At the US-Mexico Border, a Flood of Heroin, Meth Show the Trade Is Changing SAN YSIDRO, Calif. - Mexican traffickers are sending a flood of cheap heroin and methamphetamine across the U.S. border, the latest drug-seizure statistics show, in a new sign that America's marijuana decriminalization trend is upending the North American narcotics trade. The amount of cannabis seized by U.S. federal, state and local officers along the boundary with Mexico has fallen 37 percent since 2011, a period during which American marijuana consumers have increasingly turned to the more potent, higher-grade domestic varieties cultivated under legal and quasi-legal protections in more than two dozen U.S. states. [continues 1257 words]
Seizure Data Shows Drug Trade Is Changing SAN YSIDRO, CALIF. - Mexican traffickers are sending a flood of cheap heroin and methamphetamine across the U.S. border, the latest drug seizure statistics show, in a new sign that America's marijuana decriminalization trend is upending the North American narcotics trade. The amount of cannabis seized by U.S. federal, state and local officers along the boundary with Mexico has fallen 37 percent since 2011, a period during which American marijuana consumers have increasingly turned to the more potent, higher-grade domestic varieties cultivated under legal and quasi-legal protections in more than two dozen U.S. states. [continues 1251 words]
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Fewer soldiers are testing positive for marijuana in two states where recreational use of the drug is legal, an Army study of the issue obtained by The Gazette has found. The change in Washington and Colorado, where legal pot is available near large Army bases, is small. But it's the reverse of what military leaders said would happen in Colorado Springs with marijuana legalization. "With one minor exception, the data is trending downwards, though it remains relatively flat and the changes are statistically insignificant," Army spokesman Lt. Col. Justin Platt wrote in an email from the Pentagon. [continues 659 words]
The Spending Bill Passed by Congress Contains a Significant Change in the Federal Government's Policy. WASHINGTON - Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy. The bill's passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates. It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana. [continues 672 words]
Undercover agents posing as drug kingpins. Cartel reps exchanging hockey bags full of money. A west-side kid who moved money for the Mexicans Ariel Julian Savein would drive to classes at Vancouver's Point Grey secondary a decade ago in his father's green BMW. In his 2003 graduation yearbook, Savein thanked his parents and teachers for getting him through school: "Looking back, it's hard to put things in perspective but I think I've learned a lot." [continues 2904 words]
Spending Bill Ends Federal Prohibition on Medical Pot WASHINGTON - Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy. The bill's passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates. It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana. [continues 567 words]
Spending Bill Ends Federal Prohibition on Medical Pot WASHINGTON - Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy. The bill's passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates. It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana. [continues 519 words]
There's New Opportunity for the Senate Drug Caucus Establishment Washington too often forgets that while most legislative matters affect segments of the country, drug policy is a national concern. When the American people gave Republicans majorities in both houses of the next Congress, they certainly indicated dissatisfaction with the performance of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. But soon, the voters will ask what the Republican Congress has done with its leadership of the legislative branch. Despite strong majorities, Republicans are unlikely to override presidential vetoes, which means Congress will have limited power to implement sweeping changes that require presidential cooperation. Redefining issues and setting forth a governing agenda may therefore be as important as enacting laws for the next Congress. [continues 541 words]
In late September, the New York Attorney General announced a drug bust in Syracuse resulting from a nine-month long investigation -- 34 people arrested for dealing $1 million worth of heroin and cocaine. Sounded like a big success -- but was it really? It seems more like mowing the grass. As long as there is demand, there will be supply. Taking these 34 people off the streets just means that others will take their places, and the jockeying for position usually means increased violence. The drug trade will go on, with no net effect on prices or availability. [continues 543 words]
Here's the biggest irony of Tuesday's mid-term elections: the US government will continue demanding that Mexico, Colombia and other countries fight the marijuana trade as part of its "war on drugs," while Washington voters have just approved making pot legal in the US capital. Under an initiative passed by DC voters in Tuesday's elections, residents aged over 21 will be able to possess two ounces of marijuana and grow up to six plants for recreational consumption outside federal lands, pending congressional approval of the measure. [continues 633 words]
Pro-Pot Votes in Other States Propel the Effort After Tuesday's election, just one piece of the West Coast remained unwelcoming to recreational pot: California. But with voters in Oregon and Alaska legalizing the use and sale of marijuana-joining Washington and Colorado in inviting retail spreads of cannabis-infused tea sand brownies and joints- advocates see fresh momentum behind the slow shift in how the public regards the green stuff and those who enjoy it. California residents rejected legalization in 2010, with a 54 percent vote against it, but supporters of recreational marijuana are growing more confident about reversing that result in the 2016 election. [continues 1086 words]
A Psychology of Macho Law-Making Steers Policy - in Defiance of Public Opinion and Common Sense The government should ban all reports on drug legalisation. They get you hooked on rage. Evidence-based reform is a gateway substance to common sense. Just send a message: no thought means no. Parliament's response to this week's report on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act shows that psychoactive substances are the last taboo to afflict Britain's elite. It has got over past obsessions with whipping, hanging, sodomy and abortion, but it is still stuck on drugs. There is no point in reading the latest research on drugs policy worldwide. It is spitting in the wind. The only research worth doing is on why drugs policy reduces politicians to gibbering wrecks. [continues 961 words]
The U.S. government wasted $7.6 billion on an ill-conceived drug war in Afghanistan that was doomed to failure from the start, according to a scathing new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The Afghan opium poppy crop, providing the raw material for the bulk of the world's heroin supply, reached record levels in 2013 and is likely to climb even higher this year, the report finds. "The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability" of the past decade of counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, Special Inspector General John Sopko concludes. "Given the severity of the opium problem and its potential to undermine U.S. objectives in Afghanistan, I strongly suggest that your departments consider the trends in opium cultivation and the effectiveness of past counternarcotics efforts when planning future initiatives." [continues 201 words]
'Kill the Messenger' Recalls a Reporter Wrongly Disgraced If someone told you today that there was strong evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency once turned a blind eye to accusations of drug dealing by operatives it worked with, it might ring some distant, skeptical bell. Did that really happen? That really happened. As part of their insurgency against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, some of the C.I.A.-backed contras made money through drug smuggling, transgressions noted in a little-noticed 1988 Senate subcommittee report. [continues 1730 words]
Hundreds of Pounds of the Drug, Jewelry and $800,000were Seized From Firms With Colombian Ties. Federal agents seized hundreds of pounds of marijuana, 161 pieces of jewelry and $800,000- including nearly $450,000 stashed in the trunk of a car-from Colorado pot businesses with Colombian ties, according to records obtained Wednesday by The Denver Post. The forfeiture document, in which federal authorities formally seek to confiscate the items, offers the most detailed account yet of the allegations stemming from Denver-area raids executed in November. They were the largest-ever federal raids on the Colorado marijuana industry. [continues 928 words]
A 21-MEMBER international panel has urged a global overhaul of drug policies, calling for drugs such as marijuana to be regulated, an end to incarceration for drug use and possession, and greater emphasis on protecting public health. The Global Commission on Drug Policy said traditional measures in the "war on drugs" such as eradicating acres of illicit crops, seizing large quantities of illegal drugs, and arresting and jailing violators of drug laws had failed. The commission's 45-page report pointed to rising drug production and use, citing a UN estimate that the number of users rose from 203 million in 2008 to 243 million in 2012. [continues 79 words]
Report Recommends Treating Drug Abuse as Public-Health Problem MEXICO CITY--A commission composed mostly of former world leaders will recommend Tuesday that governments move beyond legalizing marijuana and decriminalize and regulate the use of most other illegal drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The international drug-control system is broken, says a report to be released Tuesday in New York by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Governments should be allowed wide latitude to experiment with the regulation of drugs, except for the most lethal, says the commission, whose 21 members include former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, and former presidents such as Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo and Colombia's Cesar Gaviria. [continues 809 words]
A coalition of political figures from around the world, including Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, and several former European and Latin American presidents, is urging governments to decriminalize a variety of illegal drugs and set up regulated drug markets within their own countries. The proposal by the group, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, goes beyond its previous call to abandon the nearly half-century-old American-led war on drugs. As part of a report scheduled to be released on Tuesday, the group goes much further than its 2011 recommendation to legalize cannabis. [continues 359 words]
Juan Manuel Santos Approves Bill Allowing Sales of Medicinal Cannabis Praised Bill for Giving People Access to Medicine While Reducing Crime Uruguay Has Legalised Drug, With Brazil and Chile Considering Law Change The President of Colombia has endorsed new legislation which paves the way for legalising medical cannabis. Juan Manuel Santos made the announcement yesterday at a drug policy forum in the capital Bogota. Mr Santos called the bill 'a practical, compassionate measure to reduce the pain (and) anxiety of patients with terminal illnesses' while adding that it would help combat crime. [continues 193 words]
THREE years ago, the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy announced that the world had lost the long war against illegal drugs. Its 22 eminent members concluded that there remained only one feasible response: legalise the trade. The evidence they had studied was overwhelming. The fight had resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in turf wars and in ever-increasing power and wealth for the criminal syndicates. Tens of millions were incarcerated, often in prisons where dangerous drugs were as easily available as on the outside. [continues 616 words]
