The World Wide War on Drugs #11 - User 2600 is baaasssss

quote:

Lyn Ulbricht, mother of Ross Ulbricht, joins us today to discuss the arrest, conviction and unconscionable double life plus 40 year sentence of her son in the Silk Road case. We discuss the case against Ross and the exculpatory information that was withheld from the jury (and sometimes even the defence) during his trial. We also talk about the loss of his appeal in the 2nd District court and where the FreeRoss.org campaign goes from here.

Ross Ulbricht Loses His Appeal. Here's What Happens Next.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 00:51 schreef Odaiba het volgende:
Deze strijd is (jammer genoeg) echt nooit te winnen, tenzij je alle mensen weet te overtuigen niet aan die troep te beginnen en dat gaat dus nooit lukken.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 00:54 schreef heiden6 het volgende:

[..]

Probleem is dat velen afhankelijk zijn geworden, denk aan de mensen die in de gevangenissen werken, of bij de politie, die zich hiermee bezig houden. Als jouw inkomen er van afhangt dat dit blijft doorgaan...

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 01:06 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Er verdwijnen altijd wel banen door wat er in de wereld gebeurt, ik zou het alleen maar mooi vinden als er minder politie nodig zou zijn, maargoed daar hoeven ze dus nooit bang voor te zijn. Criminaliteit roei je namelijk niet uit. Zelfs in een wereld waar iedereen gelijk is, blijft er criminaliteit bestaan.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 00:51 schreef Odaiba het volgende:
Deze strijd is (jammer genoeg) echt nooit te winnen, tenzij je alle mensen weet te overtuigen niet aan die troep te beginnen en dat gaat dus nooit lukken.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 05:08 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

De drugs zijn niet het probleem.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 00:51 schreef Odaiba het volgende:
Deze strijd is (jammer genoeg) echt nooit te winnen, tenzij je alle mensen weet te overtuigen niet aan die troep te beginnen en dat gaat dus nooit lukken.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 11:10 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Nee, natuurlijk niet. Altijd zo'n lame ass excuus.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:43 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

[..]

Deze strijd is prima te beperken als je alle drugs legaliseerd en zo de criminaliteit rond om drugs weggehaald. Zolang mensen bang blijven en worden gemaakt wordt deze problematiek niet opgelost.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:46 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

[..]

Nee hoor, mensen worden bewust bang gemaakt en drug wordt bewust veel erger voorgespiegeld dan het is.
En dit om maar niet toe te hoeven geven dat legaliseren veel beter is.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:48 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

En dan is straks een groot deel van de bevolking zwaar verslaafd met alles wat daarbij komt kijken..

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:49 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb jaren met verslaafde mensen gewerkt en heb ze er dood aan zien gaan Het is wel zo dat er ook andere factoren meespelen, want je kunt er ook een redelijke leeftijd mee halen.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 13:04 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

[..]

Je zult altijd een groep mensen blijven houden die inderdaad zwaar verslaafd zijn, maar dat is geen reden om drugs niet te legaliseren en uit de crminaliteit te halen.

Een groot voordeel hiervan is dat je veel meer zicht hebt op de productie van drugs en dat de groep mensen die wel zwaar verslaafd is ( die je nu ook hebt) schone drugs gebruiken.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 11:10 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Nee, natuurlijk niet. Altijd zo'n lame ass excuus.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:48 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

En dan is straks een groot deel van de bevolking zwaar verslaafd met alles wat daarbij komt kijken..

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:49 schreef Odaiba het volgende:
Ik heb jaren met verslaafde mensen gewerkt en heb ze er dood aan zien gaan

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:48 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

En dan is straks een groot deel van de bevolking zwaar verslaafd met alles wat daarbij komt kijken..

quote:

Volgens de rechtbank in Zutphen dealde hij heroïne tussen 1 april vorig jaar en 18 februari dit jaar. De opbrengst gebruikte hij om zijn eigen heroïneverslaving te bekostigen.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 22:34 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:
Dit is een kleine greep uit alle drugberichten op omroep Gelderland.
Dit soort nieuws berichten houden de angst voor drugs in stand en zorgen voor dat de war on drugs blijf bestaan.

Politie achtervolgt drugsauto over A12

Ging om jawel 60gr wiet.
Drugsauto haha.

Drugsdealer loopt tegen de lamp bij verkeerscontrole

25 gr harddrugs
Ja ja een echte drugdealer

Verwarde Pool vernielt 5 auto's; omstanders houden hem in bedwang

Vermoedelijk onder invloed van drug, dus niks met zekerheid vastgesteld, aanname?

Politie stuit op grote hoeveelheid drugs

Staat niet in hoeveel, maar het zal wel om een 10 tal wietplantjes gaan.

Dealer op leeftijd (76) loopt tegen de lamp

Grote hoeveelheid drugs staat er in het artikel

[ afbeelding ]

[ afbeelding ]

een kruimel dealer dus.

Jihadvlag en drugs in jeugdgevangenis De Hunnerberg

[ afbeelding ]

Ohhh er ligt een jointje op tafel, boefjes.

Geen blowverbod in Rheden: jointje roken mag http://www.omroepgelderland.nl/nieuws/2135519/Geen-blowverbod-in-Rheden-jointje-roken-mag

Dit is goed nieuws,
Om het gebruik van soft en harddrugs te verminderen was er een voorstel voor een blowverbod op straat, gelukkig is die van tafel.

Heroïnedealer moet de cel in

[..]

Dat krijg je als je drugs niet legaliseert, dan moet je zelf gaan dealen om aan je drugs te komen.

12 kilo coke verstopt tussen bananen

Als het gelegaliseerd wordt is dit dus ook verleden tijd.

twitter:

voxdotcom twitterde op woensdag 12-07-2017 om 19:00:37 Jeff Sessions: the anti-drug program DARE worked. Actual research: it was a huge failure. https://t.co/kLzAuopr29 reageer retweet

quote:

Jeff Sessions’s praise of DARE shows he just can’t quit the 1980s

Trump’s attorney general said the anti-drug program DARE worked. The research shows it was actually a huge failure.

It was peak Jeff Sessions, the moment that showed exactly what the country is getting under President Donald Trump’s attorney general: Ignoring decades of scientific evidence, Sessions praised an anti-drug program — DARE — straight out of the 1980s “tough on crime” playbook.

Speaking at a DARE conference, Sessions said, “DARE is, I think, the best remembered anti-drug program today. In recent years, people have not paid much attention to that message, but they are ready to hear it again. … We know it worked before, and we can make it work again.”

DARE was founded on a basic idea: If you tell kids about how bad drugs are, they will be so scared that they will not use them. Different levels of government threw money at the program, encouraging the majority of school districts in the US to take it up. So many kids growing up in the 1980s through the early 2000s were bombarded by DARE’s messaging in their schools, warned about how drugs, from marijuana to LSD to heroin, will ruin their lives after even one instance of use — because they’ll get immediately addicted and suffer for a lifetime.

This simply did not work. Decades of research show that DARE was nothing short of a complete disaster, failing to reduce drug use among youth. Even DARE’s own leaders finally acknowledged this after years of denying the evidence, redesigning the curriculum under a new slogan — “keepin’ it REAL” — in 2011 after the overwhelming empirical evidence finally led multiple levels of government to pull back funding for the program.

What Sessions said, then, is simply wrong.

There is, however, an important lesson to draw from his comments: Sessions is simply out of touch with the empirical reality on a host of issues that he is now in charge of addressing in the federal government. From prisons to police to drugs, Sessions often comes out with retrograde statements out of the 1980s and ’90s — when research on such topics was limited at best, and politics called for harsh penalties to address core societal problems. We now know better — except for Sessions, who keeps defending programs and ideas that have literally decades of research against them.

DARE was a total failure

There isn’t much in scientific research that is nearly unanimous. Evaluations of DARE are one of the few exceptions. Time and time again, when researchers carefully studied the program, they found that DARE failed at its most basic purpose: to prevent drug use.

Here is a sampling of the empirical evaluations:

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:48 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

En dan is straks een groot deel van de bevolking zwaar verslaafd met alles wat daarbij komt kijken..

quote:

Op woensdag 12 juli 2017 19:33 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

Het klopt dat de grootste verslavingsproblematiek te wijten is aan de door de farmaceuten legaal verstrekte drugs. Maar dat wil natuurlijk niet zeggen dat de betere en nu nog illegale drugs ook tot dergelijke verslavingsproblematiek gaat leiden.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 10:25 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Betere drugs? xD

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 10:28 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

De slaap en kalmeringsmiddelen en de pijnstillers die legaal worden gedeald door de farmaceutische industrie zijn over het algemeen een stuk verslavender en schadelijker dan de recreatieve drugs.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 10:32 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Beide slecht dan...

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 10:36 schreef heiden6 het volgende:

[..]

Dat ligt eraan hoe/wanneer ze gebruikt worden. Drugs zijn chemische verbindingen, die zijn niet van zichzelf goed of slecht.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 10:32 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Beide slecht dan...

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 10:58 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

Nee, als jij tegen drugs wil pleiten omdat ze schadelijk en verslavend zijn moet je schadelijkheid en verslavendheid als criterium nemen en dan staat de farmeceutische industrie er een stuk slechter op dan de dealer op de hoek.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 11:18 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Wat vind jij zo geweldig aan drugs?

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 11:22 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

Ik vind helemaal niks geweldig aan kalmeringsmiddelen en het pushen van psychofarmaca.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:49 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb jaren met verslaafde mensen gewerkt en heb ze er dood aan zien gaan Het is wel zo dat er ook andere factoren meespelen, want je kunt er ook een redelijke leeftijd mee halen.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 11:27 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Ok, ik weet genoeg. Je hebt een goed punt hoor, van mij mogen de restricties op drugs ook wel losser in de hoop dat het decriminaliseert en er minder mensen aan de drugs gaan, maar ik denk dat we er in Nederland nog jaren op moeten wachten. Ik heb alleen helemaal niks met drugs.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 11:37 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

Dat hoeft ook niet, er zijn zoveel dingen waar ik niks mee heb. Maar wat mij betreft mogen er wel flinke restricties op het stimuleren van drugsgebruik door de farmaceutische industrie. Die hebben allerlei perverse prikkels om problemen te medicaliseren en mogen psychische kwalen verzinnen bij reeds gevonden en gepatenteerde drugs. Ook hebben die geen enkele prikkel om minder verslavende kalmeringsmiddelen te ontwikkelen.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 12:50 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Ik vind sws dat de Farmaceutische industrie en de banken sector aangepakt mogen worden...Maar goed ik moet het maar accepteren dat bij de ontwikkeling die we hebben gemaakt op chemische gebied ook rotzooi met zich meebrengt en dat sommige er plezier aan beleven om een party of hallucinerende drug te gebruiken zo nu en dan. Denk dat als we dat kunnen decriminaliseren dat we dan al een hoop gewonnen hebben.

Ik geloof ook niet in een wereld waarin we alles verbieden, maar het verheerlijken en promoten ervan gaat me te ver.

quote:

Op donderdag 13 juli 2017 12:57 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:

[..]

Vind ik ook hoor. Alleen weet iedereen van recreatieve drugs wel dat je daar een beetje voorzichtig mee moet zijn en het gebruik in de hand moet houden. De drugs van de farmaceuten worden verheerlijkt alsof ze alleen maar problemen oplossen, altijd problemen oplossen en nauwelijks schadelijk zijn.

quote:

Colombia producing more cocaine than ever before, UN figures show

. About 866 tonnes of cocaine were produced in 2016, new report suggests
. Farc rebels say they will work with government to find crop substitute

Colombia has spent years trying to shake off its reputation as the cocaine capital of the world, but the country is producing more of the drug than ever before, according to new figures from the United Nations.

An estimated 866 tonnes of cocaine were produced at clandestine labs across the country in 2016, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). In 2015, the estimate was 649.

In terms of the area planted with coca, the raw material used for cocaine, Colombia is back at the same levels as in 2001, when a huge US-backed anti-narcotics effort known as Plan Colombia was just getting under way. Coca crops covered 146,000 hectares in 2016, up 52% from 96,000 in 2015. Higher yields from mature plants mean more cocaine can be produced per hectare planted.

The results of the study “show a complex panorama”, said Bo Mathiasen, the UNODC’s representative in Colombia.

José Ángel Mendoza, the head of Colombia’s counter-narcotics police, said Colombia faced “a difficult historical moment”, but stressed that the figures reflected the state of the country on 31 December 2016.

Since then, the government has put in place an ambitious plan to eradicate 100,000 hectares of coca by the year’s end. Half of that amount is to be forcibly eradicated, and the other half removed through crop substitution agreements with coca farmers.

The substitution program is part of a peace deal with Farc rebels, who renounced drug trafficking as part of their demobilization deal. During much of the group’s 53 years as an armed insurgency, it financed its fight through the drug trade.

Former combatants have committed to work with the government to convince farmers to replace coca crops with another way to make a living.

“The history of drug crops is divided in two: before and after the beginning of the post-conflict period,” said Enrique Gil Botero, the justice minister.

Already 40% of the goal of forced eradication has been met, and 86,000 families – who account for as much as 76,000 hectares of coca – have signed on to crop substitution programs in exchange for subsidies of about $11,000 per farmer over the course of two years, according to the government.

“Having the Farc on the side of substitution and not on the other side makes a difference,” said Rodrigo Pardo, who heads the government agency in charge of implementing the peace agreement.

But the deal on crop substitution with the Farc, announced before the final peace deal was finalized last year, also provided a perverse incentive for farmers to grow coca, knowing they would later be awarded subsidies. Cocaine production began increasing in 2013, rising steadily every year since. In 2014 the Colombian government ended aerial fumigations in over health concerns.

A significant rise in the number of hectares planted with coca, the raw material used in cocaine, had already been reported by the White House, which uses its own measurements. While calculating 180,000 hectares of coca, the US figured the country produced about 700 tonnes of the drug in 2016.

quote:

Catalonia regulates the Cannabis Social Clubs

Barcelona - On 28 June 2017 The Catalan Parliament, approved the regulation of Cannabis Social Clubs for its territory, legally belonging to the Spanish State. The law includes, among other things, the cultivation, transportation and distribution of cannabis.

This law has been the result of much effort on the part of civil society, experts and politicians. It was presented in the form of Popular Legislative Initiative, obtaining 67,500 signatures, of which 55,000 were accepted.

Subsequently a period of amendments was opened in which the Catalan Federations, Fedcac and CatFAC (Som el que cultivem) and the experts also participated through the political parties.

On Wednesday 28th June 2017, after a period of two years, the Rosa Verda initiative, was approved by a large majority of the Catalan parliamentary groups. With the votes in favour of JxSí, Cs, PSC, CSQP i CUP; all parliamentary groups except PPC which voted against.

But what does the law say in detail? How is the Catalan cannabis social club model? The law regulates the Cannabis Social Clubs under the framework of ‘The Law of Associations’ and the legal doctrine of collective consumption and cultivation. It establishes that these entities are non-profit making, with a democratic, assembly and transparent management.

With regard to risk prevention and collective health, this has guided the law from the outset, with the advice of the Subdirectory for Drug Addiction of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which continues to be a pioneer in effective prevention programs, along with the Agency of Catalan Public Health, the CSC model is described as a model that preserves the values ​​of risk prevention and an important agent for the correct management of pleasures in a responsible way by the users of cannabis. Associations will also be obliged to trace the product, including with cannabis analysis, at the end of the process and prior to distribution. You will not be allowed to consume alcohol or any other illegal drugs in a CSC, nor can you make statement, apology or publicity about the consumption of cannabis.

On the other hand, we find transparency, the law requires us to have books for registration of members, minutes, crops, withdrawals and accounting, as well as an agricultural expertise.

In short, it is a safe model for users and non-users. That contemplates the social reality. The law is based on Health and Human Rights, from a multidisciplinary perspective, and regulates in an integral way the Cannabis Social Clubs.

quote:

Cannabis en de speekseltest 1: de regels en de problemen

quote:

Sinds 1 juli controleert de politie met een speekseltest op gebruik van cannabis en een aantal andere illegale drugs door verkeersdeelnemers. De straffen zijn hoog, de methode is omstreden en de politie en het CBR (Centraal Bureau Rijvaardigheidsbewijzen) spreken elkaar tegen. In twee artikelen beschrijft Mario Zwart de problemen rond de speekseltest en manieren om je als cannabist te beschermen.

quote:

United Nations and World Health Organisation call for drugs to be decriminalised

But member states still want narcotics to be illegal

The United Nations and World Health Organisation have issued a call for drugs to be decriminalised.

Buried in a joint release on ending healthcare discrimination, the organisations called for the “reviewing and repealing punitive laws that have been proven to have negative health outcomes” by member states.

Among a number of measures, this included “drug use or possession of drugs for personal use”.

While the WHO has previously called for drugs to be decriminalised in the context of HIV reduction, the UN has limited its calls to health- and evidence-based solutions to drug abuse.

Last year, nations meeting at the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs maintained a criminal approach to narcotics, despite strong concerns from a number of countries.

But last month, on the International Day Against Drug Abuse, UN Secretary General António Guterres called for tackling the problem through “prevention and treatment,” adhering to human rights.

He said: “Despite the risks and challenges inherent in tackling this global problem, I hope and believe we are on the right path, and that together we can implement a coordinated, balanced and comprehensive approach that leads to sustainable solutions.

“I know from personal experience how an approach based on prevention and treatment can yield positive results.”

Mr Guterres was Prime Minister of Portugal when the country launched its landmark drug decriminalisation programme, which also introduced greater resources for drug prevention and treatment projects.

Portugal saw its drug fatalities fall to one of the lowest in Europe and also reduced the prevalence of HIV among injectors.

But the illegal drugs trade is a complex international issue. Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Yury Fedotov, used his statement for the day to highlight the challenges posed by narcotics.

“The nexus between drugs, crime and terrorism and reveals a shifting pattern of relationships,” he said.

“As new threats appear, including spreading methamphetamine and new psychoactive substances, old ones continue to thrive. Business models are evolving too, with cybercrime and the darknet increasingly playing a role.”

quote:

Gedetineerden en tbs'ers werden vorig jaar ruim 18.000 keer positief getest op drugsgebruik. Vooral het gebruik van cannabis ligt met 16.600 positieve drugstests hoog. In een aantal gevangenissen is bijna de helft van de controles op cannabis positief.

Naast cannabis, werd bij 1600 gevangenen vastgesteld dat zij cocaïne hadden gebruikt. In 730 gevallen werd er positief getest op opiaten zoals heroïne. Xtc- en amfetaminegebruik werd tientallen keren vastgesteld.

Het persbureau ANP vroeg het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie de uitslagen van urinecontroles in gevangenissen van de afgelopen drie jaar bekend te maken. Uit die cijfers blijkt dat het aangetoonde gebruik van cannabis en cocaïne toeneemt.

Geen voortdurende controle

Volgens het ANP blijkt uit de resultaten dat het niet uitzonderlijk is als er meer dan duizend positieve cannabistests per gevangenis zijn. In jeugdinrichtingen gaat het om enkele honderden tests.

Mogelijk ligt het drugsgebruik hoger dan uit de resultaten blijkt, omdat niet iedereen voortdurend wordt gecontroleerd. De tests vinden steekproefsgewijs plaats als er aanwijzingen zijn dat een gedetineerde gebruikt of als iemand vaker is betrapt. Sommige positieve tests zijn het gevolg van drugsgebruik voor een arrestatie of tijdens een verlof.

Door het verschil in het aantal urinecontroles per gedetineerde en het beveiligingsniveau van inrichtingen, zijn er geen percentages op te maken van gevangenen die verboden middelen gebruiken. Sommige inrichtingen herbergen gevangenen met drugsproblematiek, wat de drugsuitslagen in die inrichtingen moeilijk te vergelijken maakt met andere inrichtingen.

Vaker betrapt

Nederland telt 39.790 gedetineerden; het aantal van ruim 18.000 positieve drugstests lijkt dus hoog. Maar de cijfers gaan over het aantal drugstests. Of een gevangene vaker is betrapt, blijkt niet uit de gegevens.

Het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie zegt tegen het ANP dat drugsgebruik in de gevangenis niet is toegestaan en dat het een risico oplevert voor de veiligheid. "Het verbeteren van controle- en veiligheidsmaatregelen heeft de continue aandacht". Gedetineerden doen volgens het ministerie veel moeite om aan middelen te komen, vooral als zij verslaafd zijn.

Verontrustend

Frans Carbo van vakbond FNV noemt het aantal positieve drugstests verontrustend. "Vooral ook omdat het aantal stijgt, dat baart zorgen. Ook omdat het het topje van de ijsberg kan zijn. We weten niet precies hoeveel drugs er binnen zijn." Hij is bezorgd over de veiligheid van het gevangenispersoneel.

Onlangs concludeerde de inspectie dat het door tijdgebrek moeilijker is geworden voor gevangenispersoneel om smokkelwaar als drugs buiten de deur te houden. Volgens Carbo kan de werkdruk worden verlaagd door meer personeel in te zetten. "En de mensen moeten beter getraind worden, want daar is op bezuinigd." Carbo denkt dat een slecht arbeidsklimaat in de gevangenissen leidt tot een hoog verloop.

quote:

Op donderdag 20 juli 2017 14:18 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:
Hij is bezorgd over de veiligheid van het gevangenispersoneel.

quote:

Op donderdag 20 juli 2017 14:59 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Vanwege cannabisgebruik?

quote:

Schokkende video van politie schrikt niet af: 'Zo zit de mens niet in elkaar'

Met een video van een man die stuiptrekkingen heeft van de drugs waarschuwde de politie Enschede dit weekend voor de gevaren van drugsmisbruik. "Gelukkig waren we er op tijd bij", schrijft de politie erbij. Helpt dit soort schokkende filmpjes?

Waarschijnlijk niet, zegt Gjalt-Jorn Peters, universitair docent aan de Open Universiteit die onderzoek doet naar gedragsverandering. Angstaanjagende voorlichting is meestal niet zo effectief, weet hij.

'Zo zitten mensen niet in elkaar'

"Dit soort video's of foto's gaat er vanuit dat als mensen weten wat slecht voor ze is, ze het dan niet meer doen. Er zijn veel films met geweld dus je moet hard en emotioneel zijn om te raken, is het idee. Maar zo zitten mensen niet in elkaar. Alcohol brengt de maatschappij en de drinker bijvoorbeeld veel schade toe, maar het grootste deel van Nederland drinkt."

Dit filmpje heeft vooral negatieve gevolgen, vermoedt Peters. "Als iemand een bad trip heeft, is het goed als ze op hulpdiensten zoals de politie afstappen. Zo'n filmpje kan mensen juist afschrikken om dat te doen, omdat ze bang zijn om online gezet te worden. Dat is vast niet het afschrikwekkende effect dat de politie voor ogen heeft."

'Logisch dat politie mensen wil waarschuwen'

Daarnaast vindt Peters de toon vrij hard voor een situatie waarin de politie nog geen medische expertise heeft betrokken. "Misschien was het wel geen drugs. Een beetje onhandig om dat filmpje dan te plaatsen. Stel dat het geen drugs was, dan zeg je eigenlijk: we weten niet zo veel van middelengebruik af."

De onderzoeker snapt de politie overigens heel goed. Agenten komen door hun werk relatief vaak met de negatieve gevolgen van drugs in aanraking. "Het is logisch dat zij er vooral een negatief beeld van hebben en de behoefte voelen mensen te behoeden."

Het probleem is volgens Peters dat mensen niet zo makkelijk te helpen zijn. "Je kunt ook niet heel snel zeggen: deze boodschap werkt en deze niet. Ga maar na. Waarom drink je bijvoorbeeld wel of geen wijn, rook je wel of niet en sport je veel of weinig? Daar kunnen heel veel redenen voor zijn. Het is niet makkelijk daar een boodschap voor te bedenken om gedrag te veranderen."

Plaatjes op pakjes sigaretten

Om dezelfde reden werken de griezelige plaatjes op pakjes sigaretten ook niet, zegt Peters. "Door die plaatjes gaat de roker nadenken: Vind ik die dreiging ernstig? Het gevaar is kanker. Ja, dat is ernstig. Kan ik het krijgen? Ja. Wat kan ik eraan doen?"

"Daar gaat het fout. Rokers kunnen stoppen, maar dat is heel moeilijk. Meestal hebben ze dat wel al geprobeerd. In hun ervaring lukte dat niet. Het enige wat je dan nog kunt doen is proberen van dat vervelende gevoel af te komen. Dat doe je door de dreiging te verkleinen. Dan denk je dingen als: mijn oma werd 100 en rookte twee pakjes per dag, of ik sport heel veel en eet gezond."

Ook voor mensen die beginnen met roken, speelt het bewustzijn van de risico's geen grote rol, weet de onderzoeker. "Er zijn tientallen mogelijke redenen die kunnen spelen: ze zouden het gewoon een keertje willen proberen of stoer kunnen vinden."

Geen sexy boodschap

Oftewel, de les van Gjalt-Jorn Peters: politie, je kunt niet zomaar op een heftige manier waarschuwen zonder dat je hebt onderzocht wat het probleem eigenlijk is. Geen sexy boodschap, dat erkent hij. "Maar het kan bijvoorbeeld goed zijn dat mensen die af en toe drugs gebruiken dat juist doen omdat het gevaarlijk kan zijn. En dat mensen door zo'n video misschien juist willen laten zien dat zij wel een grote hoeveelheid aankunnen en niet in een bad trip belanden."

"De meeste mensen die wel eens drugs gebruiken zullen denken: Die zal wel te veel hebben genomen, of slecht hebben gegeten of er te veel bij hebben gedronken. Hun eerste gedachte is in elk geval nooit: Ja, dit is wat er gebeurt als je drugs gebruikt. Het is net alsof je een video van een dronken persoon laat zien. Dan denken alle alcoholgebruikers: Natuurlijk, die heeft te veel gedronken."

Video van Facebook verwijderd

De politie Enschede heeft de video van de vermeende drugsgebruiker vandaag van Facebook weggehaald om het grote aantal negatieve reacties. Het doel was mensen bewust te maken van de gevaren van drugs en te laten zien waar de politie zoal mee te maken krijgt. Maar veel mensen vonden dat de politie te ver was gegaan en de privacy van de man in de video te weinig gerespecteerd was.

Wat volgens Peters wel goed zou kunnen werken: mensen confronteren met beelden van hun eigen gedrag. Geen online shaming dus, maar jezelf in dronken toestand terugzien.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 12:48 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

En dan is straks een groot deel van de bevolking zwaar verslaafd met alles wat daarbij komt kijken..

quote:

Op donderdag 20 juli 2017 14:18 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:
http://nos.nl/artikel/2184113Duizenden gedetineerden bij controles betrapt op drugsgebruik-duizenden-gedetineerden-bij-controles-betrapt-op-drugsgebruik.html

[..]

Legalize

De straf van gedetineerde is dat ze niet meer in vrijheid naar buiten kunnen en opgesloten zitten.
Waarom dan ook nog willen bepalen wat een gedetineerde wel niet mag tijdens zijn opsluiting.

quote:

Op vrijdag 21 juli 2017 12:17 schreef Glazenmaker het volgende:

[..]

Iets zegt mij dat een aantal bewakers een beetje bijverdienen om hun magere loon wat hoger te maken.

twitter:

DrugsInDebat twitterde op donderdag 20-07-2017 om 18:04:01 'It's a great pill The greatest pill you've ever used The other pills are LOSERS SAD" https://t.co/UHq2Rs5xic:'… https://t.co/94NIUSLB1n reageer retweet

quote:

Geen genade voor drugsdealers Indonesië | NOS

De aanpak van drugsdealers in Indonesië gaat een nieuwe fase in. President Joko Widodo zegt dat de politie dealers en smokkelaars desnoods mag doodschieten.

"Wees streng", zei hij in een toespraak. "Vooral voor buitenlandse drugsdealers die ons land binnenkomen. Schiet ze neer als zij zich verzetten bij hun arrestatie. Toon geen genade."

Widodo hield de toespraak gisteren, ruim een week na de inbeslagname van een ton crystal meth, een sterk verslavende harddrug. De politie arresteerde vier Taiwanezen voor de smokkel. Een andere verdachte werd doodgeschoten. Hij zou zich hebben verzet.

De opmerkingen van Widodo lijken op die van president Duterte van de Filipijnen. Na zijn aantreden vorig jaar, verklaarde Duterte drugsdealers de oorlog.

Duizenden mensen zijn vermoord. Ook persoonlijke tegenstanders van de president zouden zijn geliquideerd.

Bron: nos.nl

quote:

Op zaterdag 22 juli 2017 14:32 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

quote:

'Drugstoeristen maken plaats voor blowende jongeren in Roosendaal' | NOS

Er is geen enkele coffeeshop te vinden en toch hebben inwoners van Roosendaal de meeste overlast van drugs. Uit cijfers van het CBS blijkt dat een op de acht Roosendalers vorig jaar drugsoverlast heeft ervaren.

Roosendaal sloot in 2009 alle coffeeshops, samen met buurgemeente Bergen op Zoom. "De stadjes werden totaal overlopen door drugstoeristen", weet criminoloog Cyrille Fijnaut nog. "Het was totaal onhoudbaar in het centrum."

De coffeeshops zijn nu zo'n acht jaar dicht. Fijnaut: "Dat heeft geleid tot een enorme daling van de toestroom aan Belgen en Fransen. Maar iedereen wist dat er overlast zou blijven. Je hebt een vrij grote kring van Nederlandse gebruikers gekweekt en die willen wel aan hun genot komen."

In Roosendaal herkennen ze de cijfers van het CBS, die gaan over vorig jaar. "We hebben meerdere onderzoeken gedaan en daaruit kwam eigenlijk hetzelfde beeld", zegt een woordvoerder van de gemeente. "Naar aanleiding daarvan zijn wij begonnen met acties die het hele jaar doorgaan. Acties op straat, in panden. Overal waar drugsoverlast is, grijpen we in. Dat doen we met politie en handhaving." Na afloop van een actie stuurt de gemeente omwonenden direct een brief met informatie over de actie.

Volgens Roeland van Roosmalen van verslavingszorgorganisatie Novadic Kentron is het drugstoerisme inderdaad afgenomen sinds 2009. "Je ziet dat het nu vooral jongeren zijn", zegt hij. "Vroeger was de overlast rondom coffeeshops, nu zie je dat het overal in de stad is. Dan zie je jongeren op een bankje blowen, of scooterrijders die bepaalde zaken doen."

In buurgemeente Bergen op Zoom hebben ze de indruk dat de overlast fors is afgenomen, sinds de coffeeshops zijn gesloten. "In 2009 hadden we per week 12.000 mensen over de vloer die we niet wilden. Dat zie je niet meer", zegt een woordvoerder. "Ik zeg niet dat we hier nooit meldingen krijgen, maar het zijn er veel minder."

Bron: nos.nl

quote:

Waarschuwing! Cannabispatiënten rijden onverzekerd auto

Cannabispatiënten mogen niet meer autorijden sinds 1 juli 2017, volgens de apothekersbond. Dat is een gevolg van de wetswijziging die de speekseltesten in het verkeer mogelijk maakt. Inmiddels zijn de autoverzekeraars ook wakker geworden. Een cannabispatiënte kreeg te horen dat zij onverzekerd rondrijdt, omdat ze dagelijks cannabis gebruikt. Bewust beleid? Of een foutje van Haagse ambtenaren die deze gevolgen van de wetwijziging niet helemaal hebben voorzien?

quote:

Uit een belronde blijkt dat de wetswijziging die de speekseltest mogelijk maakt allerlei instanties compleet verrast. Zij wisten niet dat de wet eraan zat te komen en hebben geen idee hoe zij de wet moeten interpreteren. Een van die instanties is de apothekersbond KNMP. Zij plaatsten op 13 juli een berichtje op hun website waarin zij stellen dat patiënten die cannabis (of morfine) gebruiken geen auto meer mogen rijden. “De wet maakt geen uitzondering voor gebruik van middelen die op recept door een apotheker zijn afgeleverd.”

Navraag bij de KNMP leert dat de nieuwe wet hen overvallen heeft. Voorheen kregen patiënten altijd het advies om de eerste twee weken niet te rijden. Daarna kunnen zij weer veilig deelnemen aan het verkeer, tenzij er sprake is van bijwerkingen die de rijvaardigheid kunnen beïnvloeden. De apothekersbond heeft een brief gestuurd naar de drie betrokken ministeries om nadere uitleg te krijgen over de gevolgen van de wet.

Ook Bureau Medicinale Cannabis (BMC) blijkt niet op de hoogte van de wetswijziging en eventuele gevolgen voor cannabispatiënten. Een woordvoerster stelt dat cannabispatiënten onder de medicijnenwetgeving vallen. Daarom zou er een uitzondering voor hen gelden. In de communicatie van de overheid over de wet staat echter dat er “geen uitzondering [geldt] voor bestuurders die drugs medicinaal gebruiken. Ook niet als zij bij staande houding aan de politie een medische verklaring kunnen overleggen.”

De medewerkster van BMC laat mij weten dat dit een vergissing moet zijn. “Ik ben blij dat ik dit nu weet. Maar die laatste regel klopt niet. […] Ik schat in dat 80% van de cannabis patiënten autorijdt. Dit is een van de ergste dingen die kunnen gebeuren. Als dit werkelijk zo is, dan heeft dit een mega impact op cannabispatiënten.”

quote:

Rejecting Sessions' Plea, Senate Panel Votes to Protect Medical Marijuana

quote:

Jeff Sessions' former Senate colleagues, dismayed at Donald Trump's humilating tweets and comments about him, are rallying to his defense, urging the president to stop castigating an attorney general he describes as a "beleaguered" and "very weak" disappointment. But their solidarity with Sessions goes only so far, as demonstrated by today's vote on a spending rider that blocks Justice Department interference with medical marijuana laws.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the rider, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, by a voice vote, indicating that it was not controversial among the panel's members, who include 16 Republicans. The committee thereby rejected a personal plea by Sessions to let the amendment lapse.

"I write to renew the Department of Justice's opposition to the inclusion of language in any appropriations legislation that would prohibit the use of Department of Justice funds or in any way inhibit its authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act," Sessions said in a May 1 letter to Senate and House leaders. "I believe it would be unwise to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime."

Evidently Sessions' former colleagues found that logic, tying medical marijuana to violence and heroin use, unpersuasive. The committee's approval of the rider Sessions opposes, which was first enacted in 2014 and has been renewed each year since then, sets the stage for its inclusion in the final bill providing funding for the Justice Department.

"This vote is not only a blow against an outdated Reefer Madness mindset," says Marijuana Majority Chairman Tom Angell, who first reported Sessions' letter. "It is a personal rebuke to Jeff Sessions. The attorney general, in contravention of President Trump's campaign pledges and of public opinion, specifically asked Congress to give him the power to arrest and prosecute medical marijuana patients and providers who are following state laws. A bipartisan group of his former Senate colleagues just said no. A majority of states now allow medical cannabis, and we will not allow drug warriors in the Justice Department to roll back the clock. The war on marijuana is ending, even if Jeff Sessions doesn't realize it yet."

Two weeks ago, the same Senate committee, by a vote of 24 to 7, approved an amendment that would have permitted Veterans Health Administration doctors to recommend marijuana as a treatment in states that allow medical use. Last year that amendment passed the Senate and House by wide margins but did not end up in the final appropriations bill. Yesterday the House Rules Committee voted to keep the rider from proceeding to a floor vote.

twitter:

theintercept twitterde op zaterdag 29-07-2017 om 18:56:28 A new @fieldofvision film shows the human toll of Duterte’s bloody campaign, which has killed more than 7,000 peopl… https://t.co/MYTHKGSuJE reageer retweet

quote:

Duizenden liters grondstof voor drugs gevonden in Brabant | NOS

In een schuur bij een chalet in Molenschot in Noord-Brabant is 5000 liter zoutzuur gevonden. In een bestelbus stond nog eens 2000 liter. De vloeistof zat in jerrycans. De politie heeft één aanhouding verricht.

De politie zei tegen Omroep Brabant dat van het zoutzuur 4000 kilo pasta gemaakt kan worden voor de productie van amfetamine, voor een straatwaarde van 2,8 miljoen euro.

Agenten gingen kijken na een melding van een verdachte bus. Tijdens het onderzoek kwam ook de schuur in beeld.

De speciale politiedienst voor het opruimen van chemische stoffen is in Molenschot voor onderzoek. De grondstoffen worden door een gespecialiseerd bedrijf vernietigd. "Je moet er niet aan denken als zo'n schuur in brand vliegt of als zo'n jerrycan gaat lekken", aldus een politiewoordvoerder.

Bron: nos.nl

quote:

At least 60 UK drug deaths in past eight months linked to fentanyl

quote:

At least 60 drugs deaths in the UK in the past eight months have been linked to fentanyl, a deadly opiate that is being mixed with street heroin to make it more potent.

Releasing the figures, the National Crime Agency repeated its warning to drug users, their friends and families to be vigilant, recommending they read guidance issued by Public Health England so they could “protect themselves and their loved ones”.

The body said that since December 2016 postmortem toxicology results indicated that 60 people who had died from drug overdoses had fentanyl or a related substance in their system. A further 70 suspected cases were yet to be tested.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opiate, is up to 100 times stronger than heroin and is sometimes prescribed as a painkiller for the terminally ill. Its analogue carfentanyl is 10,000 times stronger and is used as an elephant tranquilliser.

On Tuesday police charged 25-year-old Kyle Enos from Newport, south Wales, with importing, supplying and exporting class A drugs after officers identified him using the dark web to purchase fentanyl.

His arrest follows that of three men in April after a drug-mixing facility in Morley, Leeds, was raided. All were charged with conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

“The threat of synthetic opioids is not new,” said Ian Cruxton, deputy director of the NCA. “However, since December 2016, we have seen a number of drug-related deaths linked to fentanyl and carfentanyl.”

“The NCA has been working with partners, both in the UK and overseas, to take action against those drug dealers who are playing Russian roulette with the lives of their customers by mixing synthetic opioids with heroin and other class A drugs.”

In the US, fentanyl is one of the drugs blamed for the rapid rise in overdose deaths and widespread opioid addiction. It came to international attention in June, when it was found that the singer Prince died after overdosing on it.

The majority of drug overdoses in the UK thought to have involved fentanyl and carfentanyl are in the Yorkshire and the Humber region. “We have been working with drug testing labs and local drug services to get more information on confirmed and suspected cases,” said Pete Burkinshaw, alcohol and drug treatment and recovery lead at Public Health England.

“We do not have a full picture, but the deaths in Yorkshire do appear to have peaked earlier in the year and fallen since our national alert and, encouragingly, our investigations in other parts of the country suggest we are not seeing the feared sharp increase in overdoses.”

DS Patrick Twiggs of West Yorkshire police said fentanyl and its analogues had come to the force’s attention about six months ago.

“We started to see an increase in apparent drugs deaths and, when the toxicology results were carried out, we weren’t finding the normal levels of heroin that we usually would in those deaths, so toxicologists started to extend their searches and look for other potential causes. [They then] happened on the group of fentanyls.”

Speaking to the media on behalf of police forces across Yorkshire, the Humber and Cleveland, he said the substance had been found in 50 deaths across the region and that another 73 possible cases were awaiting testing.

“The drug can be manufactured by anyone with a modicum of chemical knowledge and the necessary equipment, but the main supply route is coming through the dark web, principally from China and Hong Kong,” he said.

He said police forces were working with other agencies to ensure that paramedics had a sufficient supply of naloxone, which acts as an antidote in cases of opioid overdose, and training frontline police in how to use it.

“Sadly we feel this is a drug that is going to be here to stay,” said Twiggs. “Whilst we will do everything we can to stem the flow of this and supply into communities, because of its availability on the dark web, it’s something that is very difficult to control and it is freely available.”

quote:

Er zat een recordaantal van 1,5 ton aan cocaïne verstopt in de romp, ter waarde van 322 miljoen dollar (271 miljoen euro) en was op weg naar Australië.

quote:

The Federal Government Is Finally Exploring Marijuana As a Medical Alternative to Opioids

Medical marijuana advocates have claimed for years that cannabis is an effective and safe alternative to prescription opioids for the treatment of pain. But no one put up the money to prove it until last week.

On Tuesday, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System announced a forthcoming study to ascertain whether medical marijuana can alleviate the need for opioids in both HIV-positive and HIV-free patients who suffer from chronic pain. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is putting $3.5 million towards the investigation.

A study published last year suggests the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is on the right track.

In 2016, researchers at the University of Michigan published two years' worth of survey results collected from 185 medical marijuana patients suffering from various ailments. Patients reported a 45 percent improvement in quality of life and a 64 percent reduction in the use of prescription opioids.

"We would caution against rushing to change current clinical practice towards cannabis," said Michigan study leader Kevin Boehnke, "but note that this study suggests that cannabis is an effective pain medication and agent to prevent opioid overuse."

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine is right to point out that we have far less data than one might expect, considering the first state to legalize medical marijuana did so 21 years ago. Most research into Schedule I drugs is paid for by the federal government, which has historically underwritten only those studies that either show the harms of such substances or explain their mechanism of action. The federal monopoly on research marijuana, meanwhile, makes studying the drug's therapeutic qualities an exercise in bureaucratic kowtowing.

But we do know there is a correlation between medical marijuana legalization and opioid use. A 2014 study that looked at 11 years of overdose data found that death rates from opioids increased in both states with liberalized marijuana laws and those without, but that "medical cannabis laws were associated with lower rates of opioid analgesic overdose mortality."

When University of Georgia economist David Bradford looked at Medicare prescribing rates, he found that physicians in medical marijuana states prescribed "1,826 fewer doses of conventional pain medication each year."

In addition to receiving funding from NIH—itself a noteworthy development—the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will conduct its study using marijuana provided by New York medical marijuana dispensaries, rather than the moldy ditchweed provided to researchers by the Drug Enforcement Administration's operation at the University of Mississippi.

Cannabis research has turned another corner.

quote:

5 Things You Need to Know About UK Drug Policy

quote:

“Drug misuse among adults and young people has fallen in the last 10 years.” – UK Home Office, December 2016

Variations of this line have without fail been the Home Office’s go to statement in recent years when questioned on the efficacy of its drug policies. More often than not, it is defiantly accompanied with quotes that suggest to the general public: “Because drug use is falling, our drug policy is working.”

Perversely, the above December 2016 quote comprised part of the Home Office’s refusal to accept Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recommendations to combat the rising rate of opioid-related deaths through improving drug treatment and harm reduction services. How a fall in drug use is relevant when drug deaths are skyrocketing is simply beyond comprehension.

Ultimately, the prevalence of drug use is a terrible measure of whether a country’s drug policy is successful or not. Yet, governments the world over are obsessed with utilising this as the sole metric, blindly ignoring in the process the immense harm their punitive policies are causing to societies.

This year will see the UK government release its long-awaited new drug strategy. Any hint of a break with the history and willingness to learn from past errors, though, will be severely lacking, according to reports. Ideology it seems will once again outweigh evidence and good public policy.

In light of this impending continuation of failure, we thought it would be helpful to outline some of the damage wrought by UK drug policies in recent years - from over 400,000 people criminalised for non-violent drug possession and the police resources wasted on drugs stop and searches, to the all-time high in drug-related deaths.

These infographics are just a snapshot of the UK drug policy’s most egregious shortcomings. Sadly, with the Home Office’s fixation on drug use levels as a measure of success and refusal to accept the evidence for drug law reform, these significant societal harms will not be diminishing anytime soon.

quote:

Dashcam video shows police sexually assaulted Texas woman, lawyer says

Attorney for Charnesia Corley, who was pulled over for allegedly running a stop sign, releases video showing her examined while naked below the waist

The attorney for a black woman subjected to an invasive and lengthy roadside strip search by Texas police has released a dashcam video of the incident that he says shows her treatment was a form of rape.

“When you stick your fingers in somebody without their effective consent, that’s rape in any state that I know of,” said Sam Cammack, an attorney for Charnesia Corley.

Cammack made the video public after two Harris County deputies, Ronaldine Pierre and William Strong, were cleared of official oppression by a grand jury earlier this month. They are still with the sheriff’s department. Cammack wants an independent prosecutor to look into the case; a federal civil rights trial is set for January.

Corley was pulled over for allegedly running a stop sign and failing to use turn signals. In the video, she is made to stand, handcuffed, outside her car while two officers look inside. She is then searched with the rear passenger-side door open, partially obscuring the camera’s view of her body.

Corley is then put on the ground, naked below the waist, and examined for about 11 minutes by a female officer using a flashlight. The incident happened in the parking lot of a Texaco garage in Houston late on a June evening in 2015, when she was a 20-year-old student.

The federal lawsuit against Harris County alleges: “When one of the Deputies tried to insert her fingers into Ms Corley’s vagina, Ms Corley protested. At that point, the Deputies forcibly threw Ms Corley to the ground, while she was still handcuffed, pinned her down with her legs spread apart, threatened to break her legs and without consent penetrated her vagina in a purported search for marijuana.”
Corley was arrested and charged with possession of 0.02 ounces of marijuana and resisting arrest; the charges were dropped by the Harris County district attorney’s office.

“When they’re violating the bodies of black women, I think there’s this perception in society that that’s par for the course, that that’s to be expected and that combines with these profiles of black women as drug couriers, drug concealers, as people who are always hiding drugs in some part of their body,” said Andrea J Ritchie, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color.

“And so I think those things kind of combine in the minds of grand jurors to: ‘Well, isn’t this how we wage the war on drugs, isn’t this what we think black women are doing all the time anyway? So we’re not going to hold this officer liable for basically doing the job we told them to do.’”

In response to a previous incident, Texas lawmakers passed a bill that went into effect a couple of months after Corley’s arrest. The measure prohibits officers from conducting roadside body cavity searches without a search warrant. But Ritchie is worried that the current national political climate will lead to continuing invasive searches.

“It’s unfortunately a very consistent characteristic of the war on drugs,” she said. “It’s a concern as the federal government, particularly [the attorney general] Jeff Sessions, talk about ramping that up, that we’ll be seeing more and more of the kind of searches that Charnesia describes.”

quote:

Human rights group slams Philippines president Duterte's threat to kill them

‘If they are obstructing justice, you shoot them,’ Rodrigo Duterte tells police officers of activists opposed to his drugs war

Human Rights Watch has denounced a call by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte for police to shoot rights activists who get in the way of his bloody drug war.

Duterte should immediately withdraw his statement or be investigated for possibly instigating or inciting violence against Philippine rights advocates, the New York-based advocacy group said.

The body’s deputy Asia director, Phelim Kine, said the threat “is like painting a target on the backs of courageous people working to protect the rights and upholding the dignity of all Filipinos”.

Duterte “should retract his reprehensible remarks immediately before there is more blood on his hands”, he added.

Speaking following the bloodiest night of his one-year tenure in high office, Duterte said he would investigate human rights defenders criticising him, or order officers to kill them.

“One of these days, you human rights groups, I will also investigate you. That’s the truth. For conspiracy,” Duterte said.

“If they are obstructing justice, you shoot them,” he said. “So they can really see the kind of human rights.”

Police in the Philippines killed 32 people in a series of raids near Manila on Monday night, part of an operation authorities said was aimed to “shock and awe” drug dealers.

Duterte later said he approved of the “massive raid” and called for more bloodshed: “Let’s kill another 32 every day. Maybe we can reduce what ails this country.”

The former prosecutor, who has repeatedly assured police he will pardon them for crimes, previously threatened to kill human rights defenders in December 2016.

Nicknamed “the Punisher” for his lethal approach to policing, Duterte has also threatened to block an investigation by the national commission on human rights into alleged abuses by Philippine security forces, although he later said his threat was a “joke”.

Political opponents of Duterte have attempted to bring him to the international criminal court (ICC) in the Netherlands, accusing the president of crimes against humanity.

His call on Wednesday for police to consider human rights advocates legitimate drug war targets is a sinister escalation in his rhetoric, Human Rights Watch said.

“Duterte is on notice that his death threats against human rights advocates could pave the way for prosecution for crimes against humanity,” Kine said. “Duterte’s assault on accountability highlights the urgent need for a UN-led international investigation into his drug-war slaughter.”

Since the former mayor of Davao city became president last July, government figures show police have killed close to 3,500 “drug personalities”. More than 2,000 other people have been killed in drug-related crimes and thousands more murdered in unexplained circumstances, according to police data.

quote:

French ex-drugs squad chief accused over cannabis smuggling

The former head of France’s anti-narcotics agency has been charged with complicity in drug smuggling as part of an inquiry into controversial methods used by the police to bring down drug barons, legal sources have said.

François Thierry was charged on Thursday with complicity in the possession, transport and acquisition of drugs and in their export as part of an organised gang, a source close to the investigation said.

Ocrtis, the drug-fighting agency he ran between 2010-2016, came under investigation after seven tonnes of cannabis smuggled from Morocco was seized in Paris on 17 October 2015.

The police were initially praised for the haul but it later emerged that it was part of a sting operation aimed at infiltrating a smuggler network, with the help of a notorious trafficker acting as an informer.

Investigators accuse Thierry of keeping his superiors in the dark about parts of the operation and the role played by the trafficker, allegations he denies.

He has been released on bail.

His lawyer Francis Szpiner accused prosecutors of “incredible hypocrisy”, saying Thierry’s methods had produced “exceptional results”.

quote:

Misschien zou u eens psychedelica moeten proberen

quote:

In de aanloop naar het huwelijk van prinses Beatrix van Oranje en Claus van Amsberg in 1966 stond de samenleving op spanning. Het huwelijk was omstreden en politie en politiek verwachtten ongeregeldheden. Om de boel te stangen kwam de Provobeweging in die dagen met een grappig bedoelde memo. Het fictieve Oranje Komitee schreef:

‘Uit betrouwbare kringen heeft ons Komitee vernomen dat enkele ekstreme groeperingen op 10 maart a.s. Akties zullen ondernemen, die LEVENSGEVAARLIJK kunnen zijn voor de Amsterdamse bevolking. Er zijn plannen voor het toedienen van het krankzinnig makend middel L.S.D. aan de paarden van de bereden politie.’ Er was door de instanties zelfs het gerucht opgevangen dat lsd in het drinkwater van Amsterdam zou worden gedaan.

De paniek brak uit op de verantwoordelijke ministeries. Koste wat kost moest het middel zo snel mogelijk verboden worden. Staatssecretaris Aloysius Bartels van Volksgezondheid (KVP) maakte korte metten met de legale status. De ‘beschikking inzake psychotogene stoffen’ lag in die jaren op zijn bureau, en op de avond van 8 februari 1966 werd een ‘beschikking’ gemaakt die lsd, psilocybine en mescaline onder de Opiumwet deed vallen, die op dat moment nog bedoeld was voor middelen als cannabis, heroïne en cocaïne.

Binnen een paar dagen had De Telegraaf een stuk over de vermeende gevaren van het middel. Lsd leidde tot krankzinnigheid, zo meende de krant: ‘Reeds vele jongeren in ‘t verderf gestort,’ zo stond er boven het artikel. En zulk soort misvattingen zijn sindsdien standaard geworden in de demonisering van psychedelica.

quote:

Politiecommissaris pleit voor legalisering van alle drugs: "De war on drugs werkt niet"


"Haal alle drugs uit de illegaliteit." Dat is de opvallende oproep van politiecommissaris Peter Muyshondt. Volgens de commissaris, die zelf zijn broer verloor door een overdosis heroïne, werkt het huidige drugbeleid niet en is een radicale omslag nodig.

Muyshondt (45) is hoofdcommisaris in de politiezone Voorkempen. Hij pleit al langer voor het legaliseren van drugs en heeft er nu een boek over geschreven, "Beleid op speed". Daarin schrijft hij dat de "war on drugs" die nu al meer dan 40 jaar gevoerd wordt, meer kwaad dan goed doet.

Nochtans was hij vroeger een andere mening toegedaan. "Ik was de grote drugsbestrijder. Ik was ervan overtuigd dat de strafrechtelijke aanpak de enige goeie was om druggebruik te ontraden en om mensen met een spreekwoordelijke stok achter de deur richting hulp te sturen", vertelt hij aan onze redactie.

Muyshondt kreeg van dichtbij af te rekenen met de destructieve gevolgen van een drugsverslaving. Zijn broer Tom overleed aan een overdosis heroïne. Dat veranderde zijn visie op de problematiek.

"Na het overlijden van mijn broer ben ik met verschillende mensen in contact gekomen en ben ik veel beginnen lezen. Ik heb ook veel studiewerk gelezen, academisch onderzoek, dat in het ganse drugdebat telkens opzij wordt geschoven omdat de conclusies niet stroken met het beleid. Zo heb ik gaandeweg een nieuwe visie ontwikkeld. Of beter gezegd: overgenomen van anderen. Omdat die visie volgens mij accuraat is."

"Druggebruik stijgt nog elk jaar"

Muyshondt pleit voor het legaliseren van alle drugs, ook harddrugs als heroïne. Door ze uit de illegaliteit te halen kan de overheid meer controle uitvoeren, zegt hij. "Zo kan je kan bepalen wat erin zit. Je kan daar dan vergunningen aan koppelen. Je kan er ook voor zorgen dat bepaalde bedrijven instaan voor de productie, maar dan wel onder strikte overheidscontrole."

Op die manier zou vermeden worden dat druggebruikers sterven door vervuilde drugs. Nu weten ze immers nooit helemaal zeker wat ze kopen. Bovendien zouden de criminele bendes niet langer de markt in handen hebben. Het tegenargument dat een legalisering meer mensen naar druggebruik zou leiden, klopt volgens hem niet.

"Men kan beweren wat men wil, maar de "war on drugs" werkt niet. Je krijgt al die statistieken over arrestaties en inbeslagnames en over hoe hard wij wel niet werken. Maar wat doet dat met de evolutie van het druggebruik? Niets. Het druggebruik stijgt nog elk jaar, ook aan de productiekant gaat het in stijgende lijn. Opium en cocaïne, dat zijn groeimarkten."

Maatschappelijk draagvlak

Muyshondt is zelf commissaris. HIj moet dus het huidige beleid uitvoeren. Geeft dat geen conflicten? Nee, zegt hij heel duidelijk, hij voert uit wat de wet zegt. "Zolang het in handen blijft van de criminele onderwereld, zullen wij het als politie blijven bestrijden. Dat is onze taak."

"Maar het is een ongelofelijke kost die niets bijdraagt. Meer nog,
het leidt tot veel schade, bij gebruikers en familieleden", aldus Muyshondt. "En daarnaast is er het sociale stigma. Niet elke druggebruiker ontwikkelt problematisch gedrag. Dat gaat om een minderheid."

Wat wil hij te bereiken met zijn boek? "Ik wil een aantal oude ideeën de wereld uithelpen en mensen op een meer realistische manier naar het drugbeleid laten kijken", antwoordt hij. Op termijn hoopt hij dat beleid te beïnvloeden. "Politici volgen het maatschappelijke draagvlak. Dus ik probeer eerst samen met anderen dat draagvlak te creëren en vorm te geven."

quote:

Duterte's Son Denies Meth Smuggling Claims as Case Rivets Manila

quote:

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s son denied any involvement in a drug smuggling case that is captivating the nation.

Paolo Duterte, the vice mayor of Davao City, on Thursday appeared before a Senate committee investigating how 604 kilograms (1,330 pounds) of the drug known as crystal meth slipped through the Bureau of Customs in May. A broker who handled the shipment initially said his customs transactions were facilitated by a group claiming to have links with Paolo Duterte and his brother-in-law, Manases Carpio.

“My brother-in-law and I have been publicly crucified based on rumors and gossip,” Carpio told lawmakers in Manila on Thursday, also denying the allegations. He is married to Davao City Mayor Sarah Duterte, who took over from her father after he won the presidency.

President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly said he’ll resign if any of his family members are found guilty of corruption or involvement with drug smuggling. Since taking office in June 2016, Duterte has waged a deadly war on illegal drugs that has been condemned by the United Nations, the European Union and human rights advocates.

“Both gentlemen are willing and ready to face malicious allegations intended to impugn their character and credibility,” Duterte’s official spokesman Ernesto Abella said in a statement on Thursday before the men spoke. “The president has said in numerous occasions that he would not interfere.”

Drug Shipment

The Senate probe began in July when lawmakers accused customs chief Nicanor Faeldon, who resigned last month, of failing to stop the shipment. The National Bureau of Investigation later filed criminal charges of illegal drug imports against traders including Mark Taguba, who denies wrongdoing. They face life in prison and a fine of as much as 10 million pesos ($200,000) if convicted.

Taguba, the broker for the shipment, mentioned the names of the president’s relatives during an Aug. 7 hearing at the House of Representatives. He said that he had paid 1 million pesos a week to a Davao group to facilitate his transactions.

Taguba had said that he never met Paolo Duterte nor Carpio, but dealt with people who had mentioned their names and accepted protection money on their behalf. Last week, Taguba issued a statement attempting to clear the pair of any involvement in illegal drugs or anomalies at customs.

President Duterte previously advised both men to tell the truth, even as he said that his son can invoke his “right to silence,” according to a transcript of his remarks to reporters on Sept. 3.

quote:

Xtc erkend als mogelijke behandeling tegen PTSS

De Amerikaanse voedsel- en warenautoriteit FDA heeft xtc aangemerkt als een ‘doorbraakbehandeling’ tegen posttraumatische stressstoornis. Die positieve aanduiding maakt het makkelijker om door te gaan met proeven op mensen – die eerder al goede resultaten hebben laten zien.
^{9 september 2017 door Karine Kirkebæk #PTSD}

De mogelijkheid om xtc op doktersrecept te verkrijgen is weer een stap dichterbij gekomen.

En dat is goed nieuws voor de circa 8 miljoen mensen wereldwijd die lijden aan een posttraumatische stressstoornis (PTSS).

De Amerikaanse voedsel- en warenautoriteit FDA heeft xtc aangemerkt als een ‘doorbraakbehandeling’ tegen PTSD.

De chemische naam van de drug is 3,4-methyleendioxymethamfetamine (MDMA), maar de stof is vooral bekend onder de straatnaam xtc.
Klinische proeven met xtc

Het besluit van de FDA maakt het mogelijk om de stof sneller te laten goedkeuren als geneesmiddel.

De klinische proeven met xtc zullen worden uitgevoerd door de non-profitonderzoeksorganisatie Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

In het kielzog van de bekendmaking van de FDA liet de organisatie weten dat ze nu verder kan gaan met haar komende fase 3-onderzoek.
Geld nodig voor onderzoek

Bij eerdere proeven van MAPS bleek 61 procent van de proefpersonen genezen van PTSS nadat ze twee maanden gecontroleerd xtc hadden gebruikt.

In 2018 wil MAPS de veelbelovende resultaten proberen te reproduceren met ongeveer 230 nieuwe proefpersonen.

Het is de eerste keer in de geschiedenis dat een psychedelische stof wordt getest in een fase 3-onderzoek met als doel door artsen te worden voorgeschreven als aanvulling op een bestaande therapie.

MAPS moet nog wel aan geld zien te komen voor de proeven. In totaal heeft de organisatie 26 miljoen dollar nodig, en tot op heden heeft ze daarvan nog slechts 13 miljoen binnen.

quote:

Op zondag 10 september 2017 13:26 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Rotterdamse bendes ronselen jeugd om in België te dealen

Drugsorganisaties hebben in Rotterdam-Zuid op grote schaal minderjarige jongens geworven als drugskoerier. In Belgische steden leverden ze drugs uit Rotterdam op straat en aan huis. Tientallen jongeren uit Rotterdam-Zuid zijn al opgepakt in België.

De jongeren van 16 en 17 jaar werden op scholen en in jeugdinstellingen geworven door ronselaars, die in sommige gevallen zelf ook minderjarig zijn. In onder meer Sint-Truiden brachten ze op afroep heroïne en cocaïne naar klanten. De drugs werden geleverd door criminele organisaties uit Rotterdam-Zuid.

Ongeruste ouders

Het Openbaar Ministerie kwam de praktijken in de loop van 2015 op het spoor doordat ouders ongerust belden dat ze hun zoon misten. Die bleken dan in België vast te zitten voor drugshandel.

In een ander Rotterdams onderzoek stuitte de politie op een in beslag genomen telefoon op informatie over de ronselpraktijken. Tot nu toe zijn drie ronselaars aangehouden. Twee van hen staan volgende week terecht.

De minderjarige jongeren die benaderd werden om in België drugs aan de man te brengen, komen uit zwakke sociale milieus in Rotterdam-zuid. Afkomst speelt geen rol, veel van hen kwamen wel al eerder met de politie in aanraking voor vergrijpen als straatroven en vechtpartijen.

Minderjarige drugskoeriers kunnen in België niet veroordeeld worden omdat dat land geen minderjarigen-strafrecht kent. Wel kan de onderzoeksrechter ze tot 65 dagen vasthouden in het belang van het onderzoek. In Nederland worden ze daarna nog wel vervolgd. Enkelen hebben al jeugddetentie gekregen, anderen werkstraffen.

Rotterdammers lopen snel tegen de lamp

De pakkans in België is groot, aldus het OM. "Ze lopen met een Rotterdamse tongval rond in een klein Belgisch stadje", zegt een woordvoerder.

Een van de na zijn uitlevering in een jeugdinstelling geplaatste drugskoeriers bleek daar zelf jongeren enthousiast te maken om als drugsrunner aan de slag te gaan.

Het OM zegt nog geen goed beeld te hebben van de criminele organisaties die gebruik maakten van de minderjarige drugsrunners. Wel lopen er verschillende onderzoeken.

quote:

Jaarbudget Filipijnse mensenrechtencommissie vastgesteld: 16 euro

quote:

Kleine samenvatting

Vorig jaar kreeg deze instelling nog 12.3 miljoen euro nu nog maar 16 want zegt Duterte "als ze de criminelen willen beschermen moeten ze daar ook maar het geld vandaan halen"

Meneer Duterte wil gewoon niet dat er onderzoek gedaan wordt naar zijn handelen in de war on drugs van de afgelopen 12 maanden waarin al 7000 mensen zijn vermoord door zijn toedoen.

mensen worden in koele bloede vermoord, waarna er een pistool, en drug bij het lichaam worden gelegd door de politie er zijn door de politie 2500 mensen gedood de rest door doodseskaders die door de straten trekken en onder de dode zijn ook kinderen die zelf gebruiken.

Dus ja dan wil je graag het een en ander in de doofpot stoppen natuurlijk en dan is deze instelling weg bezuinigen de oplossing.

wederom LEGALIZE

quote:

Hoe druk krijgen maffiajagers het in ​'scharnierpunt Nederland'?

quote:

Een Italiaans restaurant als dekmantel voor de maffia: het klinkt als een filmcliché, maar het gebeurt ook in Nederland. Het is slechts een van de sectoren waarin de maffia actief is. De vorming van een speciaal anti-maffiateam bij de politie komt dan ook niet uit de lucht vallen.

"De Italiaanse justitie heeft vaak hulp nodig van Nederland omdat hier voortvluchtige maffiosi rondzwerven", zegt onderzoeksjournalist Stan de Jong. Hij schreef samen met Koen Voskuil het boek De Italiaanse maffia in Nederland (2010). "De invloed van deze criminele organisaties wordt toch groter dan men had verwacht."

quote:

Vaststaat dat ons land voor de organisaties waardevol is als productieplaats voor verdovende middelen en het vervoer daarvan. "Nederland is gewoon een scharnierpunt in de drugshandel", zegt De Jong. "Denk aan de grote havens van Rotterdam en luchthaven Schiphol: er komt heel veel drugs via binnen."

quote:

Medewerker haven Rotterdam gepakt met 363 kilo cocaïne

quote:

Een arrestatieteam van de politie in Rotterdam heeft woensdagavond een 43-jarige havenmedewerker gepakt die vermoedelijk medeplichtig is aan drugssmokkel. Het onderzoek naar de man heeft maanden geduurd. De politie probeerde hem op heterdaad te betrappen en dat lukte.

Op het moment van de inval was de man achter de computer bezig met de afhandeling van een container. In die container vond de politie 363 kilo cocaïne.
Opengeknipte container

De politie kwam de verdachte op het spoor na de ontdekking van een opengeknipte container op de terminal van een overslagbedrijf. Het vermoeden was dat er drugs in was vervoerd.

De politie begon samen met de douane en het overslagbedrijf een onderzoek en daarbij kwam de verdachte in beeld. Hij zou de zogenoemde "uithalers" van de drugs helpen door containers op een bepaalde plaats neer te zetten.

Er is huiszoeking gedaan bij de verdachte, een 43-jarige man uit Rozenburg. Daarbij zijn geld en spullen in beslag genomen. Morgen wordt hij voorgeleid aan de rechter-commissaris.

Behalve van drugshandel wordt hij verdacht van corruptie. Justitie meldt dat het onderzoek verder gaat, naar andere verdachten en het geld dat met de drugssmokkel is verdiend.

quote:

Oproep burgemeesters aan nieuwe kabinet: 'Meer geld en bevoegdheden tegen drugscriminaliteit'

EINDHOVEN - Burgemeesters van de vijf grootste Brabantse steden willen dat het nieuwe kabinet meer prioriteit geeft aan het bestrijden van de drugsgerelateerde criminaliteit. De burgemeesters willen meer geld en en bevoegdheden. Volgens burgemeester John Jorritsma van Eindhoven is het 'werkelijk elke dag weer vechten tegen de bierkaai'.

quote:

'America's War on Drugs': Inside New Miniseries Exposing Hypocrisy of U.S. Drug Policy

New four-part docuseries dives into links between CIA, DEA and military, providing "secret history of the past 50 years."

There's a great moment in the new History channel miniseries, America's War on Drugs, when a former DEA agent named Celerino Castillo explains why America's crusade to purge drugs from the world is doomed to fail: "America is more addicted to drug money than they are addicted to drugs."

After risking his life going undercover in the 1980s, Castillo had been disillusioned – quite a few different times – to discover that the CIA couldn't care less about stemming the flow of cocaine from Latin America. In fact, the agency ignored the Contras' drug smuggling. The cocaine moved by the guerrillas made its way to America's inner cities as crack, fueling an epidemic of addiction and mass incarceration that has helped make America the number one jailer in the world. When San Jose Mercury reporter Gary Webb broke that story, he was maligned as a conspiracy theorist and fired. Webb eventually killed himself.

Unearthing these kinds of dizzying links in the global drug trade is the driving force behind the eight-hour, four-night event, which premieres this Sunday, June 18th. Using historic footage, dramatic re-enactments and interviews with a cast of fascinating characters – including former CIA and DEA agents, drug traffickers and gang members – the series makes the case that the drug trade has always been entwined in America's military adventures: all the way from the CIA's secret experiments with LSD in the early Cold War, to opium production in Afghanistan during the War on Terror. "We really wanted to do an epic look at the secret history of the war on drugs in America and tell this much bigger story," says Anthony Lappé, who produced the four-part series along with Julian Hobbs and Elli Hakami . "It's almost like the secret history of the last 50 years."

A veteran journalist who collaborated with Gary Webb at an investigative reporting conference in Mexico, Lappé says it's odd that most people don't look at drugs through the prism of global relations. "It's uncanny," he says. "We're all so focused on the drug problem in the country, but we don't stop to ask, where are those drugs coming from? And what are the global forces driving drug trafficking?"

In answering those questions the series has dug up an engrossing history, some of it largely wiped from the mainstream conversation around drugs. Did you know that in the early 1990s, the Bloods and the Crips forged a truce and tried to get out of the drug trade? Or that Nazi butcher Klaus Barbie avoided justice after World War II, embarking on a second act as a cocaine trafficker, murderer and regime-toppler? Or the story of the "Cocaine Cowboys," whose insane hijinks inspired Miami Vice? There's the gruesome end of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juarez Cartel, who died at the end of a 10 hour plastic surgery to alter his appearance. The entire series feels almost too bizarre to be true.

"Some of it is mind-blowingly weird," Lappé says. "It's really a wild ride, something that captures your imagination."

Even as it moves at the pace of an international thriller, War on Drugs smartly lays out the shocking hypocrisy of US drug policy. Take Bill Clinton's two signature, now-infamous accomplishments: the Crime Bill and NAFTA. The former-President's anti-crime legislation flooded American cities with more cops and upped mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, causing America's prison population to explode. At the same time, by loosening border restrictions between the US and Mexico, NAFTA helped drug traffickers move massive amounts more product into the US. The trade agreement has been called a "deal made in narco Heaven" – and there's evidence Clinton was well aware of that potential outcome.

The series delivers injustice after injustice, with poor people of color almost always on the losing end. In one piece of footage from 1996, CIA director John Deutch is grilled at a community forum in South Central Los Angeles about the CIA's link to the crack trade. It's satisfying to watch him squirm, until you remember that there are still people serving life without parole for crack.

With America in the midst of an opioid crisis, fifty-odd-years worth of cautionary tales about how not to fight a war on drugs is more relevant than ever. Especially since Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an old-school drug warrior, bent on reversing the slim criminal justice and drug policy reforms that occurred under Obama.

"We have an administration, led by AG Sessions, promising to bring back the War on Drugs' most draconian policies, including mandatory sentencing laws," Lappé says. "Policies that most experts on all ends of the spectrum agree do little to stop people from consuming drugs and end up doing uncalculable harm to communities for generations."

Hopefully, the History channel will expose a large swath of America to a side of the drug story they’ve never heard - and it’s a story that should resonate with blue and red state America alike.

"It's not a left or right thing. This crosses administrations and ideologies," Lappé says. "Here we are, with the War on Drugs making a stealth comeback and few Americans knowing the real story of its origins, or truly understanding why it has never worked," Lappé says. "It's never been a more timely topic because if they did, they would be shocked."

quote:

Brazil’s Latest Outbreak of Drug Gang Violence Highlights the Real Culprit: the War on Drugs

quote:

On July 1, 2001, Portugal enacted a law to decriminalize all drugs. Under that law, nobody who is found possessing or using narcotics is arrested in Portugal, nor are they turned into a criminal. Indeed, neither drug use nor possession is considered a crime at all. Instead, those found doing it are sent to speak with a panel of drug counsellors and therapists, where they are offered treatment options.

Seven years after the law was enacted, in 2008, we traveled to Lisbon to study the effects of that law for one of the first comprehensive reports on this policy, the findings of which were published in a report for the Cato Institute. The results were clear and stunning: This radical change in drug laws was a fundamental and undeniable success.

While Portugal throughout the 1990s was (like most Western countries) drowning in drug overdoses along with drug-related violence and diseases, the country rose to the top of the charts in virtually all categories after it stopped prosecuting drug users and treating them like criminals. This stood in stark contrast to countries that continued to follow a harsh criminalization approach: the more they arrested addicts and waged a “war on drugs,” the more their drug problems worsened.

With all the money that had been wasted in Portugal to prosecute and imprison drug users now freed up for treatment programs, and the government viewed with trust rather than fear, previously hopeless addicts transformed into success stories of stability and health, and the government’s anti-drug messages were heeded. The predicted rise in drug usage rates never happened; in some key demographic categories, usage actually declined. As the 2009 study concluded: “The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success.”

quote:

This evidence is of vital importance to the citizens of any country that continues to treat drug users and addicts as criminals. It is simply unconscionable to break up families, force children to remain apart from imprisoned parents, and turn drug addicts into unemployable felons, particularly if the data demonstrates that those policies achieve the opposite results as their claimed intent.

But moral questions aside, the drug-related violence now sweeping Brazil, particularly the horrific war that is engulfing the Rio de Janeiro favela of Rocinha — just a few years after it was declared “pacified” — makes these questions of particular urgency for Brazilians and citizens of any country. Brazil has witnessed repeated outbreaks of horrific violence in the favelas of its largest cities, many of which have long been ruled not by the government but by well-armed drug gangs. But this past week’s war — and that’s what it is — in Rocinha, located in the middle of Rio de Janeiro’s fashionable Zona Sul, has been particularly shocking.

Competing drug gangs have “invaded” the favela and are in open warfare for control of the drug trade, in the process forcing schools to close, residents to cower in their homes, and stores to remain shuttered. As Misha Glenny reported on Monday in The Intercept, “The immediate cause of violence is the ongoing struggle between and now within factions,” but the violence portends the high likelihood of a wider war for control of the drug trade.

In the face of drug-related violence, there is a temptation to embrace the seemingly simplest solution: an even-greater war on drugs, more drug dealers and addicts in prison, more police, more prohibition.

Those who peddle this approach want people to believe a simple-minded string of reasoning: the cause of drug-related problems, such as violence from drug gangs, is drugs. Therefore, we must eliminate drugs. Therefore, the more problems we have from drugs, the more aggressively we rid society of drugs and those who sell and use them.

But this mentality is based on an obvious, tragic fallacy: namely, that the war on drugs, and drug criminalization, will eliminate drugs or at least reduce its availability. Decades of failure prove this will not happen; rather, the opposite will occur. Like the U.S., Brazil has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of citizens for drug-related crimes — mostly poor and nonwhite — and the problem has only worsened. Any person with minimal rationality would be forced to admit this string of logic is false.

Supporting a failed policy by hoping that, one day, it will magically succeed, is the definition of irrationality. In the case of drug laws — which spawn misery and suffering — it is not only irrational but cruel.

A 2011 report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy — featuring multiple world leaders including former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso — examined all relevant evidence and put it simply: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”

The primary fact in this conclusion is vitally important. The key cause of all drug-related pathologies — particularly gang violence of the type now suffocating Rocinha — is not drugs themselves, but rather the policy of criminalizing drugs and the war waged in its name.

quote:

Cannabis use is associated with a substantial reduction in premature deaths in the United States.

quote:

Adverse effects of moderate Cannabis use on physical health are subtle and rarely fatal, while Cannabis use is associated with decreased rates of obesity, diabetes mellitus, mortality from traumatic brain injury, use of alcohol and prescription drugs, driving fatalities, and opioid overdose deaths. These data suggest that Cannabis use may decrease premature deaths. To date, no studies have attempted to estimate impacts of Cannabis use on premature death that include both adverse and beneficial effects on physical health. Marijuana use is estimated to reduce premature deaths from diabetes mellitus, cancer, and traumatic brain injury by 989 to 2,511 deaths for each 1% of the population using Cannabis. The analysis predicts an estimated 23,500 to 47,500 deaths prevented annually if medical marijuana were legal nationwide. A number of other potential causes of reduced mortality due to Cannabis use were revealed, but were excluded from the analysis because quantitative data were lacking. These estimates thus substantially underestimate the actual impact of Cannabis use on premature death. Overall, prohibition is estimated to lead to similar numbers of premature deaths as drunk driving, homicide, or fatal opioid overdose. Cannabis use prevents thousands of premature deaths each year, and Cannabis prohibition is revealed as a major cause of premature death in the U.S.

quote:

NRC checkt: ‘Eénvijfde Brabantse boeren wordt benaderd voor drugsproductie’

Dat zei de Eindhovense burgemeester John Jorritsma zaterdag tegen RTL Nieuws.

^{18 september 2017}

De aanleiding

Dit weekend deden de burgemeesters van de vijf grootste Brabantse gemeenten een ‘noodoproep’ aan de onderhandelaars voor het nieuwe kabinet. Via RTL Nieuws vroegen ze om een deltaplan tegen drugscriminaliteit in Noord-Brabant. De burgemeesters willen een ‘strijdkas’ van 150 miljoen euro om de drugscriminaliteit aan te pakken en pleiten ervoor de privacywetgeving flink aan te passen zodat gegevens bij overheidsinstanties makkelijker gekoppeld kunnen worden.

Noord-Brabant is een belangrijke plek voor de productie van cannabis en xtc. Verschillende onderzoeken hebben aangetoond dat criminelen veel macht hebben in de provincie. RTL Nieuws ging op bezoek bij een boer uit Hulten die was benaderd door criminelen om een van zijn schuren te verhuren voor drugsproductie.

RTL Nieuws maakte een item voor de avondjournaals en plaatste een artikel op de website. In dat stuk stelt de Eindhovense burgemeester John Jorritsma: „Eén op de vijf agrariërs wordt benaderd om loodsen of stallen beschikbaar te stellen voor de drugsproductie.” We checken of dat klopt.

Waar is het op gebaseerd?

We leggen het de woordvoerder van de burgemeester voor. Hij verwijst naar een onderzoek van Omroep Brabant van afgelopen zomer. De omroep deed een steekproef onder 210 Brabantse boeren; 123 reageerden en 13 procent zei wel eens te zijn benaderd door criminelen voor zijn schuur of loods. ‘1 op 8 Brabantse boeren benaderd door criminelen voor duistere praktijken’, zo bracht Omroep Brabant het nieuws naar buiten. Uit het onderzoek bleek ook dat een kwart van de boeren ‘verhalen kent’ van collega’s die zijn benaderd.

Jorritsma’s woordvoerder meldt dat de burgemeester deze uitkomsten heeft „samengetrokken en gemiddeld naar één op de vijf”. Hij stelt dat dit getal van 20 procent ook wordt gebruikt in het reguliere overleg tussen de burgemeester van de vijf grootste Brabantse steden en de Commissaris van de Koning.

En, klopt het?

Onderzoek waaruit blijkt dat één op de vijf agrariërs in Brabant wordt benaderd door criminelen voor drugsproductie, lijkt niet te bestaan. Toine Spapens, hoogleraar criminologie aan Tilburg University, kent dergelijk onderzoek in ieder geval niet.

De hoogleraar onderzoekt met regelmaat de criminaliteit in Brabant en waarschuwt te veel conclusies te verbinden aan het Omroep Brabant-onderzoek. Op de ongeveer 10.000 agrarische bedrijven in Brabant is een steekproef van 210 „niet bijzonder groot”.

Twee journalisten van de omroep stellen dat op basis van de steekproef conclusies getrokken kunnen worden met een betrouwbaarheid van 90 procent. Ze zeggen geanonimiseerde data van de land- en tuinbouworganisatie ZLTO te hebben gebruikt. ZLTO heeft boeren aselect en uit de hele provincie benaderd, rekening houdend met de diversiteit aan agrarische sectoren.

Spapens blijft toch „voorzichtig”. Hij vindt het moeilijk in te schatten hoe de boeren die niet reageerden op de steekproef afwijken van degenen die wel reageerden. „Dat boeren benaderd worden is duidelijk, maar zonder meer informatie over de achtergronden zouden we toch voorzichtig moeten zijn met conclusies over de schaal waarop dat gebeurt.”

Conclusie

Er is geen onderzoek waaruit blijkt dat één op de vijf agrariërs in Brabant worden benaderd voor de productie van xtc, cannabis of andere drugs in hun panden. Het onderzoek waarop burgemeester Jorritsma zich baseert, spreekt van één op de acht boeren en bij dat onderzoek is enige voorzichtigheid geboden. We beoordelen de bewering daarom als ongefundeerd.

quote:

Nieuw kabinet wil proef met legale wietteelt

Het nieuwe kabinet wil een proef doen met legale wietteelt. Haagse bronnen bevestigen berichtgeving van RTL Nieuws over de proef. In een aantal gemeenten mag straks wiet worden verkocht die is geteeld door een of meerdere door de overheid aangewezen organisaties. De proef moet duidelijk maken of de criminaliteit door de legale wietteelt afneemt en of de wiet minder schadelijke stoffen bevat.

Nu wordt de verkoop van wiet in coffeeshops gedoogd, maar is het illegaal om wiet te kweken of in te kopen. Het is de bedoeling dat de overheid straks een vergunning afgeeft aan de organisaties om de wiet te produceren. Tussen de zes en tien gemeenten mogen de softdrugs dan in hun stad of dorp gaan verkopen.

De discussie over een proef met legale wiet speelt al jaren. Tientallen gemeenten, met name in het zuiden van het land, die last hebben van drugscriminaliteit pleiten al langer voor experimenten met legale wiet. De Vereniging Nederlandse Gemeenten adviseerde in 2015 al om de wietteelt te reguleren.

Het houden van een proef stuitte altijd op veel bezwaren, onder meer van de VVD en CDA. Vorig jaar wijzigde de VVD zijn koers en stemden de leden op een partijcongres voor het slimmer reguleren van de wietteelt.

In februari werd een initiatiefwet van D66 door de Tweede Kamer aangenomen om de wietteelt te reguleren.

quote:

CBS: geregistreerde criminaliteit blijft dalen, maar er zijn kanttekeningen

quote:

De oplossingspercentage lopen volgens Fijnaut ook ver uiteen: van heel hoog bij drugs- en wapendelicten - bijna 100 procent - tot 14 procent bij vermogensdelicten.

Fijnaut: 'Tja, die bijna 100 procent. Het wordt alleen geregistreerd als de dader wordt aangehouden bij het plegen van het delict, maar de gehele drugsindustrie en de wapenhandel blijven buiten beeld. Ook de vrij massale bedreigingen aan het adres van de burgemeesters, wethouders en raadslieden, zie je niet terug in die cijfers. Gebeurt dit in Zuid-Italië dan zouden mensen zeggen: allicht daar heb je de maffia. Maar hoe zouden Italiaanse deskundigen naar Nederland kijken?'

quote:

Grote actie tegen drugscriminaliteit in Brabant

Bij een grote politieactie in Brabant zijn vanmorgen op dertien adressen invallen gedaan. De actie was gericht tegen criminelen die zich bezighouden met hennepteelt. Zes mensen zijn opgepakt.

De invallen waren in Tilburg, Eindhoven, Goirle en Kaatsheuvel. Volgens een woordvoerder waren er 150 agenten bij betrokken. Naast drugs werd er ook gezocht naar wapens, explosieven en bewijs voor witwaspraktijken.

Tientallen hennepplanten zijn in beslag genomen, net als spullen die gebruikt worden voor de hennepteelt. De politie hield vier vrouwen en twee mannen aan. Zij zijn volgens Omroep Brabant tussen de 35 en 52 jaar oud en komen uit Tilburg, Goirle en Eindhoven. Een aantal van hen was al langer in beeld bij de politie.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 13:35 schreef Odaiba het volgende:

[..]

Ik wil het experiment best aangaan hoor, maar mijn standpunt over drugs blijft hetzelfde. Ik zou het per wet voor die bedrijven dan ook willen verplichten het verdiende geld gelijk naar door te geleiden naar verslavingszorg, afkickklinieken, voorlichting etc in de hoop dat slachtoffers van drugs beperkt blijven. Zie je helaas ook niet gebeuren in de rook- en drankindustrie, die bedrijven worden rijk op een smerige manier.

quote:

Psychedelische drugs hebben mogelijk positief effect op menselijk brein

Psychedelische drugs hebben mogelijk enkele positieve effecten op processen in het menselijk brein.

Een bestanddeel van de plantaardige drug ayahuasca stimuleert waarschijnlijk de vorming van nieuwe verbindingen tussen hersencellen. Ook zou de stof ontstekingen en de afbraak van hersencellen in het brein tegengaan.

Dat melden Braziliaanse onderzoekers in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Scientific Reports.

De wetenschappers kwamen tot hun bevindingen door een stof uit ayahuasca met de naam 5-MeO-DMT toe te dienen aan zogenoemde 'mini-hersenen'. Dit zijn kweekjes van hersencellen waarmee het menselijk brein wordt nagebootst in een laboratorium.

Uit het onderzoek blijkt dat 5-MeO-DMT meer dan duizend eiwitten tot expressie brengt in de nagebootste hersenen. Veel van de eiwitten stimuleren de vorming van nieuwe verbindingen tussen hersencellen. Dat proces wordt ook wel synapsisvorming genoemd. Het gebeurt normaal gesproken vooral bij het het leren van nieuwe informatie en vaardigheden.

Verder lijken processen die ontstekingen in hersencellen veroorzaken te worden onderdrukt door de geactiveerde eiwitten.

Kritisch

Hoofdonderzoeker Stevens Rehen is opgetogen over de resultaten van het onderzoek. "Voor het eerst kunnen we aan psychedelisch drugsgebruik gerelateerde veranderingen in menselijk hersenweefsel op moleculair niveau beschrijven", verklaart hij op nieuwssite EurekAlert.

Andere wetenschappers waarschuwen dat het nog onduidelijk is hoe betrouwbaar de uitkomsten van de studie zijn. De effecten van psychedelische drugs zijn waarschijnlijk maar beperkt meetbaar met 'mini-hersenen' in een laboratorium.

"Je kunt deze kweekjes niet zomaar gebruiken als model voor een volwassen menselijk brein", zegt onafhankelijk hersenonderzoeker Michael Stachowiak in Newsweek. "De studie is interessant, maar er is veel meer onderzoek nodig."

quote:

Op dinsdag 10 oktober 2017 19:39 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op dinsdag 10 oktober 2017 19:47 schreef Sigaartje het volgende:

[..]

Waarom post je dit twee keer?
Hoe gaat het met je geheugen?

quote:

Op woensdag 11 oktober 2017 07:42 schreef Geelman het volgende:
Kwam zomaar even langs dit topic en vroeg me af wie die lappen gequote tekst eigenlijk leest?

quote:

In het nieuwe regeerakkoord is opgenomen dat de overheid gaat experimenteren met het reguleren van de wietteelt. Maar hoeveel mensen blowen er in Nederland?

quote:

UK accounts for largest share of darknet fentanyl sales in Europe

quote:

The UK is the largest host of fentanyl sales on the darknet in Europe, with 1,000 trades being made in the last few months, research shows.

Experts at the Oxford Internet Institute said the UK was a “significant player” in the trade of the synthetic opioid, a controlled class A drug that can be up to 100 times stronger than heroin. They warned that the drug was increasingly appearing on illicit websites.

It follows repeated warnings from the National Crime Agency for people to be “vigilant about fentanyl to protect themselves and their loved ones”, following at least 60 deaths linked to the substance.

A team at the institute has been scraping the world’s largest darknet marketplaces since April 2017. It found that the US accounts for almost 40% of global darknet trade, followed by Canada (15%) and Australia (12%). The largest seller in Europe is the UK (9%), followed by Germany, accounting for 5% of sales.

Joss Wright, a research fellow at the institute, said: “Why is the UK a significant player? … It’s because we have a relatively strong tech sector and users of the web, but also geographically the UK is quite well placed for trade coming from the US.”

quote:

Democrats’ war on Trump’s drug czar: Explosive DEA exposé provides opening on opioids

quote:

The DEA's public information officer for Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky, Special Agent Rich Isaacson, traveled to Wright State University last week to promote this DEA 360 Strategy. For the last decade, Isaacson told Ohio’s WYSO, “his agency has worked to develop a more ‘holistic approach’ to dealing with the opioid crisis.” Two days later, The Washington Post published their latest in a series of explosive reports detailing the successful takeover of the federal drug enforcement agency by the very industry it is supposed to police.

Along with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” the Post’s investigation found that "amid a targeted lobbying effort, Congress weakened the DEA's ability to go after drug distributors. Partially a function of what is known as the “revolving door” in Washington, D.C., after a successful stint of crackdowns that saw the shutdown of hundreds of pill mills across the nation, the DEA significantly slowed its efforts to stop the flow of prescription painkillers.

Drug companies upset by the agency’s efficacy offered former DEA and Justice Department officials high-priced salaries to switch sides. By 2013, after successful lobbying, DEA lawyers began requiring a higher standard of proof before cases against drug distributors could move forward. After reviewing the DEA diversion office’s civil caseload in 2014, Chief Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II wrote that “there can be little doubt that the level of administrative Diversion enforcement remains stunningly low for a national program.”

Republicans in Congress then further handcuffed the DEA.

quote:

Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs

quote:

Private individuals and policymakers often utilize prohibition as a means of controlling the sale, manufacture, and consumption of particular goods. While the Eighteenth Amendment, which was passed and subsequently repealed in the early 20th century, is often regarded as the first major prohibition in the United States, it certainly was not the last. The War on Drugs, begun under President Richard Nixon, continues to utilize policies of prohibition to achieve a variety of objectives.

Proponents of drug prohibition claim that such policies reduce drug-related crime, decrease drug-related disease and overdose, and are an effective means of disrupting and dismantling organized criminal enterprises.

We analyze the theoretical underpinnings of these claims, using tools and insights from economics, and explore the economics of prohibition and the veracity of proponent claims by analyzing data on overdose deaths, crime, and cartels. Moreover, we offer additional insights through an analysis of U.S. international drug policy utilizing data from U.S. drug policy in Afghanistan. While others have examined the effect of prohibition on domestic outcomes, few have asked how these programs impact foreign policy outcomes.

We conclude that prohibition is not only ineffective, but counterproductive, at achieving the goals of policymakers both domestically and abroad. Given the insights from economics and the available data, we find that the domestic War on Drugs has contributed to an increase in drug overdoses and fostered and sustained the creation of powerful drug cartels. Internationally, we find that prohibition not only fails in its own right, but also actively undermines the goals of the Global War on Terror.

quote:

New Zealand to hold cannabis referendum within three years

quote:

New Zealand will hold a referendum on legalising the recreational use of cannabis in the next three years, its prime minister-elect has pledged.

Jacinda Ardern said she did not personally support imprisoning people for using cannabis but wanted to hear New Zealanders' views.

Ms Ardern received a standing ovation at a meeting of her Labour Party.

She will head a three-way coalition with the Greens and nationalist party New Zealand First (NZF).

Ms Ardern, 37, emerged as the surprise new leader after weeks of negotiation following September's inconclusive election , which resulted in a hung parliament.

The incumbent National Party won 56 seats - two more than the Labour-Green bloc - but was unable to agree a governing coalition.

The coalition sees an uneasy alignment between the Greens and NZF, which have previously clashed over issues including immigration policy.

But Ms Ardern has denied her government is a "coalition of the losers" and says she is hopeful it will see out its term.

Detailed discussions on policy will take place next week but Ms Ardern promised a "government of change" in remarks on Friday.

She reiterated her support for a referendum on legalising personal cannabis use, saying she had "always been very open" about her opposition to criminalisation.

"On the flip side," she added, "I also have concerns around young people accessing a product which can clearly do harm and damage to them."

She said she wanted to hear New Zealanders' views and would consider carefully the wording of any referendum question.

quote:

Merkel May Agree To Legalize Marijuana In Germany Under Coalition Deal

Members of a potential German coalition government, including the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, are nearing agreement on a deal to legalize marijuana, reports indicate.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its ally the Christian Social Union together got the most votes in September’s election, but they also lost seats and don’t have a clear majority. That means they need the support of other parties to govern.

The conservative alliance is now in talks with Free Democrats and Greens to form a governing agreement and, as part of those negotiations, are nearing completion of a deal to legalize marijuana and have it legally distributed through pharmacies, the German newspaper Stuttgarter-Zeitung is reporting.

Members of the so-called “Jamaica coalition” (because the colors of the involved parties are reminiscent of those on the Caribbean nation’s flag) are expected to formalize a marijuana policy agreement toward the tail end of the talks, after other issues are settled.

“We are ready to do that,” Fritz Becker, Chairman of the German Pharmacists Association, said of distributing marijuana through pharmacies.

The regulated storefronts would provide “advice on risks and side effects, good customer service and ensure clean goods,” he said.

Other issues at play in the potential German coalition government agreement include immigration and climate policy, Reuters reported.

If the negotiations result in a formal agreement to legalize marijuana, Germany would become the second country in a matter of weeks where an interparty governing deal forced a move toward ending cannabis prohibition.

Last week, a minority coalition government agreement in New Zealand led to new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pledging to hold a nationwide marijuana legalization referendum by 2020.

quote:

http://nos.n'Zeker in woonwijken willen mensen van coffeeshops af'l/nieuwsuur/artikel/2200872-zeker-in-woonwijken-willen-mensen-van-coffeeshops-af.html

quote:

De Rotterdamse burgemeester Ahmed Aboutaleb wil een alternatief voor coffeeshops. Hoe het alternatief er precies uit moet zien weet hij nog niet, maar hij heeft wel ideeën. Bijvoorbeeld via internet, een stichting, een staatswinkel of een 'joint-automaat'. Als dat lukt, kunnen coffeeshops gesloten worden.

Volgens de burgemeester zijn er per dag 25.000 mensen die cannabis kopen. In Rotterdam kan dat in 36 coffeeshops. "Het grootste probleem is dat een deel van die shops in woonwijken staat. Daar willen veel bewoners vanaf. Soms staat zo'n winkel middenin een woonstraat."

En dat veroorzaakt overlast. Een coffeeshop mag legaal cannabis verhandelen en verkopen, maar toch is het vaak ook een plek waar illegale dingen gebeuren. 70 tot 75 procent van de exploitanten komt in aanraking met criminaliteit, blijkt uit een onderzoek van Bureau Intraval uit 2005. "Deze exploitanten komen in aanraking met de politie, soms voor zware criminaliteit zoals wapenhandel."

Legale wietverkoop zonder coffeeshops moet kunnen, vindt Aboutaleb. "Het is een wereld die we zelf hebben gecreëerd. We geloven dat die redelijk valide is, maar je kan er toch af en toe je vraagtekens bij plaatsen."

Extra stap

Het idee voor een alternatief voor coffeeshops wordt gekoppeld aan de aangekondigde proef met door de overheid gereguleerde wietteelt. De proef draait om de 'achterdeur' van de verkoop van wiet: de inkoop. Formeel mogen coffeeshops geen cannabis inkopen, terwijl de verkoop wel is toegestaan.

Bij het experiment wordt ook de inkoop gelegaliseerd. Daarbij wordt de wiet landelijk geteeld en vervolgens verspreid onder zes tot tien gemeenten. Op die manier wordt gekeken of de criminaliteit afneemt en of de wiet daarnaast minder schadelijke stoffen bevat.

Rotterdam wil ook graag meedoen, en heeft hiervoor al eerder een plan ingediend bij toenmalig minister Opstelten van Veiligheid en Justitie.

quote:

Op donderdag 2 november 2017 09:28 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

[..]

[..]

Wordt er een plan bedacht om de criminaliteit rondom drugs ( wiet teelt) te verminderen, krijg je dit soort nutteloze opmerkingen die er voor zorgen dat je het weer regelrecht terug de criminaliteit induwt.

O en ja als je in wapens handelt ben je wel een hele zware crimineel natuurlijk hahahaha

LEGALIZE

quote:

Op donderdag 2 november 2017 09:42 schreef eNGine10 het volgende:

[..]

Ik snap je bericht niet zo goed. Het is toch een begrijpelijk plan van Aboutaleb? Tenminste, ik zie niet waarom de verkoop niet door de overheid zou kunnen gebeuren.

quote:

. Bijvoorbeeld via internet, een stichting, een staatswinkel of een 'joint-automaat'. Als dat lukt, kunnen coffeeshops gesloten worden.

quote:

Op donderdag 2 november 2017 10:21 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

[..]

[..]

Het lost het probleem niet op maar crieert andere problemen,

De coffeeshop geeft ook de mogelijkheid om daar je jointje te roken en als dat verdwijnt zal dit naar de straat verplaatsen, denk dat ze daar in woonwijken nog minder op zitten wachten.

Via internet, dan via de post opsturen komt er maar weinig op plek van bestemming aan denk ik.

Een stichting of staatswinkel maken de wiet duurder door extra kosten en verplaats daardoor de verkoop naar de straat of in de achterkamertjes bij mensen thuis, lijkt me ook niet wenselijk.

En de joint automaat heeft ook geen lang leven vermoed ik, die zal met regelmaat gekraakt worden.

Mijn inziens is de enige juiste manier via de coffeeshop met meer controle en goede afspraken.

En ja er kan best gekeken worden naar de plaatsing van coffeeshops.

quote:

Op donderdag 2 november 2017 09:28 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:

[..]

[..]

Wordt er een plan bedacht om de criminaliteit rondom drugs ( wiet teelt) te verminderen, krijg je dit soort nutteloze opmerkingen die er voor zorgen dat je het weer regelrecht terug de criminaliteit induwt.

O en ja als je in wapens handelt ben je wel een hele zware crimineel natuurlijk hahahaha

LEGALIZE

quote:

Welkom bij De industrie: over Drugsland Nederland

quote:

De Industrie is een online interactieve documentaire en podcastserie die laat zien hoe drugs overal zijn en iedereen er mee te maken heeft - van elektricien tot pizzakoerier, van boer tot burgemeester. Luchtig, humoristisch en soms banaal, biedt De industrie in kleine persoonlijke verhalen een inkijkje in hoe de drugindustrie in Nederland in elkaar zit. En hoezeer onder- en bovenwereld verweven zijn in het leven van alledag.

quote:

The impact of the 'war on drugs' for female 'mules'

University of Kent research on women working as drug 'mules' has found they aren't victims of their sex but of the trade, and its illegal status.

University of Kent research on women working as drug 'mules' has found they aren't victims of their sex but of the trade, and its illegal status.

Dr Nayeli Urquiza Haas of the University's Kent Law School compared different legal developments and strategies in Europe and Latin America.

Globally, women who traffic drugs across borders are over-represented in prison in relation to their limited role in the trade. Dr Urquiza Haas found attributing victim status to women who traffic drugs is used to minimise prison sentences if they are arrested and charged.

But she suggests this legal bias, born from pre-conceived judgments and expectations about women's behaviour, distracts law and policy-makers from paying attention to the negative effects of punitive drug control laws and the so-called 'war on drugs'.

Her research examined how courts fail to consider how drug mules, among other participants in the drug trade, endure precarious work conditions in foreign countries; disregarding the conditions which make them more vulnerable to exploitation.

Dr Urquiza Haas says gender does play a role but only in the same way as in any other 'workplace' where sexism and poverty may restrict women's access to safe working conditions.

Dr Urquiza Haas presented her research at a workshop bringing together international researchers, activists and practitioners from the field of global drug policy reform in Budapest, Hungary, earlier this year.

Vulnerability Discourses and Drug Mule Work: Legal Approaches in Sentencing and Non-Prosecution/Non-Punishment Norms is published in a special issue of The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice dedicated to international advances in research and policy regarding drug mules and couriers.

quote:

Mexican troops waging war on drug gangs not punished for rights abuses – report

Research shows most abuses go unsolved and unpunished despite reforms letting civilian authorities investigate and prosecute such crimes

The vast majority of human rights abuses allegedly committed by soldiers waging Mexico’s war on drug gangs go unsolved and unpunished despite reforms letting civilian authorities investigate and prosecute such crimes, a report said on Tuesday.

The Washington Office on Latin America study, described as the first comprehensive analysis of military abuse investigations handled by the attorney general’s office, found there were just 16 convictions of soldiers in the civilian judicial system out of 505 criminal investigations from 2012 through 2016, a prosecutorial success rate of 3.2%.

Moreover, there were only two “chain of command responsibility” convictions for officers whose orders led to abuses, it said.

The report said factors that hinder civilian investigations of the military include parallel civilian and military investigations, limited access to troops’ testimony and soldiers tampering with crime scenes or giving false testimony.

“This militarized public security model has negatively impacted Mexico’s criminal justice system. The civilian justice system faces challenges – including military authorities’ actions resulting in the obstruction or delay of investigations – which limit civilian authorities’ ability to sanction soldiers implicated in crimes and human rights violations,” the group said.

The attorney general’s office, the defense department and other government offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The military has played a central role in the war on drug cartels since at least late 2006, when newly installed President Felipe Calderón deployed soldiers across the country to fight the gangs. The militarized offensive has continued under the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto.

During that time there have been numerous accusations of serious human rights violations by soldiers, such as torture, killings and forced disappearances.

Critics say the Mexican military is not trained to carry out policing activities. However, many police departments in the country are seen as corrupt, outgunned and even in cahoots with organized crime gangs, and thus unreliable allies against the cartels.

One high-profile rights case involving the military was the 2014 killing of 22 suspected criminals by soldiers in the central town of Tlatlaya. The military initially claimed they died in a fierce firefight, but evidence suggested there was no protracted shootout and some of the dead appeared to have been killed in cold blood.

Seven soldiers were accused of homicide, but the charges were thrown out by civilian courts due to lack of evidence. In August of this year, a judge ordered an investigation into whether army commanders played any role in the killings.

The report said Tlatlaya was an example of a case in which military investigators had access to the crime scene and soldiers’ testimony before civilian authorities.

“The Tlatlaya case illustrates that holding military and civilian investigations concurrently delays and obstructs justice … [and] shows that in military jurisdiction, cases of grave human rights violations also go unchecked or remain unpunished,” the report said.

Reforms in 2014 changed how allegations of abuses by the military can be investigated, including the right to conduct a civilian investigation in such cases and for victims to participate.

Among the 16 successful prosecutions of soldiers carried out by the attorney general’s office are convictions for the cover-up of a human rights violation and desecration of a corpse; forced disappearance; homicide; injuries and trespassing, and rape, the report said.

The two “chain of command” convictions the study found were of a lieutenant colonel and a second lieutenant in two forced disappearance cases in in the northern states of Chihuahua and Nuevo León.

The Washington Office on Latin America said the report was based on three main sources: interviews with human rights groups and lawyers, right-to-information requests that yielded information including on convictions of soldiers, and collaboration with journalists who created a website on the issue, Cadenademando.org (Spanish for “chain of command”).

It added that it was “possible” there may have been more convictions than the 16 it documented, but authorities did not report them in response to right-to-information requests.

The United States has supported Mexico’s security efforts through the multibillion-dollar Merida Initiative, including outfitting the military with helicopters and training security forces. According to the report, more than $521m in counter-drug assistance has flowed from the US defense department to the Mexican military since 2008.

The report calls for measures from both Mexico and the United States to bolster the Mexican judicial system. It also urges Washington to condition aid money on improvements in the human rights record of Mexican security forces and to enforce US laws barring funding of units known to have committed gross rights violations.

quote:

Grondstof voor 15 miljoen xtc-pillen in loods woonwijk Tilburg

TILBURG - De politie heeft woensdag tijdens een grote tweedaagse actie tegen drugs in Tilburg 3200 liter hulpstoffen voor de drug MDMA (xtc) gevonden. De vaten met de zeer brandbare en explosieve stoffen stonden in een loods aan de Lambert de Wijsstraat.

Uit deze grondstoffen zouden zo’n 15 miljoen xtc-pillen gedraaid kunnen worden. De politie heeft het spul in beslag genomen. Er is niemand aangehouden. Dinsdag werden tijdens deze actie, Operatie Impact, vijf mannen aangehouden, van wie drie in België.

Tijdens Operatie Impact deden speciale teams van de politie invallen in tientallen plaatsen in Brabant en Limburg. Naast grondstoffen voor synthetische drugs werden dinsdag ook vuurwapens gevonden.

quote:

Mexico drug cartel's grip on politicians and police revealed in Texas court files

Los Zetas pumped money into elections in the border state of Coahuila but the detailed testimonies have been met with official denial and public apathy

The accusations made in three Texas courtrooms were staggering. Witness after witness described how a notorious drug cartel pumped money into Mexican electoral campaigns and paid off individual politicians and policemen in the border state of Coahuila to look the other way as hundreds of people were massacred or forcibly disappeared.

The Texas court testimonies – gathered in a report released this week by the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law and Fray Juan de Larios Diocesan Human Rights Centre in Coahuila – give one of the most complete accounts so far of how organized crime has attempted to capture the institutions of democracy in Mexico’s regions.

The report prompted outrage among activists who have worked with victims of violence. But the accusations were met with sharp denials from Mexican politicians and a pointed lack of interest from judicial officials.

The Mexican public, meanwhile, mostly shrugged, even as the country endures its most violent year on record and the crackdown on organised crime seems unlikely to end anytime soon.

“The lack of action from government is to be expected,” said Jorge Kawas, a security analyst in the city of Monterrey. “But the lack of outrage by Mexicans is just disheartening.

“We’ve become numb to excessive violence. There’s no leadership in government or in the streets and Mexican media is practically useless for holding power accountable.”

Allegations that Mexican politicians have acted in cahoots with drugs cartels have been common for decades, though such accusations have seldom resulted in thorough investigations, let alone criminal convictions. Even after sworn testimony in US courts has described corruption, Mexican officials appear unwilling to act.

“For Mexicans, it’s always sad to hear that the real investigations against crime and corruption in Mexico have to be done elsewhere in order for them to actually mean something or obtain a result,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the magazine Nexos.

Mexico’s militarized crackdown on drug cartels over the past decade has cost more than 200,000 lives and left more than 30,000 missing. But by its own terms, it has been a failure: 2017 is shaping up to be the country’s the most violent year on record.

Los Zetas, a band of elite soldiers who became cartel enforcers and then established their own criminal empire, have been weakened in recent years after their senior leaders were kidnapped or killed and the group split into rival factions.

But from 2006 to 2014 the group terrorised swaths of north-eastern Mexico. In Coahuila, an arid state butting up against Texas, Los Zetas killed hundreds of people and burned their bodies before scattering the ashes in the desert.

The cartel carried out a string of massacres, including a 2011 rampage through the town of Allende which left about 300 dead.

They also spent millions on bribery, according to testimony gathered in this week’s report and given in separate criminal trials between 2013 and 2016.

“The Zetas paid bribes and integrated police officers into their hierarchy to ensure the cartel would be able to continue their illicit operations without resistance,” it said.

“Witnesses described a level of Zeta control which extended to city police chiefs, state and federal prosecutors, state prisons, sectors of the federal police and the Mexican army, and state politicians.”

The report also quoted explosive accusations made in US courts that Los Zetas paid off a pair of Coahuila state governors and pumped millions into state elections elsewhere in the country.

Some observers urged caution, saying witness statements alone – especially from those cooperating the authorities – were not enough to establish guilt.

“These guys clearly have a motive to blame others, to incriminate others. Whatever they’re saying should be read within this context,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst.

“It’s hard to believe that in the Zetas’ peak years [in Coahuila state], 2010, 2011, 2012, they had no connections with the state apparatus in Coahuila,” he added. “Did it go to the top? I’m not sure.”

Javier Garza, former editor of the Coahuila newspaper El Siglo de Torreón said that such questions would probably go unanswered by Mexican authorities. “These statements were told under oath so supposedly what they’re saying is true, but it’s never been corroborated because nobody in Mexico investigated.”

quote:

Morgues shut doors as ultra-violent Mexican state is overwhelmed by bodies

Stench of decomposing corpses leads workers to shut down mortuaries in Guerrero where violence has also emptied villages and forced buses off the road

Violence in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero has emptied entire villages, closed schools and forced bus companies off the road.

Now it has shut down the state’s overcrowded morgues as workers walked off the job, saying the stench of hundreds of decomposing bodies had become unbearable.

“Lots of nausea. Lots of nausea,” state employee Laura Reyna Benjamín said of the smell to Televisa. “It makes you not want to eat because the stench really sticks with you.”

Bodies have arrived in such numbers that morgues in the state have neither the space to store them nor the personnel to carry out autopsies, workers told local media.

In the state capital Chilpancingo, 200 kilometres south of Mexico City, at least 600 bodies are being stored in a space designed to take 200, according to the Reforma newspaper.

Between eight and 10 bodies have been arriving daily at morgues in the state, according to Reforma, while the state has registered 1,919 homicides so far this year – already at least 100 more than last year.

More than a decade after Mexico launched a militarized crackdown on organized crime, violence has continued to surge across the country, and 2017 looks set to be the country’s most murderous year since such statistics were first compiled in 1997.

“This problem isn’t exclusive to Guerrero. It’s national,” said Father Mario Campos, a Catholic priest and social activist in the impoverished La Montaña region of Guerrero. “Our society has been battered by the narcos and our institutions are not responding or doing their jobs.”

Guerrero sits south of Mexico City, and includes Pacific beach resorts such as Acapulco and an impoverished mountain hinterland that includes some of the country’s poorest regions.

“People are unable to make ends meet so they get involved with criminal groups because they pay them,” Campos said.

Opium poppies have long been cultivated in the state, but amid growing demand for heroin from US consumers, local crime groups have shifted to the production and sale of heroin – in turn fueling more violence as criminal groups dispute control of production zones and transportation routes to markets north of the border.

Guerrero has long suffered violence, repression, and rule by local strongmen; it has also been the setting for some of Mexico’s most notorious crimes. In 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college were kidnapped by local police and presumably killed after they were handed over to drug traffickers.

Analysts say that government tactics have also inadvertently helped fuel the violence: law enforcement efforts targeting mafia leaders have led to the splintering of the previously dominant Beltrán Leyva cartel, unleashing a new round of conflict as rival factions vie for power.

At least 50 criminal groups now operate in the state, according to Guerrero’s attorney general, Javier Olea.

Insecurity and threats against teachers – often targets for extortion – forced at least 100 schools to close earlier this month around the city of Chilapa, one of the main poppy-growing areas.

Bus services to the city have also been suspended after the murders of at least 10 drivers. Public transport is reportedly a major method of moving drugs out of the region.

quote:

Brazil must legalise drugs – its existing policy just destroys lives

For decades, guns and imprisonment have been the hallmarks of Brazil’s war against the drug trafficking. But the only way to beat the gangs is to stop creating criminals, says a top Brazilian judge



^{Luís Roberto Barroso}

The war raging in Rocinha, Latin America’s largest favela, has already been lost. Rooted in a dispute between gangs for control of drug trafficking, it has disrupted the daily life of the community in Rio de Janeiro since mid-September. With the sound of shots coming from all sides, schools and shops are constantly forced to close. Recently, a stray bullet killed a Spanish tourist. The war is not the only thing being lost.

For decades, Brazil has had the same drug policy approach. Police, weapons and numerous arrests. It does not take an expert to conclude the obvious: the strategy has failed. Drug trafficking and consumption have only increased. Einstein is credited with a saying – though apparently it is not his – that applies well to the case: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

In a case still before the Brazilian supreme court, I voted for decriminalising the possession of marijuana for private consumption. The case has been suspended and no date has been set for its resumption. I also proposed to open a broad debate on the legalisation of marijuana, to begin with – and then, if successful, cocaine. The subject is extremely delicate, and the outcome hinges on a decision from the legislature.

Drugs are an issue that has a profound impact on the criminal justice system, and it is legitimate for the supreme court to participate in the public debate. So here are the reasons for my views.

First, drugs are bad and it is therefore the role of the state and society to discourage consumption, treat dependents and repress trafficking. The rationale behind legalisation is rooted in the belief that it will help in achieving these goals.

Second, the war on drugs has failed. Since the 1970s, under the influence and leadership of the US, the world has tackled this problem with the use of police forces, armies, and armaments. The tragic reality is that 40 years, billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of prisoners and thousands of deaths later, things are worse. At least in countries like Brazil.

Third, as the American economist Milton Friedman argued, the only result of criminalisation is ensuring the trafficker’s monopoly.

With these points in mind, what would legalisation achieve?

In most countries in North America and Europe, the greatest concern of the authorities is users and the impact drugs have on their lives and on society. These are all important considerations. In Brazil, however, the principal focus must be ending the dominance drug dealers exercise over poor communities. Gangs have become the main political and economic power in thousands of modest neighbourhoods in Brazil. This scenario prevents a family of honest and hard-working people from educating their children away from the influence of criminal factions, who intimidate, co-opt and exercise an unfair advantage over any lawful activity. Crucially, this power of trafficking comes from illegality.

Another benefit of legalisation would be to prevent the mass incarceration of impoverished young people with no criminal record who are arrested for trafficking because they are caught in possession of negligible amounts of marijuana. A third of detainees in Brazil are imprisoned for drug trafficking. Once arrested, young prisoners will have to join one of the factions that control the penitentiaries – and on that day, they become dangerous.

Moreover, each place in prison costs 40,000 reais (£9,174) to create and 2,000 reais a month to maintain. Worse still, within a day of one man being arrested, another is recruited from the reserve army that exists in poor communities.

The insanity of this policy is striking: it destroys lives, generates worse outcomes for society, is expensive, and has no impact on drug trafficking. Only superstition, prejudice or ignorance could make someone think this is effective.

For these reasons, I believe we should consider alternative means of combating drugs, not least better planning, expert engagement and greater attention to the experiences of other countries. We should consider the possibility of dealing with marijuana as we deal with cigarettes: a licit product, regulated, sold in certain places, taxed, and subject to age and advertisement restrictions, warning notices and campaigns discouraging consumption. In the past two decades, cigarette consumption in Brazil has more than halved; fighting in the light of day, with ideas and information, has brought better results.

We cannot be certain that a progressive and cautious policy of decriminalisation and legalisation will be successful. What we can affirm is that the existing policy of criminalisation has failed. We must take chances; otherwise, we risk simply accepting a terrible situation. As the Brazilian navigator Amyr Klink said: “The worst shipwreck is not setting off at all.”

quote:

Bill for legalised supply of opium, marijuana cleared for Parliament

Patiala MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi’s private Bill to seek legalisation of certain intoxicants, such as opium and marijuana, has been cleared by the legislative branch of Parliament, a statement issued by him here informed on Wednesday.

A proposed legislation to legalise and start regulated supply of traditional intoxicants such as opium and marijuana (cannabis) is likely to be placed in front of Parliament as a Private Member’s Bill in the coming winter session.

Patiala MP Dr Dharamvira Gandhi’s Bill to seek legalisation of the “non-synthetic” intoxicants has been cleared by the legislative branch of Parliament, a statement issued by him informed on Wednesday. Gandhi hopes this winter session the amendment for the NDPS Act will be tabled before the Parliament and hopefully the Act shall be amended to provide relief to common drug user through cheap, regulated and medically supervised supply of traditional and natural intoxicants like ‘afeem’ and ‘bhukki’ (opium) “to get society rid of dangerous and killing medical and synthetic drugs”.

Also read | Punjab govt complete failure on drugs, says Dharamvira Gandhi

Gandhi, who won as Aam Aadmi Party candidate but has since been suspended from the party, is seeking to amend the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act 1985. This is the second Bill by Gandhi to be accepted for tabling in the Parliament, the first being the Sikh Marriage Bill 2016 that has already been tabled in the Parliament.

The reason for bringing up this amendment to the NDPS Act, says Gandhi, is that “the 30 years’ period of enactment and implementation of NDPS Act has produced results contrary to the desired results”. “Thirty years down the line, where do we stand? The fact of the matter is that the NDPS Act has not only failed in achieving its professed goals, but this ‘War on Drugs’ has delivered results directly opposite to what it aimed to achieve. There can be no better verdict and/or evaluation of such punitive drug laws than frank admission statement of the United Nations Conference on 12th March, 2009, admitting that ‘the war on drugs has failed’,” the statement added.

Dr Gandhi described the intentions behind the enactment that the “NDPS Act was enacted in order to meet then UN Conventions on Drug Policy... The objective was to prevent rampant drug use in society, as it was believed drugs and intoxicants degrade the moral character of individuals and destabilize well-ordered society.”

“Most drugs were made illegal. Anyone found using or possessing such substances was prescribed harsh punishments, and large amounts of money was invested in the enforcement of drug restrictions and punishments handed out herewith. Plants and chemicals used in the manufacture of drugs were strictly controlled, and drug enforcement agencies spent large amounts of money and time ensuring that drugs were eradicated from society,” he added.

“But the ‘war on drugs’ had led to the creation of a dangerous drug mafia, hundreds of scores of human rights violations and innumerable precious lives destroyed.”

“As the common man’s recreational substances were made unavailable, the newer, more potent, addictive and dangerous alternative drugs flooded the markets. Heroin replaced opium, cocaine replaced cannabis, and so on. As the drug business involves huge super profits, on one hand it creates rivalries spilling into gang wars and on the other hand it promotes ruthless and aggressive marketing, thus pushing more and more people into the drug world. Consequently, the petty traditional drug users are turning to the easily available and aggressively marketed more addictive and dangerous street drugs.”

He said statistics of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) indicate that number of drug users arrested contributes to 88% of those jailed under NDPS. “Traffickers and distributors are 2%. No financers have been arrested. The drug mafia operates with impunity, increasing the scale of its operations.”

quote:

Gemeenten trekken één lijn tegen drugsoverlast

VLISSINGEN - De dertien Zeeuwse burgemeesters trekken één lijn bij de bestrijding van drugsoverlast. Ze hebben hierover afspraken gemaakt in overleg met de politie en het Openbaar Ministerie.

Tot nu werd in de ene gemeente strenger opgetreden dan in de andere. Bij het aantreffen van meer dan een halve gram harddrugs wordt voortaan zonder meer overgegaan tot het sluiten van een pand omdat er dan wettelijk gezien sprake is van een handelshoeveelheid.

Directe sluiting

Bij het aantreffen van softdrugs werd in sommige gemeenten eerst een waarschuwing gegeven. Voortaan zal ook hier eerder worden overgegaan tot directe sluiting. Bij meer dan 5 gram softdrugs is sprake van een handelshoeveelheid. De hoeveelheid softdrugs, de mate van professionaliteit en de criminele achtergrond van betrokkene(n) wegen mee bij de beslissing een woning, loods of ander pand te sluiten.

Een pand kan voor maximaal 24 maanden worden gesloten.

Duidelijkheid

,,Het beleid is een gezamenlijke vuist tegen ondermijnende criminaliteit. Het biedt duidelijkheid naar de handhavers en zeker ook naar de overtreders van de wet'', aldus de Zeeuwse burgemeesters in een gezamenlijk persbericht.

Ook in het handhaven van de regels voor coffeeshops kiezen de burgemeesters voor een gemeenschappelijke aanpak. Overigens zijn alleen in Vlissingen, Terneuzen en Goes nog coffeeshops met een gedoogverklaring open.

quote:

The US Coast Guard is operating floating prisons in the Pacific Ocean, outside US legal protections

If you've followed the War on Terror at all, you're almost certainly familiar with the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — a US prison that exists outside the realm of the US justice system.

Now, it turns out, there's a secret US detention system in the War on Drugs, too — and this one is aboard US Coast Guard cutters sailing in the Pacific Ocean.

In an effort to staunch the flow of cocaine and other hard drugs from South America to Central America and points north, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed farther and farther from the shore in the Pacific Ocean. When these cutters capture a boat carrying drugs, the smugglers are brought onto the ships and kept shackled to the deck, sometimes outside in the elements, until the Coast Guard makes arrangements for them to be transported back to the US for trial.

But this isn't a wait of just a few hours or days. Often, these waits can last weeks or months, according to new reporting from The New York Times. Coast Guard officials say they can do this because the drug smugglers aren't under arrest until they reach US shores, but some of the worst cases are drawing criticism even from Coast Guard officials.

Seth Freed Wesslernov reported this story for The Times. He says a combination of US agreements with Latin American countries and the US Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act allows the US to take this action. Wesslernov spoke with The World's Carol Hills about his reporting and these "floating Guantánamos" on the Pacific Ocean.
The Coast Guard usually has a reputation for being the good guys out there — rescuing people, apprehending bad guys. We've done stories about that. I take it it's a little bit more complicated?

It is. The Coast Guard has a broad mission. It does search and rescue, enforces fisheries laws. It enforces drug laws on the oceans and, what few people know, is that the US Coast Guard has actually been deployed in recent years deep into the Pacific Ocean to interdict drug smugglers moving between South America — Colombia, Ecuador — and Central America, where the drugs — often cocaine — are dropped off and then often moved up through Mexico. These Coast Guard ships are deployed deep into the Pacific —sometimes thousands of miles from the nearest US port, where they're detaining suspected smugglers and holding them aboard these Coast Guard cutters. What I found in my reporting is that detainees, men who are moving cocaine in the Pacific Ocean.
You write about some Ecuadorians who are out there transporting drugs and they end up shackled for many, many days on a Coast Guard boat. Give us the quick thumbnail sketch of this one guy, in particular, Jhonny Arcentales, and how he ended up there?

He is a fisherman from a coastal town in Ecuador and was having a particularly, economically, rough year and made a decision to take a job smuggling cocaine off of the coast of Ecuador. He really didn't know all that much about what he was doing.

As he was moving this cocaine on a boat with three other men, another Ecuadorian man and a Colombian man, they were approaching Central America, approaching Guatemala and the US Navy and Coast Guard intercepted that boat and pulled these men off. For the next 70 days, Mr. Arcentales and the other man he was detained with were held — always chained by their ankle to the deck of a ship or to a cable running along one of these large Coast Guard or Navy ships — for 70 days. He was moved from ship to ship as these Coast Guard cutters went about their patrols, picking up more cocaine in the Pacific Ocean.

So this guy, Arcentales, and another guy — they're on a ship. This is a Coast Guard ship and they're basically exposed to the elements and basically shackled and not getting much food. How can the Coast Guard get away with keeping people under those conditions when the men haven't even been charged?

The Coast Guard makes the argument that these people are not formally under arrest until they get to the United States. They're simply being held, while the Coast Guard deals with the logistical challenges of trying to get these men onto shore — into an airplane and flown to Florida, where they'll be prosecuted.

Courts have generally bought the government's argument. The argument by the Coast Guard and by federal prosecutors that these logistical delays are legitimate, as it's hard enough to get people back. The reality is that when the Coast Guard has had to move people more quickly, they do. Very often, detainees are brought to port in one of these cutters, then placed in a hidden room in a helicopter hangar or in a room below deck and hidden there for the day while the Coast Guard cutter refuels or the Coast Guard crew get a bit of a break and then are brought back out to sea.

So there are these delays that people in the Coast Guard — Coast Guard officials I interviewed — though really are actually unreasonable, considering that they're near an airport. Somebody could be put on a plane and brought back to the United States. As we've made this decision to prosecute more and more people, these delays have grown longer and longer.

What we're seeing now is sort of carting people around ... carting suspected drug smugglers around the ocean an average of 18 days — very often longer than that — as the government waits to transport people to courts in Florida.

Now Donald Trump's chief of staff, General John Kelly, he played a key role in expanding the reach of the Coast Guard in this way.

Well, John Kelly was in charge of Southern Command, the Department of Defense area of operation in Latin America that's in charge of managing the drug war in Latin America. He was the head of Southern Command between 2012 and 2016 then retired. Under the Trump administration, he became head of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard.

On two occasions he has had a role in these operations. And John Kelly has really been a proponent of the idea. He's called drug smuggling in Central America an existential threat to the United States. And the idea that we need to push our borders outward farther and farther away from our actual borders in order to defend the homeland, that's led to this effort to interdict drugs far, far away from the United States in places where drug smugglers actually really have very little idea where their drugs are headed. So, Johnny Arcentales and the other men that I've spoken to know, they're not thinking about where these drugs are going. The drugs are moving from South America to Central America as far as they're concerned. It's out of their control after that, but we're arresting people in international waters, often on foreign boats, thousands of miles from the United States.
So the Coast Guard is arresting these people in these boats and it's not clear whether the drugs on these boats are going to the US?

Ultimately, most of the cocaine on these smugglers' small boats is probably headed for the United States. But some of it may be going to other markets, to European markets, to Australian markets or elsewhere. It's not always clear that the drugs are coming here and, in fact, the circuit court in California has said that the US can't prosecute these cases unless they can prove that the drugs were headed to the United States — that they actually intended to to show up there. And that's one of the reasons why federal prosecutors prefer to bring these cases to Florida, where that burden of proof is not required.
Whatever happened to Johnny Arcentales? How many days was he out there on this ship?

He was picked up in September of 2014. And for the next 70 days, he was held aboard a series of Coast Guard cutters and Navy frigates as he was moved around the Pacific Ocean. He describes the experience of feeling like he really might disappear.

He didn't know that he was going to be brought to the United States, wasn't being allowed to call his family — wondering, "does my family think I died?" He was ultimately brought to shore in Central America and told "you're going to be handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration now" and brought to the United States to face prosecution after more than two months held aboard these ships.

He was brought to the United States, charged criminally under drug trafficking laws and was sentenced to 10 years to a decade in federal prison. He's now in a federal prison in New Jersey.

The community he comes from on the central coast of Ecuador, many men have left on these smuggling trips. More than a year ago, there was a major earthquake in Ecuador that left families in dire economic straits. Since then, there have been more and more people leaving. In fact, his son-in-law decided not long after that earthquake to take one of these jobs and left home. He didn't tell anyone and disappeared. Days later, was picked up by the Coast Guard. He was also sentenced to a decade in US federal prison.

The question about the legality of the US Coast Guard's detention practices has not been raised, in an international context, in criminal courts. In the United States, when defense attorneys have tried to argue that the conditions amount to inhumane treatment, some cases judges have agreed. But they've said there's nothing we can really do about it. The law does not allow for us to throw this case out.
What about the shame factor?

This is a practice of detention that until now hasn't really been known.

I wrote to dozens of men and received letters back from many of these men who'd been detained on these Coast Guard ships, describing the conditions of their confinement. Describing what sounded to me like real terror for them on the high seas. Those are stories that hadn't been told before.
Are they allowed to use a proper bathroom?

No the bathrooms on these boats are very different, ship to ship. They're provided essentially buckets to use as toilets on some of the boats. And these men are then required to clean out the buckets themselves and dump them off the edge of the ship. They describe that as a really terrible disgusting process. And the Coast Guard says "our ships aren't equipped as detention centers. We don't have facilities here. This is what we've got."

In fact, I spoke to Coast Guard commanders who are really uncomfortable about the conditions on their ship — and uncomfortable about the amount of time people are held.

I have evidence of people being held for upwards of 70 days. A Coast Guard official told me people have been held for 90 days. But the Coast Guard has no clear rules about how long they can hold people.
When you talk to Coast Guard officials and ask them about these things that you've researched and found out, what do they say? Are they proud of this or are they a little bit wary of what's going on?

Many of the Coast Guard officials that I talked to were really uncomfortable about the detention conditions and the amount of time that people were being held during their detention. I really felt that officials thought people need to be moved off the boats more quickly and, again, are uncomfortable about the conditions that they have to hold people in.
Have you talked with the families?

Yes. Many families, in fact, believe that their loved ones — husbands, fathers, sons — had disappeared. It's not unheard of for fishermen to disappear in the sea.

For these fishermen, the ocean is the geography of their life. And so when I talked to Arcentales, for example, about the sea, he said to me "the ocean used to be a place that for me represented freedom. But now it's like a prison in the open ocean."

And all of these men say "we understand that we've broken laws. We understand that we made these decisions. We understand that we're going to be punished for this." The question that they raise is "how are we in the United States right now?"

quote:

After marijuana, are magic mushrooms next to be decriminalised in California?

Mayoral candidate near San Francisco seeks signatures to put decriminalisation on statewide ballot next year, saying drug could offer healing at time of crisis

As California prepares for the legalisation of recreational marijuana in 2018, one man is pushing for the state to become the first to decriminalise magic mushrooms.

Kevin Saunders, a mayoral candidate for the city of Marina, just south of the San Francisco Bay, has filed a proposal that would exempt adults over the age of 21 from any penalties over possessing, growing, selling or transporting psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms.

If he can get 365,880 voter signatures by the end of April 2018, the California Psilocybin Legalization Initiative will be placed on the statewide ballot.

Saunders thinks that now is the right time because, he says, the drug can help bridge the current political divide and restore a sense of community.

“The world is really hurting and everybody is at a loss about what’s going on right now with Trump, Brexit, the refugee crisis and everything else. I’m at a loss at what to do politically, but the only thing I feel like we could do is get psilocybin into more people’s hands,” he said.

“It deflates the ego and strips down your own walls and defences and allows you to look at yourself in a different light,” he said, adding: “It could allow people to figure out what to do and could revolutionise the way we treat those with depression, addiction and cluster headaches.”

A profound magic mushroom experience helped Saunders get over a “debilitating five-year heroin addiction” in 2003, when he was 32. “I got to the root of why I made a conscious decision to become a heroin addict; I’ve been clean almost 15 years.”

California is one of eight states where voters have legalised marijuana for recreational use, even though it’s still included in the federal government’s list of schedule 1 drugs. Saunders and Kitty Merchant, who is co-author of the measure and his fiancee, believe that magic mushrooms – also listed as schedule 1 drugs – are the next logical step.

“I think we have learned a lot from marijuana and we are ready as a society,” he said.

So far, they have about 1,000 signatures, but plan to ramp up signature-gathering efforts in early December at college campuses and events like the medical marijuana summit The Emerald Cup. Eighty-five thousand signatures will trigger hearings at the state capitol.

Merchant and Saunders are not the first couple to propose legalising mushrooms. The husband and wife team Tom and Sheri Eckhert announced earlier this year that they were pushing for a similar ballot measure in Oregon, hoping to make it the first state in the US to legalise the drug.

They have taken a more conservative approach than Saunders has, aiming for a 2020 ballot and seeking to legalise the drug to be taken only in licensed centres under the supervision of a certified facilitator. Individuals would not be able to just buy the mushrooms and consume them at home as they can with marijuana.

“It’s not only amazing for mental health, there’s also a lot of potential for self-development and creative work,” Tom Eckhert told Vice in July.

Their efforts run in parallel to several promising clinical trials in which psychedelic mushrooms have been used to successfully treat severe depression, anxiety and addiction.

Robin Carhart-Harris, who has been studying the use of psilocybin to tackle treatment-resistant depression at University College London, believes that it is a “logical inevitability” that the drug will become available to patients.

However, such legalisation will only take place once final phase 3 clinical trials are completed and the drug is approved by the FDA and the European Medicines Agency. To standardise the dose, the psilocybin would have to be administered in capsule or pill form.

“Depression is such a major problem and it’s not being treated effectively at the moment. A lot of patients aren’t seeing results with traditional antidepressants,” Carhart-Harris said, adding that psilocybin could be a legal medicine – to be administered in clinics – within the next five years.

Although magic mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs in terms of the number of people who require emergency medical treatment, according to last year’s Global Drug Survey, they still carry risks.

“They are drugs with very low toxicity and very low abuse potential,” said psychiatrist Adam Winstock, founder of the Global Drug Survey, who said that if you take into account how often people take them, they are safer than cannabis.

“The only difference being the potential for mushrooms to distort your perceptions, cognition, emotions in a way that is totally outside of most people’s real of normal experience. For a minority of people, taken in the wrong situation, that could be terrifying.”

Winstock said he’d prefer to see a well-regulated market for magic mushrooms where you’d have to show a letter from a doctor saying you were not receiving any acute mental health care or medications. Buyers should also be given advice on how to use the drug, what the effects are and given links to online services to manage difficult situations if they arise.

“I would get people to treat mushrooms with the respect they deserve,” he said.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a not-for-profit group focused on ending the “war on drugs”, would not comment on the specific proposals in California and Oregon, but its director of legal affairs, Tamar Todd, said: “We certainly agree that nobody should be arrested or incarcerated simply because they possessed or used drugs.”

quote:

Gemeenten vrezen dat ze te weinig ruimte krijgen om met wietteelt te reguleren

quote:

Volgens burgemeester Depla zijn 'gevarieerde experimenten belangrijker dan welke gemeenten mogen meedoen'. Hij waarschuwt voor het risico van één variant. Als die mislukt 'zien tegenstanders hun gelijk bevestigd en ligt het debat weer jaren stil'.

quote:

Feds: Philly officer sold drugs stolen by corrupt Baltimore police squad

Federal agents arrested a Philadelphia police officer Tuesday, accusing him of conspiring with officers in Baltimore to sell cocaine and heroin seized from that city’s streets.

Prosecutors say that Eric Troy Snell, 33, earned thousands of dollars serving as a conduit between corrupt members of a Baltimore police task force who stole the drugs and his brother, who sold them in Philadelphia.

Investigators also have accused Snell of threatening the children of a Baltimore officer who pleaded guilty in the case.

His arrest is the latest in a widening police corruption scandal that has rocked Maryland’s largest city, resulting in the arrests of eight members of an elite gun task force there who prosecutors have accused of robbing and extorting drug dealers for years.

A Philadelphia police spokesman said that Snell — a three-year veteran of the force who had been assigned to the department’s 35th District in Northwest Philadelphia — would be suspended for 30 days with intent to dismiss.

Snell began his police career in Baltimore before arriving in Philadelphia in 2014. It was at the police academy in Maryland that he met Jemell Rayam, a fellow officer and his primary contact with the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force.

The squad had been deployed to crack down on the proliferation of illegal guns in that city. But prosecutors now say that Rayam and several cohorts, including two commanding sergeants, used their positions to rob drug dealers and pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars uncovered while searching homes and cars of suspected criminals.

According to Snell’s indictment, the Philadelphia officer set up an October 2016 meeting between his brother, who is not named in court filings, and Rayam to arrange for the sale of cocaine seized by the task force.

After Snell’s brother sold the drugs, the officer allegedly deposited $1,000 in proceeds in Rayam’s bank account, keeping $1,000 for himself. Several similar transactions followed over the next two months, the indictment alleges.

Rayam, arrested along with six other officers in March, pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy last month.

But in recorded jailhouse phone conversations referenced in court filings, Snell allegedly pressured Rayam to keep his name out of the ongoing investigation.

“Snell told Rayam to ‘stand tall’ and said he would ‘keep an eye’ on Rayam’s kids, which Rayam perceived as a threat to harm Rayam’s children if Rayam told authorities about Snell’s illegal drug trafficking,” the indictment says.

Snell made his initial appearance Tuesday in federal court in Baltimore on drug conspiracy charges. It was not immediately clear whether he had retained a lawyer.

quote:

Op maandag 27 november 2017 15:31 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
His arrest is the latest in a widening police corruption scandal that has rocked Maryland’s largest city, resulting in the arrests of eight members of an elite gun task force there who prosecutors have accused of robbing and extorting drug dealers for years.

quote:

Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 00:51 schreef Odaiba het volgende:
Deze strijd is (jammer genoeg) echt nooit te winnen, tenzij je alle mensen weet te overtuigen niet aan die troep te beginnen en dat gaat dus nooit lukken.

quote:

DEA approves synthetic marijuana while cracking down on real marijuana

quote:

While most of the country was preparing to get high on some Thanksgiving turkey last week, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) quietly granted a Schedule II classification to the drug Dronabinol, a synthetic THC nasal spray. The classification means the government officially recognizes its medicinal potential and will allow it to be prescribed, sold and federally regulated.

Non-synthetic THC, which is the active chemical compound in marijuana, remains classified as a Schedule I drug. As such, the government believes it is potentially dangerous and has no medicinal value.

Insys Therapeutics, the company which developed Dronabinol, will now enjoy a monopoly on the treatment of cancer patients who experience nausea from chemotherapy thanks to the DEA.

quote:

With Insys facing no competition in the market, they will price the medication between $1,000 to $2,000 per month.

All of this comes after years of well documented legal maneuvering and market manipulation by the pharmaceutical firm.

Last year Insys spent $500,000 to stop Arizona's recreational cannabis measure. They argued that pot businesses would be bad for public health and endanger children. Less than five months after defeating the legalization effort, they announced to shareholders that the DEA had given them approval to launch Syndros, the market name for Dronabinol.

Insys also happens to manufacture fentanyl, a painkiller that is 50 times stronger than heroin and is driving the national opioid crisis. Six former Insys executives were recently arrested for bribing doctors to prescribe fentanyl to patients who didn't need it, including Insys founder Dr. John N. Kapoor, who stepped down after the charges were filed.

"I am confident that I have committed no crimes and believe I will be fully vindicated after the trail," Kapoor said in his resignation letter.

That product is a Transmucosal Immediate Release Fentanyl known as Subsys which was meant to treat cancer patients, but prescribed widely to those who did not have cancer.

Insys is now working on a synthetic version of Cannabidiol to treat a variety of ailments in children. That substance, which is also an oral solution, is currently in various stages of clinical trials in the FDA's approval process.

quote:

Internet-facilitated drugs trade

An analysis of the size, scope and the role of the Netherlands

The potential role of the Internet in facilitating drugs trade first gained mass attention with the rise and fall of Silk Road; the first major online market place for illegal goods on the hidden web. After Silk Road was taken down by the FBI in October 2013, it was only a matter of weeks before copycats filled the void.

Today, there are around 50 so-called cryptomarkets and vendor shops where anonymous sellers and buyers find each other to trade illegal drugs, new psychoactive substances, prescription drugs and other goods and services. But it is not just the obscure parts of the Internet where drugs are on offer. There are numerous web shops, easily found by search engines, which offer new psychoactive substances, often labelled as 'research chemicals'.

The Netherlands occupies a crucial position in European illicit drug markets. Data from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction suggested it is the main producer of MDMA, ecstasy and herbal cannabis and a key distribution hub for cannabis resin and cocaine. Whether the pivotal role of the Netherlands also extends online, has yet been unclear.

The Netherlands Ministry of Security and Justice commissioned RAND Europe to provide a firmer evidence base to this phenomenon and, in particular, the role of the Netherlands. This report analyses the size and scope of Internet-facilitated drugs trade both on the so-called clear and hidden web, paying special attention to the Netherlands, and delineates potential avenues for law enforcement for detection and intervention.

Key Findings

Monthly revenues from drugs on cryptomarkets are in the double-digit million dollars

Of all products and services on offer, this study found that 57 per cent of listings across the eight analysed cryptomarkets offered drugs. The results indicate that these cryptomarkets generated a total monthly revenue of $14.2m (¤12.6m) in January 2016, $12.0m (¤10.5m) when prescription drugs and alcohol and tobacco are excluded (lower-boundary estimate). An upper-boundary estimate for monthly drug revenues via visible listings on all cryptomarkets would be $25.0m (¤22.1m) and $21.1m (¤18.5m) when prescription drugs and alcohol and tobacco are excluded. Cannabis, stimulants and ecstasy were responsible for 70 per cent of all revenues on the analysed cryptomarkets. No information was identified on revenues on the clear net. The values are based on EUR/USD exchange rate of 1.14 as of April 2016.

Cryptomarkets are not just an 'eBay for Drugs'

Large 'wholesale' level transactions (those greater than $1,000) are important for cryptomarkets, generating nearly one quarter of overall revenue both in September 2013 and in January 2016. Based on these findings it is likely that many cryptomarket customers are drug dealers sourcing stock intended for offline distribution.

Most revenues are generated by vendors who indicate they are operating from Anglo-Saxon countries or Western Europe

Most vendors appeared to be operating from the United States (890), followed by the United Kingdom (338), and Germany (225). Vendors indicating they ship from the United States generated 36% per cent of all drug revenues within our sample. Other Anglo-Saxon (Canada and the United Kingdom) as well as Western European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, France) also generate substantial proportions of revenues.

Revenues from vendors operating from the Netherlands are by far the largest on a per capita basis

Revenues to vendors reporting to operate from the Netherlands on cryptomarkets accounted for 8 per cent of total drug revenues. On a per capita basis, revenues to vendors operating from the Netherlands were 2.4 times higher than those from the United Kingdom and 4.5 higher than those from the United States.

Vendors and buyers on online markets seem to have similar characteristics

Traditional investigation techniques applied in the drug chain, postal detection and interception, online detection and online disruption are potential law enforcement strategies in the detection and intervention of Internet-facilitated drugs trade. In addition, international cooperation and coordination (and the accompanying legal challenges), capacity and resources and (technical) capabilities could play a facilitating role in deploying the different strategies to tackle Internet-facilitated drugs trade.

There are four broad categories of modes of detection and intervention

Traditional investigation techniques applied in the drug chain, postal detection and interception, online detection and online disruption are potential law enforcement strategies in the detection and intervention of Internet-facilitated drugs trade. In addition, international cooperation and coordination (and the accompanying legal challenges), capacity and resources and (technical) capabilities could play a facilitating role in deploying the different strategies to tackle Internet-facilitated drugs trade.

quote:

Op dinsdag 28 november 2017 17:17 schreef Adept het volgende:

[..]

Oftwel, zorgen dat het leven zo leuk en vermakelijk in elkaar steekt dat het niet in je opkomt

quote:

Journalistenvakbond: bedreigingen van crimereporters alarmerend

Zeer alarmerend noemt journalistenvakbond NVJ het nieuws dat volgens de politie vanuit de hoek van motorclub No Surrender een "aanzienlijk" geldbedrag is gezet op het hoofd van misdaadjournalist John van den Heuvel. "Dat is het ergste soort bedreiging mogelijk", zegt algemeen secretaris van de vakbond Thomas Bruning. "Misdaadjournalistiek is een tak van sport waar je te maken hebt met mensen die hun regels aan journalisten willen opleggen, maar dit is wel heel ernstig."

De advocaat van No Surrender-voorman Henk Kuipers spreekt overigens tegen dat Van den Heuvel is bedreigd. Volgens hem voert de journalist een persoonlijke vete tegen Kuipers en de motorclub.

Als er sprake is van een bedreiging, is het de derde tegen een misdaadjournalist in korte tijd. Ook Telegraafjournalist Mick Van Wely is afgelopen week bedreigd, en misdaadverslaggever Paul Vugts van Het Parool is zelfs ondergedoken vanwege "dreiging vanuit het criminele milieu".

Zeer serieus

De NVJ neemt die bedreigingen zeer serieus. Bruning: "Journalisten worden wel vaker bedreigd, en dat is altijd ernstig, maar in sommige gevallen neem je dat als journalist met een korrel zout. Maar bedreigingen aan misdaadjournalisten moet je echt serieus nemen, omdat je weet uit welke hoek ze komen."

Ook NOS-hoofdredacteur Marcel Gelauff, voorzitter van het Genootschap van Hoofdredacteuren, vindt het buitengewoon ernstig dat "mensen die gewoon proberen hun werk te doen" worden bedreigd.

Hoe ver criminelen bereid zijn te gaan blijkt uit de moord op Martin Kok van crimewebsite Vlinderscrime. Kok, zelf ooit drugscrimineel, had met zijn website vijanden gemaakt in het criminele circuit. Na eerdere mislukte aanslagen op zijn leven werd hij op 8 december vorig jaar doodgeschoten in Laren.

"De zaak rond Martin Kok ligt wat ingewikkeld", zegt Bruning. "Hij was niet iemand die in het rijtje past van misdaadsjournalisten als John van den Heuvel en Paul Vugts, maar het geeft wel aan dat je dit soort bedreigingen zeer serieus moet nemen."

De NVJ liet eerder dit jaar onderzoek doen naar bedreigingen aan het adres van journalisten. Daaruit bleek dat de impact van bedreigingen en intimidatie op het werk van journalisten de laatste jaren is toegenomen. Journalisten worden daardoor soms terughoudender en angstiger en mijden bepaalde plekken en onderwerpen, stelde de onderzoekscommissie.

Bruning denkt niet dat misdaadverslaggevers hun werk laten beïnvloeden door bedreigingen en intimidatie. "Dat soort journalisten zijn zo gepokt en gemazeld. Ik denk niet dat die zich laten afschrikken. Maar dat is natuurlijk wel de bedoeling van degene die zo'n bedreiging uit."

De NVJ is in overleg met politie en justitie om bedreigingen tegen journalisten harder aan te pakken. "Het is belangrijk dat die bedreigers gepakt worden. Dat geeft in ieder geval een signaal: als je journalisten bedreigt, dan word je snel en hard gepakt. Journalisten moeten in staat zijn om vrijelijk hun werk te doen. "

Volgens NOS-justitieredacteur Remco Andringa komt het vaker voor dat journalisten worden bedreigd. "Denk aan Barend & Van Dorp, die in 2000 in de tv-studio werden mishandeld door leden van de Hells Angels."

Andringa wijst erop dat de bedreigingen zeker niet altijd uit de hoek van motorclubs komen. "Zo kreeg Peter R. de Vries een paar jaar geleden Willem Holleeder aan de deur, die hem bedreigde."

Bovendien worden niet alleen journalisten door criminelen geïntimideerd. "Morgen staat bijvoorbeeld een wapenhandelaar voor de rechter die gedreigd heeft de burgemeester van Gilze en Rijen met een kalasjnikov neer te schieten. Bedreigingen kunnen iedereen treffen die een crimineel iets in de weg legt."

quote:

Nog onzeker of Amsterdam meedoet met proef staatswiet

quote:

Het kabinet komt naar verwachting komende lente met wetgeving dat een experiment met het gedoogd telen van wiet voor recreatief gebruik in zes tot tien gemeenten toestaat. Zeker twintig gemeenten hebben zich aangemeld.

Utrecht, Breda, Terneuzen, Hengelo en Wageningen zeggen op voorhand dat de sterkte van wiet beperkt moet worden. De andere gemeenten wachten de exacte spelregels van het kabinet nog af.

Kans op psychose
De gemeenten die nu al op de rem trappen, willen niet dat er ook maar één gebruiker een psychose krijgt van de gemeentejoint. Nederwiet die nu in het illegale circuit wordt geteeld, kenmerkt zich namelijk door een zeer hoog THC-gehalte. Er zijn aanwijzingen dat deze sterke wiet bij gebruikers soms tot psychoses leiden.

Floor van Bakkum, preventiemedewerker van verslavingscentrum Jellinek, noemt een sterkte tot 15 procent THC als waarschijnlijk maximum. "Alle hasj zit echter al hoger. Ga je dat dan verbieden? Wat moeten die gebruikers dan? In het illegale circuit blijven?"

Dennis Lahey, directeur van de Belangenvereniging van Drugsgebruikers, deelt die kritiek.

"Laten we vooropstellen dat ik blij ben dat gemeenten deze stap nemen, maar ze worden niet gehinderd door enig gebrek aan kennis als ze dit roepen. Laat de kwekers toch zelf uitmaken hoeveel procent THC ze in hun hasj of cannabis hebben."

Of Amsterdam meedoet aan de proef is vooralsnog onzeker. Al eerder waarschuwde locoburgemeester Eric van der Burg dat de proef waarbij gemeenten mogen experimenteren met legale wietteelt, waarschijnlijk aan Amsterdam voorbijgaat.

Straathandel voorkomen
De situatie hier is met 164 coffeeshops binnen de stadsgrenzen onvergelijkbaar met andere gemeenten in Nederland. Bovendien hoeven bezoekers van een coffeeshop in Amsterdam niet aan te tonen dat ze inwoner zijn, terwijl dat elders wel moet. Hier zijn toeristen bijvoorbeeld ook welkom in de coffeeshop.

"We handhaven het ingezetenencriterium niet, zodat we de straathandel voorkomen. Als dit wel een voorwaarde wordt voor deelname aan de proef, zeg ik: we doen het niet," aldus Van der Burg.

Raadsleden zien graag dat Amsterdam meedoet. "Als het in Amsterdam niet werkt, is het sowieso voor niks," aldus D66-raadslid Reinier van Dantzig.

quote:

Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

Since it decriminalised all drugs in 2001, Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime. By Susana Ferreira

quote:

When the drugs came, they hit all at once. It was the 80s, and by the time one in 10 people had slipped into the depths of heroin use – bankers, university students, carpenters, socialites, miners – Portugal was in a state of panic.

Álvaro Pereira was working as a family doctor in Olhão in southern Portugal. “People were injecting themselves in the street, in public squares, in gardens,” he told me. “At that time, not a day passed when there wasn’t a robbery at a local business, or a mugging.”

quote:

In 2001, nearly two decades into Pereira’s accidental specialisation in addiction, Portugal became the first country to decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those caught with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them.

The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from an all-time high in 2000 of 104.2 new cases per million to 4.2 cases per million in 2015. The data behind these changes has been studied and cited as evidence by harm-reduction movements around the globe. It’s misleading, however, to credit these positive results entirely to a change in law.

Portugal’s remarkable recovery, and the fact that it has held steady through several changes in government – including conservative leaders who would have preferred to return to the US-style war on drugs – could not have happened without an enormous cultural shift, and a change in how the country viewed drugs, addiction – and itself. In many ways, the law was merely a reflection of transformations that were already happening in clinics, in pharmacies and around kitchen tables across the country. The official policy of decriminalisation made it far easier for a broad range of services (health, psychiatry, employment, housing etc) that had been struggling to pool their resources and expertise, to work together more effectively to serve their communities.

quote:

In spite of Portugal’s tangible results, other countries have been reluctant to follow. The Portuguese began seriously considering decriminalisation in 1998, immediately following the first UN General Assembly Special Session on the Global Drug Problem (UNgass). High-level UNgass meetings are convened every 10 years to set drug policy for all member states, addressing trends in addiction, infection, money laundering, trafficking and cartel violence. At the first session – for which the slogan was “A drug-free world: we can do it” – Latin American member states pressed for a radical rethinking of the war on drugs, but every effort to examine alternative models (such as decriminalisation) was blocked. By the time of the next session, in 2008, worldwide drug use and violence related to the drug trade had vastly increased. An extraordinary session was held last year, but it was largely a disappointment – the outcome document didn’t mention “harm reduction” once.

Despite that letdown, 2016 produced a number of promising other developments: Chile and Australia opened their first medical cannabis clubs; following the lead of several others, four more US states introduced medical cannabis, and four more legalised recreational cannabis; Denmark opened the world’s largest drug consumption facility, and France opened its first; South Africa proposed legalising medical cannabis; Canada outlined a plan to legalise recreational cannabis nationally and to open more supervised injection sites; and Ghana announced it would decriminalise all personal drug use.

The biggest change in global attitudes and policy has been the momentum behind cannabis legalisation. Local activists have pressed Goulão to take a stance on regulating cannabis and legalising its sale in Portugal; for years, he has responded that the time wasn’t right. Legalising a single substance would call into question the foundation of Portugal’s drug and harm-reduction philosophy. If the drugs aren’t the problem, if the problem is the relationship with drugs, if there’s no such thing as a hard or a soft drug, and if all illicit substances are to be treated equally, he argued, then shouldn’t all drugs be legalised and regulated?

Massive international cultural shifts in thinking about drugs and addiction are needed to make way for decriminalisation and legalisation globally. In the US, the White House has remained reluctant to address what drug policy reform advocates have termed an “addiction to punishment”. But if conservative, isolationist, Catholic Portugal could transform into a country where same-sex marriage and abortion are legal, and where drug use is decriminalised, a broader shift in attitudes seems possible elsewhere. But, as the harm-reduction adage goes: one has to want the change in order to make it.

quote:

Police have killed dozens of children in Philippines war on drugs, Amnesty says

Rights group urges International Criminal Court to open investigation into crimes against humanity committed over past 18 months in brutal state crackdown

Police have killed dozens of children in the “war on drugs” in the Philippines in the last 18 months, Amnesty International said.

The rights group urged the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into crimes against humanity in the violent crackdown, including the deaths of an estimated 60 young people by police and vigilantes. Some of those killed were deliberately targeted in anti-drugs raids, while others were caught in the crossfire. There have also been “riding in tandem” attacks, carried out by vigilantes on motorcycles, which are often paid for by police, Amnesty said.

Relatives of some of the victims told the rights group how they witnessed police fatally shooting children at point blank range as they were begging for mercy.

The killing by police of a 17-year-old student, Kian Delos Santos, in August, sparked nationwide protests in the Philippines after CCTV footage emerged of him being dragged along the street by two plain clothes officers, casting doubt on police claims he was shot in self defence. More than 12 police officers have been investigated for the Santos killing after the case received international attention, but no one has yet been held to account.

Since Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, took office in June 2016, more than 3,900 “drug personalities” have been killed in his anti-drugs campaign, although activists say they are suspected users and alleged small-time dealers. More than 2,000 others have been killed in drug-related crimes and thousands murdered in unexplained circumstances, according to police data.

In October, amid waning public support for his deadly campaign, Duterte ordered police to end all operations in his anti-drug offensive, and placed the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in charge, saying the shift was to target big networks and suppliers.

James Gomez, Amnesty’s director for south-east Asia and the Pacific, said: “How many bullet-riddled bodies must be found dumped on the streets before the international community takes action?

“It is time for international justice mechanisms to step in and end the carnage on Philippine streets by bringing the perpetrators to justice. The country’s judiciary and police have proven themselves both unwilling and unable to hold the killers in the ‘war on drugs’ to account.

“The ICC must open a preliminary examination into the situation and cast its net widely. Responsibility is not just limited to those pulling the trigger, but also those who order or encourage murders and other crimes against humanity.”

The ICC recently indicated that it will investigate and pay special attention to crimes against children.

Duterte and other high-level government officials have openly advocated for extrajudicial killings, which could amount to criminal responsibility under international law, Gomez said.

One 17-year-old victim was killed after he was woken up in the middle of the night. The victim’s partner, known as O, told Amnesty: “They pointed a gun at my head [and] told me to get out … I heard shouting and three gunshots, then three more shots.”

Researchers from Amnesty witnessed large numbers of children suspected of drug-related offences kept in overcrowded and unsanitary holding centres for minors in the Philippine capital, Manila. Some said they had been beaten and tortured by police on their arrest, and claimed police had framed them by forcing them to pose in photographs with drugs that had been planted.

quote:

Onderzoek naar Nederlands drugsbeleid jarenlang gemanipuleerd

Na druk van hooggeplaatste ambtenaren op het ministerie van Justitie is een onafhankelijk onderzoeksrapport over regulering van de wietteelt in 2014 drastisch aangepast. De onderzoeksopdracht, rapportage en conclusies zijn zo beïnvloed dat het softdrugsbeleid van de minister van Justitie ondersteund werd, in plaats van bekritiseerd zoals onderzoekers feitelijk hadden vastgesteld. Dat blijk uit een interne klacht van een projectleider in handen van Nieuwsuur.

Het WODC concludeert in 2014 dat een overlastprobleem met coffeeshops dat het kabinet wil aanpakken, eigenlijk helemaal niet bestaat. Maar die conclusie ligt politiek te gevoelig, want hij ondermijnt het bestaande drugsbeleid.

"Wij kunnen met wat we nu hebben niet instemmen", stelt een topambtenaar van het ministerie van Justitie in een mail aan de WODC-onderzoekers. De conclusies moeten worden aangepast.

Wel of geen drugsoverlast?

WODC-directeur Leeuw zwicht voor de politiek druk en herschrijft de conclusie van het WODC-rapport, tegen de wil van de onderzoekers in. De minister is gered. In zijn brief aan de Tweede Kamer kan de minister dankzij de aanpassingen in de conclusie schrijven: "De uitkomsten ondersteunen de beleidswijziging."

Hoogleraar Recht en Maatschappij Jan Brouwer heeft op verzoek van Nieuwsuur de gang van zaken tegen het licht gehouden. "In feite staat hier dat gemeenten geen problemen ervaren met betrekking tot de omvang van de coffeeshops. Dat ze geen overlast ervaren. En vervolgens staat er dat de gemeenten als gevolg van de grootte wel overlast ervaren. Dat is simpel gezegd diametraal het tegenovergestelde van wat aanvankelijk de conclusie van het onderzoek was."

Daarmee hebben de ambtenaren de echte conclusie van de onderzoekers over de coffeeshops in politiek opzicht 180 graden weten te draaien. Of in de woorden van Brouwer: "Die conclusie was verdwenen."

quote:

'Te weinig agenten voor jacht op heroïnehandelaren'

De politie heeft te weinig mensen om de groeiende heroïnehandel aan te pakken. De handel floreert en Turks-Nederlandse drugscriminelen gebruiken steeds extremer geweld, maar de recherche heeft geen capaciteit meer voor onderzoek. Dat staat in een intern rapport van de politie, waaruit het AD citeert.

In Nederland wordt steeds minder heroïne gebruikt, maar de drugs komen wel in grote hoeveelheden vanuit Turkije naar Nederland voor de internationale handel. En die handel floreert, staat in het politierapport.

Volgens de politie dreigt nu de situatie te ontstaan dat er helemaal geen onderzoek meer wordt gedaan naar de heroïnehandel. Dat komt doordat de politie te weinig mensen heeft, maar ook doordat het accent wordt verlegd naar de aanpak van onder meer de handel in cocaïne en synthetische drugs en de aanpak van motorbendes.

Meedogenlozer

En dat is alarmerend, staat in het rapport. De politie schrijft dat de nieuwe generatie Turks-Nederlandse heroïnehandelaren roekelozer en meedogenlozer is dan de vorige generatie en dat ze vrij spel krijgen. Dat zou de toename van het aantal 'vergismoorden', gijzelingen en zware wapens in het drugsmilieu verklaren.

"Voor een halve kilo schieten ze je af", zegt een betrokkene in de Turks-Nederlandse onderwereld in een telefoongesprek dat door de politie is afgeluisterd.

quote:

Theresa May Calls for Continued “War against Drugs”, Despite Her Own Research Indicating its Failure

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has vowed to continue fighting the country’s war on drugs, despite the approach having contributed to the country’s highest rate of drug-related deaths on record, and exorbitant financial costs.

"It is right that we continue to fight the war against drugs," May announced at a prime minister’s questions session on November 22, citing “the incredible damage [drugs] can do to families and the individuals concerned”.

In the past five years of punitive drug policies under Conservative rule, there has been a 44 per cent increase in drug-related deaths in England and Wales, including a staggering 109 per cent rise in heroin/morphine deaths during the same period. In 2016, the number of drug-related deaths hit the highest figure on record, with drug misuse deaths now outnumbering road traffic fatalities.

May had been responding to a question from Crispin Blunt MP on whether she would look at evidence “from the US on the legalisation and regulation of cannabis markets there, as well as decriminalisation [of drug possession] in Portugal and elsewhere".

Bizarrely, she justified her approach to parliamentarians by referring to research undertaken by the Home Office, when she served as Home Secretary, which investigated and compared how different countries approached drug policy. What the prime minister failed to mention is that this report found there to be “[no] obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country”.

A more recent publication, the government’s evaluation of its own drug strategy, yet again found that drug law enforcement has “little impact on availability”, and that punitive policies actually worsen problems that they supposedly intend to solve by bringing “potential unintended consequences including unemployment and harm to families".

The horrific social harms wrought by the UK’s war on drugs – from the criminalisation of over 40,000 people a year for drug possession, to the disproportionate targeting of black people and young adults in drugs policing – are compounded by the huge financial cost of drug law enforcement: around £1.6 billion annually. This enormous figure is particularly significant as May’s prohibitionist declaration coincided with the UK’s economic growth forecast plummeting, and within the context of public services facing severe budget cuts.

Later in the afternoon of November 22, a parliamentary debate took place on how policies can best respond to problematic drug use, with MPs from several parties suggesting evidence-based alternatives to Theresa May’s war on drugs.

Norman Lamb, a Liberal Democrat, said that we must “accept across our country the principle of safer drug consumption rooms (DCRs) [which] are already saving lives in eight European countries and in Canada and Australia, [and are] endorsed by the British Medical Association.” Ronnie Cowan, of the Scottish National Party, spoke of the importance of providing central government funding to support heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) - something endorsed by the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, but ignored by the government itself.

Sharon Hodgson, of Labour, pointed to "drug rehabilitation services being closed and budgets to tackle drug abuse cut, all against a backdrop of an NHS under significant pressure" as contributing factors to rising drug-related harms and deaths. John Howell, a Conservative, described how he was "most impressed" by information sent to him by Release - the UK's centre of expertise on drugs and drug law - which argued for DCRs, HAT, and a range of other public health measures that could reduce the harms of drug use.

Crispin Blunt, another Conservative MP, said that "the UK could have a royal commission to make evidence-based policy recommendations free of politicians’ trite response, 'Drugs are bad; they must be banned'".

Backing for drug policies rooted in public health and compassion appears to be growing among members of all main parties. However, the prime minister’s unwavering support for perpetuating the government’s failed “war against drugs” suggests that progressive reform is unlikely to come from the top anytime soon.

quote:

http://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/

Each year, GDS consults more than 100,000 people around the world on the way they use drugs. We do this to get to the heart of how, where, when, why and what drugs are being taken. By discussing the findings we aim to make drug use safer, regardless of the legal status of the drug.

Share your story with us and help change the conversation. Because your experience matters.

quote:

Following marijuana legalization, teen drug use is down in Colorado



Following legalization, the rate of adolescent marijuana use in Colorado has fallen to its lowest level in nearly a decade, according to new federal survey data.

State-level numbers from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health show that a little more than 9 percent of Colorado teens age 12 to 17 used marijuana monthly in 2015 and 2016, a statistically significant drop from the prior period. That's the lowest rate of monthly marijuana use in the state since 2007 and 2008.

And it's not just marijuana: Rates of teen alcohol, tobacco and heroin use are down sharply in the state, as well.

Colorado, which was the first in the nation to open recreational marijuana markets in 2014, is viewed as a bellwether by both opponents and supporters of legalization.

For state-level data, the survey uses pooled two-year periods to increase sample sizes and statistical accuracy. Last year the survey showed that Colorado was ranked No. 1 in the nation on adolescent marijuana use, a fact seized by marijuana opponents to argue that legalization was failing to protect children from drug use.

With the sharp drop in this year's data, Colorado has fallen to No. 7 in the national ranking of teen marijuana use, behind Alaska, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. A separate survey administered by officials in Colorado has found that teens in the state are in the middle of the pack on marijuana use.

“Teen use appears to be dropping now that state and local authorities are overseeing the production and sale of marijuana,” said Brian Vicente of Vicente Sederberg LLC, one of the drafters of Colorado's marijuana ballot measure, in a statement. “There are serious penalties for selling to minors, and regulated cannabis businesses are being vigilant in checking IDs.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an outspoken critic of marijuana legalization, but thus far he has hewed to the prior administration's policy of noninterference with state-level legalization efforts. While marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, voters in eight states plus the District have legalized the recreational use of the drug. Lawmakers in Vermont have signaled they will legalize the recreational use of marijuana early next year.

The new federal data shows that adolescent marijuana use fell nationwide in 2016. In no states did the share of teens using pot increase by a significant amount, and in a number, including California, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey and Texas, rates of teen marijuana use fell considerably.

Use is up, however, among young adults age 18 to 25 and adults age 26 and up. Alcohol use, meanwhile, is falling across the board, according to the federal survey data.

In Colorado, for instance, the number of 18-to-25-year-olds using alcohol on a monthly basis fell by four percentage points between 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. That's the group with the highest propensity to use marijuana, suggesting that a number of young adults are opting to smoke weed instead of get drunk now that the option is available to them.

If that's the case, it could be a big public-health win, considering what public-health experts know about the harmfulness of marijuana vis-à-vis booze.

quote:

Norway votes to decriminalise drugs and offer treatment instead of jail time

Norway’s parliament has voted to decriminalise drugs and offer treatment to addicts instead. 133 seats out of 175 voted in favour of decriminalising illegal drugs across the country. According to Norway’s 2017 Country Drug Report, 266 people died from drug-related deaths this year. Instead of being handed a prison sentence, drug users would be given treatment. People with addictions to drugs would be regarded as needing treatment for an illness.

Sveinung Stensland, deputy chairman of the Storting Health Committee told VG: “It is important to emphasise that we do not legalise cannabis and other drugs, but we decriminalise. “The change will take some time, but that means a changed vision: those who have a substance abuse problem should be treated as ill, and not as criminals with classical sanctions such as fines and imprisonment.” Nicolas Wilinson, health spokesman for the Socialist Left told VG: “The majority will stop punishing people who struggle, but instead give them help and treatment.”.

According to Norway’s Country Drug Report, 266 people died from drug-related deaths which is said to be an increase on last year, reports The Independent.

The Portugal model

The move follows that of Portugal which decriminalised drugs in 2001. Drug addicts in the country are given therapy or community service rather than fines or jail time. However drugs still remain illegal in the country which means that those found to be growing drugs, dealing substances or trafficking them will still be handed criminal penalties. When a person is found in possession of a small amount of drugs, the drugs are confiscated and the person is interviewed by a psychiatrist, a social worker and a lawyer. Following this, a number of sanctions can be put in place such as a ban on visiting certain places, a foreign travel ban and a small fine, in line with the country’s minimum wage. The result in Portugal has been positive. According to the latest European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and drug addiction report, there are six drug related deaths in Portugal for every one million people. While in the UK, there are 60 deaths for every million people.

quote:

West Virginia governor orders National Guard to Huntington after drug-related killings

After a spate of homicides in Huntington, West Virginia, Governor Jim Justice announced he was deploying the National Guard to the small city of 53,000. The governor made the announcement during a televised town hall meeting in Huntington Thursday afternoon.

So far this year, the city has been the scene of 19 confirmed homicides, with two others under investigation. A string of five shootings resulting in three deaths in the past week has catapulted Huntington ahead of Cleveland and New Orleans in terms of per capita homicides. This rail hub on the Ohio River now sits just behind St. Louis and Baltimore, large cities battered by deindustrialization, in the nationwide violent crime rankings.

The violence, along with an increase in theft and robberies, has set many working class residents on edge and contributed to the efforts by politicians to whip up fear and a siege mentality. The deployment of National Guard forces to respond to civilian drug crimes sets a dangerous precedent in the United States.

In an interview with MetroNews’ “Talkline” radio show October 14, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams described the killings as a turf war and largely internal to the drug trade. “Don’t think for a minute that we don’t know who is causing harm,” Williams said. “We know who they are and where they are and we are going to come in and lock them away for years to come.” Williams suggested that drugs like meth and crack cocaine, not just heroin, were fueling “some bit of craziness and aggressive drug dealers with it.”

Governor Justice, who switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican earlier this year, seized on the violence to burnish his law-and-order credentials in an apparently snap decision in front of television cameras. “I’m going to call upon our National Guard,” Justice declared to local television station WSAZ. “Our National Guard has resources that can absolutely combat this thing.” In his typically incoherent manner, Justice intoned that Huntington must replace “drugs for jobs … When I was here it was the great town in the world. Streets running one way, avenues running another way. It was a sweater-type town.”

Now Huntington will be a “martial-law-type town,” with National Guard troops deployed to reinforce civil law enforcement. It is unclear whether the governor either consulted with Mayor Williams or forewarned National Guard officials before his announcement. Major General James Hoyer, the adjutant general of the state’s National Guard, released a video on social media Thursday night attempting to explain the “technical support” role the military force would play, ostensibly in response to public dismay over the prospect of “boots on the ground.”

“That doesn’t mean setting a Humvee on every street corner,” Justice insisted. “We can’t do that because the National Guard doesn’t get involved with law enforcement. But between the National Guard, the state police and great police of the city of Huntington we’re going to stop it.”

Huntington has gained national notoriety in the past few years as an epicenter of the opioid crisis. West Virginia has a fatal overdose rate of 35.3 per 100,000—far outpacing the already staggering national death rate of 15 per 100,000 for drug overdoses.

Huntington’s Cabell County, population approximately 100,000, saw an appalling 105 fatal overdoses in the first nine months of the year, most of them attributable to heroin or other opioids.

Huntington Fire Chief Jan Rader has estimated that as many as one in ten Cabell County residents are drug-addicted. “We average 5.3 overdoses a day in Huntington, West Virginia,” Rader told NBC’s “Meet the Press” October 30. “Twenty-six percent of the time that my guys get a call, they are climbing on their truck and going to an overdose.”

Rader has gained a national profile following the Netflix release of a short documentary, Heroin(e), a film that follows the fire chief and two other women involved in responding to the drug crisis. In interviews, she and other emergency responders have repeatedly stressed the necessity for drug rehabilitation programs. In Cabell County, Rader explained on PBS’s “Bill Moyers” program November 22, thousands of addicts have access to “only eight detox beds,” none of them medically assisted.

The city has served as a stage backdrop for Democratic and Republican politicians who seek to pose as champions of drug treatment, law-and-order, or some combination of the two. In 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made a well-attended campaign stop in Huntington to give his standard stump speech railing against the “billionaire class.” Last summer, Republican President Donald Trump filled the same arena with supporters for a rally in which he issued promises to bring jobs to the region, crippled by the collapse in the coal industry.

In early October, First Lady Melania Trump ventured out into the open air for a photo-op at Lily’s Place, Huntington’s specialized infant recovery center for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. The president’s wife traveled with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway and Republican Congressman Evan Jenkins. Unsurprisingly, the few public comments issued during the visit were couched in platitudes about personal responsibility. “No promises were made,” WSAZ reported, “but there are plans to keep in touch” with medical providers.

The promises of politicians for meaningful drug treatment are nothing more than lip service. As a few million dollars are pledged here and there, the Trump administration has moved to gut Medicaid and other lifeline health care services. Much federal money earmarked for emergency response has been allocated to police departments rather than rehabilitation services.

In early December, the state Department of Health and Human Resources announced $20.8 million in lawsuit settlements with pharmaceutical companies involved in creating the opioid epidemic would be divided among nine drug treatment programs. Huntington’s Marshall University Recovery Center for Families was earmarked $2.8 million to provide residential treatment services for pregnant women.

Meanwhile, municipal emergency services have been all but bankrupted by the cost of naloxone, the anti-opioid drug used to reverse overdoses. The Evzio-branded naloxone auto-injector device runs at approximately $4,500 for a box containing only two doses. Naloxone delivered by auto-injector can cost up to $3,800 per dose. The nasal delivery version of Narcan, which is not as effective for overdose cases involving fentanyl-laced heroin, runs $50 per dose.

Thousands of lives have been saved by emergency responders, but the effort has cost Huntington and Cabell County emergency services a staggering $100 million in the past year and a half.

In communities smaller than Huntington, the funding crisis has had a shattering impact on municipal budgets. Funding for emergency services are completely threadbare, staff are run ragged, and naloxone shortages are widespread. Of West Virginia’s 434 local fire departments, a November 16 Charleston Gazette-Mail article noted, all but 16 are volunteer.

Many cities in West Virginia and throughout the country are dysfunctional and falling deeper into debt—opening their infrastructure up to be picked clean by the bond rating agencies and hedge fund vultures. America’s drug epidemic is fundamentally an expression of the rapacious appetite of the capitalist class.

Consider: just three pharmaceutical companies at the center of the opioid racket—McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen—pull in revenues of $400 billion every year. These three companies were responsible for supplying hundreds of millions of addictive painkillers to West Virginia over a five-year period, causing the deaths of at least 1,700 people.

The legal settlements are little more than pocket change for the pharmaceutical giants, and will do little to alleviate the crisis. Nothing short of the expropriation of the profits of the major pharmaceuticals will suffice to address the social devastation they have wrought. Working people in West Virginia and across the US must fight for genuine redress by liquidating the ill-gotten gains of these capitalist criminals. Only through a massive reorganization of economic life to meet pressing social needs will the working class gain the resources required to restore their lives and rehabilitate their loved ones.

quote:

"Bart De Wever is lenig in het verdraaien van de werkelijkheid"

De "Pano"-reportage over cocaïne in Antwerpen lokt een maatschappelijk debat uit. Enkele uitspraken van burgemeester Bart De Wever (N-VA) schieten in het verkeerde keelgat van districtsraadslid Morad Ramachi: "Wie lenig is in het verdraaien van de werkelijkheid eindigt snel bij ‘alternatieve feiten’."

De reportage van "Pano" over de Antwerpse drugsproblematiek heeft heel wat reacties losgeweekt, en dit uit alle hoeken van de maatschappij. In de reportage spreekt de Antwerpse burgemeester, Bart de Wever, onomwonden van een ‘tegencultuur’ bij de Marokkaanse gemeenschap. Dat de Antwerpse burgemeester zijn hand niet omdraait voor een rondje polemiek wisten we al langer. Maar het voeden van complottheorieën van hetzelfde niveau als “Elvis Presley leeft nog” mag niet onbetwist voorbijgaan.

Wie lenig is in het verdraaien van de werkelijkheid eindigt snel bij ‘alternatieve feiten’. En de Antwerpse burgemeester kan er zo wel wat op zijn conto schrijven.

Het is een vaststaand feit dat de stad Antwerpen in toenemende mate geconfronteerd wordt met een drugsprobleem. De gevolgen daarvan vertalen zich in overlast, conflicten en sociale drama’s.

Maar een krachtterm als ‘tegencultuur’ roept heel wat associaties op. Het wil inhouden dat een hele cultuur, een hele gemeenschap zich tegen ‘ons’ keert. Zulke bewoordingen versterken het denkbeeld van collectieve schuld, en van collectieve verantwoordelijkheid.

En wie zich niet uitspreekt is guilty by association.

Het is een van de meest wraakroepende tactieken die een politicus kan hanteren. Er zijn voorbeelden legio tot welke maatschappelijke excessen zulke collectieve verdachtmakingen kunnen leiden.

Door drugscriminaliteit een kleur te geven zijn burgers van Marokkaanse origine ongewild de inzet geworden van een politiek steekspel tussen links en rechts. Maar aan de wortels van het probleem lijken heel wat beleidsmakers voorbij te gaan.

Als we jongeren uit achterstandswijken een volwaardig toekomstperspectief willen bieden, dan moeten we in de eerste plaats kijken naar wat al die wijken kenmerkt. Je hebt geen langdurige geestelijke reflectie nodig om te concluderen dat er mechanismen van sociale uitsluiting aan het werk zijn.

Het plafond waar de ‘allochtoon’ tegenaan kijkt, is vaak van gewapend glas. De tewerkstellingskansen van etnische minderheden zijn nergens in Europa zo laag als hier. De beperkte sociale mobiliteit van de onderklasse in een grootstedelijke context is bijzonder frustrerend, en zorgt ervoor dat veel jongeren worstelen met een laag sociaal zelfbeeld. Dat maakt hen kwetsbaarder voor rekruterende drugsbendes die hen geld en maatschappelijk aanzien voorspiegelen.

De Marokkaanse gemeenschap een etnisch monopolie op de drugshandel verwijten getuigt van intellectuele oneerlijkheid. In de drugszaak rond de Aquino’s werden de Belgische Italianen als gemeenschap niet aangesproken op het gedrag van enkele individuen van Italiaanse origine.

Bovendien is de roep om deze georganiseerde misdaad in zijn geheel vanuit de gemeenschap op te lossen, in strijd met de beginselen van onze rechtstaat. Het is de taak van de politie, het gerecht en het beleid om in te grijpen.

Laat ons ook erkennen dat drugshandelaars vooral gedreven zijn om Porsches en Lamborghini's te kopen, en niet zozeer om zich te storten in liefdadigheid. De bewering dat islamitische gebedshuizen ontvankelijk zouden zijn voor crimineel geld is dan ook volledig van de pot gerukt.

De huidige repressieve aanpak van drugscriminaliteit lijkt duidelijk niet te werken. Het Antwerpse stadsbestuur heeft zoveel politiek kapitaal geïnvesteerd in de 'war on drugs' dat het zich niet kan veroorloven om toe te geven dat ze zich vergist heeft. Het discours van de harde aanpak scoort nu eenmaal goed bij een bepaald electoraat.

Maar etnische minderheden zijn niet langer bereid om ingezet te worden als politiek pasmunt. Het businessmodel van de cokehandel vertrekt hyperbolisch vanuit de toplaag van witte boordencriminelen, die de macht en het geld hebben om deze drugs te importeren, via de straatdealers die 1 op 1 vervangbaar zijn, en gaat terug omhoog naar de sociale klasse die de vraagzijde beheerst naar deze luxedrug.

Het is uiteraard gemakkelijk om te focussen op de zwakste schakel in deze business en de snuivers buiten schot te laten. Maar proper is dit niet. Ik hou geen pleidooi om alle straatboefjes vanaf nu ongemoeid te laten. Maar het is noodzakelijk dat men erkent dat de armoedeproblematiek een stuwende kracht is achter de drugshandel, en dat er veel meer aandacht moet zijn voor de preventieve kant van het verhaal, zoals meer investeringen in jeugdwelzijn, onderwijs en het verbeteren van de tewerkstellingskansen van jongeren met allochtone roots.

De oorlogsstrategie tegen drugs voorzetten is niet meer dan een misdaad tegen de logica. Het is een verspilling van kansen en van vele jonge talenten.

In de studio van "De afspraak" hekelde ik reeds het feit dat veel jongeren met allochtone roots zich niet herkennen in de maatschappelijke structuren. De overheid moet een weerspiegeling zijn van de samenleving, maar dat is ze helaas niet.

Slechts 7% van de Antwerpse politieagenten zijn van buitenlandse origine, terwijl meer dan 50% van de inwoners allochtone roots heeft.

Meer ruimte geven aan diversiteit betekent dat je via verschillende invalshoeken naar maatschappelijke problemen kan kijken. Diversiteit brengt nuance en inlevingsvermogen met zich mee, en het werkt bovendien zalvend voor het gevoel van cultureel onbehagen.

Maar laat ons eerlijk zijn: het vorige stadsbestuur, onder leiding van socialisten, sloof zich ook niet uit voor een geloofwaardig diversiteitsbeleid. Politici met allochtone roots werden onbekwaam geacht om schepen te worden, en het personeelsbestand was niet veel kleurrijker dan nu het geval is.

Ik onderschrijf dan ook de stelling dat een links bestuur geen enkele garantie biedt op een kansrijke toekomst. Het debat zal altijd gevoerd moeten worden, ongeacht welke politieke formatie aan de knoppen zit.

Politiek moet mensen perspectief geven. Het moet zich niet verlagen tot hopeloze pogingen om stereotype beelden in stand te houden. Een stad als Antwerpen heeft in de eerste plaats nood aan een geloofwaardig en becijferd diversiteitsbeleid.

Inclusie is de hoeksteen van een succesvolle democratie. Laat ons inzetten op actief burgerschap op basis van wederzijds vertrouwen, en een tegengewicht bieden aan de verruwing van het maatschappelijk debat.

quote:

Aantal moorden in Mexico nog nooit zo hoog

Mexico koerst af op het grootste aantal moorden in één jaar sinds daarover in 1997 gegevens worden bijgehouden. In de eerste elf maanden van dit jaar zijn ruim 23.000 moordonderzoeken geopend, tegen 22.400 in het recordjaar 2011.

Het cijfer is ook een bittere pil voor president Nieto, die met het oog op de presidentsverkiezingen van volgend jaar heeft beloofd de misdaad in zijn land te beteugelen.

Nieto werd gekozen in juli 2012. Gedurende de eerste twee jaar van zijn bewind gingen de misdaadcijfers omlaag, maar daarna steeg het aantal moorden weer.

Hoewel het aantal moorden in absolute cijfers hoger is dan in 2011, is het aantal moorden per 100.000 inwoners met 18,7 nog iets lager dan in dat jaar.

El Salvador het onveiligst

Met het aantal moorden per hoofd van de bevolking spant Mexico nog lang niet de kroon in Midden- en Zuid-Amerika. Volgens gegevens van de VN over 2015 is het aantal moorden per 100.000 inwoners nog veel hoger in Brazilië en Colombia (27 per 100.000), Venezuela (57), Honduras (64) en El Salvador (104). In de VS gaat het om 5 moorden per 100.000 inwoners.

Nieto's rivaal bij de komende verkiezingen is de linkse kandidaat Lopez Obrado, de voormalige burgemeester van Mexico-Stad. Die speelt met de gedachte bendeleden amnestie aan te bieden om het geweld onder controle te krijgen. Twee derde van de Mexicanen is blijkens een opiniepeiling van deze maand tegen een amnestie voor bendeleden.

quote:

The Election Fraud in Honduras Follows Decades of Corruption Funded By the U.S. War on Drugs

quote:

Interdiction data extracted from the U.S. government’s Consolidated Counterdrug Database show that the amount of cocaine seized in Honduras tripled from 2005 to 2006, hitting 21,320 kilograms. Annual totals remained similarly high until 2009, the year of the coup, when the total skyrocketed again to 70,272 kg. Then, between 2010 and 2011, U.S. federal government agencies reported almost 250,000 kg of cocaine intercepted in Honduras.

Tegucigalpa, aided by Washington, began a crackdown that was visible to olanchanos by 2011. Special forces police, in units known as Cobras and Tigres, accompanied by the military and public prosecutors office, raided mansions, hotels, construction firms, meat-packing plants, mayoral offices, outlet stores, mineral mines, and private zoos throughout Olancho in the next few years. The Cobras police remained to occupy some areas. Residents say they frequently saw U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents accompanying raids. U.S. agencies registered a drop in intercepted kilograms in 2012 – to just over 68,000 kg – and by 2014, the amount had fallen to about 30,000 kg. In response to the repression, the narcos went underground.

But the narcos who ran wild in Olancho weren’t in charge of the game. The chessboard masters are the elite. In January 2015, the leader of one of Olancho’s own cartels, the Cachiros, was among those caught and extradited to face trial in the Southern District of New York. Once on the stand, Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga pointed the DEA to Fabio Lobo, the son of the Olancho cattleman and former president. Fabio was later arrested in Haiti, and his personal cadre of police, who ensured safe passage for the drugs, was arrested in Honduras. Then Hernández’s brother was called to Washington to answer for his apparent involvement with a major trafficker. That same month in a different case, when a Mexican trafficker-turned-DEA informant was asked on the stand who offered to help him move drugs through Honduras, he named Hernández’s current minister of security, Julian Pacheco, a longtime ally of the U.S. military and graduate of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. The informant also said it was Lobo’s son who had introduced him to Pacheco.

Olanchanos aren’t fooled: They know the leaders of the drug game are the same corrupt networks. The streets may be calmer now, but they still rule, and they make their presence known.

Olanchanos recognize the traces of the drug networks because they’re “out of place,” fuera de lugar. For instance: the imported German beers in the dilapidated refrigerators of corner stores across Catacamas, catering to expensive tastes not from around there. The mayor’s office in Concordia, built like a castle, against which lean the homes of residents, clay block shacks. Sightings of limousines that appear suddenly and meander dirt roads. Elegiac poetry books, sold in gas stations around Juticalpa, honoring former Mayor Ramón Sarmiento, arrested for illegal weapons possession.

Another trace of their presence is large enough to be seen from space.

quote:

'Urk has a problem': Dutch fishing town caught up in cocaine-smuggling trial

Five people, including three fishermen from Urk, are suspected of attempting to smuggle 261 kilos of cocaine in their boat

It may be the Netherlands’ most religiously devoted community, where television and dancing are spurned by some as the devil’s work. But the wrath of God for indulging in those pursuits is unlikely to be the most pressing concern at the moment for some of the 20,000 residents of Urk, for centuries a major centre for Dutch fishing.

During an ongoing trial of five people, including three of the town’s fishermen, suspected of attempting to smuggle 261 kilos of cocaine worth ¤6.5m in their cutter boat, claims have emerged that the town’s fishing community has been infiltrated by a gang using financial favour and threats of violence, and even murder, to keep their hold.

Those on the boat, Z181, are accused of taking the stash of cocaine onboard from a container ship on the orders of a Dutchman of Pakistani descent who was working with a Montenegrin henchman.

With cocaine production from South America said to be at an all-time peak, it is claimed the tight-knit community is the latest to fall foul of an urgent need among smugglers for fresh ways into mainland Europe.

The breaking up of drug cartels in South America has opened up opportunities for European gangs, according to Dr Axel Klein, an expert in drug smuggling. In 2016 an estimated 866 tonnes of cocaine were produced at clandestine labs in Colombia alone, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). In 2015, the estimate was 649 tonnes.

Urk’s close community, reluctant to seek help from outsiders, may have been an enticement to the drugs gang. The local council admitted of the fishermen: “They don’t talk.”

In an opening hearing of the case against the men, the public prosecutor in charge of the case, Koos Plooij, made it plain that he suspected that a tight grip has been kept on the Urk fishermen through a variety of means, including in one case the threat of a grenade being thrown into a front room. “Urk has a... problem,” Plooij told the court. “The mixing of legal fishing with international drug trafficking is worrying, especially in the light of the revealing reports about pressure and threat.”

On Urk’s docks, a man wearing a luminous jacket with ‘harbour master’ across the back, was loathe to speak to The Guardian, as he unloaded fish into a van. He said: “No comment, it was one boat. No comment.” The mayor of Urk, Pieter Van Maaren, an elder of the Dutch Protestant church, was apparently “very busy” in his office when asked for an explanation at the town hall.

The mayor’s spokeswoman, Marianne Heida, instead took questions, insisting the scandal had “come out of the blue” to the town, which was an island until 1939, and retains its own anthem and strong dialect to this day. More than one Urk boat may have been lured into the criminal gang’s web, she had picked up from from the trial, but the council had no idea what would happen next, Heida admitted.

“In 2008 the economy went down and the fisheries [all over the country] were very bad,” she said. “They say, but it is a rumour, ‘The fisheries are bad, the loans are bad, the criminals were coming up and going to the fishermen, saying here do something of us’,” she said. “We didn’t know that. Only when they were picked up in June. And then it was ‘Oh, maybe there is a relation between the economy in 2008 and this point.’”

“It was out of the blue for us,” Heida added. “We didn’t know there was criminal activity here. They don’t talk, the community, if they have a problem they will solve it themselves...

“That’s sometimes difficult. Also I think that is a problem of the Dutch people. You are proud. You want to manage yourselves...They didn’t go to the police and say we were threatened, can you give us protection. We heard it also during the trial.”

Heida added of Urk: “When you were born here, you will stay here. You don’t go out of Urk. That’s the main thing. Everyone knows each other.”

The boat at the centre of the current court case - which is due to resume in February - was bought and renovated by Johannes Nentjes, 31, and his father in 2015, to fish Norwegian lobster and plaice.

Johannes’s mother, Hennie, took three goes to break a bottle of champagne against the bow of the ship when it was christened, according to the local press. A party was held at the Het Achterhuis restaurant overlooking the harbour. Approached by The Guardian about threats of violence to fishermen, there were nods of those at the bar. “But it isn’t for me to say,” said one.

Pim Visser, director of the VisNed, the representative group for cutter boat fishermen, insisted that it was a matter of “a few rotten apples”. He added: “And we have a big basket of apples.”

“This is a specific family that was not party of the fishing community. A few years ago they got into fishing with money from sources unknown, and rumours started. The wider community are just turning their back on the family. They all know that once you get involved in this mess you never get out. They are fishermen, they just want to fish.”

quote:

California rings in new year with broad legalization of marijuana

The arrival of the new year in California brought with it broad legalization of marijuana, a much-anticipated change that comes two decades after the state was the first to allow pot for medical use.

The US’s most populous state joins a growing list of other states, and the nation’s capital, where so-called recreational marijuana is permitted even though the federal government continues to classify pot as a controlled substance, like heroin and LSD.

Pot is now legal in California for adults 21 and older, and individuals can grow up to six plants and possess as much as an ounce of the drug.

But finding a retail outlet to buy non-medical pot in California won’t be easy, at least initially. Only about 90 businesses received state licenses to open on New Year’s Day. They are concentrated in San Diego, Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Palm Springs area.

Los Angeles and San Francisco are among the many cities where recreational pot will not be available right away because local regulations were not approved in time to start issuing city licenses needed to get state permits. Meanwhile, Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside are among the communities that have adopted laws forbidding recreational marijuana sales.

Just after midnight, some Californians were raising blunts instead of champagne glasses.

Johnny Hernandez, a tattoo artist from Modesto, celebrated New Year’s Eve by smoking “Happy New Year blunts” with his cousins.

“This is something we’ve all been waiting for,” he said. “It is something that can help so many people and there’s no reason why we should not be sharing that.”

Hernandez said he hoped the legalization of recreational marijuana would help alleviate the remaining stigma some still believe surrounds marijuana use.

“People might actually realize weed isn’t bad. It helps a lot of people,” he said.

For those who worked for this day, the shift also offered joyful relief.

“We’re thrilled,” said Khalil Moutawakkil, founder of KindPeoples, which grows and sells weed in Santa Cruz. “We can talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of the specific regulations, but at the end of the day it’s a giant step forward, and we’ll have to work out the kinks as we go.”

The state banned “loco-weed” in 1913, according to a history by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the pot advocacy group known as NORML. The first attempt to undo that by voter initiative in 1972 failed, but three years later felony possession of less than an ounce was downgraded to a misdemeanor.

In 1996, over the objections of law enforcement, President Clinton’s drug tsar and three former presidents, California voters approved marijuana for medicinal purposes. Twenty years later, voters approved legal recreational use and gave the state a year to write regulations for a legal market that would open in 2018.

Today, 29 states have adopted medical marijuana laws. In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana. Since then, five more states have passed recreational marijuana laws, including Massachusetts, where retail sales are scheduled to begin in July.

Even with other states as models, the next year is expected to be a bumpy one in California as more shops open and more stringent regulations take effect on the strains known as Sweet Skunk, Trainwreck and Russian Assassin.

The California Police Chiefs Association, which opposed the 2016 ballot measure, remains concerned about stoned drivers, the risk to young people and the cost of policing the new rules in addition to an existing black market.

“There’s going to be a public health cost and a public safety cost enforcing these new laws and regulations,” said Jonathan Feldman, a legislative advocate for the chiefs. “It remains to be seen if this can balance itself out.”

At first, pot shops will be able to sell marijuana harvested without full regulatory controls. But eventually, the state will require extensive testing for potency, pesticides and other contaminants. A program to track all pot from seed to sale will be phased in, along with other protections such as childproof containers.

quote:

Jeff Sessions to end policy that let legal pot flourish - AP

quote:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going after legalized marijuana. Sessions is rescinding a policy that had let legalized marijuana flourish without federal intervention across the country.

That's according to two people with direct knowledge of the decision. They were not allowed to publicly discuss it before an announcement expected Thursday and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The move will leave it to U.S. attorneys where pot is legal to decide whether to aggressively enforce federal marijuana law. The move likely will add to confusion about whether it's OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where it's legal, since long-standing federal law prohibits it.

The decision comes days after California began selling recreational marijuana. Today, 29 states have adopted medical marijuana laws. In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, and since then, five more states have passed recreational marijuana laws, including Massachusetts, where retail sales are scheduled to begin in July.

quote:

Internationale drugsbende opgerold in Nederland en België

quote:

In een internationaal onderzoek naar drugshandel en -smokkel is in Nederland en België de afgelopen dagen een reeks aanhoudingen verricht. In Belgisch Limburg waren veertien aanhoudingen, in Nederland vijf. De verdachten zouden deel hebben uitgemaakt van een criminele organisatie die zich schuldig heeft gemaakt aan drugshandel, -smokkel en -productie.

In Nederland zijn acht woningen en een bedrijfspand doorzocht in Casteren, Sint Willebrord, Raamsdonksveer, Roosendaal, Oudenbosch, Weert, Biest en Sprundel. Er zijn 1,5 kilo amfetamine, een geweer met demper, hennep, computers, telefoons, 0,5 kilo springstof en contant geld in beslag genomen.
Loodsen voor drugsproductie

In het Brabantse dorp Zeeland is een loods ontdekt die diende als opslagplaats voor chemicaliën; er lag 50.000 liter afval van de productie van synthetische drugs. Ook in Uden, Nispen en Waspik werden loodsen ontdekt waar xtc of amfetamine werd geproduceerd of cocaïne gewassen

quote:

De arrestanten in Nederland waren allen Nederlanders. Tegen een andere Nederlander is een Europees arrestatiebevel uitgevaardigd.
Smokkelvoertuigen

In België werden meerdere drugslabs en hennepkwekerijen ontmanteld. In België ging het om elk geval om vuurwapens, voertuigen, computers, telefoons en contant geld. De arrestanten in België waren Belgen en Serviërs.

Enkele voertuigen hadden geheime ruimtes waarin drugs werden vervoerd naar in elk geval Malta. Op Malta zijn vier aanhoudingen verricht, onder wie twee Belgische koeriers. Zij hebben inmiddels een celstraf van 19 jaar gekregen.
Hoofdverdachte eerder veroordeeld

De hoofdverdachte in het onderzoek, John H. uit Sint-Willebrord, werd op 20 december al opgepakt in Scheveningen. Hij werd op heterdaad betrapt met 50 kilo cocaïne. De politie heeft daarvoor geïnfiltreerd in de bende. H. is een bekende van de politie en werd in 2003 veroordeeld tot 11 jaar cel. Hij stond aan het hoofd van de zogeheten York-bende, een criminele organisatie uit Brabant die eveneens handelde in drugs.

Het onderzoek startte medio 2016, toen ongewone bestellingen van chemische producten door een firma uit Lommel werden waargenomen. De resultaten van het onderzoek werden bekendgemaakt op een gezamenlijke persconferentie in Hasselt.

quote:

Vermont senate passes bill to legalize marijuana use

quote:

(Reuters) - Vermont’s senate on Wednesday passed a bill to legalize recreational marijuana use, which would make the state the first in the nation to do so through the legislative process rather than a ballot initiative.

Republican Governor Phil Scott is expected to sign the bill, which passed the Democratic-controlled Senate by a voice vote. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the measure last week. Although Vermont is one of the most politically liberal states, it is also one of 23 in the nation that do not allow ballot initiatives.

Sponsored

The Vermont bill would allow those 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana, two adult plants and four immature plants beginning on July 1. It does not immediately clear the way for retail sales of the drug, leaving that up to a commission created last year to study how to tax and regulate it.

Passage would put the state directly at odds with the Trump administration. Last week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed an Obama-era policy easing enforcement of federal laws banning the drug in eight states where it is legal.

“Vermont in particular doesn’t care very much what the attorney general thinks,” said Matt Simon, New England political director for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project. “With the way this bill is written, having a few plants, there’s nothing that the feds could do even if they wanted to.”

Law enforcement groups in Vermont have criticized the legalization drive, saying the drug poses health risks and that there is no way to quickly test drivers who might be intoxicated by marijuana.

Neighboring Massachusetts, nearby Maine and six other states have legalized marijuana use as a result of voter initiatives.

New Hampshire’s House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a similar bill to legalize recreational marijuana use. That state’s governor, Republican Chris Sununu, has said he opposes legalization.

Marijuana advocates say that legalizing sales of the drug will help to phase out the existing illegal market and allow states to take in additional tax revenue.

Five of the first states to legalize the drug - Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Nevada - together generated more than $485 million in tax revenue off marijuana sales in the first nine months of 2017, according to an analysis by the Marijuana Policy Project.

quote:

Waarschuwing voor vervuilde harddrugs in Rotterdam en Brabant

In de regio Rotterdam en in Noord-Brabant zijn vervuilde drugs in omloop. Het Drugs Informatie en Monitoring Systeem (DIMS) waarschuwt voor vervuilde cocaïne en ketamine. Deze week zijn drugsmonsters aangeleverd en onderzocht waarin de gevaarlijke stof atropine gevonden is.

Mensen die te veel atropine binnenkrijgen hebben onder meer last van rusteloosheid, hallucinaties, een verminderd bewustzijn en epileptische verschijnselen. Ook lopen ze een risico op ademhalings- en hartritmestoornissen die dodelijk kunnen zijn.

De samples met vervuilde drugs kwamen van testlocaties in Noord-Brabant. Het Nationaal Vergiftigingen Informatie Centrum heeft meerdere meldingen gekregen van mensen die onwel zijn geworden in de regio Rotterdam. Vermoedelijk hebben ze atropine binnengekregen.

Ook elders in Nederland

Het is niet uitgesloten dat de vervuilde drugs ook op andere plekken in Nederland in omloop zijn. Instellingen voor verslavingszorg en medische diensten zijn ingelicht, schrijft Omroep Brabant.

Hoe de atropine in de drugs terecht is gekomen, is niet duidelijk.

quote:

Op donderdag 25 januari 2018 13:05 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:
Aan wiet kon je toch niet verslaafd raken? Dus wel. Zes vragen over cannabisverslaving

Vraag me af hoe serieus we dit moeten nemen of dat het een tactische move is om de wiet legalisatie tegen te gaan.

LEGALIZE

quote:

Zeker 14 doden bij schietpartij in nachtclub Brazilië

Bij een schietpartij in een nachtclub in Fortaleza, in het noordoosten van Brazilië, zijn zeker veertien mensen gedood. Zes mensen raakten gewond, onder wie een jongen van 12.

Gewapende mannen vielen vannacht Forró do Gago binnen, een nachtclub annex disco niet ver van het Castelao-stadion, een van de stadions bij het WK voetbal in 2014.

Onder de slachtoffers waren volgens de Braziliaanse politie veel meisjes en vrouwen. Een woordvoerder zegt dat de schietpartij vermoedelijk te maken heeft met een oorlog tussen drugsbendes in het noordoosten van het land.

Crisis en bezuinigingen

Die drugsoorlog kostte het afgelopen jaar in de deelstaat Ceará aan naar schatting 5000 mensen het leven. Dat waren er bijna twee keer zo veel als in 2016.

De groei van de criminaliteit wordt in verband gebracht met de economische crisis in Brazilië en met bezuinigingen bij de politie.

quote:

NWS / Arrestatieteam ingezet bij grootschalige actie tegen drugshandel

quote:

'Hennepkwekerijen beter verstopt, en dus minder vaak opgerold'

Het aantal hennepkwekerijen dat wordt opgerold in de regio's Rijnmond, Haaglanden en de provincie Utrecht, daalt. Dat meldt netbeheerder Stedin. Daardoor lijkt het of er minder illegale wiet wordt geteeld, maar dat is niet zo.

Volgens Stedin, vooral actief in de Randstad, worden criminelen steeds geraffineerder in het maskeren van illegale hennepkwekerijen.

Woordvoerder Koen de Lange noemt bij RTV Rijnmond als voorbeeld teelt die diep weggestopt zit in kelders van woonhuizen. "Buitengewoon lastig te vinden."
Isolerende tent

Ook hebben criminelen steeds professioneler spullen om hun praktijken te maskeren. Bijvoorbeeld een speciale tent waar ze de kwekerij in bouwen. Die isoleert veel beter, zodat minder hitte vrijkomt en warmtecamera's de kwekerij niet signaleren.

Volgens Stedin treffen monteurs vaak zeer brandgevaarlijke situaties aan. Criminelen knoeien met elektriciteit en stelen grote hoeveelheden stroom. Het stroomverbruik is hoog en langdurig. Het risico op oververhitting, kortsluiting en brand is groot, zegt de netbeheerder.

Stichting Salvage (voor eerste hulp na brand) registreert jaarlijks 70 tot 80 grote woningbranden door hennepkweek. De branden slaan vaak over naar naastgelegen woningen.

De 30.000 hennepkwekerijen die ons land naar schatting telt, zijn samen verantwoordelijk voor 60 miljoen euro aan gestolen stroom. De kwekerijen verbruiken 1 miljard kilowatt aan stroom, dat is evenveel als de stad Rotterdam verbruikt. De overheid loopt door de energiediefstal 135 miljoen euro aan belasting mis.

quote:

Mexico debates marijuana legalization as traffickers shift to harder drugs

MEXICO CITY — For decades, marijuana flowed in one direction across the U.S.-Mexico border: north.
These days, drug enforcement agents regularly seize specialty strains of retail-quality cannabis grown in the United States being smuggled south.

Widespread legalization in the U.S. is killing Mexico’s marijuana business, and cartel leaders know it. They are increasingly abandoning the crop that was once was their bread and butter and looking elsewhere for profits, producing and exporting drugs including heroin and fentanyl and banking on extortion schemes and fuel theft.

So when Mexico’s tourism secretary this week boldly declared his hopes that Mexico will legalize marijuana for recreational use in an effort to reduce growing violence across the nation, some balked at the notion that marijuana was driving the bloodshed.

“Avocados are a bigger industry than marijuana,” said security expert Alejandro Hope. “And the number of homicides connected to marijuana are very small.”

“It is naive to believe that legalizing marijuana will reduce crime rates,” tweeted Margarita Zavala, a presidential candidate.

Still, that a Cabinet member was willing to advocate such a policy marks a dramatic shift from a time when Washington dictated a hard-line drug policy across Latin America. Mexican leaders have increasingly been taking more liberal stances on marijuana, in part to stay in step with other countries in the region and in part because they are at a loss about how to stem Mexico’s rising violence, much of which is centered around the drug trade.

The legalization debate comes amid Mexico’s bloodiest wave of violence yet. There were more than 29,000 homicide victims in 2017, more than in any year since the government began releasing homicide records two decades earlier.

The drug trade generates between $6 billion and $8 billion a year for Mexico, according to the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, which estimates that 15 percent to 26 percent of that comes from marijuana. Advocates of legalization say it would allow law enforcement officers to focus on more important work. Few in Mexico have touted legalizing harder drugs.

The tourism secretary, Enrique de la Madrid, told reporters at a tourism conference Thursday that he thinks “it is absurd that we have not taken the step” toward legalization of cannabis. He said legalization should start in Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur, states home to the resorts of Cancun and Los Cabos, both of which have seen a dramatic increase in homicides in recent years.

“I am convinced that we must discuss it as part of the solution to violence and insecurity in Mexico,” De la Madrid said later in a tweet, which also clarified that his views on the subject were his own, and not an official government position.

But De la Madrid, a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, is one of a growing number of Mexican leaders who have called for pot legalization.

In 2016, President Enrique Peña Nieto proposed a bill that would allow Mexicans to carry up to an ounce of marijuana, arguing that Mexico and the U.S. should not pursue divergent policies on the drug.

The bill stalled in Congress, but lawmakers did approve another measure that allows the use of medical marijuana in some cases.

Legalization has been the trend across the Americas.

In the U.S., marijuana is legal in some form in a majority of states and will soon be permitted for recreational use in eight. Cannabis is legally sold for recreational use in Uruguay and will be later this year in Canada. Several Latin American countries, including Chile, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica and Colombia, have changed laws to make marijuana more available for either medical or recreational use.

Full legalization faces an uphill battle in Mexico, where a majority of voters and the Catholic Church are opposed to the idea. A 2015 poll conducted by the newspaper El Universal found that two-thirds of Mexicans oppose decriminalizing cannabis, although 63 percent said they backed a debate on the issue.

Amid talk of legalization, all signs suggest Mexico’s marijuana market is on the decline.

Seizures of marijuana by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have been falling for a decade. Last year, 861,231 pounds of marijuana were seized at U.S. ports of entry, down from 2.4 million pounds in 2013 and 4.3 million pounds in 2009.

Mexico has also been eradicating fewer marijuana fields over the last decade. In 2006, federal forces wiped out 74,531 acres of marijuana crops, according to the Mexican government. In 2016, a total of 13,537 acres were destroyed.

Increasingly, growers are moving on to other crops, such as poppies, which can be found flowering across violence-plagued states such as Michoacan and Guerrero. Drug traffickers are also switching to synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, which is easier to traffic than marijuana because it is much more potent, with just a few milligrams amounting to a fatal dose.

In the coastal resort city of Ensenada, 85 miles south of San Diego, Mexican police recently seized a drug shipment that included 100 pounds of fentanyl, 914 pounds of crystal methamphetamine, 88 pounds of cocaine and 18 pounds of heroin. There was no marijuana in the shipment.

“Cartels know their ability to compete in the U.S. marijuana market is diminishing,” said John M. Walsh, director for drug policy at the think tank Washington Office on Latin America. “U.S. consumers have better options.”

Marijuana’s profitability has been greatly reduced, with farmers receiving much less than they used to for cultivating the plant. At the same time, Mexico remains one of the world’s top producers of pot, Walsh said.

He said he supports legalization in Mexico. Even if it wouldn’t end Mexico’s violence, it could put a dent in it, he said.

“The role that cannabis plays in terms of contributing to violence is fuzzy,” Walsh said. “But illegal markets facilitate violence. Every little bit helps.”

A key question surrounding the legalization debate is whether Mexico would face opposition from the U.S., which over the last 50 years has invested billions of dollars in anti-drug programs aimed at reducing the flow of drugs from Latin America.

Inside the U.S., there is little consistency on marijuana regulation. While the legal pot trade is now a billion-dollar business and one of the country’s fastest growing industries, the federal government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug, the same classification given heroin.

quote:

http://nos.nl/artikel/2215074-Veteranen gaan mdma testen tegen trauma'sveteranen-gaan-mdma-testen-tegen-trauma-s.html

Krijg je straks mdma bij de psycholoog? | NOS op 3

quote:

NDP's Don Davies calls on Liberal government to "abandon the failed war on drugs" and decriminalize narcotics

Yesterday (February 1), the prospect of decriminalizing the personal possession of illicit narcotics was formally raised in the House of Commons.

“In 2017, a staggering 4,000 Canadians died from opioid overdoses, an unprecedented 1,400 people in British Columbia alone,” began Don Davies, NDP MP for Vancouver-Kingsway. “But this is not an opioid crisis, it is not an overdose crisis. It is a crisis of social isolation and bad drug policy.”

Davies then suggested the problem could be addressed with a proposal that was put forth last September by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. That month, when Singh was still a candidate for the party’s leadership, he argued that Canada should eliminate criminal penalties for the personal possession of drugs, including hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. He said that would help eliminate stigma.

“Jagmeet Singh has proposed the only real solution: treat addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one,” Davies said during question period yesterday. “When will this government abandon the failed war on drugs and adopt a health-based approach to addiction and drug use?”

In a brief telephone call this morning, Davies said he believed it was the first time the idea was formally raised in the House.

“I wanted to do it so that we can start normalizing discussion of this topic,” he told the Straight.

In the House yesterday, Davies’s suggestion was met with audible jeers.

Ginette Petitpas Taylor, minister of health and Liberal MP for Moncton–Riverview–Dieppe, responded to his question.

“Our government is treating this as a public-health issue and not a criminal matter,” she said.

"We are not looking at decriminalizing or legalizing any other drugs aside from cannabis, as decriminalizing would not ensure quality control of drugs, and there would still be the risk of contamination on the streets.

“By streamlining the application process of supervised-consumption sites and giving legal protection for those who seek emergency help during an overdose, we are working towards improving access to treatment and social services for those who need it.”

Petitpas Taylor was correct when she said that decriminalization would not address the contamination of street drugs.

Decriminalization would remove criminal penalties for the personal possession of drugs. While the specifics would still have to be worked out, it could, for example, eliminate a police officer’s ability to arrest someone found with cocaine and might instead create a system where they would issue the person a fine. It would divert drug users away from the criminal-justice system, reduce stigma, and therefore likely encourage people to use drugs more openly, where they can access treatment services with greater ease.

Decriminalization would however leave Canada’s supply of illicit drugs like heroin and cocaine in the hands of street dealers and organized crime.

Legalization, on the other hand, would involve regulating hard drugs and bringing their supply and distribution under the control of government. That would possibly address the problem of fentanyl, a dangerous synthetic opioid that is cut into street drugs and is largely responsible for Canada’s rise in overdose deaths.

In a November 2017 interview with the Straight, Singh said he was not prepared to support the idea of fully legalizing and regulating illicit narcotics.

“We have to get past that first hurdle, decriminalization,” he explained. “I’ve really just focused first on decriminalization. I haven’t looked beyond that. It’s a massive thing.…People aren’t all there yet.”

Singh stressed that the NDP’s plan to decriminalize drugs would not occur in isolation. To address overdose deaths, he emphasized that a policy of decriminalization would be implemented alongside substantial new investments in treatment programs for addiction.

On January 31, the B.C. Coroners Service released preliminary figures for illicit-drug overdose deaths in 2017. Last year, 1,422 people in B.C. died after taking drugs. The synthetic opioid fentanyl was associated with 81 percent of those deaths.

More than 1,400 fatal overdoses in B.C. is up from 993 the previous year, 518 in 2015, 369 in 2014, and 333 the year before that.



Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly ruled out removing criminal penalties for the personal possession of drugs like heroin.

“We’re not looking at decriminalization or legalization of any other drugs other than what we’re doing with marijuana,” Trudeau told Global News while in Vancouver last August.

The issue does not, however, break along party lines. In February 2017, for example, Hedy Fry, the Liberal MP for Vancouver Centre, told the Straight she believes it is time for Canada to begin at least discussing the idea of legalization and regulation.

“This is the discourse that we must have now,” Fry said. “Nobody is ramming anything down anybody’s throats. I’m not saying, ‘Let’s legalize.’ But I am saying, ‘It’s time we discussed this, openly and publicly.’ ”

quote:

Handhaving op bouwsels en milieu in Waalwijk onder druk door 'wiet'

WAALWIJK - De focus van Waalwijkse handhavers ligt meer en meer op ondermijnende criminaliteit en illegale wietteelt. Hierdoor komen ze minder toe aan hun overige taken.

De strijd tegen ondermijnende criminaliteit en de wietteelt is in Waalwijk zo hevig dat handhavers van de gemeente minder tijd hebben voor andere taken, zoals het toezicht houden op bouwen en milieu, stocksales, parkeren en hondenpoep. ,,De laatste jaren is de strijd tegen ondermijnende criminaliteit erbij gekomen en daar hebben we geen blik nieuwe medewerkers voor open kunnen trekken", geeft burgemeester Nol Kleijngeld aan.

Waalwijk is veel tijd kwijt aan de strijd tegen wietcriminaliteit. Zeker omdat de gemeente de regels heeft aangescherpt. Net als in Tilburg wordt bij elke drugsovertreding de woning waar de overtreding is geconstateerd gesloten. Een rigide beleid waarbij momenteel een rechtszaak loopt over de vraag of gemeenten niet té hard optreden. Volgens Kleijngeld moet hij wel. ,,Als we een andere grens vaststellen, worden we beduveld. Dan gaan ze één plantje onder die grens zitten.

Bouwprojecten

Bij grote bouwprojecten houdt de gemeente wel de vinger aan de pols. Neem de verbouwing bij Piet Klerkx. Kleijngeld legt uit dat de gemeente in zulke gevallen een risico-inschatting maakt. ,,Bij Piet Klerkx bleef de winkel tijdens de verbouwing gewoon open, dus zijn er veel mensen in de buurt. Dat is van een andere orde dan een serre die iemand aanbouwt."

Ook wijst Kleijngeld op de eigen verantwoordelijkheid van Waalwijkers bij een verbouwing. Andere projecten die Waalwijk wel intensief volgde, zijn de verbouwing bij de Walewyc en het project bij de entree van Landgoed Driessen aan de Koetshuislaan.

quote:

Politie betrapt drugsdealer in Waalwijk, vindt grote hoeveelheid drugs

WAALWIJK - De politie heeft een 23-jarige drugsdealer uit Kaatsheuvel betrapt toen hij drugs verkocht op straat. Hij is aangehouden op de Stationsstraat in Waalwijk rond 00.25 uur zaterdagnacht. Hij had een grote hoeveelheid drugs bij zich.

Agenten zagen de dealer vanuit zijn auto iets aan een man geven op straat. Op dat moment schrok hij, waarschijnlijk omdat hij doorhad dat de agenten naar hem keken, en liep weg. Omdat de agenten vermoedden dat hij drugs kocht, besloten ze de bestuurder van de auto te controleren.


Sok

Die wilde niet meewerken. Ook zagen de agenten dat hij iets in zijn sok stopte. Daarna stopte hij ook iets in zijn broek. Op het moment dat de portier geopend werd probeerde de man te vluchten. De agenten hielden hem tegen en moesten pepperspray gebruiken om hem onder controle te krijgen.

Uiteindelijk staakte de verdachte zijn verzet en werd hij geboeid. De man uit Kaatsheuvel werd naar het bureau gebracht. Daar kwamen uit zijn fouillering tientallen gripzakjes met verschillende hoeveelheden drugs erin waaronder cocaïne en amfetaminepasta. Ook had hij enkele zakjes met pillen, in totaal meer dan 60, bij zich en bijna 500 euro contant. Ook in zijn auto werden pillen gevonden. De recherche stelt een onderzoek in.

quote:

Israel will forego its plans to become a pioneer medical marijuana exporter for fear of upsetting US President Donald Trump, Channel 2 News reported Wednesday evening.

According to the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put the ambitious export project on hold in a meeting Sunday with the ministers of agriculture, health and finance.

Before the ministry representatives could even present their arguments in favor of the plan, among them an expected annual windfall of one to four billion dollars, Netanyahu said Trump had called him and made clear his general attitude against marijuana exports, the report said.

Netanyahu told the ministers that it would not be wise to be the vanguard in this field, noting the Canada is the only country so far that has authorized the export of cannabis.

The report went on to say that when a Finance Ministry representative suggested that the issue could be skirted by avoiding export to the US, Netanyahu said it might not serve Israeli interests to go against the administration’s policy.

The US Justice Department in January reversed its policy on the marijuana business, withdrawing legal guidelines widely seen as giving safe harbor against prosecution to cannabis businesses in states where pot is legal.

An interministerial committee of the Israeli Finance and Health Ministries approved the export of medical cannabis in August 2017.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 februari 2018 13:19 schreef broodjepindakaashagelslag het volgende:
Nederlandse veteranen gaan de drug mdma testen als medicijn tegen trauma's, meldt de Volkskrant. Het middel, dat ook de werkzame stof in xtc is, kan helpen bij de behandeling van een posttraumatische stressstoornis.

quote:

Op dinsdag 6 februari 2018 17:40 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
grote hoeveelheid drugs

quote:

Op dinsdag 6 februari 2018 17:40 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Daar kwamen uit zijn fouillering tientallen gripzakjes met verschillende hoeveelheden drugs erin waaronder cocaïne en amfetaminepasta. Ook had hij enkele zakjes met pillen, in totaal meer dan 60, bij zich en bijna 500 euro contant. Ook in zijn auto werden pillen gevonden.

quote:

ICC launches crimes against humanity inquiry into Duterte's war on drugs

Preliminary inquiry into Philippine president is ICC’s first in a south-east Asian nation

The international criminal court has launched an initial inquiry into allegations of crimes against humanity committed by Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, in his brutal anti-drugs crusade.

A report submitted to the ICC last year laid out evidence that Duterte had been directly responsible for “extrajudicial executions and mass murder” over three decades since he began his war on drugs as mayor of Davao in 1988.

According to official statistics, 4,000 people have been killed by the police in anti-drug operations since Duterte became president. However, the 77-page report submitted by a Philippine lawyer, Jude Sabio, alleged the death toll was over 8,000.

The ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement that her office would “analyse crimes allegedly committed … since at least 1 July 2016 in the context of the ‘war on drugs’ campaign”. The inquiry will be the ICC’s first preliminary examination in a south-east Asian nation.

Gary Alejano, an opposition politician who tried to get Duterte impeached last year and submitted evidence to the ICC as part of the complaint, said the move was an affirmation that the claims against Duterte had legitimacy, and it offered “a ray of hope for the victims of his war on drugs, which is still ongoing right now”.

He said: “In this country, people are at a loss where to go if members of your family feel victim to the war on drugs. They cannot go to police because they are involved, they cannot go to the department of justice because the secretary will say there’s no such thing as extrajudicial killing. And when we request an investigation from the House of Representatives, we can not get an impartial hearing because they are covering up for the president. There is a clear and blatant violation of the rule of law in the Philippines right now, and so the ICC are the only ones who can step in.”

Alejano said he believed they had a “strong case, if we are given the opportunity to be heard.”

Duterte’s spokesperson, Harry Roque, described the inquiry as a “waste of the court’s time and resources,” stressing that many of the allegations predated the Philippines signing up to the ICC in 2011, and therefore could not be considered. However, Bensouda specifically referenced killings since 1 July 2016 in her statement.

Roque said continuing with the investigation would undermine the sovereignty of the Philippines “because the domestic courts are functioning and willing to entertain this matter … and the alleged deaths, if true, were because of a legitimate police exercise.”

He alleged that “domestic enemies” were behind the complaint and said Duterte was prepared to go on trial and defend his actions, though he said he was confident the ICC would not proceed. “He’s sick and tried of being accused. He wants to be in court and put the prosecutor on the stand,” Roque said.

Since securing a landslide victory in the 2016 elections on a pledge to kill tens of thousands of criminals and eradicate drugs in Philippine society, Duterte has authorised police to violently crack down on illegal drug use, urging them to kill suspects and promising to protect them from prosecution. His abrasive tongue and brutal methods have kept him popular in the Philippines, where he enjoys high approval ratings and legislative support.

He maintains that the thousands who died were suspects who resisted arrest, but human rights groups and political opponents allege that many murders have been carried out and covered up.

When he was mayor of Davao, Duterte’s crackdown on criminals was often carried out by vigilante groups, known as death squads, allegedly with his approval. The thousands of deaths in Davao were part of the complaint filed to the ICC.

Duterte is notorious for his dislike of the ICC, calling it “bullshit”, “hypocritical” and “useless”, and he has threatened to withdraw his country’s membership multiple times, even daring the court to bring him to trial.

Human Rights Watch, which has been calling for an independent international investigation into Duterte’s war on drugs, welcomed the ICC’s move. Phil Robertson, a deputy director in its Asia division, said the ICC “absolutely should initiate a full investigation into these alleged crimes because to date there has been no serious attempt to investigate them by the Philippines police or prosecutors, much less take suspected killers to court”.

The ICC defines crimes against humanity as “serious violations committed as part of a large-scale attack against any civilian population”. Since it was established in 2002, the court in The Hague has received more than 12,000 complaints or communications, and nine cases have gone to trial.

quote:

Bedreigde officier van justitie die onderzoek naar No Surrender leidde zat ondergedoken

quote:

Onderzoeksbureau Pro Facto deed vorig jaar in opdracht van het WODC onderzoek naar criminele beïnvloeding van het lokale openbaar bestuur. Daaruit bleek dat bijna een kwart van de ondervraagde burgemeesters weleens bedreigd was met een crimineel oogmerk, bijvoorbeeld door een criminele organisatie die een vergunning wilde verkrijgen. 'Dat komt doordat burgemeesters zich bezig zijn gaan houden met het aanpakken van criminele activiteiten', zegt Brouwer. Het gaat daarbij vooral om drugscriminaliteit.

quote:

Cafébaas staat doodsangsten uit door undercoveractie van politie

Een cafébaas in Nijmegen wil dat drie agenten worden vervolgd vanwege een undercoveractie, anderhalf jaar geleden. Hij zegt dat hij bij de actie doodsangsten uitstond.

De politie stuurde drie mannen op hem af die zich voordeden als Marokkaanse criminelen. Ze dachten dat de cafébaas meer wist over de moord op twee Marokkaanse broers in zijn café, in het voorjaar van 2016.

Cafébaas Ismael doet zijn verhaal tegen Omroep Gelderland. Drie mannen, volgens hem sportschooltypes van "twee bij twee", duiken op 12 juli 2016 plotseling op als Ismael buiten aan het werk is. Ze rijden in een Audi A8 met Belgisch kenteken. Als de auto tegen een boompje aanrijdt, wil Ismael de chauffeur waarschuwen. Maar de mannen stappen uit en staan al snel om hem heen. Hij kan geen kant op in de doodlopende straat.

Huurmoordenaar

Een van de mannen spreekt alleen Frans. "Hij leek op een huurmoordenaar", zegt Ismael nu. "Hij leek me elk moment te kunnen aanvliegen. Op dat moment kon ik geen kant op. Ik kon mijn benen niet eens meer optillen. Ik begon te zweten, ik was gewoon doodsbang."

Hij weet dan nog niet dat het undercoveragenten zijn. Ismael is ook bang omdat hij eerder gewaarschuwd werd voor mogelijke wraakacties uit de hoek van de Marokkaanse slachtoffers. Want ook al had hij naar eigen zeggen niets met de dubbele moord te maken, de Marokkanen zouden hem wel verwijten dat de moord in zijn café plaatsvond. "'Luister Ismael', zeiden ze. 'De volgende keer kom ik niet, dan komen andere mensen. Dan moet je weten dat je hele gezin in gevaar is.'"

Over de schreef

Als Ismael het incident bij de politie meldt, wordt niet direct gereageerd. Na een paar dagen krijgt hij te horen dat het geen criminelen waren maar undercoveragenten. Ismael is woedend en neemt advocaat Irene Libosan in de arm. Zij zegt: "Ik vind dat volstrekt niet kunnen. Ik vind dat ze daarmee over de schreef zijn gegaan."

Justitie bevestigt de inzet van undercoveragenten, maar wil verder niets zeggen. Er loopt nog een procedure, waarmee Ismael vervolging van de agenten wil afdwingen. Ook wil justitie niet vooruitlopen op de rechtszaak tegen de twee verdachten van de moord. Zij staan komende week voor de rechter. De oorzaak van het conflict lijkt een ruzie over drugs te zijn.

Beelden gewist

Ook Ismael moet zich in de zaak voor de rechter verantwoorden. Justitie denkt dat hij camerabeelden van de schietpartij heeft gewist.

De Nijmeegse strafrechtdeskundige Sven Brinkhoff ziet dat politie en justitie steeds vaker naar draconische middelen grijpen. In deze zaak denkt Brinkhoff dat de inzet van de agenten juridisch wel door de beugel kan. "Maar moreel gezien lijkt het op het randje van het toelaatbare te zijn. Wat absoluut niet kan, is fysiek geweld toepassen. Dit lijkt een grijs gebied: wel dreigen, maar we gebruiken geen geweld. Daarom lijkt het moreel gezien nét te kunnen."

quote:

Fruithandelaar cel in voor witwassen van miljoenen aan crimineel geld

Een 48-jarige fruithandelaar uit Apeldoorn moet vier jaar de cel in, onder meer omdat hij bijna 5 miljoen euro heeft witgewassen. Het geld zou afkomstig zijn van cocaïnehandel. De man fraudeerde tussen januari 2007 en juni 2012.

De man is niet op een legale manier aan het geld gekomen. Volgens de rechtbank is er sprake van "contant geld met een criminele herkomst".

Een paar jaar geleden liep hij tegen de lamp nadat in een bedrijfshal van hem 189 kilo cocaïne was ontdekt in containers met ananassen, schrijft Omroep Gelderland. Het Openbaar Ministerie had geen bewijs dat de man zelf had meegedaan aan drugssmokkel of drugshandel.

Dure horloges en auto's

Met valse facturen liet hij contant geld zijn bedrijf in vloeien. Ook loste de man leningen contant af en stortte hij contant geld op zijn privé- en bedrijfsbankrekening. Daarnaast kocht hij dure horloges en auto's.

Om voor de buitenwereld te verhullen hoeveel cashgeld hij had, maakte de fruithandelaar valse facturen. De rechtbank acht hem daarom ook schuldig aan valsheid in geschrifte. In zijn woning lag een gaspistool en munitie.

Het Openbaar Ministerie had een celstraf van zes jaar geëist. De rechtbank legde een lagere straf op omdat de zaak relatief oud is en veel media-aandacht kreeg.

quote:

Mexico police charged with using death squad tactics on drug suspects

Veracruz police picked up youths and turned them over to specialized interrogation and torture squads, according to indictment

Police in Mexico’s corruption-plagued state of Veracruz set up units that used death squad-style tactics to abduct, kill and dispose of at least 15 people who they suspected of being drug cartel informers and drug runners, according to charges filed by state prosecutors.

The allegations filed against the former top police commanders in Veracruz show all the signs of the human rights abuses of Mexico’s notorious anti-guerrilla counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1960s and 70s.

Police in marked patrol cars picked up youths but never recorded their arrests. Instead they turned them over to specialized interrogation and torture squads working at the police academy itself, according to the indictment, and they were later killed and their bodies disposed of.

While individual groups of corrupt cops have been known to turn youths over to drug cartels in several areas of Mexico, the Veracruz state case is notable for the rank of those accused: the former head of state security and the leaders of at least two police divisions have been charged, suggesting that the disappearances were state policy under the former governor Javier Duarte, who is in jail facing corruption charges.

“This is the first time they have charged people in significant numbers and of significant rank and demonstrated that there was an organized, structured governmental apparatus that had an agreed-on, systemic method to carry out a policy of disappearing people,” said Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, a lawyer who specializes in human rights cases.

“The groundbreaking thing is that prosecutors built a case by demonstrating there was a whole governmental structure that was designed to disappear people,” he said.

Mexico’s military and federal police were widely accused of systematic, state-sponsored torture and disappearances as they pursued leftist rebels in the mountainous southern state of Guerrero in the 1960s and 1970s.

In contrast the disappearances in Veracruz between 2013 and 2014 were urban and brazen: in one case, a highway policewoman referred to in court records as Jaqueline was tortured after being detained while riding in a taxi after finishing her shift, according to the charges.

Police accused the driver of carrying a small amount of cocaine.

But neither the taxi driver nor Jaqueline, his passenger, were ever formally booked, arraigned or brought before a judge.

In court testimony, Jaqueline recounted a chilling procedure similar to those allegedly used in other cases: she and the driver were forced to get out of the taxi.

The officers who detained them then turned them over to the police “rapid reaction” squad – also known as los fieles or “the loyal ones” – who took them to a police academy where they said they were tortured and beaten.

After four days, Jaqueline was released, apparently because her captors realized she really was a police officer. But the taxi driver was never heard from again.

According to documents read in court, it was a pattern repeated in at least 14 other cases. The victims were mostly young men pulled from streets, roadsides or vehicles, on suspicion they were acting as lookouts for the Zetas drug cartel.

They were apparently picked up if an initial police inspection turned up suspicious messages on their cellphones.

After that, they were allegedly taken to the police academy, and from there they disappeared without a trace.

Nineteen current or former Veracruz state police officials and officers are now on trial facing charges of “forced disappearance”, including the state’s former public safety secretary – in effect the top police commander – and his directors of special forces, prisons and state police.

The victims included two women and two minors

The episode has drawn comparisons with the 1970s military counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin America, when detentions led to clandestine torture cells on military bases, and then unmarked graves.

quote:

Drugsboten varen op klaarlichte dag naar Spaanse kust

Opmerkelijke beelden uit het Spaanse dorpje Torreguadiaro: op klaarlichte dag varen daar vier drugsboten het strand op, klaar om hun lading verspreiden. De beelden zijn gefilmd door de politie zelf, maar optreden tegen de drugshandel kunnen ze niet. Het probleem is té groot, vertelt correspondent Rop Zoutberg. "De politie is zwaar onderbemand."

De boten komen uit Marokko en vervoeren grote hoeveelheden hasj. "Dat drugsboten de Spaanse kust binnenvaren is op zich niet opmerkelijk", vertelt correspondent Rop Zoutberg, "want we weten dat ze dat doen. Maar dat zo'n groep boten op klaarlichte dag gefilmd is, heb ik nog nooit gezien."

Naast hasj varen er steeds vaker boten met cocaïne het land binnen, meestal uit Colombia. "De ladingen drugs worden opgepikt en grootschalig verspreid. Een groot deel gaat Europa in, ook naar Nederland."

Doordachte strategie

Zoutberg was de afgelopen dagen in het zuiden van Spanje. "Je ziet dat drugsmaffia veel boten tegelijkertijd op pad sturen. Misschien wordt er dan eentje gepakt, maar drie komen er door. Het is een doordachte tactiek."

Dat de boten zo op klaarlichte dag naar de kust varen, toont een problematische onderbemanning bij de Spaanse politie. "De politiebonden klagen al langer dat er te weinig mensen zijn. De politie heeft bovendien geen materiaal om ze tegen te houden. De boeven varen met snellere boten en hebben moderner materiaal."

Dagelijks liggen er tien van dit soort boten te wachten om binnen te varen, vertelt de correspondent. "En de politie kan er bijna niets tegen doen."

quote:

Drugsmaffia's groeien ongehinderd in dit Zuid-Spaanse stadje

quote:

De Spaanse politie is de strijd tegen de drugsmaffia in het zuiden van het land aan het verliezen. Zeker dertig bendes hebben rond de stad La Linea de handel in Marokkaanse hasj in handen en steeds vaker komt ook Colombiaanse cocaïne via de stranden Europa binnen.

Carmen Velayos van de politiebond SUP draait er niet omheen. De drugsbazen hebben alle middelen die de agenten in La Linea nu eenmaal niet bezitten. "Ze hebben speedboten die sneller varen dan de onze. Ze hebben versleutelde telefoons, gebruiken radarinstallaties waarmee ze onze opsporingsdiensten in het hele gebied volgen."

Ze kijkt me vermoeid aan: "De agenten hebben om te beginnen meer mensen, terreinwagens en kogelwerende vesten nodig. Want ook die hebben ze niet." We lopen langs het strand van La Linea de Concepción. De stad grenst aan de apenrots van de Britse kolonie Gibraltar.

quote:

Burgemeester Voerendaal op 3 meter afstand met wapen bedreigd

Burgemeester Wil Houben van Voerendaal is twee weken geleden bedreigd met een vuurwapen. Houben was net van huis weggereden, toen een gemaskerde man uit de struiken de weg op stapte en een wapen op hem richtte. De burgemeester sloeg daarop op de vlucht.

Het gaat prima met hem, zegt de VVD'er tegen 1Limburg. "Het was heel raar, zoiets verwacht je in een film. Het was een beetje surrealistisch, maar ik wist wel meteen dat het een heel ernstige zaak was. Het schijnt zo te zijn dat je dan kunt bevriezen, vechten of vluchten. Ik heb een goed heenkomen gezocht."

De man kwam op een splitsing op hem af. Hij stond op een afstand van 3 meter. "Dan weet je dat het op jou is gericht. Er is hier in Voerendaal natuurlijk het nodige gebeurd met woonwagenbewoners. Maar het is speculeren wat erachter kan zitten."

Vinger aan de trekker

Volgens de Limburgse gouverneur Bovens is het de ergste bedreiging van een burgemeester in Nederland. "Dat denk ik ook", zegt Houben daarover. "Hij hoefde alleen nog maar zijn vinger naar achteren te trekken." Maar Houben is niet "door zijn hoeven gezakt." Hij is naar eigen zeggen vandaag weer "lekker gaan werken".

De dader heeft volgens justitie waarschijnlijk twee uur staan wachten voor hij de weg op stapte. Minister Ollongren van Binnenlandse Zaken noemt het in De Limburger verschrikkelijk dat Houben is bedreigd. Ze heeft hem telefonisch gesproken en is blij dat hij aangifte heeft gedaan.

Auto in brand

In Voerendaal werd vorig jaar de auto van een wethouder in brand gestoken. Destijds zijn al extra veiligheidsmaatregelen getroffen. Die worden nu licht opgeschaald, schrijft De Limburger.

Vorig jaar werden twee broers die op een woonwagenkamp woonden weggestuurd vanwege een huurachterstand en verdenkingen van criminele activiteiten. Destijds zei Houben dat de mannen meermaals wethouders en gemeenteambtenaren hadden bedreigd. Hij zei ook dat alles erop wees dat de twee woonwagenbewoners betrokken waren bij de autobrand.

In 2017 werd in Voerendaal drie keer opgetreden tegen onder meer een xtc-lab bij een autohandel en drugs- en wapenvondsten op twee woonwagenkampen. Of er een verband is tussen criminele activiteiten op de woonwagenkampen en de bedreiging kan het OM nog niet zeggen.

quote:

Cancún: from tourist beach paradise to hotbed of Mexico's drug violence

The murder of an alleged cartel boss in his hospital bed is the latest outrage in a resort city torn by trafficking and corruption

The Playamed hospital is an unremarkable two-storey building on a quiet street lined with red-blossomed flame trees, just a few minutes’ drive from the white-sand beaches and all-inclusive resorts of Cancún’s hotel zone.

Recently, however, it was the setting for an incident underlining the relentless spread of Mexico’s drug war to cities previously best known as beach holiday destinations.

Four gunmen burst into a private room at the clinic last week, where they shot dead Alfonso Contreras Espinoza and his wife. Known as “El Poncho”, the murdered man was reputed to be the local boss for the Gulf cartel, and had been released from a local prison to receive treatment for a leg problem.

Investigators discovered a bag of white powder under his leg and a scale, suggesting that Contreras had been dealing from his sickbed.

On a recent morning, hospital officials declined to comment on the brazen attack. Paramedics standing in the shade outside looked away or stared into their smartphones when asked about the incident.

Not so long ago, Cancún sparkled as the crown jewel of Mexico’s Mayan Riviera. But rampant corruption, chaotic development and a string of murders have all tarnished the resort city’s reputation.

Other tourist hotspots have also been caught in Mexico’s red tide: Acapulco, once the country’s most glamorous beach spot, is now the setting for relentless gang violence; late last year, the bodies of six men were left hanging from bridges near Los Cabos on the Baja California peninsula. Earlier this month, a Mexican thinktank named Los Cabos the world’s most dangerous city outside a war zone.

The problems of Mexico’s resort cities mirror those of the country, which last year suffered its most murderous year in memory.

But violence here threatens a key industry: Mexico welcomed nearly 40 million visitors in 2017. Tourism accounts for about 8% of Mexico’s GDP and has long been a ready source of employment for the country’s poor.

Thanks to their strategic locations and transitory populations, Mexico’s tourist destinations have also been prime territory for the country’s criminal groups.

Meanwhile, the government’s strategy of targeting “kingpins” has exacerbated the conflict, as crime groups fracture into rival factions competing for territory and trade.

In Cancún, at least four cartels are thought to be contesting routes to smuggle cocaine in from South America and a local drug market targeting tourists and locals.

Over the past year the upstart Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) has been moving into the resort city, pushing out other groups such as the Gulf cartel.

“[The CJNG] shoot first and ask questions later,” said a source who works on public security issues in Cancún. “These are their methods and they’re now here.”

Political corruption and collusion between politicians and criminal groups is also believed to have exacerbated the problem.

One former governor of the surrounding state of Quintana Roo, Roberto Borge, awaits trial on accusations of graft after being extradited from Panama.

During his 2010-2016 administration, hotel and land owners in Tulum were forced to hand over their properties in complex schemes involving notaries and judges. Journalists who investigated allegations of official wrongdoing were arrested on trumped-up charges.

Mauricio Góngora, the former mayor of Playa del Carmen, just south of Cancún, was arrested after an unsuccessful election campaign to succeed Borge as state governor, and stands accused of misappropriating £9.5m ($13.3m).

“Corruption was escalating and the [Borge] government’s excesses became unsustainable,” said Vicente Carrera, publisher of Noticaribe, an online news outlet in Playa del Carmen. “When the new state government arrived [in late 2016] everything was on its head.”

Amid political turmoil in the state, violence has increasingly encroached on tourist areas, including Playa del Carmen’s fabled Quinta Avenida.

Last week, the US government issued a security warning for Playa del Carmen, and temporarily closed its consulate after receiving information about a “security threat”.

The warning followed an explosion on a tourist ferry, which injured 19 Mexicans and at least five US citizens in Playa del Carmen.

Local authorities said the blast was caused by engine failure, but later investigators said it was caused by explosives. Another device was found on a second ferry, but officials discounted any connection with cartel violence and said tourists had nothing to worry about, although the federal government deployed black-uniformed police and bomb-sniffing dogs to patrol the wharfs and the beach areas.

“The government always wants to downplay the violence,” said Daniel Pérez Villaseñor, a labour lawyer and activist in Cancún.

“The [state] governor doesn’t have a plan for fighting the violence,” he said. “They just want to put some makeup on Cancún to give it a good image.”

Much is riding on that image.

According to Roberto Cintrón, the president of the local hotel association, Cancún airport is receiving a record number of arrivals. Hotel occupancy hovers at 83%.

Cancún was little more than a fishing town when the federal government first bet big on tourism in the early 1970s.

The original plan called for a hotel zone and separate residential area. But as tourism grew, it drew an unexpected influx of migrants from Mexico’s impoverished southern states seeking employment.

They settled on the fringes of the city, where the ramshackle homes and rutted roads feel a world away from the manicured lawns and pricey shops of the hotel zone.

That contrast raises uncomfortable questions about the benefits of tourism.

Wages for workers in the tourism industry are low and benefits scant, while hotel owners pay few taxes and often hire through outsourcing to avoid paying social security contributions, said Pérez.

And while tourists have so far been largely insulated from the violence, the same is not true of residents: a survey in December showed that 84.9% of Cancún’s inhabitants consider the city “unsafe”.

Many outlying neighbourhoods lack basic services. Such neglect has been symbolised by a huge pothole which opened in a busy street 15 years ago and still has not been repaired.

Local residents recently celebrated the anniversary by throwing a birthday party for the flooded hole and installing a 100-meter zip line over the muddy water.

“This is a first world city with third world services,” said José Pech, an electrician who built the zip line.

“The governments we have are the worst. They’re worse than the criminals,” he said. “If they had paid proper attention to the people, if there wasn’t such corruption, organised crime wouldn’t exist as it does now.”

Donald Trump advocates death penalty for drug dealers: 'Solve drug problem through toughness'

quote:

Trump komt met harde aanpak drugssmokkel en medicijnverslaving

President Trump gaat de drugs- en medicijnverslaving in de Verenigde Staten aanpakken. Dat staat in plannen die hij later vandaag gaat ontvouwen, maar al voor een deel zijn uitgelekt.

Trump wil onder meer de straffen voor drugssmokkel en de handel in verdovende middelen flink verhogen en kijkt naar mogelijkheden om smokkelaars en dealers de doodstraf op te kunnen leggen. Volgens hem hebben individuele dealers soms duizenden doden op hun geweten.

Hoe dat in de praktijk gaat uitpakken, is niet bekend. Niet elke staat in de VS hanteert de doodstraf. Ook wil Trump iets doen aan de verslavingscrisis in Amerika. Daar zijn 2,6 miljoen mensen verslaafd aan opiaten, zoals heroïne of morfine. Veel Amerikanen slikken pijnstillers met daarin opiaten.

Opiaten

In de VS worden elk jaar zo'n 250 miljoen recepten voor opiaten uitgeschreven. Artsen schrijven de sterke en gevaarlijke medicijnen soms zonder veel moeite of medische reden voor. Een verklaring daarvoor is dat de Amerikaanse farmaceutische industrie aan minder regels is gebonden dan de Europese.

In 2016 stierven 42.000 Amerikanen aan een overdosis medicijnen, onder wie popster Prince. Hij bezweek aan de gevolgen van een sterke dosis fentanyl, een zeer sterke pijnstiller.

Het medicijngebruik in Amerika moet volgens de president de komende jaren met een derde worden teruggedrongen.