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."

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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!

[..]