Madrid - Catalonia's public health agency has proposed strict new measures to regulate cannabis clubs in the region amid claims that Barcelona is on its way to rivalling Amsterdam as a smokers' haven. Amsterdam has tightened restrictions on cannabis sales just as the number of clubs in Spain has proliferated, from around 40 in 2010 to more than 700, say smokers' groups. The Catalan capital is home to more than half of these clubs. From swanky clubs to others with a small room and a few chairs, the clubs take advantage of a provision in Spain's drug laws that allows marijuana to be grown and consumed by private users. [continues 129 words]
BARCELONA, Spain - On a recent evening, two vacationing German college students, armed with addresses they had gotten off the Internet, were trying to get into one of Barcelona's new marijuana clubs. They were not members. But no matter. They quickly found a club near the city's central boulevard, La Rambla, that was willing to ignore the rules, helping them choose from a dozen strains of marijuana for sale in plastic bins before letting them settle into the cushy lounge area to light up. [continues 1241 words]
Authorities are keeping a closer eye on member-only associations that claim to be not-for-profit Growing numbers of visitors are purchasing a few grams of marijuana while on holiday in Barcelona, a city that is already being described as the "Holland of the South." All one needs to do is become a member of a cannabis club, many of which advertise on the internet, and place an order by phone or online, as this newspaper has confirmed. Club employees can also be found handing out flyers in the streets and leading interested passersby to club premises to help with the registration process. Membership fees are around =C2=8020. [continues 306 words]
MADRID - Spain's judiciary on Friday rejected a plan by a small town in northeastern Catalonia to ease its municipal debt and help lift itself out of the financial crisis by growing marijuana. When the seven-member town council of Rasquera - population 960 - voted in favor of cultivating cannabis just over a year ago in order to create jobs and shore up its finances, the news flashed around the world. In April 2012, 56 percent of Rasquera's inhabitants gave support in a referendum to the plan to rent land to the Barcelona-based pot-smoking group ABCDA which agreed to pay $750,000 per year for two years. [continues 129 words]
IT was funded by two businessmen Tomas Bengoechea - aka El Grande - from Sevilla and Juan Serrano - aka El Apoderado - from Estepona, and was built by Manuel Clemente, or The Engineer, based in Galicia. But the 'Narcosubmarine' - which was sold for 100,000 euros to a Columbian drug cartel - was blown out of the water on its first dive. Now all three men are facing nearly 100 years in prison between them at a trial in Galicia. The semi-submersible submarine had room for just one person, who received oxygen from a pipe that stuck up above the surface [continues 479 words]
(AFP) The main chemical in marijuana appears to aid in the destruction of brain cancer cells, offering hope for future anti-cancer therapies, researchers in Spain wrote in a study. The authors from the Complutense University in Madrid, working with scientists from other universities, found that the active component of marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), causes cancer cells to undergo a process called autophagy - the breakdown that occurs when the cell essentially self-digests. The research, which appears in the April edition of US-published Journal of Clinical Investigation, demonstrates that THC and related "cannabinoids" appear to be "a new family of potential antitumoral agent." The authors wrote that the chemical may prove useful in the development of future "antitumoral agents." [end]
(CNS) The active ingredient in marijuana appears to reduce tumour growth, according to a Spanish study published on Wednesday. The researchers showed giving THC to mice with cancer decreased tumour growth and killed cells off in a process called autophagy. "Our findings support that safe, therapeutically efficacious doses of THC may be reached in cancer patients," Complutense University in Madrid reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. [end]
Spanish Study Says THC May Pave Way for Cancer-Treating Medications The active ingredient in marijuana appears to reduce tumour growth, according to a Spanish study published on Wednesday. The researchers showed giving THC to mice with cancer decreased tumour growth and killed cells off in a process called autophagy. "Our findings support that safe, therapeutically efficacious doses of THC may be reached in cancer patients," Guillermo Velasco of Complutense University in Madrid and colleagues reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. [continues 195 words]
New Study; Many Adults in the Sample Had None of the Usual Risk Factors Among individuals who appear to be "mentally well," heavy use of marijuana may predispose them to develop schizoprehenia and other "psychoses," new research suggests. Among 92 patients, ages 18 to 65 years, who suffered a first episode of functional psychotic illness, more than half said they smoked marijuana daily or nearly every day and most of these individuals (66%) had no pre-existing signs of abnormal neurological development that would put them at risk for psychosis. [continues 221 words]
Boastful 'Baby' treated his Spanish jailers to a brothel before escaping; now he's back in prison Spanish police have captured one of the world's most prolific cannabis smugglers after he escaped jail with the help of prison guards in his pay. Mohamed Taieb Ahmed, nicknamed El Nene - The Baby - was arrested after being stopped in a sports car belonging to his brother in Spain's north African enclave of Ceuta. He was carrying false papers and police had to identify him by his fingerprints. [continues 594 words]
Long a Transit Point for Smuggling into Europe, the Country Is Now the Largest Consumer of the Drug on the Continent, Recent Studies Show. MADRID -- Around dawn on a Sunday, packs of young people are huddled at stoplights, or ambling down Paseo del Prado. Despite the hour, the day isn't just beginning for them. Like thousands of young Spaniards, they are ending a long night of hard-core partying that very likely included the unbridled snorting of cocaine. At crowded clubs and throbbing bars along Madrid's Gran Via, and on side streets radiating from the Puerta del Sol, the city's heart, a gram of coke is casually sold for 50 euros -- about $79 -- and quickly consumed in restrooms or nearby parked cars. [continues 1031 words]
The number of teenagers in the province of Alicante who smoke cannabis is rising, as is the frequency with which they smoke the drug. More and more teenagers take the substance daily and, according to experts, that abuse will show in the next few years. The latest study showed that 40% of schoolchildren aged between 12 and 17 smoke 'spliffs' and 2% smoke them every day. Bartolome Perez Galvez, the head of the Addictive Conduct Unit at Hospital San Juan, speaking at the III Infant and Juvenile Psychiatry Conference last Friday, revealed the new statistics, adding that "the cannabis problem is more serious than that of any other drug, such as cocaine or other designer drugs." [continues 204 words]
Drug Transported From South America to Europe MADRID, Spain - A landmark shift in trafficking routes has transformed West Africa into a hub for cocaine smuggling from South America to a booming European market, according to anti-drug officials on three continents. Drug traffickers have established a safe haven and transit area along the Gulf of Guinea to elude aggressive efforts to seize cocaine headed directly to Europe. Anti-drug officials fear the new route will worsen lawlessness in African countries already overwhelmed by crime, poverty and instability. [continues 660 words]
The Ministry Of Health Will Have To Authorize "Compassionate Use" Of The Drug On A Case By Case Basis Heroin as medicine. The Council of Andalucia is formally requesting permission from the Ministry of Health to administer the drug to a group of addicts in Granada as if it were an experimental medicine. The Council's decision is based on the clinical research with heroin it has undertaken, which shows that heroin maintenance improves health twofold over methadone in long term addicts who have not been able to give up the drug. The Health Ministry will have to authorize compassionate use of the drug on a case by case basis, but the formal request puts the Ministry in an awkward position. The department run by Elena Salgado has until now opted to turn a blind eye to heroin maintenance. [continues 684 words]
A new study conducted by scientists at Complutense University in Spain suggests that cannabis extracts may shrink brain tumours and other cancers by blocking the growth of the blood vessels which feed them. According to New Scientist, Manuel Guzman and colleagues have demonstrated how the cannabis extracts block a key chemical needed for tumours to sprout blood vessels. The team tested the effects of marijuana extract, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol in 30 mice and found that it inhibited the expression of several genes related to the production of a chemical called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). [continues 95 words]
They looked like a real football team - with snarling coach included. But the 10 men arrested at the weekend in Spain's southern province of Cadiz were not going to play a match, despite their yellow and blue kit. They were drug traffickers who used their footballs, knapsacks and club strips, emblazoned with the team name of a local town, Guillen Moreno CF, as a ruse to fool border police as they passed from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in North Africa, to Algeciras, on the southern Spanish mainland, a police spokesman in Cadiz said."They were not going to play football," he said. "Their game was drugs." [continues 156 words]
In a bold venture that puts Spain at the forefront of the medical use of cannabis in Europe, 60 pharmacies and four hospitals in Catalonia are to prescribe marijuana for therapeutic use where other treatments have failed. The pioneering scheme surpasses measures taken by the Dutch, leaders in the field, and puts British efforts in the shade. A British drug company has been denied permission to produce medicinal cannabis for trials - because of lack of political will, critics say. Doctors in Catalonia will be able to prescribe cannabis in capsules or as an infusion to help four specific conditions: anorexia among Aids patients; nausea caused by chemotherapy in cancer patients; constant pain - including migraine - that has been unresponsive to other treatments; and muscular problems among those with multiple sclerosis. About 150,000 patients are expected to benefit. [continues 229 words]
Extremists Look To Organized Crime MADRID, Spain -- The odd crew of longtime extremists and radicalized gangsters accused of committing the March train bombings nourished their holy war with holy water. And hashish. The water came from Mecca. The conspirators drank it during purification rituals at a barbershop that was an after-hours prayer hall for disciples of Takfir wal Hijra, a secretive Islamic sect active in the criminal underworld of Europe and North Africa. The hashish came from Morocco. The ideologues of the terror cell justified selling drugs as a weapon of jihad. The Moroccan dealer who financed the plot traded a load of hashish for the dynamite that slaughtered 191 people aboard commuter trains on March 11. The drug trafficker led the cell along with a Tunisian economics student, a duo whose disparity reflects the evolving nature of Islamic terrorism. Both blew themselves up after a standoff with police last month. [continues 284 words]
Muslim Extremists Who Attacked Madrid Funded The Plot By Selling Drugs, Investigators Say. MADRID - The odd crew of longtime extremists and radicalized gangsters accused of carrying out the March train bombings here nourished their holy war with holy water. And hashish. The water came from Mecca, the Muslim holy city in Saudi Arabia. The conspirators drank it during purification rituals at a barbershop that was an after-hours prayer hall for adherents of Takfir wal Hijra, a secretive Islamic sect allegedly active in the criminal underworld of Europe and North Africa. [continues 2060 words]
News Conference Describes Alleged Planning by Suspects Madrid - The Islamic extremists responsible for the Madrid train bombings financed their plot with sales of hashish and ecstasy and drank holy water from Mecca in ritual "purification acts" before the attacks, the acting interior minister, Angel Acebes, said Wednesday. In a final news conference before the newly elected Socialist government takes office, Acebes described the March 11 terror attacks as a local, independently organized operation led by people with "connections to other fundamentalist groups in Europe and outside Europe." [continues 582 words]
MADRID, Spain - Terrorists who carried out the Madrid train bombings were members of an autonomous cell who may have had ties with fundamentalists elsewhere but who got financing chiefly from drug profits, the interior minister said Wednesday. Officials are investigating the possibility that someone with ties to radical Islam -- and perhaps terrorist training in Afghanistan or elsewhere - -- was the overall leader of the March 11 attacks that killed 191 people, but aren't sure such a person even exists, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. [continues 440 words]
MADRID, Spain - The Islamist extremists responsible for the Madrid train bombings financed their plot with sales of hashish and "ecstasy" and drank holy water from Mecca in ritual "purification acts" before the attacks, the acting interior minister, Angel Acebes, said Wednesday. In a final news conference before the newly elected Socialist government takes office, Acebes described the March 11 terror attacks as a local, independently organized operation led by people with "connections to other fundamentalist groups in Europe and outside Europe." [continues 446 words]
Madrid, Spain - The perpetrators of the Madrid train bombings were members of an autonomous cell who may have had ties with fundamentalists elsewhere but received their financing chiefly from drug profits, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said yesterday. Officials are investigating the possibility that someone with a deeper grounding in radical Islam - and perhaps terrorist training in Afghanistan or elsewhere - was the overall leader of the March 11 attacks that killed 191 people, but are not sure such a person even exists, Acebes said. [continues 261 words]
MADRID, Spain - Police seized about 10 tons of cocaine on a fishing boat off the Cape Verde Islands and arrested 13 people, authorities said Friday. Spanish Civil Guards boarded the Belize-flagged boat about 1,000 miles from the island chain off the coast of West Africa, police said. The cocaine was found wrapped in 215 parcels, each weighing about 55 pounds. The crew of the "Lugo," all Colombians, were arrested. Six other people - five Spanish men and a Dominican woman - also were arrested in connection with the seizure in Spain's northwestern region of Galicia, according to the police statement. [end]
Hashish found in van owned by David den Otter EDMONTON - An Edmonton man who spent 70 days in a Spanish jail last year after being caught with 22 kilograms of hashish in his van has learned he no longer faces prosecution. David den Otter, 33, was in Edmonton Tuesday for a business meeting when he heard the heartening news. It came in a phone call from his wife, Jacquie, who was in Tangier, Morocco, where the couple live with their eight children. [continues 719 words]
The conservative Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Aznar and his Popular Party is moving to rein in that country's lively cannabis culture. Although cannabis use and possession is not a crime in Spain, for the last six months Interior Minister Angel Acebes has been spearheading the effort, which includes proposals to shut down marijuana grow shops and seed sellers, as well as an attack on Spain's leading pro-cannabis publications, Canamo and Yerba, as "apologists" for pot-smoking among teenagers. A government panel is expected to make recommendations for the cultural offensive in March. [continues 837 words]
Every summer, hundreds of thousands of young Europeans flock to Ibiza's rave parties. It's 3 a.m. on a Sunday, and the narrow streets of this pretty island are jammed with 20-somethings throwing fried chicken at one another. Hundreds of others are jumping up and down to the jackhammer beat of techno music; others line up to get into clubs. A brunette in a sequined silver halter top is passing out on the pavement. Ibiza has become synonymous over the past two decades with the drug- infested clubbing, or raving, subculture. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of young men and women from around Europe - Britain in particular - - come here not to sun themselves, but to escape into drugs, alcohol, nonstop dancing, and anonymous sex. [continues 581 words]
Spain is setting up a pioneering network of radar and sensitive night-sight cameras along its southern coast in a hi-tech attempt to crack down on the trafficking of drugs and immigrants from Morocco. The scheme, said to be the first of its kind in Europe and costing E142m (UKP90m), will enable Civil Guard paramilitary coastal patrols to spot vessels up to 12 miles from the Spanish coast, the government said. The aim is to detect the small wooden pateras and rubber dinghies that smuggle thousands of would-be immigrants from Morocco to Spain each year. With the Integrated External Vigilance System (SIVE), infra-red cameras and radar capable of detecting the presence of a person or an outboard motor will alert officials stationed along the coast. [continues 106 words]
BARCELONA, Spain - Former President Clinton and South African leader Nelson Mandela called on world leaders Friday to recognize that the AIDS epidemic is a threat to international peace and economic stability. "We cannot lose our war against AIDS and win our battle against poverty, promote stability, advance democracy and increase peace and prosperity,'' Clinton told a Barcelona audience that cheered wildly as he and Mandela embraced. "One hundred million AIDS cases means more terror, more mercenaries, more war, destruction, and the failure of fragile democracies,'' Clinton said at the close of the 14th International AIDS Conference. [continues 744 words]
BARCELONA, Spain -- Former President Clinton acknowledged, "I was wrong" about one of the most controversial AIDS decisions of his presidency: his refusal to lift the ban on federal funding of needle-exchange programs. A government panel advised him at the time that the practice, used to slow the spread of HIV among injection-drug users, was effective and didn't promote drug abuse. But Mr. Clinton sided with his drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who opposed it, Mr. Clinton said Thursday, because of "the message it would send on the drug front." [continues 338 words]
ARCELONA, Spain, AIDS will claim an additional 65 million lives by 2020, more than triple the number who died in the first 20 years of the epidemic, unless more countries vastly expand their prevention programs, says the United Nations' first long-range forecast of the epidemic. The forecast is a departure from earlier estimates, which had predicted that the epidemic may have reached its peak in some countries by 2000. It is part of a grim report that was issued today in advance of the 14th International AIDS Conference, which begins here on Sunday. [continues 1163 words]
MADRID - Spanish police seized a Venezuelan fishing boat in mid-Atlantic on Saturday and landed a haul of almost two tons of cocaine, authorities said. Police boarded the boat some 550 miles west of the Canary Islands and arrested its seven Venezuelan crew in the early hours, a Spanish government official said. The seizure -- Spain's largest so far this year -- was the result of a year-long police, customs and navy operation which involved the arrests of 12 Spaniards. Interior Ministry official Gonzalo Robles, who heads Spain's anti-drug agency, told reporters that the ramshackle fishing vessel had been bound for the northern Spanish fishing port of La Coruna and the drugs were in 76 bundles on the ship's deck. [continues 141 words]
Lima, Mar 29 (EFE).- Peru is studying the possibility of issuing special sovereign bonds in the international markets to finance the war on drugs, according to presidential drug enforcement adviser Ricardo Vega Llona. In statements published Friday in the daily La Republica, Llona said Peru urgently needs at least $1.2 billion to carry out development programs promoting alternative crops to replace coca leaf, the raw material of cocaine. Outlining the scope of the initiative, he said the funds raised through sale of the bonds "would be used for a specific program through a trusteeship held by a major institution such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank or the Andean Development Corp." [continues 135 words]
Spanish Pressure Groups Demand Action To Educate Clubbers On Drug Risks The deaths of two young people after taking ecstasy at a mass rave in Malaga have set off a national debate about drugs, with calls for their complete legalisation and a campaign to educate young Spaniards about their dangers. In Spain it is not illegal to consume drugs of any kind in private, but people can be fined for consumption in public and trafficking carries a prison sentence. Drug use is slightly lower than in Britain. [continues 682 words]
Spanish prosecutors began investigating three judges and a prison psychiatrist yesterday after one of the country's most notorious alleged drug traffickers was allowed out of prison on bail and immediately skipped the country. Carlos Ruiz Santamaria, whom the prosecution want jailed for 60 years and fined UKP280m on charges of smuggling drugs into Spain, disappeared late last month after paying an UKP18,000 bond to get out of prison. Outraged politicians, newspapers and the police blame the judges. But a psychiatrist had recommended his release because he was suffering severe depression and the three judges in the national court in Madrid - roughly equivalent to Britain's high court - gave him bail on humanitarian grounds. [continues 268 words]
The sprawling shanty town of Las Barranquillas is a dusty 20-minute walk along a bumpy dirt track from the nearest bus stop on Madrid's southern fringes. It is also the nearest thing Europe has to a state-sanctioned drug hypermarket. Up to 5,000 Spaniards come every day to buy heroin and cocaine from a dealer's slum. Whatever the hour, people trail by on foot; many bent double. Others arrive in unofficial taxis driven by drug users who charge a fare equal to the price of a dose. [continues 771 words]
Police Back Ecstasy Quality Control At Raves In a square in the north-eastern Spanish town of Olot, Barcelona-based disc jockey Micky Molino is on a stage, mixing his own-brand techno-house while hundreds of people dance. Micky's show may be organised by the town council, but this is as close as you get to a full-blown rave in a quiet country town best known for its snails. Not that the young people of Olot are far behind their big city cousins in their party habits. There are plenty of drugs here: cocaine, hash and ecstasy are all readily available, fuelling the dance fever. [continues 567 words]
MADRID, Spain -- Spain has called in Colombian police officers to help curb an outbreak of violence in Madrid after seven people were killed in eight days in street shoot-outs and revenge attacks among international drug traffickers. The Colombian police, hardened by years of war between cocaine cartels in their country, were drafted in after the latest gun battle, which saw three people killed and one injured last week. All the victims were young Colombian men. One of them, a 25-year-old from the cocaine capital of Medellin, had been in Spain for only two weeks. [continues 300 words]
Spain has called in Colombian police officers to help curb an outbreak of violence in Madrid after seven people were killed in eight days, in street shoot-outs and revenge attacks among international drug traffickers. The Colombian police, hardened by years of war between cocaine cartels in their country, were drafted in after the latest gun battle, which saw three people killed and one injured on Tuesday night. All the victims were young Colombian men. One of them, a 25-year-old from the cocaine capital of Medellin, had only been in Spain for two weeks. [continues 483 words]
BARCELONA, Spain -- Police have broken up a global Ecstasy smuggling ring based here, arresting 23 people around the world in the culmination of a yearlong international investigation, authorities said Thursday. Since May, authorities in Spain, the United States, Holland, Canada and Australia have seized a quarter-million Ecstasy pills linked to the ring. This week, the authorities rounded up the people suspected of running the operation, including 11 Israelis, six Spaniards, and two Moroccans. The investigation, called "Operation Israel," was launched about a year ago after Barcelona police noticed a group of Israelis with no obvious sources of income living extravagantly in local resorts. [continues 304 words]
Catalonia And Andalusia May Initiate Experimental Treatments This Fall In less than 90 days, Andalusia, Catalonia and the other communities that wish to will be able to conduct clinical studies that dispense heroin as a treatment for addicts. The Heroin Committee, comprised of the Ministry of Health, independent experts and representatives of Spain's autonomous communities, yesterday gave the final research authorization, which will be supervised by the Spanish Agency of Medicine. Research subjects are limited to heroin addicts who have failed in other attempts at rehabilitation. [continues 812 words]
All five political parties in the Catalan parliament in Spain have signed a proposal to legalise the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes. The agreement asks the Catalan government to negotiate with the Spanish authorities so that cannabis--either as a drug or as a standardised extract of the plant--may be used to treat medical disorders. Once the bill is approved in the Catalan parliament, it may be submitted to the Spanish parliament for discussion and eventual voting. The initiative came from a collective of 300 women with breast cancer called the "Agata group" (after Saint Agata, who had her breasts removed under torture) and from a journalist, Nuria Nogueras, who recently died of the disease and who found the drug helpful during chemotherapy. Since last September, the Agata collective has held meetings with representatives of the five Catalan parties, as well as with the Catalan health department and oncologists and pharmacologists. [continues 476 words]
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Spanish police said they seized about 5 tons of cocaine yesterday in a major anti-drug operation. The drug was found on the ship Abrente when it was boarded before dawn, some 350 miles west of Spain's Canary Island archipelago. Officials said 13 suspects were arrested. The government said customs police had been watching the vessel during the past year as it docked frequently in the Canary Islands and on mainland Spain to unload fish. Last month, the ship sailed to an unspecified place in the south Atlantic to pick up the cocaine, which came from Colombia, the ministry said. [end]
Europe's biggest drug operation has ended in fiasco, with British and Spanish police in Las Palmas giving up the search for a huge cargo of cocaine on the Panamanian-registered Privilege. The failure to find what was originally claimed to be ten tonnes of cocaine left police facing awkward questions about what happened to the drugs that the British had said were loaded by a Colombian cartel known as Los Mellizos, or "The Twins", in the Orinoco River, Venezuela, last month. [continues 145 words]
Spanish police blamed their British counterparts yesterday for being unable to find up to ten tons of cocaine reported to be on board a cargo vessel seized in what was billed as the biggest ever single drugs bust in Europe. The Spanish drugs officers who led last Thursday's spectacular high-seas raid on the Panamanian-registered Privilege cargo vessel admitted that they had still not found a trace of the cocaine. They have now reportedly been joined in Las Palmas, the Canary Isles port, by the undercover British drugs officers who tipped them off that the Privilege had picked up drugs in the mouth of Venezuela's Orinoco river. The Spanish officers said that British police were responsible for tracking the vessel by satellite during its voyage. Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service yesterday declined to comment. [end]
Spanish police have been giving details of a massive drugs seizure made as a result of a raid on a cargo ship in the Atlantic. They are still searching the vessel but expect to recover several tonnes of cocaine. Explaining the operation, the Spanish Government's anti-drugs supremo Gonzalo Robles said: "We are talking of a major consignment, probably over five tonnes. "We believe the search of the ship will be slow and prolonged, not just because of the size of the vessel and the amount of cargo it carries, but also because of the way the drug is hidden." [continues 298 words]
International donors pledged $621 million on Friday to help fund Colombia's multibillion-dollar project to combat cocaine production and revitalize the country's economy. Colombia is trying to gather $3.5 billion from foreign donors to add to its own contribution of $4 billion to the project, which includes plans to beef up military action against the drug trade, protected by Colombia's powerful rebel movement. The pledges from the one-day conference, which gathered 27 nations and several international agencies in Madrid, Spain, ``forms the first contribution from the international community to the peace process'', said Enrique Iglesias, head of the Inter-American Development Bank, which is presiding over the Colombia Plan. [end]
In Madrid on Friday, European Commission officials and EU ministers will discuss their response to "Plan Colombia", an ambitious programme, backed by both Washington and Colombia's President Pastrana, which aims to eradicate the country's twin plagues of drugs and violence writes Ana Carrigan COLOMBIA: Its critics fear, however, the plan may have the reverse effect. The EU is being asked to contribute $1 billion towards pacification projects. Last week, the US Senate voted through $1.3 billion in military aid for the counternarcotics side of the programme. [continues 411 words]
One in eight of the half-million young tourists going to Ibiza this summer will take Ecstasy nearly every night of their stay, according to new research. It also found that more than a quarter have unprotected sex and a quarter have sex with more than one partner during their trip. The study is the first evidence of the extent of drug use on the Spanish island, which was dubbed the "Gomorrah of Europe" after the British vice-consul resigned two years ago in disgust at the behaviour of its British visitors. [continues 392 words]
The decision mandates alternative treatment, even for repeat offenders with felony convictions. If a drug addict agrees to detoxification in a treatment center, the judges should revoke the prison sentence for the crime committed and facilitate rehabilitation. And it does not matter if the penalty is over two years in prison or if the offender is a repeat offender. The Supreme Court's groundbreaking decision is based on the understanding that drug addicts suffer from an illness. The decision establishes that crimes committed by drug addicts should be dealt with via safety measures (residency in a treatment center) that lead to social reintegration. [continues 677 words]
Inside Spain
