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

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Iran Criticized for Executing Drug Offenders

Six international human rights groups have petitioned the United Nations to freeze its counternarcotics aid to Iran until that country abolishes the death penalty for drug offenses.

In a jointly signed Dec. 12 letter released Wednesday by the groups, they argue that the freeze is justified because of “the widening gulf between Iran’s rhetoric and the realities of the justice system.”

Iran executes more prisoners than any other country except China, with 500 to 625 executed last year, according to United Nations estimates. At least half of the condemned were convicted of drug trafficking.

Yury Fedotov, chief executive of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, a Vienna-based agency that has provided millions of dollars to Iran’s counternarcotics efforts, has been in discussions with Iranian officials about the executions, which are at odds with the agency’s human rights guidelines.

Under international law, Iran and other countries with the death penalty are required to impose it only for the “most serious crimes,” which do not include drug offenses.

Even though some senior Iranian officials have spoken out against capital punishment for drug crimes, there have been signs that the pace of executions has accelerated this year.

Iran, a conduit for opium trafficking from neighboring Afghanistan, has one of the world’s harshest drug laws. It imposes mandatory death sentences for making, trafficking and possessing specified quantities of opium, opiates and other drugs, like methamphetamines.

On Dec. 4, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Human Rights Council, said in an interview with the France 24 news channel that “nobody is happy” about the number of executions and that he would like to see Iran’s drug punishment softened. “We are crusading to change this law,” he said.

Rights groups say in their letter, which is addressed to Mr. Fedotov, that a few days before Mr. Larijani’s interview, 18 convicted offenders had been hanged in Iran, and that this year at least 318 had been put to death, a pace that would surpass the 331 drug convicts executed in 2013.

“This increase in the execution rate belies Mr. Larijani’s reassuring rhetoric and U.N.O.D.C.’s lauding of ‘potentially favorable developments’ on this issue,” reads the letter by the groups.

The letter was signed by Human Rights Watch, Reprieve, Iran Human Rights, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Harm Reduction International and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, named after an Iranian lawyer who was assassinated in Paris in 1991.

There was no immediate comment from Mr. Fedotov’s office about the letter. Phone and email messages left with the agency’s spokeswoman, Preeta Bannerjee, were not immediately returned.

Iran has given mixed messages on capital punishment.

When the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, criticized Iran in March for what he called its failure to improve human rights — including the use of capital punishment — Mr. Larijani’s brother, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, the chief of the Iranian judiciary, chastised him for the remarks.

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Black truffles contain 'bliss molecules' not unlike those found in cannabis

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All animals, including humans, possess endocannabinoid systems responsible for feeding, energy expenditure, memory, and pain regulation. The production of endocannabinoids is one characteristic that distinguishes animals from plants. When someone smokes weed, phytocannabinoids produced by cannabis actually mimic the body’s endocannabinoids.

New research from Italy now shows that truffles, the highly prized and insanely expensive fungi, also produce endocannabinoids. Truffles grow underground near oak trees and can ultimately fetch $1500 per pound. That truffles produce endocannabinoids is just the latest evidence that fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. Plants, animals and fungi all share a common ancestor, and increasingly it appears that fungi are much more akin within the evolutionary tree to humans than say, lettuce. (I certainly feel more simpatico with truffles than turnips or kale, don’t you?)

The endocannabinoid content of truffles may be one of the reasons that humans prize them, since these compounds are active at incredibly small doses and the aroma of fresh truffles feels quite intoxicating.

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Mexican vigilante leaders give themselves up after gun battle

Two rival leaders and their followers from western state of Michoacán give themselves up after gun battle that left 11 dead

Two rival vigilante leaders and dozens of their followers from the western state of Michoacán have given themselves up to the authorities in the wake of a gun battle between their groups that left 11 people dead and fuelled fears that a major government operation was failing to control the drug war hotspot.

Luis Antonio Torres, nicknamed “Simón El Americano”, surrendered on Tuesday along with nine of his men at a prearranged pick up point. He was flown to jail in a navy helicopter to face judicial hearings. El Americano’s sworn rival, Hipólito Mora, gave himself up three days before along with 26 of his followers.

One of Mora’s sons was among those who died in the shootout on 16 December, which took place at a barricade set up by his group in his hometown of La Ruana, in the long-conflictive region of the Tierra Caliente, or the Hot Land.

Alfredo Castillo, the presidential envoy in charge of the federal security operation in the state, celebrated the voluntary incarceration of the vigilantes as evidence that Michoacán’s institutions have been immeasurably strengthened in recent months.

“We secured the surrender of these people to the courts without a shot being fired or any shootouts,” Castillo said after the detention of El Americano. “What has been achieved today would have been unthinkable a year ago.”

Castillo said he hoped a further 19 vigilantes involved in the shootout two weeks ago will also give themselves up in the coming days. He also sort to down play the shootout, saying it was not a public security issue but one of “social conflict”.

The armed vigilante groups emerged in the Tierra Caliente in 2013, claiming that government inaction in the face of a reign of terror imposed in the region by the Caballeros Templarios, or Knights Templar, drug cartel gave them no other option for protecting their communities.

With the situation threatening to degenerate into a regional civil war, the government flooded the area with federal forces in January this year. A subsequent uneasy alliance with the vigilantes lead to a series of important arrests and deaths of Caballeros leaders that left the cartel seriously weakened.

But violence in the state has continued as government efforts to institutionalise the vigilantes into a rural police force have struggled in the face of deep rivalries between some of the leaders. The new rural police has also been damaged by multiple accusations that a significant number of commanders and officers have links to the Caballeros or other gangs operating in the region.

Both El Americano and Mora joined the new rural police. Both have blamed each other for the gun battle in La Ruana. Mora has repeatedly accused El Americano of links to the traffickers.

Mora spent two months in jail earlier this year accused of killing two of El Americano’s associates, but the charges were dropped.

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Fourth man’s death linked to ‘Superman’ ecstasy batch

Police offer temporary amnesty to anyone who comes forward with pink or red tablets featuring ‘S’ emblem

A fourth man has died in less than two days from what police fear is a potentially fatal batch of ecstasy being sold on British streets.

A temporary drug amnesty has been offered to anyone who surrenders the red or pink tablets of ecstasy, inscribed with a Superman-style “S” in their centre, to a police station, accident and emergency department or fire station.

Police say they are not offering a general drug amnesty but the ecstasy tablets, thought to be to blame for the four deaths and one hospital admission, are “potentially so dangerous we need to remove them from the streets to prevent further deaths”.

Supt Louisa Pepper from Suffolk police said: “Please don’t be worried about any sort of prosecution because we genuinely just want the drugs off the streets. We view this particular drug as especially dangerous and want to prevent further deaths and save lives.”

The fourth death in Telford on Friday follows the deaths of two young men in Suffolk within hours of each other on Thursday morning, with another admitted to hospital in a serious condition.

Gediminas Kulokas, a Lithuanian labourer, died on New Year’s Day – his 24th birthday – after collapsing at his Ipswich home. Kulokas’s 22-year-old friend Donatas was admitted to hospital at the same time in a serious condition after taking the same drug.

Kulokas died less than three hours after another man, 20-year-old John Hocking, also a labourer, who died in nearby Rendlesham, near Woodbridge.

The first victim of the rogue batch of drugs is thought to be a Lithuanian factory worker Eustace Ropas, 22, who died on Christmas Eve at his home, also in Ipswich.

Natasha Mumby, Kulokas’s partner, has described how she desperately tried to resuscitate him after he stopped breathing.

“We were at the flat having a few quiet drinks to celebrate New Year’s Eve and his birthday in the early hours,” she said. “I went to bed at 2am and woke up a few times because he and his friend were making a bit of noise. I had no idea that they had been taking drugs.

“Every time I got up to tell them to keep quiet, they were looking the worse for wear. His friend popped out and when I checked on Gediminas, he was breathing in a funny way. I propped him up and went back to bed,” she said. “I then came back in the lounge because he was not making the breathing noise any more. He was just sitting there not breathing.”

Police believe the drug taken by all five men could have a similar chemical mix to dangerous ecstasy pills with a similar appearance that were in circulation in the Netherlands last month.

In December, the Dutch Trimbos drug addiction clinic issued a warning about the pills, which have a high concentration of a chemical known as PMMA instead of MDMA, which is the usual main drug component of ecstasy pills.

PMMA is dangerous because the chemical takes longer to work than MDMA. The delay can cause users who do not know they have taken a different variety of ecstasy to overdose because they think their first pills have not worked.

Dutch media reported on at least two PMMA-related deaths in the Netherlands in 2013.

Both drugs are stimulants, causing an energy boost and feelings of affection for other people, but PMMA is far more toxic, with an overdose of just 50mg having potentially fatal consequences.

Harry Shapiro, director of communications at Drugscope, said a possible explanation for the increased use of PMMA and the closely related chemical PMA in ecstasy was a crackdown in Cambodia on the production of safrole, a key ingredient in MDMA production, causing drug manufacturers to turn to other ingredients.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that there were no deaths from PMA or PMMA in 2009 or 2010, but that this jumped to 20 in 2012. By 2013, there were 29 deaths connected to the drugs.

The Irish drugs website Drugs.ie says that between December 2013 and May last year, six people in Ireland were found to have had PMMA in their systems when they died.

In 2011 the Scottish Drug and Crime Enforcement Agency released a warning about PMMA after a spate of deaths.

It was also believed to be the cause of a series of deaths across Europe at around the same time.

Speaking at the time, DI Tommy Crombie, drugs co-ordinator at the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, warned: “PMMA and other harmful substances could be present in many illicit drugs including powders, products sold as legal highs and ecstasy tablets in all sorts of colours and with all sorts of logos. Like all illicit drugs, there is no way to tell what’s in them until it’s too late.”

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Johann Hari: ‘I failed badly. When you harm people, you should shut up, go away and reflect on what happened'

He was the Independent’s star columnist whose lying and cheating destroyed his career. Now Johann Hari is back, with a book about drug-taking – including his own. But will anyone believe a word of it?

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When I heard that Johann Hari had written a book about the war on drugs, two immediate concerns sprang to mind. The first was whether anyone would trust a word he wrote.

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“I think that’s totally right,” Hari agrees. “I did not want to write a 400-page polemic about the drug war. I didn’t want to have an argument about it, I wanted to understand it.” For that matter, he admits, “It’s struck me that, actually, polemic very rarely changes people’s minds about anything.” He says so as a former columnist? “A recovering former columnist, yes.” He laughs. “It’s not just that polemic doesn’t change people’s minds. It says nothing about the texture of lived experience. People are complex and nuanced, they don’t live polemically.”

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Hari went to Vancouver to meet a psychology professor, Bruce Alexander, who had been similarly puzzled, so had replicated the original experiments. This time, instead of experimenting on solitary rats locked in empty cages, he offered the choice of clean or drugged water to rats kept in what he called Rat Park, a kind of rat heaven full of wheels and coloured balls and delicious food, and other rats to play and mate with. When these rats tried heroin, they weren’t very interested.

“They just didn’t like it. None of them overdosed. Even more strikingly, he then took rats that had become addicted in the isolated cages, and put them into Rat Park. And they almost immediately stopped using. What Alexander had found is that we’ve fundamentally misunderstood what addiction is. It isn’t a moral failing. It isn’t a disease. Addiction is an adaptation to your environment. It’s not you; it’s the cage you live in.”

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Superman ‘ecstasy’ pill deaths are result of ‘illogical and punitive drugs policy’

Former government adviser Dr David Nutt says ban on MDMA has resulted in more dangerous drugs coming on to market

The deaths of four men who had taken pills they thought were ecstasy are the result of the government’s “illogical and punitive drug policy”, a former drugs tsar has said.

Dr David Nutt, who advised the last government on drug policy until 2009, said the policy had targeted the production and sale of MDMA, only to see it substituted by a more toxic substance.

MDMA is the chemical name for ecstasy, but the pills bearing a Superman emblem that have been linked to four recent deaths – three in Suffolk and one in Telford – are believed to have been made with a high concentration of the chemical PMMA.

Suffolk police said on Monday that they had seized more than 400 pills matching the description of those believed to have been taken by two Ipswich men stashed in a public place in the city.

Writing for the Guardian, Nutt, who was sacked as the government’s senior drug adviser in 2009 after criticising its decision to toughen the law on cannabis, said PMMA and its close relative PMA have been responsible for most of the deaths – amounting to more than 100 – attributed to ecstasy by the media in recent years.

“Their re-emergence is directly due to the international community’s attempts, via UN conventions, to stop the use of MDMA by prohibiting its production and sale,” he wrote. “The emergence of the more toxic PMA following the so-called ‘success’ in reducing MDMA production is just one of many examples of how prohibition of one drug leads to greater harm from an alternative that is developed to overcome the block.”

Nutt, the Edmond J Safra professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, compared the situation to the rise in demand for more poisonous hooch after alcohol was prohibited in the US during the 1920s and the rise in production and injecting of heroin after smoking opium was banned.

He explained that the UN banned a number of precursor chemicals to MDMA, including safrole. As safrole supplies dropped, drug makers switched to chemically similar aniseed oil. “Unfortunately, the product that results from using the MDMA production process with aniseed oil is PMA or PMMA,” he wrote. “Hence, these substances only exist because of the blockade of MDMA production. That in itself wouldn’t particularly matter if they were not more toxic than MDMA.”

Nutt said there should be testing facilities for users, without fear of prosecution, like those in the Netherlands, or safe doses of pure MDMA should be available to registered users. “In the meantime, we should accelerate the testing of seized tablets and make public their contents and strengths on internet databases, so that all users can check what they might be taking,” he wrote.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “MDMA, PMA and PMMA are all illegal class A drugs. They destroy lives, cause misery to families and communities, and this government has no intention of decriminalising them. No drug-taking can be assumed to be safe.”

The chief superintendent of Suffolk police, Jon Brighton, said the seizure of 400 pills on Sunday night was a significant development in its investigation into the deaths of the two Ipswich men.

“If these prove to be the same as those linked to these cases, we will have gone a significant way towards reducing the risk of further serious injury or deaths linked to this particular ecstasy pill,” he added.

A man has been charged and two men have been bailed after arrests made as part of the investigation into the deaths.

A 19-year-old Ipswich man, Adrian Lubecki, has been charged with being concerned in the supply of ecstasy and possession with intent to supply a class B drug. He appeared at Ipswich magistrates court on Monday and was remanded in custody.

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The Superman pill deaths are the result of our illogical drugs policy

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Here’s why most people who use drugs don’t become addicts, according to science

Drug use is common, drug addiction is rare. About one adult in three will use an illegal drug in their lifetime and just under 3m people will do so this year in England and Wales alone. Most will suffer no long-term harm.

There are immediate risks from overdose and intoxication, and longer-term health risks associated with heavy or prolonged use; damage to lungs from smoking cannabis or the bladder from ketamine for example. However most people will either pass unscathed through a short period of experimentation or learn to accommodate their drug use into their lifestyle, adjusting patterns of use to their social and domestic circumstances, as they do with alcohol.

Compared to the 3m currently using illegal drugs there are around 300,000 heroin and/or crack addicts while around 30,000 were successfully treated for dependency on drugs in England in 2011-12, typically cannabis, or powder cocaine.

A powerful cultural narrative focusing on the power of illegal drugs to disrupt otherwise stable, happy lives dominates our media and political discourse, and shapes policy responses. Drug use is deemed to “spiral out of control”, destroying an individual’s ability to earn their living or care for their children, transforming honest productive citizens into welfare dependent, criminal “families from hell”.

This is a key component of the Broken Britain critique of welfare and social policy advanced by the Centre for Social Justice and pursued in government by the CSJ’s founder Iain Duncan Smith in his role as secretary of state for work and pensions. However, the narrative has resonance far beyond the political arena and underpins most media coverage of drug addiction and the drug storylines of popular culture.
Most drug users are ..?

In reality the likelihood of individuals without pre-existing vulnerabilities succumbing to long-term addiction is slim. Heroin and crack addicts are not a random sub set of England’s 3m current drug users.

Addiction, unlike use, is heavily concentrated in our poorest communities – and within those communities it is the individuals who struggle most with life who will succumb. Compared to the rest of the population, heroin and crack addicts are: male, working-class, offenders, have poor educational records, little or no history of employment, experience of the care system, a vulnerability to mental illness and increasingly are over 40 with declining physical health.

Problem cannabis use is less concentrated among the poor, but is closely associated with indicators of social stress and a vulnerability to developing mental health conditions.

Most drug users are intelligent resourceful people with good life skills, supportive networks and loving families. These assets enable them to manage the risks associated with their drug use, avoiding the most dangerous drugs and managing their frequency and scale of use to reduce harm and maximise pleasure. Crucially they will have access to support from family and friends should they begin to develop problems, and a realistic prospect of a job, a house and a stake in society to focus and sustain their motivation to get back on track.

In contrast the most vulnerable individuals in our poorest communities lack life skills and have networks that entrench their problems rather than offering solutions. Their decision making will tend to prioritise immediate benefit rather than long-term consequences. The multiplicity of overlapping challenges they face gives them little incentive to avoid high risk behaviours.

Together these factors make it more likely that, instead of carefully calibrating their drug use to minimise risk, they will be prepared to use the most dangerous drugs in the most dangerous ways. And once addicted, motivation to recover and the likelihood of success is weakened by an absence of family support, poor prospects of employment, insecure housing and social isolation.

In short what determines whether or not drug use escalates into addiction, and the prognosis once it has, is less to do with the power of the drug and more to do with the social, personal and economic circumstances of the user.
Heads in the sand

Unfortunately the strong relationship between social distress and addiction is ignored by politicians and media commentators in favour of an assumption that addiction is a random risk driven by the power of the drug.

It does happen. But the atypical experience of the relatively small number of drug users from stable backgrounds who stumble into addiction and can legitimately attribute the chaos of their subsequent lives to this one event drowns out the experience of the overwhelming majority of addicts for whom social isolation, economic exclusion, criminality and fragile mental health preceded their drug use rather than being caused by it.

Viewing addiction through the distorting lens of the minority causes policy makers to misunderstand the flow of causality and pushes them towards interventions focused on changing individual drug-using behaviour and away from addressing the structural inequality in which the vulnerabilities to addiction can flourish.

Until we re-frame our understanding of drug addiction as more often the consequence of social evils than their root cause, then we are doomed to misdirect our energy and resources towards blaming the outcasts and the vulnerable for their plight rather than recasting our economic and social structures to give them access to the sources of resilience that protect the rest of us.

The ConversationBy Paul Hayes, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

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Christie: The war on drugs has failed, treat NJ heroin addiction as an illness

To combat New Jersey’s growing heroin and opioid crisis, Gov. Chris Christie says the state needs to embrace a dramatically different approach to substance abuse, but cautioned that he will not write a blank check to get it there.

In his time as governor, heroin and opioid abuse have surged into the spotlight, claiming at least 740 lives in New Jersey alone last year, while tens of thousands of others sought treatment, many of their lives broken by addiction. Irrespective of how the state arrived at such an unenviable position, in Christie’s eyes, government has a role in making sure those shackled by addiction get the help they need.

In an interview with NJ Advance Media, Christie said that means changing course, to a system that values treatment over incarceration. The War on Drugs has failed, he says, and it’s time to move on.

“I think what we’ve seen over the last 30 years is it just hasn’t worked,” he said. “And there are some people who make one bad choice to try drugs one time and their particular chemistry leads them to be an addict from the minute they try it. So we need to treat it as a disease. And not having mandatory incarceration for non-violent offenders but having mandatory treatment is something that’s going to yield a much greater result for society in general and for those individuals in particular.“

According to federal data, treatment centers in the Garden State have been operating near or slightly above capacity for several years. While the number of available treatment slots has increased over the last decade, so has demand, one that is increasingly being driven by heroin and prescription opioids.

In 2010, the state estimated 37 percent of people seeking substance abuse treatment in New Jersey didn’t receive it. Since then, the number of heroin-related deaths has increased by 160 percent, while the number of people in treatment for heroin or opioids has only increased by 15 percent.

To that effect, Christie says New Jersey is falling short. There aren’t enough available residential treatment beds for adults battling substance abuse. Getting into what does exist can be a confounding maze of dead-ends and frustrating questions. If you do find a bed, odds are your insurance carrier won’t pay.

Christie says the state needs to step up to fix this, but just as importantly, the private sector does as well.

“I don’t want to build a bunch of new state facilities. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do from a fiscal perspective or for the long-term treatment of these folks,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to have local government agencies, the counties in particular do a better job…to say, ‘here’s where you go, here’s the options for detox that are available, here is non-residential that’s available, here’s residential that’s available,’ and help them connect those dots. I think we need to do a better job at that.”

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Law Championed by Joe Biden Leads to More Ecstasy Deaths

The quarterly social research magazine Contexts has an article by Tammy Anderson, author of Rave Culture: The Alteration and Decline of a Philadelphia Music Scene, in its Fall issue about the 2003 Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act, championed by then-Sen. Joe Biden. The law was intended to reduce deaths due to the use of ecstasy, a pill that contains MDMA, usually cut with caffeine or some other drug. How deadly is ecstasy? Statistics are hard to come by. Sixty-three people were reported to have died from ecstasy used in 2000. Many more die from, say, alcohol poisoning every way—the ecstasy death rate might be as low as one per million users.

Nevertheless, the perceived exoticism and danger of the drug, exaggerated by media accounts of young people’s deaths, led Joe Biden to add penalties to venues that knowingly cater to drug users, a primary component of the RAVE Act, in a misguided and typical fashion for government. And, as typical for a government solution, the RAVE Act came with “unintended consequences” that did the opposite of what legislators hoped the bill would do. Instead of reducing vulnerability to ecstasy, the law increased that vulnerability by criminalizing the simple things that make ecstasy even safer, like dance floor patrols, cool down rooms, even free water. The responsibility to stay safe is on the drug user—to know before taking a drug that it may require rehydrating before feeling dehydratring, cooling down once in a while, and so. But that certainly doesn’t preclude venues from offering tools to make drug use even safer too. It’s being a good Samaritan and its good business too. When given the choice, drug users prefer to go to venues that cater to their use rather than venues that will toss them into an alley when they’re throwing up from a bad drug trip.

That happened to one drug user according to Anderson, because the club believed, not wrongly, that if they offered medical assistance they would be held liable for her drug use. That’s what Joe Biden has wrought on drug users that don’t happen to be his children because of his obsession with the war on drugs. Contexts reports:

. The 2003 RAVE Act places young ravers at great risk of harm. Because the act treats raves’ cultural traits as evidence that promoters are permitting drug use and sales, it places festival stakeholders in a bind over how to protect ravers without being shut down. For example, rave promoters are perceived to sanction drug use if they permit cultural props such as glow sticks, lollypops, and massage oils to be sold at their event, or if they provide chill rooms and free bottled water to ravers. Since MDMA use (in either its Ecstasy or Molly varieties) and dancing at raves can produce extreme dehydration, critics interpret the distribution of free bottled water as a sign that promoters are trying to hydrate, and therefore accommodate, ravers’ drug use. Promoters even told me that “rave” language on flyers or other promotional materials could serve as evidence of a legal violation.

. If they offer drug intervention services, such as drug testing and education, promoters may be at even greater legal risk. Rotondo died from MDMA toxicity; a MDMA/Methylone combination killed Russ. Had drug testing and education been offered at EZoo, Rotondo might have learned not to take so many hits of Molly and Russ would have learned that his Molly had been mixed with extremely dangerous methylone (“bath salts”).

From my first drug experience I’ve always been sure to research and talk with friends about every drug I thought about taking. Legalizing MDMA would make drug use even safer by allowing simple education to win over the anti-drug propaganda privileged in an environment where drugs are criminal.

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Mexican firebrands mount call for self-rule: 'It’s time for the people to take power'

Away from the spotlight of protests over the disappearance of 43 student teachers, Guerrero may prove a much more serious challenge to state authority

Milling around the front steps of the town hall, about 20 men with shotguns began the night watch sipping coffee from styrofoam cups and munching cakes.

The atmosphere was relaxed, but the message was one of revolution.

“It’s time for the people to take power,” said Jésus, one of the guards. “The government has not been able to fulfill its role – and the people are waking up.”

Over the past three months, dozens of town halls across Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero have been taken over by members of an amorphous movement calling for “popular government”. The protesters – some of whom are armed – have also called for the army to close its bases and leave the region.

Guerrero is a state steeped in a history of rebellion: it was the setting for some of the first uprisings of the Mexican revolution, and home to the country’s most famous rural guerrilla army of the 1970s.

But the current wave of unrest was triggered by the disappearance last September of 43 student teachers in the city of Iguala, after they were attacked by municipal police in league with a local drug cartel.

Anger over the case has prompted months of street protests against President Enrique Peña Nieto. But away from the spotlight, the growing calls for self-rule in Guerrero may prove a much more serious challenge to state authority.

“We took over the town hall as way of pressuring the government to do more to find the missing students, but this goes further now,” said Jésus, outside Tecoanapa’s town hall. “We are dismantling the old institutions.”

That kind of talk resonates particularly loudly in the region around Tecoanapa: 17 of the missing students grew up in towns and villages of the Costa Chica, a remote and poverty-stricken region which stretches from the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur down to the Pacific Ocean.

The victims include the two eldest sons of Doña Oli Parral who, like many parents of the disappeared, have grown tired of peaceful protest and polite calls for justice.

“We shout our slogans and it makes no difference. The government doesn’t listen to us,” she said, sitting in her spartan home in the village of Xalpatlahuac, just outside Teconapa. “If they want peace then give back the kids.”

In the Costa Chica, the occupations are led by a group of radical teachers’ unions and the Union of Organized Peoples of Guerrero (UPOEG), a network of vigilantes formed two years ago to combat the killings, kidnapping and extortion by drug gangs in the area.

“The narcos did with us what they wanted. People were intimidated, frightened, and desperate,” says Huricel Cruz, a teacher and former student at the radical Ayotzinapa training college where the 43 missing students were enrolled. “Then the people took control and things calmed down.”

The Guerrero militias emerged alongside other vigilante movement in the neighbouring state of Michoacán, although there are important differences.

The Michoacán groups are less ideological, revolve more clearly around local strong men, and are more regularly accused of ties to criminal gangs. Michoacán is also the stage for a high-profile government security operation which broke up one of the country’s most notorious crime syndicates – known as the Family – but has failed to consolidate peace.

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The Hunting of Billie Holiday

How Lady Day found herself in the middle of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics’ early fight for survival.

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Why animals eat psychoactive plants

Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, learns about drunk elephants, the stoned water buffalo, and the grieving mongoose.

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After sampling the numbing nectar of certain orchids, bees drop to the ground in a temporary stupor, then weave back for more. Birds gorge themselves on inebriating berries, then fly with reckless abandon. Cats eagerly sniff aromatic “pleasure” plants, then play with imaginary objects. Cows that browse special range weeds will twitch, shake, and stumble back to the plants for more. Elephants purposely get drunk off fermented fruits. Snacks of “magic mushrooms” cause monkeys to sit with their heads in their hands in a posture reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker. The pursuit of intoxication by animals seems as purposeless as it is passionate. Many animals engage these plants, or their manufactured allies, despite the danger of toxic or poisonous effects.

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Jamaica poised to relax cannabis laws

Several restrictions on ‘ganja’ use could go up in smoke as island’s politicians back bill to establish licensing authority

The Jamaican cabinet has approved a bill that would decriminalise possession of small amounts of cannabis and pave the way for a legal medical marijuana industry, the justice minister has said.

Mark Golding said he expected to introduce the legislation in the Senate this week. Debate could start this month in the country where the drug, known popularly as “ganja”, has long been culturally entrenched but illegal.

The bill would establish a cannabis licensing authority to deal with the regulations needed to cultivate, sell and distribute the herb for medical, scientific and therapeutic purposes. “We need to position ourselves to take advantage of the significant economic opportunities offered by this emerging industry,” he said.

It would make possession of 2 ounces (56g) or less an offence that would not result in a criminal record. Cultivation of five or fewer plants on any premises would be permitted. Rastafarians, who use marijuana as a sacrament, could also legally use it for religious purposes for the first time in Jamaica, where the spiritual movement was founded in the 1930s.

For decades, debate has raged on the Caribbean island over laws governing marijuana use. But now, with several countries and US states relaxing their laws on the herb, Jamaica is advancing reform plans.

Golding said the government would not soften its stance on drug trafficking and it intended to use a proportion of revenues from its licensing authority to support a public education campaign to discourage pot-smoking by young people and mitigate public health consequences.

The director of the national Cannabis Commercial and Medicinal Research Taskforce said he expected the bill to be passed soon in parliament, where Portia Simpson Miller’s governing party holds a 2-1 majority. “This development is long overdue,” Delano Seiveright said.

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Crystal meth per drone, en het komt niet uit de hitserie Breaking Bad

Het had zo een bizarre scene kunnen zijn uit de hitserie Breaking Bad: Mexicaanse narcobazen die per drone hun drugs de VS insturen als tegenwicht voor de 99 procent pure methamfetamine van scheikundeleraar Walter White. Maar het is geen fictie. De Amerikaanse grenspolitie moet vanaf nu rekening houden met alles, na de drugsvlucht die eindigde op een parkeerplaats bij de grensovergang San Ysidro.

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Marihuana-drone stortte neer op gevangenis

Een drone gevuld met marihuana is medio december neergestort op een gevangenis in Hamburg. Dit gebeurde in een poging de drugs via de lucht naar binnen te smokkelen.

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Despite a Crackdown, Use of Illegal Drugs in China Continues Unabated

BEIJING — Despite the crowds and the risk of arrest, the African man standing outside an Adidas outlet here one recent wintry evening was brazen in his pitch.

“Hey man, you want to smoke something?” he asked a passer-by, before offering his wares: cocaine, ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine, all highly illegal in China.

The man was but one of several drug dealers who are a fixture in Sanlitun, one of Beijing’s diplomatic districts, just down the block from a police station. Their presence would seem to defy the Chinese government’s ambitious claims of a six-month crackdown on drugs that is underway in 108 cities.

Last week, the Ministry of Public Security announced that the Chinese police had arrested 60,500 suspects on drug offenses and seized more than 11 metric tons of narcotics since the latest operation, called “Ban drugs in hundreds of cities,” began in October, according to the Xinhua state news agency. Around 180,000 drug users had been punished by mid-December, including more than 55,000 sent to government-run rehabilitation centers, Xinhua said.

But for all the reported successes of China’s expanding antidrug campaigns — which last year included the arrest of celebrities like the son of the movie star Jackie Chan and the burning of 400 tons of methamphetamine ingredients — some analysts question whether the police are winning significant, lasting victories in what the authorities have called a “people’s war.”

China’s growing prosperity has turned recreational drug use into an $82 billion annual domestic business, according to the National Narcotics Control Commission. There are 2.76 million drug users registered with the Chinese government, three-quarters of them under 35. Yet even the police admit that such figures convey only a fraction of the drug problem. In October, Liu Yuejin, director general of the government’s anti-narcotics division, estimated the actual number of addicts at roughly 13 million, half of whom are suspected of using methamphetamine, up from nine percent of addicts who were suspected of using that drug in 2008.

“China is facing a grim task in curbing synthetic drugs, including ‘ice,’ which more and more of China’s drug addicts tend to use,” he said, using the street name for crystal methamphetamine, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. China has some of the world’s harshest drug laws: those caught trafficking large amounts of drugs can face the death penalty, and the police have the authority to send casual drug users to compulsory drug rehabilitation centers, which human rights groups say are little more than labor camps.

Although heroin is the most commonly used illegal drug among rural Chinese, the country’s booming cities have become major markets for methamphetamine. A study of sewage in four megacities, published last year in the international journal Science of the Total Environment, reported that meth was omnipresent in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In Beijing, the greatest concentration was found at a treatment plant serving the city’s highest density of nightclubs and bars, while China’s wealthy coastal cities in the south were determined to have the highest total consumption of meth, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine, according to the study.

Drug use also spans the breadth of Chinese society. In December, 41 government officials in the southeastern province of Yunnan were expelled from the Communist Party after failing drug tests. A few months earlier, a 17-year-old girl in the southern province of Jiangxi posted photos on social media of herself and friends snorting ketamine at a nightclub in the province of Jiangxi. She was detained.

Perhaps the most shocking example of China’s huge drug trade exploded into the public consciousness in December 2013, when 3,000 paramilitary police officers raided a small village on the coast of Guangdong Province and arrested 182 people, including the former party secretary and 13 other officials. Nearly three tons of meth were seized from the village. “Meth is popular because any illegal lab or factory in the mainland can make it,” said Lu Lin, the director of the China Medical Dependency Research Institute at Peking University in Beijing.

Some of the key ingredients in meth are derived from the herb ephedra sinica, known as ma huang in Mandarin, a staple of traditional Chinese medicine used for treating colds and coughs. Experts say much of the country’s meth is produced in southern China, though the authorities prefer to blame Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar and Laos. Consistently absent from their accusations is North Korea, a close ally that some experts believe churns out vast quantities of meth trafficked into China’s northeast.

For years, Beijing residents have wondered how dealers were able to sell their wares so openly near a police station in the Sanlitun district, home to many embassies, bars, and restaurants popular with expatriates. A crackdown scattered the men last spring, but during a recent stroll through the neighborhood, it was clear they have not gone far.

Sun Zhongwei, a former narcotics officer turned lawyer, dismissed the suggestion that the dealers were officially tolerated. “If Chinese police had spotted them, they’d have been arrested,” he said. “It’s impossible for the police to see them and not act upon it. That would be considered an act of negligence.”

But drug users in China say the police operate in a bureaucracy programmed to follow orders from above. In some cities, the police allow dealers to operate undisturbed — until they need to fill a quota, according to He Mukun, a former addict and drug counselor in Yunnan. Mr. He said the police in Yunan rarely arrested drug dealers, preferring to use them as informants during crackdowns. “The police think, ‘In the future, when my boss gives me an assignment to catch drug users, what happens if I can’t find any?’ ” he said. “But if a cop knows a drug seller, he can just ask for a bunch of names. You get huge numbers that way.”

Indeed, the eye-popping statistics from the Ministry of Public Security appear intended to impress: In a five-month crackdown last year, the police were said to have “totally uncovered” 50,827 drug cases, arrested 56,989 suspects and seized 26.5 tons of drugs, an increase in seizures of 126.8 percent over the same period a year earlier.

Despite those numbers, the nation’s drug problem continues unabated. On Tuesday, the Chinese government for the first time acknowledged the existence of performance goals in law enforcement. According to Xinhua, the party’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee demanded that officials “firmly abolish” quotas.

As for drug traffickers higher up the chain, Mr. He, the drug counselor, suggested that some were politically connected and, thus, protected. “The police usually can’t touch them,” he said.

But in an interview, one Beijing dealer said things were changing. “Before, because of our connections, we would always be alerted a few months ahead of a crackdown,” said the dealer, who asked not to be identified. “Now they just happen.”

quote:

Wietkwekerij Zaltbommel levert 2 miljoen euro per oogst op

quote:

ZALTBOMMEL - In een bedrijfspand in Zaltbommel is dinsdag een zeer grote hennepkwekerij met 30.000 planten aangetroffen, een van de grootste die ooit in Gelderland is ontdekt, misschien zelfs wel de grootste.

Maar wat levert dat op?

Volgens een arrest van de Hoge Raad uit 2010 wordt uitgegaan van 28,2 gram hennep per plant bij een prijs van 2,37 euro per gram. Dat betekent dat één oogst in Zaltbommel ruim 2 miljoen euro zou hebben opgeleverd. Een andere bron geeft een bedrag van 3,28 per gram, dat is en gemiddelde op basis van vergelijking van verschillende meldingen van het Coördinatiepunt Nationaal Netwerk Drugsexpertise van het KLPD. Dan kom je uit op bijna 2,8 miljoen euro per oogst.

De grootste hennepkwekerijen die de laatste jaren zijn ontdekt:

3/12/14 - Duiven: 6000 planten
21/10/14 - Dodewaard: 22.000 stekjes en 280 moederplanten (straatwaarde: 1 miljoen)
5/11/13 - Duiven: 2500 planten
23/9/13 - Nijmegen: 420 grote planten en 3825 stekjes
3/4/13 - Ruurlo: bijna 4500 planten
6/3/13 - Buren: 14.000 hennepstekken
20/2/12 - Huinen (bij Putten): 2850 planten
20/5/11 - Ede: 2700 planten
26/8/09 - Overasselt: 10.000 planten en 15.000 stekken
18/6/08 - Alphen: ruim 4000

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Burgerinitiatief van BNN tegen strafblad bij te veel pillen op zak

quote:

Festivalgangers en clubbezoekers zouden voortaan straffeloos meerdere xtc-pillen voor eigen gebruik op zak mogen hebben. Daarvoor pleit het BNN-progamma Spuiten en Slikken. Het heeft ruim 41.000 handtekeningen verzameld om dit pleidooi kracht bij te zetten; genoeg voor een burgerinitiatief waardoor de Tweede Kamer het onderwerp moet bespreken. De handtekeningen worden vandaag in Den Haag aangeboden.

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Internationaal onderzoek naar vermiste Mexicaanse studenten

Er komt een internationaal onderzoek naar de moord op 43 Mexicaanse studenten. Die zijn sinds eind september vermist en vermoedelijk vermoord door een drugskartel op bevel van een burgemeester.

Half februari begint het onderzoek, meldt de Inter-Amerikaanse Mensenrechtencommissie vrijdag.

De families van de studenten wilden graag dat er meer en onafhankelijk onderzoek gedaan zou worden naar de verdwijning. De overheid verklaarde afgelopen dinsdag de studenten dood en leek daarmee de zaak af te doen.

Nu zullen erkende, Spaanstalige mensenrechtenexperts de zaak gaan onderzoeken, aldus de commissie. De nabestaanden zijn overigens ook nog van plan om naar de VN te stappen.

De ouders vinden dat de regering probeert om de zaak af te sluiten voor die naar behoren is opgelost. "We hebben niet genoeg bewijs om dit te accepteren", zei een van de ouders dinsdag.

Iguala

De studenten verdwenen eind september tijdens een protest in de stad Iguala. Vermoedelijk hebben politiemensen ze op bevel van de burgemeester van Iguala ontvoerd tijdens een demonstratie. De studenten zijn vervolgens overgeleverd aan een drugsbende.

Een van de leden van die bende heeft verklaard dat hij de opdracht van zijn baas kreeg om de jongeren te vermoorden. De bendeleden zou zijn verteld dat het om leden van een rivaliserende bende ging.

Er zijn zo'n negentig mensen opgepakt in de zaak, onder wie veel agenten. Ook de burgemeester van Iguala zit vast.

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Hennepkwekerijen tappen meer stroom af

quote:

De bijna 4700 hennepkwekerijen die vorig jaar zijn opgerold, hebben voor 147 miljoen kilowattuur stroom afgetapt. Dat is meer dan in 2013, toen nog voor 140 miljoen kWu werd gestolen. Dat meldt Netbeheer Nederland.

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Rotterdam onderschepte 7575 kilo cocaïne in 2014

quote:

Vorig jaar is rond de 9 duizend kilo harddrugs in beslag genomen in de Rotterdamse haven. Het overgrote deel betrof cocaïne: 7575 kilo. De drugs zijn onderschept door het Hit and Run Cargoteam (HARC). Dat meldt het Openbaar Ministerie vandaag.

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Marseille housing estate sealed off after police car shot at

About 100 special forces dispatched to area after police shot at while responding to reports of gang members firing Kalashnikovs into air

A housing estate in Marseille was sealed off after gunmen shot at a police vehicle hours before the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, was due to visit the city.

Residents reported that about 10 young hooded gunmen were patrolling the streets of the Castellane estate on scooters on Monday morning, looking for a rival gang and firing Kalashnikovs into the air.

When the first police vehicle arrived at the estate, another gang member who was posted inside one of the estate’s tower blocks shot at it with a sniper rifle.

About 100 special forces police were dispatched to search the area, where about 7,000 people live. Riot police were posted at entrances to the estate and a creche was evacuated.

Later on Monday, police reportedly found seven Kalashnikovs and about 20kg of cannabis as well as a large sum of money in an apartment in Castellane. Police were still searching for the gunmen.

The gunfire happened as Pierre-Marie Bourniquel, the departmental director of public security, was checking that the area was safe before the prime minister’s visit.

Valls was due in Marseille to congratulate local officials and police on their clampdown on crime in the city. He was expected to be accompanied by the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, and the education minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.

Le Figaro reported that Bourniquel and an accompanying police chief had come under fire as they arrived at the estate in a police car with its siren on. The shots passed two or three metres from the vehicle and no one was injured.

Police said the shooting was linked to a dispute over a drug deal between two rival gangs.

Bourniquel told Agence France-Presse that he and other officers were in three vehicles that were targeted: “We were shot at when we got there. We were in clearly marked police cars.”

The 1960s housing estate where the French footballer Zinedine Zidane grew up is in one of Marseille’s notorious crime-ridden suburbs.

Drug traffickers regularly turn parts of the estate into no-go areas for police and outsiders, and local authorities plan to demolish at least one high-rise block in an attempt to make the area easier to monitor and control.

Last week the local infants’ school was broken into, and the neighbouring primary school was set alight over the Christmas period.

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Amend UN Treaties to End Drug Prohibition

quote:

We, the People of the World, petition the United Nations and the Signatory nations of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and two corollary UN drug prohibition treaties, to Amend the Treaties, ending the war on drugs and providing for a health-, harm-reduction and human rights- oriented convention much like that proposed by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. See http://www.tiny.cc/leap_treaty

quote:

Op donderdag 12 februari 2015 18:57 schreef Tism het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Liquidatiegolf Amsterdam groeit uit tot onoverzichtelijk conflict

quote:

De liquidatiegolf in Amsterdam is een nieuwe fase ingegaan. Wat begon met een ruzie tussen twee groepen over een verdwenen partij drugs uit de Antwerpse haven is inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een onoverzichtelijk conflict tussen meerdere, kleine groepen criminelen. Dat zegt Hanneke Ekelmans, lid van de korpsleiding Amsterdam, in een interview met de Volkskrant. Ze is verantwoordelijk voor de opsporing.

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Mexico police barricaded in station over labour dispute clash with federal agents

quote:

A revolt by local police who barricaded themselves inside a station for nearly two weeks in a labour protest erupted in a clash that wounded at least five federal agents in southern Mexico on Friday.

Between 250 and 300 local police officers have been hunkered down in the station in the town of Santa María Coyotepec for the last 13 days to demand raises and better working conditions, the Oaxaca state government said in a statement.

They shot at federal police who tried to remove them on Friday, the government alleged. Five federal agents were wounded in the legs by bullet shrapnel, but their lives were said not to be in danger.

Some of the local officers contended it was not them but rather federal agents who opened fire in the pre-dawn confrontation.

“The federal police tried to get in through the main door, but my companions reacted and the clash began,” said a policeman inside the compound who gave his name as only Luis for fear of possible reprisals.

Jeyco Pérez, identified as one of the leaders of the revolt, told Milenio TV that they were only using shields to defend themselves and had not fired weapons.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the local officers carrying batons and riot shields, but no weapons were readily visible. The entry to the station was barricaded with a truck and metal fencing.

The locals captured at least three federal officers but later released them.

One, Mauricio Villela, said he was not harmed during his seven hours of captivity. He denied that it was federal police who opened fire, saying, “We did not shoot.”

quote:

Chemopatiënten kweken stiekem cannabis

quote:

Duizenden ernstig zieke Nederlanders kunnen bij de apotheek 'staatswiet' krijgen. Die werkt bij veel patiënten niet goed. Sommigen telen daarom zelf wiet. Ook Rudolf Hillebrand. Tot de politie kwam.

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The UK needs common sense about ketamine

^{David Nutt}

Ketamine is a vital medicine, and restricting it has harmed patients without cutting recreational use. Britain should stand up to the UN’s failed ‘war on drugs’

Ketamine is a unique anaesthetic and analgesic that has unfortunately become a popular and harmful recreational drug. Last year, in an attempt to reduce recreational use, and on the recommendation of its Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), the UK government decided to ban all ketamine-like drugs (analogues) and also put ketamine itself under greater controls.

These changes were opposed by many scientists who saw the analogue ban as anti-scientific, and by many doctors and vets who feared that the greater controls would reduce ketamine use with consequent increase in patients suffering. Our fears turned out to be true. For example, the Glastonbury festival medical team who use ketamine for emergency anaesthesia (eg for burns) were last year denied supplies.

The increased restrictions also failed to take account of the advances in prescribing options provided by the Patient Group Directive legislation, which improves access to vital medicines by allowing trained nurses and other practitioners to prescribe. On Tuesday, the Home Office was told by the ACMD of this oversight, and hopefully the regulations will soon be changed to allow ketamine to be used optimally.

These issues highlight the perverse damage that can occur with the current simplistic legal-based approaches against recreational drug use. They damage research and harm patients, yet have little if any effect on recreational use. Now the misuse of ketamine in some other countries could lead to an even more outrageous decision: the banning of ketamine as a medicine world-wide. The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (UNCND) is proposing this at its next meeting in March. This recommendation is being pursued despite opposition from the World Health Organisation that argues ketamine is a vital medicine. Ketamine is the only anaesthetic that does not cause respiratory depression and one that has proven utility in emergency situations, war zones and in surgery for children. This is not the first time that the faceless “war on drugs” bureaucrats in the UN are trying to get a drug banned to justify their existence – but surely it must be the last?

The prospect of denying the long-proven therapeutic benefits of ketamine to people, particularly children in pain, is one I am sure we would all find abhorrent. We need to remember that because many countries blindly follow UN guidance to ban all strong opioids under UN conventions, 80% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to adequate opioid analgesia, one of the great socio-medical scandals of the past century.

Ketamine also has a major and growing role to play in the control of patients with chronic pain. Moreover ketamine is probably the most significant innovation in the treatment of resistant depression in the past 40 years. It can produce rapid remission of symptoms in suicidal patients and is also being tested in treatment-resistant PTSD.

To stop the clinical and research use of ketamine would be madness but this is what would happen if the UK approves and implements the UNCND recommendation. This would mean that every doctor and hospital that wished to use ketamine would need their own special licence to do so. We know that only four hospitals in the country have such a licence and to get one costs about £6,000 and takes a year or more.

The idea that banning ketamine will stop recreational use is ludicrous, given that similar bans on heroin and cocaine have not impacted misuse. Unless our scientific and medical leaders stand up to the UNCND, researchers and patients will suffer. We need to remember that the UK medical community successfully lobbied the government to reject the 1961 UN recommendation to ban heroin when many other countries went along with it and so eliminated it as a medicine. UK patients have benefited from this powerful painkiller whereas patients in other countries have suffered. We can insist that common sense over ketamine prevails and that our medical leaders demand a similar exemption be applied to ketamine in the UK if the UN proposal is endorsed.

But we should do more. It is time to stop the UNCND pursuing its failed “war on drugs”. This serves its goals of maintaining its significant international profile and job security, but it has been a costly failure in terms of the rest of humanity, particularly because of the perverse effects to deny proven pain-control treatments to much of the world’s population. Surely it is now time for the UK, one of the founders of the World Health Organisation and a leader in international health policy, to rectify this cruelty: stopping it worsening by opposing the ketamine ban would be the first step.

quote:

Hacker from Anonymous says he was charged after refusing to help FBI

quote:

A 28-year-old hacker currently serving a six-month prison sentence for computer crimes now says that authorities asked him to help the United States gather information on Mexican drug cartels, then charged him with dozens of counts after he refused.

Fidel Salinas of Texas started his half-year prison sentence last Friday, according to court documents obtained by RT, three months after he accepted a plea deal that saw him owning up to a single count of accessing without authorization the computer system of Hidalgo County in 2012. The activity was part of an operation that authorities say involved the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

This Wednesday, however, Wired reported that Salinas said ahead of surrendering to US Marshals last week that the agreement he reached with the Department of Justice was hardly the first time that the two had discussed a deal.

According to Wired, Salinas told journalist Andy Greenberg that agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation attempted to recruit him to assist with the FBI’s own intelligence gathering operations in 2013. After Salinas shot them down, he soon found himself being charged with dozens of counts through no fewer than four indictments filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

In May 2013, Greenberg wrote this week, the FBI interrogated Salinas for six hours, during which they allegedly asked him to harness his cyber skills in order to help federal authorities gather intelligence on Mexican drug cartels — a previous target of Anonymous.

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Life after El Chapo: kingpin's arrest spells new era in Mexican drug war

The capture last year of Joaquín Guzmán barely seems to have affected the Sinaloa cartel’s core business, but behind the scenes trouble may be brewing

The fortune-teller smiled as she gazed out towards the distant peaks of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.

“The mountains are glowing red and it will be a good harvest,” she predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop of marijuana – and the cash bonanza it will bring.

This is Mexico’s own golden triangle. Straddling the northern states
of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua, the Sierra has been a stronghold of
the country’s drug trade for as long as anyone can remember. Its deep
canyons and dense pine forests have harboured narcos
and hidden plantations of marijuana and opium poppies for decades.

It’s a world the fortune-teller knows well: over the years, she said she had often used her gift to help local people – locating a lost kilo of opium
paste or comforting the girlfriends of slain traffickers.

The arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán on 22 February 2014 was hailed
by the Mexican and US authorities as the one of the biggest blows to
the drug trade in decades. But a year on, the core business of
Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel seems hardly affected. “As long as there are people who want the drugs this will never stop, whoever goes to prison,” the seer said.

Overall, seizures of drugs from Mexico heading into the US remain much
as they were before Guzmán’s arrest. The Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) has reported only small changes in the way the cartel operates. And after a brief burst of triumphalism in the days
after Guzmán’s arrest, the Mexican government now rarely mentions the
Sinaloa cartel at all.

“Chapo’s capture has not produced any major changes here,” said Ismael
Bojórquez, the director of the Sinaloa investigative weekly Ríodoce.
“The cartel structure continues to work just as before.”

Not that everybody in Sinaloa accepts that view.

“Things are calm, yes, but it feels like the calm before the storm,” said a local music producer who specialises in narcocorridos – accordion-driven ballads often commissioned by traffickers to glorify their exploits. Like the psychic – and others interviewed for this article – he was wary of being identified, because his work often brings him into contact with members of the criminal underworld.

Sinaloa’s Coordinator of Public Security, who previously headed military operations in the state, insists that Chapo’s capture has not had any major impact on security over the past year. “Things not only have not got worse,” retired General Moisés Melo Garcia said, “but high impact crimes have been falling in Sinaloa, thanks to improved coordination between the federal and state forces.”

But over the past year, unease in Sinaloa has been magnified by the lack of
clarity over the cartel’s reconfiguration since Guzmán’s arrest.

For all his mythical status – forged by a dramatic prison escape in
2001 and the Sinaloa cartel’s subsequent attempt to take over territories across the country from other cartels – Guzmán was not so much the boss of bosses as the highest profile figure in a triumvirate of veterans.

The other two were Juan José Esparragoza, known as El Azul (“the blue one”), who reportedly died in June and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who is still at large.

Many assumed El Chapo’s arrest would prompt Zambada’s seamless succession to power, but the 67-year-old narco has apparently come under intense pressure in recent months: several close collaborators, including one of his sons, have been arrested and he has reportedly come close to capture several times.

Even in the state capital Culiacán – once his undisputed home
territory – El Mayo has appeared unable to respond to an incursion by
a former protege of Chapo called Dámaso López, who is said to have made
inroads into street-level dealing in the city.

The record producer noted that López appeared to be backing his
ambitions with an aggressive string of promotional narcocorridos with
lyrics that are becoming increasingly bellicose.

In Culiacán, some believe El Chapo could eventually be replaced by one of his sons, Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán, but others dismiss him as too inexperienced to take full control.

Analysts, law enforcement sources and cartel contacts agree generational change is contributing to the unease: traditionalists often point to the hotheaded and exhibitionist tendencies of such narco “juniors”, whose inherited power and wealth contrast with the rags-to-riches struggles of their fathers.

And then there is the wild card of Rafael Caro Quintero. A founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara cartel, Quintero spent 28 years in jail for the 1985 murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, but was unexpectedly released in 2013 – to the disgust of the US government – and promptly disappeared. Today the ageing narco is said to be hiding out somewhere in the golden triangle, intent on reimposing old school narco order in Sinaloa.

“There is no logic to what is happening,” the record producer said. “The sense I get is of an atmosphere of pending war.”

Luís agrees. He spent 10 years as one of El Chapo’s gunmen, loading drugs on to planes heading to the US as well as torturing and killing cartel members who stepped out of line.

Luis has retired and complains of nightmare flashbacks to his days as a killer, but he still keeps in contact with the few members of his old crowd who are still alive. They tell him all is not well in the cartel.

“Before all the cows went in one direction. Now there are too many cowboys,” he said, sipping a beer and fiddling with a joint. “There will always be drugs moving, for as long as it is not legal, but I see a lot of weakness, a lot of internal disputes and mistreatment of the local population and that creates problems too.”

Luis said that while the police were as accommodating as ever, new tactics being used by the federal government were causing problems.

Time was, he said, when soldiers would help cartel members load up drug shipments “for a beer and a woman”. Now, however, he said army units were rotated so often that deals with corrupt commanders had to be constantly renegotiated.

Worse still, he added, the government was increasingly depending on special operations forces, which have proved stubbornly resistant to making any deals with the cartels. Naval special operations units, working closely with the DEA, have been responsible for almost all the key arrests in Sinaloa, including Chapo’s.

María, a well-dressed middle-aged lady who spoke freely once assured of anonymity, also described considerable nervousness at the “peaceful end of the business”. A close relative of María’s trafficed cocaine independently, she said, but still depended on the cartel to keep order in the state.

“The youngsters wanting to come in are more violent, they don’t have what it takes,” she said. “El Señor [El Mayo] is looking weak, but he is very astute and we are hoping that he has an ace up his sleeve.”

Memories are still fresh of the all-out war that erupted in Sinaloa in 2008 following a violent split between Chapo and his one-time allies in the Beltrán Leyva family, leaving many in the area particularly attuned to signs of internal tension in the cartel. Their concerns are only reinforced by events elsewhere in Mexico: hardly a day goes by in the southern state of Guerrero without reports of atrocities committed in the turf wars between splinter groups of the once-mighty Beltrán Leyva cartel.

“The Sinaloa cartel is not a good thing, but it is better than the others,” said one taxi driver in the city. “We don’t want another war.”

His immediate concern, however, was a lack of cash in Culiacán linked by many to El Chapo’s capture.

A financial adviser at a bank in the city agreed: “The Sinaloan economy depends, in large part, on these guys. It’s their cash and investments that provide the work,” he said.

He added that El Chapo’s arrest and tighter restrictions on cash transactions had led to a notable contraction in the past year, though he expected this to ease once the cartel had found new creative ways of laundering its money.

Agriculture and the tourism industry have long been favoured routes for laundering money, he said, but he expected new construction projects would become the preferred way to clean dirty money.

“In Sinaloa we are all betting on the good guys and the bad guys doing business,” he said.

Javier Valdez, a reporter at Ríodoce, specialises in stories about the way daily life in Sinaloa has become increasingly invaded by narco economics and culture. “The narcos have domesticated us,” Valdez said. “They are in our lives and we are ever more resigned to that destiny.”

The government’s failure to provide security or prosperity only adds to this sense of dependence on an underworld that relies on both barbaric violence and managerial agility to adapt to new market conditions.

The DEA’s 2014 National Threat Assessment notes a steady rise in heroin seizures on the US south-west border that reached 2,200kg (4,850lb) in 2013 – more than four times the amount intercepted in 2008.

This appears to be a response to growing US demand, but could also reflect opium paste’s portability compared with large bricks of marijuana. In Sinaloa growers in the Sierra Madre describe increased poppy production for just those reasons.

Local people with connections to the drug trade also describe a surge in the number of crystal meth labs. The DEA report notes that almost all the methamphetamine on sale in the US was produced in Mexico, with seizures on the border nearly tripling between 2009 and 2013 to reach about 11,500kg. The report also cites increasingly sophisticated techniques, which include dissolving the drug in solvents to smuggle it across the border disguised as flavoured drinks or hidden in windshield wiper reservoirs.

Meanwhile, marijuana seizures dropped suddenly in 2013. Some newspaper reports have ascribed this to the legalisation of the drug in some US states, but local producers say it has more to do with years of falling prices and greater vigilance by the army, which complicates the transport of large shipments.

All of which leads journalists such as the director of Ríodoce to conclude that the Sinaloa cartel is well on the way to completing its reformation for the post-Chapo era.

“It is a period of transition and there will always be bumps along the way,” Bojórquez said. “But this is a business group with a worldwide reach and it is looking pretty strong.”

Bojórquez speculates that the cartel’s resilience may also also owe something to backroom negotiations with Mexican politicians, who he believes are desperate to find a way to close down the drug wars, which have killed about 100,000 people around Mexico.

At least one Sinaloan politician from the governing Institutional Revolutionary party appeared to agree. “The only way to do this is for the big boys to sit down with the big boys and make a deal,” he said.

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VVD-campagne start in mineur door integriteitsaffaires

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Donderdag kreeg de partij een nieuwe klap te verwerken: de vorige week al afgetreden VVD-fractievoorzitter van de gemeente Stichtse Vecht is nu in hechtenis genomen. Zij maakt deel uit van een groep van acht arrestanten die wordt verdacht van hennepteelt en witwassen. De ex-politica mag geen contact hebben met de buitenwereld. Zij moest al eerder aftreden omdat ze wordt verdacht van het lekken van geheime informatie uit een vertrouwenscommissie aan een partijgenoot.

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Mexicaanse drugsbaron 'La Tuta' opgepakt

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De drugsbaron stond aan het hoofd van het Tempeliers-kartel, een quasireligieus crimineel netwerk dat voorheen de hele staat onder controle had. Zo had het de macht over de politie en de handel die in de staat werd gedreven. De gang wist zelfs de internationale haven Lazaro Cardenas te veroveren en zo miljoenen op te strijken met het illegaal mijnen van erts.

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UK should begin decriminalising drugs, say Richard Branson and Nick Clegg

Virgin founder and deputy prime minister argue that ‘war on drugs’ has failed and urge UK to follow Portuguese example

Sir Richard Branson and Nick Clegg are urging the UK to begin decriminalising the use and possession of almost all drugs, following the example of Portugal.

The Virgin founder and deputy prime minister are to address a conference on fighting drug addiction on Wednesday, and in a Guardian article they argue that the “war on drugs” has failed.

“As an investment, the war on drugs has failed to deliver any returns,” they write. “If it were a business, it would have been shut down a long time ago. This is not what success looks like.

“The idea of eradicating drugs from the world by waging a war on those who use them is fundamentally flawed for one simple reason: it doesn’t reduce drug taking.

“The Home Office’s own research, commissioned by Liberal Democrats in government and published a few months ago, found there is no apparent correlation between the ‘toughness’ of a country’s approach and the prevalence of adult drug use.

“This devastating conclusion means that we are wasting our scarce resources, and on a grand scale.”

Branson has always made a point of not endorsing party politics, but is willing to endorse specific campaigns, and as a member on the global commission on drugs policy has called for an international rethink on drugs laws.

In their article, they argue: “The status quo is a colossal con perpetrated on the public by politicians who are too scared to break the taboo.”

Portugal decriminalised all drugs at the turn of the century. In the nearly 15 years since, the country has seen drug abuse drop by half, with the money previously spent on prohibition enforcement spent instead on reconnecting drug addicts with society.

In Clegg’s clearest endorsement of the Portuguese experiment, they say: “We should look to Portugal which removed criminal penalties for drug possession in 2001.

“Portugal’s reforms have not – as many predicted – led to an increase in drug use. Instead, they have allowed resources to be re-directed towards the treatment system, with dramatic reductions in addiction, HIV infections and drug-related deaths.

“Drugs remain illegal and socially unacceptable, as they should be, but drug users are dealt with through the civil rather than the criminal law.

“Anyone who is arrested for drug possession is immediately assessed and sent for treatment or education. If they fail to engage, they have to pay a fine.”

Portuguese citizens are allowed to purchase and possess 1g of heroin, 2g of cocaine, 25g of marijuana leaves or 5g of hashish.

They write: “The Portuguese system works, and on an issue as important as this, where lives are at stake, governments cannot afford to ignore the evidence. We should set up pilots to test and develop a British version of the Portuguese model.”

But the Centre for Social Justice, a charity closely associated with the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, claimed charities on the front line in the struggle against drug addiction are opposed to decriminalisation.

In recent CSJ research, nearly three-quarters of charities surveyed were concerned about the effect cannabis use had on their clients and families. More than half (56%) felt the decriminalisation of cannabis would lead to an increase in its use. Less than a quarter (23%) thought it would not.

Commenting on the findings, Christian Guy, director of the CSJ, said: “Drug addiction is ripping Britain’s poorest communities apart. Our network of 300 front-line charities sees this on a daily basis.

“Many are right to be worried that liberalising cannabis laws will lead to more people taking drugs and developing harder use.

“Politicians need to listen to these experts. They are the people who witness the devastating impact of drugs in our poorest neighbourhoods day in, day out.”