The World Wide War on Drugs #7 - Uruguay is tegen, wie volgt?

quote:

De Ochoas - de echte bazen van het Medellínkartel

quote:

Mexican Drug Cartels Threaten Texas Cops: Accept Bribes or Die

quote:

Residents of El Paso, TX have witnessed a disturbing sight which would seem to be a direct threat to local police. Two billboards on I-10 have been defaced with a hanging effigy and the words "Plata o plomo" which means "silver or lead." It is believed to be a message from Mexican Drug cartels to local law enforcement to "accept bribes or die."

The Obama Administration released 68,000 criminally convicted illegals back to the streets in 2013.

Let's not forget the fact that Eric Holder and Barack Obama were both highly instrumental in arming Mexican Drug Cartels through the now infamous "Fast and Furious" debacle.

Despite obvious problems, legislators are in a rush to push the amnesty bill through, presumably before 2014 elections in a political move.

quote:

Gemiddeld drugsgebruik nergens in Europa zo hoog als in Nederland

quote:

Nergens in Europa ligt het gemiddelde drugsgebruik hoger dan in Nederland. Gemeten over 42 verschillende Europese steden blijkt dat Utrecht, Amsterdam en Eindhoven voor vrijwel alle soorten drugs eindigen in de Europese toptien. Vooral cannabis, speed, MDMA en cocaïne blijken populair. In Amsterdam worden tussen de 20- en 30 duizend lijntjes per dag gesnoven, ervan uitgaande dat een lijntje coke 100 milligram is en een zuivergraad heeft van 50 procent.

quote:

Gemeten over drie opeenvolgende jaren en vertaald naar drugsgebruik per duizend inwoners, is Eindhoven de Europese nummer één voor wat betreft speed, wordt alleen in Antwerpen meer cocaïne gesnoven dan in Amsterdam en is het gemiddelde Nederlandse cannabisgebruik het hoogst van alle onderzochte landen. De topdrie van steden waar het meeste MDMA (xtc) wordt gebruikt, is zelfs helemaal Nederlands, met wederom Eindhoven als nummer een.

Uit eerder rioolwateronderzoek kwam al naar voren dat de cijfers in de gemeenten Nijkerk en Edam-Volendam vergelijkbaar zijn met die van de andere drie Nederlandse steden. Methamfetamine (chrystal meth) is de enige onderzochte drug die nauwelijks in het Nederlandse rioolwater voorkomt.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 mei 2014 14:36 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
en is het gemiddelde Nederlandse cannabisgebruik het hoogst van alle onderzochte lande

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 mei 2014 16:50 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

[..]

Dan moet er ergens een hiaat zitten tussen een van de onderzoeksmethodes die het trimbos instituut erop na houdt en toch met andere cijfers komt.

http://www.trimbos.nl/ond(...)en-cijfers-en-trends klik op het ndm jaarbericht.

quote:

- Het recent en actueel cannabisgebruik onder Nederlandse volwassenen valt samen met het Europese gemiddelde (§ 3.5).

- Het percentage actuele cannabisgebruikers onder Nederlandse scholieren van 15-16 jaar is in 2011 twee keer hoger dan het Europese gemiddelde (§ 3.5).

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 mei 2014 14:36 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Gemiddeld drugsgebruik nergens in Europa zo hoog als in Nederland

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 mei 2014 17:23 schreef Individual het volgende:

[..]

Echte klinkklare onzin.

Ik heb nog nooit zoveel drugs gezien als in Londen.

quote:

Op dinsdag 27 mei 2014 17:35 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Maar dat zegt toch niets? In NL word er gewoon veel minder drukte om gemaakt.

In veel landen kun je veel relaxter blowen dan in NL. Zat clubs in Spanje waar je gewoon mag blowen, maar ze zeggen het gewoon niet. En ondertussen klagen ze over het NL'se "relaxte" beleid.

Als je wil weten wat er gebruikt word moet je kijken naar wat er gebruikt word, niet wat er in folders staat of hoe vaak je iets krijgt aangeboden.

quote:

"Limburg is het Colombia van de synthetische drugs"

Wietplantages, drugslabs, maffia: de Limburgse gemeente Maasmechelen is een uitvalsbasis van de georganiseerde misdaad geworden, zo schrijft het weekkblad Humo. "Het is al een tijd dweilen met de kraan open, zeker aan de Maaskant."

Wat is er aan de hand in het oosten van Limburg? De regio van Maaseik over Maasmechelen tot Lanaken is een draaischijf van de Europese drugshandel geworden, vol wietplantages en labs voor synthetische drugs. "Het Colombia van de synthetische
drugs", zo bestempelde Peter De Buysscher van het commissariaat-generaal van de federale politie Belgisch en Nederlands Limburg het onlangs.

De Limburgse grensstreek is een ideale locatie, zo klinkt het in Humo. Allereerst puur geografisch: "Wie in België woont, gaat crimineel aan de slag in Nederland en Duitsland, en omgekeerd. De handhaving loopt toch achter en raakt nog veel te vaak niet over de grens", zegt Patrick Van den Oetelaar, directeur van de federale gerechtelijke politie in Tongeren.

Daarnaast is de nabijheid van grote wiet- en xtc-organisaties in Nederlands Limburg essentieel. "De Nederlandse politie ziet daar hoe volledige straten - pand na pand - zich op de wietkweek toeleggen en hoe brave burgers voor de georganiseerde misdaad gaan werken." Hij noemt de oude mijnstreek rond Kerkrade, maar ook in Belgische mijnstreken duikt het fenomeen op. Meestal met Nederlanders achter de schermen, maar ook Belgen zetten soms hun eigen labs en plantages op poten.

Wachtlijsten
De aanwezigheid van Marokkaanse, Italiaanse en Turkse gemeenschappen in de cités van de vroegere mijngemeenten, waar de economie al een tijd in een dip zit, blijkt een doorslaggevende factor. "Allochtone families hebben buitenlandse contacten en familiale banden over de grenzen heen. Je ziet hoe Italiaanse criminelen in Limburg gebruikmaken van hun Italiaanse contacten in het buitenland en dat Turken voor het transport van drugs een beroep doen op familie of landgenoten in andere landen." Dat verklaart ook de aanwezigheid van Italiaanse maffiaorganisaties in Maasmechelen, met mensen die banden hebben met de Camorra of de 'Ndrangheta.

De situatie is dermate ernstig dat de politie tegenwoordig al met wachtlijsten werkt. Op het grondgebied van de gemeente Genk en de zone Midden-Limburg lopen ze continu een vijftiental wietplantages achter. En in Maasmechelen en Lanaken is het nog erger.

Geen volk, geen tijd
Een Limburgse magistraat zegt in Humo dat het probleem zeker ten dele bij het lokale bestuur ligt. "Er wordt zeker niet voldoende
op gewerkt. Wietplantages, xtc-labs en de smokkel van cocaïne zijn aan de Maaskant geen grote prioriteit voor lokaal bestuur en politie. Mensen in Maasmechelen of Lanaken liggen niet wakker van
wietboeren en hennepplantages, maar wel van gewapende overvallers en inbrekers. Die moeten eerst worden aangepakt door de lokale politie. En dan is er geen volk en tijd meer voor de rest."

Maasmechels bugermeester Raf Terwingen (CD&V) reageert dat hij niet goed op de hoogte is van de toestand van de georganiseerde misdaad in zijn gemeente. "Er wordt niet met mij gecommuniceerd. Zo'n highlevelcriminaliteit kun je niet aanpakken met het lokaal bestuur en de lokale politie. Dat moeten het parket en de federale politie doen." Dat de wijk Eisden-Tuinwijk vol criminele families zou zitten, noemt hij "overdreven". "Ik vind het erg dat men dat over die buurt zegt. Als jullie met mij naar Eisden gaan, dan zullen jullie daar gastvrij worden ontvangen."

quote:

Experts evaluate drug laws in an era of surging substance use and overcrowding

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The dark legacy of Taiwan's war on drugs is ever-rising drug use and desperately overcrowded prisons. While measures to ease the overflow of inmates get under way this year, experts are weighing the merits and costs of time-honored laws.

A life sentence, like the size of a galaxy, is hard to fathom, even for an inmate serving one. Paul Douglas, a middle child from a middle-class family raised in the middle-of-the-road town of Wokingham, England, pleaded guilty to trafficking 1.9 kilos of heroin out of Bangkok for US$4,000 in 2002.

“I made a very bad decision,” said Douglas, 45, who has struggled to find peace, watching his early 30s drift into his mid-40s in gray prison garb, serving life at Taipei Prison for a first-time offense.

His peculiar hobby — collecting news clippings of “bizarre” court verdicts he reads about in Taiwanese newspapers — has only confused his understanding of local justice.

“It makes no sense,” Douglas said, comparing his case — a life sentence for trafficking a grade-one narcotic — to a March story in The China Post about 13 military officers sentenced between three to eight months for their roles in an army conscript's death. “What I ask is, does the punishment fit the crime?”

Taiwan's trafficking laws are relics of the 19th-century Opium Wars, when addiction raged along Asia's seafaring trade routes according to Edward Lai, professor at Central Police University. A state-run system of opium licenses, not the laws, eventually quelled the local epidemic, but popular fears that the “nightmare” could return are driving current policies, Lai said.

“The laws and policies for drug trafficking are too harsh,” said Lai, a former corrections officer at Taipei Prison, until ten years ago. “However, most citizens support 'get-tough-on-crime' policies, so politicians support those policies to win the votes.”

Draconian laws, empirically, are ineffective in deterring the drug trade, said Lai, who witnessed much recidivism among drug users while at Taipei Prison that foretold today's swelling incarceration rates. Two decades since the modern war on drugs was declared, 38 out of 49 penitentiaries are overcrowded while nearly half of the 58,565 inmates last year served time for drug crimes, according to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).

Still, legislators defend the current policies, arguing that addiction, namely to heroin, the deadliest and the island's most abused drug, is poison to the economy — costing a user US$18,310 per year — and ravages communities by attracting crime, according to a National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) study published last year.

“Drug criminals severely endanger public order,” said KMT legislator Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井), who is trying to resurrect a 2007 bill that commutes prison sentences to alleviate overcrowding — but excludes drug criminals. “They are unforgivable.”

Last year, Liao toured Taipei Prison — which is built for 2,705 inmates, but houses 3,716, according to the Agency of Corrections (AOC) — and said he realized, then and there, what constituents meant when they described the place as “horrible.”

Prisoners here sleep side by side on factory floors, not beds — violating United Nations covenants — and are allotted an average space of roughly a square meter, or “a spot on the floor,” according to Abdul Azeez Mahdi, 35, from Los Angeles, sentenced to 15 years for trafficking 1.2 kilos of heroin.

“It's not written down, but the prison rule is everyone gets 45 centimeters,” Mahdi said. “But my shoulders are 45 centimeters.”

The close quarters cause mental stress and health problems, inmates said. “It's just part of the course,” said Douglas about scabies outbreaks. “Like you're living in squalor.”

The Drug War Comes Full Circle

Last year, a shipment of 229 kilos of heroin was seized, the second largest haul in the island's history behind a heroin bust in 1993, the year the war on drugs was declared. To many it symbolized history coming full circle.

But the tide is turning. Although trafficking a grade-one narcotic is a capital offense in Taiwan, life sentences were largely automatic when Douglas was arrested. In 2009, however, the law was amended granting reduced sentences to anyone who pleads guilty — but the reduction doesn't work retroactively in Douglas's case. “It's disheartening to see people who come after you, leave before you for the same crime,” he said.

This year, expansions at three prisons, including Taipei Prison, will add capacity for nearly 2,000 inmates, while the Ministry of Defense transfers Tainan's military prison to the AOC.

But many, including Liao, are seeking alternatives to building prisons. A year incarcerated costs taxpayers NT$22,000 per prisoner, according to the NCKU study, while the prison population has doubled since 1992, casting doubt over the strategy's long-term sustainability.

“When I first got here,” said Douglas with a kind, sallow smile, “I used to wonder, 'What do the guards think when they look through the bars and see a sea of people '”

quote:

Drug Use Is Not a Sustainable Development Issue - The War on Drugs Certainly Is

This month negotiators met at the UN in New York to discuss the Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs); government targets that will heavily influence policies through to 2030 and that will affect the lives of billions in the coming years. The SDGs are intended to address global challenges relating to our ability to survive and thrive on this planet, from climate change, poverty reduction, sustainable cities and disease prevention to functioning institutions of government. Done well, this could be transformative. But somehow (nobody seems to know how) a goal to rid the world of drug use has been included in the draft SDG document. This is harmful both for the aims of the SDGs and, given the lack of any transparency around its inclusion, for the credibility of the entire process.

The current draft includes a target to 'eliminate narcotic drug and substance abuse'. This is the essence of drug war rhetoric. But issue by issue, discipline by discipline, every canard, every straw man, every lie of the war on drugs has by now been exposed, including any pretense that a 'drug free world' is either possible or, given what it requires, a desirable goal to pursue. In fact, just as the UN negotiators were considering this target five Nobel Prize winning economists joined the growing chorus of community activists, experts and senior political figures calling for systemic change.

Aside from being a failure on its own terms (pick your indicator) the war on drugs has been a systematic human rights onslaught. It has eroded and crowded out constitutional values democratic societies should defend. It has fuelled urban violence and hindered peaceful resolution of conflicts. It has been a consistent barrier to development in producer nations. It has been a vector of disease and an economic catastrophe; billions poured down the sinkhole of tail-chasing drug enforcement at the expense of proven, life-saving harm reduction and treatment interventions.

To put it another way: the idea of a drug free world has produced and is producing effects that are anathema to everything the Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to stand for.

Now, there are some aspects of the draft SDGs that can be criticised as, for example, unachievable or immeasurable. But none are so directly harmful to the whole enterprise as this. So how did something so counterproductive make it in?

Sweden, which has a reputation for restrictive drug policies and a national goal of a 'drug free society', was credited with the suggestion. After contacting the ambassador in charge, however, we were told this was absolutely not the case. Sweden corrected the record, saying it had never proposed this target.

A group of NGOs known as the Women's Major Group was also credited with the proposal. On the contrary, the group objected strongly to it on the grounds that it had undermined so many other priorities, such as HIV prevention, and it said so forcefully at the meeting.

So the target was included outside of the official, transparent SDG procedures. But despite coming out of thin air (or perhaps, more realistically, from an arbitrary decision or error of a UN secretariat staffer) the target to eliminate drug abuse is now on the negotiating table. Once there it became part of the debate. Some States, such as Singapore, Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates liked it as it was. Others, mainly Latin American governments, wanted to amend it for an explicit focus on health, peace and security, not criminalisation (they clearly know what this well worn rhetoric means in practice). A few, including China and Indonesia, called for it to be deleted.

But the UN, of course, seeks consensus. So the upshot is that no agreement was reached and a very stupid and simplistic idea that was not officially proposed remains on the table as a baseline for negotiations by our governments. The only thing that changed after this round of debate was that any reference to where it came from is now gone.

This doesn't tell us much about the war on drugs we didn't already know. It's insidious, infectious and it undermines institutions and debates such as these. But what does it tell us about the SDG process? What faith can we have in these goals when official papers mysteriously include aims that no one wanted, falsely attributed to governments and NGOs, and that fail to display any understanding of contemporary science or politics, goals that would in their pursuit undermine precisely what the SDGs are for?

If drugs issues are to be included in the SDG targets then ideas must come from official, considered sources, including NGO consultations. They must be based on what is really happening, and real solutions, not the same discredited fantasies of the past. Drug use is not a sustainable development issue. The war on drugs certainly is.

quote:

Bekende anti-legaliseringspersonen:
• Ivo O. en Fred T.
• Jan-Peter B.

quote:

Op donderdag 29 mei 2014 11:52 schreef waht het volgende:

[..]



Voeg dan ook gelijk even alle andere premiers/presidenten/ministers ter wereld toe.

quote:

Duizenden drugsdealers Italië vervroegd vrij

Zo'n 9 duizend Italiaanse drugsdealers komen in aanmerking voor vervroegde vrijlating. Dit is het gevolg van een beslissing van de Italiaanse Hoge Raad van vandaag. Die bepaalde dat er ook met terugwerkende kracht een onderscheid moet worden gemaakt tussen harddrugs en softdrugs. Daarvan kunnen nu mensen profiteren die voor de handel met hasj tot deels jarenlange celstraffen waren veroordeeld.

Op initiatief van de rechtse politicus Gianfranco Fini werd in 2006 het verschil tussen softdrugs en harddrugs uit het strafrecht gehaald. Die wet is eerder dit jaar door het Constitutioneel Hof in Rome nietig verklaard.

Op het verkopen van hasj kwam door de 'Fini-wet' een maximumstraf van twintig jaar cel en een boete van 260 duizend euro te staan. Centrumlinkse politici vonden dat onnodig hoog en 'criminaliserend'. Daarnaast zijn de gevangenissen in Italië al overvol. Italië is daarvoor op de vingers getikt door de Raad van Europa.

quote:

Op donderdag 29 mei 2014 12:11 schreef Individual het volgende:

[..]

Behalve José Mujica van Uruguay dus.

quote:

http://www.nu.nl/economie(...)britse-economie.html
'Drugs en prostitutie goed voor Britse economie'
Drugshandel en prostitutie leveren een bijdrage van circa 10 miljard pond (12,3 miljard euro) aan de Britse economie.
'Drugs en prostitutie goed voor Britse economie'
Foto: Thinkstock
Dat schrijft zakenkrant Financial Times.
De Britse overheid heeft aangekondigd prostitutie en drugshandel voortaan mee te nemen in het berekenen van de economische groei......

twitter:

JoinTheMajority twitterde op vrijdag 30-05-2014 om 06:28:51 BREAKING: US House passes amendment to stop DEA medical #marijuana raids 219-189!!!!!! RT if you’re excited! #mmot http://t.co/vAhuLeyAlL reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 30 mei 2014 16:57 schreef heiden6 het volgende:
Jongeren onwel na zelfgemaakte GHB

quote:

Op vrijdag 30 mei 2014 10:19 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

[..]

Dus we laten deze zaken wel illegaal maar om de economische cijfertjes op te poetsen nemen we ze wel weer mee.

quote:

Megawinst door wietteelt in Limburg

Limburgse wiettelers verdienen per jaar bijna een kwart miljard euro. Desondanks staat de bestrijding van de softdrugshandel laag op de agenda van de politie. De pakkans is gering en de straffen zijn bovendien laag.

^{door Bram van der Heijden, Marco van Kampen en Serge Sekhuis}

Dit blijkt uit onderzoek van deze krant. Het Openbaar Ministerie onderschrijft de uitkomsten van de research.

De politie komt in de regel pas in actie na een tip, ze gaat zelden zelf op onderzoek uit. Dat blijkt een bewuste keus. Bronnen binnen de politie wijzen onder meer op de publieke roep om meer ‘blauw' op straat om het aantal overvallen en inbraken een halt toe te roepen. „Het is elke dag kiezen bij de politie”, is het enige dat politiechef Gery Veldhuis kwijt wil. Ook het dubbelzinnige kabinetsbeleid, dat enerzijds de verkoop van wiet via coffeeshops gedoogt, maar anderzijds de aanvoer via de achterdeur strafbaar stelt, speelt een rol bij de lage prioritering die de politie geeft aan de strijd tegen softdrugshandel.

De politie ontmantelde vorig jaar 599 wietplantages: 399 in Zuid- en 200 in Noord- en Midden-Limburg. De politie claimt één op de drie plantages te ruimen. Dit zou betekenen dat er verspreid over de provincie 1.800 zolders, kelders, garageboxen en loodsen zijn waar wiet wordt geteeld. Gebaseerd op een gemiddelde omvang van 260 planten per plantage, een opbrengst van 30,9 gram per plant en vijf oogsten, wordt er jaarlijks in Limburg 72.306 kilo wiet geoogst. Volgens justitie betalen coffeeshophouders, via tussenpersonen, telers zo'n 3.280 euro per kilo. Zo komt de winst op ruim 237 miljoen euro.

Het enorme financieel gewin dat wordt behaald met illegale hennepteelt, staat in schril contrast met het aantal verdachten dat een celstraf krijgt opgelegd. Uit een inventarisatie van deze krant van alle wietzaken die de rechtbank in Limburg in 2013 behandelde, blijkt dat slechts een fractie van de telers in de cel belandt. Van de 343 verdachten die werden gedagvaard, kwam ruim twee derde er vanaf met een voorwaardelijke gevangenisstraf, een taakstraf of een boete.

Lees meer in de krant van zaterdag en op Krant Digitaal.

quote:

How Antwerp turned into Europe's go-to city for cocaine

Antwerp, Belgium's genteel port city, is now revealed as a global drugs gateway and the cocaine capital of Europe

A country probably has to admit to a drugs problem when even its wildlife is on cocaine. As of yesterday morning, an online petition calling on the Belgian government to protect the country's racing pigeons from being doped with performance-enchancing cocaine was 200 shy of its target of 45,000 signatures.

That nefarious pigeon fanciers have apparently been using the drug as their doping agent of choice is a reminder that a nation often pilloried for being boring is also partial to South America's most notorious export.

According to last month's Global Drug Survey, Belgians are the most enthusiastic consumers of cocaine in the world, giving the drug a rating of 5.5/10 compared with just 2.2/10 from Australians, who rated it the least highly.

And last week a scientific analysis of wastewater samples in 45 European cities, conducted between 2011 and 2013 and weighted against the size of their respective populations, concluded that the Belgian port city of Antwerp – not London, as widely reported in the British press – is Europe's cocaine capital.

The hipster district of Antwerp Zuid, a well-heeled place where bars and galleries give way to vintage shops and furniture stores, knocked Amsterdam into second place when it came to the amount of benzoylecgonine – the metabolised compound cocaine forms after it has been in the human body – washing through its sewerage system. Zurich was third and London fourth.

And yet a visitor to the city, home to Rubens and famed for its diamond trade, would find it hard to reconcile genteel Antwerp with its position at the top of the cocaine charts.

Dominated by cycling lanes and tramways, it is a city of green spaces and elegant buildings. Lavender plants fill its traffic islands; people wait for the green man to appear before crossing the road; the police stop traffic so that hundreds of cyclists towing children in small buggies can stage a public protest. Even Antwerp's famed red-light district, reputedly home to one of the biggest brothels in Europe, draws as many curious middle-aged tourists as stag parties.

No wonder many are reluctant to confront Antwerp's edgy reputation. Several Belgian politicians approached for comment declined to discuss the matter. Even those familiar with Antwerp's drug scene were shocked by the claims made for its cocaine usage. "There just aren't more people here doing cocaine than, say, in Brussels or Rotterdam," said Joep Oomen, who runs a cannabis social club that represents some 300 adults legally allowed to grow the drug to meet their personal needs.

Nevertheless, he concedes that cocaine is more popular now than when he came to Antwerp 22 years ago. "It's cheap here, too. When I was 20, cocaine was for people in Hollywood. Not any more."

According to the Global Drug Survey, Belgium is the cheapest country in western Europe to buy cocaine. Local people say that dealers on De Coninckplein, a small, cafe-lined square, close to its Chinese quarter, charge as little as ¤50 (£40)a gram, half the European average.

Received wisdom suggests Antwerp's proximity to its port, the second busiest in Europe after Rotterdam, ensures a cheap supply of coke, which in turn drives demand.

But Steve Rolles of Transform, a thinktank that advocates reform of the drugs laws, said the truth was more complex: "If there's a demand for a drug, then availability will follow. I mean, it's not like there's a lot of cocaine in Southampton, for example. There has to be something in the social fabric of the place that drives demand."

In the case of Antwerp, a city once famous for its merchants, this something appears to be a new era of embourgeoisement. The Ferraris, Porsches and Jaguars snaking their way past Antwerp's boutique designer shops suggest it is a place on the up.

"Twenty years ago Antwerp was a lot more empty," said Oomen, who puts the city's renaissance down to European integration. "The Flemish region is booming."

A rising middle class and cocaine use appear to be inextricably linked. "Cocaine is popular here, but it is a drug for professionals with money," said Katerine, a student drinking in a bar close to Antwerp Zuid's film museum. "Young people will do cannabis or pills. It is the architects, journalists, lawyers and politicians who do coke."

Daniel, a waiter at a nearby restaurant, suggested the city's rising affluence had seen it become a popular weekend destination for Europe's upwardly mobile, for whom cocaine was now an essential part of their tourist experience. "People come in by plane, by yacht, by boat, by train. You can get here quickly in a car from Holland or France. It's a beautiful city and people want to have a good time when they're here."

The city's reputation as a cocaine hotspot threatens to turn the clock back to the start of the millennium, when it attracted narco-tourists from northern France seeking to score cheap heroin.

Keen to avoid history repeating itself, last year Antwerp's mayor, Bart De Wever, declared war on the illegal drugs scene, tripling the size of the city's drugs squad from 15 to 45 officers and pledging "zero tolerance". He has set himself a formidable challenge. Few cities in the world are as immersed in the cocaine trade as Antwerp.

Around 25% of the cocaine moving from South America into Europe passes through Belgium. And most of this comes through Antwerp's port, the "supermarket of Europe", which has 140,000 employees and 160km of quayside. But only around 2% of the 8m containers passing through the port each year are screened.

"Screening is far from watertight," said Tom Feiling, author of The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World. "Law enforcement want us to think that they know the size and scale of cocaine coming in, but the reality is that they just don't know."

The US State Department estimates that around 20 tonnes of cocaine comes through the port annually. But some studies suggest it could be 30 tonnes or higher. Certainly the cocaine cartels are becoming more ambitious. Two years ago the city's port authorities seized a record eight tonnes of cocaine with a street value of ¤500m, hidden in a container of bananas shipped from Ecuador.

Last year it emerged that hackers, working with the cartels, had breached the IT systems controlling the movement of shipping containers in the port so that they could remove them before they were searched. "It sounds like fantasy and science fiction, but it's the reality," said Calum MacLeod, who is a security expert at Lieberman Software Corporation.

At one time the wholesale trafficking of cocaine through the port was performed almost exclusively by Colombian drug cartels. But, according to a recent article in the Journal of Drug Issues, gangs from Albania and the Philippines are now muscling in. They are aware that Europe will soon outstrip the United States as the main market for cocaine.

All of which means that picturesque, prosperous Antwerp is unlikely to shed its relationship with cocaine any time soon.

quote:

Silk Road Reduced Violence in the Drug Trade, Study Argues

The dark web may have a silver lining, according to a pair of academics: A new class of geekier, less violent drug dealers.

A law professor and a professor of criminal science argue, in a paper released online, that by reducing physical contact between drug dealers—particularly between dealers and their suppliers—the Silk Road’s bustling Web-based narcotics trade may have prevented bloodshed that would have occurred in the street-level illegal drug market.

The Silk Road, after all, became a bustling online drug bazaar by giving users a new way to deal in contraband anonymously. On the site and dozens of copycats that followed its takedown by law enforcement in October, users’ physical locations were obscured by tools like bitcoin and the anonymity software Tor. Those crypto protections are designed to prevent anyone–including cops and competitors–from knowing where users are. According to University of Lausanne criminologist David Decary-Hetu and University of Manchester law professor Judith Aldridge, that layer of anonymity made technical know-how and online customer service, not a propensity for violence, the barrier to entry for dealers on the Silk Road.

“This new breed of drug dealer is… likely to be relatively free from the violence typically associated with traditional drug markets,” reads the paper, the title of which calls Silk Road “a paradigm-shifting criminal innovation.” “Whereas violence [in the traditional drug trade] was commonly used to gain market share, protect turfs and resolve conflicts , the virtual location and anonymity that the cryptomarket provides reduces or eliminates the need – or even the ability – to resort to violence.

“In the drugs cryptomarket era,” the paper adds, “having good customer service and writing skills…may be more important than muscles and face-to-face connections.”

Aldridge and Decary-Hetu’s study, still being reviewed for publication by a journal they declined to name, doesn’t offer crime statistics to back up that argument. Instead, it uses slightly convoluted logic based on assumptions about the source of violence in the drug world. The Silk Road’s role in reducing bloodshed, they say, is a “very clear inference” from an analysis of the size of transactions made on the market. Using a custom web crawler, they scraped Silk Road in September of 2013–just before its shutdown by the FBI–to collect a snapshot of all feedback and review data from the site’s vendor profiles. Those posts provided a catalog of past deals on the site, including their frequency and size. They found that the high average price of those deals, along with other clues, implies a surprisingly large number of Silk Road buyers were not consumers, but dealers buying wholesale.

That’s a different take than previous studies, which have described Silk Road as an eBay for drugs. Instead, Aldridge and Decary-Hetu say their data shows a vast portion of the Silk Road’s sales were “business-to-business.” That finding moves the market’s role farther up the drug market supply chain than was previously thought, they argue, placing it closer to the cartel-controlled drug producers behind much of the trade’s violence. And since the study argues the traders on both sides of a Silk Road deal were often drug dealers, the researchers claim Silk Road’s business-to-business deals mean twice as many opportunities for violence were prevented.

All of that assumes, without much hard evidence, that transactions between drug dealers and their suppliers lead to dangerous conflicts more often than transactions between dealers and their customers. But Aldridge argues you don’t have to swallow that premise to take her larger point about how the Silk Road model reduces violence: Virtual drug deals don’t allow for physical attacks. “People who don’t meet face to face can’t hit each other or shoot each other,” she says.

According to the study’s measurements, the top 20 percent of Silk Road deals were for more than $1,000–$1,475 for cannabis and $3,494 for ecstasy, for instance. Those amounts, which Decary-Hetu and Aldridge compared with previous studies on real-world drug dealers, sound like far larger purchases than those intended for personal consumption. And in terms of revenue, those high-priced deals were much more important to the site’s sellers’ livelihoods, bringing in between 31 percent and 45 percent of their total revenue versus just 3 percent or 4 percent for deals in the cheapest 20 percent. The presence of products like “precursor” ingredient for synthesizing drugs and lab notes also implies that drug dealers, not just consumers, were shopping on the site.

The study also notes that the Silk Road trade focused far more on less addictive and harmful drugs than might have been previously assumed. “Drugs typically associated with drug dependence, harmful use and chaotic lifestyles (heroin, methamphetamine and crack cocaine) do not much appear on Silk Road, and generate very little revenue,” the study reads. It explains that skew by pointing to the waiting period between a Silk Road drug buy and the product’s arrival, vacuum-sealed, in the mail. “The site may therefore have suited purchases by recreational users with the resources and time to place orders and wait for deliveries; dependent users with chaotic lifestyles, in contrast, were likely to have had neither.”

If the Silk Road did in fact reduce violence, that’s in part by design. The site’s founder, who called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts and is alleged to be 30-year-old Ross Ulbricht, wrote that his creation was intended to enable non-violent, small-time dealers and to take power away from bloody cartels.

“For the first time I saw the drug cartels and the dealers, and every person in the whole damn supply chain in a different light,” he wrote on the site’s now-defunct user forums in 2012. “Some, especially the cartels, are basically a de facto violent power hungry state, and surely would love nothing more than to take control of a national government, but your average joe pot dealer, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, that guy became my hero…It wasn’t long, maybe a year or two after this realization that the pieces started coming together for the Silk Road.”

The notion of the Silk Road as a peace-loving innovation, of course, is tarnished by prosecutors’ accusations that Ulbricht paid would-be assassins to kill six people, including a blackmailer and an employee he worried might act as an informant.

But Aldridge counters that those murder-for-hire attempts took place outside the Silk Road’s market, and have little to do with its interactions. “Our argument about situational violence doesn’t mean people can’t be violent in other aspects of their lives,” she says. “They can engage in domestic violence or fight when they’re drunk, but none of those things are facilitated by a crypto market.”

She also notes that despite the prosecution’s claims, the killings Ulbricht allegedly commissioned don’t appear to have occurred; they may well have all been law enforcement stings or scams by con artists posing as assassins. The same anonymous, bitcoin-based transactions that worked so well for facilitating drug deals, Aldridge argues, haven’t turned out to be as convenient a system for paid murder. “We haven’t seen any, to our knowledge, murder-for-hires happening on crypto markets,” she says. “In fact, it may be much harder by virtue of the markets’ anonymity.”

Even if they do reward nonviolence, Aldridge and Decary-Hetu admit the Silk Road and the sites it’s inspired still account for just a tiny portion of the overall drug trade. Zeta drug cartel enforcers won’t need to trade their AK-47s and briefcases of cash for Tor and bitcoin just yet.

quote:

Hulp leger gevraagd bij strijd tegen wietteelt

Limburgse burgemeesters roepen de hulp in van het leger bij de opsporing van hennepplantages op agrarische percelen.

De Venlose burgemeester Antoin Scholten, portefeuillehouder ‘hennep' namens alle Limburgse burgemeesters, stelt dat hierover gesprekken gaande zijn met het ministerie van Defensie. „Defensie kan ons ondersteunen door drones (onbemande vliegtuigen, red.) of helikopters met speciale opsporingsapparatuur in te zetten”, legt hij uit. „Defensie bekijkt of ze deze vorm van ondersteuning kan realiseren binnen de reguliere capaciteit.”

De politie ontdekte met eigen materieel in 2013 in Limburg op zeventig buitenlocaties 4000 planten. Hulp van het leger moet de opsporing intensiveren.
Uit onderzoek van deze krant is gebleken dat henneptelers in Limburg jaarlijks ruim 237 miljoen euro verdienen.

Het ministerie van Defensie kon maandag niet reageren.

quote:

Op dinsdag 3 juni 2014 11:24 schreef Tism het volgende:

[..]

twitter:

Hey_SaturdaySun twitterde op dinsdag 03-06-2014 om 19:23:21 Since legalizing, Colorado made $19 million in March, $2 million went to schools, crime down 10% #WarOnDrugs #420 http://t.co/8xgfsZyifD reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 3 juni 2014 11:24 schreef Tism het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op dinsdag 3 juni 2014 20:28 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

twitter:

Hey_SaturdaySun twitterde op dinsdag 03-06-2014 om 19:23:21 Since legalizing, Colorado made $19 million in March, $2 million went to schools, crime down 10% #WarOnDrugs #420 http://t.co/8xgfsZyifD reageer retweet

quote:

The multi-decade, trillion dollar waste that we call the drug war has become increasingly unpopular, with everyone from Nobel Prize winning economists to leaders from the religious and civil rights communities calling for its end. Those who defend arresting, incarcerating and militarizing our way into even more disaster often claim that it’s all in the name of protecting children. Yet, the war on drugs is waged with a shocking disregard for human rights, and even babies and children are not spared.

A woman in Texas named Nicole Guerrero recently filed a lawsuit over her 2012 drug possession arrest and detention in a Wichita County jail.She was pregnant at the time, and on the night of June 11, had labor-like symptoms and tried to alert her jailors. Guerrero was ignored for more than four hours. She was subsequently placed in solitary confinement. The following morning, Guerrero was forced to deliver her baby with the help of a guard. The baby was pronounced dead. Guerrero’s lawsuit claims no effort was made to resuscitate the newborn.

--------
It is a bitter irony that thousands of kids have experienced needless violence or had their families ripped apart in the name of drug prohibition. As many as 2.7 million children are growing up in U.S. households in which one or more parents are incarcerated.

quote:

Op woensdag 4 juni 2014 08:30 schreef stoeltafel het volgende:
Keihard aanpakken, ook in Nederland, lol

’Verbied drugsfestivals’

Festivals en grote muziekevenementen waar niet krachtig wordt opgetreden tegen drugsgebruik, moeten worden verboden. Organisaties die niet keihard ingrijpen bij drugsgebruik, mogen geen vergunning meer krijgen voor dergelijke grootschalige evenementen.

Dick Trubbendorffer, directeur van de GGZ CrisisCare, vindt dat de overheid nu veel te slap optreedt: „Wanneer kickboksgala’s verboden worden omdat zij broedplaatsen zijn voor criminelen, dan vind ik het vreemd dat de festivals waar jaarlijks drugsdoden vallen, wel gewoon mogen doorgaan.”

Gevaarlijk
De GGZ denkt dat alleen hard beleid een herhaling van vorige zomer kan voorkomen. Toen kwamen bij verschillende evenementen tien feestgangers om het leven door hooggedoseerde xtc-pillen.

Daan van der Gouwe, onderzoeker van het Trimbos-instituut, constateert eveneens een gevaarlijke trend, maar hij legt de verantwoordelijkheid in de eerste plaats bij de drugsgebruikers zelf: „Toch moeten wij wel hulp bieden als het misgaat. Daarom vind ik het een slechte zaak dat de overheid ons verbiedt om feestgangers hun drugs te laten testen bij onze stands.”

Juist de hulp aan drugsgebruikende feestgangers valt slecht bij de GGZ. Trubbendorffer: „Datzelfde Trimbos roept al twintig jaar dat softdrugs niet schadelijk zijn. Ik stel vast dat het gedoogbeleid niet werkt. Onlangs is Amsterdam uitgeroepen tot xtc-hoofdstad van Europa. Nou, dan hou ik mijn hart vast voor de aankomende festivals.”

Gemakkelijker
De festivalgangers zelf maken zich niet zo druk. Volgens fanatiek bezoeker Werner (26) wordt het alleen maar gemakkelijker om drugs mee te nemen. „Ik ben nog nooit gepakt. Ja, ze fouilleren wel, maar daar houdt het op.” Hij stopt zijn pillen in plastic en stopt ze in zijn sok of, als het erom spant, in zijn onderbroek. „Daar checkt de beveiliging toch niet.”

Bron, http://www.telegraaf.nl/b(...)ugsfestivals___.html

War on drugs in Nederland

quote:

Several Massachusetts doctors associated with prospective medical marijuana dispensaries are reportedly facing intense pressure from the federal government to cut ties with those companies.

Citing sources, the State House News Service reports at least two physicians have already resigned from their positions with medical marijuana organizations after federal agents with the D.E.A., which controls the licensing of doctors to prescribe controlled medications, threatened to revoke their licenses to prescribe certain medications.

quote:

Colorado’s poster boy for ‘stoned driving’ was drunk off his gourd

quote:

In January, Keith Kilbey crashed his car into a couple of parked Colorado police cars. The cars were blocking the entrance to an exit ramp, and their lights were flashing at the time Kilbey hit them. Shortly after the accident, a Colorado State Patrol (CSP) spokesman said Kilbey was high on pot the night of the crash and that he had been charged with driving under the influence of drugs. “This time we were fortunate,” warned CSP Corporal H. Cobler, “but many officers across the nation are not so lucky.”

In the state where recreational pot had just become legal, Kilbey became the poster boy for the dangers of driving while stoned. And with good reason. A sky-high driver who couldn’t even see the bright flashing lights of a couple of parked police cruisers confirmed all the predictions from law enforcement about the highway carnage Colorado would see after legalization. The CSP posted the incident on its Facebook page, and commenters responded by linking the incident to Amendment 64, the measure that legalized marijuana.

The Denver Post ran the headline “Colorado State Patrol says stoned driver crashed into 2 Patrol vehicles” and included a stock photo of a bag of joints. Denver’s alt weekly, the Westword, quoted extensively from police sources about how Kilbey’s wreck illustrated the dangers of driving while stoned. Denver’s Fox 31 reported: “Man charged with driving while stoned after hitting CSP vehicles.” The headline from Denver’s ABC7 was “Suspected stoned driver hits 2 Colorado State Patrol vehicles investigating a crash on I-76 ramp,” and for emphasis added on another line, “Driver suspected of being on drugs.” Colorado 9News asked, “Is weekend wreck a sign of ‘high’ times in Colorado?” then tied the wreck to an earlier fatal accident in which the driver was high on meth and heroin. From (ironically enough) the conservative news outlet the Blaze: “Man Allegedly High on Marijuana Made a Big Mistake on a Colorado Interstate.” Colorado’s 9News ran the story “Driver who hit 2 state troopers’ cars was high on pot” with an accompanying video that interspersed images of pot plants and an anonymous guy exhaling pot smoke with footage from inside of a car. And the CBS affiliate and Denver proclaimed, “Troopers Say Man Who Crashed Into Patrol Car Was Stoned.”

In a more nuanced piece published about a months after the crash, the Denver Post’s John Ingold noted that neither Kilbey’s official summons nor the incident report made any mention of pot.

This week, Keith Kilbey accepted a plea bargain. Here’s the headline from the Denver Post:

. Drunk, stoned driver takes plea deal after car crash in Adams County

Wait, Kilbey was drunk? Neither drunk nor alcohol appeared in any of those previous stories.

In fact, Kilbey had a blood-alcohol concentration of .268, more than three times the legal limit. The current legal limit is .08. People with Kilbey’s BAC typically experience severely impaired motor function, loss of consciousness and memory blackout. Kilbey also had pot in his system, about twice the state’s legal limit. But tests for pot impairment are a lot less precise, and pot itself has a much less pronounced effect on motorists than alcohol. (Scroll down to see the graph and link to the corresponding study under the section headed “Drugged driving is a concern, but it’s overblown” in this piece from Vox.) Kilbey’s alcohol consumption was by far the more likely cause of his impairment on the night of his wreck.

quote:

Mother of Four Cures PTSD With MDMA

quote:

Rachel Hope describes how MDMA dramatically transformed her life in just 6-8 hours. Rachel Hope is a mother of four who used MDMA to cure a life-long battle with PTSD. Rachel was given the MDMA as part of her participation in a Maps.org study. The study found MDMA-assisted psychotherapy cured 83% of participants with treatment-resistant PTSD, compared to 25% cured with psychotherapy alone.

quote:

Op vrijdag 6 juni 2014 02:24 schreef Blue_Panther_Ninja het volgende:
http://www.alternet.org/n(...)-edible-pot-freakout
Maureen Dowd wrote in her New York Times column today that a marijuana chocolate bar she ate put her in an 8-hour hallucinatory state. Dowd, who was visiting Colorado, said she became immobilized on her hotel-room bed.
----
It turns out the Dowd ate way too much of her chocolate bar (she was supposed to cut it into 16 pieces, but ate an undisclosed portion). However, she claims it was not properly labeled. And after sharing her own cautionary tale and warning others of the potential dangers of edibles, she referenced a 19-year old Wyoming college student who jumped off a balcony and a Denver man who shot his wife to death after over partaking.

En dit was haar eerste keer.

What Maureen Dowd's Absurd Weed Stunt Tells Us About Privileged White People

quote:

Op maandag 9 juni 2014 20:14 schreef heiden6 het volgende:

[..]

Ik geloof echt niet dat dit zo gegaan is als er wordt verteld, het is ofwel een verzonnen verhaal of opzettelijk zo gedaan.

quote:

Mexico May Follow U.S. On Marijuana Legalization

The president of Mexico dubbed the drug war "failed policy," and hinted strongly that Mexico, the source of most of America's illegal drugs, could follow the U.S.'s lead on marijuana legalization.

Marijuana prices for cartel-connected farmers have plummeted in recent years as the U.S.'s drug policy becomes more and more lenient. Keeping marijuana illegal in Mexico makes no sense when the plant is legalized north of the border, President Enrique Pena Nieto told Madrid-based newspaper El Pais in an interview published Sunday, according to Reuters.

And as everyone -- including Maureen Dowd -- now knows, marijuana policy is changing rapidly in America, with the drug available for medical use in almost half of the country.

These words are just that: words. But they're the strongest words yet from a sitting Mexican president, whose predecessors have said much the same thing after leaving office.

Marijuana is legal in two American states -- Washington and Colorado. California muffed a chance to be the first state to end marijuana Prohibition in 2010, thanks in large part to interference from the federal government. And at least one leading leftist in Mexico says that as soon as California goes legal, the war on marijuana in Mexico will end.

In Mexico, possession of small quantities of drugs is legal. Trafficking huge quantities to satisfy American demand is not, and a military-style crackdown on cartel activity led to today's state of war between Mexican drug traffickers and the police and military.

This isn't good. It would take a fool to posit otherwise, and Pena Nieto is no fool. Following up on the "failed policy" admission, he added that Mexico can't continue on a "road of inconsistency" with liberalizing drug policy in America.

However, he is also practical.

Others who have come before him have said much the same thing about the efficacy of Mexico's war on drugs. Vicente Fox, who served as president from 2000 to 2006, criss-crossed the United States last year with that message -- one he also delivered in San Francisco in September with a strong addendum: legalize all drugs now.

Pena Nieto does not feel that way. He voiced strong support for keeping marijuana production illegal in Mexico, according to other sources.

Still, hearing the man in charge of Mexico say that it's time to rethink failed policy is a step toward sanity, and possibly fewer panga boats and catapults sending cartel-grown brick weed into the United States.

quote:

Report Unveils How DEA Has Systematically Blocked Research and Reclassification of Marijuana, MDMA, and New Synthetic Drugs

quote:

On Wednesday, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) will hold a press tele-conference to accompany the release of their new report, “The DEA: Four Decades of Impeding and Rejecting Science”. The report – which is being made available today – documents a decades-long pattern of systematically obstructing medical research and ignoring scientific evidence.

In a series of historic votes late last month, the U.S. House approved a bipartisan measure prohibiting the DEA from undermining state medical marijuana laws, as well as two amendments prohibiting the DEA from interfering with state hemp laws. The votes were seen as a rebuke to the DEA and DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, who is under increasing pressure to step down.

“The DEA is a police and propaganda agency,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “It makes no sense for it to be in charge of federal decisions involving scientific research and medical practice, especially when its successive directors have systematically abused their discretionary powers in this area. The time is long past for a top-to-bottom review of this rogue agency.”

Despite substantial evidence confirming marijuana’s medical benefits, the DEA has opposed efforts to reform federal policy to acknowledge marijuana’s medical value and made it very difficult for researchers to obtain marijuana to study its medical efficacy.

The federal government maintains a monopoly on the production of only one drug: marijuana. Researchers who want to conduct clinical trials of its therapeutic value are typically frustrated by bureaucratic obstacles. In 2007, a DEA Administrative Law Judge ruled that this decades-long monopoly was harmful to the public interest and should end – but the head of the DEA, Michele Leonhart, rejected the ruling. State legislators and voters have taken matters into their own hands by making marijuana available for medical use at the state level. Almost half of all Americans now live in a state where medical marijuana is legal to one degree or another.

"The DEA has obstructed research into the medical use of marijuana for over 40 years and in the process has caused immeasurable suffering that would otherwise have been treated by low-cost, low-risk generic marijuana," said Rick Doblin, executive director of MAPS. "The DEA’s obstruction of the FDA approval process for marijuana has – to the DEA’s dismay – unintentionally catalyzed state-level medical marijuana reforms.”

Wednesday’s teleconference will feature medical researchers, members of Congress, medical marijuana patients and advocates.

quote:

Akkoord Amsterdam: 'Voortrekkersrol wietteelt', meer sociale huurwoningen

quote:

De partijen spraken ook af dat de stad een voortrekkersrol moet spelen bij het mogelijk maken van gereguleerde wietteelt.

quote:

West Africa should decriminalise drugs - Obasanjo commission

Low-level drug offences should be decriminalised in West Africa, according to a high-level report.

The West Africa Commission on Drugs says drug cartels are undermining the region by using it to transit cocaine.

The commission, headed by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, says the cartels should be tackled but that punishing the personal use of drugs does not work.

It argues that current policies incite corruption and provoke violence.

Drug trafficking and consumption have become major issues in West Africa since the turn of the century.

Efforts around this time to stem the flow of cocaine from the producing countries of Latin America to consumers in the US and Europe led criminals to target West Africa as a new route.

Dramatic events like the crash landing of a Boeing 727 full of cocaine in Mali in 2009 have alerted the authorities to the problem.

The new report, commissioned by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, estimates that the annual trade in cocaine alone through West Africa is now worth $1.25bn (£744m) - more than the total of foreign direct investment in the region.

quote:

Op donderdag 12 juni 2014 16:00 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Het artikel gaat verder.

quote:

Op donderdag 12 juni 2014 16:38 schreef Individual het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb een week op een West Afrikaans eiland gezeten dat helemaal vol stond met wietvelden (en cashewbomen) en de politie kwam er niet door de voodoo op het eiland. Een kg bushweed kostte daar ¤5.

quote:

Op donderdag 12 juni 2014 16:41 schreef OllieWilliams het volgende:

[..]

quote:

South American Drug Trade Deja Vu

Peru, after overtaking Colombia as the world's top producer of coca, cocaine's main ingredient, in 2013, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced this week that Peru greatly decreased cocaine cultivation, reducing coca production by 17.5 percent. U.N. officials herald it the "most remarkable reduction rate achieved in the last 14 years."

But no one is declaring victory in the war on drugs quite yet: Although Peruvian yields are down, the price of coca leaves has increased by 30 percent. Similarly, the price of base cocaine has increased more than 17 percent. Most importantly, the street form -- cocaine hydrochloride -- increased almost 32 percent from 2013 prices, according to the UNODC. Though authorities have squeezed the supply of coca and its products some, demand remains high. Moreover, if the Andean drug trade's history is any indication, supply will simply shift to another country.

Drug researchers call this the "balloon effect" -- where pressure from the authorities in one country or region pushes drug production elsewhere. Squeezing the balloon at one end causes drug producers to compensate and expand into another. Since the U.S.-led war on drugs began in the 1980s, the balloon effect has shaped the cocaine trade.

In 2013, fumigation and forced eradication of coca crops in Colombia finally hit a turning point and the South American nation bequeathed its crown as the world's top coca producer to its neighbor, Peru. Both the United States and the U.N. declared it a milestone. Unsaid was that the Colombian government's efforts to crack down on production -- in part under the banner of Plan Colombia, the U.S.-backed effort to combat left-wing guerrillas and drug traffickers -- simply shifted production to Peru.

Colombia and Peru have swapped the cocoa-producer champion crown for decades. In the mid-90s Peru launched an intense eradication campaign and Colombia was back on top. In 1990, Colombia was only responsible for 19 percent of the global coca market, behind top producers Bolivia and Peru. By 1997, it was the world's top producer. See the pattern here?

Growing global demand is a big factor in shifting supply locations. Even though demand for cocaine is dropping in the United States -- still the world's largest cocaine consumer -- it's up in Brazil, Europe, and Africa, according to the 2013 U.N. World Drug Report. Colombia is the United States' largest cocaine supplier but Brazil -- the No. 2 cocaine market and No. 1 crack-cocaine market -- and Europe are supplied by Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Peru's crackdown will undoubtedly move coca central again but exactly where is unclear. History makes Colombia and Bolivia top contenders. Coca growers in Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, and Brazil are trying to increase production in those countries.

Meanwhile, Brazil is also becoming a vital transit route for shipping cocaine to West Africa and Europe, where markets are growing. Brazilian consumption, as well as trade of the substance, will only open up more emerging markets to the high of cocaine. And as incomes rise in Asia, cocaine consumption there will likely spike, possibly more than making up for Americans' shrinking appetite.

As before, the South American drug trade will find a way to persevere.

quote:

Ganja free: Jamaica decriminalises marijuana for personal use

'Being caught with a spliff' will no longer mean a criminal record, says justice minister, with fines given instead for small amounts

Jamaica is to decriminalise the possession of small amounts of marijuana, joining the trickle of countries moving to soften laws on the drug known on the Caribbean island as "ganja".

The country's minister of justice, Mark Golding, announced that Jamaica's prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, and her cabinet had decided to amend the Dangerous Drugs Act.

"Cabinet approved certain changes to the law relating to ganja. These relate to possession of small quantities of ganja for personal use, the smoking of ganja in private places and the use of ganja for medical-medicinal purposes," he said.

"Approval has been given also to a proposal for the decriminalisation of the use of ganja for religious purposes."

Uruguay recently became the latest country to legalise marijuana use, joining several countries in Europe as well as the US states of Colorado and Washington.

Possession of small quantities of the drug would become a non-arrestable, ticketable infraction in Jamaica resulting only in a fine, Golding said.

"Too many of our young people have ended up with criminal convictions after being caught with a spliff, something that has affected their ability to do things like get jobs and get visas to travel overseas," Golding said.

The government would propose a bill in the Jamaican parliament soon to expunge the criminal records of people convicted of possessing small amounts of the drug, which is grown widely across Jamaica.

The change means that a person cannot be arrested if in possession of up to 57 grams (2oz) of marijuana in a public space.

Anyone ticketed will be given 30 days to pay the fine, failure of which will result in it becoming a minor offence, resulting in the offender doing court-ordered community service.

Golding said the possession of ganja for religious or therapeutic purposes as prescribed by a registered medical practitioner, or for scientific research by an accredited institution, would also be decriminalised.

quote:

‘Revisit Laws To Fight Drug Scourge’

KUALA LUMPUR: The worsening drug smuggling and abuse in the country has led to the Malaysian Crime Prevention Foundation (MCPF) calling for a review of existing laws.

MCPF vice-chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye said frequent drug busts at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and elsewhere, either by the police or the Cu stoms, were alarming.

“Judging by the exposure, arrests and quantity of drugs confiscated, it appears that the drug issue in the country is endless, and what has been uncovered so far could just be the tip of the iceberg.

“If the statistics released by the authorities are anything to go by, it certainly appears that the death sentence has not deterred people from getting involved in the drug trade.

“We call on the government to review our existing laws with regards to the mandatory death penalty, and why it has not been a deterrent to potential drug traffickers. Looking at the drug problem today, we are certain that Malaysia will not be drug free by 2015,” he said.

Lee added that all incoming flights carried the message that Malaysia has stringent anti-drug laws which carries the death penalty for drug trafficking if proven guilty.

“But this has not deterred traffickers from taking a gamble in this trade. The time has come for the government to revisit various legislation related to drug issue and take necessary steps to fight the number one enemy in the country,” he said.

quote:

Albanian police hit with grenades during cannabis crackdown

Police try to enter Lazarat village where authorities believe gangs produce about 900 metric tonnes of marijuana a year

Authorities say suspected gang members have fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns at hundreds of police officers who tried to enter a village in southern Albania as part of a crackdown on marijuana production.

Police said nobody was hurt in the pre-dawn attack on Monday outside Lazarat, where authorities believe gangs produce about 900 metric tonnes of cannabis a year. The drug production is estimated to be worth about ¤4.5bn (£3.6bn) – roughly half the country's GDP.

They said about 500 lightly armed police, including special forces officers, surrounded the village overnight after a smaller force was repelled over the weekend by small arms fire that injured one villager.

Police said they would continue the crackdown on drug producers to "liberate Lazarat from criminals".

twitter:

YourAnonCentral twitterde op maandag 16-06-2014 om 17:11:24 Meanwhile... Activists are planting #weed in public all over the #UKVia @VICEUKhttp://t.co/jg2XyP0mOH http://t.co/8ikzlNbJfD reageer retweet

quote:

Op maandag 16 juni 2014 18:18 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Drugstoerist mag uit coffeeshop worden geweerd

In de strijd tegen drugstoerisme mogen gemeenten bepalen dat buitenlanders niet in coffeeshops mogen komen.
Drugstoerist mag uit coffeeshop worden geweerd
Foto: ANP
De Raad van State heeft dat woensdag bepaald over de regel waar coffeeshops uit Tilburg en Maastricht twee jaar tegen hebben geprocedeerd.
Het voorkomen van drugstoerisme en de bestrijding van georganiseerde criminaliteit zijn volgens de rechter legitieme doelen om indirect onderscheid te maken naar nationaliteit van de bezoekers.
Er zijn geen andere, minder ingrijpende maatregelen, oordeelt hij.
Wietpas
De regel werd bedacht door het vorige kabinet. Coffeeshops mogen alleen leden toelaten (het zogeheten besloten clubcriterium) en alleen volwassenen die in Nederland wonen, kunnen lid van een coffeeshop worden (ingezetenencriterium), en een zogenaamde 'wietpas' krijgen.
In de praktijk controleren echter alleen een paar gemeenten in het zuiden van Nederland of coffeeshops aan drugstoeristen verkopen.
In Maastricht sloot burgemeester Onno Hoes vorig jaar veertien coffeshops tijdelijk, omdat ze het verbod hadden overtreden. Vier daarvan bleven dicht in afwachting van de uitspraak van de Raad van State.
'Teleurstellend'
Marc Josemans, voorzitter van de Vereniging van Officiële Coffeeshops in Maastricht (VOCM), noemt het besluit van de Raad van State "teleurstellend en wrang".
Volgens Josemans is een meerderheid binnen de gemeenteraad van Maastricht tegen het zogeheten ingezetenencriterum, en zal burgemeester Hoes door lokale politici worden aangesproken op de kwestie. Er komt binnenkort een voorstel aan de orde.
Josemans put hoop uit een nieuwe procedure over de sluiting van zijn coffeeshop Easy Going door Hoes vorig jaar, toen er volgens Josemans duidelijk meer overlast was van straatdealers.
Tilburg
De Tilburgse vereniging van coffeeshops De Achterdeur hoopt dat de gemeente tot inkeer komt en onderkent dat de nieuwe regels niks hebben opgelost en dat de georganiseerde criminaliteit juist is toegenomen, reageerde woordvoerder Willem Vugs.
VVD
VVD-Kamerlid Ard van der Steur spreekt van een "terechte en logische uitspraak die voortvloeit uit de eerdere beslissing van het Europees Hof".
Van der Steur: "Nederland moet niet de grootste drugsdealer van Europa worden."
D66
Volgens D66 moet de uitspraak van de rechter gerespecteerd worden. De partij wil wel dat het beleid zo wordt aangepast dat burgemeesters zelf mogen beslissen of ze buitenlandse coffeeshopbezoekers willen weren.
Kamerlid Magda Berndsen: "Gemeenteraden zouden op basis van redenen als handhaving van de openbare orde en de volksgezondheid en met oog voor lokale belangen af moeten kunnen wijken van het door de minister opgelegde ingezeten-criterium."

quote:

29 doodvonnissen in drugszaak Vietnam bevestigd

Een rechtbank in Vietnam heeft in hoger beroep 29 drugssmokkelaars tot de doodstraf veroordeeld en daarmee hun eerdere vonnissen bevestigd. De veroordeelden behoorden tot vier drugsbendes die tussen 2006 en 2012 bijna twee ton heroïne, amfetamine en xtc-pillen vanuit Laos via Vietnam naar China transporteerden.

Van één verdachte werd de doodstraf omgezet in levenslang. Hij had volgens de rechter minder heroïne gesmokkeld dan de anderen en hij had meegewerkt met justitie. Ook 59 anderen kregen levenslang. Het was het grootste proces tegen drugssmokkelaars ooit in Vietnam.

Vietnam heeft zeer strenge drugswetten. Het bezitten of verhandelen van zeshonderd gram heroïne kan iemand al de doodstraf opleveren. In Vietnamese cellen zitten bijna zevenhonderd ter dood veroordeelden.