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

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

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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.

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

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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

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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

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Welkom bij De industrie: over Drugsland Nederland

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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?"

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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.”

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

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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'.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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DEA approves synthetic marijuana while cracking down on real marijuana

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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.

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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.

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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

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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."

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Nog onzeker of Amsterdam meedoet met proef staatswiet

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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

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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.

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'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.”

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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.

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Jeff Sessions to end policy that let legal pot flourish - AP

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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.

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Internationale drugsbende opgerold in Nederland en België

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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

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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.

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Vermont senate passes bill to legalize marijuana use

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(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.

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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.