In October 2009, medical marijuana advocates celebrated a U.S. Department of Justice memo declaring that federal authorities wouldn't target the legal use of medicinal pot in states where it is permitted. The memo from Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden was credited with accelerating a California medical marijuana boom, including a proliferation of dispensaries that now handle more than $1 billion in pot transactions. But last month brought a new memo from another deputy attorney general, James Cole. And this time, it is stirring industry fears of federal raids on pot dispensaries and sweeping crackdowns on large-scale medical pot cultivation. [continues 822 words]
A controlled drug sting in Miami-Dade' Redlands went awry and police opened fire, killing four armed men who showed up to rob a home owned by the county that was all part of the ruse. Seven months after he was released from prison, Rosendo Betancourt helped Miami-Dade police infiltrate a gang of suspected home invasion robbers with a penchant for torture and mutilation. The plan was to convince the gang there was a stash of marijuana inside a rural Redlands home that turned out to be owned by Miami-Dade County and set up for such a ruse. [continues 818 words]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is meeting in Guatemala this week for talks with the presidents of Central America, Mexico and Colombia on security assistance to Central America that will focus on the most serious problem facing the region: drug trafficking. As Mexico has interrupted transit routes across its territory and along its coasts, drug cartels have been moving into Guatemala and countries to the south. A particularly heinous manifestation of this shift in activity was the killing of 27 people in northern Guatemala last month, a crime for which Mexico's "Zetas" openly took credit. [continues 563 words]
Re Leonard Pitts' June 15 column, Time to end drug war: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy immediately rejected the high profile Global Commission on Drug Policy call for reform and defended the federal government's drug control efforts. These efforts have given the land of the free the highest incarceration rate in the world. Prohibition-related violence has caused upwards of 35,000 deaths in Mexico during the past four years. Despite criminal penalties, the United States has higher rates of drug use than European Union countries such as Portugal that have decriminalized. With the national debt soaring, we can no longer afford to throw good money after bad drug policy. Robert Sharpe Policy Analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy Washington, D.C. [end]
Dear President Obama: Right after your election, somebody asked if I thought having a black president meant black people's concerns would now receive attention at the executive level. I told them I expected the opposite. There used to be a saying - only Nixon could go to China. Meaning, of course, that only he, as a staunch anti-communist, had the credibility to make overtures to that nation without accusations of being soft on communism. By the inverse of that political calculus, I never expected that you, as a black man, would do much to address black issues. [continues 480 words]
Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation into law to crack down on pill mills in Florida. TALLAHASSEE -- After initially fighting one of its key provisions, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill Friday aimed at cracking down on clinics that frivolously dispense pain pills, feeding a nationwide prescription drug abuse epidemic. "Florida will shed its title as the Oxy Express," Scott said at a bill signing ceremony in Tampa. The signing ended what had been a hard-fought political battle over how to stop an epidemic that kills an estimated seven Floridians daily. [continues 813 words]
Federal agents dubbed the case "Operation Cedar Sweep," zeroing in on South Florida head-shop owners of mostly Lebanese descent. Some were suspected of selling "cut" for cocaine and sending profits to the Middle East for possible terrorist activities. But after a two-year FBI investigation with undercover police officers, Miami federal prosecutors lacked evidence to make terrorism support cases. And this week, prosecutors also decided to drop drug-related charges against 27 defendants, many of whom had been detained since their arrests early this year. [continues 864 words]
Plan to Toughen Felons' Rights-Restoration Process Is Biased and Unfair In record time, Florida's Cabinet brought us back to Jim Crow-era laws Wednesday. Unanimously, the Cabinet undid a judicious measure that had partially streamlined the voting-rights restoration process for tens of thousands of felons convicted of nonviolent crimes. The all-Republican Cabinet -- Gov. Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam -- last month expressed support for Ms. Bondi's proposal to repeal the voting-rights reforms instituted for some felons in 2007. On Wednesday, at a rushed Cabinet meeting the group of four made it official. [continues 470 words]
Ex-cons like Vinny Colangelo are barred from certain business pursuits. Felons can't get a license in Florida as a pest-control operator. Colangelo can't be a private detective or paramedic or title insurance agent or bail bondsman or labor union business agent. He can forget about employment with the Florida Lottery. Or qualifying as a notary. "In Florida, this guy couldn't own a liquor store," said Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti. Yet according to the DEA, Vincent Colangelo, who couldn't kill bugs, serve cocktails or tail a cheating husband, could operate seven pain clinics and a pharmacy in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. His pill mills peddled more than 660,000 doses of oxycodone in just two years. The feds calculated Vinny's proceeds at $22,392,391. [continues 589 words]
The veteran sitting across the table from me looked weary after delivering yet another speech against a war that has neither a point nor, apparently, an end. It was started years ago by a Republican president, long since discredited, the veteran noted. Yet the Democrats who until a few weeks ago controlled both the White House and Congress didn't raise a finger to stop it. "I don't understand how much more money has to be wasted or how many more lives have to be ruined before we admit it's been a huge mistake," Kyle Vogt told me. "We can end this thing with the stroke of a pen." [continues 740 words]
For Three Decades, a Federal Agency Has Supplied Irvin Rosenfeld With Marijuana to Control a Rare Disease. He Tells About It in a New Book. On a recent chilly morning, Fort Lauderdale stockbroker Irvin Rosenfeld interrupted his client calls for a quick marijuana cigarette in the company parking lot. Then he went back to work. The cigarette - perfectly legal for him - was one of about 120,000 the federal government has provided to him at taxpayer expense for the past 29 years. He's one of only four people who remain in a now-closed "compassionate" drug program that at its peak provided 13 patients across the country with daily doses of pot to help manage medical conditions. [continues 1293 words]
A self-made millionaire Republican is campaigning in Florida on a platform of spending cuts and less government. It's not Rick Scott, anymore. This is Gary E. Johnson -- a former New Mexico governor and marijuana-legalization advocate -- who's putting out Florida feelers in a possible bid for the presidency in 2012. Johnson's campaign-style stops in Tallahassee, Melbourne and Orlando last week reveal that the presidential race is already at a low boil in the nation's largest swing state. Without Florida, Republicans say, they can't recapture the White House. [continues 204 words]
MEXICO CITY -- If California voters approve a proposition calling for the legalization of marijuana in the Nov. 2 midterm elections, get ready for a domino effect in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. It is not likely to be immediate, but it will be hard to stop in the near future. Granted, the Obama administration would most likely challenge California's Proposition 19 -- it would allow adults to consume marijuana for pleasure -- in the courts if it were approved. Most polls show that the California proposal has a better than even chance of passing. [continues 641 words]
It's a funny thing about words: sometimes, they convey meaning but not necessarily understanding. Take the term "racial profiling." Author Joseph Collum of Plantation says the Oxford English Dictionary credits him with coining it in 1989 when he was an investigative TV reporter in New Jersey. We all get its meaning: law enforcement personnel targeting citizens by their skin color. But to truly understand what racial profiling is, it helps to hear a story like that of Chris Stubbs. She was a 27-year-old black woman, driving home to North Carolina from New York where she had gone to pick up $10,000 from a friend's brother; the brother, who owned a car dealership, had agreed to stake Stubbs' dream of opening a restaurant. [continues 556 words]
I stand corrected on a claim I made seven years ago that Multnomah County, Ore., was run by the dumbest bureaucrats on earth, after they sought to hire a Klingon translator to communicate with mental patients who prefer the language invented for Star Trek. I stand corrected because the Drug Enforcement Administration is looking to hire people who can speak "Ebonics" in Miami and several other cities, and can translate it for agents who are having a hard time understanding what suspected drug dealers are saying on the business end of wiretaps. [continues 484 words]
MEXICO CITY -- Here's an interesting detail about the much-publicized recent arrest of Mexico's top drug baron Edgar Valdez Villarreal, better known as "La Barbie" -- he was caught with a U.S.-made M-16 semiautomatic rifle and other sophisticated arms that Mexican officials suspect were smuggled from the United States. In Mexico, U.S. arms smuggling is a big issue. President Felipe CalderA3n said during a visit to Washington in May that of all the guns and assault rifles seized in Mexico over the past three years, "more than 80 percent of those we have been able to trace came from the United States." [continues 670 words]
Ron Allen probably thinks Alice Huffman has been smoking something. Huffman, president of the California Conference of the NAACP, recently declared support for an initiative that, if passed by voters in November, will decriminalize the use and possession of marijuana. Huffman sees it as a civil rights issue. In response, Bishop Allen, founder of a religious social activism group called the International Faith-Based Coalition, has come out swinging. "Why would the state NAACP advocate for blacks to stay high?" he demanded last week at a news conference in Sacramento. "It's going to cause crime to go up. There will be more drug babies." Allen wants Huffman to resign. [continues 536 words]
In his July 8 Other Views column, The laws can't curb our appetites, George Will talks about the unintended consequences of Prohibition in the 1920s, including the growth of organized crime. He likens Prohibition to our government's current initiatives to encourage change from detrimental eating to habits that destroy the environment. I am amazed that he failed to realize that he should have compared it to the failed war on drugs. This prohibition has created a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide, contributed to the political instability of many countries, turned the United States into a nation with one of the highest incarceration rates and fueled illegal border crossings. [continues 55 words]
'You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to." -- Richard Nixon as quoted by H.R. Haldeman, supporting a get-tough-on drugs strategy. "They give [black people] time like it's lunch down there. You go down there looking for justice, that's what you find: just us." -- Richard Pryor. Michelle Alexander was an ACLU attorney in Oakland, preparing a racial profiling lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol. The ACLU had put out a request for anyone who had been profiled to get in touch. One day, in walked this black man. [continues 563 words]
Pro-Marijuana Activists, Backed by the Director of the Cocaine Cowboys' Documentaries, Are Pushing to Decriminalize Marijuana in Miami Beach Miami Beach voters could cast ballots for Mary Jane come November should a budding effort to decriminalize marijuana possession in the city gain traction. In front of City Hall Wednesday evening, the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy announced a drive to gather signatures in support of a proposed amendment that would make "personal" possession of marijuana in Miami Beach a civil code violation punishable by a mere fine. [continues 485 words]
I disagree with your May 26 editorial Jamaica's day of reckoning. The violence in Jamaica is because of drug prohibition, not in spite of it. The U.S. drug war has done little other than give us the highest incarceration rate in the world. Zero tolerance hasn't deterred use. The United States has higher rates of drug use than European Union countries that have decriminalized. Drug prohibition finances organized crime at home and terrorism abroad, which is then used to justify increased drug war spending. [continues 64 words]
Jamaica is paying a painfully high price to learn the elementary lesson that no government can afford to ignore or tolerate drug trafficking. At last count, with gunshots still echoing across the capital Tuesday, at least 30 people had died in the slums of Kingston as police and soldiers fought to regain control of crime-ridden neighborhoods that drug kingpins and their armed gangs have long considered personal fiefdoms. The mayhem involves reputed underworld boss Christopher "Dudus" Coke. His various nicknames include "Mister President," an indication of his power and status in Jamaica. It began after Prime Minister Bruce Golding dropped his nine-month refusal to extradite Coke to the United States to face federal drug charges in New York. Coke's ties to Mr. Golding and his Jamaica Labour Party were said to be behind the government's initial unwillingness to agree to the extradition. [continues 401 words]
Fight Against Drug Criminals Is Also Our Fight President Felipe Calderon's state visit to Washington on Wednesday comes at a time when Mexico is under siege by drug criminals as never before. The violence has claimed some 23,000 lives since Mr. Calderon declared war on drug gangs. Traffickers are fighting to control the drug supply into the United States. Never have the two countries faced a common enemy as powerful and as dangerous as these gangs. This puts a premium on mutual efforts to combat narcotics gangsters, requiring both leaders to go beyond the customary expressions of friendship and work to defuse the tensions that threaten to drive Mexico and the United States apart. [continues 298 words]
As the death toll has climbed from drug-related violence in Mexico, it's fallen largely to newspapers to keep the count. Two weeks ago, a government report that legislators leaked spoke of 22,700 deaths over little more than a three-year period, a far higher body count than the 18,000 or so given by El Universal, a leading newspaper. President Felipe Calderon's aides won't confirm the report, and some political analysts have seized on the lack of transparency as an element in the Mexican leader's difficulties in rallying the nation in the campaign against heavily armed narcotics syndicates. [continues 827 words]
MEXICO CITY -- Three years ago this month, Mexican President Felipe Calderon donned military fatigues and declared a full-scale war on drugs, ordering the Army into Mexico's streets, highways, and villages. Back then, Calderon received broad support, both domestically and from abroad, for what was viewed as a brave, overdue, and necessary decision. Tangible results were predicted to come soon. Moreover, George W. Bush's administration quickly promised American support -- the so-called Merida Initiative, signed in February, 2007 - -- and public-opinion polls showed that Calderon had, in one fell swoop, left behind the travails of his close and questioned electoral victory, gaining the trust of the Mexican people. But today, things look very different. [continues 745 words]
Regarding Andres Oppenheimer's Dec. 10 column U.S. may take new look at 'war on drugs,' the drug war is a cure worse than the disease. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime. With alcohol prohibition repealed, liquor bootleggers no longer gun each other down, nor do consumers go blind drinking unregulated bathtub gin. While U.S. politicians ignore the drug war's historical precedent, European countries are embracing harm reduction, a public-health alternative based on the principle that both drug abuse and prohibition have the potential to cause harm. [continues 92 words]
If you had asked me 10 years ago whether the United States will ever change its interdiction-focused counternarcotics policies -- and perhaps even decriminalize marijuana consumption at home -- I would have told you, "never." Today, I say, "perhaps." Earlier this week, in a tacit admission that current U.S. anti-drug policies are not working, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill to create an independent commission to review whether the U.S. anti-drug policies of the past three decades in Latin America are producing positive results. [continues 716 words]
In an act of merciful sanity, the Obama administration has made good on its promise to stop interfering with states that allow the medical use of marijuana. Clink-clink, hear-hear, salud, cheers, et cetera. Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement surely comes as a relief to the many who rely on cannabis to ease suffering from various ailments. This doesn't let drug traffickers off the hook. It merely means that 14 states that provide for some medical marijuana uses no longer need fear federal raids on dispensaries and users operating under state law. [continues 538 words]
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, never one to let facts get in his way, is stoking another anti-American controversy among his neighbors. This one involves non-existent U.S. military "bases" in Colombia. Given the region's traditional sensitivity to claims of U.S. intervention, it's no surprise that he's getting traction, but it's disappointing to see moderate leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva take the bait. "I don't like the idea of an American base in the region," Brazil's president said recently. [continues 377 words]
A New Prescription-Drug Monitoring Law Is Overdue Finally, the state will regulate pill mills that have operated in South Florida with virtually no oversight, which allowed a black market of prescription pain-killers to flourish, selling to dealers as far away as Massachusetts. The new prescription-monitoring law, signed by Gov. Charlie Crist last week, closes loopholes that had exempted from state inspections those pain clinics that don't take insurance. Incredibly, such clinics, which have proliferated over the past few years, were able to avoid background checks of their owners and employees -- even though such scrutiny is required at legitimate health clinics that take insurance. [continues 275 words]
A Movement Among Powerful Florida Leaders To Overhaul The State's Prison System Is Gaining Steam As Lawmakers Grapple With Shrinking Resources A call by Florida's most powerful business lobby to halt prison construction and reform the criminal justice system is gaining surprising traction among policymakers in the wake of a deepening budget crisis and growing evidence that building new prison beds will not reduce crime. Four months after the head of Associated Industries of Florida stunned lawmakers with his plea to slow prison growth, a who's-who of business, religious and political leaders are asking Gov. Charlie Crist to consider alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders, particularly drug addicts. [continues 963 words]
Tackle Prison Overcrowding From the Other End The Florida Legislature passed a "just in case" bill that its author, Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, calls a "passive safety net," not a mandate. But the philosophy behind SB 1722, which becomes law July 1, is based on regressive thinking. It would allow the corrections department to ship inmates to other states in case prison overcrowding forces early releases here. Fund Programs This is a patchwork solution that misses the point. Florida should be fighting crime at the front end -- not shipping prisoners to be warehoused out of state. [continues 370 words]
Inmates in the Broward jails will no longer receive substance abuse treatment, anger management help, computer skills and some other training -- a stark result of budget cuts advocates say will prove costly in the long run. The Broward Sheriff's Office sent a letter to judges and attorneys Wednesday saying the programs will be eliminated by Aug. 1. "We know the value of these programs but we have no option but to reduce our services in the jails to their core," wrote Kristina Gulick, director of the Department of Community Control. [continues 657 words]
One son: dead from an oxy overdose. Another son's wife: also dead from oxycodone. Year after futile year of traveling to Tallahassee on her own expense to beg legislators to get a grip on Florida's storefront pain pill bazaars. When a bill designed to regulate pain pill clinics finally passed its final committee review Monday, Maureen Barrett was not exactly in a victorious mood. "Eleven deaths a day," she said, summarizing the brutal cost of procrastination. "It's about time." [continues 439 words]
President Alvaro Uribe Has Not Given Up On His Campaign To Get Personal Drug Use Outlawed. BOGOTA -- Sitting in the bedroom of her home in one of Bogota's well-heeled neighborhoods, Alicia Fajardo takes a deep toke of a marijuana joint and exhales the thick smoke. With that breath, Fajardo is exercising a right granted her by Colombia's Constitutional Court. But it's a right that President Alvaro Uribe believes is wrong. The Colombian Congress this month will begin discussing a bill introduced by the government that would prohibit possession of any drug and would punish addicts and drug users with mandatory clinical treatment. [continues 629 words]
They Belong in Treatment Facilities, Not in Jails and Prisons You see them all the time: People who aimlessly wander the streets, obviously homeless and obviously in need of attention for their mental illnesses. Ever wonder what happens to them? Far too many end up in jail or prison, at great and unnecessary expense to taxpayers. To keep just 1,700 of these people locked up, as Florida currently does, costs $250 million each year. When they are released from prison, as inevitably all of them are, their mental-health conditions have worsened. [continues 446 words]
Parts of Rural Appalachia Are Awash in Prescription Drugs Delivered By Car and Airplane From Broward County Pain Clinics Dr. Roger Browne was once one of Kentucky's most popular pain doctors. His office, however, was 850 miles away, in Broward County. When federal agents raided Browne's Coral Springs clinic, Americare Health and Rehabilitation, last year, they found medical files on nearly 500 Kentucky residents who had received painkillers from the doctor. Browne was just one part of a vast pill-trafficking industry stretching from Broward County through rural Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and West Virginia. [continues 1587 words]
Drugs At The Border Maybe we should legalize drugs. I come neither eagerly nor easily to that maybe. Rather, I come by way of spiraling drug violence in Mexico that recently forced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to acknowledge the role America's insatiable appetite for narcotics plays in the carnage. I come by way of watching Olympian Michael Phelps do the usual public relations song and dance after being outed smoking weed, and knowing the whole thing was a ritualized farce. Most of all, I come by way of personal antipathy: I don't like and have never used illegal drugs. [continues 582 words]
I come neither eagerly nor easily to that maybe. Rather, I come by way of spiraling drug violence in Mexico that recently forced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to acknowledge the role America's insatiable appetite for narcotics plays in the carnage. I come by way of watching Olympian Michael Phelps do the usual public relations song and dance after being outed smoking weed, and knowing the whole thing was a ritualized farce. Most of all, I come by way of personal antipathy: I don't like and have never used illegal drugs. [continues 583 words]
It's an indictment of our fact-averse political culture that a statement of the blindingly obvious could sound so revolutionary. ''Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,'' Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on her plane Wednesday as she flew to Mexico for an official visit. ``Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border . . . causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians.'' Amazingly, U.S. officials have avoided facing these facts for decades. This is not just an intellectual blind spot but a moral failure, one that has had horrific consequences for Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and other Latin American and Caribbean nations. [continues 652 words]
Smoke weed - help the state? Marijuana would be sold and taxed openly in California to adults 21 and older if legislation proposed Monday is signed into law. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, said his bill could generate big bucks for a cash-starved state while freeing law enforcement agencies to focus on worse crimes. "I think there's a mentality throughout the state and the country that this isn't the highest priority - and that maybe we should start to reassess," he said. [continues 198 words]
WASHINGTON - A recent Drug Enforcement Administration raid on a South Lake Tahoe, Calif., medical marijuana dispensary showcases one of the legal conflicts inherited by the Obama administration. The Jan. 22 raid near the California-Nevada border occurred two days after Obama took office and before the new president's own Justice Department team was in place. The raid resembled many conducted during the Bush administration, but seemingly clashed with Obama's campaign opposition to such tactics. "I think the basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors (is) entirely appropriate," Obama told Oregon's Mail Tribune newspaper in March. "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue." [continues 605 words]
The State's Budget Cuts Have Hit The Ranks Of Probation Officers, With 66 Of Them Losing Jobs, 22 Of Those In South Florida TALLAHASSEE -- With the state budget tightening, 66 Department of Corrections probation officers lost their jobs last week. The layoffs targeted those with less than a year of service and represented a 3 percent reduction in the probation officer force statewide, including 22 in South Florida. The cuts, made Thursday, stemmed from last year's cuts in the prison system's budget, which faces a $28 million hole in its balance sheet. [continues 313 words]
Mexican Drug Gangsters Pose Threat In This Country Mexican President Felipe CalderA3n, who met with President-elect Barack Obama on Monday, has vowed to put drug gangsters in his country out of business -- and he has backed up his words with actions. Mr. CalderA3n has no other choice if he wants to keep Mexico from turning into a narco-state, but the decision has resulted in a frightening increase in violence, particularly along the U.S.-Mexico border. Body Count Rising Daily [continues 390 words]
Feds Liked Inmate's Testimony, Until She Cried Rape In the dead-to-rights view of S.R., the victim of multiple sexual assaults and rapes at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, the U.S. attorney's office here saw her as ``a very credible witness. I was competent. But then when I needed them, I was mentally ill. I was incompetent.'' Complaints Dismissed S.R. is referring to the lack of interest federal prosecutors showed in pursuing complaints that three detention center guards sexually assaulted her, and that a fourth guard raped her several times when she was being detained to testify at drug-trafficking trials between 2002 and 2005. Federal Bureau of Prison officials wrote her off as ''mentally incompetent'' after she reported the assaults, which began during her first stint at the center. A prosecutor who brought her to Miami to testify has no recollection of what, if anything, she did when she received a letter informing her of S.R.'s allegations. [continues 317 words]
Dozens of veterans gathered at Government Center in downtown Miami on Wednesday afternoon to speak out against two brutal killings of homeless veterans since mid-November in Miami. Todd Hill's head was bashed in with an iron pole at 3 a.m. Friday as he slept on a bench overlooking the Miami River. The 41-year-old Gulf War veteran died at the hospital hours later. Ernest Holman's body was found beaten to death behind a Liberty City bus bench on Nov. 17. The 67-year-old frequented the local Veterans Affairs hospital, according to Robert Pickett, Holman's former boss at the Brownsville junkyard where he once worked. [continues 435 words]
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government said Tuesday it needs to see changes from Venezuela's government before the two countries can have a better relationship in the fight against drugs. The comments followed Venezuelan President Hugo ChA!vez's warning that U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy risks expulsion after the ambassador said drug traffickers are taking advantage of the ''gap'' that exists between the United Stats and Venezuela. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that the U.S. government is ''prepared to have a better relationship'' but needs ``to see some actions on the side of the Venezuelan government.'' [continues 191 words]
I'm not a big fan of the nanny society's limits on freedom, except when I am. That's the dilemma for me, and for everyone. Reason magazine recently ranked "the worst nanny cities in America" by assessing their laws regulating sex, tobacco, alcohol, guns, driving, drugs, gambling and food. Whether these things are good, bad or no one's business is clearly up to the beholder. Liberal hangouts -- Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin -- swoop down on tobacco but look the other way on marijuana. For example, Washington state bans smoking not only in public places but within 25 feet of its doors and even closed windows. Thus, in parts of Seattle, the Reason article said, "smokers literally have to stand in the middle of the street to comply with the law." The opposite happens in conservative parts of the country. Nashville, Indianapolis, Memphis and Jacksonville go easy on tobacco but not on pot. Houston and El Paso are tough on both smoking and marijuana, but guns are another matter. [continues 457 words]
The loud cheers that have met the Brazilian film Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite), soon to be released in this country, provide as good an image of attitudes toward the rule of law in Latin America as any sociological treatise. The film is a disturbing semi-fictional account of the activities of a police battalion in charge of fighting drug traffickers in the slums of Rio. It has become a phenomenon in Brazil, where 11 million people have seen the film, either at the cinema or through illegal copies. [continues 625 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]
