The World Wide War on Drugs #10 - Dag ter Bestrijding van Drugs

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Kamala Harris Hits Jeff Sessions for 'Dark Ages' Drug Sentencing - Rolling Stone

Kamala Harris Hits Jeff Sessions for 'Dark Ages' Drug Sentencing

California Sen. Kamala Harris – who served as a prosecutor, district attorney and state attorney general before winning her seat in Congress – blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions' draconian new sentencing guidelines earlier this week.

Speaking at the Center for American Progress' Ideas Conference in Washington, D.C., Harris delivered one of the standout speeches of the event, widely viewed as a showcase for the Democrat's 2020 bench.

Sessions' recent memo ordering federal prosecutors to pursue the harshest sentences possible for low-level nonviolent drug offenders effectively declared the start of the War on Drugs II, Harris says.

"I saw the War on Drugs up close, and, let me tell you, [it] was an abject failure," she tells the audience. "It offered taxpayers a bad return on investment. It was bad for public safety. It was bad for budgets and our economy. And it was bad for people of color and those struggling to make ends meet."

Harris started her career as prosecutor in the East Bay at the height of the crack epidemic. Back then, she recalls, "there were so many of these nonviolent drug cases that we would do handoffs in a court house – we called them handoffs – that meant that these young baby prosecutors would be handed a file of a possession case, simple possession, and we'd have about five minutes to review it before we went to court. And then we would go in and argue for some sentence [for which] this person would be jailed."

Pursuing the toughest possible sentence for nonviolent drug offenders, a regular practice in Eighties and Nineties, had dire consequences: It overcrowded prisons and ruined lives. Stigmatized convicts had trouble getting jobs after they served their time, trapping them and their families in endless cycles of poverty. Sessions' new policy, Harris declares with authority, would take America "back to the dark ages."

Months before issuing the sentencing guidance, Sessions began laying the groundwork for it with another memo, which reversed an Obama-era directive phasing out the use of private prisons. The order, Sessions wrote in February, "impaired" the Bureau of Prison's "ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system."

If it wasn't clear at the time what America's "future needs" would be, it became so last week: The U.S. will be spending incredible sums of money, as it did in the past, to lock up nonviolent offenders.

"Let's be clear about private prisons: The business model is that you reap profit from incarcerating people," Harris says. "We should not be creating incentives to house people in prison, we should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison."

Harris' advice for the progressives huddled in this windowless ballroom at the D.C. Four Seasons is to push for more resources to treat addiction, the root cause of so many of these convictions, and to work to elect progressive prosecutors at the state and local level, where the "vast majority" of prosecutions occur.

"We need a national drug policy that finally treats substance abuse not as a crime to be punished but as a disease to be treated. We need to build on reforms, instead of reviving mandatory minimums or boosting bottom lines for private prisons, and we need to fund – not defund – the office of National Drug Control Policy," she finishes. "And we need this administration to understand that if they care about the opioid crisis in rural America as they say they do, they have also got to care about the drug-addicted young man in Chicago or East LA."

Bron: www.rollingstone.com

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Study finds mushrooms are the safest recreational drug

People taking mushrooms in 2016 needed medical treatment less than for MDMA, LSD and cocaine, while one of the riskiest drugs was synthetic cannabis

Mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs people take recreationally, according to this year’s Global Drug Survey.

Of the more than 12,000 people who reported taking psilocybin hallucinogenic mushrooms in 2016, just 0.2% of them said they needed emergency medical treatment – a rate at least five times lower than that for MDMA, LSD and cocaine.

“Magic mushrooms are one of the safest drugs in the world,” said Adam Winstock, a consultant addiction psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, pointing out that the bigger risk was people picking and eating the wrong mushrooms.

“Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.”

Global Drug Survey 2017, with almost 120,000 participants in 50 countries, is the world’s biggest annual drug survey, with questions that cover the types of substances people take, patterns of use and whether they experienced any negative effects.

Overall, 28,000 people said they had taken magic mushrooms at some point in their lives, with 81.7% seeking a “moderate psychedelic experience” and the “enhancement of environment and social interactions”.



Magic mushrooms aren’t completely harmless, notes Winstock. “Combined use with alcohol and use within risky or unfamiliar settings increase the risks of harm most commonly accidental injury, panic and short lived confusion, disorientation and fears of losing one’s mind.”

In some cases people can experience panic attacks and flashbacks, he added, so his advice for people thinking about taking them is to plan “your trip carefully with trusted company in a safe place and always know what mushrooms you are using”.

Even bad trips can have positive outcomes, according to a separate piece of research carried out by Roland Griffiths and Robert Jesse at John Hopkins Medicine.

In their 2016 paper they surveyed almost 2,000 individuals about their single most psychologically difficult or challenging experience with magic mushrooms. Of that group, 2.7% received medical help and 7.6% sought treatment for enduring psychological symptoms. Nevertheless 84% of those surveyed said they benefitted from the experience.

“In a way, it’s not really so surprising,” said Griffiths in a Q&A about the paper. “When we look back on challenging life events we wouldn’t choose, like a bout with a major disease, a harrowing experience while rock-climbing, or a painful divorce, sometimes we feel later that the difficult experience made us notably stronger or wiser. We might even come to value what happened.”

Outside of recreational use, magic mushrooms have been shown in clinical trials to treat severe depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Of the almost 10,000 LSD consumers who took part in GDS 2017, around 1% of them – 95 individuals – reported seeking emergency medical treatment, five times more than those who took magic mushrooms.

“LSD is such a potent drug,” said Winstock. “It’s so difficult to dose accurately when tabs you buy vary so widely. It’s easy to take too much and have an experience beyond the one you were expecting.”

He added that drug manufacturers are starting to incorporate novel super potent psychedelics such as NBOMe into tabs, which adds to the risk. He suggests making efforts to get a “reliable, trustworthy supply” and “always take a tiny dose to start”, waiting a few hours before taking more.

One of the riskiest drugs, according to the survey, was synthetic cannabis. Over one in 30 of users in the sample sought emergency medical treatment – the highest of any drug studied except crystal methamphetamine. That rises to one in 10 among people who use the drug at least 50 times per year. These figures echo the data from the previous year’s report.

Synthetic cannabis, sold as “spice” and “black mamba”, is an umbrella term for hundreds of chemical compounds that mimic the effects of THC, the active ingredient of cannabis, in the brain. These synthetic forms are often extremely potent, cheap and odourless, which has led to them flooding the market in the US and Europe. They’ve been particularly popular in prisons in the UK, where they’ve had a “devastating impact” and have been linked to deaths, serious illness and episodes of self-harm among inmates.

Brad Burge from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps) urged caution on relying on people’s self reports for data as people often take multiple drugs at the same time, so you can’t be sure which one is causing the problem.

He also highlighted that seeking emergency medical treatment means different things for different drugs. With a drug such as heroin, a trip to the emergency room is a life-or-death situation requiring resuscitation and medication. With LSD or mushrooms, a patient will receive supportive psychological reassurance.

“There is no known lethal dose for LSD or pure psilocybin,” he said.

Both Winstock and Burge said that the findings indicate a need for drug policy reform, with a focus on shifting psychedelics off the schedule one list of the most dangerous controlled substances.

“Drug laws need to balance the positives and problems they can create in society and well crafted laws should nudge people to find the right balance for themselves,” said Winstock.

“People don’t tend to abuse psychedelics, they don’t get dependent, they don’t rot every organ from head to toe, and many would cite their impact upon their life as profound and positive. But you need to know how to use them.”

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Trump complimenteert Duterte met drugsaanpak | NOS

De Amerikaanse president Trump heeft zijn Filipijnse ambtsgenoot Duterte gecomplimenteerd met zijn "fantastische aanpak van het drugsprobleem". Dat blijkt uit uitgelekte Filipijnse notulen van een telefoongesprek, die in handen zijn van Amerikaanse media.

Trump had dit telefoongesprek vorige maand met Duterte. De opmerking over het drugsprobleem was een van de eerste dingen die Trump zei tijdens het gesprek. De uitspraken zijn opvallend, omdat Duterte internationaal juist onder vuur ligt vanwege zijn harde aanpak van drugscriminelen.

Sinds het aantreden van Rodrigo Duterte in juni vorig jaar zijn naar schatting al rond de 8000 mensen gedood die in verband werden gebracht met drugs. De meesten zijn door de politie doodgeschoten, maar er worden ook doodseskaders ingezet.

In binnen- en buitenland is er veel kritiek op dat drugsbeleid. De VN pleit al langer voor een moordonderzoek naar het handelen van Duterte.

President Trump lijkt daar volledig aan voorbij te gaan: "Veel landen hebben een drugsprobleem. Wij hebben een probleem. Ik wilde even bellen om te zeggen dat je het goed aanpakt."

Bron: nos.nl

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Locoburgemeester Emmen dook drie weken onder na doodsbedreiging | NOS

Locoburgemeester Bouke Arends (PvdA) van Emmen en zijn vrouw hebben drie weken lang in Groot-Brittannië ondergedoken gezeten in verband met een doodsbedreiging. Die kreeg hij na de sluiting en sloop in januari van het clubhuis in Emmen van motorclub No Surrender.

De reden daarvoor was dat er structureel in drugs werd gehandeld. Ook was het er neergezet zonder dat er een bouwvergunning was afgegeven.

Bijna twee maanden na de sluiting van het clubhuis kreeg hij op een ochtend een telefoontje van de politie, zegt hij in een interview met RTV Drenthe. Die vertelde dat er een bedreiging was binnengekomen. Later die dag zou de politie opnieuw contact opnemen.

's Avonds, na een bezoek aan FC Emmen-FC Eindhoven, kreeg Arends te horen dat de bedreiging zo ernstig was dat hij beter niet meer thuis kon slapen. De politie kon niet zeggen van wie de bedreiging kwam.

Arends en zijn gezin maakten zich op voor een weekend bij Van der Valk in Emmen, maar in plaats daarvan werd hij naar een hotel ergens anders in Nederland gebracht.

Aan het eind van het weekend meldde zich de hoofdofficier van justitie in Noord-Nederland. Die vertelde dat de dreiging dermate serieus was dat Arends naar het buitenland moest vertrekken. "De dreiging was alleen op mij gericht, niet op mijn vrouw en kinderen", zei Arends tegen RTV Drenthe. "Ja, dan gaat er echt van alles door je heen."

Arends en zijn vrouw vertrokken de maandag daarna in een gepantserde auto naar Groot-Brittannië. Waarheen precies wil hij niet kwijt. De kinderen verbleven elders in Emmen.

Hij is boos en gefrustreerd over wat hem is overkomen. "Dit is toch Nederland en niet een of andere bananenrepubliek?"

Hij pleit voor fors meer geld voor het opsporingsapparaat. "Terrorisme is een probleem, maar de ondermijning van de rechtsstaat is zo mogelijk een nog een groter probleem."

Na drie weken Groot-Brittannië kregen Arends en zijn vrouw te horen dat er geen dreiging meer was en dat ze veilig naar huis konden terugkeren.

Arends zegt dat de gebeurtenissen een grote impact hebben gehad. Van de sluiting van het clubhuis heeft hij geen spijt. Hij zou het morgen precies zo doen. "Alleen zou ik dan na dreiging niet vertrekken. Het voelde als een vlucht en dat is frustrerend."

Er zijn berichten dat de bedreiging inderdaad uit de hoek van No Surrender kwam, maar dat wordt ten stelligste ontkend door de club.

"Wij doen alles volgens het boekje. Het is een hetze van het Openbaar Ministerie richting No Surrender. De bedreiging komt niet bij de motorclub vandaan, daar durf ik mijn hand voor in het vuur te steken", aldus voorman Henk Kuipers.

Bron: nos.nl

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Uruguay, the first country where you can smoke marijuana wherever you like

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Alicia Castilla was watering the plants in her garden on a quiet Sunday afternoon when five police patrol cars screeched to a halt outside her home. A team of 14 officers “armed to the teeth” stormed through her gate and arrested the mild-mannered, 66-year-old intellectual. They seized everything they could find: computers, her mobile phone, books, even an orange squeezer.

They also impounded the 29 cannabis plants she was watering and 24g of marijuana they found in her possession. She was taken to a police station where she spent the night handcuffed to a bench. “They treated me like the female version of Pablo Escobar,” Castilla told the Observer. But far from resembling the infamous Colombian drug lord who inspired the 2015 Netflix series Narcos, Castilla was a peace-loving, grey-haired author whose book Cultura Cannabis had become an unexpected bestseller. Like many Argentinian sexagenarians, she had recently retired to nearby Uruguay. The seized plants were for her personal use. “I make a living writing about marijuana, not selling it.”

Castilla’s arrest in 2011 sent Uruguay into shock. Although the consumption of recreational drugs had never been outlawed in a country that prides itself on its broad-mindedness and liberal institutions, its cultivation and sale remained forbidden. The author faced between two and 10 years behind bars.

Her imprisonment at the women’s prison in the town of Canelones became round-the-clock news. “I fell into a foul-smelling pit that reminded me of Midnight Express. Cockroaches crawled over the bed, there were rats the size of rabbits in the bathrooms.”

Castilla realised she had become a national celebrity when her fellow inmates broke into spontaneous applause on her arrival. The eldest of the 120 women imprisoned there, her fellow inmates nicknamed her “the reefer grandmother”, a moniker that was quickly picked up by the press.

Thousands marched to demand her release. The protests soon galvanised a longstanding demand for the full legalisation of recreational cannabis. “The media coverage was crazy. Legislators started bringing legal marijuana draft bills for me to look at in prison,” Castilla, now 72, recalls.

Her three-month incarceration (and the lengthy series of trials until the case was dismissed by Uruguay’s supreme court last year) finally paid off. The cultivation of cannabis was legalised in 2014, and in July Uruguay will become the first country in the world where its sale is legal across the entire territory.

“It’s important for Uruguay to advance towards a logical regulation of recreational marijuana,” says Eduardo Blasina, director of the recently inaugurated Cannabis Museum located in a large terracotta-coloured property in the old Palermo neighbourhood of Uruguay’s capital city, Montevideo.

“The law gives consumers access to certified, unadulterated marijuana,” says Blasina. “South America’s war against drugs has been absurd, with catastrophic results no matter which indicators you consider, including consumption. If Uruguay’s experience turns out positive, it will be easier for other countries such as Colombia or Mexico, mired in huge problems with powerful narcos, to find a better solution than the disastrous one implemented so far.”

For Laura Blanco, one of the most energetic campaigners for legalisation, Uruguay's unique history of never having prohibited the consumption of any drug was key. "We found this grey area in the law where consumption was legal but cultivation was not, so every time a marijuana-grower was taken prisoner it was reinforcing the message that the only place to obtain access to a legal substance was on the illegal market."

But not everyone is pleased with how legal marijuana is being implemented in Uruguay. "I'm happy because now you can plant without going to prison," says Juan Manuel Varela, the 28-year-old manager of MDAR (Spanish-language acronym for high-quality marijuana), one of the cannabis clubs that have been set up under the new legislation. "But like many things in Uruguay, the new law is a good idea that is being applied badly."

Cannabis activists such as Varela and Castilla are upset that the new law falls short of full legalisation. Home growers are required to register with the government for a permit that grants them a maximum of six plants, and cannabis clubs such as Varela's require permits for a maximum of 45 members who are allowed to withdraw only 40g per month from the club's crop.

Most controversial of all, when the law goes into full effect in July, legal marijuana will only be available at pharmacies. Though the price will be highly accessible, only $1.30 per gram compared with $3 on the street, consumers must register with the government first. They will then be required to identify themselves with a digital thumb scan to withdraw their weekly maximum of 10g.

The government has taken important precautions to prevent the registry falling into the wrong hands because of the privacy issues involved. Pharmacists will not be given the name of the client associated with each thumb scan. Only the amount of grams still available from each client's quota will be revealed on the pharmacy's screen. Additionally, only seven members of the government will have access to the full registry, and three of them will need to be present simultaneously in order to retrieve any names from it.

"It's like a police file they're building of planters and consumers," says Daniel Vidart, another long-time cannabis activist and author who met, fell in love with and married Castilla shortly after her release from prison six years ago.

The impressively spritely 96-year-old is a personal friend of Uruguay's former president, José "Pepe" Mujica, who introduced a series of liberal reforms during his 2010-2015 term in office, including same-sex marriage, abortion and the sale of state-controlled marijuana.

Vidart is highly critical of his friend's marijuana law. "This law actually stigmatises marijuana more than it legalises it," says Vidart, holding his wife Castilla's hand. "Why should there be a registry of marijuana consumers and not one of alcohol consumers? Alcohol is a much deadlier drug. This law continues considering that marijuana smokers are so dangerous that they need to be counted by the government. And a registry is more or less safe as long as you have a democratic government, but it could become a weapon against consumers should the political mood change."

The registry was opened at the beginning of May. So far about 3,500 people (out of Uruguay's population of 3.4 million) have signed up to buy marijuana at pharmacies. Additionally, since 2014 about 6,700 have signed up as home growers and 57 cannabis clubs have been set up, according to the government's Cannabis Regulation and Control Institute.

Despite the media attention, sales seem to be likely to get off to a slow start. "Only 30 of the country's 1,000 pharmacies have signed up to sell marijuana so far," says Alejandro Antalich, vice-president of the Uruguayan pharmacies association.

"Our society can be conservative, resistant to change, so there is still uncertainty and many pharmacists are waiting to see how the system works before signing up to sell. There is also fear of reprisals against pharmacies from corner drug traffickers upset at losing their clients."

Castilla also has mixed feelings about the new law. "I would like to see full freedom to plant in your own home," she says.

Has she registered to plant or buy? "No, I haven't." Is she still growing at home? "Yes, I am." Isn't she afraid of falling foul of the new law? "I don't think they'd dare come after me again," says Castilla with a twinkle in her eye.

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Recreational drugs market should be managed by 'governments not gangsters', says expert

Steve Rolles argues the war on drugs has been a ‘spectacular failure’ and has led to ‘the most rapid expansion of drug use in human history’. His solution? Licensed high street venues...

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Over the 50-odd years the global war on drugs has been fought, it’s been a catalogue of failure on pretty much every level you’d care to examine – bar the bank balance of those profiting from the outcome. There may yet be another half century of futility and broken promises ahead of us, but one man has a vision of what a post-drug-war world could look like.

In his latest book, Legalizing Drugs: The Key to Ending the War, Steve Rolles, a senior policy analyst on drug policy with the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, provides a brief history of the global war on drugs, outlining the cost five decades of the policy has had on public health, the economy and human rights, and then goes on to suggest how the market should instead be “managed by governments, not gangsters”.

Approximately 247 million people now use drugs around the world, pumping money into a global industry worth more than $300bn (£233bn), according to a UN report from 2015, with a quarter of a billion adults worldwide having potentially taken illegal drugs such as cannabis, cocaine or heroin in 2014 alone.

The prohibition of drugs has had “little or no impact” on the rate of drug use, the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s annual report said last year, as the number of drug users had increased by almost 20 per cent between 2006 and 2013.

Last year also saw one of the world’s oldest general medical journals, The BMJ, call for the legislation of illicit drugs the first time. An editorial said prohibition laws had failed to curb either supply or demand, cut violence or reduce profits for organised crime. It went on to say the ban on the production, supply, possession and use of some drugs for non-medical purposes was causing immense harm.

In an interview with The Independent, Rolles, who has previously served as an adviser to the Global Commission on Drugs, argues that the “most striking thing about the war on drugs is its spectacular failings on its own terms”.

He says the idea behind the policy was to eradicate drugs from the globe in order to create a drug-free world by 2008, with the official slogan of the 1998 UN conference on the world drug problem being: “A Drug-Free World: We Can Do It.”

“Not only did that not happen but actually things continued to get worse so drug markets were founded, prevalence increased and all the problems related to drug use and illegal drug markets increased as well,” Rolles says. “For a policy that is specifically trying to eradicate drugs from the world, it has overseen the most rapid expansion of drug use in human history.”

The policy has instead backfired, he points out, leading to the creation of an “enormous illegal market where hundreds of billions every year are controlled by violent gangsters. So we have all of this crime and violence, both on UK city streets and around the world, which is fuelled by the illegal drug trade. We don’t have those issues with legal drugs. We don’t have tobacconists gunning each other down in the streets. All the problems associated with the vast illegal drug trade are essentially a result of prohibition.”

Instead of protecting the health of the public, the war on drugs has made drugs more dangerous, Rolles maintains. “It’s not deterring youth. It’s not preventing availability of access to drugs. It’s actually making drugs more dangerous.

“All drugs are fundamentally risky but when they’re produced and supplied through an illegal market they become more risky. People don’t know how strong they are, people don’t know what’s in them, their potency can vary wildly. All of the things that that the war on drugs is supposedly achieving in terms of protecting our health or protecting us from crime, it’s actually doing the opposite.”

Rather than continuing the war on drugs, Rolles argues that the drugs market could be reformed in a way that would leave it “managed by governments, not gangsters”. He advocates strict legal regulation from licensed vendors and different forms of regulation for different drugs, with greater restrictions placed on the more risky drugs.

His book outlines five tiers to regulate the drugs market. At the highest tier, the most risky drugs would only be available on prescription for people who are dependent users. The next tier down would be a pharmacy sales model, with a trained and licensed member of staff enforcing a code of practice in terms of age control or not selling to people who are intoxicated, but also available to give advice on health issues or refer people to other services if there are any concerns.

The third tier “is just more familiar licensed retailing, a bit like tobacconists or off licences,” Rolles explains, regulated in terms of opening hours and age access controls. The next model would “be a bit like pubs,” a licensed venue where people could consume drugs on the premises. “So it would be like pubs for alcohol or cannabis coffee shops in the Netherlands.

“You could imagine potentially extending that model to some other drugs. So perhaps membership-based clubs where you could buy and consume MDMA, for example, or perhaps an opium den model where you could go to licensed premises where you can smoke opium.”

The least regulated model would “be basically just a supermarket” for mild stimulants, such as cocoa or poppy tea, “very mild products that don’t really need much significant regulation at all over and above normal descriptions and sell-by dates and the usual stuff”.

Rolles believes regulating the drugs market would ‘‘make less risky drugs relatively more available and more risky drugs relatively less available. And in that way, over time, perhaps shepherd people towards safer products and safer behaviours. Prohibition tends to do the exact opposite. It tends to encourage the use of the most risky products but also encourages people to use them in risky ways and use them in risky environments. Regulation enables us to tilt the market in the opposite direction and encourage safer behaviours, safe products and safer using environments.”

Rolles goes on to describe how human rights have historically been marginalised in the enforcement of drug laws around the world.

“At its most extreme, the war on drugs can licence horrific state violence. At a less extreme level, it still can have awful impacts: mass incarceration in the US for example. We see grossly disproportionate penalties and enormous prison sentences for really quite trivial crimes. In a lot of countries you can be flogged or whipped or beaten for minor drug offences. In a number of countries you can actually be executed for trafficking offences. Countries like Iran are executing one or two people a day for drug offences on average and in places like China it’s even more.”

A significant portion of the prison population in the UK is there because of the war on drugs, Rolles points out, with “some estimates putting it as high as half the entire prison population in there being related to drug markets, or specifically drug offences”.

“Even though not everybody who uses drugs gets a criminal record, we do still have 27,000 people who are criminalised for cannabis possession alone. So tens of thousands of people in the UK are getting criminal records just for using drugs.”

The cost of the war on drugs is “carried by the most marginalised people in society,” he says, adding: “It tends to be young people, it tends to be people from socially deprived communities and it tends to be ethnic minorities. The people who are swept up in the enforcement net tend to be the ones whose drug use is more public.”

The “white middle-class dinner party set using cocaine doesn’t engage with the criminal justice system at all because the system never encounters them. It is a profoundly disproportionate racial make-up of people who are both stopped and searched, and if drugs are found on them then in terms of when they are actually prosecuted, we see a huge disproportionate number of young black men in particular finding their way into criminal records, criminality and prison.”

Cannabis drug reform is picking up pace around the world. It has been legalised in Uruguay, Canada and eight states in the US, including California, which Rolles points out is of a similar size to the UK.

Asked how likely it was for cannabis to be decriminalised in Britain, his response is measured: “Neither Labour nor the Conservatives are interested in cannabis legalisation. I wouldn’t expect legalisation of any drugs under the next government, but perhaps the one after that.”

So what would a post-drug-war world look like? “I don’t think society would look more different. It’s not as if people aren’t using drugs now and if they were legal everyone would be, ‘hurrah let’s go and take loads of drugs’. It doesn’t work like that.

“People who want to use drugs use them already and they are effectively freely available to anyone who wants them. The idea that prohibition is stopping that in any way is nonsense.”

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Almost one in three drugs overdoses in Europe recorded in UK

Britain has Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts and problematic use of novel psychoactive substances, say reports by the European drugs agency

Almost one in three drugs overdoses in Europe were recorded in the UK as the continent’s rate of drug deaths rose for a third year in a row, according to the European drugs agency.

The annual report from the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction (EMCCDA) also said the UK had Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts, while separate research found a pattern of problematic use of novel psychoactive substances (NPSs) among poor communities.

Europe’s home affairs commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said: “Over 93 million Europeans have tried an illicit drug in their lives and overdose deaths continue to rise … I am especially concerned that young people are exposed to many new and dangerous drugs.”

The EMCCDA report aggregates data from the European Union’s 28 member states plus Turkey and Norway to give a broad picture of the continent’s drug markets, consumption trends and related harms.

It registered a total of 8,441 overdose deaths, mainly related to heroin and other opioids, in 2015 – a 6% increase on the 7,950 deaths across the 30 countries in 2014, with increases reported in almost all age groups.

The UK accounted for 31% of those deaths, with Germany in second place on 15%. Although the researchers noted there could be under-reporting in some countries, they said the size of Britain and Germany’s at-risk populations was a factor.

About eight in every 1,000 Britons are high-risk opioid users, the highest rate in Europe. In 2015, the year the EMCDDA’s researchers investigated, England and Wales recorded a 26% rise in heroin deaths.

In separate research published alongside the report, ECMDDA researchers said the UK and Hungary were the two countries that had seen “more extensive use of novel psychoactive substances” among low-income groups and problem drug users.

They noted that although data was patchy and numbers remained comparatively low, a number of national surveys indicated increasing NPS use among problem drug users, who were often taking them in conjunction with heavy use of other drugs such as heroin and alcohol.

A 2015 Public Health England survey of injecting drug users, cited by the research, found almost 9% of respondents had injected mephedrone in the past year. A survey of vulnerable populations in Scotland – including rough sleepers, mental health service users, at-risk young people and others – found in 2016 that 59% reported having used NPSs, of whom 74% had used them in the past year.

“NPS use mainly occurs in a context of polydrug use” and in most cases they “are very rarely reported to be the primary drug used” by high-risk users, the EMCDDA researchers said.

“More often they are are a secondary or tertiary drug, for example when the preferred substance is not available or to heighten the effects of other drugs. This means that it would be uncommon to find many high-risk users, with the exception of specific groups in Hungary and some areas of the United Kingdom.”

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State Supreme Court Justice Just Called for the Release of All Those in Prison for Cannabis

Amid the seemingly constant bad news about rising international tensions and the crushing police/surveillance state at home, one bright spot remains. Cannabis decriminalization keeps on sweeping the U.S. – as, according to polls, almost no one believes cannabis should be illegal.

It is well known that the war on drugs serves no purpose but to enrich and empower the police state and the corporatocracy. On the other hand, cannabis legalization has provided tremendous benefits to the people.

Medical cannabis is proving to successfully treat an ever-growing number of physical and mental ailments, without the side harmful side-effects of pharmaceutical products. While it is not a panacea, medical cannabis is giving life to children where before they were expected to die, allowing children to finally stop having debilitating seizures, and allowing war veterans to find treatment for PTSD where none other exists, to name just a few.

Freedom is even greater in the eight states that have legalized recreational cannabis use. If this weren’t enough, legal pot is providing incredible economic boosts, such as in Colorado where the cannabis industry is contributing more to the economy than all other industries.

More and more of those in government are getting it, and they’re not afraid to speak out or even act in the noblest of manners, such as Georgia Rep. Allen Peake who skirts the law to distribute Colorado medical cannabis to suffering children in his state.

Add Ohio Supreme Court Justice William O’Neill to the list. In a recent speech, the enlightened judge said cannabis should be legalized and all non-violent cannabis offenders should be released from jail.

O’Neill says legalization and prisoner release would generate $350 million that would be used to treat drug addiction instead of criminalizing it, as well as create a mental health network to combat addiction.

“Treat addiction like the disease it is in the name of compassion,” he said.

O’Neill is pondering a run for Ohio governor, but won’t make a decision until the end of the year. Even if he doesn’t run, his remarks inject some much-needed substance into the race, and should spur the candidates to put their positions on record.

Ohio legalized medical cannabis in Sept. 2016, although legal sales won’t begin for at least a year. Ohio will eventually have dispensaries and cultivation centers to provide medical products for a host of qualifying conditions.

O’Neill’s call to legalize all cannabis use, like alcohol and tobacco, and release non-violent cannabis “offenders” is a natural progression in rational thought. As far as drugs go, we know that alcohol and tobacco use kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, while no one has ever been known to die from the use of cannabis.

How can the State logically defend the legality of more dangerous drugs (with little to no medical benefit) while a harmless, medically beneficial one is illegal? If there is no rational basis, and cannabis were completely legalized, then it follows there is no rational basis for holding non-violent users and sellers of a natural plant in jail.

Pretty simple, but too many politicians still cling to the injustice of prohibition, even though we know the drug war was started to oppress minorities and suppress political dissent. They continue supporting the War on Drugs even though it has not achieved any of its stated goals, after five decades and $1 trillion being spent.

If Justice O’Neill ends up running for governor, his chances will certainly be boosted by calling for the freedom and economic boost that is legal cannabis.

Bron: thefreethoughtproject.com

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How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico

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The inside story of a cartel’s deadly assault on a Mexican town near the Texas border — and the U.S. drug operation that sparked it.

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There’s no missing the signs that something unspeakable happened in Allende, a quiet ranching town of about 23,000, just a 40-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas. Entire blocks of some of the town’s busiest streets lie in ruins. Once garish mansions are now crumbling shells, with gaping holes in the walls, charred ceilings, cracked marble countertops and toppled columns. Strewn among the rubble are tattered, mud-covered remnants of lives torn apart: shoes, wedding invitations, medications, television sets, toys.

In March 2011 gunmen from the Zetas cartel, one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, swept through Allende and nearby towns like a flash flood, demolishing homes and businesses and kidnapping and killing dozens, possibly hundreds, of men, women and children.

The destruction and disappearances went on in fits and starts for weeks. Only a few of the victims’ relatives — mostly those who didn’t live in Allende or had fled — dared to seek help. “I would like to make clear that Allende looks like a war zone,” reads one missing person report. “Most people who I questioned about my relatives responded that I shouldn’t go on looking for them because outsiders were not wanted, and were disappeared.”

But unlike most places in Mexico that have been ravaged by the drug war, what happened in Allende didn’t have its origins in Mexico. It began in the United States, when the Drug Enforcement Administration scored an unexpected coup. An agent persuaded a high-level Zetas operative to hand over the trackable cellphone identification numbers for two of the cartel’s most wanted kingpins, Miguel Ángel Treviño and his ​brother Omar.

Then the DEA took a gamble. It shared the intelligence with a Mexican federal police unit that has long had problems with leaks — even though its members had been trained and vetted by the DEA. Almost immediately, the Treviños learned they’d been betrayed. The brothers set out to exact vengeance against the presumed snitches, their families and anyone remotely connected to them.

Their savagery in Allende was particularly surprising because the Treviños not only did business there — moving tens of millions of dollars in drugs and guns through the area each month — they’d also made it their home.

For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. They erected a monument in Allende to honor the victims without fully determining their fates or punishing those responsible. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Treviños but never acknowledged the devastating cost. In Allende, people suffered mostly in silence, too afraid to talk publicly.

A year ago ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together what happened in this town in the state of Coahuila — to let those who bore the brunt of the attack, and those who played roles in triggering it, tell the story in their own words. They did so often at great personal risk. Voices like these have rarely been heard during the drug war: Local officials who abandoned their posts; families preyed upon by both the cartel and their own neighbors; cartel operatives who cooperated with the DEA and saw their friends and families slaughtered; the U.S. prosecutor who oversaw the case; and the DEA agent who led the investigation and who, like most people in this story, has family ties on both sides of the border.

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Trimbos: onschuldig imago xtc niet terecht | NOS

De overheid moet meer gaan waarschuwen voor de risico's van xtc. Dat adviseert het Trimbos-instituut aan staatssecretaris Van Rijn van Volksgezondheid. Het instituut deed in opdracht van Van Rijn onderzoek naar de gevolgen van xtc-gebruik en concludeert dat "het onschuldige imago van de partydrug niet terecht is".

"Waar we ons zorgen over maken is dat onvoldoende gebruikers weten dat de drug veel gevaarlijker zijn dan het imago doet vermoeden", zegt Trimbos-onderzoeker Esther Croes. "Dus daar moet goed op worden gehamerd. Gebruikers moeten weten wat voor risico ze nemen." Croes noemt het een misvatting dat voorzorgsmaatregelen als het testen van de drugs de risico's kunnen wegnemen.

Volgens het Trimbos hebben mensen nu nog een te rooskleurig beeld van xtc, omdat er weinig wordt gesproken over momenten waarop het gebruik verkeerd uitpakte. De onderzoekers merkten dat slachtoffers zich vaak schamen en daardoor verzwijgen dat xtc de oorzaak was van hun klachten.

Het Trimbos onderzocht het aantal xtc-vergiftigingen en doden als gevolg van de drug tussen 2006 en 2015. Deze cijfers zijn afkomstig van acht peilstations in Nederland. "Daarmee is niet het hele land gedekt, maar als we alleen op basis van die cijfers kijken, dan zien we dat een op de 250 xtc-gebruikers acuut medische hulp heeft gezocht na xtc-gebruik. Dat is wel heel erg veel", zegt Croes.

De verschijnselen waarmee de gebruikers zich bij de medische posten melden variëren. Xtc-vergiftiging kan leiden tot angst en paniek, oververhitting, acute hartklachten of overlijden.

"We hebben geen overkoepelend cijfer van het aantal doden," zegt Croes, die met het Trimbos-instituut ook heeft gekeken naar de cijfers van het Nederlands Forensisch Instituut (NFI). "Dat zijn alleen de gevallen waarbij ook een strafrechtelijk onderzoek heeft plaatsgevonden." Op basis van die cijfers komt Croes uit op vijf tot tien xtc-doden per jaar.

Xtc is de populairste drug in Nederland, na cannabis. Uit cijfers uit 2015 blijkt dat een miljoen Nederlanders het middel wel eens hebben geslikt. Volgens recente cijfers van een Europees onderzoekscentrum wordt onder Nederlandse jongeren veel meer xtc gebruikt dan in andere Europese landen.

Bron: nos.nl

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Drie Nederlanders gearresteerd na miljoenenvondst cocaïne in Oostende | NOS

Drie Nederlanders en een Belg zijn gearresteerd na een grote drugsvondst in de haven van de Belgische stad Oostende. De politie ontdekte 1500 kilo cocaïne in een dubbele bodem van een oude vissersboot, schrijven Belgische media. De waarde van de partij onversneden cocaïne wordt geschat op 225 miljoen euro.

De vier zijn aangehouden in een langlopend onderzoek naar drugstransporten tussen Zuid-Amerika en Europa. In dat onderzoek hield de politie een tijdlang het schip, de Bounty II, in de gaten. Het lag afgemeerd aan de Baelskaai in Oostende. De boot zou zijn gebruikt door een internationale drugsbende.

Vrijdag beslist de onderzoeksrechter of de verdachten langer vast blijven zitten.

Bron: nos.nl

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Burgemeesters: aanpak misdaad Zuid-Nederland levert te weinig op | NOS

De politie en het Openbaar Ministerie schieten tekort in de strijd tegen de georganiseerde misdaad in het zuiden van Nederland. Dat concluderen tientallen burgemeesters uit Noord-Brabant en Limburg.

De NOS ondervroeg hen over de aanpak van zware criminaliteit, zoals xtc-productie, wietteelt en wapenhandel. Ruim veertig burgemeesters gaven een reactie.

Het merendeel van hen vindt dat politie en OM te weinig resultaat boeken. Er is niet genoeg mankracht om de problemen in het zuiden structureel aan te pakken.

"Lang niet alle gevallen van ondermijnende criminaliteit kunnen worden aangepakt", merkt burgemeester Jos Som van Kerkrade. Een Brabantse burgemeester constateert: "De inspanningen zijn niet zichtbaar."

Sinds 2014 zijn bij politie en Openbaar Ministerie zo'n 140 mensen extra ingezet in Zuid-Nederland, maar veel burgemeesters hebben het gevoel dat de omvang van zware criminaliteit in hun gemeente gelijk is gebleven of zelfs is toegenomen.

Het woord 'ondermijning' duikt vaak op als het over misdaad in Zuid-Nederland gaat. Met de term wordt georganiseerde criminaliteit bedoeld die het lokale gezag aantast, bijvoorbeeld door een vermenging van onder- en bovenwereld.

Politie en OM moeten te vaak keuzes maken, waardoor zaken blijven liggen. De onderzoeken naar criminelen zijn tijdrovend en het duurt lang voordat de rechter uiteindelijk een oordeel velt. Ook zien sommige burgemeesters "administratieve rompslomp" en vinden ze dat belangrijke informatie niet goed wordt gedeeld tussen de partijen die gezamenlijk misdaad bestrijden.

"Het is meer tegenwerken en verstoren dan daadwerkelijk oppakken van criminelen", stelt een van hen. "Er is gebrek aan capaciteit en mogelijkheden om echt door te pakken."

Soms zijn er sterke vermoedens van zware criminaliteit, maar ontbreekt het aan bewijs. Politie en OM staan dan machteloos. Verschillende burgemeesters zouden proactief willen optreden, maar missen nu de wettelijke grondslag. Een motorclubverbod zou bijvoorbeeld kunnen helpen, denken ze.

"Alle daadkracht die ik als burgemeester inzet, wordt te makkelijk betwist en soms ook door de rechter onderuitgehaald", klinkt het vanuit een kleine gemeente in Limburg. "Zo ondermijn je ook het gezag van burgemeesters."

Alle burgemeesters die reageerden kregen de afgelopen jaren in hun gemeente te maken met hennepteelt; de meesten ook met de productie van synthetische drugs. Dat brengt weer andere vormen van criminaliteit met zich mee, zoals witwassen, afval dumpen en in een enkel geval een liquidatie.

De meeste burgemeesters kregen de afgelopen paar jaar tussen de vijf en de twintig waarschuwingen over georganiseerde misdaad in hun gemeente. Een middelgrote gemeente in het zuiden ontving maar liefst 230 signalen.

De burgemeesters roepen een nieuw kabinet op om meer werk te maken van misdaadbestrijding in het zuiden. In februari vroegen de burgemeesters van Eindhoven, Helmond, Breda, Tilburg en Den Bosch al om extra geld en een "ondermijningswet" die het makkelijker moet maken om criminelen aan te pakken. Ook willen ze afgepakt vermogen van criminelen kunnen gebruiken om de misdaad in het zuiden te bestrijden.

Het Openbaar Ministerie erkent dat er meer nodig is om de misdaad in Zuid-Nederland effectief te bestrijden. "Behalve meer mensen, moeten we ook investeren in kwaliteit en innovatie", zegt hoofdofficier van justitie Nicole Zandee van Oost-Brabant. Ook het uitwisselen van informatie moet volgens haar beter.

Toch vindt ze dat er wel degelijk vooruitgang wordt geboekt in Zuid-Nederland. "Ik denk dat we de criminele industrie met de huidige aanpak op een behoorlijke manier verstoren", zegt Zandee. "Dat doen we met korte strafrechtelijke onderzoeken en het afpakken van crimineel geld."

Volgens haar is het een kwestie van de lange adem. "Als iets jarenlang heeft kunnen groeien, zul je ook jarenlang moeten werken om dat te bestrijden."

De NOS ondervroeg alle burgemeesters in Noord-Brabant en Limburg; 41 van hen gaven een reactie. Een groot deel wenste anoniem te blijven.

Bron: nos.nl