On Thursday, top U.S. drug interdiction officials said U.S. authorities seized a record 316 metric tons of cocaine last year. In making the announcement, the officials credited Mexico's increasing cooperation with helping force drug traffickers to raise their prices and try new smuggling methods. John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the record seizures have led to a 21 percent jump in the price of cocaine and a drop in the purity of the drug. The price of methamphetamine has jumped even more, he said, thanks to a crackdown on U.S. labs and Mexican authorities doing more to stop importation of precursor material. [continues 344 words]
MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon is losing the fight against drug traffickers on the field of public opinion, two polls this week show, as he faces calls to change tactics and the possible collapse of an anti-drug package with the U.S. The surveys show that most Mexicans still support Mr. Calderon's actions in taking on the narcos. His approval rating remains high, at just over 60 percent. But by a 2-to-1 margin, Mexicans believe that the powerful and well-armed drug cartels are outgunning the government even as the army takes a high-profile and unprecedented role. [continues 909 words]
Mexico Says Aid Deal Shouldn't Meddle in Rights MEXICO CITY -- Even though Mexico has just endured an especially deadly month, top Mexican officials said this week that they are ready to walk away from a historic U.S. aid package to help combat drug-related violence. Mexican officials said they will not accept the Bush administration's proposed Merida Initiative if it includes requirements to overhaul their country's human-rights institutions, as a growing number of U.S. lawmakers insist. [continues 732 words]
Drug Use Is Up, And Colombian Farmers Are Unfairly Targeted. Let's Overhaul Counternarcotics. Washington - Every year, White House officials describe the US counterdrug policies in the same glowing terms used to describe the Emperor's new clothes: We're snuffing out coca crops and cracking down on those who grow them. But they leave out two important facts: More cocaine is coming out of South America than ever before and more young Americans are using than when the Bush administration took office. [continues 697 words]
Unknown centuries after someone first decided that lighting up marijuana led to good feelings, the debate continues over the drug and its effects. Proponents argue it's a natural way to alter the mood and feel better, with few or no side effects. Opponents, while not proclaiming it the "evil weed" portrayed in the old film "Reefer Madness," cite new scientific evidence that marijuana has longer short- and long-term effects than known years ago. A new White House report links marijuana use in teens to a dangerous combination that can lead to dependency, mental illness, or thoughts of suicide, according to the Associated Press. [continues 363 words]
The May 11 article Mexicans conquer U.S. 'meth' trade correctly underscores some of the challenges Mexico and the United States face as our governments jointly and co-responsibly take on the scourge of drug-trafficking organizations operating on both sides of the border. However, the article does not address key issues that I believe are essential elements to present a comprehensive picture of this challenge. First, as acknowledged by U.S. law-enforcement agencies, there is no evidence to sustain that ``Mexican drug gangs now produce 80 percent of the methamphetamine consumed in the United States.'' [continues 163 words]
Move Could Help Free-Trade Deal Advance in Congress Colombia extradited 14 top paramilitary warlords to face drug-trafficking charges in the U.S., a dramatic move that could help the country secure a free-trade deal with Washington but endangers Colombia's fragile peace process. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said the 14 bosses of the paramilitary, a group believed responsible for shipping tons of cocaine to the U.S. as well as having participated in or ordered thousands of murders during Colombia's long-running civil war, violated the terms of their 2005 peace deal by continuing to run criminal groups and traffic drugs from prison. "We have greatly reduced the incidence of violence in Colombia. Therefore, we cannot afford to react weakly to the recidivists who return to their murders and their other crimes," Mr. Uribe said in a nationally televised address. On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, doesn't appear ready to free the trade deal for a vote. But allies of the Andean nation seized on the extraditions Tuesday as fresh evidence of the need for action on the deal, which would tighten economic ties between the U.S. and Colombia. [continues 1166 words]
It could be argued that the most useless job in Washington, D.C., is held by John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He's otherwise known as the country's Drug Czar. And when you consider the spectacular number of useless jobs in Washington, that's quite an accomplishment. No one is saying, of course, that it's easy being a figurehead of a cost-inefficient organization charged with implementing the biggest domestic policy disaster since Prohibition. After all, it means advocating that thousands of non-violent offenders be sent to prison - -- quite often after paramilitary raids have reeled them in. [continues 502 words]
WASHINGTON - The White House drug czar said in a warning to parents Friday that depressed teens are medicating themselves with marijuana, running risks of even deeper depression. A report by the Office National Drug Control Policy said that frequent marijuana ingestion doubles a teen's risk of depression and anxiety, based on data compiled from published studies. The report, timed for release during Mental Health Awareness Month, cited a study that marijuana use increases the risk of developing mental disorders later in life by 40 percent. [continues 99 words]
Washington, D.C. - Depression, teens and marijuana are a dangerous mix that can lead to dependency, mental illness or suicidal thoughts, according to a White House report being released Friday. A teen who has been depressed at some point in the past year is more than twice as likely to have used marijuana as teens who have not reported being depressed - 25 percent compared with 12 percent, said the report by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Marijuana is a more consequential substance of abuse than our culture has treated it in the last 20 years," said John Walters, director of the office. "This is not just youthful experimentation that they'll get over as we used to think in the past." [continues 287 words]
WASHINGTON -- The White House drug czar warned parents Friday that depressed teens are medicating themselves with marijuana, running risks of deeper depression. A report by the Office of National Drug Control Policy said that frequent marijuana use doubles a teen's risk of depression and anxiety, based on data compiled from published studies. The report cited a study saying that marijuana use increases the risk of developing mental disorders later in life by 40 percent. "In short, marijuana makes a bad situation worse," said John Walters, director of the drug-control policy office. [continues 196 words]
Each month Irvin Rosenfeld goes to his pharmacy and picks up a special prescription, supplied to him by the U.S. government: a canister containing roughly 10 ounces of marijuana in pre-rolled cigarettes. Rosenfeld, a Boca Raton, Florida stockbroker, suffers from a rare illness called multiple congenital cartilaginous exostosis, a painful genetic disease that causes tumors to grow at the ends of his long bones, causing unbelievable pain. He is also one of four surviving patients receiving government-supplied medical marijuana, in a program that was closed to new applicants by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. [continues 595 words]
Misinformation for the purpose of perpetuating a lie is wrong. Most of us were told this by our parents. And yet, today we allow government officials to twist the truth to suit their agenda. Case in point: Marijuana laws. These laws were not created to protect society at large, but rather to protect the interests of those who profit from marijuana's illegality. The feds seem to have the biggest need to see that this plant remains against the law regardless of the fact that individual states and the populace within see it differently. [continues 364 words]
One point should be added to letter writer Paul Armentano's insightful comments about drug prohibition ("Start with the war on drugs," April 2). There was no such thing as a "drug problem" before the drug laws went on the books in 1914. Search old newspaper archives in vain seeking an addiction-related robbery, theft, embezzlement, assault or murder when drugs were legal. When addicts could buy all of the heroin, morphine, cocaine and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally, there was no such thing as "drug crime." Nowadays, our prisons are filled with drug users whose crime is being addicted to a drug. The term "drug crime" is an alibi for a failed drug crusade. [continues 66 words]
ELORZA, Venezuela -- Facing criticism that cocaine trafficking is out of control, Venezuela's government this year has embarked on an aggressive program to track drug-smuggling planes and destroy clandestine airstrips used by Colombian drug clans, Venezuelan drug enforcement and military officials said in a series of interviews. In what appears to be a sharp shift from last year, Venezuelan aircraft and munitions experts have destroyed 157 dirt strips here in the grassy plains state of Apure, most of them in the last two weeks. The government has installed three new Chinese-made radar stations and plans to put up seven others that will completely cover Venezuelan airspace and permit authorities to track unidentified flights originating in neighboring Colombia. [continues 1094 words]
New Drug Testing Data Show Effects Of Supply Crunch John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy, highlighted new data showing significant reductions in meth and cocaine positivity rates in the American workforce, as well as continued disruptions in the supply of both drugs. According to data released today by Quest Diagnostics' Drug Testing Index (DTI), results from workplace drug screenings conducted in 2007 show a more than 50 percent decline in the percentage of positive tests for methamphetamine over two years, from 28 of every 10,000 people testing positive for meth in 2005 to 14 of every 10,000 testing positive for meth in 2007. [continues 495 words]
Why The War On Drugs Must And Will Be Ended Within The Next Half Decade Here's a crazy idea that may sound a bit absurd, but follow me through on this: Cannabis will be legalized in the United States of America by 2010. "Totally absurd," you say, as you shuffle the pages and mutter something about illogical and idealistic hippies with no grounding in reality. Even those who would support such a concept would have an idealism tempered by decades of disappointment and be--rightly--cynical about any sort of far-reaching change like that. And geez, wouldn't legalization come after decriminalization? [continues 1195 words]
National and state studies indicate that use of crystal meth has declined significantly. Encouraging figures gathered nationally and in Hawaii indicate a downturn in the use of crystal methamphetamine, described as a crisis only a few years ago. Government and nonprofit agencies should accelerate what has proven successful to achieve further decline in the use of the dangerous drug. According to a report this month by Quest Diagnostics' Drug Testing Index, workplace screenings conducted on the mainland last year showed more than a 50 percent decline in the percentage of positive tests over a two-year period, from 28 testing positive for meth in 2004-05 to 14 percent in 2006-07. Quest Diagnostic is the nation's largest diagnostic tester. [continues 184 words]
The Arbitrary Distinctions at the Root of Prohibition High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It, by Joseph A. Califano Jr., New York: Public Affairs, 270 pages, $26.95 The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World's Most Troubled Drug Culture, by Richard DeGrandpre, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 294 pages, $24.95 On the opening page of High Society, which aims to explain "how substance abuse ravages America," Joseph Califano declares that "chemistry is chasing Christianity as the nation's largest religion." Although it is not always easy to decipher Califano's meaning in this overwrought, carelessly written, weakly documented, self-contradictory, and deeply misleading anti-drug screed, here he seems to be saying that opiates are the religion of the masses. Americans, he implies, are seeking from psychoactive substances the solace they used to obtain from faith in God, and better living through chemistry is nearly as popular as better living through Christ. [continues 3891 words]
"I am not a criminal -- I am sick." Gretchen Steele of Coulterville was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis seven years ago. She is one of thousands of Illinois residents who has been unable to find relief through conventional medications, but whose pain can be relieved by marijuana. Unfortunately, the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes is illegal in Illinois, but lawmakers have an opportunity this session to do the right thing for people such as Steele and Lisa Lange Van Camp of Lindenhurst, who suffers from severe osteoarthritis associated with Dercum's disease. [continues 612 words]
