We need a new strategy. It should be clear to everybody that the illegal drug trade is flourishing worldwide and is estimated by the United Nations to be worth US$400 billion a year. Enormous wealth is being generated by criminals who are willing to profit from the "risk premium" of dealing in these illicit drugs.

Cocaine is produced in Colombia at a cost of an estimated US$500 per kilo, and retails on the streets of America at US$60,000 per kilo. Marijuana starts life even cheaper than Pangola grass, which is probably why it is called "weed"? In Afghanistan, the USA and its "coalition partners" have spent approximately US$2 billion trying to eradicate the growing of poppy from which heroin is made, and in spite of the presence of massive numbers of foreign troops, the heroin crop was last year estimated to be double the previous year's harvest - because there is a lot of money in it!

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Near fatal stabbings, prestige school clubbing, a schoolboy gang-attack on a family, book bags with loaded firearms, the brutal beating of a drunken old man, the smashing of a teacher's car with a metal dustbin, female fist-fights over jewelry and romance and the assault of a police officer by a gang of students have all served to colour the landscape of school crime and violence in Trinidad for the past two years.

Mentorship programmes, a heightened police presence and increased psychological measures have all been instituted but many fear that these are not attacking the root of the problem which some say revolves around communities, parenting, literacy and teacher absenteeism.

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New Twist in Guyanese Man's Extradition

PRIVATE criminal charges of kidnapping and unlawfully detaining a Guyanese national have been filed against a locally based American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and two local officials by a representative of jailed Guyanese national Shaheed Roger Khan.

This has been the latest twist in the ongoing legal battle since Khan was handed over to agents of the United States at Piarco International Airport on June 29.

Khan was subsequently indicted in New York with conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States during a five-year period between April 13, 2001 and March 2006.

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THERE was high drama in court yesterday, when three Sea Lots fishermen charged with possession of 0.03 grammes of marijuana reappeared.

The street value of the marijuana is about 15 cents.

The accused men's defence attorney made allegations of beatings and threats by the police complainant upon his clients.

The police prosecutor also refused to give a full description of the drugs to the court because she wanted further instructions from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

All this happened amidst impassioned shouting as the defence and prosecution argued their case and at one point caused the presiding magistrate to silence them both as he said, "Please, I try to maintain a level of decibel noise in my court-room."

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PRIME MINISTER Patrick Manning yesterday called on the US government to step up to the plate and do more to arrest drug transshipment through the Caribbean region.

Manning had the ears of US Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Roy Austin, who was one of the many guests at the launching of BG Trinidad and Tobago Luncheon series at the Hilton Trinidad.

"Initially, the US was concerned about drugs, but of course that has inevitably since 9/11 given way to terrorism, preoccupied now... is terrorist activity around the world and how it affects US interests- we find that concern about drugs has gone to the back burner," Manning said.

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With schools across the country set to reopen tomorrow, Education Minister Hazel Manning is assuring students, teachers, principals and parents that new policies and guidelines will be introduced to ensure that schools are safe, clean and healthy environments in which quality learning can take place.

Unveiling the Ministry's newest policy titled Drug Abuse and Prevention at the Ministry's head office at Loinsworth Building, St Clair, last week, Manning said special interventions had been made to coincide with the start of the new academic year.

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A primary school pupil related how his parents stopped using drugs when he took home a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) workbook and taught them how to resist drugs.

He was among 54 pupils of the Fyzabad Presbyterian Primary School who graduated at the Morning Star Presbyterian Church, Lum Tack Hill, Fyzabad Friday .

In an essay the DARE class was asked to write, the pupil said that his parents had been using drugs and he was worried that when he grew up he would also become a drug addict. He said that he showed his parents the workbook and discussed what he had learned in the programme.

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Rohini Jones's path to prison was strewn with bad choices. She dropped out of school at 15. She ran away from home and worked in a bar. She began trafficking drugs from Trinidad to England.

But there is one bad choice Jones, 31, could have but didn't make. It's one that may have had a result much worse than the four-year stretch she's soon to finish at the Women's Prison.

She didn't swallow. Pellets, that is. They're condoms filled with cocaine and wrapped till grape size. They've been known to burst in the body of the carrier. The person dies in two hours.

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The Ministry of Health has recently been placing excellent ads in the print media which quote, among other things, the fact that the World Health Organisation reports that world wide, someone dies from tobacco use every 6.5 seconds. Also that smoking for 20 years will cause death for smokers as much as 25 years earlier than someone who never smoked. Yet tobacco use is legal.

In developed countries tobacco use is dropping significantly through a combination of severe health warnings, taxation and the prohibition of advertising on television and other types of media. Tobacco companies are now concentrating on finding a growing number of new victims in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe.

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The old woman edged cautiously towards the 12-year-old youth. "Where you going?"

"By my friends up the streets."

"Why the bandana on your head?"

"Because all dem friends wearing one."

"What is dat in your hand?"

He smiled mockingly. But she had a consuming curiosity to press on.

"Who gave you dat?"

Frightened speechless, the little boy slipped through a neighbour's backyard and disappeared.

In another reported incident, a 14-year-old was caught by PC Jaglal along the Mon Repos Street, San Fernando, with 2.1 grammes of marijuana in his possession. And another deviant youth was caught with a firearm and held in custody because "he feared that people out to kill him". It is believed that gang members wanted to dish out their polluted punishment on him "for not following orders." What orders?

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Police officers were not acting responsibly when they fired a gunshot near a primary school, while pupils were playing in the yard, National Parent/Teacher Association president Zena Ramatali said yesterday.

She said the officers should have exercised more caution because teachers and pupils could have been injured.

The incident happened at the St Margaret's Government Primary School during the lunch time break on Thursday.

Police officers were about to lock up a man on drug trafficking charges when he broke away near the station and ran through the schoolyard.

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PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Faced with a spiralling problem of murder and kidnappings, Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister, Patrick Manning, said yesterday that curbing crime was his government's biggest challenge and said that the elimination of poverty and under-development would be critical to its solution.

Trinidad and Tobago, the only significant oil and gas producer in the Caribbean Community, is among the richest member-state of Caricom, a grouping of regional territories, which yesterday launched a single market as part of a move towards a seamless regional economy.

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Tobago Community Up In Arms

Plans to establish a drug rehabilitation centre in Goodwood, a community of about 1,000 people in East Tobago, have been met with opposition from some villagers.

Arnold Des Vignes, president of the Goodwood Village Council, told the Sunday Express in a telephone interview, "As far as the people of Goodwood are concerned, they don't want it here."

But Fitzherbert Phillips, president of Scarborough and Environs Action Group, the driving force behind the establishment of the centre, argues that this project will help deal with one of Tobago's most pervasive threats.

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The cocaine found in New Grant that was eaten by "human rats" while in the custody of police, may not be the only drug haul that went missing in 2000, the Express has learnt.

In another batch of cocaine found on Trinidad's South coast in August 2000, some also vanished, sources said.

The missing cocaine issue will be brought up in a High Court case in San Fernando, due to be called before year's end.

The case involves three men who were held with more than 20 kilograms of cocaine around the time blocks of cocaine began floating ashore after a mysterious incident involving a Guyanese fishing vessel out at sea.

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East Indian businessmen are being kidnapped and forced to sell out their businesses very cheap before leaving to settle in another country, according to Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday.

He said the drug lords are at the centre of such activities.

"The drug lords are terrorising the businessmen so that they could acquire their property at a cheap rate," he said.

Panday said the action by kidnappers is having a serious effect on the real estate market and families are leaving Trinidad in droves, which is a reversal of the trend when the United National Congress was in power.

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"TELL them the rude boys from Beverly Hills say we go blow them up, yeah, fire burn them!"

This came from one young man as he and other youths were in the middle of a card game on the steps of one of the wooden apartments, while they spoke with the Sunday Express about the police/army centre to be erected in their area.

They were smoking marijuana and lamented that they would be unable to do this freely when the cops moved in.

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Express Individual of the Year

The power to stop crime is at your fingertip.

Or so the new chairman of the Crime Stoppers programme, Darren Carmichael, would have us believe.

"Empowerment to make a difference. That is the real value of the programme," Carmichael said yesterday.

Crime Stoppers is an international non-profit, nongovernmental organisation which started in Albuquerque, New Mexico the United States in 1976 following the murder of a university student.

A police officer, stumped in his investigations, came up with the idea of offering a cash reward for information and two men were later held.

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FACED with the dangerous link between illicit drug consumption and the HIV/Aids pandemic, Caribbean Community governments are now challenged to also intensify efforts to deal with overcrowded prisons where significant percentages of inmates are young people and women convicted for using or running marijuana and cocaine.

How to help reduce the tremendous harm from illicit drugs to family life and the social and economic consequences to society, with a shift from traditional punitive penal custody that is an increasing burden to State resources, requires a fresh look at alternative policies and programmes, according to penal reform and human rights specialists and professionals of regional and international institutions and agencies.

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Two pupils of the Chaguanas Senior Comprehensive School appeared in court yesterday charged with drug possession. One of them was allegedly caught smoking marijuana in class. They were among three secondary school pupils who were arrested for taking drugs into their schools within the past week.

In the most recent incident, a 14-year-old Form Three pupil was arrested after a Maintenance Training Security (MTS) officer allegedly found a joint of marijuana in his schoolbag. The officer searched the pupil before he entered the classroom yesterday morning and is said to have found the illegal drug in the form of a large cigarette. The cigarette weighed 1.1 grammes.

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Judge's Plan to Reel in Drug 'Big Boys'

DRUG OFFENDERS who cooperate with the police and provide information which can help nab the supplier will receive reduced sentences from the courts, a High Court judge said yesterday in passing sentences against two Carenage men.

Although lawyers representing Cleveland McLean, 50, and Carlton Bernard, 52, had pleaded with Justice Mark Mohammed not to send their clients to jail, the judge noting the seriousness and prevalence of marijuana trafficking sentenced both men to serve two years each.

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