The World Wide War on Drugs #9 - Legal Highs are Go!

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'Tientallen drugslabs in woonwijken opgerold'

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'Politici deinzen er niet voor terug onschuldige burgers bloot te stellen aan de gevaren die vast zitten aan de War on Drugs zoals MDMA en amfetamine', zegt Korpschef Heeres van Breda tegen RTL Nieuws. Burgemeester Paul Depla van Breda zegt: 'Het zijn tikkende tijdbommen in buurten en wijken. Het is onacceptabel'.

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Megaproces drugshandel haven Rotterdam van start

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In Rotterdam is vandaag een megaproces begonnen tegen negentien verdachten die betrokken zouden zijn bij drugssmokkel van Zuid-Amerika naar Nederland en België. De bende zou actief zijn geweest in de havens van Rotterdam en Antwerpen.

De groep wordt er onder meer van verdacht computerspecialisten te hebben ingehuurd om de systemen van havenbedrijven te hacken. Zo kon de bende zeecontainers onderscheppen waar drugs in zaten.

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'Rabobank onderzocht wegens witwassen Mexicaans drugsgeld'

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In januari werd al bekend dat de autoriteiten onderzoek doen naar de Californische filialen van de Rabobank. Toen besloot de bank de vestiging in Calexico te sluiten. Volgens Bloomberg stapelen de bewijzen zich inmiddels op. Zo was er bij dat filiaal opvallend veel cash in omloop en reden de geldwagens af en aan. Mogelijk konden drugskartels via de Rabobank jarenlang hun geld witwassen. De autoriteiten onderzoeken nog of de Rabobank de signalen wel voldoende heeft opgepikt.

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Twee ton drugs ontdekt in privévliegtuig Saoedische prins

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De pillen zijn van het 'merk' Captagon, een van de meest gebruikte drugs in het Midden-Oosten. Sinds de oorlog uitbrak in Syrië wordt het middel volop geproduceerd (vaak met ingrediënten afkomstig uit Europa) en geconsumeerd in de regio. Het middel wordt, berichtte persbureau Reuters vorig jaar, gebruikt om lange, hevige gevechten te kunnen doorstaan. De verkoop van de drugs levert weer geld op om wapens te kunnen kopen.

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Cannabis cafes set to open all around Britain | UK news | The Guardian

Less than a week after the Government's top drugs advisory committee called for cannabis to be downgraded from Class B to Class C - severely reducing penalties for possession - campaigners are setting up coffee shops confident that such a move is now all but inevitable. Last week the Liberal Democrats became the first mainstream party to adopt a policy of legalising the drug.

The cannabis entrepreneurs setting up the coffee shops include an affluent retired businessman, an internet pioneer and a wheelchair-bound victim of multiple sclerosis living on disability benefits. Many have been attending a special course in the Netherlands to teach British people how to run a coffee shop, including how to tell the difference between types of weed and the best tactics for dealing with police and local authorities.

The movement has taken its cue from the Dutch Experience, Britain's first cannabis coffee shop in Stockport, which has been raided by police three times since opening last September. However, repeated mass protests made the police back off, and the coffee shop still attracts around 200 people a day. In the next fortnight, Dutch Experience 2, which is in the process of being decorated, is to open its doors in Bournemouth.

Other coffee shops are set to follow in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cumbria, Liverpool, Rhyl, Anglesey, Milton Keynes, Braintree, Brighton, Taunton, Worthing, and Lambeth and Hoxton in London. Britain is on course to follow the Netherlands in having a public cannabis café culture.

The campaigners have been encouraged by rapidly changing attitudes to the illegal drug, and the prospect of the Government downgrading it from Class B to Class C. All say they would like to co-operate with police and local authorities, but are prepared to go to prison if necessary.

Jimmy Ward, who went on the coffee-shop course in January, is currently working 16 hours a day with eight friends to prepare the Dutch Experience 2 for its opening in the next fortnight. Ward, who used to run a haulage business, was unable to persuade any landlord in Bournemouth to rent a café to him, so he is converting a storage unit he owns.

'We're studding the walls, putting in water, and a false ceiling,' he said. 'Ever since my girlfriend and I met 14 years ago we wanted to run a coffee shop. We thought we'd have to go to Holland, but with everything happening here, we thought we could open one in the UK.

'Everyone locally loves it - I've had so much support from the public. But no matter what the authorities do, I am determined to open this. I am not worried about going to jail, so long as when I come out it is still open.'

Ward has recruited pensioners to grow cannabis for him, supplying them with seeds and growlights, and has had expressions of interest from dozens more. 'It helps them to pay the winter fuel bills. They are angry about being lied to all these years about how dangerous cannabis is,' he said. A report last week from the Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs concluded cannabis was less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.

Jeff Ditchfield, who went on the coffee-shop course with Ward, spent last week looking for a property to buy in Rhyl, north Wales, to convert to a coffee shop. 'I don't want it in a residential area or near a school or McDonalds, because the kids will try to come in,' said Ditchfield, who retired two years ago. His café will stick to the strict Dutch coffee-shop rules of banning all alcohol, hard drugs and anyone under 18.

The Deputy Mayor of Rhyl, Glyn Williams, said the plan 'beggars belief', prompting Ditchfield to name his coffee shop 'The Beggars Belief'.

Williams said: 'We are not in the process of helping people break the law. I firmly believe that, if you downgrade cannabis, then there'll be so many more parents who'll come forward with tragic stories about their children.' However, the Chief Constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, has publicly called for drugs to be legalised.

David Crane, the director of an internet company for seven years, is in the process of raising £250,000 for an upmarket coffee shop in Hoxton, London. 'We've been speaking to a number of different people in the music business and media, and they are very keen, largely because they smoke dope themselves. I absolutely believe that coffee shops are a benefit to society,' he said.

Many of the cannabis entrepreneurs are veterans of protests at the Dutch Experience in Stockport. Almost 100 people, including the local MEP, went to Stockport police station holding cannabis and demanding to be arrested. After arresting 28 people, the police gave up, prompting protesters to declare cannabis had been legalised in Stockport.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Drugslaboratorium in Hoornsterzwaag opgerold

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De politie is een paar dagen geleden begonnen met een onderzoek naar de productie van drugs in dit gebied. Er kwam een tip binnen dat er in het gebouw drugs zouden worden gemaakt en dat er mensen binnen waren. Vanmiddag heeft de politie het laboratorium ontruimd.

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Overheidscampagne wijst op gevaren drugs

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De overheid komt in het voorjaar met een campagne om jongeren en hun ouders te wijzen op de gevaren van drugs. Volgens staatssecretaris Van Rijn weten ouders veel te weinig over het drugsgebruik van hun kinderen.

Uit het laatste onderzoek van het Trimbos-instituut blijkt dat 60 procent van de mensen die regelmatig stappen weleens xtc gebruikt.

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Staatssecretaris Van Rijn zegt dat het Nederlandse drugsbeleid goed werkt, maar hij maakt zich wel zorgen over de recente ontwikkelingen. "De normalisering van drugsgebruik tijdens het uitgaan wil ik ter discussie stellen", schrijft hij aan de Tweede Kamer.

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Chemsex rise prompts public health warning | Society | The Guardian

Some sexual health services setting up special clinics in response to growing use of illegal psychoactive substances during sex

The growth in use of illegal psychoactive substances during sex could pose an increasing risk to public health, experts say.

The popularity of “chemsex” – mostly but not exclusively among gay men – is leading some sexual health services to set up special clinics to treat the consequences of drugs such as GHB, GBL and crystal meth.

Users are turning to such sources to lower inhibitions and increase pleasure, according to an editorial in the BMJ by experts in sexual health and drug misuse.

Its authors warn of a “small but important” increase in the use of mental health services by chemsex drug users. Psychological and physiological dependence on the drugs can become permanent, they say.

“Chemsex drug users often describe losing days – not sleeping or eating for up to 72 hours – and this may harm their general health. Users may present too late to be eligible for post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV transmission.” say the authors.

“An increased number of sexual partners may also increase the risk of acquiring other sexually transmitted infections. Data from service users suggest an average of five sexual partners per session and that unprotected sex is the norm.”

The editorial says: “Many barriers exist to chemsex drug users accessing services, including the shame and stigma often associated with drug use and ignorance of available drug services.”

It points to a 2014 report by Antidote, a London drugs service for lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual people, which suggested that nearly two-thirds of people seeking help from it reported using chemsex drugs.

The authors say: “Addressing chemsex-related morbidities should be a public health priority. However, in England funding for specialist sexual health and drugs services is waning and commissioning for these services is complex.”

The Royal College of GPs agreed with the warning. Dr Richard Ma, of its sexual health and blood-borne virus group, said: “Chemsex is a rapidly emerging pattern of drug use, not just amongst men who have sex with men as often assumed, but heterosexual patients as well.

“Taking recreational drugs during sex can lead to a number of potentially harmful side-effects including facilitating the spread of common STIs and HIV, but also serious mental health problems such as anxiety, psychoses and suicidal tendencies. It is essential that both patients and healthcare professionals – including GPs and primary healthcare teams – are aware of these and take the issue seriously.”
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Mexico opent deur naar legalisering marihuana

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Mexico heeft de eerste stap gezet op weg naar het legaliseren van marihuana. Het Hooggerechtshof heeft bepaald dat elke burger het recht heeft marihuana te consumeren. Ook mag iedereen het kweken voor persoonlijk gebruik zonder winstoogmerk.

De uitspraak van het hof is opzienbarend. Mexico heeft een uiterst conservatieve drugswetgeving, die geen onderscheid maakt tussen soft- en harddrugs. Sinds 2006 is het land verwikkeld in een bijzonder gewelddadige drugsoorlog. Die heeft al meer dan 100.000 levens gekost. Meer dan 25.000 Mexicanen zijn spoorloos verdwenen.

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Indonesia plans to use crocodiles to guard death row drug convicts | World news | The Guardian

In echoes of the Bond film Live and Let Die, the country’s anti-drugs chief is backing the plan because ‘you can’t convince them to let criminals escape’


Indonesia’s anti-drugs agency has proposed building a prison on an island guarded by crocodiles to hold death row drug convicts, an official has said, an idea seemingly taken from a James Bond film.

The proposal is the pet project of anti-drugs chief Budi Waseso, who plans to visit various parts of the archipelago in his search for reptiles to guard the jail.

Related: In the end, Chan and Sukumaran's executions stung Indonesia's economy. In the end, Chan and Sukumaran's executions stung Indonesia's economy, not its conscience | Brigid Delaney

“We will place as many crocodiles as we can there. I will search for the most ferocious type of crocodile,” he was quoted as saying by local news website Tempo.

Waseso said that crocodiles would be better at preventing drug traffickers from escaping prison as they could not be bribed – unlike human guards.

“You can’t bribe crocodiles. You can’t convince them to let inmates escape,” he said.

But he is banking on the convicts lacking the crocodile-running skills shown by Roger Moore’s 007 in the Bond movie Live and Let Die when he escapes from an island using the reptiles as stepping stones.

The plan is still in the early stages, and neither the location or potential opening date of the jail have been decided.

Indonesia already has some of the toughest anti-narcotics laws in the world, including death by firing squad for traffickers, and sparked international uproar in April when it put to death seven foreign drug convicts, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

But president Joko Widodo has insisted that drug dealers must face death as the country is fighting a “national emergency” due to rising narcotics use.

Despite the harsh laws, Indonesia’s corrupt prison system is awash with drugs, and inmates and jail officials are regularly arrested for narcotics offences.

Anti-drugs agency spokesman Slamet Pribadi confirmed authorities were mulling the plan to build “a special prison for death row convicts”.

He said only traffickers would be kept in the jail, to stop them from mixing with other prisoners and potentially recruiting them to drug gangs.

The agency is currently in discussions with the justice ministry about the plan, he added.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Douaniers vast voor drugssmokkel Schiphol

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Twee douaniers zijn vandaag opgepakt omdat ze mogelijk drugs hebben ingevoerd op Schiphol. Ook zouden ze een ambtenaar hebben omgekocht. RTV NH schrijft dat in totaal vier mensen vastzitten in deze zaak.

De ene douanier is een 32-jarige vrouw uit Zandvoort; de andere een 48-jarige man uit Purmerend. De andere twee verdachten zijn een 44-jarige man uit Purmerend en een 59-jarige man uit Oostzaan. Bij huiszoekingen werd bij de 44-jarige Purmerender een vuurwapen gevonden.

Het onderzoek is gedaan door de Koninklijke Marechaussee, onder leiding van het Openbaar Ministerie Noord-Holland. Ook de FIOD en de Rijksrecherche zijn betrokken bij het onderzoek.

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'Amsterdams ziekenhuis maakte miljoenen winst op heroïne'

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De drugs werden geproduceerd in opdracht van het ministerie van Volksgezondheid en waren bestemd voor drugsverslaafden die het onder begeleiding van hulpverleners kregen toegediend. Het VWS zegt in een reactie in NRC Handelsblad dat het op de hoogte is van de winst die wordt gemaakt.

Het ziekenhuis maakte meer dan 30 procent winst op de heroïne, schrijven Soeterhorst en Wester. 'Van de drie miljoen die de bv van het ministerie jaarlijks als vergoeding krijgt, is meer dan één miljoen winst. Die ging naar het eigen vermogen van het ziekenhuis - een kwart van dat totale vermogen werd verdiend met productie en verkoop van heroïne.'

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Neven presidentsvrouw Venezuela verdacht van smokkel 800 kilo cocaïne

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Twee neven van de vrouw van de Venezolaanse president Maduro worden donderdag in New York aangeklaagd wegens drugssmokkel. Het tweetal werd dinsdag op Haïti gearresteerd tijdens een undercoveroperatie van de DEA en overgebracht naar New York. Ze zouden hebben geprobeerd om 800 kilo cocaïne te smokkelen naar de VS. De vrouw van Maduro, Cilia Flores, is een van de invloedrijkste personen in het Venezolaanse bewind.

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Douane vindt 300 kilo cocaïne tussen bevroren kip | NOS

De Douane heeft in Rotterdam 300 kilo cocaïne gevonden tussen een lading bevroren kip. Er is verder niemand gearresteerd.

De drugs zaten in twaalf sporttassen verstopt tussen de kip in een container uit Brazilië. De cocaïne heeft een straatwaarde van ruim tien miljoen euro. De lading drugs is onmiddellijk vernietigd.

Het HARCteam, een samenwerkingsverband van Douane, Zeehavenpolitie en Fiod, onderzoekt wie er achter de smokkel zitten.

Bron: nos.nl

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America's poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs

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Karen Jennings patted her heavily made up face, put on a sardonic smile and said she thought she looked good after all she’d been through.

“I was an alcoholic first. I got drunk and fell in the creek and broke my back. Then I got hooked on the painkillers,” the 59-year-old grandmother said.

Over the years, Jennings’ back healed but her addiction to powerful opioids remained. After the prescriptions dried up, she was drawn to the underground drug trade that defines eastern Kentucky today as coal, oil and timber once did.

Jennings spoke with startling frankness about her part in a plague gripping the isolated, fading towns dotting this part of Appalachia. Frontier communities steeped in the myth of self-reliance are now blighted by addiction to opioids – “hillbilly heroin” to those who use them. It’s a dependency bound up with economic despair and financed in part by the same welfare system that is staving off economic collapse across much of eastern Kentucky. It’s a crisis that crosses generations.

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Leading the blight is a powerful and highly addictive opioid painkiller, OxyContin, known locally as "hillbilly heroin". Typically it is ground down and injected or snorted to give an instant and powerful high.

Its misuse is so routine that the bulk of court cases reported in the local papers are drug related. Just about everyone in Beattyville has a story of the human cost. Some mention the decline of the town's homecoming queen, Michele Moore, into addiction in the 1990s. Moore struggled by as a single mother living in a trailer home before she was stabbed to death by a man while the two were taking drugs.

At about that time, Beattyville's police chief, Omer Noe , and the Lee County sheriff, Johnny Mann, were jailed for taking bribes to protect drug smugglers. Five years later, the next Lee County sheriff, Douglas Brandenburg, went to prison for a similar crime.

Amid the relentless destruction of life, there is little that shocks. But four years ago residents of Harlan County - a couple of hours' drive to the south-east - were shaken by a series of deaths over six weeks of parents of members of the local boys and girls club. Eleven of the children watched a parent die.

Getting the drugs isn't difficult. Elderly people sell their prescription drugs to supplement some of the lowest incomes in the US. The national average retirement income is about $21,500. In Beattyville it is $6,500.

Last year, a pharmacy owner in nearby Clay County, Terry Tenhet, was jailed for 10 years for illegally distributing hundreds of thousands of pills after police tied the prescriptions to several overdose deaths. In 2011 alone, he supplied more than 360,000 OxyContin pills in a county with only 21,000 residents. Those prescriptions were mostly written by doctors in other states.

Prosecutors alleged that for years a single pain clinic nearly 1,000 miles away in south Florida had provided the prescriptions for a quarter of the OxyContin sold in eastern Kentucky. The bus service to Florida is known to police and addicts alike as the "Oxy Express".

In 2012, Dr Paul Volkman was sentenced to four life terms for writing illegal prescriptions for more than 3m pills from a clinic he ran in Portsmouth, Ohio, on the border with eastern Kentucky. Prosecutors said the prescriptions had contributed to dozens of overdose deaths.

Another doctor, David Procter, is serving 16 years in prison for running a "pill mill" at which at least four other doctors were involved in the illegal supply of drugs to eastern Kentucky.

There is little sympathy for doctors or pharmacists acting as dealers, but there is a view in Beattyville and surrounding towns that people have been exploited by something bigger than a few medics, largely because they are regarded as "backward".

Davis said the drug companies aggressively pushed OxyContin and similar drugs in a region where, because of a mixture of the mining, the rigours of the outdoors and the weather, there was a higher demand for painkillers.

Here's this synthetic opium product and they sell it as regular pain medicine. They knew how highly addictive it was

"You couldn't go to a doctor without seeing a merchant there. Here's this synthetic opium product that's supposed to be good for palliative care - cancer patients - and they start selling it as regular pain medicine. They knew how highly addictive it was and they sold it anyway," he said. "I live in a town of 1,500 people with seven pharmacies as well as pain clinics and methadone clinics and the full backup industry. Everybody gets paid, doctors and pharmacists and lawyers."

Recently released research shows that abuse of powerful opioid painkillers is in part responsible for a sharp rise in the death rate among white middle-aged Americans over the past two decades, particularly less-educated 45- to 54-year-olds. The report by academics at Princeton university also blamed misuse of alcohol and a rise in cheaper high quality heroin along with suicides. The researchers said they suspected that financial stress played a part in people taking their lives.

OxyContin's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, was penalised $634m by a federal court in 2007 for misrepresenting the drug's addictive effects to doctors and patients. Purdue is now being sued by the Kentucky government. The state's attorney general, Jack Conway, accuses the company of concealing information about the dangers of the drug in order to increase profits, and its salespeople of claiming OxyContin is less addictive and safer than it is.

"I want to hold them accountable in eastern Kentucky for what they did," Conway told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "We have lost an entire generation."

Purdue has denied the claim.

Late last year the Beattyville Enterprise reported that pharmacists in the town were appealing to drug companies for greater control over another prescription medicine, Neurontin, which is increasingly in demand and has been found at the scene of overdose deaths. Heroin use is also on the rise.

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Top drug expert says: the war on drugs is just a war on the poor

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Scotland’s war on drugs amounts to a war on the poor, according one of the country's leading authorities on substance abuse.

In a new paper, Dr Iain McPhee, from the University of the West of Scotland's Centre for Alcohol and Drugs Studies, calls the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, “unjust, unfair and unworkable.” McPhee was Project Leader of the National Drugs Helpline and the National AIDS Helpline, and has worked as a drugs specialist with social work and Scottish police.

According to the academic, tough key performance indicators to be met by officers from Police Scotland means that it is those living in areas of multiple deprivation, and seen as “problem drug users”, who are targeted the most.

Separately, another drug policy expert, former Scottish Government adviser Mike McCarron, has said that if drugs were decriminalised savings could be made by Police Scotland and health and social work amounting to £1.5 billion.

Although, according to a recent survey, drug crime is the public’s top priority for Police Scotland, McPhee says it is the enforcement of prohibition that “exacerbates drugs related crime” and says the way to deal with problematic drug use is through tackling social deprivation.

The force’s targets also explain why, since 2003, the arrest rate for drug dealers in Scotland is twice as high as it is in England and Wales.

McPhee told the Sunday Herald: “The war on drugs, one must conclude, is a war on the poor, as they are most affected by the performance indicators used by medicine, criminal justice social work, particularly child protection, and the police, enforcement and security agencies.”

He continued: “Only a continual challenging of the moral framework on which drug policy rests can lead to reforms of our unjust, unfair and unworkable drug policies.”

The academic said that the government was aware of this, and pointed to a report by John Birt commissioned by the Blair government. Birt’s report pointing out the unfairness of the act was then suppressed.

“All the things that we attribute to drugs, like poor health, or poor housing or poverty, these are in many ways enduring structural factors caused by inequality and deprivation, and these people when they use drugs may go on to be problem drug users, but the key factor here...is there is no relationship between the activity of the police, the availability of drugs and the number of drug users. And no matter what you spend on the misuse of drugs it can never achieve its aims.”

In a survey of 31,000 people across Scotland conducted by the police to feed into their annual plan, 28 per cent of the public said they wanted the force’s top priority to be tackling drug crime, ahead of road safety, violence and anti-social behaviour.

McPhee believes this is what has led to those in poorer areas being targeted. "I think it would be reasonable to conclude that they must be targeting scarce resources, which may or may not be intelligence-led, about where they think most activity which infringes the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 occurs," he said. "That would appear to be specific areas in Scotland that are also where there is most inequality and deprivation. I think it's no secret that by far the majority of people who are attending services for treatment and the majority of people who are incarcerated for infringements of the Misuse of Drugs Act invariably reside in areas characterised by deprivation, no matter what index is used."

A police source told the Sunday Herald that most drug arrests were in poorer areas because that was where the problem drug users and the gangs were.

“Nobody in the west end of Glasgow, or in the posh bits of Edinburgh or Aberdeen is bothered if their neighbour is doing a wee bit of coke. But see when you’ve got junkies breaking into folks houses and stealing bikes and stereos so they can get their next fit then of course we should be there. And by and large that’s happening in poorer areas where there’s higher dependency and you have the presence of gangs,” the source said.

There is seemingly little appetite to devolve drug laws to Scotland. Although the Scottish Government’s default position is to want all powers transferred to Westminster, in the White Paper for independence, there was only a passing mention made to independence allowing “decisions on drugs policy and drug classification to be taken together in a coherent way.”

Politicians will be keenly aware of Police Scotland’s survey results. There are few votes to be won from backing drug law reforms. Former Scottish Government adviser Mike McCarron, however, is hopeful that reform could be on the cards.

“I don't see the Westminster Government either now or in the foreseeable future adopting significant change of direction in drug policy, so if drug policy is not fully devolved then a very 'strong voice' of Scottish MPs will be needed at Westminster to increase harm prevention and service effectiveness within a significant change of policy direction.”

McCarron, who works with Transform Drug Policy Scotland, believes decriminalisation and taxation and regulation of drugs could see the costs to Scotland of drugs harm reduced by as much £1.5 billion.

“This might include, regarding the £600 million spent on police and prisons, potentially several hundreds of millions pounds saved or redeployed for other policing needs and further tens of millions raised in tax for investments.

“So we should scrutinise every detail of the the estimated £3.5 billion socio-economic costs for potential savings and tax gains, comparing prohibition with regulation. Savings and taxes could fund a greater number of services to meet Scotland's very high needs and also improve the quality of services.”

Scotland does have a problem with drugs. And it is worse here than it is in the rest of the UK. According to the UN's World Drugs Report, Scotland has a greater per-head use of heroin, ecstasy and cocaine than almost any other country in the world.

David Liddell Director of Scottish Drugs Forum said it’s difficult to quantify exactly how many drugs are in Scotland and how many people are using them.

“The nature of an illegal trade is that you would only ever have fairly crude estimates. However, from the available statistics, a troubling picture emerges.”

Liddell says that latest figures from the government show 6.2 per cent of adults reported using a drug in the last year including 0.5% who had taken new drugs or legal highs. A quarter of those who used drugs said they “felt dependent”.

“The estimated number of individuals with problem drug use in Scotland is 59,500 - 1.68 per cent of the population - 2.43 per cent of all males and 0.96% of all females resident in Scotland. In this context, problem drug use is defined very narrowly in terms of the use of heroin and benzodiazepines such as diazepam. Our fatal drugs overdose figures are very high – far higher than in England, for example - and amongst the highest in Europe which in part merely reflects the high levels of problem drug use, in particular heroin use.”

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Irish police back decriminalising personal possession of heroin

Minister in charge of drug policy calls for move as part of ‘radical cultural shift’ in tackling Ireland’s narcotics crisis

Police officers in Ireland have backed a proposal from a government minister to make possession of heroin, cocaine or other opiates for personal use no longer an arrestable offence.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, who is in charge of Ireland’s drug policy, said this month that the country should move towards decriminalising possession of small quantities of certain narcotics, including all class A opiates, as part of a “radical cultural shift”.

He said attitudes to drugs must move away from shaming users, focusing instead on helping them, and that there was a difference between decriminalisation and legalisation.

The Garda Representative Association, which represents 11,500 frontline officers, has welcomed the move to decriminalise personal possession, saying it would free up police resources.

“I think anything that can deal with the curse of drugs and some innovating thinking on this is to be welcomed,” the GRA’s general secretary, PJ Stone, said, adding that Ó Ríordáin’s proposal would be seen as a brave move.

Stone said that instead of targeting drug users, Garda and state resources should be directed against the “big guys” who make millions from the misery of drug use.

The GRA has called for a more realistic solution to Ireland’s drug crisis than simply arresting users on the streets.

One GRA source said resources are so stretched in Dublin, where heroin usage is rife in certain parts of the capital, that “we don’t even have enough cells to lock up drug users who get arrested for possessing drugs”.

Ó Ríordáin’s initiative marks a major break with the state’s decades-long policy of criminalising heroin and other drug users.

He also confirmed that one of his last acts as minister before the Irish parliament dissolves and a general election is held in early spring will be to introduce safe, supervised heroin injecting rooms in Dublin.

Speaking at his constituency office in north-east Dublin, the Labour party minister said the centre could be up and running within 12 months.

Denying that his call for such a centre in the capital made him soft on drugs, Ó Ríordáin said the idea, which he first proposed in a speech to the London School of Economics earlier this month, was winning support across Ireland.

“My initial sense was that there should be one in Dublin, near the city centre in an area where they are used to treating people with addictions in the methadone clinics. At first I thought I would get a lot of objections to this idea but instead over the last few days I have been getting contacts from people across the country, from Galway, Cork and Waterford, who are all saying to me that they need the same kind of facility in their cities too.”

The sight of people injecting heroin is commonplace not only on some of Dublin’s most deprived housing estates but also parts of the city centre. One of the most notorious spots, where open drug dealing is also prevalent, is the boardwalk along the river Liffey towards O’Connell Bridge and the lower end of O’Connell Street, Dublin’s most famous thoroughfare.

Retailers, the tourist industry and city councillors have all called for alternatives to the open heroin consumption and dealing in some of Dublin’s most famous quarters.

Ó Ríordáin pointed towards the window overlooking the area he represents and said that there was open drug dealing and injecting even in the parks and playgrounds of his constituency.

“Opening up a safe injection room is not a solution but it is a recognition of failure that our society has produced people who are so vulnerable that this is the habit that they have. But either we address it as it is or we ignore it or we try to criminalise it. I don’t think we can police our way out of it. Instead I think we have to look from a humanitarian perspective about where the drug user is coming from and we will have a better chance of success that way.”

In the film about the murdered campaigning journalist Veronica Guerin, starring Cate Blanchett, the reach of Dublin’s drug gangs is exposed and public anger is laid bare over the Garda Síochána’s inability to stem the flow of heroin and other opiates pouring into the city during the 1990s.

Ó Ríordáin said he did not believe in legalising the drugs themselves but added it was time to stop arresting and prosecuting users for possession of small quantities of narcotics.

“Seventy per cent of the drug convictions in this state involve those who had drugs on them for personal use. In my view that is a waste of Garda time, that is a waste of the courts’ time and it does absolutely nothing for people who suffer from addictions.

“What does a Guard [Irish police officer] do if he or she walks down the street and sees a person injecting? Technically that person is still committing a crime and should be arrested under the law. The same would go for anyone possessing heroin who was walking into our proposed safe injecting room.”

He added: “How therefore can we encourage addicts to get off the streets, stop injecting in public places, inject in a safe environment where there are clean needles, where the risk of contracting things like hepatitis C are minimal if they fear they would be arrested at the door for possessing heroin? The only solution is decriminalise possession of drugs for personal use.”

Frontline organisations that work with Dublin’s hardcore heroin users have welcomed the first ever anti-prohibition move taken by an Irish minister regarding the drug crisis. The Merchants Quay project based on the Liffey said there are an estimated 20,000 opiate users in the city with 10,000 currently registered on the state’s methadone/heroin substitute programme. In 1996 there were 2,000 registered users signed up to the programme.

“The graph in terms of the numbers of addicts in Ireland has moved in only one direction since the 1980s and that is upwards,” said Tony Geoghegan, Merchants Quay’s CEO.

“In places like Dublin we have met with and tried to help three generations of drug users from one single family. Changing the law so that addicts are not sent to prison or given criminal convictions is an important step in really tackling this crisis. As is opening up a safe heroin injecting space in the city centre. Criminalisation has not worked.”

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Fake ambulances used to smuggle £1.6bn of drugs into UK, court told | UK news | The Guardian

Leonardus Bijlsma and Dennis Vogelaar were allegedly part of gang that pretended to be paramedics to transport heroin and cocaine

Audacious smugglers may have sneaked up to £1.6bn worth of cocaine and heroin into the UK using a fleet of fake ambulances, a jury has heard.

The gang was kitted out with bogus paramedic uniforms and might even have used fake patients to make their cover more authentic, Birmingham crown court was told.

Two Dutchmen, Leonardus Bijlsma and Dennis Vogelaar, were allegedly part of a lucrative criminal conspiracy to bring huge hauls of drugs into the country under the noses of British police, it is claimed.

The jury was told the smuggling operation may have seen up to £420m in “top-quality” class-A drugs reach the UK, via the Channel’s ferry ports.

When the high-purity drug packets were cut down to individual street-value wraps, the total cash value could increase four-fold, reaching a staggering amount, said prosecutor Robert Davies.

He added: “The prosecution suggest this was a top-level, audacious, and – up to the point of interception and the arrests – a successful and lucrative criminal conspiracy.”

Davies said the conspiracy was uncovered when officers of the National Crime Agency (NCA) swooped on one of the ambulances after tracking it to Smethwick in the West Midlands on 16 June.

When police arrived they arrested Bijlsma, described in court by Davies as the “righthand man” in the organisation and the “ambulance” driver Vogelaar.

The men were equipped with bogus paramedic uniforms and a letter purporting to be from a Dutch patient being taken to a London hospital for treatment.

Investigations revealed that the ambulance was “rammed” to the roof with more than £38m of cocaine and heroin. Inside the back of the ambulance, concealed behind metal-riveted panels in six “hides”, were neatly stacked, colour-coded packets of class-A drugs including cocaine with a street value of more than £30m and heroin worth £8m. Officers also found 60,000 ecstasy tablets.

When the NCA officers swooped in Smethwick, two other men – Olof Schoon, 38, and Richard Engelsbel, 51 – were also detained, jurors heard.

Davies explained that they did not appear in the dock alongside Bijlsma and Vogelaar, both from Amsterdam because they had already admitted conspiracy to import class-A drugs.

Schoon, who was a director of the Dutch-based Schoon Ambulance Company, was described by prosecutors as “the central player”.

Davies, opening the case for the crown, said the ambulance tracked to Smethwick contained “an absolutely enormous amount of class-A drugs”. He added: “In truth, the ambulance was rammed with drugs.”

The prosecutor told the jury that further study of company records revealed that the fake ambulance journeys had been “going on over weeks and months”.

In the Netherlands, investigators discovered “a fleet of ambulances” being run by Schoon’s company, ostensibly transferring patients to and from the UK.

But Davies described the firm and its operations as nothing more than “a veneer” for the smuggling operation.

“Four [ambulances] had hiding places of a similar type,” he added. “Between the vehicles, at least 45 trips can be shown to have been made in 14 months, with the final trip in June.”

Bijlsma, 55, and Vogelaar, 28, are charged with conspiracy to smuggle. They deny the offence.

In police interviews, they told officers they had no knowledge of the drug-smuggling operation with Bijlsma stating he had travelled abroad to look at a car. Vogelaar said that he had believed his driving job to be genuine.

However, the prosecutor told jurors they would be studying “highly incriminating” evidence implicating both men, including a rivet gun found with Bijlsma’s DNA on it, which it is claimed was used to fasten the false panels inside the ambulance.

The prosecution likened Vogelaar, who was shown on CCTV played in court wearing a paramedic’s uniform, to the 70’s cartoon character Mr Benn, whose adventures always began with him visiting a fancy-dress shop and choosing a uniform or outfit.

“The organised crime group running this operation would not have risked an innocent stooge aboard one of its ambulances,” added Davies.

The trial, expected to last two weeks, continues.

Bron: www.theguardian.com