The World Wide War on Drugs #12 - Legalize not criminalize

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Op dinsdag 1 oktober 2019 18:35 schreef Weltschmerz het volgende:
https://www.oogtv.nl/2019/09/invallen-in-tien-growshops-in-stad/

Grapperhaus moest meteen even een showtje opvoeren na de liquidatie van die advocaat, dus begint hij maar met symboolhandhaving bij growshops.

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RTLnieuws twitterde op woensdag 02-10-2019 om 12:35:53 EXCLUSIEF - De top van de Douane heeft een grootschalig onderzoek naar de omvang van corruptie door eigen medewerkers in de Rotterdamse haven tegengehouden. https://t.co/XJSr1e0ori https://t.co/0R6iZ9K3da reageer retweet

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PvdA wil dat klanten van minderjarige cokedealers gestraft worden
De Partij van de Arbeid wil dat afnemers van minderjarige cocaïnedealers voortaan strafrechtelijk vervolgd worden. 'Dealen is al strafbaar volgens de wet. Wat ons betreft gaan we nu ook handhaven op de afnemer.'
https://www.at5.nl/artike(...)lers-gestraft-worden

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DENK wil drugsgebruik strafbaar maken: 'Ik criminaliseer het wél'
Als het aan DENK ligt, wordt het gebruik van harddrugs strafbaar. Dat zegt fractievoorzitter Mourad Taimounti in het AT5-programma Park Politiek. Daar werd het voorstel van de PvdA om afnemers van minderjarige cocaïnedealers voortaan strafrechtelijk te vervolgen, besproken.
De DENK-fractievoorzitter wil dat niet alleen kopers, maar ook gebruikers straf krijgen. 'Ik ben misschien een stap verder, maar ik criminaliseer het wél', zegt hij.
https://www.at5.nl/artike(...)riminaliseer-het-wel

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Grading cannabis strength ‘will improve mental health of users’

Addiction experts say standard units, similar to those used for alcohol, would help consumers know the level of drug they are taking and its effects

Standard units for grading the potency of cannabis – similar to those already used for alcohol – would result in significant improvements in the mental health of users, according to addiction experts.

Researchers from the Addiction and Mental Health Group at the University of Bath, working with staff from King’s College London, UCL and the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, say more needs to be done to make people aware of the levels of THC – the main psychoactive component – in the cannabis they are consuming.

Writing in the journal Addiction, the experts suggest a unit level should be set at 5mg of THC – the amount that would typically be found in a small joint. This is enough to induce intoxication but without psychotic symptoms, they say.

“Our findings add to a growing body of evidence that suggests the health effects of cannabis are dose-related,” said lead author Sam Craft, from King’s College London. “We believe a unit system would help both users and healthcare professionals by providing clearer information on the types of cannabis products and their strength.”

Previous research from the team has highlighted how concentrations of THC in cannabis have doubled across Europe in the past decade. But although use of the drug is widespread and there are moves in some countries to legalise it, standard units – which have been commonplace for alcohol for many years – have not been adopted in health guidelines.

The authors believe that a standard unit system would also yield benefits for countries where cannabis use is illegal, such as the UK. “Where the unit system for alcohol has helped consumers to better manage their alcohol intake, so, too, this could have important implications for cannabis users,” said senior author Dr Tom Freeman from the University of Bath. “This should give clear guidance about the dose of THC people are consuming. Our hope is that the introduction of a system in locations where the drug is legalised will have knock-on effects to countries where it is not, providing users and clinicians with an important toolkit to guide safer use.”

The publication coincides with a second study from the team, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, which examines the relationship between cannabis and key health outcomes in more than 55,000 people across 175 countries.

Using the Global Drug Survey, consumers were asked about the types of cannabis they used and their health. The results showed those who used higher THC forms of cannabis, such as hashish, experienced more severe health problems than those using traditional herbal products with lower levels of THC.

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Attack in western Mexico leaves more than a dozen police killed

‘Armed civilians’ shoot state officers executing a judicial order
Michoacán state has seen recent spike in violence


At least 13 police officers were killed and three injured on Monday by gunmen in the western state of Michoacán, a region where violence attributed to organized crime has spiked in recent months.

The state police officers had gone to a home in the town of El Aguaje in Aguililla municipality to enforce a judicial order when “several armed civilians fired on them”, Michoacán’s state security department said in a statement.

After the attack, the area in western Mexico’s so-called “hot lands” was reinforced by federal and state security forces, who installed checkpoints to find the assailants.

Michoacán, an important avocado-growing state, has seen a spike in violence that has brought back memories of the bloodiest days of Mexico’s war on drug cartels between 2006 and 2012.

In August, police found 19 bodies in the town of Uruapan, including nine hung from a bridge. Later, an area roughly 45 miles north of Aguililla was the scene of fierce clashes between members of the Jalisco New Generation cartel and regional self-defense groups.

In 2013, civilian groups faced with what they said was state inaction armed themselves in Michoacán to fight the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) cartel, one of whose bases was Aguililla.

They said they took up arms to defend themselves from kidnappings, extortion and killings. But some of the self-defense or vigilante groups were infiltrated by cartels and gangs.

The government of the former president Enrique Peña Nieto launched a process to disarm and legalize the vigilante groups and incorporate them into official security forces.

Michoacán’s governor, Silvano Aureoles, has said the self-defense groups have not returned and has criticized federal authorities for not attacking cartels in his state with sufficient force and negotiating with vigilante groups he refers to as criminals.

Besides avocado orchards, Michoacán for decades has been known for marijuana plantations and the making of methamphetamine, as well as being home to the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, a key entry point of precursor chemicals used to make synthetic drugs.

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Amsterdam voert strijd tegen drugshandel op

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Amsterdam gaat de drugshandel in probleemwijken "actief verstoren." Dealers op hangplekken en in garageboxen worden aangepakt en jongeren die in de drugshandel dreigen te belanden worden beter in de gaten gehouden. Verder wordt de weerbaarheid van stadsdelen als Zuidoost tegen criminaliteit vergroot en wil de gemeente wil drugsgebruikers ervan doordringen dat hun consumptie ook een schaduwzijde heeft.

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Op woensdag 16 oktober 2019 00:34 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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De burgemeester mist volledig dat de jacht op drugs ook een schaduwzijde kent. En dat de meeste dealertjes niet op straat rondhangen maar via app's van klant naar klant fietsen.
Legalize!

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Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 12:42 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:
GBH. 4 euro per 5 ml.

GBH gebruikers die hun leven (en het leven van de mensen om hun heen) aan het verknallen zijn met een paar euro...

Een beter bewijs dat legalisering van drugs de problemen wel op zal lossen is er niet.

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‘Curb drink culture’ says drugs expert David Nutt

New restrictions needed for leading cause of deaths of men under 50

New restrictions are needed on Britain’s drinking culture, which is behind a huge rise in deaths of men and women under 50, according to the government’s former chief drug adviser, sacked a decade ago for claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

Ahead of a speech to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies on 30 October, 10 years after the then home secretary Alan Johnson fired him, Prof David Nutt said the net contribution of successive governments to drugs policy had been to make things worse.

Nutt said alcohol was now the leading cause of death in men aged under 50 and would soon be the leading cause of death in women under 50. “The big upwards inflexion in alcohol-related deaths came when we allowed it to be sold in supermarkets. When I was a teenager, alcohol could only be bought in a pub or an off-licence,” he said. “Access to 24-hour drinking through supermarkets and corner shops has led to a massive increase in deaths from drinking.”

He said alcohol was now a third of what it cost in real terms compared to 50 years ago. “We have to use rational policies on alcohol. We can’t let the drinks industry dictate terms – how can it be that we still allow alcohol to advertise on TV when it costs the health service £3bn a year and policing £6bn?

“Our drug policy is not based on reducing harm,” said Nutt, former chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Responsibility for regulating the drugs market should be switched from the Home Office to the Department of Health and Social Care, he said

“The Home Office is about crime. It will say ‘great we are reducing the use of opiates’, but deaths are rising because we’ve pulled our support for people who are using opiates.”

He drew a comparison with Portugal,where heroin use has been decriminalised. “We have data from the last 15 years showing opiate deaths have fallen to a third of what they were before. Our deaths have gone up by two-thirds.”

Nutt cited several examples where he believed government policy had increased harm. These included the banning of mephedrone. “It was banned because an election was coming up and [Alan] Johnson decided he had to be hard on this new drug,” Nutt said. “Mephedrone resulted in a massive reduction in cocaine deaths because people switched and mephedrone was safer than cocaine.”

Testing prisoners for smoking cannabis had “massively contributed to the rise of spice,” Nutt said. “There were 16 deaths last year from spice in prisons. There has never been a death from cannabis.”And the failure to treat Britain’s heroin problem had opened up the market to “even more potent opioids like fentanyl,” he claimed.

Nutt said he had been angered by his sacking which followed his earlier clash with Johnson’s predecessor, Jacqui Smith, when he compared the 100 deaths a year from horseriding in the UK with the 30 linked to ecstasy.

His dismissal triggered dismay in criminal justice circles - with many viewing it as proof that the government was not interested in a scientific evidence-based approach to policymaking, a view Nutt shares. “What’s the point of having a scientific adviser if you don’t want to know the truth?” he asked.

Similar concerns were raised earlier this month when Professor Alex Stevens of the University of Kent resigned from the advisory council over concerns that political interference in its appointment process was undermining its independence.

After his dismissal, Nutt went on to establish what became DrugScience, an independent scientific body on drugs in the UK. He is campaigning for cannabis, psilocybin – the psychoactive substance found in magic mushrooms – and MDMA, also known by its street name of ecstasy, to be developed as medical drugs for therapeutic purposes.

“I believe for moral, ethical and health reasons that any drug that is less harmful to the user than alcohol should be available, probably in pharmacies or licensed premises,” said Nutt. A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Drugs can devastate lives, ruin families and damage communities, and we are taking action to: reducing demand; restricting supply; building recovery; as well as taking global action with our international partners. We are committed to reducing the use of drugs and the harms they cause and the Home Office has commissioned a major independent review to examine these issues.“

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Mystery of Mexico’s cartel wars grows as ‘The Mouse’ is rescued

The abortive bid to arrest the son of ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán last week made one thing clear: someone betrayed the government

Sinaloa cartel gunmen took over a Mexican city on Thursday, turning the streets into an apparent war zone. Their mission was to rescue the son of the notorious drugs lord, El Chapo, who had been captured by police. Officers were forced to release Ovidio Guzmán López after gang members threw up roadblocks with blazing trucks, and staged a prison break of 51 of their comrades.

The battle came only a week after Mexico’s interior secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero pledged that the country would “very soon” see results of the deployment of a 70,000-strong National Guard – a showpiece unit formed this year by president Andrés Manuel López Obrador – against resurgent violence and record murder levels.

But on Monday, 14 police officers were killed by cartel gunmen in Michoacán. Fifteen more lives were lost next day during a firefight in Guerrero. In Thursday’s fighting, a soldier and civilian were killed in Culiacán, in Sinaloa state, and others wounded – with questions hanging over how it happened.

In reality, the new National Guard is deployed mostly against migrants in a joint policy with the US. While hundreds of guards blocked a convoy of Hondurans in Tuzantán last weekend, security minister Alfonso Durazo conceded on Friday he had deployed only 35 troops to seize Ovidio Guzmán López – “The Mouse”, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s fourth son by his second wife, Griselda López Pérez – blacklisted in the US in 2001 and charged last February with cocaine trafficking.

What’s going on? On the surface, Amlo – as the president is known – at last cracks down on a cartel long known for its conviviality with government, but is outgunned; unconfirmed reports indicated the detention on Tuesday of Ovidio’s mother.

But why mobilise a paltry crew of 35 against a mafia boss? How did such a cartel counter-force arrive to confront and humiliate it immediately? There’s choreography at play – but by whom, of what?

Even the story’s telling compounds its mystery. Durazo at first sought to have Mexicans believe that a routine patrol was fired upon from a house which, when raided, happened to be harbouring Ovidio Guzmán. (For El Chapo’s son to draw fire on himself beggars belief even by the standards of his own outrageous reputation.) Only later did Durazo concede to a news agency that Ovidio had been released.

The president then contradicted his own minister, confirming that the operation was “based on an arrest warrant for an alleged criminal”.

Two other factors further muddy the waters: one video clip shows troops and cartel gunners giving one another high-fives after the former were surrounded and neutralised. The prison break would hardly be the first time authorities have been directly or indirectly party to an escape, not least one by El Chapo – who founded the Sinaloa cartel and is now in jail in the US – himself.

The cartel has fragmented since Guzmán’s extradition and conviction. Factions compete for the succession: one led by the guiding but ailing hand of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, suspected of delivering El Chapo to the US authorities, or at least withdrawing his official protection; another, loyal to Guzmán, is led by his sons, “Los Chapitos” – Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar (son of El Chapo’s first wife Maria Alejandrina Salazar Hernández) and Ovidio.

A third interest, led by Dámaso López, “El Licenciado”, now captive in the US, defected to the rising Jalisco New Generation cartel, to which Sinaloa is losing initiative within Mexico.

Such an attack on the state is not El Mayo’s usual strategic style. It is more typical of Guzman’s sons, whose brazen tactics he abhors.

British film-maker Angus Macqueen – who penetrated further inside the Guzmán family than any foreign reporter, interviewing El Chapo’s mother – noted: “This is the first open confrontation between the authorities and the Sinaloa cartel. The remarkable thing is the speed with which hundreds of armed cartel members arrived and dominated the centre of this town.”

Anabel Hernández first described the state sanctioning of El Chapo’s escape from jail in 2001 and named the cartel’s connections at the apex of power in her book Narcoland; after numerous threats to her life, she has completed a new volume on the inner workings and reach of the Sinaloa cartel.

“What happened in Culiacán just doesn’t make sense,” she told the Observer. “No sense in the government sending 35 people to take Ovidio. That’s his girlfriend’s house, and they’d have followed him there with intelligence. There’s the municipal police and an army base in Culiacán; helicopters can arrive easily from [nearby] Mazatlán.”

And, she cautions: “Never forget that the Sinaloa cartel remains a vast organisation across 70% of the world. It’s far bigger than El Chapo, and after he was sentenced, the sons got a very small part; the huge share came under El Mayo. But the sons have money to spend, and that’s what happened in Culiacán: if you pay people to carry the weapons, you get what you want.”

Official collusion at some level is inevitable in Thursday’s battle-as-theatre. Hernández puts the events in perspective: “For a decade, war between the cartels is reflected within the police, army and all forces.

“One cartel is protected by some officers, another cartel by others. That has not changed – the prison break yesterday must have been sanctioned from within the authorities. All we can be sure of is that someone betrayed the government in Culiacán yesterday.”

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Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 19:14 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Het gebruik van alcohol is te genormaliseerd.
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Op zondag 20 oktober 2019 18:41 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Je bewijst alleen maar dat het verbod geen problemen op lost.

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Op maandag 21 oktober 2019 01:53 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:

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Nee, dat is niet de conclusie die je uit mijn bijdrage kunt trekken.

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Op maandag 21 oktober 2019 13:53 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Natuurlijk wel. Is GHB legaal?

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Op maandag 21 oktober 2019 14:04 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:

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Praktisch gezien word je geen strobreed in de weg gelegd.

Maar stel dat het volledig legaal zou zijn. Twee flessen GHB voor een tientje en een fles wijn cadeau.

Zou er dan meer, of minder verslaving zijn?

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Nieuwe partij drugs gevonden op marineschip Johan de Witt

Op marineschip Johan de Witt is opnieuw een partij drugs gevonden. Het gaat om 11 kilo harddrugs, hoogstwaarschijnlijk cocaïne, verdeeld over meerdere pakketten. De drugs werd gevonden in het kader van een onderzoek naar een militair die eerder werd aangehouden met drugs.

Deze militair, een 23-jarige man uit Haarlem, werd vorige maand in Curaçao op het schip aanhouden met eenzelfde hoeveelheid cocaïne in zijn rugtas. Het transportschip van de marine was toen net terug uit de Bahama's, waar het was ingezet voor een hulpmissie na orkaan Dorian.

De marechaussee, die belast is met het onderzoek, onderzoekt nog of de aangehouden militair ook verantwoordelijk is voor de nieuwe partij drugs. De cocaïne heeft een totale straatwaarde van minstens 1,1 miljoen euro.


Personeel schip gecontroleerd

"Na zijn aanhouding hebben we concrete aanwijzingen gekregen dat er nog meer drugs op het schip aanwezig waren", zegt een woordvoerder van de marechaussee. In Den Helder, waar het schip nu ligt, is de Johan de Witt uitgebreid doorzocht. Daarbij is het personeel dat van boord kwam gecontroleerd. Ook drie helikopters zijn doorzocht.

De woordvoerder wil niet zeggen waar de drugs waren verstopt.