The World Wide War on Drugs #8 - Demonstraties in Mexico

MS-13 - Root Of All Evil

Reefer Madness (1936) Full Movie

Retired Police Captain demolishes the War on Drugs

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Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2013: Peter Hitchens - There is No War on Drugs

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Mexico: protests gather pace with fate of student teachers still unknown

Latest march sees thousands demand return of 43 students who went missing last month after being attacked by police

Pressure continues to mount on the Mexican authorities to find 43 student teachers who disappeared three weeks ago in the southern city of Iguala, many of them after being arrested by local police.

Thousands marched through the resort city of Acapulco on Friday calling for the return of the students alive in the latest in a series of protests around the state of Guerrero, where the events happened, as well as in other parts of the country and abroad.

At the same time police on horses with sniffer dogs are searching the hills around Iguala for signs of the students.

Since the students went missing on 26 September, after being attacked by municipal police and unidentified gunmen, at least 19 mass graves have been discovered in these hills.

Federal attorney general Jesús Murillo said on Tuesday that none of the 28 bodies found in the first five graves belonged to the missing students. No information has yet been made public about the bodies found in any of the others.

Friday’s march in Acapulco took place under stormy skies, filling the boulevard that rings the resort’s famous bay. It was headed by relatives of the disappeared, as well as a sizable contingent of other students from Ayotzinapa, the name of their famously radical teacher training college that is also in Guerrero.

With tension running high prior to the protest, the US embassy issued a warning to tourists to stay away from the march. The city’s authorities suspended classes at local schools, urged businesses to shut up shop, and citizens to stay at home.

The march, however, was notably peaceful with no sign of the kind of violence that has accompanied some previous demonstrations. On Monday protestors burned out government buildings in the city of Chilpancingo, the state capital.

Apparently worried that such events could reduce solidarity for their cause, some 300 students from the college spent Thursday sweeping and removing rubbish from the streets in Chilpancingo. One of the organisers told local newspaper El Sur that they wanted to show thanks to residents of the city for their support.

The case of the disappeared students has become a powerful symbol of the broader failure of municipal, state and federal authorities to contain the influence of organised crime in Guerrero, with striking parallels evident in several other parts of the country.

A local drug cartel that calls itself Guerreros Unidos had allegedly infiltrated the municipal government of Iguala from the mayor down. Mayor José Luis Abarca is now on the run.

This week the investigative TV news programme Punto de Partida broadcast testimonies of relatives of people disappeared at checkpoints at the entrance to Iguala. The check points were reportedly set up by the police and the cartel together in order to prevent rival gangs from entering the city.

Alejandro Ramos, of a local human rights group, told the programme that relatives of people disappeared in Iguala are beginning to tentatively come forward in the hope that their loved ones will now also be included in the search for the students.

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'Cannabisbeleid leidt tot corrumpering van hele maatschappij'


De regering-Michel I gaat het gebruik en bezit van alle drugs, zowel voor minder- als meerderjarigen, opnieuw vervolgen. Het staat haaks op de bevindingen van econoom Paul De Grauwe en toxicoloog Jan Tytgat. De Leuvense professoren pleitten voor legalisatie en regulatie van het cannabisgebruik. "Het cannabisbeleid leidt tot een corrumpering van de hele maatschappij."

Gedaan met het gedoogbeleid: op federaal niveau komt een nultolerantie op drugsbezit en -gebruik, zoals nu al het geval is in Antwerpen . Het staat haaks op de bevindingen van professoren Paul De Grauwe en Jan Tytgat, die op 9 oktober in het Hollands College van de KU Leuven bespraken wat een betere oplossing zou kunnen zijn.

De professoren evalueerden eerder dit jaar de drie belangrijkste doelstellingen van het gedoogbeleid: het aantal afhankelijke personen verminderen, een afname van fysieke en psychosociale schade en ten slotte "een daling van de negatieve gevolgen van het cannabisfenomeen voor de samenleving".

Tytgat noemde het hoog tijd voor een kritische evaluatie met betrekking tot de beleidsnota waarin het huidige cannabisbeleid staat. "We hebben vanuit onze expertise in bepaalde domeinen toch een aantal legitieme en valabele argumenten om te zeggen: zo kan het niet voort."


Consequenties van repressieve aanpak

De hoogste prioriteit die het parlement heeft gesteld, was de preventie van cannabisgebruik, waaruit eigenlijk een repressieve aanpak volgde. Maar hier komt de paradox: hoe intensiever de repressie, hoe schaarser de drug is, hoe hoger de prijs en hoe winstgevender de verkoop ervan. "De overheid is verplicht heel veel middelen te steken in het bestrijden van illegale verkoop, maar dat los je niet op, op die manier, want uiteindelijk is het effect van die aanpak buitengewoon klein. Ondanks de repressieve aanpak blijft de consumptie van cannabis stijgen", legde De Grauwe uit.

De repressieve aanpak heeft ook andere gevolgen. Een van die gevolgen is dat de hele sector in de criminele sfeer leeft: iedereen die daar actief is, is crimineel op een of andere manier, wat aangeeft dat hij niet terugdeinst voor criminele activiteiten. "Het leidt tot een corrumpering van de hele maatschappij, met enorme problemen van corruptie, waarbij drugsgeld wordt gebruikt. Op die manier destabiliseert de maatschappij en dat heeft alles te maken met het feit dat de productie en verdeling van cannabis illegaal is", stelde De Grauwe.


Gevaar voor volksgezondheid

Het beleid heeft ook negatieve invloeden op de volksgezondheid, zowel individueel als maatschappelijk. "Als ik terugkijk op de laatste 20 jaar met betrekking tot cannabis, dan zie ik dat het aantal cannabisdossiers en het aantal inbeslagnames van cannabisplanten die ik als deskundige gevraagd wordt te onderzoeken, in stijgende lijn gaan", waarschuwde Tytgat.

Inderdaad: door de repressieve aanpak is de controle op de kwaliteit, compositie en reinheid van de cannabis niet mogelijk. Ook het gebruik van pesticiden of voedingsstoffen is moeilijk te controleren. Zo kan het dat er in de illegale plantages slechte omstandigheden zijn en daardoor kan de cannabis schadelijke schimmels, bacteriën en andere vervuilingen bevatten.

"In 2013 zijn er al meer dan 1.000 illegale plantages opgedoekt en dan kennen we nog niet diegenen die onontdekt blijven. Als je dat in perspectief ziet met 10 of 20 jaar geleden, is dat werkelijk een vertienvoudiging. Dus dan kan je moeilijk beweren dat de federale beleidsnota effectief werkt en zijn doelstellingen haalt", benadrukte Tytgat.


Regulering? Eerst legaliseren

Volgens De Grauwe zijn er twee belangrijke elementen: legalisatie en regulatie van het cannabisgebruik. "Iets dat niet legaal is, kan je niet reguleren. De illegale drugs van vandaag kan je niet reguleren, precies omdat ze illegaal zijn", wist hij. De professor, tegenwoordig actief aan de London School of Economics and Political Science, voegde daaraan toe dat dat kan zoals in het biermodel of het tabaksmodel.

De Grauwe en Tytgat geen voorstanders van drugs, maar volgens hen worden ze moreel in een hoekje geduwd en ze moeten zich daarin defensief opstellen. "We willen de zaak liever op een pragmatische manier behandelen", klonk het in koor. Het probleem op deze wijze oplossen kan ertoe leiden dat "het crimineel karakter ervan kan verdwijnen".

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Psychedelic Mushroom Compound Found to Grow and Repair Brain Cells

You may know them as “shrooms”, “Magic mushrooms”, psilocybic mushrooms, or you may not know them at all. They are a natural plant that, like marijuana, is banned by the U.S. Government. But like marijuana, these mushrooms may not be without medical properties. Like marijuana, they could deserve a place on natural medicine shelves for their ability to treat depression, eradicate mental illness, and improve cognition – not in police evidence rooms.

According to research from the University of South Florida, psilocybin, the active component within psychedelic mushrooms, is able to grow new brain cells—potentially offering treatment for mental illness and improving cognition.

The study, published in Experimental Brain Research, says psilocybin is able to bind to special receptors in the brain that stimulate healing and growth. In the case of these mushrooms, brain cell growth occurs. In mice, the researchers found psilocybin to actually help repair damaged brain cells and cure or relieve PTSD and depression.

Lead researcher, Dr. Juan R. Sanchez-Ramos, tested the effects of psilocybin by training mice to fear an electric shock when they heard a noise associated with the shock. Then, by giving them psilocybin, the mice were able to stop reacting to the noise-trigger much faster than those mice not treated with the mushroom compound.

. “The proposition that psilocybin impacts cognition and stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis is based on extensive evidence that serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT) acting on specific 5-HT receptor sub-types (most likely the 5-HT2A receptor) is involved in the regulation of neurogenesis in hippocampus,” says Dr. Sanchez-Ramos according to NaturalNews. “The in vitro and in vivo animal data is compelling enough to explore whether psilocybin will enhance neurogenesis and result in measurable improvements in learning.”

Other research also shows that this same compound could greatly help with depression, helping the majority of participants in one study achieve great well-being.

Psilocybin is referred to as a “nootropic” agent, or one that has numerous functions in the brain that can improve hippocampus health. The hippocampus is part of the brain responsible for learning as well as converting short-term memory to long-term memory. New brain cells in the hippocampus from the psilocybin translates into a healthier and sharper brain overall.

The research on psychedelic mushrooms is limited—far more limited than the research on marijuana. Because these mushrooms are known for causing hallucinations, unguarded self-treatment isn’t recommended. However, this plant, like marijuana, does not deserve a place in the Schedule I classification of illegal substances. Like marijuana, the U.S. government has determined ‘shrooms as having no medicinal value’—an obviously-flawed determination.

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Op maandag 20 oktober 2014 17:17 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

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Dus in de VS heeft men medicinale wiet maar de onderzoekers van de mushrooms beweren hier dat wiet het geen medicische effecten hebben.

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Op maandag 20 oktober 2014 17:39 schreef OllieWilliams het volgende:

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"Net als marihuana zouden deze paddo's wel eens niet zonder medicinale werking kunnen zijn." niet + zonder = met

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Op maandag 20 oktober 2014 19:38 schreef OllieWilliams het volgende:

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Dieptriest is het. Nee, ronduit schandalig. Als je dingen op basis van schadelijkheid en maatschappelijke gevolgen verbiedt, dien je daar wetenschappelijke onderbouwingen voor te leveren. Wetenschap speelt momenteel geen enkele rol in het drugsbeleid, het wordt bijna religieus benaderd. "Drugs zijn slecht, dat is me altijd verteld dus het is zo. Waarom zouden ze anders illegaal zijn?"

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Afghan opium poppy yield hits all-time high

Farmers grew ‘unprecedented’ 209,000 hectares of opium poppy despite US spending $7.6bn on counter-narcotics efforts

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has hit an all-time high despite years of counter-narcotics efforts that have cost the US $7.6bn (£4.7bn), according to a US government watchdog.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported that Afghan farmers grew an “unprecedented” 209,000 hectares (516,000 acres) of opium poppy in 2013, surpassing the previous high of 193,000 hectares (477,000 acres) in 2007, said John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.

“In past years, surges in opium poppy cultivation have been met by a coordinated response from the US government and coalition partners, which has led to a temporary decline in levels of opium production,” Sopko said in a letter to the secretary of state, John Kerry, the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, and other topUS officials.

“The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of those prior efforts,” he said on Tuesday.

Afghanistan produces more than 80% of the world’s illicit opium, and profits from the illegal trade help fund the Taliban insurgency. US government officials blame poppy production for fuelling corruption and instability, undermining good government and subverting the legal economy.

The US has spent $7.6bn on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since launching the programmes following the start of the 2001 war, it said.

Sopko said the UN drug office estimated the value of poppy cultivation and opium products produced in Afghanistan in 2013 at about $3bn, a 50% increase over the $2bn estimated in 2012.

“With deteriorating security in many parts of Afghanistan and low levels of eradication of poppy fields, further increases in cultivation are likely in 2014,” Sopko said in the letter.

He said affordable deep-well technology brought to Afghanistan over the past decade had enabled Afghans to turn 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of desert in south-west Afghanistan into arable land, much of it devoted to poppy production.

In a letter responding to the findings, the US embassy in Kabul said the rise in poppy cultivation and decline in eradication efforts by provincial authorities was “disappointing news”. It said American officials were helping Afghans develop the ability to lead and manage a long-term counter-narcotics effort.

The embassy said the fight against poppy cultivation had had an impact on growers, resulting in a change in where the crop is planted.

“Essentially, poppy cultivation has shifted from areas where government presence is broadly supported and security has improved, toward more remote and isolated areas where governance is weak and security is inadequate,” it said.

Michael Lumpkin, the assistant secretary of defence for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said in a letter in response that the Pentagon had supported counter-narcotics operations by other US government agencies but was not responsible for managing poppy eradication programmes.

“In our opinion, the failure to reduce poppy cultivation and increase eradication is due to the lack of Afghan government support for the effort,” Lumpkin said.

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Zij twitterde over drugskartels, de kartels twitterden haar moord

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Fuentes Rubio was in haar vrije tijd een van de personen achter 'Valor por Tamaulipas' (Moed voor Tamaulipas), een van de grootste burgerjournalistieke initiatieven van Mexico met meer dan 100 duizend digitale volgers op Facebook en Twitter. Onder haar alias Felina berichtte ze over aanslagen, ontvoeringen en andersoortig drugsgeweld. 'Sinds 12:25 uur zijn er explosies en vuurgevechten in Cañada/Fuentes. Pickups rijden met hoge snelheid door de straat', aldus een van haar berichten. Of: 'In Balcones, op de hoek van de Evereststraat, staan twee witte Fords met drie gewapende mannen eromheen.' Ook vroeg ze slachtoffers om via haar medium hun verhaal te delen.

Twitteraars als Felina zijn in het noorden van Mexico populair omdat nieuws over drugsgerelateerd geweld daar lang niet altijd de lokale en regionale media haalt. Volgens de Committee to Protect Journalists, een Amerikaanse non-profitorganisatie, komt dat mede omdat er sinds 2006 al 17 Mexicaanse journalisten werden vermoord die zich ooit kritisch uitlieten over drugskartels. Een gevolg is dat burgers voor wat betreft lokaal nieuws vrijwel volledig afhankelijk zijn van vaak anonieme burgerjournalisten, zoals Felina.

Een gegeven dat tot grote onvrede bij de plaatselijke kartels leidt, blijkt wel uit de ongeveer 35 duizend euro die anderhalf jaar geleden beschikbaar werden gesteld in ruil voor de ware identiteit van Felina en haar collega's bij 'Valor por Tamaulipas'.

Maar ondanks de prijs op haar hoofd en aanhoudende bedreigingen bleef haar echte naam altijd geheim, totdat ze vorige week woensdag - volgens Mexicaanse websites bij toeval - werd ontvoerd samen met twee andere artsen. Toen haar kidnappers vervolgens op haar telefoon keken, zagen ze met wie zij eigenlijk te maken hadden, waarna ze besloten een punt te maken.

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Burgemeester liet studenten Mexico verdwijnen

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De burgemeester van Iguala, in het zuidwesten van Mexico, en zijn vrouw zijn verantwoordelijk voor de verdwijning van 43 studenten bijna een maand geleden. Deze beschuldiging uitte het Openbaar Ministerie woensdag. Het stel zou de plaatselijke politie en leden van de criminele organisatie Guerreros Unidos instructies hebben gegeven de jongeren te laten verdwijnen omdat zij een toespraak van de vrouw wilden verstoren.

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Uruguay’s superstar president bows out – but will his liberal marijuana laws survive?

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Overnight, the passage of the law turned Uruguay’s president, José Mujica, into an international progressive superstar. During his five-year presidency, Mujica, 79, revitalised Uruguay’s economy, slashed poverty from almost 21% to 11.5% and legalised abortion, making his country the first and only one in South America so far to do so. (Elsewhere in Latin America, abortion is available only in Cuba and in Mexico City).

But those gains could be challenged by his successor, who will be decided among front-runner Tabaré Vázquez, a 74-year-old oncologist from Mujica’s own Frente Amplio (Broad Front) party; Luis Lacalle Pou, 41, an energetic conservative from the Partido Nacional (National party); and Pedro Bordaberry, 54, who is likely to throw his votes behind Pou in what opinion polls suggest will be a tightly fought second round between him and Vázquez on 30 November.

The two front-runners have already said that they will tinker with the marijuana law if elected, while Bordaberry, who the pollsters predict will take 18% of the vote, makes it clear that he has no time for it.

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Surprising source offers signs the global ‘war on drugs’ may be ending

William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs summed up the key idea underpinning the shift at the United Nations on Oct. 9:

. Things have changed since 1961. We must have enough flexibility to allow us to incorporate those changes into our policies … to tolerate different national drug policies, to accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalize entire categories of drugs.


The statement is hugely significant as it represents a new diplomatic doctrine and a potential tipping point in efforts to end the disastrous “war on drugs” that has lasted six decades.

It recognizes that immediate reform of the UN drug control conventions (the core of which is the 1961 Single Convention), while necessary, is not yet feasible. But it acknowledges that UN conventions should never serve as a barrier to improving global drug policies and that different policies will work for different regions and nations. Lastly, it accepts that member states can reinterpret the conventions in response to new scientific evidence and with careful regard to other international human rights norms and obligations — as Uruguay has done in the case of cannabis regulation.

The United States was a key architect of the international control system, begun in 1909, and has traditionally served as chief proselytizer for a repressive prohibitionist model globally. Although it initially rejected the 1961 Single Convention as too weak relative to its predecessor treaties, the United States soon embraced it as a useful mechanism to rally nations towards the global war on drugs, formally launched in the 1970s. The United States soon worked to strengthen the convention through successor treaties, funding initiatives and aggressive bilateral drug diplomacy.

Now that the United States has openly rejected the role of key bilateral enforcer the UN will likely cease to be a forum where states are pressured to pursue the war on drugs orthodoxy. Instead, it can become a forum that facilitates cooperation and discussion on a new range of policy approaches.

The main obstacle to this change will likely remain Russia and a coalition of conservative states that are reticent to move away from a militarized and repressive police response. Nevertheless, Russia, despite a strong grip on the UN drug control apparatus, will struggle to enforce its vision due to the post-Ukraine diplomatic freeze and a general recognition that Russia’s domestic drug policies have fuelled incarceration, human rights abuses and a HIV epidemic.

As states approach the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs, Brownfield’s framework provides a practical way forward. It allows states to push ahead with various national regulatory reforms, including regulated markets around the recreational use of certain drugs. It focuses diplomatic effort on preserving the ‘core’ of the conventions — nothing to do with national cannabis or coca leaf prohibitions, and everything to do with regulating licit markets for pain medicines.

And it focuses enforcement efforts on minimizing the impact of illicit markets through effective targeting of criminal gangs, rather than blanket enforcement of impossible global prohibitions. Finally, it allows regions to move ahead with case-specific policies that reflect their local needs, rather than acting as agents of a self-destructive global ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy.

The UN and member states are moving toward a more nuanced understanding that places the drug conventions within broader contexts of human rights, indigenous rights and other frameworks of health and human empowerment. As Brownfield points out, part of this shift is driven by the need to make rational determinations of resource allocation and interpret implementation of the conventions accordingly.

The United States federal government does not believe making U.S. states comply with drug conventions on cannabis is a good use of resources. Other nations should make similar, case specific, determinations.

Legal reform of the international drug conventions is certainly required but only prior national reforms will make that process seem necessary and inevitable to member states.

The course outlined in the Brownfield doctrine appears the best strategy to ensure the survival and modernization of the global drug control framework for the immediate future.

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Schippers vindt dat drugstests leiden tot 'schijnveiligheid'

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Het invoeren van drugstests op festivals vindt Schippers echter 'helemaal geen optie' omdat de tests geen absolute veiligheid kunnen garanderen.

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Mexican cartel boss vows to fight to the death instead of surrendering

Net may be closing on Knights Templar leader Servando Gómez, alias La Tuta, as he releases rambling online video message

The fugitive leader of one of Mexico’s most violent and bizarre drug cartels has said that he regrets choosing a life of crime, but vowed that he would never let himself be taken alive.

“I have committed many crimes like an idiot, and I will have to pay for them when the time comes, but I don’t plan to do that on this earth,” said a man who identifies himself as Servando Gómez, alias La Tuta, in a 24-minute recording, posted on social media. “I am not going to give myself up. I am going to fight until the end.”

The Knights Templar cartel, or Caballeros Templarios, gained notoriety for its signature blend of extreme violence with faux medieval rituals and a rhetoric of social justice.

The cartel once trafficked large quantities of drugs and iron ore, while imposing a reign of terror throughout its main bastion in the Tierra Caliente, or Hot Lands, in the western state of Michoacán. The group was severely weakened after the rise of an armed vigilante movement in the region prompted federal forces to step up efforts against the Knights Templar.

With all the other major cartel leaders now dead or in prison, the recording, first posted on the internet late on Tuesday, appears to confirm reports that the circle is now closing in on La Tuta.

“Just like they say I am alone, hiding in the sierra, riding a donkey and I haven’t seen any of my women for a year,” says Gómez, who in the course of the rambling message complained that authorities had detained members of his family who had nothing to do with the drugs trade.

Interior minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong appeared to accept the authenticity of the recording when he told reporters that it showed “a cornered criminal who recognises that the state has been effective.”

In the recording, Gómez appears resigned to being tracked down by the authorities, but he also accuses the government of protecting other narcos – and rival groups which have risen to occupy the power vacuum left by his cartel’s demise.

He reserves particular venom for the new rural police set up in an effort to control the vigilante movement.

“For 10 years we fucked over Michoacán,” the voices announces, while expressing regrets at having led the Knights Templar. “Now they are arming more criminals than there were before.”

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In 1996, Downey was diagnosed with lung cancer and had one of his lungs removed. He did a complete about-face on the issue of tobacco use, going from a one-time member of the National Smokers Alliance to a staunch anti-smoking activist. He continued to speak against smoking until his death from lung cancer in 2001
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5fc_1370833748#gLE52mXmE1HXxFra.99

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Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work

Eight month study shows legalisation policies do not result in wider use, and the US should be watched with interest

The Home Office comparison of international drug laws, published on Wednesday, represents the first official recognition since the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act that there is no direct link between being “tough on drugs” and tackling the problem.

The report, which has been signed off by both the Conservative home secretary, Theresa May, and the Liberal Democrat crime prevention minister, Norman Baker, is based on an in-depth study of drug laws in 11 countries ranging from the zero-tolerance of Japan to the legalisation of Uruguay.

The key finding of the report, written by Home Office civil servants, lies in a comparison of Portugal, where personal use is decriminalised, and the Czech Republic, where criminal penalties for possession were introduced as recently as 2010.

“We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country,” it says. “The Czech Republic and Portugal have similar approaches to possession, where possession of small amounts of any drug does not lead to criminal proceedings, but while levels of drug use in Portugal appear to be relatively low, reported levels of cannabis use in the Czech Republic are among the highest in Europe.

“Indicators of levels of drug use in Sweden, which has one of the toughest approaches we saw, point to relatively low levels of use, but not markedly lower than countries with different approaches.”

Endless coalition wrangling over the contents of the report, which has taken more than eight months to be published, has ensured that it does not include any conclusions.

However, reading the evidence it provides, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Home Office civil servants who wrote it seem to have been impressed that a health-based rather than a criminal justice-based approach is where effective policies lie.

It also, rather remarkably, says that the experiments in legalisation now under way in the US states of Washington and Colorado, and in Uruguay, should be watched with interest. This is a world away from the “war on drugs” rhetoric that has formed the mainstay of the political debate on drugs in the past four decades.

The report, Drugs: International Comparators, documents in great detail the experience of Portugal, where personal use was decriminalised nearly 11 years ago and those arrested for drugs are given the choice of going before a health “dissuasion commission” or facing a criminal justice process.

“Trend data from Portugal shows how levels of drug use changed in the years following decriminalisation in 2001. Although levels of drug use rose between 2001 and 2007, use of drugs has since fallen to below 2001 levels. It is clear that there has not been a lasting and significant increase in drug use in Portugal since 2001,” the report says.

At the same time, it notes there have been significant reductions in the number of drug users diagnosed with HIV and Aids at a time when drug-related deaths have remained stable: “These outcomes cannot be attributed to decriminalisation alone, and are likely to have been influenced by increases in the use of treatment and harm reduction,” it says, stressing that it is difficult to disentangle the impact of decriminalisation from wider improvements in drug treatment and harm reduction over the same period.

Nevertheless, it firmly rejects claims that decriminalisation in Portugal has led to a spike in drug use. It goes on to contrast Portugal with the Czech Republic, where an evaluation found that there was no significant decline in the availability of drugs following the implementation of stricter laws in 2010.

On the situation in Colorado, Washington and Uruguay, the Home Office says their experimental policies which legalise production, supply and recreational use of cannabis have the common aim of disrupting organised crime and exercising greater control over the use of cannabis.

“The American states have a market-driven approach, with lighter regulation than Uruguay and fewer limitations on consumption and use. Uruguay, which has growing concerns about organised crime, has a stronger role for the state, with limitations in size of the market, the strains and potency of cannabis, and the quantity that an individual can purchase in a month.”

Crucially, the report adds: “It is too early to know how these experiments will play out, but we will monitor the impacts of these new policies in the coming years.”

The report examines various harm reduction initiatives in 11 countries, including the use of drug consumption rooms, the prescription of heroin under medical supervision, and prison-based needle exchange programmes. In particular it found evidence that heroin prescribing, including in three limited trials in Britain, can be effective.

There is no overall conclusion to the report, but in its last paragraph the Home Office authors reflect that the lack of any clear correlation between “toughness” of approach and levels of drug use demonstrates the complexity of the issue: “Achieving better health outcomes for drug users cannot be shown to be a direct result of the enforcement approach.”

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Op donderdag 30 oktober 2014 23:07 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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*lachen inhouden...*

Papierversnipperaar, dit fragment mag zeker in de OP erbij!

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Ministers high on their war on drugs need a speedy cure

A psychology of macho law-making dominates British drugs policy – in defiance of both public opinion and common sense

The government should ban all reports on drug legalisation. They get you hooked on rage. Evidence-based reform is a gateway substance to common sense. Just send a message: no thought means no.

Parliament’s response to this week’s report on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act shows that psychoactive substances are the last taboo to afflict Britain’s elite. It has got over past obsessions with whipping, hanging, sodomy and abortion, but it is still stuck on drugs. There is no point in reading the latest research on drugs policy worldwide. It is spitting in the wind. The only research worth doing is on why drugs policy reduces British politicians to gibbering wrecks.

In 2000 the Police Foundation committee chaired by Lady Runciman (on which I served) proposed an end to imprisonment for “soft” drug possession and cultivation, together with lower penalties for hard drugs. In particular we pointed to the nonsense of classifying half-safe drugs such as ecstasy with heroin, suggesting that the latter was no more harmful than the former. It was pretty mild stuff.

Tony Blair’s Downing Street went ape. What would they say at the Daily Mail, then ruling Britain much as the pope rules Ireland? Blair’s aide Alastair Campbell ordered the hapless home sectary, Jack Straw, to rubbish our report over the weekend before it was even published.

In the event the report was welcomed by the Mail, as well as by the Express, the Telegraph and more liberal papers. The Mail on Sunday even published a poll showing 60% of people in favour of decriminalising cannabis. Such was Straw’s embarrassment that he later partly climbed down. Cannabis law enforcement was eased, but the sense of panic surrounding the subject remained. There has been no liberalisation since.

It did not matter that the law was almost 30 years old and had manifestly failed to suppress narcotic use or abuse. It did not matter that most of the press were in favour of reform, or that at the time, eight Tory shadow ministers admitted to having taken drugs.

Today it still does not matter that a 2012 ComRes poll showed three quarters of MPs in favour of reform. An Observer poll last month showed 52% of the public wanting US-style legalisation of medical and recreational marijuana, while a Sun poll this week had 71% accepting that the “war on drugs” had not worked. The Sun itself concluded: “We can’t just carry on with the status quo.”

If the Archangel Gabriel came down from heaven and said decriminalising drugs would end war, banish poverty, reduce obesity and defeat child sex abuse, it would make no difference to a British cabinet. David Cameron might have favoured reform before taking office, as he will doubtless favour it after leaving – in common with many world leaders. When he has power to do something about it, he runs scared. The great taboo tightens its iron grip on his throat, as it does on that of his ambitious home secretary, Theresa May.

This week’s report is another reminder of the limits of the criminal law in telling people how to order their own lives. It finds no correlation between the toughness of a country’s penalties and drug consumption. You can nudge but you cannot ban. Besides, illegality imposes huge burdens on the justice system, prisons and the health service. A 2009 report by the charity Transform suggested legalisation could save as much as £14bn, while taxing cannabis, as the US has started doing, could raise £1.3bn. Better by far to spend this money on countering addiction and policing the drugs market.

It is foolish to deny that drug abuse can cause harm, as does the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and other substances. This is not an issue. The issue is the capacity of the law to mitigate it. “Sending a message” may make ministers feel tough, but it is clearly wrecking thousands of lives and enriching criminals. Cameron pleads that “our drugs strategy is working”. That some areas of consumption are falling – in tough and tender regimes alike – does not make the policy a good one. Drug abuse is about physical and mental health. It should no more be about crime than is obesity or alcoholism.

The Independent yesterday asked, “Is Britain ready to grow up?”. I fear the answer is no. I cannot face more reports on how much more humane are the drugs policies of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Colorado and Uruguay. I give up reading of the hell that criminalisation – abetted by an antediluvian UN – inflicts on the people of Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Pretending to ban cocaine production may delight rightwing opinion, but it exacts a ghastly price from people in producer countries.

As for the government proposal to ban “legal highs”, the Home Office appears not to have heard of the internet. The BBC revealed last August that there are now 23 distinct online operators on the dark web, covering about 250 products. This market has doubled in size in the past year, with heaven knows what unregulated junk flooding the mail.

The best deterrent to drug misuse is publicity, just as the best cure is treatment. Instead Theresa May and her political colleagues (including Labour) are the drug dealers’ useful idiots. To leave young people to the mercy of pushers and adulterators is the real crime. The chaotic nature of these markets causes more harm than do the substances themselves. Nor does the liberal Home Office minister Norman Baker, who backs reform, have a coherent strategy. He wants to “crack down on the Mr Bigs and criminal gangs”. I can hear them laughing. His job should be to regulate them out of business.

The psychology of repressive law-making and its appeal to political machismo is the most sinister branch of public life. The belief of those in power that they can command private behaviour with the flick of a law or the cosh of a penalty is fantasy. I once hoped that sheer embarrassment at the harm they cause might shame Britain’s politicians down the road increasingly taken by those in the rest of Europe and north and south America.

But no. May could not even bring herself to publish her own department’s factual survey on the drugs market for three months of infighting with Baker and the Lib Dems. Britain will soon be to drugs what Ireland is to abortion, in a dark ages zone. Unlike Ireland it cannot even blame religion, only stupidity.

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Op donderdag 30 oktober 2014 15:39 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work

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UK government’s drug laws survey was suppressed, Lib Dem minister says

Norman Baker says Tories did not like evidence gleaned as deputy prime minister Nick Clegg criticises foot dragging over report that says tough laws make no difference

A groundbreaking Home Office report which concluded that tougher enforcement of drug laws does not lead to lower levels of drug use was “suppressed” by the Conservatives, a Liberal Democrat minister has said.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat Home Office drugs minister, said the report, published on Thursday, had been suppressed not by the home secretary, Theresa May, but by the Conservatives.

In support, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said there had been a lot of “foot dragging” over the publication of the report but urged the Tories to “have the courage just for once to break some of the taboos about Britain’s ineffective drug laws”.

The deputy prime minister accused Downing Street of being frightened to open its eyes to the way in which Britain’s drugs laws leads to 2,000 deaths a year while “the pushers, the Mr Bigs and the criminal gangs get richer and richer”.

The government’s first evidence-based survey examined international drug laws and said there was no evidence that tough enforcement of laws on personal possession led to lower levels of drug use. The Home Office document brings to an end 40 years of almost unbroken official political rhetoric that only harsher penalties can tackle the problem caused by the likes of heroin, cocaine or cannabis.

The report was signed off by May and Baker and was published on Thursday alongside an official expert report calling for a general ban on the sale and trade in legal highs, although Baker has said it had been ready for publication since July.

The Lib Dem Home Office minister said: “The reality is that this report has been sitting around for several months. I’ve been trying to get it out and I’m afraid that I believe that my coalition colleagues who commissioned the report jointly don’t like the independent conclusions it’s reached.

“It was suppressed, not by Theresa May, it was suppressed by the Conservatives and the reality is that it has got some inconvenient truths in it.”

Baker said the international comparisons demonstrated that “banging people up and increasing sentences does not stop drug use”. He said the last 40 years had seen a drugs debate in Britain based on the “lazy assumption in the rightwing press that if you have harsher penalties it will reduce drug use, but there is no evidence for that at all”.

Baker added: “If anything the evidence is to the contrary.”

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, he said some Conservative colleagues did not like the evidence that had come out but “if you see a tree, it is a tree”.

Downing Street insisted the report did not reach the conclusions Baker claimed and accused him of a desperate spinning operation.

In a statement, Number 10 said: “This report provides no support whatsoever for the Lib Dem’s policy of decriminalisation. In fact, it clearly states that it would be inappropriate to draw those kind of conclusions.

“The Lib Dem policy would see drug dealers getting off scot-free and send an incredibly dangerous message to young people about the risks of taking drugs “As the report makes very clear, the Government’s approach already provides a good balance between enforcement and treatment, drug use is plummeting as a result and there is simply no chance that we will entertain such a reckless change of course .”

Clegg, speaking on LBC, said: “I think the Tories have a misplaced, backward-looking, outdated view that the public would not accept a smarter approach on how to deal with drugs. The argument I have made to them privately and publicly is pluck up the courage to face up to the evidence that what we are doing is not as effective as it should be, there are lessons we can learn from other countries and if you are anti-drugs you should be pro-reform. Have the courage for once just to break some of the taboos.”

He said: “We have got to get away from this facile view that talking tough solves this problem. It is a betrayal of those 2,000 families of those that die every year in our country.”

Clegg said he had unsuccessfully pressed his Conservative colleagues to set up a royal commission, but then persuaded them to undertake an international comparative study that had finally been published after “lots and lots of foot dragging”.

He stressed that he was not advocating decriminalisation of drugs, saying he did not support a free-for-all, but wanting more criminalisation of the pushers.

“I hope today’s report is a wake-up call to Ed Miliband and David Cameron to open their eyes and actually get on with changing things so we can help the addicts to break their habit and really get the criminals that should be behind bars in prison.”

Michael Ellis, a Tory member of the home affairs select committee, accused Baker of naked political posturing and being pro-drugs, adding Baker was acting in desperation as his party fell behind the Greens in opinion polls.

Baker added that wider societal factors, such as a more risk-averse generation of young people who suffered fewer alcohol problems and were healthier, contributed to the general downward trend in drug use.

The international report documents in detail the successes of the health-led approach in Portugal, combining decriminalisation with other policies, and shows reductions in all types of drug use alongside falls in drug-related HIV and Aids cases.

The Home Office international research paper on the use of illegal drugs, which redeems a Lib Dem 2010 election pledge for a royal commission to examine the alternatives to the current drug laws, also leaves the door open on the legalisation experiments in the American states of Washington and Colorado, and in Uruguay. It said: “It is too early to know how they will play out but we will monitor the impacts of these new policies in the years to come.”

Regarding legal highs, Baker said the government would look at the feasibility of a blanket ban on new compounds of psychoactive drugs that focused on dealers and the “head shops” that sell tobacco paraphernalia rather than users.

“The head shops could be left with nothing to sell but Rizla papers,” Baker said. “The approach of a general ban had a dramatic effect on their availability when it was introduced in Ireland, but we must ensure that it will work here.”

A ban would apply to head shops and websites. Legal highs are currently banned on a temporary 12-month basis as each new substance arrives on the market. Legislation is possible before the election but not certain.

The new blanket or generic ban would not be accompanied by a ban on the possession or use of the new psychoactive substances, which often mimic the effects of traditional drugs. This would remain legal.

It is expected the expert report on legal highs will recommend a threshold for substances to be banned so that those with minimal psychoactive effects – such as alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee – would not be caught by the proposed new ban.

The report firmly rejects a New Zealand style-approach of regulating head shops and other sales outlets for legal highs.

Publication of both reports has been held up for months as interminable negotiations between the two coalition parties have gone on over every detailed issue.

Baker has repeatedly warned of the dangers of legal highs, citing evidence that some cannabinoids synthesised in chemical labs are 100 times more powerful than traditional strains of cannabis.

The expert report says there were 60 deaths related to new psychoactive substances in 2013 – up from 52 the year before.

It also considers basing future controls on the effect on the brain rather than the current test of their chemical structure.

Frontline health staff are also urged to receive strengthened training to deal with their effects.

Danny Kushlik, of the Transform drugs charity which campaigns for drug legalisation, said the international report represented a landmark in British drugs policy since the introduction of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act that is still in force today.

“This is a historic moment in the development of UK drug policy. For the first time in over 40 years the Home Office has admitted that enforcing tough drug laws doesn’t necessarily reduce levels of drug use,” said Kushlik.

“It has also acknowledged that decriminalising the possession of drugs doesn’t increase levels of use. Even more, the department in charge of drugs prohibition says it will take account of the experiments in the legal regulation of cannabis in Washington, Colorado and Uruguay.

“Pragmatic reform will only happen if there is cross-party support for change and we can assume now that the Labour party can engage constructively on this previously toxic issue.”

A Home Office spokesperson, responding to the evidence of the international report, said: “This government has absolutely no intention of decriminalising drugs. Our drugs strategy is working and there is a long-term downward trend in drug misuse in the UK.

“It is right that we look at drugs policies in other countries and today’s report summarises a number of these international approaches.”

Earlier this year the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, pledged to abolish prison sentences for the possession of drugs for personal use – including class-A substances such as heroin and cocaine. He urged David Cameron to look at issues such as decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs.

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Nederland krijgt enorme cheque met Amerikaans drugsgeld



Nederland krijgt 3 miljoen dollar van de Amerikaanse overheid vanwege de hulp met het bestrijden van grootschalige drugshandel. Nederland deelt mee in de opbrengst van het onderzoek, dat drie jaar duurde.

Het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie assisteerde sinds 2009 bij een grootschalig onderzoek naar internationale drugshandel, operatie Pac Rim. Het onderzoek duurde drie jaar en vond plaats in verschillende landen, waaronder de VS, Nederland en Colombia.

ZIE OOK: Topman drugskartel opgepakt tijdens voetbalwedstrijd

Bij het onderzoek in Nederland, waarbij de Nederlandse politie assisteerde, werd 6 miljoen euro gevonden. Die opbrengst deelt de VS nu met Nederland. De Amerikaanse ambassadeur heeft Nederland (letterlijk) een grote cheque gegeven. Het geld gaat naar de begroting van Justitie.

In totaal leidde het onderzoek tot inbeslagname van meer dan 175 miljoen dollar cash. Ook werden er bezittingen met een waarde van 850 miljoen dollar in beslag genomen. Er werden 37 mensen aangeklaagd en 26 veroordeeld.

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Norman Baker resigns as Home Office minister with parting shot at May

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Coalition relations hit a new low on Monday night when the Liberal Democrat Norman Baker resigned as a Home Office minister after likening his experience working under Theresa May to “walking through mud”.

In a sign of the loveless nature of the coalition in the final six months before the general election, Baker announced his resignation in an interview with the Independent apparently without notifying the home secretary.

Nick Clegg, who will on Tuesday announce a replacement for Baker as minister for crime prevention with responsibility for drugs policy, alerted Downing Street earlier in the day.

Baker announced he had decided to stand down after a row over drugs policy with the home secretary showed there was little support for “rational evidence-based policy” in the Home Office. He had criticised May for sitting for three months on an official report which showed that tougher enforcement of drug laws does not lead to lower levels of drug use.

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Burgemeester opgepakt in zoektocht naar vermiste studenten Mexico

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De burgemeester van de Mexicaanse stad Iguala, waar op 26 september 43 studenten verdwenen na rellen, is dinsdag opgepakt. Hij was voortvluchtig.

Dat meldt de BBC op basis van lokale media. Jose Luis Abarca zou in Mexico-Stad zijn aangehouden. De autoriteiten spraken eerder al het vermoeden uit dat de burgemeester en zijn vrouw verantwoordelijk zijn voor de ontvoeringen.

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Jaarbericht Nationale Drug Monitor 2013/2014 verschenen

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De jaarlijkse update van de Nationale Drug Monitor is verschenen. Naast de laatste cijfers over gebruik van alcohol, tabak, drugs en slaap- en kalmeringsmiddelen, wordt ook een overzicht geboden van de laatste ontwikkelingen in wetgeving en beleid en alcohol- en drugsgerelateerde criminaliteit.

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Voorbereiding grootschalige illegale wietteelt wordt strafbaar

Mensen die meewerken aan voorbereidingen van grootschalige illegale wietteelt kunnen straks worden vervolgd.

Een meerderheid in de Eerste Kamer schaarde zich dinsdag achter het wetsvoorstel van minister Ivo Opstelten (Veiligheid en Justitie), maar coalitiepartner PvdA steunt het niet.

''De effectiviteit van de wet is zo gering ten opzichte van de huidige wet dat er geen positief oordeel kan komen'', zei Guusje ter Horst (PvdA). Ook D66, SP, GroenLinks en 50PLUS zijn tegen het plan.

Volgens Margreet de Boer (GroenLinks) wordt met het wetsvoorstel ''verwijtbare naïviteit'' strafbaar. Kan een vrachtwagenchauffeur die kunstmest aflevert bij een loods ook vervolgd worden als later blijkt dat er een hennepkwekerij is gevestigd, vroeg De Graaf zich af.

Het gaat om gevallen wanneer ''elk weldenkend mens het handelen achterwege had gelaten'', aldus de minister, dus om ''verwijtbaar wegkijken''. Onoplettendheid en onachtzaamheid vallen hier volgens Opstelten niet onder.

Een motie van de PvdA om een commissie in te stellen die het Nederlandse softdrugsbeleid tegen het licht moet houden, wees Opstelten van de hand. ''Ik heb geen behoefte aan een commissie.''

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California Voters Deal Blow To Prisons, Drug War

California approved a major shift against mass incarceration on Tuesday in a vote that could lead to the release of thousands of state prisoners.

Nonviolent felonies like shoplifting and drug possession will be downgraded to misdemeanors under the ballot measure, Proposition 47. As many as 10,000 people could be eligible for early release from state prisons, and it's expected that courts will annually dispense around 40,000 fewer felony convictions.

The state Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that the new measure will save hundreds of millions of dollars on prisons. That money is to be redirected to education, mental health and addiction services -- a novel approach that reformers hope will serve as a model in the larger push against mass incarceration.

The approval of the ballot measure could also help California grapple with massive overcrowding in its state prisons, which are still struggling to release enough inmates to comply with a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court order.

Although California once led the nation in tough-on-crime policies, like the state's infamous three-strikes felony law, Proposition 47 has led in every poll conducted since it was certified in June. The measure's supporters have been an eclectic bunch, from conservatives like Newt Gingrich and business tycoon B. Wayne Hughes Jr. to liberal performers like John Legend and Jay-Z.

The most vocal opponents of Proposition 47 were law enforcement officials who warned that the measure could make it harder to prosecute felony gun theft or possession of date-rape drugs.

At the same time, a few scattered law-and-order voices, like San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, did come out in favor of the proposition, dismissing those concerns.

Reformers also vastly outspent law enforcement officials and their allies. The main coalition in favor of Proposition 47 raised $7 million as of mid-October, buoyed by contributions from the likes of Hughes, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and a foundation backed by the financier George Soros.

Californians Against Proposition 47, meanwhile, garnered less than $500,000 in the same time period. The state prison guard union -- often a formidable force in debates over mass incarceration -- sat the ballot measure debate out.

"The country seems to have come to a different place [...] I think, most fundamentally, because crime is down," Keith Humphreys, a drug addiction expert who supported the measure, told The Huffington Post in October. "When people are not feeling terrified, they're more willing to back off on the tough-on-crime stuff."

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Saudi Arabia and Lebanon launch crackdown on “digital drugs” sold as MP3s

Authorities in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have moved to clamp down on so-called “digital drugs” – audio files which claim to get you high.


The theory that you can buzz off “binaural beats” has largely been dismissed by scientists, but Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper is reporting that Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi is pushing to ban the use of the audio files, which can be downloaded for a few dollars each. Saudi Arabia’s national drug control bodies are also having “urgent meetings” to try and prevent their spread, as Arab News reports. The panic follows a similar response in the United Arab Emirates in 2012, when a leading police official called for binaural beats to be dealt with like cannabis and ecstasy.

“Binaural beats” are said to work by playing two pure tones through headphones that combine to make a third ‘phantom’ tone, which induces an altered state. The type of high depends on which track you buy, with companies like i-Doser giving you the option to design your own trip for specific effects.

Most scientists are sceptical of the power of “digital dosing”, pointing out that there is virtually no evidence about their effects yet. Michael Casey, a computer science and music professor at Dartmouth College, told VICE News: “The idea that binaural beats or this very simple sound phenomenon is having an impact on a direct medical condition or a cognitive state such as sleep or increased focus is still a matter of further research at this point.”

We know you want to give it a whirl, so dip into some binauraul beats below.

DIGITAL DRUGS - Binaural beats - WARNING High Intensity

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Raad Amsterdam wil experiment gereguleerde wietteelt

Burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan van Amsterdam heeft donderdag de gemeenteraad toegezegd te willen lobbyen voor een experiment met gereguleerde wietteelt. Een grote meerderheid in de raad stemde vandaag voor een motie die de burgemeester oproept voorbereidingen te starten voor zo'n experiment.

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Van der Laan waarschuwde niet te hard van stapel te lopen door alvast te gaan experimenteren. 'Als we het doen, moeten we geloofwaardig blijven. Alvast een beetje beginnen zou ons kwetsbaar maken. Tempo maken met beleid voorbereiden is beter dan gaan provoceren. Ook Utrecht, Heerlen en Eindhoven zijn nog niet verder dan de planfase', zei Van der Laan.

twitter:

jdscee twitterde op donderdag 06-11-2014 om 21:35:41 Silk Road 2.0's alleged owner arrested as drugs website shuttered by FBIhttp://t.co/XOn3dYAEINSilk Road 3 won't be far away. #warondrugs reageer retweet

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Hickenlooper unveils next year's Colorado budget and taxpayer rebates

DENVER - There is some good news for taxpayers. Gov. John Hickenlooper's proposed $26.8 billion Colorado budget, unveiled Monday afternoon, includes two rebates for taxpayers.

Taxpayer rebates totaling $167.2 million are mandated by Colorado Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, assuming current law and the September forecast by the Office of State Planning and Budget.

A $30.5 million rebate for new marijuana taxes is coming. Total state marijuana revenue was different than what was projected in the election blue book for 2013's Proposition AA. Because the estimate was off, under TABOR, the state must refund the money being collected or ask voters again to keep it.

Hickenlooper said he'll let the legislature decide the nuts and bolts of the rebate.

"It will be important to engage the legislature when the session begins on the issue of marijuana rebates, and at this time, it would be unwise for the state to plan to spend any of those funds in advance of that discussion," Hickenlooper said.

Meanwhile, current revenue projections indicate a $136.6 million refund for revenue above the Referendum C cap in Fiscal Year 2015-16. If they materialize, the rebates would go out under existing formulas via tax credits or sales tax refunds when people file their 2016 taxes.

The budget allocates substantially increased funding for K-12 education -- some on a one-time basis -- continues strong support for higher education, and secures funding to complete construction projects already underway.

In Fiscal Year 2015-16, the General Fund will provide additional funding for transportation per the provisions of Senate Bill 09-228. The budget allocates $102.6 million under the statute's formulas.

"Colorado's economic activity continues to outperform the national expansion," Hickenlooper said. "Total employment and personal income have steadily increased for several years running. The state's unemployment rate stands at 4.7 percent, the lowest since 2008. Looking ahead, the most likely scenario is for the momentum to continue at a steady pace."

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Op zaterdag 8 november 2014 20:52 schreef heiden6 het volgende:
SFL End the Drug War Event in Serbia Stormed by Neo-Nazis

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Betogers blokkeren luchthaven Acapulco om verdwenen studenten

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Betogers hebben maandag de ingang van aankomst- en vertrekhallen van de internationale luchthaven van de Mexicaanse badplaats Acapulco geblokkeerd. Ze demonstreren vanwege de 43 studenten die in september in de plaats Iguala verdwenen.

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The legalisation of marijuana isn't just about liberal values - it's about dollars

The tax revenues from marijuana in states where it has been legalised are relatively sizeable - is this one of the reasons why many places are consenting to pro-marijuana legislation?

On Tuesday, Oregon, Alaska and Washington D.C. voted in favour of pro-marijuana legislation. A vote in Florida won 58% support, falling just short of the required 60% threshold. Nearly 18 million Americans now live in states where marijuana is fully legal.

So, why is it that legislatures and voters in red states favourably lean towards what, on paper at least, would seem to be a liberal issue? One reason (at least when it comes to governments) might be to do with money.

One of the states they now join is Colorado, where marijuana was legalised (with some restrictions) last year. On average, the state now gets more tax revenues from the plant than from alcohol.

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NYPD will stop arresting people for minor marijuana offenses

In policy shift, NYPD officers will soon have option to issue court summonses rather than arrest those caught with less than 25 grams of cannabis in open view

The New York police department, the largest in the US, will stop arresting people in possession of small amounts of marijuana, in a marked policy change that mayor Bill de Blasio said reflects his campaign promise to repair frayed relations between officers and the city’s minority communities.

Starting next week, NYPD officers will have the option to issue court summonses rather than arrest those caught with less than 25 grams of pot, the mayor and the NYPD police commissioner William Bratton announced during a joint press conference on Monday afternoon.

“When an individual is arrested, even for the smallest possession of marijuana, it hurts their chances to get a good job; it hurts their chances to get housing; it hurts their chances to qualify for a student loan,” DeBlasio said. “It can literally follow them for the rest of their lives and saddle young people with challenges that for many are very, very difficult to overcome.”

Under the new policy, people caught burning or smoking weed in public still face arrest. Other exceptions include those with outstanding warrants and people who can’t provide proper identification, Bratton said. If a police officer decides to issue a summons, the person will be given a ticket to appear in court and sent on their way. Officers will seize the marijuana, and take it back to the station for processing.

The fine for a first offense will be $100, which can go up to $250 for a second offense. Bratton said official guidelines would be released on Tuesday, and the policy would go into effect on 19 November. Officers are to undergo training this week.

The new policy is a sharp pivot from the “broken windows” crime-fighting strategy Bratton champions: tough enforcement of low-level crimes to stop offenders from committing more serious ones in the future. But he said on Monday he welcomes the opportunity to direct more resources to fighting serious, violent crime.

The policy is expected to curb the tens of thousands of arrests for low-level pot possession the NYPD makes each year. Research shows such arrests disproportionately affect black and Latino residents, even though white residents are as likely to use marijuana.

In the first eight months of 2014, 86% of the people arrested for marijuana possession were blacks and Latinos, according to the Marijuana Arrest Research Project.

Advocates offered lukewarm praise of the new policy, warning that summonses still entangle New Yorkers in the criminal justice system. A missed court date may result in arrest.

“We’re glad to see the consequences of a marijuana offense won’t include handcuffs and jail time,” said New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman in a statement on Monday.

“But we’re still concerned that too many New Yorkers will become involved with the court system because of a small amount of marijuana. And because there is no required reporting on the demographics of who is issued summonses, we won’t be able to track the racial disparities that result from the new initiative.”

Summonses do not require race or ethnicity reporting, so it will be difficult to identify who police are ticketing.

The city’s five district attorneys met with the mayor and the police commissioner to discuss the new policy on Monday, Bratton said, adding that he believed all supported the move.

Earlier this year, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office announced it would stop prosecuting small-scale marijuana cases. In a memo, the district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, said the policy aimed to keep nonviolent offenders – who are disproportionately young men of color – out of the criminal justice system.

In response, Bratton said at the time that the city’s police officers would continue to enforce the law. On Monday, De Blasio said the disagreement between the district attorney and Bratton had been overstated.

In 1977, New York state legislature decriminalised the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Despite this, New York City persisted as the marijuana arrest capital of the world, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a reform advocacy group.

Inimai Chettiar, director of the Justice Program with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, said the city’s action is reflective of a broader shift in criminal justice policy that moves away from the tough-on-crime measures of past decades, which resulted in record-level incarceration rates.

“This is very emblematic of a larger movement across the country that’s supported by conservatives and law enforcement alike,” she said. “Across the country there really is a unique bipartisan consensus that we need to focus law enforcement and criminal justice resources on the most serious offenders as opposed to low-level offenders … I think that this policy really positions New York as a leader in this area.”

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Afghan opium crop set for record high

Helmand province remains country’s top opium-cultivating province, with drug money financing Taliban operations

The opium crop in Afghanistan will hit a new high this year, the United Nations has said, presenting a challenge to the country in tackling the trade that fuels the Taliban-led insurgency.

Opium cultivation has risen 7% year on year to 224,000 hectares, and production in 2014 may reach 6,400 tonnes – a 17% increase – according to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Afghanistan’s southern provinces, which have been disproportionately affected by the recent surge in violence, continued to drive overall production, with a 27% increase in yields.

In Helmand province, where British forces operated and the UK government spearheaded eradication efforts, opium cultivation appears to have stabilised. Nevertheless, it still remained the country’s top opium-cultivating province.

The report confirms how the international community’s efforts to reduce opium production in Afghanistan have been met by dismal failure. After the Taliban seized power in 1996, production rapidly grew. It fell back in 2001 – when the Taliban leader Mullah Omar declared opium to be un-Islamic. Since the US-led invasion of 2001 and the Taliban’s exit from Kabul, it has inexorably risen.

The money from opium sales finances Taliban operations, and also serves as a source of systemic corruption inside the Afghan government.

With much of the country slipping out of central control, eradication by local governors decreased by 63%. The number of fatalities during the campaign also dipped from 143 in 2013 to 13 in 2014.

The figures showed counter-narcotics efforts had failed, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, director for policy analysis and public affairs at the UNODC, said, but there was hope for success under the new government.

“[Changing] the economic incentives away from the illicit economy to the licit economy, now that’s a hell of a task, but that’s exactly what indeed this new government seems to stand for,” he said.

President Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated in late September, following months of tension followingafter a disputed election. The political wrangling has accelerated a sharp economic downturn caused by the withdrawal of foreign troops.

“For him the criminalisation of the economics and politics of Afghanistan is one of the main problems. It penetrates everything and anything he [Ghani] wants to achieve,” Lemahieu said.

A recent report by the US watchdog found that the opium economy employs 411,000 Afghans with jobs – more than the fledgling Afghan national security forces. The poppy industry still makes up 4% of Afghanistan’s estimated gross domestic product (GDP).

Ghani has a comprehensive plan to tackle the drug problem, Lemahieu said, including creating incentives for farmers to plant alternative crops and prosecuting smugglers.

The president, who wrote a book on how to fix failed states, has said the key to opium eradication is jobs. He has also suggested cotton could replace opium if the west scrapped tariffs on Afghan textiles. Poor Afghan farmers, however, point out that they can make far more money from opium than from other crops such as wheat.

The failure of the eradication campaigns has inspired some Afghanistan experts, such as the former UK ambassador to Afghanistan Sir William Patey, to come out endorsing legalisation of the drug.

“If we cannot deal effectively with supply, then the only alternative would seem to be to try to limit the demand for illicit drugs by making a supply of them available from a legally regulated market,” he said earlier this year.

The US has spent $7.6bn (£4.8bn) on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since ousting the Taliban in 2001, according to the US government watchdog for reconstruction, and ending Afghanistan’s illicit drug trade was listed as one of the reasons for deploying British troops to Afghanistan.The country remains the world’s biggest supplier of opium, producing 90% of illicit opiates.

Ethan Nadelmann: Why we need to end the War on Drugs

quote:

“The reason some drugs are legal and others are not has nothing to do with science or health or the risk of drugs, and everything to do with who uses, and is perceived to use, certain drugs,” says Nadelmann during his TedGlobal talk. “If the principal smokers of cocaine were affluent older white men and the principal users of Viagra were young black men, using Viagra would land you time behind bars.”

quote:

Gouverneur verleent eigen zoon gratie na veroordeling drugsbezit

quote:

Mike Beebe, de gouverneur van de Amerikaanse staat Arkensas, is van plan gratie te verlenen aan iemand die gestraft werd voor het bezit van marihuana. Het is niet zomaar een veroordeelde, het is zijn zoon.

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Mexico at breaking point as anti-government anger escalates

Corruption and violence threaten to destabilise country after mass murder of students and scandal over presidential home

Mexico is facing an escalating political crisis amid growing fury over a mansion built for the presidential family and the disappearance and probable massacre of 43 student teachers.

The two apparently unrelated issues have fed the widespread perception that unbridled political corruption is the underlying cause of the country’s many problems – ranging from stunted economic growth to a breakdown of law and order that has left parts of the country at the mercy of murderous drug cartels.

“The drama of Mexico is about impunity,” said leading political commentator Jesús Silva-Herzog. “This is not about the popularity or unpopularity of the president, that is irrelevant. It is about credibility and trust and, at its root, it is about legitimacy.”

Thousands of protestors are expected to join a mass demonstration planned for Thursday in Mexico City to protest over the disappearance of the students by municipal police in collusion with a local drug gang in the southern city of Iguala six weeks ago.

But the latest focus for anti-government anger is a video released late on Tuesday night by first lady Angélica Rivera in an attempt to mitigate a scandal over a multi-million minimalist white residence built to measure for her and President Enrique Peña Nieto in one of Mexico City’s most exclusive barrios.

The house is still owned by a subsidiary of a company with a long history of obtaining lucrative contracts from Peña Nieto administrations, dating back to his term as governor of the state of Mexico.

In her address, Rivera, a former telenovela star, said she was going to sell her interests in the house, but vehemently insisted there had never been any strings attached.

“I don’t want this to continue to be a pretext for offending and defaming my family,” she said.

Rivera said she had been paying for the house from the fruits of her labour earned during a 25-year long career within TV giant Televisa that ended in 2010 with the payment of 88.6 million pesos ($6.5m) and the transference of property of another luxurious residence that backs onto the controversial new mansion.

She said she had already paid about a third of the cost of the new home worth 54 million pesos ($4m), in accordance with a contract signed with the company over eight years.

She said she had met the company’s owner, who also happens to be a personal friend of the president, “like I meet many businessmen, professionals, and artists.”

The existence of the house was revealed 10 days ago by the website of leading Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui.

But the the first lady’s attempt to turn the page of the scandal was met with widespread skepticism.

“There have always been rumours, but we have never before had documents that suggest that a president in office has participated in illegal operations,” commentator Silva-Herzog said, adding that he expected the unanswered key question to further fuel public skepticism and anger.

“This is the worst possible moment for a scandal of this kind.”

Rivera’s attempt to shake off the suggestion of wrong-doing came as the president adopted a new combative stance in the face of intensifying protests triggered by the disappearance of the 43 students in the southern city of Igualá on 26 September.

The students went missing after being arrested by municipal police who also participated in a series of attacks during the night that left six people dead.

Over time the focus of the protests has moved from demands for the return of the students alive, to disbelief at the government’sfailure to crack down on widespread collusion between law enforcement agencies and drug mafias.

The disappearance of the students has sparked numerous demonstrations in many parts of the country, which have been much more widespread than protests prompted by allegations of fraud in Peña Nieto’s electoral victory in 2012.

Unlike during the previous wave of dissent, the current protests have expressed anger at perceptions of corruption across the entire political class that is viewed as corrupt, not just Peña Nieto.

Peña Nieto had previously adopted a conciliatory tone, expressing sympathy for the victims’s families and promising a full and thorough investigation, but on Tuesday he used a speech to denounce violent outbreaks in some of the numerous demonstrations in recent weeks.

The violence, he said, “appears to respond to a general interest to destabilise and, above all, attack the national project that we are pushing forward”.

The harder line echoes some calls in the national press by commentators such as Ricardo Alemán who has begun regularly urging politicians to discard their “fear of governing”, and crack down radical elements in the demonstrations.

Other analysts, however, detect a menacing tone in the president’s words.

Silva-Herzog drew parallels with the language used by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, who governed at the time of the watershed 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in which scores – and possibly hundreds – of pro democracy students were killed by government forces in Mexico City.

“It is dangerous because it polarizes the climate,” he said. “The solution has to start by recognizing the legitimate foundations of the collective irritation. The country has good reason to be angry.”

With Thursday’s key demonstration approaching on the 104th anniversary of the Mexican revolution, the authorities announced the cancellation of the annual military parade that usually fills the capital’s central streets on that day.

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Groot protest in Mexico om verdwenen studenten

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In de hoofdstad Mexico-Stad gooiden betogers molotovcocktails naar de oproerpolitie al voordat de demonstraties begonnen. Gewonden zijn er volgens de politie niet gevallen.

De sfeer werd grimmig toen drie verschillende protestmarsen het centrale plein in de hoofdstad bereikten. Daar ging onder meer de beeltenis van president Enrique Pena Nieto in vlammen op.

Sommige actievoerders botsten buiten het presidentieel paleis met de politie, die massaal aanwezig was om het gebouw te beschermen.

De verdwenen studenten werden op 26 september door de politie in de plaats Iguala meegenomen en overgeleverd aan een drugsbende. Sindsdien ontbreekt elk spoor. Sommige actievoerders droegen spandoeken met opschriften als ''de staat heeft het gedaan''. Ook familieleden van de verdwenen studenten liepen mee.

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US judge sentences 'El Chapo' Guzmán associate to 22 years in prison for drug crimes

In sentencing Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez, judge said he wanted to send a stern message to Hernandez and other Mexican cartel traffickers

A US judge sentenced a reputed lieutenant of captured Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman to 22 years in prison on Monday for his role in a $1b conspiracy to traffic narcotics to Chicago and other cities.

In sentencing Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez, Chief US District Judge in Chicago Ruben Castillo said he wanted to send a stern message to Hernandez and other Mexican traffickers. Hernandez, 58, is one of 11 alleged traffickers indicted in Chicago, including Guzman himself. Hernandez was the first to be sentenced.

“I tell you on behalf of all citizens of Chicago ... we are tired of this drug trafficking,” Castillo told Hernandez, who minutes earlier apologized to the court and US government and asked Castillo to take pity on him.

The case is regarded as one of the US government’s most important against Mexican cartels. Guzman remains jailed in Mexico and Mexican authorities haven’t said if they might extradite him to Chicago.

The spotlight during and in the lead-up to Hernandez’s sentencing was on the credibility of two Sinaloa cartel associates-turned-government witnesses, Pedro and Margarito Flores.

Secret recordings and other evidence provided by the twin brothers in 2008 led to the Chicago indictments of Hernandez and 10 others, including Guzman and the Flores twins themselves.

Hernandez, of Mexico, was the first up for sentencing. He pleaded guilty to possessing drugs with intent to distribute.

Hernandez was a close friend of Guzman, using his logistical skills to ship tons of heroin and cocaine by train from Mexico to Chicago concealed in bogus furniture cargo, according to the Flores brothers.

But defense lawyers accused the brothers of exaggerating Hernandez’s rank in the cartel to curry favor with US prosecutors and ensure the lowest possible prison terms for themselves.

The twin brothers sought to hoodwink federal agents even after they agreed to cooperate, they allege.

Lawyers for Hernandez also cited court documents indicating the brothers – while behind bars working with the feds –had someone hide up to $2.5m in cash. From jail, they also allegedly bought a $100,000 Bentley as a gift for Pedro Flores’ wife.

Prosecutors say the Flores brothers cut deals with Guzman, Hernandez and others in the Sinaloa cartel to distribute drugs in the United States with Chicago as the operational hub.

The brothers claimed they sold up to two tons of cocaine a month in Chicago alone by 2007. They also supplied eight other cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.

In statements unsealed recently, the Flores twins said they know assassins would try to kill them and their families if the cartel ever discovered where they are being held in protective custody.

twitter:

ggreenwald twitterde op dinsdag 25-11-2014 om 14:41:37 The movement to end the evils of drug criminalization has global momentum - proud to join the Advisory Board of @LEAPBrasil reageer retweet

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Mexican authorities accused of persecuting peaceful protesters

Eleven demonstrators charged with attempted murder and riot after mass protest in capital over disappearance of 43 students

Human rights groups have accused Mexican authorities of using arbitrary detentions, trumped-up charges and excessive force in an attempt to quell a mass protest movement unleashed by the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 students.

The complaints centre on the indictment for attempted murder, criminal association and rioting of 11 protesters who were arrested after masked youths clashed with police in the central Zócalo square, following a huge and mostly peaceful march through the capital last Thursday.

Supporters of the 11 accused insist that they had nothing to do with the violence, alleging that several of the detainees were arrested later, during an aggressive police operation to disperse the crowd.

“There is no evidence that they did anything other than attend the march,” said Fernando Ríos of the Mexican human rights network All Rights for Everybody. “What we do know is that the police used excessive force as they cleared the Zócalo.”

Ríos said human rights groups fear the crackdown is associated with a recent statement by President Enrique Peña Nieto, who accused violent protesters of “kidnapping” the wave of indignation triggered by the disappearance of the 43 students after they were arrested by police in the southern city of Iguala.

“This is more than an attack on freedom of expression,” Ríos said. “It is an effort to discourage people from demonstrating for the truth and for justice in the face of an inoperative, ineffective state that only pretends to be acting in the case [of the students].”

The eight men and three women arrested on Thursday are now being held in high-security jails hundreds of miles from Mexico City. The detainees – most of whom are students – include a 47-year-old Chilean doctoral student, whose case has prompted demonstrations in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

In an interview on Radio Fórmula on Monday, the interior minister, Miguel Ángel Osorio, insisted that any detainees not involved in the violence “have nothing to worry about”.

He added that the police “passed from tolerance to action” in the face of violence at the march because “a majority of Mexicans are asking for a stop to this kind of behaviour”.

Videos and testimonies documenting the aggression of the police at some distance from the battles in front of the presidential palace have been widely circulated on social media.

These include the account of Layda Negrete, one of two lawyers behind a hit documentary called Presumed Guilty which exposed systematic abuses of due process in Mexico’s capital city.

After being pushed against shop fronts by riot police forcing back the mass of peaceful demonstrators, Negrete says officers shouted, “fucking bitches, is this why you wanted to come out and march?” while they attacked her and three other women with their truncheons and shields.

“It is very worrying that a march to repudiate crimes committed by police ended with more crimes committed by police,” the lawyer said.

quote:

Weer toeristen dood na mogelijk gebruik witte heroïne in Amsterdam

quote:

Dat meldt de politie woensdag. Het gaat om twee mannen van 20 en 21 jaar. De politie denkt dat ze de witte heroïne hebben aangeschaft terwijl ze dachten dat het cocaïne was.

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11 Burned Bodies Found in Troubled Mexican State

Eleven beheaded bodies were found Thursday in Mexico's troubled southern state of Guerrero, a region still reeling from the apparent massacre of 43 students.

The grisly discovery came as President Enrique Pena Nieto prepared to unveil a new security strategy in response to a wave of protests that erupted after a police-backed gang confessed to killing the 43 students.

In the latest carnage to hit Guerrero, 11 bodies were dumped on a road near the town of Chilapa following reports of a shootout, state and municipal officials said.

"In addition to being executed, the 11 people were decapitated and subsequently some were burned," said a state government official who requested anonymity.

A note was left near the bodies with a message addressed to the criminal group "Los Ardillos" (The Squirrels), with the words "here's your trash," the official said.

A state police officer said the bodies had high-caliber bullet wounds. The victims appeared to be in their 20s.

Chilapa is 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Ayotzinapa, where the teacher-training college of the 43 students is located.

Authorities say the aspiring teachers, all young men, were rounded up by municipal police in the city of Iguala on September 26.

The case has become a tragic example of collusion between local authorities and organized crime in Mexico, a country struggling with drug violence that has left 100,000 people dead or missing since 2006.

On the eve of his announcement, Pena Nieto said the Iguala case was a "turning point for the nation."

"It is only a constructive, positive attitude that will allow us, society and government, to build the Mexico that we want and that we want to project to the entire world," he said.

Pena Nieto is expected to push for passage of dormant anti-corruption legislation and announce an overhaul of the country's municipal police forces.

Prosecutors say Iguala's mayor ordered his police force to confront a group of students over fears they would disrupt a speech by his wife.

Guerreros Unidos gang henchmen confessed to killing the students and incinerating their bodies after officers turned them over.

Pena Nieto will not be the first Mexican president to seek to reform the police.

Some 400,000 federal, state and municipal police forces across the country have undergone anti-corruption exams with polygraph tests, a system that began under his predecessor, Felipe Calderon.

The interior ministry said this month that 13 percent of municipal officers failed the exam, compared to 10 percent of state and six percent of federal forces.

The non-government organization Common Cause said this week that 42,214 federal, state and municipal police staff are still working despite failing the "control de confianza" (trust test).

"We have made it clear to governors ... that they must remove them from their positions," Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong. "None of them can be in the streets today, in any state, in any town."

When he took office in December 2012, Pena Nieto vowed to reduce the everyday violence besetting the country.

But he maintained the controversial militarized strategy of Calderon, who deployed 50,000 troops against the drug cartels in 2006.

Pena Nieto launched a crime prevention program, which officials acknowledged will take years to show results, and created a 5,000-strong militarized police force, the gendarmerie.

In an editorial, the national daily El Universal noted that past governments launched anti-crime measures in response to public discontent, with some positive results.

"But the depth of the problem is so large that these actions have not changed an indisputable fact in the perception of people, that crime continues to grow," it said.

"This time, the State's response will have to be stronger."

quote:

President Mexico grijpt in na studentendrama

De Mexicaanse president Enrique Peña Nieto gooit het veiligheidsapparaat van zijn land op de schop. Daarmee probeert hij een einde te maken aan de corruptie en de georganiseerde misdaad de kop in te drukken. Aanleiding is vooral de verdwijning van en vermoedelijke moord op 43 studenten twee maanden geleden.

Peña Nieto kondigde vandaag een reeks wijzigingen in de grondwet aan. Zo wil hij dat de gemeentepolitie verdwijnt en wordt vervangen door de landelijke politie. Verder moet de centrale regering meer bevoegdheden krijgen om lokaal in te grijpen als het gemeentelijke apparaat geïnfiltreerd blijkt door georganiseerde bendes.

Door de verdwijning van de studenten in de staat Guerrero eind september werden verbanden blootgelegd tussen criminelen, politie en politici. Zo is de voormalige burgemeester van de Mexicaanse plaats Iguala, waar de 43 studenten verdwenen, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, gearresteerd en officieel van moord en doodslag beschuldigd.

Pena Nieto werd twee jaar geleden gekozen omdat hij bezwoer de rust in het land te zullen herstellen. Sinds 2007 zijn al 100 duizend mensen om het leven gekomen in de oorlog tussen allerlei drugsbendes. Sinds de verdwijning van de studenten eist de bevolking dat hij zijn belofte gestand doet.

Opnieuw mensen vermoord

Vandaag nog zijn elf nieuwe lichamen gevonden, de meeste onthoodfd, aan de kant van de weg in het zuidwesten van Mexico. Volgens het Openbaar Ministerie werden de lichamen gevonden in Chilapa, in dezelfde provincie waar de studenten zijn ontvoerd.

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'Doing life when no one died': Prop 47 ends 'insane' drug penalties in California

Public defenders applaud ballot initiative’s passage after decades under harsh three-strikes law offering ‘strong incentive to arrest’


Russell Griffith, a deputy public defender in the Los Angeles crucible known as Compton, had strong words to describe the criminal justice system: “inhumane”, “stupid”, “insane”, and “completely screwed up”.

Seated on the eighth floor of Compton’s courthouse, his view obstructed by bulletproof glass, the veteran attorney let rip in an outspoken interview this week, denouncing a system in which he has worked for 25 years.

Griffith cast California’s network of police, courts and jails, the embodiment of the rule of law, as a cross between Kafka and Tom Wolfe’s novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, which he lauded as an accurate depiction of judicial dysfunction.

“Everyone has gone along with this big lie – our own version of the cheque is in the post,” said Griffith, who is paid by the state to represent those who cannot afford an attorney. “Everyone is part of this giant system that funds the machine – I’m including us, public defenders. We have all had our bread buttered by this. And it has been at the expense of generations of Latino and, above all, African American men.”

He was excoriating California’s draconian sentencing policies and America’s war on drugs, follies which produced needless mass incarceration, he said.

But during a tour of the courthouse, a 14-storey structure which towers over a landscape of gritty bungalows and discount stores, the public defender kept cracking a smile.

The reason was the legal thunderclap resounding through the corridors he considered a second home. “It’s a game changer,” said Griffith, 57. “In this job you lose most of the time. But now you actually have the law in your favour. It’s all gravy.”

He was referring to Proposition 47, a ballot initiative which Californians approved on 4 November in a rare victory for progressives on the day conservative Republicans swept congressional races across the US.

The measure reduces penalties for drug and other non-violent crimes, triggering instant releases for hundreds of inmates and shortening jail time for potentially tens of thousands of others. Combined with other reforms, it effectively ends America’s most notorious tough-on-crime experiment.

In 1994, California’s three-strikes law required courts to impose harsh sentences on habitual offenders. Dozens of other states subsequently adopted their own versions, fuelling an explosion in the US jail population, which grew from around 300,000 in 1986 to more than 2.4 million by 2014, rivaling China for the world’s highest incarceration rate. African Americans were jailed at nearly six times the rate of white people.

Compton, a poverty-stricken 10-square mile city of 97,000 souls in south LA, filled a disproportionate number of prison bunks. This, after all, was home to the rap group NWA, which scorched into popular culture with the double platinum album Straight Outta Compton, featuring tracks like Fuck Tha Police and Gangsta Gangsta. Bullet holes pockmarked the courthouse.

Griffith, paid by the state to defend clients who could not afford their own lawyers, watched the system flip from excessive lenience – in the 1970s you could kill and get just three years – to excessive harshness. “When three-strikes came in, that’s when everything became completely insane,” he said. “People were doing life for cases where no one died.”

Gun possession triggered ever-longer mandatory terms, regardless of whether the gun was unloaded and stuck in a waistband, or loaded and stuck in someone’s face. Possessing heroin or crack cocaine became a felony.

“It gave cops an enormously strong incentive to arrest people because they were cheap statistics,” Griffith said.

Police routinely testified that upon their approach, “startled” suspects “dropped” rocks of crack cocaine, a lie giving a legal pretext to search, said Griffith. “It kept the whole machinery going.”

Police got collars, courts got cases and prisons – which multiplied exponentially – got inmates. “These were largely victimless crimes. Incarcerating people on drugs charges is just absurd. But it was essentially funding the system.”

Carole Telfer, 60, another veteran public defender, said felony convictions condemned vulnerable people to unemployment and lack of federal assistance after lengthy terms inside. “It just ruins their life,” she said. “You can’t in good conscience handle all these cases and say it’s fair.”

Griffith said a zip code lottery compounded injustice. In heavily black and latino areas like Compton and Inglewood, juries were sceptical of police testimony and prosecutors tailored cases accordingly, resulting in lighter sentences. Locals nicknamed Compton the “love court” for its relatively sympathetic hearings.

Griffith called it a model of cooperation and camaraderie between clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges. Wealthy areas like Torrance and Long Beach, in contrast, were more polarised and imposed heavier sentences. “Old white people sending a message: don’t come to our town or you’ll get screwed. Venue is everything.”

Both lawyers have been victims of crime. Griffith was badly beaten and robbed. Telfer had a shotgun pointed at her during a robbery. As citizens, they said they wanted dangerous people kept off the streets. Focusing on largely harmless drug users diverted police from chasing murderers, rapists, and child molesters, they said.

Both believe California’s lock-’em-up spree blurred the distinction between bad people and people who had done bad or stupid things. “Draconian sentencing seems inhumane. We’re saying this person is beyond redemption,” said Griffith.

Defence lawyers may be expected to say such things, but the nation’s top law-enforcer, attorney general Eric Holder, said much the same when changing federal jail policy last year.

California voters, fed up with huge prison bills and emboldened by low crime rates, also agree. In 2012, they approved proposition 36, which eased the three-strikes law, and earlier this month they approved proposition 47. It reclassifies common drug violations and certain thefts – about a quarter of all crimes - from potential felonies to misdemeanours. Inmates serving felony sentences for such offences have a three-year window to apply for reduced sentences.

An estimated 40,000 are eligible. In Compton, 115 have already been freed, with more due as the courts work through the backlog. Telfer is the designated attorney for such cases, which means continuous calls from clients and their relatives. Her phone rang about two dozen times while she spoke to the Guardian.

“We’re kind of inundated,” she said.

Prosecutors are unhappy. Jackie Lacey, the LA county district attorney, said in a phone interview she agreed with reclassifying minor offences as misdemeanours but said the new law created new problems.

A felony charge encouraged offenders to do drug rehab if offered as an alternative to jail, but a misdemeanour strips that incentive because county jails have no space for those charged with lesser offences. “Just a few minutes and they’re out. You have removed that leverage,” said Lacey.

The law also raises the hurdle for proving dangerousness, meaning prosecutors may struggle to keep violent offenders inside. “There are unintended consequences here,” she said. Even so, the DA pledged to apply the law as the will of the people.

Compton’s public defenders shared concerns about addicts skipping rehab and also about thieves feeling emboldened to steal goods valued up to $950, a misdemeanour.

But it was a small price, said Griffith, for correcting a system which jailed generations of essentially harmless people. “It’s a brave new world. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do: getting people out of custody who are supposed to be out of custody.”

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Global Drug Survey 2015: why you should tell us what you take

Help us in this scientific research to find out the world’s drug consumption patterns. See what we learned from last year’s study and what we hope to find out in this one

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For the last few years the Guardian has been collaborating with the Global Drug Survey to find out about what drugs people take, how and why. If you have not already done it then you can take the survey here.

Last year 80,000 people from across the globe completed the survey on their drug usage, making it the largest research project of its kind. It gives us a wealth of information about how people were approaching the consumption of substances both legal and illegal.

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The aim of this year’s survey is to to reach 120,000 people. It has been launched in partnership with media organisations in20 different countries and has been translated into 10 separate languages.

The study will, as always, look at prevalence, price, purity, value for money and the proportion of people seeking medical treatment but there are a few specific areas that will be explored this year including:

Performance enhancing drugs - weight loss agents and anabolic steroids
Cognitive enhancers - Ritalin, modafanil and atomoxetine use among students and working people
The dark net - now Silk Road has closed, how are people buying drugs online?
Nitrous oxide - the risks of neurological harm from this drug
E-cigarettes - whether these might be used for something other than nicotine
Why do people stop using different drugs - and when?

Completing the survey will help us cover a subject which is, for obvious reasons, often shrouded in secrecy. The researchers do not track or store IP addresses, browser types, or other identifying information. As always though, caution is suggested when sending information over the internet.