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

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Mexico arresteert opnieuw leider groot drugskartel

De Mexicaanse politie heeft de leider van het beruchte drugskartel Los Zetas opgepakt. Het is Omar Trevino Morales. Hij was de baas van het kartel sinds de arrestatie van zijn broer in juli 2013.

Morales werd woensdagochtend (plaatselijke tijd) aangehouden in de stad Monterrey. Hij was een van de meest gezochte misdadigers in het land. Zijn arrestatie komt enkele dagen na de aanhouding van een andere bendeleider, Servando Gomèz van het Tempelierskartel.

Het kartel Los Zetas, dat voor een groot deel bestaat uit goedgetrainde gedeserteerde militairen, staat bekend als zeer gewelddadig. Het wordt onder andere verantwoordelijk gehouden voor de moord op 72 immigranten in San Fernando in 2010.

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ChristenUnie blokkeert legaliseren softdrugs bij herziening belastingsysteem

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De ChristenUnie zal niet instemmen met een nieuw belastingstelsel waar de legalisering van softdrugs een onderdeel is.

Dat zegt ChristenUnie-leider Arie Slob vrijdag tegen NU.nl. Zaterdagochtend volgt een uitgebreid interview.

D66 presenteerde onlangs een initiatiefwetsvoorstel om de wietteelt te reguleren. Op deze manier wordt de 'achterdeur' van coffeeshops legaal, waardoor er ook belasting over geheven kan worden.

D66-leider Alexander Pechtold liet vervolgens weten het plan op tafel te willen leggen bij de onderhandelingen over een nieuw belastingsysteem, de komende tijd een van de grootste uitdagingen voor het kabinet.

Zowel D66 als de ChristenUnie horen bij de "constructieve" oppositiepartijen die met de coalitie hierover meepraten.

Als het aan Slob ligt kan Pechtold zijn wietplan dus thuis laten. "Als je bij D66 binnenloopt dan zit je meteen met je hoofd in de wietdampen", stelt hij.

"Die partij heeft het belastingplan gekoppeld aan het softdrugsbeleid. Wij zien het als een gezondheidsvraagstuk, zij als een financieel vraagstuk. Maar ik zou geen geld willen verdienen aan de verslaving van anderen. Daar sta ik diametraal tegenover."

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Fractielid stapt op na 'nieuwe corruptieverdenking' VVD

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De mannen worden ervan verdacht de benoeming van de burgemeester in de gemeente Stichtse Vecht te hebben beïnvloed in het voordeel van VVD'er Rob Bats. De verdenking is bijvangst in het onderzoek naar fractievoorzitter Kathalijne de Kruif van de VVD in Stichtse Vecht.

Zij werd vorige maand aangehouden op verdenking van het handelen in hennep en het witwassen van drugsgeld. De VVD in de gemeente liet dinsdag weten dat 'mevrouw De Kruif heeft aangegeven dat het niet in het belang van de gemeente, de inwoners, de gemeenteraad, haar partij en haarzelf is als zij nog langer politiek actief is'.

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Drugsdeal met Cees H. doet VVD-bewindslieden das om

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De zaak rond Cees H. kwam maandag in een stroomversnelling nadat bekend werd dat het betalingsbewijs was opgedoken van de overeenkomst met H. Daarmee werd ook het bewijs geleverd dat Opstelten niet de waarheid sprak in de Tweede Kamer. De drugscrimineel H. incasseerde 4,7 miljoen gulden, en niet 1,25 miljoen zoals Opstelten vorig jaar beweerde.

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Hooijmaijers wil dat justitie 'zijn omkopers' voor de rechter daagt

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Vandaag krijgt de ex-gedeputeerde van de provincie Noord Holland te horen hoe lang justitie wil dat hij moet zitten. De rechtbank veroordeelde hem in 2013 tot 3 jaar cel, omdat hij zich had laten omkopen, geld had witgewassen en valsheid in geschrifte had gepleegd. Uit de tenlastelegging van het OM blijkt dat justitie hem in hoger beroep verwijt dat hij voor circa 1,2 miljoen euro aan giften en beloften voor betalingen heeft ontvangen.

157 Zangeres zonder Naam Mexico

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Irish Es are smiling – ecstasy and other drugs temporarily legal in Ireland

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Possession of ecstasy and other drugs is currently legal in Ireland, but only for a day, after a court ruling on Tuesday morning.

A written judgment released by the Republic’s court of appeal said part of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, which allows certain substances to be controlled, is unconstitutional, meaning all government orders banning substances such as ecstasy and magic mushrooms are void – and it is not an offence to possess them.

Specifically, the court found that the act was being added to via ministerial order and without consulting the Oireachtas (both houses of the Irish parliament) and deemed this unconstitutional.

The appeal court’s ruling came in favour of a man who was prosecuted for possession of methylethcathinone, which was among a number of substances put on the controlled drugs list in 2010.

Stanislav Bederev denied the charge of having the substance for supply in 2012, and then brought a high court challenge in Dublin seeking to stop his trial, claiming that additions to the 1977 act were unconstitutional.

Bederev’s legal team argued it was not lawful to put the substance on the controlled drug list because there are no principles and policies guiding the introduction of such rules – and specifically no consultation with the Irish parliament.

The Irish government now has to force through emergency legislation in its parliament on Tuesday evening in response to the ruling.

The emergency law won’t come into place until the Republic’s second chamber, the Seanad, endorses the legislation. Following that the country’s president, Michael D Higgins, will have to gave his approval.

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Prescription drugs involved in 82% of overdose deaths, Victoria coroner says

Overdose deaths involving prescription drugs twice as common as those involving illegal ones and increasing rapidly, medical conference told

The number of deaths associated with prescription drugs used to treat stress, anxiety and insomnia are increasing at a “frightening” rate, a coroner has told attendees at a medical conference in Melbourne.

Prescription drugs were involved in 82% of the 384 overdose deaths investigated by the Victorian coroner’s court in 2014, Audrey Jamieson told the International Medicine in Addiction conference on Saturday.

This was 6% higher than the rate of deaths involving prescription drugs in 2011, she said, and almost double the number of deaths in which illicit drugs were involved.

Benzodiazepines were most commonly implicated in toxic deaths, Jamieson said, a class of drugs which includes the medicine more commonly known as Xanax, Serepax and Valium, prescribed for anxiety, panic and sleep disorders.

The drugs were involved in 55% of overdose deaths investigated by the court last year, compared with 49.7% four years ago.

“It’s frightening,” Jamieson said.

“Benzodiazepines as a contributor to mixed-drug toxic deaths is there, you can see it in the statistics. I hardly ever investigate a matter where the cause of death is mixed drug use where a benzodiazepine isn’t seen.”

Opioids, used to treat pain, were implicated in 48.4% of deaths, followed by antidepressants and antipsychotics.

Benzodiazepines contributed to a significant number of deaths involving alcohol, opioids, illicit drugs and antidepressants, the coroner said, highlighting the dangers of mixing substances.

As of February last year, Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Good Administration, rescheduled Xanax to make it a controlled drug – a substance deemed to have a high potential for abuse and addiction – which means restrictions have been placed on its prescription.

And while it was too early to see the impact of this on deaths and hospital admissions, Xanax was not the only prescription drug being abused by Australians, the conference heard.

Their widespread abuse meant the harms they caused were second only to alcohol, and were significantly greater than harm caused by illicit drugs, Associate Professor Nicholas Lintzeris, who is director of drug and alcohol services at South Eastern Sydney local health district, said.

The impact was being felt across socioeconomic and age groups, he said, as more people used them to cope with even the short-term stresses of life.

“Historically in Australia, people over 60 or 70 were not identified as a population that used drugs or alcohol, but that’s changing now with baby boomers getting older,” Lintzeris said.

“They’re the first generation to use alcohol and prescription drugs more widely, and it doesn’t look like they’re slowing down in their 70s and 80s.”

People expected to live longer and enter their later years pain-free, Lintzeris said.

There was a societal expectation that there was a pill for almost anything, and he said prescription monitoring systems to prevent “doctor shopping”, as well as better patient education about the risks and harms of prescription drugs, was needed.

Consumers needed to know that some prescription drugs, such as opioids, were highly addictive; that when taken in combination with other drugs such as alcohol, prescription drugs could be deadly; and that there were often non-drug alternatives, such as counselling or physiotherapy, that may work better for patients than drugs, he said.

Doctors also needed to reconsider prescribing so readily and widely, he said.

“We need much greater resilience in the community about what we can expect from healthcare and medicine,” Lintzeris said.

“There’s been over-reliance on medications to address those problems at the expense of talking therapy like counselling, and we also must look at how society is structured and how it may be causing harm.”

While sessions with a psychologist were currently subsidised by the government for conditions such as depression and anxiety, Lintzeris said no such subsidy for counselling occurred for patients suffering from chronic pain, making drugs too often the first choice for patients and doctors.

Speaking during a panel discussion on prescription drug abuse at the conference, Lintzeris called for government to force the pharmaceutical industry to make the harm profiles of drugs more readily available before they could be allowed into the market.

Dr Belinda Lloyd, who heads research at the Turning Point drug and alcohol centre in Melbourne, said it was important to ensure patients who needed pain and anxiety medications were not prevented from accessing them.

“It’s not about unduly limiting access to humane and proper healthcare, but we do need to balance that minimising risk of harm,” she said.

“We’ve seen a substantial increase in prescription drug availability and related harms in Australia. We need to enhance awareness of their risks.”

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Alaska police raid former TV anchor Charlo Greene's marijuana dispensary

Police served search warrants at marijuana activist Charlo Greene’s cannabis club after receiving reports of illegal sales but she reopened the next day

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Anchorage police served search warrants at marijuana activist Charlo Greene’s Alaska Cannabis Club after receiving reports of illegal marijuana sales.

The police took marijuana and impounded a Dodge Dakota and a Jeep Liberty on Friday, KTUU reported.

Greene is a former television reporter who gained notoriety when she quit her job on live TV in September with an expletive and announced she’s becoming an advocate to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Alaska.

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DEA Approves MDMA In Clinical Trials For Anxiety Patients

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has approved the first clinical trial of MDMA being used to treat patients with debilitating anxiety due to terminal illness, highlighting a changing attitude toward using psychedelic drug therapy on those with severe nervous disorders.

Communications Director Brad Burge at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) tells Al Jazeera America that the trial will test 18 subjects, each with proven life-threatening illnesses, in a non-hospital setting. The sessions will be monitored by on-site therapists to offer "support and conversation" to the patients. By pairing the drug with psychotherapy, MAPS hopes that the month-long trial will prove to lessen patients' anxiety symptoms associated with being terminally ill and create opportunity for more studies and trials to be conducted with psychedelic drugs. He explains that the trial is part of a larger $20 million plan to make MDMA an FDA-approved prescription medicine by 2021.

This trial is one of many that MAPS has overseen, including MDMA testing with sufferers of PTSD in addition to studies with LSD, Psilocybin ("magic mushrooms"), and the plant-based brew Ayahuasca, to lessen the symptoms associated with mental illnesses. A similar trial, brought to light by Vice earlier this year, studied the dissociative drug Ketamine and its effectiveness as an antidepressant.

It is the ultimate hope of MAPS that trials like these will prove the therapeutic quality of MDMA and other psychedelic drugs. Burge remains convinced that this is what "really good science shows, despite decades of propaganda and government misinformation."

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Brabantse burgemeesters vrezen machtige criminelen

De georganiseerde criminaliteit dreigt de baas te worden op sommige plekken in Nederland. Twee Brabantse burgemeesters waarschuwen in de Volkskrant voor de toenemende ondermijning van het gezag door criminelen.

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Criminelen uit de drugsscene en de vrouwenhandel delen de lakens uit in buurten, infiltreren in het openbaar bestuur en zetten het gezag onder druk. Burgemeesters worden stelselmatig bedreigd.

Zangeres Zonder Naam - Mexico

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UK: This Is What's Actually in Your Ecstasy

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You know those dance floor lifers you sometimes meet in the smoking areas of nightclubs, the greying men with sweat-logged shirts wrapped around their necks, blabbering through locked jaws about how much better pills were back in the day? They are all officially wrong.

The latest data on ecstasy – taken from pills seized by police in England and Wales between July and October of last year – reveals that the average pinger contains 108mg of MDMA, making them the strongest they've ever been in the UK.

For context, "back in the day" – i.e. during the Second Summer of Love, as rave took off here in the late-80s and early-90s – most pills were around the 80mg mark. Which, as it happens, is close to what's seen by ecstasy researchers as the "acceptable" dose (70-75mg) for an average-sized adult during one drug-taking session.

As recently as 2009, because law enforcement agencies managed to disrupt the supply chain of the precursor ingredients used to make ecstasy, most pills in the UK contained zero MDMA. Instead, largely because of a seizure in Cambodia in 2008 of 33 tons of the precursor chemical safrole oil – enough to supply the UK ecstasy market for five years – pills contained a mixture of BZP, speed or caffeine. They were basically duds, which is one of the reasons mephedrone sales reached the extraordinary heights they did.

It was the popularity of mephedrone, however, that helped to really open up the online drug trade, which – in turn – has enabled the mass supply of high quality ecstasy pills.

At Glastonbury Festival last year, all the pills seized contained MDMA, which is a pretty good sign of the current state of play. This potency surge also applies throughout Europe; in Holland, where most pills are made and where they've always been of higher quality than they are in Britain, the average strength is 140mg. In Spain, 120mg pills are the norm.

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Op woensdag 1 april 2015 14:50 schreef Prutzenberg het volgende:
Oeps!

Indiana's Controversial "Religious Freedom" Act Just Unintentionally Legalized Marijuana

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‘Minister verdraaide feiten over wietteelt’



Onderzoekers zijn niet te spreken over hoe hun publicaties over wietteelt door hun opdrachtgever, veelal het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie, zijn gepresenteerd. Dat leert een rondgang langs wetenschappers en onderzoekers.

Onwelgevallige publicaties zijn uitgesteld, conclusies selectief naar buiten gebracht (‘cherry picking’) en vraagstellingen zo gestuurd dat de uitkomst het beleid ondersteunt. Oud-minister Ivo Opstelten (VVD) gebruikte de rapporten om de harde aanpak van wietteelt te rechtvaardigen, maar het wetenschappelijk fundament daarvoor is brozer dan voorgesteld.

Twist

Zo zou het overgrote deel van de nederwiet naar het buitenland gaan. Elke poging van burgemeesters om wietteelt te reguleren veegde het ministerie er de afgelopen jaren mee van tafel. Zolang veel wiet de grens over gaat, is de gedachte, helpt regulering niet tegen illegale plantages en georganiseerde misdaad in Nederland.

Maar de KLPD-onderzoeker die in 2006 het rapport publiceerde waarop het ministerie de hoge exportschatting baseerde, kaartte intern aan dat dit niet de conclusie was uit zijn onderzoek. Daaruit bleek namelijk: we weten het niet. Diezelfde conclusie, getrokken door onderzoekers van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoeks- en Documentatiecentrum in een nieuwe exportschatting vorig jaar, werd door Opstelten eveneens verdraaid. Onderzoekers die aan het rapport meewerkten zeggen “teleurgesteld” te zijn.

Dat regulering strijdig is met de wet en met internationale verdragen, is een andere belangrijke pijler van het harde aanpak van wietteelt. Opstelten liet onderzoeksbureau Rand Europe in 2013 een overzicht maken van landen die wietteelt toestaan of ermee experimenteren. Het bureau zegt verbaasd te zijn over de twist die de oud-minister aan het rapport heeft gegeven. Zijn conclusie, dat regulering in andere landen minder ver gaat dan gedacht, stond er niet.

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Op zaterdag 11 april 2015 10:03 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

[..]

Ja maar totaal niet opgepakt door de oppositie waarmee we kunnen concluderen dat de zich progressief profilerende partijen ook niet meer dan een wassen neus zijn.

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Parents of missing Mexican students tour US to push for new investigation

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Velez, along with other family members of the missing Mexican students, are on a caravan tour of the United States, trying to raise awareness and support for further investigation into the attack, which took place 26 September in the city of Iguala.

The students, from Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa, a nearby teacher training academy known for its social activism, were detained by police, allegedly under orders from the local mayor. The police handed the students over to a drug gang called Guerreros Unidos, which massacred them, according to the official government account. Partial remains from at least one student were later found in a mass grave, after extensive forensics testing.

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Along with help in the search for answers, members of Caravana 43 are calling for an end to aid provided to Mexico under the Merida Initiative, a federal effort that has given $2.3bn to Mexico since 2008 to fight drug trafficking. Caravana 43 members say those funds are being used to suppress dissent, not fight drug cartels.

“The weapons that are given to Mexico through this plan are used to kill us, not help us,” said Velez.

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The DEA Has Been Secretly Buying Hacking Tools From an Italian Company

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The Drug Enforcement Administration has been buying spyware produced by the controversial Italian surveillance tech company Hacking Team since 2012, Motherboard has learned.

The software, known as Remote Control System or “RCS,” is capable of intercepting phone calls, texts, and social media messages, and can surreptitiously turn on a user’s webcam and microphone as well as collect passwords.

The DEA originally placed an order for the software in August of 2012, according to both public records and sources with knowledge of the deal.

The contract, which has not been previously revealed, shows that the FBI is not the only US government agency engaged in hacking tactics, but that the DEA has also been purchasing off-the-shelf malware that could be used to spy on suspected criminals.

This revelation comes just a week after USA Today uncovered a secret program with which the DEA collected the phone records of millions of Americans for more than 20 years, a program that pre-dated and inspired the NSA’s own bulk telephone collection program, suggesting that the drug agency is sort of a pioneer in the use of surveillance.

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Rotterdam klaar voor proef met gereguleerde wietteelt

Rotterdam is klaar voor een proef met gereguleerde wietteelt. Zodra het wettelijk mogelijk is, kan in de Maasstad binnen afzienbare tijd gereguleerd wiet verbouwd worden. Dat maakte de gemeente vandaag bekend in een persbericht.

De Rotterdamse gemeenteraad nam in november vorig jaar een motie aan voor de start van een experiment met gereguleerde wietteelt. Sindsdien is er een verkenning uitgevoerd naar de mogelijkheden om zo’n proef te starten. Het onderzoek richtte zich in eerste instantie op een proef door de gemeente, later kunnen één of meerdere erkende bedrijven de teelt overnemen.

Minder criminaliteit en beter voor de volksgezondheid

De gemeente wil met het invoeren van gereguleerde wietteelt de criminaliteit verminderen en de kwaliteit van het product verhogen. Dat zou beter zijn voor de gezondheid van de gebruikers. Ook denkt de gemeente dat de veiligheid in de stad verbetert als er minder illegale wietplantages in woonwijken staan. In de huidige situatie is de manier waarop er wiet wordt geteeld niet of nauwelijks te controleren.

Naar schatting kopen 25.000 Rotterdammers dagelijks wiet bij een coffeeshop. De hoeveelheid ligt tussen de 0,2 en 5 gram. Om aan de vraag van al deze wietgebruikers in Rotterdam te voldoen, is een oppervlakte van ongeveer zes voetbalvelden nodig voor het groeien, knippen en drogen van de wiet. In Rotterdam wordt jaarlijks voor zo’n 90 miljoen euro aan wiet verkocht.

Joint regulation

In 2013 tekenden 54 gemeenten de petitie ‘Joint Regulation’, waarmee ze toenmalig minister van Ivo Opstelten (Justitie en Veiligheid) opriepen wietteelt te reguleren, en als dat niet mogelijk was zou hij lokale experimenten moeten toestaan. Uit een rondgang van NRC Handelsblad (¤) bleek dat er eind vorig jaar nog maar weinig gemeenten gebruik maakten van de mogelijkheid om te experimenteren met gereguleerde wietteelt.

Naast Rotterdam zijn er in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Heerlen en Eindhoven wel concrete plannen gemaakt om een proef te starten met gereguleerde teelt. De gemeente Heerlen maakte in maart bekend dat het ‘praktisch mogelijk’ is om er te starten met gereguleerde hennepteelt.

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Douanemedewerker Rotterdamse haven gepakt voor cocaïnesmokkel

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Een 54-jarige medewerker van de douane in Rotterdamse haven is gisteravond aangehouden wegens drugssmokkel. Hij wordt in verband gebracht met de vondst van vierhonderd kilo cocaïne in een container uit Brazilië.

Dat meldt de politie. De man zou ook betrokken zijn geweest bij de invoer van een container met drieduizend kilo coke, in november vorig jaar. Dat was de op een na grootste vangst ooit in de Rotterdamse haven.

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The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think

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It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems manifestly true. Until I set off three and a half years ago on a 30,000-mile journey for my new book, Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Days of the War on Drugs, to figure out what is really driving the drug war, I believed it too. But what I learned on the road is that almost everything we have been told about addiction is wrong -- and there is a very different story waiting for us, if only we are ready to hear it.

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Professor Alexander argues this discovery is a profound challenge both to the right-wing view that addiction is a moral failing caused by too much hedonistic partying, and the liberal view that addiction is a disease taking place in a chemically hijacked brain. In fact, he argues, addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's your cage.

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Franse douane pakt ruim 2.000 kilo cocaïne in ‘historische’ drugsvangst

Leden van de Franse douane hebben een drugsvangst gedaan die nu al als “historisch” te boek staat. Woensdag namen zij een partij cocaïne van 2.250 kilo in beslag op een zeilboot in de buurt van Martinique, een eiland in de Caribische Zee. Dat heeft de Franse minister van Financiën Michel Sapin zaterdag laten weten, meldt AFP.

Op het vaartuig werden drie verdachten aangehouden, twee Spanjaarden en een Venezolaan. Het schip voer onder de Amerikaanse vlag, maar dat lijkt een dekmantel te zijn geweest. De Franse douane nam over heel 2014 in totaal 6.600 kilo cocaïne in beslag. De operatie van afgelopen week is daarmee een van de grootste drugsvangsten van Frankrijk aller tijden.

De operatie was het slotstuk van een twee jaar durend onderzoek van de douane. Hierbij werd samengewerkt met Spaanse en Britse inlichtingendiensten. De drugs hadden een straatwaarde van zo’n 100 miljoen euro. Sapin prees de samenwerking van landen bij dit soort operaties.

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'Te weinig resultaat aanpak drugshandel Brabant'

Burgemeester Noordanus van Tilburg vindt dat er veel te weinig vaart gemaakt wordt in de aanpak van georganiseerde criminaliteit in Brabant. Dat meldt Omroep Brabant op basis van geheime notulen van een topoverleg tussen verschillende instanties in december van vorig jaar.

Het openbaar bestuur probeert al enige tijd tegenmacht te organiseren om de drugshandel een halt toe te roepen. De meest in het oog springende manifestatie daarvan is de zogenaamde Taskforce Brabant; een samenwerking tussen de vijf grote steden, dat inmiddels is uitgebreid naar de provincies Brabant en Zeeland.

Vorig jaar ontving de Taskforce nog 1,8 miljoen euro aan subsidie, maar volgens Noordanus wordt er binnen het samenwerkingsverband veel gepraat, maar te weinig resultaat geboekt: 'Er moet meer garen op de klos.'

De georganiseerde criminaliteit, met name drugshandel, is een kolossaal probleem, zo weet Volkskrantverslaggever Jan Tromp. Hij doet al enige weken verslag van het bedreigde bestuur in Brabant: 'De Taskforce probeert de drugsmaffia te frustreren door 'korte klappen' uit te delen. Er wordt geprobeerd criminaliteit minder aantrekkelijk te maken door de drugsmaffia te hinderen, te frustreren en op te jagen.'

'Puinhoop'

Omdat de capaciteit altijd tekort schiet, moeten er keuzes worden gemaakt, weet Tromp: 'Er wordt gekozen voor invallen in XTC-labaratoria en hennepkwekerijen.' Die aanpak heeft de voorkeur van Noordanus, maar er is ook kritiek op de methode: 'Het is niet gericht op de grote jongens in de onderwereld, die blijven volgens velen buiten schot.'

Tijdens het overleg met onder meer de officier van Justitie Kim Tax en politiechef Peter Verschuur, zou Verschuur gezegd hebben dat hij het gevoel heeft dat hij 'het zicht kwijt is.' Omroep Brabant spreekt over een 'puinhoop door falende instanties.

'Puinhoop' is volgens Tromp een te zware term, maar dat de samenwerking moeizaam verloopt, lijkt aannemlijk: 'De gemeenten, provincie, politie, justitie en de belastingdienst zijn allemaal betrokken bij dit project. Die diensten kennen allemaal een eigen cultuur met een eigen bureaucratie. Dat maakt samenwerking lastig.'

De PVV in Brabant heeft een debat aangevraagd over de problemen rond de Taskforce.

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'Yippee Ki-yay!' DEA's Leonhart Prepares to Resign, Reformers Rejoice

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Michele Leonhart, the longtime leader of the Drug Enforcement Administration, is reportedly preparing to resign after nearly two dozen House lawmakers questioned her competence in handling an agency sex scandal.

Twenty-two members of the House oversight committee, including the panel’s Republican and Democratic leaders, said last week they had lost confidence in her leadership after the revelation that DEA agents weren't fired for participating in sex parties involving prostitutes that were paid for by drug cartel members.

The resounding bipartisan expression of “no confidence” appears to have succeeded where pot advocates' campaign against "insubordination" failed last year, after she criticized her boss, President Barack Obama, for his position that smoking pot is less harmful than drinking alcohol.

The controversial anti-drug leader's departure will, perhaps most significantly, remove a major voice against more liberal marijuana policies.

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Bolivia resists global pressure to do away with coca crop

Despite its use in cocaine production, the mildly narcotic leaf enjoys a treasured cultural place in Bolivian society

One by one, Bernardo Tarquino carefully harvests the green leaves growing on the bushes on his farm at Minachi, Nor Yungas province, Bolivia. “We’ve been growing coca here for generations,” the old man says with a smile, assuring us that “his” crop is for acullico, which in the Aymara language means chewing the leaves to extract their full benefit.

“Coca quells hunger and gives strength to work,” Tarquino, 75, says, adding that it also eases altitude sickness that often affects visitors to the nearby high Andean plateaus. The leaf, which was sacred in the days of the Incas, has long been highly valued by people living in the Andes, on account of its nutritional and medicinal qualities.

But coca contains alkaloids and is used to produce cocaine, a drug causing worldwide devastation. Given the two possible uses, coca leaves are a major challenge for producer-countries such as Bolivia, the world’s third-largest source of coca (23,000 hectares), behind Colombia (48,000 hectares) and Peru (49,800 hectares).

Before he was first elected president in 2006, Evo Morales – who has been re-elected twice since – used to grow coca in Chapare province, in south-eastern Bolivia. It is a tropical region and the country’s second-largest source, after Yungas. He has always defended this crop, against governments at home and abroad, and their “no coca” policies, which sought to destroy the plants indiscriminately. In 1996 he was elected head of the six [cocalero] federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba, leading demonstrations chanting, “Viva la coca y mueran los yanquis” [long live coca, death to the Yankees].

So the question when he came to power was where he would stand on drugs. Nine years after his election the policies deployed by Morales, who retained his job at the head of the cocaleros union, enjoy the support of producers. They have also drawn the attention of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Last year’s survey [PDF] showed a downward trend between 2010-2013 when coca cultivation dropped by 26%. “In 2013, Bolivia recorded the lowest area under coca cultivation since 2002,” commented Antonino De Leo, the UNODC representative in Bolivia, when the report was released.

The Bolivian experiment has been unique in several ways. “The suspicions harboured by the international community with regard to the changes initiated by Evo Morales are a thing of the past,” said Bolivia’s interior minister Hugo Moldiz, when he presented his country’s model for combating drugs at the 58th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs at the UN general assembly in March.

In order “to restore the dignity of the coca leaf”, the Bolivian government launched an international campaign in 2006 to depenalise coca and have it taken off the list of narcotics drawn up by the Vienna convention in 1961.

Bolivia has not yet succeeded in convincing the UN, but in 2013 it did obtain a specific clause authorising chewing of coca leaves on its territory. “Bolivia is the only country in the world with a clause of this sort,” says De Leo. Coca cultivation, using traditional methods, is currently allowed on 12,000 hectares.

Bolivia’s other success story, according to the UNODC, is its social control policy “by which the state dialogues with producers and upholds human rights”, De Leo says. The cocaleros have pledged to restrict their crops to authorised areas, but also voluntarily to reduce the amount of land used.

“We check that no one moves into the prohibited areas,” says Jesus Quisbert, a producer from Coripata, Yungas, who thoroughly approves of Bolivia’s radical policy shift since 2006. “Before we had to combat the authorities, who put pressure on us; now we work together with the government to control output.”

Quisbert also believes that “helping the government is also a way of protecting our traditional crops from narco-trafficking”. The officially approved Villa Fatima market in La Paz now sells 93% of the coca leaves produced in Yungas, confirming the claim that the region’s crop is used for traditional purposes. But in contrast only 10% of the output from Chapare passes through the legal market, according to UNODC figures. The rest is sold illegally, either on markets not recognised by the state but serving traditional consumption, or to drug traffickers..

It is hard to establish how many tonnes of leaves the cocaine trade absorbs. In 2013 the government destroyed plants on more than 11,000 hectares, following discussions with the local community.

This approach differs from the strategy of forced eradication adopted for a long time in Bolivia, with financial support from Washington, which only ending in 2008 when US agents were sent home.

Neighbouring Peru is still pursuing the same US-sponsored strategy.

One of the biggest headaches for Morales is keeping the cocaleros out of the natural parks. Between 2010 and 2013 coca plantations in protected areas were more than halved, but they are still a real threat. “You have to bear in mind that no crop can compete with coca leaves, which is by far the most profitable,” De Leo says. In 2013 the UNODC put the average price per kilo of coca leaves on the official market in Bolivia at $7.80, with total output an estimated 36,300 tonnes, adding up to $283m. Just under half this tonnage is sold illegally.

“Bolivia is also a country where cocaine is produced,” De Leo says, with the country’s annual production of the 100% pure drug estimated at 155 tonnes in 2012. Furthermore, “the eastern side of Bolivia is a transit zone between the world’s main area of production in Peru and the region’s main centre of drug consumption in São Paulo and Rio in Brazil”, says Ricardo Soberon, a former head of Peru’s Drugs and Human Rights Research Centre.He adds that many Brazilian cartels are operating in southern Bolivia, an established centre for narco-trafficking.

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Amerikaanse agenten gepakt die drugs doorlieten

De Amerikaanse federale recherche FBI heeft vijftien mensen opgepakt omdat ze drugstransporten ongehinderd het land lieten binnenkomen en geldtransporten van de drugsopbrengsten lieten passeren. Dertien van de arrestanten werken of werkten bij de politie of in het gevangeniswezen, maakte het ministerie van Justitie vandaag bekend.

De vijftien verdachten hadden niet door dat de transporten in werkelijkheid een undercover operatie waren van de FBI. 'Corruptie bij de lokale overheid - vooral als er agenten bij betrokken zijn - bedreigt het sociale cement dat onze gemeenschap bij elkaar houdt', verklaarde een hoge functionaris van Justitie.

'Ze zwoeren te dienen en te beschermen maar in plaats daarvan verkochten deze agenten en bewaarders hun penningen en gebruikten hun posities om hun zakken te vullen'.

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Seven killed in Mexico after gunmen down helicopter in series of attacks

A drugs cartel is suspected of shooting down the military chopper, setting up roadblocks and firebombing banks in the western state of Jalisco

At least seven people died as flames and gunfire erupted around the western Mexico state of Jalisco on Friday when a military operation targeting a drug cartel was launched at the start of a three-day holiday weekend.

Suspected cartel members stopped buses and trucks to block highways in the state capital of Guadalajara and other cities, snarling traffic on a day Mexicans took to the road in droves. Officials said 11 banks and five gas stations were firebombed in almost simultaneous attacks. Lesser violence also was reported in three other states.

The first attack occurred when gunmen fired on a military helicopter, killing three soldiers and forcing it to make an emergency landing about 150 miles (250 kilometres) southwest of Guadalajara. Ten soldiers and two federal police officers were injured and three soldiers remained missing, a defence ministry statement said.

The statement said the helicopter was participating in the anti-cartel offensive known as Operation Jalisco.

Jalisco state governor Aristoteles Sandoval said that the violence around the state was a reaction to the operation, which he said was designed to “get to the bottom of and to be able to arrest all the leaders of this cartel, of this organisation”.

Sandoval did not name the cartel, but authorities have been locked in an increasingly bloody battle with the Jalisco New Generation cartel. Last month, cartel gunmen killed 15 state police officers in an ambush that was the bloodiest single attack on Mexican authorities in recent memory.

One week earlier, cartel gunmen attempted to assassinate the state security commissioner and on March 19 they killed five federal police officers. Authorities have said those attacks were revenge for state forces killing a cartel leader.

On Friday, Sandoval said Operation Jalisco, which had been announced by federal authorities earlier in the day, had the goal of arresting all members of the cartel.

Sandoval said there were a total of seven deaths Friday, but did not specify the circumstances or the victims.

Later, state spokesman Gonzalo Sanchez said through his Twitter account that the dead included three soldiers, one state police officer, two suspected criminals and one civilian. In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, Sanchez said authorities believed the Jalisco New Generation cartel was responsible.

Sandoval counted 39 road blockades around the state affecting 25 municipalities. Nineteen people were arrested and there were four armed confrontations, he said. He said 19 people were injured, including three civilians who suffered burns.

Alejandro Hope, a former official with Mexico’s intelligence service, said the violent response to the government offensive showed the cartel is cohesive and capable of reacting to attacks. He said the gang would likely tighten security to fend off the capture of its leader, who is believed to be Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed “El Mencho”.

Hope questioned the decision to go after the cartel’s top leadership before first taking out mid-level leaders and weakening the gang’s ability to react with coordinated violence.

However, Jorge Chabat, another Mexican security expert, said he didn’t think the cartel’s response would have a big impact. “I don’t believe that it is going to make the federal government leave them alone,” he said.

President Enrique Pena Nieto said on Friday through his Twitter account that he lamented the soldiers’ deaths in the course of their work in Jalisco.

In December, Pena Nieto said Jalisco was considered one of the most unstable states in terms of security, along with Tamaulipas, Guerrero and Michoacan. He said then that those states would be prioritised in anti-crime efforts, but the violence there has continued.

The US consulate in Guadalajara issued an advisory warning Americans to avoid travelling in the area.

Earlier, the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office used its Twitter account to urge people in Guadalajara to remain calm as authorities responded to the road blockades. It said officials also were coordinating to extinguish fires and regain calm in other parts of the state’s interior.

Such blockades are a common cartel response to the arrest of important members or are used to foil police and military operations. In recent weeks, burning vehicles and blockades in the state of Tamaulipas along the Texas border were attributed to factions of the Gulf cartel following the capture of some local leaders.

But there have not been so many blockades erected simultaneously across so many parts of a state in recent memory.

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Rethink the War on Drugs - Health Poverty ActionHealth Poverty Action

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Health Poverty Action supports a reassessment of the War on Drugs

Since the mid-twentieth century, global drug policy has been dominated by strict prohibition with the use of law enforcement to try and reduce the supply of illicit drugs.

This approach, which has come to be known as the ‘War on Drugs’, hasn’t worked.

Instead it has fuelled poverty and failed some of the poorest and most marginalised communities worldwide.

Read our full report: Casualties of War: How the War on Drugs is harming the world’s poorest



The War on Drugs…



• Undermines democratic governance. The power and influence of drug cartels severely weakens states. The culture of fear and corruption can make it almost impossible for citizens to exercise democratic influence, access their rights, and hold officials to account for essential public services such as health and education.
•
• Diverts attention and resources from essential services. Many governments in poor countries are engaged in constant civil war with the drug cartels. It is a war they are ill-equipped to win, with the cartels often having access to far greater financial resources. The costs of waging this war, both financial and in terms of dominating the political agenda, again leave little for public services such as health care.
•
• Wastes global finance. The worldwide cost of waging the War on Drugs is estimated at $100 billion a year. This is approaching the same amount as the global aid budget (currently $130 billion).
•
• Blocks access to essential medicines. Five billion people live in countries with limited or no access to opioid pain medications like morphine, and in most of those countries, overly stringent regulations on legal medications, spurred by fears that they could find their way to the illicit market, play a major role in depriving people of the pain relief they need.
•
• Causes pollution and deforestation. The persecution of drug producers involves the regular eradication of crops, followed by deforestation when production is relocated. This can be particularly harmful to indigenous communities and biodiversity.
•
• Criminalises small farmers and people who use drugs. The potential consequences of being discovered breaking the law, prevents people who use drugs from accessing state services like health care and police protection. It also makes harm reduction work much more difficult. In addition, criminalisation cuts farmers off from the support they need (such as financing) to make a sustainable living growing other crops.
•
• Undermines sustainable agriculture and local food production. Drug production displaces farmers from more sustainable and valuable agriculture, such as local food production.
•
• Increases local drug use and associated health problems. Crackdowns on the drug trade in one region displace it to new areas, creating a cheap local supply in more developing countries, which inevitably leads to higher levels of local use. In many places, farm workers are paid with drugs rather than money.


Health Poverty Action is concerned that current drug policies are causing immense suffering in poor countries, and denying poor and marginalised people their health rights.

We are driven by our conviction that it is not acceptable for anyone to be denied their health rights.

Drug policy is a development issue. Just like tax avoidance and climate change, current global drug policies undermine development initiatives and the internationally-agreed Millennium Development Goals.

Yet, unlike with these issues, the development sector in the UK remains largely silent on drug policy. If international NGOs are serious about dealing with the root causes of poverty and not just the symptoms, the sector can no longer be absent from debates on drug policy reform.

Health Poverty Action supports a reassessment of the War on Drugs.

While the debate over global drug policy in the past has been polarised between two extremes – prohibition on the one hand, and free market legalisation on the other – our choices are not limited to these. There is a third policy option, using a combination of regulation and legal controls.

Without supporting any particular policy, Health Poverty Action calls for exploration of this last option. We urgently need evidence-based alternative policies that take a public health perspective.

As governments prepare for the UN General Assembly’s Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs in 2016, we have a unique opportunity to ensure the rights of the poorest and most marginalised are at the heart of the negotiations. Let’s seize it.



For further information please visit:

Every year the UK loses billions of pounds to corporate tax dodging, while developing countries lose an estimated $160 billion. Email your parliamentary candidates today.
Bron: www.healthpovertyaction.org

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Ecuador May Decriminalize All Illegal Drug Use

Ecuador aims to end its war on drugs by providing treatment and rehabilitation options.

Ecuador is reviewing a new piece of legislation that, if passed, would decriminalize the use of all illegal drugs.

The bill, authored by Carlos Velasco, who chairs the Ecuadorian congress’ Commission of the Right to Health, aims to put an end to the country’s war on drugs by providing drug users with treatment and rehabilitation instead of jail time.

“Treating the drug phenomenon in a repressive way, as was done in the 1980s and 1990s when prison was the only destination for the drug consumer, is absurd,” said Velasco.

Aside from shifting the country’s paradigm towards drugs and drug use, Velasco says another key component to putting an end to the war on drugs is educating the public about the harmful effects of drugs.

But Ecuador isn’t the only country pushing for the decriminalization of illegal drugs. British businessman Richard Branson and UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg hope the English government will follow in Ecuador’s footsteps.

“As an investment, the war on drugs has failed to deliver any returns,” Branson and Clegg wrote, citing a growing criminal market, rising incarceration rates of “people whose only crime is the possession of a substance to which they are addicted” and no meaningful reduction in drug use across Britain’s population. “If it were a business, it would have been shut down a long time ago. This is not what success looks like.”

Many Ecuadorians support Velasco’s bill, but there are many who oppose it, reasoning that its implementation will only increase drug use. The bill will be debated by Ecuadorian lawmakers later this month.

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An Uphill Campaign in Norway to Promote LSD as a Human Right

OSLO — In a country so wary of drug abuse that it limits the sale of aspirin, Pal-Orjan Johansen, a Norwegian researcher, is pushing what would seem a doomed cause: the rehabilitation of LSD.

It matters little to him that the psychedelic drug has been banned here and around the world for more than 40 years. Mr. Johansen pitches his effort not as a throwback to the hippie hedonism of the 1960s, but as a battle for human rights and good health.

In fact, he also wants to manufacture MDMA and psilocybin, the active ingredients in two other prohibited substances, Ecstasy and so-called magic mushrooms.

All of that might seem quixotic at best, if only Mr. Johansen and EmmaSofia, the psychedelics advocacy group he founded with his American-born wife and fellow scientist, Teri Krebs, had not already won some unlikely supporters, including a retired Norwegian Supreme Court judge who serves as their legal adviser.

The group, whose name derives from street slang for MDMA and the Greek word for wisdom, stands in the vanguard of a global movement now pushing to revise drug policies set in the 1960s. That it has gained traction in a country so committed to controlling drug use shows how much old orthodoxies have crumbled.

The Norwegian group wants not only to stir discussion about prohibited drugs, but also to manufacture them, in part, it argues, to guarantee that they are safe. It recently began an online campaign to raise money so that it can, in cooperation with a Norwegian pharmaceuticals company, start quality-controlled production of psilocybin and MDMA, drugs that Mr. Johansen says saved and transformed his life.

“I helped myself with psychedelics and want others to have the same opportunity without the risk of arrest,” Mr. Johansen, a 42-year-old researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, said. He recalled how, as a young man, he defeated an alcohol problem, a smoking habit, post-traumatic stress and depression by taking psilocybin and MDMA.

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The drugs are banned in Norway, as in most countries, but can, under tight supervision, be used for medical purposes and in scientific research.

While it took decades for pro-marijuana campaigners in the United States to shift public attitudes and government policy, Norway’s psychedelic champions insist that they already have science and even the law on their side.

But even politicians who support them, all of them quietly because of the extreme sensitivity of drug policy, caution that it will be a long struggle. EmmaSofia has nonetheless succeeded in making its cause an issue, with Mr. Johansen appearing in debates on NRK, the state broadcaster, and in a lengthy profile in a leading newsmagazine.

Eager to sidestep the strictures of Norway’s intrusive “nanny state,” Mr. Johansen and his supporters tap into a more freewheeling side of this button-down Nordic nation and point to a long tradition of nature-worshipping shamans, particularly among Norway’s indigenous Sami people.

Also lending a hand are the Vikings, who, at least according to fans of psychedelic drugs, ate hallucinogenic mushrooms to pep them up before battle.

Cato Nystad, a 39-year-old drum maker, EmmaSofia supporter and organizer of traditional ceremonies that involve psychedelic potions, said many Norwegians wanted to get in touch with their wilder, more spiritual sides.

Steinar Madsen, the medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said he had no objection in principle to what he called EmmaSofia’s “interesting project,” but cautioned that “it is a very long shot.”

He scoffed at the argument that Norway needs to reconnect with its shamanistic past. “I don’t believe this stuff,” he said, adding that “drugs were not part of this tradition in Norway.”

Ina Roll Spinnangr, a Liberal Party politician who supports a more relaxed policy on drugs, said the best way to bring about change was not to attack Norway’s paternalistic government but to turn it on its head.

“You have to use a nanny argument: The government needs to take control and regulate the market instead of leaving it to criminals,” she said. “The argument that you decide yourself what you put in your own body will never work in Norway.”

As a result, she added, “I would never use the word ‘legalize,’ but talk instead about regulating, not liberalizing.”

Ketil Lund, 75, the retired Supreme Court justice who advises EmmaSofia on its legal strategy, said he had never used psychedelic drugs and had no interest in trying them. But, he said, he supported Mr. Johansen’s campaign as part of a “bigger struggle” against antidrug policies in the West that he described as “an absolute failure.”

“The present narcotics policy in the West has so many detrimental effects,” he said. “These have to be balanced against detrimental effects of the drugs themselves.”

He said he was not qualified to adjudicate a raging debate over the possible hazards and benefits of psychedelic drugs like LSD. But he had been impressed by research suggesting that they were less harmful than alcohol. “People have used psychedelics for centuries,” he added.
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jimmy 28 minutes ago

Like a few of the others commenting here, I took it a few times too. Harmless and quite exhilarating! The only danger comes from taking a...
Scott Miller 28 minutes ago

There have been a trickle of studies, reports and political efforts over the past few decades to add nuance to the question of psychedelics....
KiruDub 1 hour ago

I'm 44, and did a lot of psychedelics in college (LSD & mushrooms). I learned a lot about myself and it also changed my perception of our...

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The taboo in the West on psychedelics, however, is deeply entrenched — a legacy of government campaigns against drug use and a long backlash against the counterculture of the 1960s, when Timothy Leary, a Harvard professor and zealous promoter of LSD, urged Americans to “turn on, tune in and drop out.”

“LSD terrifies governments. It is their ultimate fear because it changes the way people look at the world,” said David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London. He was fired in 2009 as the British government’s drug policy adviser after he told a radio interviewer that alcohol was far more harmful than LSD and other psychedelics.

He praised EmmaSofia and other groups for helping to lift the stigma and fear long attached to psychedelics, adding that “there has definitely been a renaissance” in recent years of medical research after decades of science-killing “paranoia and censorship” based on scare stories about psychedelics that fed public panic.

“We are not in the 1960s anymore and have moved on,” said Mr. Johansen, a clinical psychologist, adding, “This is a question of basic human rights.”

LSD, which was first synthesized in a Swiss pharmaceuticals laboratory in 1938, and MDMA, which was patented in 1914, won wide acceptance in Europe and the United States in the middle of the last century when they showed early promise against alcoholism and other maladies.

But initial euphoria over their medical use was then swamped by deep alarm as recreational use of psychedelics surged, leading to a cascade of horror stories in the news media.

The United States banned LSD in 1970. A year later, the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances classified LSD and MDMA as “Schedule I” drugs, those that pose a serious threat to public health.

The United Nations convention banned their use “except for scientific and very limited medical purposes by duly authorized persons.” It also exempted psychedelics contained in plants “used by certain small, clearly determined groups in magical or religious rites.”

Mr. Johansen said the dangers connected with psychedelic drugs had been exaggerated by stories that did not take into account probability. “Everything carries a risk. If you walk in a forest, a tree may fall on your head, but does this mean you should never go in the woods?”

Dr. Madsen, of the Norwegian Medicines Agency, conceded that there “are a lot of myths” about psychedelic drugs like claims that “if you use LSD, you will jump from the roof.”

All the same, he sees no quick way around a thicket of laws and strict regulations on their use. “Everyone sees we have to be very careful with these drugs,” he said. “I don’t think the time is ripe.”

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Mexico declares all-out war after rising drug cartel downs military helicopter

Mexico has declared an all-out offensive against the relatively new drug cartel which shot down an army helicopter during a weekend of coordinated attacks across the western state of Jalisco which prompted fresh concerns over the latest escalation of the country’s drug wars.

Six soldiers were killed when gunmen from the New Generation Jalisco Cartel used a rocket-propelled grenade to bring down an army helicopter that was pursuing a cartel convoy on Friday, the national security commissioner, Monte Alejandro Rubido, told Televisa.

At least 15 other people were killed and 19 injured in a coordinated show of strength by the cartel which included several shootouts with soldiers and police, and involved hundreds of low-level operatives who set up roadblocks with burning cars, buses and trucks in Jalisco and three neighbouring states. Eleven banks and five petrol stations were also set ablaze.

“The full force of the Mexican state will be felt in the state of Jalisco,” Rubido said on Monday. “Satisfactory results will start to be seen very soon.”

Formed five years ago, the New Generation Jalisco Cartel has grown to become one of the biggest players in the country’s drug wars, at the same time as other major criminal groups have lost operational capacity in the face of government offensives.

But the cartel’s ability and desire to openly challenge federal forces had not been obvious until its response to Friday’s launch of a federal operation in its Jalisco stronghold, reportedly aimed at capturing or killing the group’s leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho”.

While RPGs have reportedly featured in battles between rival crime factions before, particularly those involving the Zetas – a paramilitary cartel originally formed by special forces soldiers – this was the first time the authorities have reported the weapon’s use against one of its aircraft.

“This is a criminal group with very significant firepower,” Rubido said, in answer to a question about whether the cartel has now become the most dangerous and powerful in Mexico. “Without doubt this gives it a special connotation.”

The rise of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel challenges the government’s hopes that its chosen tactic of killing or capturing cartel bosses will eventually put an end to the drug wars that have killed at least 100,000 people over the last eight years.

Taking down the biggest kingpins has undoubtedly weakened several formerly powerful cartels, but it also appears to have provided the Jalisco-based cartel with opportunities for growth and expansion. This is particularly clear in territories once dominated by the Zetas, now a shadow of their former selves, as well as the recently dismantled Caballeros Templarios, or Knights Templar.

“The government does not have the capacity to attack more than one big group at a time,” said security expert Eduardo Guerrero. “Now it is the turn of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel.”

According to Guerrero, the group has also developed a “perfected model” of operations that combines the militaristic sophistication and firepower of the Zetas with a capacity to infiltrate the authorities. The latter is most commonly associated with the Sinaloa cartel which, despite the capture in February 2014 of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, remains the biggest criminal group in the country.

Guerrero said the combination of styles was clear in the weekend’s coordinated attacks that were probably only possible with the help of corrupt local police. He also noted the low level of civilian casualties, contrasting with the kind of bloodbaths Mexicans have become accustomed to in the drug wars.

The expert added that he expected the government will eventually win out in a prolonged upcoming battle with the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, though he stressed this would not necessarily bring peace.

“The government’s biggest challenge remains how to contain the particularly acute violence of the smaller groups that are formed after the big ones fall apart.” he said.

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Coca Production in Colombia Jumped 39 Pct in 2014

Cultivation of the leaf used to make cocaine skyrocketed last year in Colombia, according to a new White House report that's likely to pressure authorities here to preserve a threatened U.S. aerial eradication program at the heart of the drug war.

After six straight years of declining or steady production, the amount of land under coca cultivation in Colombia jumped 39 percent in 2014 to 112,000 hectares (about 276,000 acres), according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Potential cocaine production based on average crop yields jumped 32 percent to 245 metric tons.

The U.S. government uses satellites to annually survey the amount of land planted with the illicit leaf in the Andean nations of Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, where it is grown.

The report is usually published in the summer but the Drug Czar's office released partial numbers for Colombia on its website Monday after some of the key findings were leaked to local media over the weekend. Their release comes as Colombians are increasingly turning against the U.S.-led aerial program that is credited with spraying more than 4 million acres of coca crops over the past two decades.

Colombia's Health Ministry last month recommended suspending the fumigation program after the World Health Organization's research arm reclassified the herbicide glyphosate used to spray coca as a carcinogen. A decision could come as early as this month when policy makers gather in Bogota for a key meeting to debate the future of Colombia's anti-narcotics strategy.

"It's no accident this was released just as the fumigation program is on the edge of being suspended," said Adam Isacson, a veteran analyst of Colombia's conflict at the Washington Office on Latin America. "The U.S. is probably doing all it can to avoid that outcome."

To be sure, several anti-narcotics officials from Colombia and the U.S. stand by the program, saying there's an even greater risk to farmers' health and the environment if cocaine production reliant on hazardous chemicals were to proliferate unchecked. Coca production in Colombia peaked at over 169,000 hectares in 2001, as the U.S. was embarking on a multi-billion-dollar program to restrict the flow of cocaine.

President Juan Manuel Santos has yet to make his views known.

The White House attributed the surprise jump to increased cultivation in areas off limits to U.S.-backed aerial eradication. Overall, forced manual and aerial eradication efforts have fallen sharply since 2012, when Santos embarked on peace talks with rebels who depend on the drug trade to fund their insurgency.

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the increase in coca production "unfortunate and concerning" but expressed confidence that Colombia's strong commitment to fighting trafficking will allow it and the U.S. to reverse the trend.

While Colombia is the largest supplier of cocaine to the U.S., Peru appears to remain the largest producer of the drug thanks to higher-yielding, mature coca fields. Most of its production is destined for non-U.S. markets in Europe and Brazil.

Colombia's Justice Minister Yesid Reyes said the report should generate some much-needed reflection.

"Although we've had a lot of success, the anti-drug policy needs to change because it's demonstrated not to be as efficient as we'd like," Reyes told journalists in Washington, where he traveled to explain to U.S. officials the scope of the fumigation program's review.

Bron: abcnews.go.com

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Recordoogst voor Afghaanse papaverboeren | Buitenland

Papaverboeren in het zuiden van Afghanistan gaan een recordoogst tegemoet. Zij hebben de beschikking over een nieuw soort zaad voor planten die sneller groeien, groter worden en minder water nodig hebben dan de zaden die tot nu werden gebruikt. De hoeveelheid opium per plant kan mogelijk zelfs verdubbelen.


Bron: Volkskrant

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Van Vollenhoven: 'Softdrugsbeleid moet op de helling'

Pieter van Vollenhoven, voorzitter van de Stichting Maatschappij en Veiligheid, roept de regering op 'lef te tonen' en eindelijk eens de patstelling in het softdrugsbeleid te doorbreken. Volgens hem zijn er twee opties: helemaal stoppen met het gedoogbeleid, of de aanlevering van cannabis aan de coffeeshops toestaan.

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Zelf wil hij geen voorkeur uitspreken voor stoppen dan wel reguleren van de achterdeur. 'Ik houd van duidelijkheid. Nederland moet kiezen', aldus Van Vollenhoven. Hij roept de Nederlandse regering ook op om het beleid weer in overeenstemming te brengen met de internationale verdragen. Dat kan door sluiting van de coffeeshops of door de verdragen te veranderen. 'Misschien is het internationale verbod op softdrugs wel achterhaald. In dat geval moet het verbod van tafel. Dan moeten we internationaal regelen dat we de verdragen niet overtreden', aldus Van Vollenhoven.

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Hasj, coke en pillen. Maar géén drank

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Zijn omgeving vond het maar ongezellig toen Haroon Ali stopte met alcohol. En dat hij andere drugs bleef gebruiken, riep weerstand op. Maar hoe beviel het hem eigenlijk zelf?

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The 3 deadliest drugs in America are all totally legal

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Politie vindt 7000 liter drugsafval in truck in Weert

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Brandweer en politie hebben gisteravond in een vrachtwagen in Weert 7000 liter aceton gevonden, afkomstig uit een drugslab. De gevaarlijke afvalstof zit in vaten, zei een woordvoerder van de brandweer.