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

quote:

Will Colombia stop fighting coca with Monsanto's glyphosate?

Research by the World Health Organisation sparks recommendations to suspend aerial fumigations of coca plants.

Picture a red jeep bumping up and down a longish, straight, red dirt road in rural Colombia and, coming from the opposite direction, one lone motorcyclist. The two vehicles draw near and stop. “Amigo, we have problems,” says the motorcyclist to the jeep driver, “they’re fumigating.” “Where?” He gestures back in the direction the jeep has come from. “Two planes.”

That was all that was said. Nothing else required. The motorcyclist sped off to do whatever you do when you’re faced with such a terrifying prospect: planes spraying your home, land and loved ones - or the home, land and loved ones of someone you know - with a cocktail of chemicals including glyphosate.

That exchange took place somewhere east of a town named San Jose del Guaviare in Colombia’s Guaviare department, one of the biggest coca-producing regions in the country that has “likely” just overtaken Peru to reclaim “its position as the world’s principal cocaine producer”, according to InSight Crime’s interpretation of recently-released US White House statistics. The planes were taking off from San Jose and piloted by US citizens because the Colombians weren’t considered skilled enough to spray accurately enough - or so I was told.

Aerial fumigations using glyphosate - developed and patented by US-based firm Monsanto - have been carried out in Colombia for more than 20 years, and have become the cornerstone of the US-financed and -supported so-called “War on Drugs.” The stated aim is to destroy the cultivation of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, and it is estimated that at least 1.6 million hectares have been sprayed.

Many people, both in Colombia and abroad, have condemned and protested the fumigations for years. The stated reasons - aside from the fact they haven’t succeeded in eradicating coca cultivation - are legion. One such reason is that they have killed 1,000s of hectares of legal crops belonging to 1,000s of campesinos, Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, and because of devastating environmental impacts including destroying soil fertility, contaminating water, and pushing coca cultivation deeper into particularly environmentally sensitive, biodiversity-rich regions like the Amazon.

Other reasons include intensifying Colombia’s civil war, facilitating killings and abuses by paramilitaries, encouraging support for guerrillas, forcing people to flee to neighbouring Ecuador, increasing poverty, and causing appalling health impacts. Headaches, vomiting, eye irritations, skin rashes and burnings, poisoning, lower sperm counts, miscarriages, hair loss, respiratory problems including lung cancer, foetal deformations, destruction of red blood cells and mental health disorders have all been reported.

“We find significant effects of spraying campaigns on the probability of occurrence of dermatological problems (skin irritations, highlight burnings, etc.) and abortions,” found one recent, particularly controversial study co-written by Daniel Mejia, the president of the Colombian government’s Advisory Commission on Narcotics Policy, based on fumigations between 2003 and 2007. “Our results corroborate some of the results in the medical literature (e.g., the negative effects of exposure to glyphosate on dermatological problems and abortions).”

But will the fumigations now be suspended or, even better, stopped altogether? In March the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced the results of nearly a year’s research, published in The Lancet, which found that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans”, that it causes “DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells”, and “there is convincing evidence that [it] also can cause cancer in laboratory animals.” Colombia’s Health Ministry responded the following month by recommending the “immediate suspension” of glyphosate fumigations, and the president himself, Juan Manuel Santos, appears to agree. El Colombiano reported comments by the Conservative party president that Santos would heed the ministry’s advice, and that now appears to have been confirmed by the president himself during a speech he gave on Saturday, 9 May, at a hospital in Bogota.

“I’m going to ask the government functionaries and ministers who sit on the National Narcotics Council that in their next meeting [scheduled for 15 May] they suspend the use of glyphosate in the spraying of illegal crops,” said the president, citing the Health Ministry’s recommendation and a 2014 order by the Constitutional Court to investigate the potential risks of glyphosate fumigations as contributing to his decision.

Santos followed that statement with an appearance on Colombian television yesterday, 11 May, where he said “We must find strategies [to combat cultivation] that are more effective and cause less harm to the environment and public health.”

Monsanto has responded to the WHO’s research by calling it “Junk Science”, “biased” and “irresponsible.”

“We are outraged with this assessment,” Dr. Robb Fraley, Monsanto’s Chief Technology Officer, is quoted as saying. “This conclusion is inconsistent with the decades of ongoing comprehensive safety reviews by the leading regulatory authorities around the world that have concluded that all labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health. This result was reached by selective ‘cherry picking’ of data and is a clear example of agenda-driven bias.”

Others disagree. Dario Aranda, a journalist from Argentina, where glyphosate is used across almost 30 million hectares, calls the WHO’s conclusions “late” but “welcome.”

“[It] has confirmed what fumigated peoples, their neighbours fighting with them, social organisations and academics outside the business sector have been saying for more than 10 years,” he wrote in an article published by lavaca.org two days after the WHO’s research was made public. “The world’s most used herbicide affects people’s health.”

quote:

'You can’t trust anybody': the Mexicans caught up in the drug war just south of Texas

Cartel violence in Tamaulipas state has claimed 254 lives in the first three months of this year, but has largely gone unreported in the press

quote:

When Carlos Ulivarri heard that a body had been dumped by the side of a road just outside his hometown of Rio Bravo, a few miles south of McAllen, Texas, he knew he had to act fast.

But he did not even consider contacting the authorities.

Hours earlier, Ulivarri’s son, Luís Carlos, 23, had been shot in a bar, and then dragged into the night after an altercation with a group of men presumed to be members of a local drug cartel.

At first, Ulivarri held out hope his son might be alive. But at 10am the next morning, a friend called to say that a corpse had been spotted on a road outside town which marks the frontline between two warring cartel factions.

Ulivarri, the president of the Rio Bravo chamber of commerce, knew that the body might disappear for good if he did not move quickly, but he did not want to risk a confrontation with either gang, who are both known to monitor the road.

So instead of calling the police and waiting for an escort, he drove alone to the site, bundled his son’s body into his car, and brought him home for the last time.

“We are on our own,” Ulivarri said in a phone interview from his office in Rio Bravo, just six miles from the Donna international bridge into Texas.

“Everybody is frightened here, there is lots of danger and you can’t trust anybody. Lots of people are sending their children away to the United States but that is not the solution.”

Rio Bravo sits on the northern edge of Tamaulipas, a state which is currently gripped by a patchwork of conflicts between rival factions of the Gulf cartel.

It is a war which according to official figures has claimed 254 lives in the first three months of this year, but has largely gone unreported in the Mexican and international press.

Earlier this month, the US state department warned against all but essential travel to Tamaulipas. “Violent conflicts between rival criminal elements and/or the Mexican military can occur in all parts of the region and at all times of the day,” it said.

And if the public circumstances of Luís Carlos Ulivarra’s murder illustrate the brazen quality of cartel violence, his father’s reaction reflects the pervasive distrust many locals feel towards the official response.

quote:

Colombia suspends spraying illegal coca fields with herbicide over cancer link | World news | The Guardian

Move marks end of decades-long strategy to counter drug trafficking after a number of studies suggest glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans

Move marks end of decades-long strategy to counter drug trafficking after a number of studies suggest glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans

Colombia will suspend aerial fumigation of illegal coca plants in light of a number of studies linking the herbicide it has used to cancer, a move which marks the end of a decades-long strategy in the country’s fight against drug trafficking.

Related: Last flight looms for US-funded air war on drugs as Colombia counts health cost

The Andean country is one of the world’s biggest producers of cocaine, which is derived from the coca plant. Its leftist rebel groups, the Farc and ELN, as well as criminal gangs make huge sums from their involvement in its production and trafficking.

Colombia, which produces some 300 tonnes of cocaine per year, has fumigated illicit coca crops for two decades with financial and technical help from the United States, using the herbicide glyphosate. The strategy also included spraying of poppies, used to make heroin.

“We’ve taken the decision by a majority of 7-1, to suspend the spraying of areas with glyphosate,” the health minister, Alejandro Gaviria, said, referring to the vote taken by the National Narcotics Council late on Thursday.

Various scientific reports, including one by the World Health Organisation, have suggested that the weed killer is likely carcinogenic to humans, Gaviria said.

Spraying will be halted after administrative formalities are completed, which could take several weeks, he added.

Glyphosate is a key ingredient in the world’s most widely used herbicide, Roundup, produced by Monsanto Co.

Monsanto officials have said the chemical has been proven safe for decades and the company has demanded a retraction from WHO over its report linking the herbicide to cancer.

President Juan Manuel Santos called for an end to the fumigations last week, adding law enforcement should intensify its efforts against other parts of the drug trafficking supply chain, which include clandestine laboratories and smuggling networks.

Local communities have expressed concerns that exposure to glyphosate has caused illnesses, among them cancers and birth defects. Colombia was the only South American country still using the chemical, authorities said.

The defence ministry and other entities which fight narcotics trafficking will be tasked with recommending other ways to eradicate illegal plants, the minister added, including possibly increasing the amount of it manually uprooted.

Over the past three decades, more than 1.6m hectares of land in Colombia have been sprayed using the chemical.

Opposition figures have expressed fears that a halt to spraying may increase coca and cocaine production.
Bron: www.theguardian.com

quote:

Home-brewed heroin? Scientists create yeast that can make sugar into opiates | Science | The Guardian

Researchers have managed to reproduce the way poppies create morphine in the wild, but warn that the technology needs urgent regulation

Researchers have managed to reproduce the way poppies create morphine in the wild, but warn that the technology needs urgent regulation

Home-brewed heroin could become a reality, scientists have warned, following the creation of yeast strains designed to convert sugar into opiates.

The advance marks the first time that scientists have artificially reproduced the entire chemical pathway that takes place in poppy plants to produce morphine in the wild.

Scientists warned that the findings could pave the way for opium poppy farms being replaced by local morphine “breweries” and called for urgent regulation of the technology. In theory, opium brewing would be no more difficult to master than DIY beer kits, raising the possibility of people setting up Breaking Bad-style drug laboratories in their own homes.

Tania Bubela, a public health professor at the university of Alberta and co-author of a commentary on the research in the journal Nature, said: “In principle, anyone with access to the yeast strain and basic skills in fermentation could grow morphine-producing yeast using a home-brew kit for beer making.”

The team behind the advance have stopped one step short of linking together the entire chemical chain within a single easy-to-brew yeast strain, and announced a self-imposed moratorium on the work to allow law enforcement agencies and regulators time to catch up.

“We’re certainly not aiming for the illicit drugs market, that’s for sure,” said Vincent Martin, a microbiologist at Concordia University in Québec and co-author. “We realised that we’re entering into a brave new territory here. Me and my collaborators felt that various regulatory bodies should be consulted and talked to and we should build a consensus of how to take this forward.”

The findings, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, mark a turning point in efforts that have been made for more than a decade to replicate in microbes the 15-step chemical pathway in the poppy plant.

Scientists had previously succeeded in reproducing the second half of the chemical pathway, but the initial conversion of glucose to a compound called reticuline had proved a sticking point. The latest study cracks this problem for the first time by inserting genes from the poppy plant, sugar beet and a soil-dwelling bacteria into yeast.

Several existing yeast strains are available that can turn reticuline into morphine, and the scientists said that combining the two halves of the process was now feasible – although they have not yet attempted this final step.

“What you really want to do from a fermentation perspective is to be able to feed the yeast glucose, which is a cheap sugar source, and have the yeast do all the chemical steps required downstream to make your target therapeutic drug,” said John Dueber, lead author and a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley. “With our study, all the steps have been described, and it’s now a matter of linking them together and scaling up the process. It’s not a trivial challenge, but it’s doable.”

He predicted a timeline of a “couple of years, not a decade” for the reliable production of controlled drugs by sugar-fed yeast.

Being able to synthesise opiates in the laboratory raises the possibility of engineering new therapeutic forms of the drug, designed to be less addictive, more powerful or longer lasting, for instance.

“It creates a platform for finding new chemical structures that could have a lot of potential benefits,” said Martin.

However, it also raises concerns about the yeast falling into the wrong hands. In their commentary, Bubela and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) call for urgent regulation of the technology warning that it could lead to an alternative system for current criminal networks, particularly in North America and Europe, where the drugs are in high demand. “Because yeast is so easy to conceal, grow and transport, criminal syndicates and law-enforcement agencies would have difficulty controlling the distribution of an opiate-producing yeast strain,” the authors write. “All told, decentralised and localised production would almost certainly reduce the cost and increase the availability of illegal opiates - substantially worsening a worldwide problem.”

Future strains of morphine-producing yeast could be designed to have unusual nutrient requirements as a biocontainment measure, Bubela suggests. Such strains should also be kept in bio-secure facilities in the future, with similar safeguards to those used by researchers working with anthrax or smallpox.

Globally, more than 16 million people use opiates illegally. The drugs come from the misuse of prescription pain medications and from illegally cultivated poppy crops in countries such as Afghanistan, Laos and Mexico.

“The time is now to think about policies to address this area of research,” said Dueber. “The field is moving surprisingly fast, and we need to be out in front so that we can mitigate the potential for abuse.”

Martin said the team had no plans to complete the chain until regulations were in place to do so safely. “If this is something that we shouldn’t do, let’s talk about it now,” he added.
Bron: www.theguardian.com

quote:

50 duizend liter chemicaliën voor drugs gevonden bij grote actie | Binnenland


In het zuiden van het land heeft de politie vandaag een grote actie gehouden tegen drugscriminaliteit. Daarbij werd onder meer in een loods in Den Bommel (Goeree-Overflakkee) 50.000 liter aan chemicaliën aangetroffen voor het vervaardigen van synthetische drugs. Twee personen zijn opgepakt.

quote:

Naast de politie waren bij de actie het OM, de douane en de gemeenten betrokken bij de operatie. In totaal ging het om honderd man. De actie is onderdeel van de aanpak van de drugscriminaliteit in het zuiden van het land. Daarvoor is extra politiecapaciteit beschikbaar.


Bron: Volkskrant

quote:

‘Ambtenaren in advies: voorkom bolletjesvluchten vanaf Eindhoven’



Ambtenaren van de ministeries van Veiligheid en Justitie, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu willen dat het kabinet voor de plannen van Arke gaat liggen om vanaf november van Eindhoven naar Curaçao en Aruba te vliegen. Nieuwsuur meldt dit vanavond op grond van een geheime ambtelijke nota.

Arke, onderdeel van TUI, maakte afgelopen februari bekend dat het vanaf november twee keer per week wil gaan vliegen vanaf Airport Eindhoven naar Curaçao en Aruba. Daarmee zou Eindhoven het eerste regionale vliegveld zijn met intercontinentale vluchten. De ambtenaren van de drie ministeries adviseren in de nota dit soort vluchten uit landen met een ’100-procentcontroleregime’ voor drugs alleen vanaf Schiphol toe te staan.

Volgens de ambtenaren is er te weinig tijd om voor 1 november alle benodigde apparatuur, opvangruimtes en personeel klaar te hebben om de vluchten op bolletjesslikkers te controleren. Ook zouden de voorzieningen hiervoor te duur zijn; er zou een investering van 11 miljoen euro nodig zijn plus nog jaarlijks 18,5 miljoen euro aan personeelskosten.

In een reactie aan Nieuwsuur zeggen Arke en Eindhoven Airport dat ze ‘formeel niet op de hoogte zijn’ van een ambtelijk advies.

Mochten wij hierover in de daarvoor bestemde overleggen formeel berichtgeving ontvangen, dan zullen Arkefly en Eindhoven Airport hierover in gesprek gaan. In deze overleggen is 1 november tot nu toe het uitgangspunt geweest voor de start van deze operatie.

Volgens NRC-economieredacteur Mark Duursma is het voor zowel de luchthaven als Arke vervelend als het advies wordt opgevolgd door de betrokken ministers:

“Beide partijen hebben geïnvesteerd om dit mogelijk te maken. Voor Arke is het bovendien de eerste intercontinentale bestemming en het bewijs dat het ook lange afstandsvluchten aankan. Ook voor de toekomstige ontwikkeling van Lelystad Airport zou dit negatief kunnen uitpakken. Nu pakken dit soort regionale luchthavens vooral de chartervluchten naar goedkope vakantiebestemmingen, maar ik kan me voorstellen dat ook Lelystad op den duur ambities in de richting van intercontinentale vluchten heeft.”

Volgens Duursma zou ook Schiphol, dat overigens een meerderheidsbelang in Eindhoven Airport heeft, doorgang van dit advies met lede ogen aanzien.

“De Schiphol Group die ook eigenaar is van Lelystad en de luchthaven van Rotterdam wil juist dat de regionale vliegvelden zich ontwikkelen tot serieuze luchthavens zodat Schiphol zelf verder kan doorgroeien. Schiphol zelf wil zich steeds meer richten op de zakelijke transfers.”

Schiphol is de snelst groeiende grote luchthaven van West-Europa. Het aantal vliegbewegingen in het handelsverkeer nam vorig jaar met 3 procent toe en het aantal tonnen vervoerde vracht met 2,5 procent. Ook het aantal passagiers dat via Eindhoven Airport komt, groeide naar 4 miljoen, 6,5 procent van alle passagiers.
Bron: Trouw

quote:

Lib Dem leadership candidate Norman Lamb calls for cannabis legalisation | Politics | The Guardian

Lamb criticises ‘catastrophic failure’ of war on drugs and urges rational, education-based approach

The Liberal Democrat leadership candidate Norman Lamb has called for the UK to legalise, regulate and tax the sale of cannabis.

The former care minister and MP for North Norfolk said the UK should draw on examples from US states such as Colorado, which legalised the possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use by over-21s in November 2012.

He said he wanted immediate legalisation of the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and said there should be a swift evidence-based policy change in relation to recreational use.

Lamb acknowledged that the legalisation of recreational use would require a UN treaty change, which he said could be secured at the 2016 meeting of the general assembly on the UN’s drug control system.

“There has been a catastrophic failure of the war on drugs, with thousands of lives lost,” Lamb said. Drug laws were “criminalising so many young people, which blights their lives because of a decision about personal use which then affects their careers and creates a global criminal network”.

He added: “As a parent, I have real concerns about the dangers of drugs, both legal and illegal. But I think that it’s much better to take a rational, education-based approach rather than the approach that we take at the moment.”

The Liberal Democrats have historically been supportive of liberalising drug laws. Their general election manifesto this year pledged to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis for medicinal use and to establish a review to assess the effectiveness of legalisation experiments in the US and Uruguay.

Lamb’s only opposition in the leadership race is Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem president and key figure on the left of the party. Farron is thought to be the frontrunner and has secured the formal backing of three of the party’s eight MPs (Mark Williams, John Pugh and Greg Mulholland); the heads of the Scottish and Welsh branches of the Lib Dems, Willie Rennie and Kirsty Williams; the party’s only surviving MEP, Catherine Bearder; and more than 100 former Lib Dem election candidates.

Lamb has been publicly endorsed by Tom Brake, the MP for Carshalton and Wallington, and Shirley Williams, a founding member of the Social Democratic party, which joined with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats in 1988.

On Monday, Julian Huppert, a former MP and a campaigner for drug law reform, backed Lamb and his cannabis policy.
“This is not the first time Norman has called for bold changes based on looking at the evidence – he’s done so on mental health, on prison reform and more,” Huppert said. “I think this is exactly the bold leadership we need, and hope people who feel likewise will support Norman.”
Bron: www.theguardian.com

quote:

Mexico's election faces disruption as radical teachers burn ballot papers | World news | The Guardian

Relatives of disappeared join protests amid breakdown in credibility of electoral authorities, widespread corruption claims and murders

Radical teachers and relatives of Mexico’s disappeared have vowed to disrupt voting in the country’s coming national election on Sunday, towards the end of an electoral campaign that has been marked by the murders of candidates amid serious questions about fairness and legitimacy.

“We are ready to install and operate all the polling stations,” Lorenzo Córdova , the head of the national electoral authorities, told international observers. They are in Mexico to monitor the election that will elect all new members of the lower house of congress, as well as nine new governors and hundreds of new mayors. “But if the conditions put the physical integrity of our staff, or the voters, in danger we will not do it. We are not responsible for security.”

Related: Third political candidate killed ahead of Mexico's midterm elections

Córdova was talking about a group of radical teachers whose efforts to roll back education reform now include a movement that aims to block the working of polling stations in five southern states.

The protests are at times violent and have been particularly intense in Oaxaca where the teachers have ejected electoral officials from their offices across the state, burned ballot papers, clashed with the security forces and severely affected the distribution of petrol.

In the state of Guerrero, protesters have included relatives of people who have been killed or disappeared in the drug war violence that has ragedin Mexico for the past eight years.

There is particularly tension around the town of Tixtla, a centre of protest since 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in the town disappeared after being attacked by cartel gunmen and municipal police, last September.

Local media has reported 21 murders around the country directly associated with the elections. These include three candidates and one would-be candidate, whose beheaded body was dumped beside a message that read “this is going to happen to all the fucking politicians who don’t get in line”.

Security expert Alejandro Hope said the murders of candidates were the logical consequence of a climate in whichdisparate drug cartels are sowing terror and political vendettas can be hidden behind a tendency to blame all assassinations on organised crime. He also stressed the failure of the authorities to provide protection for candidates.

“Given the prevailing conditions,” Hope wrote in El Daily Post, “the surprise is not that some candidates get killed, but that the number of corpses is not much higher.”

The credibility of the elections has also been damaged by questions surrounding the ability of the electoral authorities to guarantee fairness.

“I cannot think of an election where the reputation of the electoral authorities has been so low,” said political analyst Federico Estevéz. “That does not bode well.”

Much of the criticism has centred on the failure to rein in the Green Party’s systematic flouting of campaigning rules, such as the amount of political advertising permitted. The Green party, widely alleged to be among the most corrupt in Mexico, is an ally of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of President, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Related: Mexico's Greens: pro-death penalty, allegedly corrupt – and not very green

The fact that no major party is free of allegations of serious corruption has helped give maverick independent candidate Jaime Rodriguez – nicknamed El Bronco – a shot at winning the governorship of the rich northern state of Nuevo Leon, according to most polls. Elsewhere, however, corruption allegations have prompted a movement to spoil ballot papers.

“Spoiling my ballot paper is the only way I can see of stripping the system of legitimacy, shaking it up and reforming it so that it favours citizens,” national political commentator Denise Dresser said in a YouTube video.

For all the signs of crisis, the elections appear set to produce a balance of power that differs little from the one in place since the last time the country voted, in 2012. Polls suggest that the PRI will remain dominant, and with the help of the Greens, could even obtain a majority in congress.
Bron: www.theguardian.com

quote:

Iran opent 150 nieuwe klinieken voor alcoholverslaafden

quote:

De Iraanse regering opent binnenkort 150 nieuwe klinieken voor alcoholverslaafden. Opmerkelijk, want alcohol is verboden in de streng islamitische republiek

quote:

De autoriteiten schatten dat, ondanks het verbod dat sinds de Iraanse revolutie van 1979 geldt, ongeveer 200 duizend Iraniërs een alcoholprobleem hebben. 'Persoonlijke redenen zijn de belangrijkste factoren die leiden tot de verspreiding van alcoholconsumptie in de samenleving', zei vice-minister van Gezondheid Alireza Mesdaghinia in 2012. 'Sommigen denken dat dit de manier is om met hun frustraties om te gaan.'

quote:

Iran scoort nog een stuk hoger als het gaat om drugsgebruik. Het hoofdkantoor van de Iraanse drugsbestrijdingsdienst schat dat ongeveer 3 miljoen Iraniërs verslaafd zijn aan drugs (met name opium, al zijn heroïne, crack en crystal meth in opkomst). Er zijn ook onderzoeken die suggereren dat het aantal eerder richting de 10 miljoen gaat. Iran telt daarmee het hoogste aantal drugsgebruikers ter wereld.

Het land kent, verrassend genoeg, een progressief drugsbeleid. Er zijn ongeveer 600 klinieken voor drugsverslaafden, waar patiënten schone naalden krijgen om drugs de injecteren. In alle grote steden zijn methadonklinieken en verslaafden die op straat leven worden geholpen door de vele ngo's die in het land actief zijn.

quote:

Op donderdag 11 juni 2015 09:46 schreef Basp1 het volgende:
Coalitiepartner VVD is fel tegenstander van regulering van wietteelt, maar laat in een reactie weten de zorgen over gezondheidsrisico's te delen.

"Het is dan ook goed dat in het regeerakkoord is afgesproken het gehalte werkzame stoffen terug te brengen en het THC-gehalte voor softdrugs is inmiddels gemaximeerd op 15 procent", stelt VVD-Kamerlid Foort van Oosten.

quote:

OM wil snellere berechting van drugsverdachten



Het Openbaar Ministerie werkt aan het creëren van ‘fast lanes’ die een snellere berechting van drugsverdachten mogelijk moeten maken. Dat zei de hoofdofficier van justitie van Limburg, Roger Bos, vandaag op een bijeenkomst in Tilburg waar de resultaten werden gepresenteerd van een negen maanden geleden begonnen offensief tegen de vaderlandse drugsmaffia.

Bos presenteerde de resultaten samen met burgemeester Peter Noordanus en het hoofd van de landelijke recherche Wilbert Paulissen. In Brabant, Zeeland en Limburg zijn sinds oktober 125 rechercheurs actief om samen met FIOD, OM en Belgische collega’s alle drugshandel in het zuiden nadrukkelijker aan te pakken. Volgens Bos wil justitie “de strafrechtelijke keten versnellen om sneller vonnissen te kunnen krijgen”.

Nu duurt het vaak jaren voordat verdachten in een drugsonderzoek voor de rechter staan. Bos zei dat dit onder meer komt omdat advocaten de strafzaken vertragen door vele tientallen getuigen op te roepen. Hij zei niet hoe hij dit probleem denkt op te lossen.

Het drugsoffensief in het zuiden heeft tot nu toe onder andere geleid tot een inbeslagname van ruim 100.000 liter aan chemicaliën die worden gebruikt voor de productie van XTC en amfetaminen. Er werden 200.000 pillen in beslag genomen en 116.000 hennepplanten. In totaal werden 149 mensen gearresteerd.

Volgens Paulissen slaagt de politie er goed in de “criminele infrastructuur in het zuiden te verstoren”. Hij zei te verwachten dat het recherchewerk zal leiden tot een verhoging van de prijzen van drugs en een verplaatsing van de criminele activiteiten. Noordanus zei dat “een prioriteit is de productie van drugs stevig terug te dringen”. In zijn stad Tilburg wordt volgens onderzoek jaarlijks zo’n 750 miljoen euro omgezet in de drugshandel die er aan 2.500 mensen werk biedt.

“Brabant hoeft geen land van heiligen te worden”, aldus Noordanus maar de huidige situatie acht hij onacceptabel. “Ik wil een stad besturen waar mensen op een normale manier geld verdienen. De huidige omvang van de drugshandel ondergraaft de rechtsstaat”. Volgens hoofdofficier van justitie Bos is door het huidige justitie offensief “de onschuld van hennep” definitief verdwenen.