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

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Mexico legalises vigilantes to fight cartels

Rise of vigilante movement brought fears that it could turn into a dangerous paramilitary force.

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Stop The War On Drugs, Says Top Republican

Rob Portman will call President Obama’s clemency plan “a Band-Aid on a deep wound” in a speech Tuesday. Can conservatives end the war on drugs?

WASHINGTON — Ohio Republican Rob Portman, a leading figure in his party who is sometimes mentioned as a candidate for president in 2016, will call for a reevaluation of the “war on drugs” and the massive prison population it has created in a speech set for Tuesday and shared exclusively with BuzzFeed.

But Portman is also expected to warn that President Obama’s plan to use executive power to make reforms to drug sentencing could prevent larger, lasting changes from coming to pass.

“President Obama recently announced that he would grant clemency to hundreds of non-violent drug offenders,” Portman is set to say Tuesday in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. “That may be within his power, but it’s like placing a Band-Aid on a deep wound. It may cover up the problem of prison overcrowding today, but it doesn’t address the deeper problem that drives recidivism.”

Portman’s words come as crime, punishment, and drugs emerge as a rare and unlikely point on which Democrats and Republicans in Washington are finding common ground. Conservatives like Portman, troubled by the vast federal spending on jails and seeking a distinctly conservative approach to crime and poverty, have found allies in Democrats and civil libertarians who have long argued for a less punitive approach to illegal drugs.

Portman’s speech lays out a plan to fight poverty using what he calls “constructive conservatism.” In the speech, the Republican senator describes that as a “bottom up” approach that lets communities develop plans to fight poverty, prove their results and then spread those ideas across the country with the help of federal grants and other assistance.

The possibility of bipartisan action on criminal justice reform drives the sections of Portman’s speech related to the war on drugs and the prison population. In the prepared remarks, the Ohio Republican calls for a reauthorization of the Second Chance Act, aimed at reducing the recidivism rate with job training, drug counseling and other programs he first wrote with a Democrat 10 years ago. Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy is co-sponsoring the bill this time around, and Portman will highlight in the speech a second bill called the Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act (co-sponsored by Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse) that aims to bring the Second Chance act reforms to the federal prison system.

The reform talk in Portman’s speech puts the Ohio Republican in a leading role in the growing conservative push for prison and criminal justice reform. Portman and other Republican reformers are calling on conservatives to embrace spending on efforts like the recidivism reduction programs in the hopes that in the long run they’ll reduce prison populations and save billions in incarceration costs.

In the AEI speech, Portman will become one of the most prominent elected Republicans to criticize the “war on drugs,” a metaphor dating back to the Nixon Administration, and a phrase the Obama Administration refuses to use. Portman said the effort has spent a lot of money but done little to solve the problems of drugs and poverty.

“After more than a trillion dollars spent in the war on drugs and thousands of lives lost, we are starting to understand that arrest, prosecution, and incarceration are not enough,” he will say in the prepared speech.

“You cannot talk about poverty without talking about addiction, and addiction is something that a war on drugs is never going to solve,” Portman is set to say.

Portman will say Obama could play a part in these reforms, but warns the president’s emphasis on executive action is problematic when it comes to bipartisan reform efforts.

“Instead of taking the easy path of executive action, I would ask the president to come to Congress and work with us to pass our legislation to reform federal prisons, leveraging our criminal justice system to incentivize long-term solutions based on what we know works to help people get out of prison and stay out, things like diversion programs and drug courts, job training, and treatment for addiction and mental services,” Portman will say.

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Guatemalan president eyes drug legalization proposal in late 2014

(Reuters) - Guatemala could present a plan to legalize production of marijuana and opium poppies towards the end of 2014 as it seeks ways to curb the power of organized crime, President Otto Perez said on Wednesday.

Perez, a conservative retired general who broke ranks with the United States by proposing drug legalization shortly after he took office at the start of 2012, has yet to put forward a concrete plan on how it could be done.

Instead, a government commission has been studying the proposal, and Perez told Reuters in an interview that he expected the recommendations to be published around October and that measures could be presented at the end of the year.

Those measures could include an initiative for Congress to legalize drugs, in particular marijuana, he said.

"The other thing we're exploring ... is the legalization of the poppy plantations on the border with Mexico, so they're controlled and sold for medicinal ends," Perez said. "These two things could be steps taken on a legal basis."

Opium poppies are used to make opium, heroin and pharmaceutical drugs such as morphine and codeine.

Guatemala, a major coffee producer which is one of the most violent countries in the Americas, has suffered from incursions by violent Mexican drug cartels in recent years.

The drug gangs have been under sustained pressure at home since the Mexican government launched a military-led offensive on organized crime at the end of 2006. More than 85,000 people have since died in Mexico in cartel-related violence.

Mexico, which made possession of tiny amounts of narcotics legal in 2009, has so far been hesitant to go further on liberalizing drug laws, though pressure is growing.

The Party of the Democratic Revolution, a leftist group that runs the local government of Mexico City, is pushing a number of initiatives to decriminalize marijuana.

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Rutte vreest toorn Merkel bij gedogen wietteelt

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Premier Mark Rutte vreest de toorn van buitenlandse collega's als de Duitse bondskanselier Angela Merkel en de Franse president François Hollande als Nederland de wietteelt toch zou gedogen en zou reguleren. Dat blijkt uit een interview dat RTV Noord-Holland vandaag met de premier had.

Het kabinet is ondanks oproepen van tientallen gemeenten niet bereid de wietteelt te reguleren, onder meer omdat er nu al veel geëxporteerd wordt. Rutte: 'Het grootste deel wat je produceert gaat naar het buitenland. Ik kan echt Hollande of Merkel niet meer onder ogen komen als een deel van die troep daar ook terecht komt.'

Hij is vooral niet blij met hoe Nederland dan wordt afgeschilderd: 'Je maakt Nederland dan de risee van Europa.'

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Waarom zijn drugs zo verslavend?

Waarom zijn drugs zo verslavend? (3/5)

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Obama Administration Is Trying To Pull Out Of The War On Drugs, Filmmaker Says

Documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki discussed the Obama administration's evolving stance on the war on drugs on HuffPost Live Friday.

Jarecki said that during President Barack Obama's second inauguration, he hoped Obama might seize the moment to move the country away from the drug war, and has been pleased to see Obama do just that in recent months.

"I wonder whether [Obama] realizes that one of the great legacy opportunities he has in his second term is to sort of establish some justice here, establish some actual mercy and some Christian compassion for this nation in terms of the war on drugs," Jarecki said of this thinking at the time. "And I have to say, having been quite a critic of Obama, that in the past several months we have seen significant moves by his administration."

While moves by the administration -- which Jarecki explains in the video above -- clearly signify progress, Jarecki's ultimate hope is that the public finally realizes that the legalization of drugs should be codified within tax law and regulated.

"If you told the government that you can tax and regulate drugs just as you do alcohol, you hit them where they're most vulnerable in the stupidity of this drug war," Jareki said. "Alcohol is more destructive than any of the drugs in the schedule of illegal drugs that we're talking about in this country, and yet it is treated far less severely than the rest of those drugs."

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An autopsy has been released in a wrongful death suit of a 150 pound 17-year-old, implicating Alabama Police.

The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences has ruled the cause of death undetermined, not because the death is suspect, but instead because any number of multiple police inflicted injuries or a combination of them could be the culprit(s).

The findings included blunt force injuries and anoxic/hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, which is when the brain does not receive enough oxygen, reports WAFF.

Nancy Smith, the mother of the teen, filed a federal lawsuit in March claiming assault and battery, wrongful death, and excessive force.

The lawsuit claims a plain closed officer came at the teen without identifying himself after he was set up in a drug sting by an 18-year-old confidential informant.

According to court documents the teen ran. The officer gave chase and threw him to the ground and cuffed him. It is at this point it is believed his ribs were broken. The officer also pepper-sprayed him and restrained his neck.

The Smith family lawsuit claims police told paramedics the 17-year-old swallowed a bag of drugs.

In an effort to retrieve the alleged bag, the lawsuit says police had to “shove a sharp object into the teenagers throat.” Lawyers for the Smiths say drugs were never found in his throat or stomach.

The autopsy report also confirms this, stating that there was no indication of anything unusual found in the teens body.

The autopsy goes on to say:

. “Because of the circumstances of this event, it is difficult to discern if the decedent died from a drug overdose or an asphyxia event exacerbated by either the occlusion of the airway by the foreign object, a possible vascular occlusion associated with the neck restraint, or from a combination of all the events that transpired during this incident.”

Huntsville PD and city attorneys have not commented on the case apart from denying any wrong doing. The PD has not responded to an Appalachian Area News email request for a statement.

Huntsville Police have however admitted two pieces of evidence into the case. Two zip-lock bags of MDMA(Ecstasy) which were found on the teens person. Each has been verified by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences.

… And the drug war claims another victim…

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Did the DEA play role in Honduran drug-war massacre?

^{by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson}

Fourteen-year-old Hasked Brooks Wood had a bright future ahead of him. Though born and raised in poverty, he was a good, dedicated student who, according to his school report, rarely missed a day of class. In early May 2012, Hasked and his mother, Clara, gathered their belongings and boarded a small riverboat bound for the remote town of Ahuas in northeastern Honduras. After years living on the Honduran coast, they were moving back to his mother’s hometown.

But as their boat neared the port of Ahuas in the predawn hours, tragedy struck. Helicopters swooped in from the sky, and bullets rained down on the boat and its occupants. Hasked was shot dead in front of Clara’s eyes. Three other passengers also lost their lives that morning: a single mother whom a local doctor found to be 26 weeks pregnant, a mother of six children and a 21-year-old man who left behind a wife and a 1-year-old child.

Later that day, the Honduran police announced that in the course of a “successful” drug interdiction operation, four drug traffickers had been killed. But soon afterward, journalists and human rights activists revealed that the people on the passenger boat had no known links to drug trafficking and had legitimate reasons for traveling that night. They also reported that U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents played a central role in the deadly operation and that for several hours Honduran and U.S. agents prevented the relatives of dead and injured victims from providing assistance to their loved ones.

When pressed by journalists, U.S. officials said a preliminary Honduran investigation showed that security forces “were justified in firing in self-defense,” though no evidence supporting this assertion was ever made public.

This deadly incident — described as a “massacre” by the peaceful Afro-indigenous population of Ahuas — has deeply troubled me and colleagues in Congress. Could U.S. agents engaged in the “war on drugs” abroad operate without any sort of accountability? When reports emerged that the Honduran investigation of the killings was stalled and badly flawed, I and 57 of my House colleagues sent a letter to the secretaries of state and justice requesting a U.S. investigation of the killings.

Sadly, the response we received from the DEA failed to address key questions about the U.S. agents’ role in the incident and showed no indication that measures would be taken to avoid future accidents of this kind. Though the official reply to the letter made no reference to our request for an investigation, an anonymous DEA official told the press that there would be “no separate investigation.”

Most appalling, though, was the news months later that the DEA had ignored Honduran investigators’ requests to interview the U.S. agents involved in the operation and perform forensic tests on their weapons. Given that Honduran police told the investigating team from the Public Ministry that the DEA had led the mission and ordered a helicopter gunman to fire on the passenger boat, this lack of cooperation could only heighten suspicions of DEA responsibility for the deaths.

May 11 marks the second anniversary of these tragic killings. The wounded victims of the incident and the relatives of those who died — including nine orphaned children — have received no compensation from the Honduran or U.S. governments, let alone justice. Many human rights advocates argue that the militarized “war on drugs” in Mexico and Central America has contributed to the surge in violence throughout the region. The least the U.S. can do is to take every measure to ensure that its agents and foreign partners receiving its support don’t contribute to the casualty list.

Only days ago I learned that our persistent call for a U.S. investigation of these tragic killings may have finally been heard. The inspector generals of the Departments of State and Justice have announced that they are conducting a joint review of the U.S. government’s response to the Ahuas incident and two other deadly incidents involving the DEA. Among other things, the inspectors will be examining “the cooperation by State and DEA personnel with the post-shooting reviews” that have been undertaken. It has been late in coming, but this is an important first step.

Yet further steps are necessary. To begin with, it’s time for the DEA to come clean about the Ahuas operation and release all relevant documents, including any transcripts and videos that can shed light on how the killings occurred. Going forward, we need to maintain transparency and accountability around U.S.-backed counternarcotic operations, whether or not U.S. agents are directly involved. Never again should we allow a young, promising life like Hasked’s to become the collateral damage of the war on drugs.

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Comey: FBI ‘Grappling’ With Hiring Policy Concerning Marijuana

Monday was a big day for the nation’s cyber police. The Justice Department charged five Chinese military officials with hacking, and brought charges against the creators of powerful hacking software.

But FBI Director James B. Comey said Monday that if the FBI hopes to continue to keep pace with cyber criminals, the organization may have to loosen up its no-tolerance policy for hiring those who like to smoke marijuana.

Congress has authorized the FBI to add 2,000 personnel to its rolls this year, and many of those new recruits will be assigned to tackle cyber crimes, a growing priority for the agency. And that’s a problem, Mr. Comey told the White Collar Crime Institute, an annual conference held at the New York City Bar Association in Manhattan. A lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana.

“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Mr. Comey said.

Mr. Comey said that the agency was “grappling with the question right now” of how to amend the agency’s marijuana policies, which excludes from consideration anyone who has smoked marijuana in the previous three years, according to the FBI’s Web site. One conference goer asked Mr. Comey about a friend who had shied away from applying because of the policy. “He should go ahead and apply,” despite the marijuana use, Mr. Comey said.

Earlier, the FBI director said the agency had “changed both our mindset and the way we do business.” He said it worked less “in-box” than it had in the past.

Mr. Comey also boasted of the agency’s efforts in combatting white collar crime. He said that the FBI had 1,300 agents currently working 10,700 white collar crime cases nationwide. The number of corporate fraud cases at the FBI had jumped 65 percent since 2008, he said.

“Anybody who thinks FBI agents shy away from going after either people or companies because they are too prominent or two large, doesn’t know the FBI,” he said.

Mr. Comey poked fun at the agency’s long-standing rivalry with federal prosecutors. FBI officials often quietly complain that while the FBI does all the leg work on investigating crimes, prosecutors hog all the glory once the cases go public.

Mr. Comey even read a haiku that included a friendly jab at Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara”

Thought I was good but

Preet made the cover of Time

What is life?

Mr. Comey also issued a more serious warning about the long term impacts of the Syrian civil war on global terrorism. He warned that when the Syrian conflict starts winding down, it would produce an outflow of hardened militants that poses a far bigger global terror threat than the outflow of militants that followed the Afghan war against the Russians in the 1980s.

“You can draw a line between that terrorist diaspora and 9/11,” Mr. Comey said. “The Syrian outflow, which will be much larger and harder to track, cannot be allowed to follow a similar line to a future tragedy.”

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NSA Memo Says Agency Is 'Blurring The Lines' Between Terrorism And Drugs

The National Security Agency is "blurring the lines" between the war on drugs and the war on terror, according to a memo produced by the spy agency itself and published Monday by Glenn Greenwald's new website The Intercept.

The partially classified 2004 memo, written by an unnamed NSA employee who served as the Drug Enforcement Administration's "account manager," provides one of the most revealing glimpses yet at the ways counterterrorism and counternarcotics operations have melded since Sept. 11, 2001.

Counternarcotics has been a major Defense Department mission since 1989, when President George H.W. Bush gave a speech announcing ramped up funding for a militarized approach to the drug war. Three months later, the U.S. invaded Panama, ostensibly to combat drug trafficking under strongman leader Manuel Noriega.

In the memo, the manager for the NSA -- a Defense Department component -- says the drug war "has all the risks, excitement, and dangers of conventional warfare, and the stakes are equally high … But many are not aware that from the start NSA has been at the forefront of Intelligence Community (IC) support to this seemingly unconventional (Department of Defense) mission."

The memo was published in conjunction with a new Intercept story detailing how the NSA recorded "virtually every" cell phone call in the small island nation of the Bahamas. The spy agency reportedly used a DEA "backdoor" to gain access to Bahamian cell phone networks.

In another document published by The Intercept, the NSA bragged about finding someone who shipped marijuana from Mexico to the United States.

And this isn't the first time the two agencies' "vibrant two-way information sharing relationship" (as the memo puts it) has been in the news.

In August, Reuters revealed that the NSA helped source information for a secretive DEA unit called the Special Operations Division. The NSA's information-gathering role was then obscured through a process called "parallel construction" when the drug agency brought criminal charges.

Just months after the 9/11 attacks, the Office of National Drug Control Policy compared the drug and terror wars in a highly criticized Super Bowl ad. Since then, the DEA has become heavily involved in counterterrorism efforts: In Afghanistan alone, the agency has 79 employee positions.

But the other side of the partnership -- the NSA's heavy involvement in counternarcotics -- could raise more questions for critics of the agency. The agency has repeatedly hammered on the threat of terrorism as a justification for its wide-ranging surveillance apparatus. But former contractor Edward Snowden's documents show the agency is using its powers in unrelated ways -- like spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The memo says the NSA plays a "critical supporting role … in key DEA operations to disrupt the flow of narcotics to our country and thwart other, related crimes."

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Fire the DEA Administrator!

The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration is refusing to support a bill backed by the Obama administration that would modify mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug crimes, putting her at odds with her boss, Attorney General Holder. He hopes to make the bill, the “Smarter Sentencing Act” a centerpiece of his legacy.

As DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart explained, “Having been in law enforcement as an agent for 33 years, [and] a Baltimore City police officer before that, I can tell you that for me and for the agents that work for DEA, mandatory minimums have been very important to our investigations. We depend on those as a way to ensure that the right sentences are going to the... level of violator we are going after.”

Administrator Leonhart, appointed by Bush a Deputy Administrator of the DEA in 2004 and served as Acting Administrator of the DEA in 2007, was appointed by President Obama as Administrator in 2010 over the objections of many drug policy reformers. She has been at the DEA since 1980.

Leonhart has reportedly harshly criticized the President behind closed doors for saying that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. She also said that the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado has only forced DEA agents to become more aggressive; and stated that gangs are taking over in Washington and Colorado in the wake of marijuana legalization, even as there is no evidence that this is true. Holder has said he is optimistic about the way things are progressing in those states.

In 2012, while testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, Leonhart refused to acknowledge that marijuana poses fewer health risks than heroin or crack, which would require it to be removed from the Drug Schedule I. Doing that would effectively change marijuana national policy.

Nobody really expected that a lifetime drug warrior would quietly accept marijuana legalization. But publicly undermining the Obama administration's position on reforming mandatory minimum drug sentences, especially given that it is a crucial part of Attorney General Eric Holder's Smart on Crime initiative, is obvious insubordination.

The Marijuana Policy Project, Director of Federal Policies Dan Riffle said:

“Whether Ms. Leonhart is ignorant of the facts or intentionally disregarding them, she is clearly unfit for her current position. By any objective measure, marijuana is less harmful than alcohol to the consumer and society. It is irresponsible and unacceptable for a government official charged with enforcing our drug laws to deny the facts surrounding the nation’s two most popular recreational drugs.

“The DEA administrator’s continued refusal to recognize marijuana’s relative safety compared to alcohol and other drugs flies in the face of the President’s commitment to prioritizing science over ideology and politics. She is neglecting the basic obligations of her job and fundamentally undermining her employer’s mission. This would be grounds for termination in the private sector, and the consequences for Ms. Leonhart should be no different.”

It is our position that Ms. Leonhart should resign or be fired. She is stuck in outdated drug war propaganda that has been proven to be wrong and is an impediment to important progress.

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Ritalin geeft eindexamenkandidaten net dat extra shot concentratie

Na de energiedrankjes en het banaantje hebben eindexamenkandidaten nu ritalin ontdekt - een stimulerend medicijn dat vooral wordt voorgeschreven aan mensen met hyperactiviteits- en concentratiestoornissen zoals adhd en add.

'Zo'n 5 tot 10 vrienden krijgen ritalin van mij. Het geeft ze net die extra boost tijdens het leren', zegt Odin (19). Hij heeft de concentratiestoornis add en doet havo-examen in Noordwijk. Omdat hij meer krijgt voorgeschreven dan hij gebruikt, heeft hij nu pillen over. 'Zelf neem ik het alleen als ik moet presteren, want ik ben niet blij met de zombieachtige bijwerkingen.'

Het is niet duidelijk hoeveel leerlingen speciaal voor hun examens naar de stimulerende middelen grijpen. Apothekers zien rond de examenperiode geen toename van de uitgifte van medicatie voor add en adhd. Uit onderzoek van IVO, een verslavingsinstituut, blijkt wel dat 2 procent van de jongeren tussen de 14 en 17 jaar weleens ritalin geprobeerd heeft terwijl zij dat niet voorgeschreven kregen. 'Opvallend is dat 60 procent van deze oneigenlijke gebruikers dit voor de lol deed of als experiment. Slechts 20 procent probeerde de medicatie om hun prestatie te verhogen', zegt de directeur van IVO, Dike van de Mheen.

Tunnelvisie
'Toen ik een paar jaar geleden voor het eerst uitging met mijn vrienden, experimenteerden wij ook wel met ritalin', zegt Odin. 'Maar nu vragen vrienden het vooral voor hun studie. Een paar klasgenoten nemen het ook en die hebben het niet van mij.'

Volgens Odin vinden zijn vrienden het middel vooral prettig omdat het hen een soort 'tunnelvisie' oplevert. Ze kunnen zich lange tijd richten op één taak, het studieboek.

IVO-directeur Van de Mheen denkt dat deze leerlingen vooral positief zijn omdat zij dénken dat ritalin helpt. 'Je gaat het tentamen echt niet beter maken. De helft van de jongeren die het oneigenlijk gebruiken ziet positieve effecten, bijvoorbeeld dat het hun prestatie verhoogt, maar er is geen enkel wetenschappelijk bewijs dat dit ondersteunt.'

Duf gevoel
De andere helft van de oneigenlijke gebruikers uit haar onderzoek spreekt overigens over negatieve effecten, zoals een duf gevoel en een verminderde concentratie.

'Omdat veel kinderen vriendjes hebben die stimulerende middelen krijgen voorgeschreven, denken ze dat ritalin onschuldig is', zegt Van de Mheen. 'Maar het is gewoon niet gezond.'

Behalve het omschreven duffe gevoel kent ritalin bijwerkingen als hoofdpijn, misselijkheid, slapeloosheid en een verminderde eetlust. Ook heeft het een verslavende werking wanneer het langere tijd wordt gebruikt.

Van de Mheen: 'Jongeren experimenteren nu eenmaal. Omdat hun brein nog niet is ingesteld op de langere termijn, moeten zij beter worden voorgelicht door hun ouders en door school. Het medicijn werkt specifiek voor mensen die een bepaald defect hebben in de hersenen - de rest moet gewoon studeren zonder pilletjes.'

Ritalin: Wat doet het met je?

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Op woensdag 21 mei 2014 22:59 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Alle scholieren aan de speed!

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Op woensdag 21 mei 2014 22:59 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Alle scholieren aan de speed!

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