyed in the east of the country, including in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an endangered Unesco world heritage site. This was in addition to the pre-existing problem of forest destruction due to illegal logging.

The wave of devastation has been moving south down the American continent, as drug crackdowns have taken force in Mexico. This is known as the efecto cucaracha, or cockroach effect, with reference to the survival instinct this creature has of seeking refuge next door as soon as it has been of chased out of one house. In the Laguna del Tigre national park in north-east Guatemala, deforestation has increased by between 5% and 10% in the past seven years. That coincides with the war against drug trafficking launched at the end of 2006 by the former Mexican president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), with backing from the US.

Take the powerful Sinaloa cartel. When it was headed by Joaquin Guzmán, alias El Chapo, before his arrest on 22 February, the Mexican mafia extended its influence in Central America via local gangs. For McSweeney: "Narco-deforestation enables cartels to occupy territory to the detriment of their competitors. If that continues, the entire Mesoamerican [Central American] biological corridor, which stretches from Panama to Mexico, will be affected by tree felling."

Worse still, the drug traffickers are laundering their illegal profits by investing in cattle ranches and intensive palm oil production, "even though farming in the protected areas is forbidden", stresses McSweeney, who blames corruption among local government officials and weak public institutions for enabling this to happen.

The reserves and national parks in northern Guatemala and north-eastern Nicaragua are suffering similar destruction. "There are too few forest guards, and they are too poorly equipped to deal with the drug traffickers in those remote and very poor regions, which provide ideal conditions for illegal trafficking," according to Matthew Taylor, another of the report's authors, "particularly since the cartels' dirty money is boosting business among land speculators and timber traffickers."

The native communities inhabiting these protected regions are the primary victims of these practices. "The Indians are either chased off their land, or recruited by the drug traffickers – voluntarily or by force – to fell the trees or work on their farms," said Taylor. He believes that the fear of reprisals enforces an omertà, or code of silence, among the indigenous peoples and environmental protection agencies.

The governments of the Central American countries involved continue to seize drugs, with the help of the US. In October 2013, the Honduran armed forces announced that they had destroyed illegal landing strips in the northern Mosquitia region where the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve is located.

But McSweeney is sceptical: "Such a purely repressive strategy will not solve the issue." During the Mesoamerican Congress on Protected Areas held in Costa Rica last month, she launched an appeal to the regional leaders to rethink the struggle against drug trafficking: it should be tackled as a public health problem, which has a devastating impact on the environment. She is convinced that the future of biodiversity depends on this.

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Honduras to extradite wanted Sinaloa cartel drug trafficker to US

Carlos Arnoldo Lobo, who the US government says trafficked multi-tonne loads of cocaine, will be extradited next week

Honduras said it will extradite to the US a drug trafficker who worked for Mexico's powerful Sinaloa cartel, making his the first such case since the country changed the law to allow the process two years ago.

Carlos Arnoldo Lobo, who the US government says trafficked multi-tonne loads of cocaine from Colombia for Honduran, Guatemalan and Mexican gangs, will be extradited next week, a spokesman for the Honduran justice department said after a decision by the country's supreme court late on Friday.

Lobo was captured in the last week of March and Honduran prosecutors have seized assets controlled by the trafficker worth in excess of $25m. He has been indicted on drug trafficking charges in the southern district of Florida.

The US Treasury Department said Lobo's clients included the Sinaloa Cartel, which has been at the forefront of cocaine trafficking from Mexico into the United States.

Like other drug gangs, the cartel has come under increasing pressure from Mexico's government. Its longstanding boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, was captured by Mexican security forces in February.

Honduras, whose congress voted to permit the extradition of wanted drug traffickers in early 2012, has become a key transit point for Mexican drug cartels moving product north.

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Uruguay teelt vanaf morgen staatswiet: 65 cent per gram

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Als eerste land ter wereld reguleerde Uruguay afgelopen december de productie, verkoop en consumptie van cannabis. Na maandenlange voorbereidingen gaat morgen de volledig door de overheid gecontroleerde productie van start en kunnen blowers zich registreren als gebruiker. Het duurt dan nog zeker een half jaar voordat de planten rijp zijn voor de oogst. De eerste zakjes Uruguayaanse staatswiet gaan naar verwachting dit najaar over de toonbank.

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'De productie en verkoop van wiet worden nu ook legaal', zegt Julio Calzada. 'Daarmee maken we een einde aan de dubbelzinnige wetgeving.' Calzada is directeur van de Nationale Drugsraad, architect van de nieuwe wietwet en coördinator van de invoering ervan. 'Het belangrijkste doel is criminaliteit bestrijden', zegt hij. 'Drugsbendes halen 90 procent van hun inkomsten uit de wietverkoop. We nemen hen de wind uit de zeilen.'

Ook de kleine criminaliteit zal afnemen, verwacht hij. 'We hebben goed gekeken naar de ervaringen in Nederland. Daar is gebleken dat het aantal harddrugsverslaafden vermindert als je de wietverkoop scheidt van zwaardere drugs. Minder verslaafden betekent minder straatroof en diefstal.'

Calzada sluit niet uit dat Uruguay in de toekomst ook drugs als cocaïne en heroïne legaliseert. 'De internationale drugsverdragen zijn zestig jaar oud', zegt hij. 'Het wordt tijd dat de wereld een andere kijk op drugs ontwikkelt.'

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Op woensdag 7 mei 2014 13:00 schreef Deeltjesversneller het volgende:
The London School of Economics has just completed perhaps the most thorough account of the war on drugs done to date. The conclusion, backed by five Nobel Prize-winning economists: it has done more harm than good.

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op woensdag 7 mei 2014 14:55 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
Kartel members zijn het laagste soort mensen.

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Op woensdag 7 mei 2014 14:05 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Dat kan ik niet lezen.

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op woensdag 7 mei 2014 13:00 schreef Deeltjesversneller het volgende:
The London School of Economics has just completed perhaps the most thorough account of the war on drugs done to date. The conclusion, backed by five Nobel Prize-winning economists: it has done more harm than good.

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Politie kan wildgroei wietplantages niet meer aan

Door de strengere aanpak in Nederland verhuizen wiettelers hun plantages steeds vaker naar ons land. De politie kan stilaan niet meer volgen......

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Violence erupts again in Mexican state where drug wars began

Top detective among latest of around 80 people killed since April in Tamaulipas state, after new crackdown on criminal groups

A spate of extreme violence in Mexico's north-eastern Tamaulipas state has ended the relative calm in the region where the country's drug wars began.

Officials say about 80 people have been killed in almost daily street battles. This week the state's top detective, Salvador de Haro Muñoz, was among five people killed in a shootout. Ten police officers have been arrested for allegedly leading him into an ambush.

Fourteen people were killed in one day this month in a string of gun battles between federal forces and unidentified gunmen in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

"It's worse than ever," said a local woman who saw three shootouts on three consecutive days while visiting relatives in Tampico in early April. The woman, who asked not to be identified, said authorities did nothing to intervene beyond advising people to stay off the streets. "This is a failed state with no law and no authority."

Tamaulipas has been a focal point in the drug wars as one of the busiest places on the border for northbound drugs and migrants and southbound weapons and cash. But the latest outbreak of bloodletting has prompted fears that the region is set for a return to the worst days of 2010, when entire populations fled towns in the region to escape the violence.

Many date the start of the drug wars to attempts by the Sinaloa cartel to take over the frontier heartland of the rival Gulf cartel in 2004-5. That incursion was repelled by the Gulf cartel's enforcement wing, a group of former special forces soldiers know as the Zetas.

The region was plunged into one of the bloodiest conflicts of the drug wars when the Zetas split from their former paymasters in 2010. Large deployments by the army and navy helped to restore some kind of calm by 2012, and both the Zetas and the Gulf cartel have been weakened after leaders in both factions were captured or killed.

The state government spokesman Guillermo Martínez said this week that the resurgence of violence in Tamaulipas was the result of government successes in "squeezing" the criminal groups. "The important thing is that we are facing the problem head on," he said.

Eduardo Guerrero, a security expert, agreed that the latest spasm of violence had been triggered by recent arrests of regional Gulf cartel bosses, but said further clashes had been caused by power struggles between rival factions within the cartel, and by efforts from the Zetas to take advantage of these rifts.

"The situation in Tamaulipas is extremely complicated," he said, adding that he hoped the crisis would put pressure on the state authorities to speed up efforts to get local police forces into shape rather than relying solely on federal forces.

Mario Segura, a journalist who fled the state after being kidnapped in 2012 but who now makes periodic visits to work with victims of the violence, said that after years of intimidation, local people were starting to lose their fear of the cartels and could put further pressure on authorities to restore order. "It is not going to happen very soon but I feel that things are moving," he said.

Segura said many people seemed inspired by the example set by armed vigilantes who took on the Knights Templar cartel in the central state of Michoacán. But one resident of Ciudad Mier – a town near a strategic crossroads, where gunmen recently peppered the main hotel with bullets before clashing with soldiers – disagreed. "We know that all we can do is hide," she said. "It's been going on for so long now that I am losing hope that we will ever have peace in Tamaulipas."