The Islamic State and its terrorist proxies would suffer if cannabis were decriminalized, Italy's top prosecutor argues. In a recent interview, Franco Roberti also pointed out the links between the extremist group and organized crime in his country. Roberti is Italy's anti-terrorism and anti-mafia chief, a joint portfolio that was created last year. He said decriminalizing marijuana - or even making it legal - would dent the illicit networks that profit from its sale and production. The Islamic State, in particular, gleans money off smuggling routes from parts of Libya into Europe. [continues 355 words]
Many at the UN General Assembly this week, not least the Latin American countries, tired of the problems borne of criminalising users, will make the case for harm-reduction programmes, writes Kerry Cullinan. FOR THE first time in 20 years, the UN has convened a special session on "the world drug problem" amid fierce international debate about whether drug users should primarily be punished or rehabilitated. The UN General Assembly special session on drugs, which started yesterday and runs until tomorrow, was called after Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala appealed to the body to revise the global approach to illegal drugs. [continues 830 words]
Many members of the UN General Assembly are tired of the problems borne of criminalising drug users, and will be making the case instead for harm-reduction programmes, writes Kerry Cullinan For the first time in 20 years, the UN has convened a special session on "the world drug problem" amid fierce international debate about whether drug users should primarily be punished or rehabilitated. The UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs, which started yesterday and runs until tomorrow, was called after Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala appealed to the body to revise the global approach to illegal drugs. [continues 852 words]
No different than liquor stores. If not quite reefer madness, it's a mentality straight out of the archaic past, when marijuana was considered a dangerous narcotic only capable of corrupting our youth and incinerating societal mores, rather than a regulated medicine legally available across Canada. City council, for some reason, remains entrenched in the dope-fiend mythology and fear mongering prevalent a century ago, and this week's Calgary Planning Commission agenda points directly to that paranoia, in grouping medical marijuana counselling with liquor stores under the land use bylaw. [continues 581 words]
Former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour is among a host of international jurists, politicians, celebrities and sports stars to sign a letter that denounces the "disastrous" war on drugs and urges the United Nations to lead the world toward a more enlightened drug policy. "Humankind cannot afford a 21st century drug policy as ineffective and counter-productive as the last century's," reads the letter, delivered to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in advance of next week's UN special session on drugs. [continues 347 words]
Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, arrives in New York this week with a clear message to the UN general assembly special session on drugs: the failure of the "war on drugs" to deal with the human cost of narco traffic and drug abuse. Santos's message will be: the whole policy needs to be rethought, with a different set of priorities. President Santos first called for an overhaul in policy towards drugs in an interview with this newspaper in 2011, urging that "a new approach should try and take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking". He has continued to drive that conversation forward with the moral authority bestowed by leading a country that was nearly destroyed by the violence and corrupting influence of cartel money on the police, judiciary and the body politic. It was close to a failed state in the late 90s and it was drugs that did that damage. [continues 194 words]
MEXICO CITY - More than a dozen conspirators gathered at the headquarters of the Honduran National Police just after 9:30 p.m. One of them clicked open a briefcase, and bundles of American dollars were distributed among the police officers - payment for the next day's hit job. After everyone else filed out of the room, the three highest-ranking officers stayed behind to make a call. "Keep watch over the news tomorrow, sir," one of them said, according to case files gathered by Honduran investigators. "We'll do it all in the morning, good night, sir." [continues 1549 words]
The South Sulawesi Wirabuana Military Command proposed on Thursday that the Army chief of staff dismiss Makassar Military commander Col. Inf. Jefri Oktavian Rotti for consuming drugs. "We have recommended his dismissal and for his successor to be inaugurated soon," Wirabuana Military Commander Maj. Gen. Agus Surya Bakti said. Jefri was arrested while allegedly consuming drugs with the head of the operations command and control center, Lt. Col. Budi Iman Santoso, and five civilians at a hotel in Makassar on Wednesday. [continues 419 words]
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan - Afghans have an expression: "Well, whatever has happened, we are still skinny." In other words, they have not gotten rich yet, try as they might. It is an expression heard often here in Helmand Province, the southwestern region that is the world capital of opium and heroin production. Afghanistan accounts for 90 percent of the world's heroin; more than two-thirds of that comes from Helmand's opium poppies, according to United Nations figures. Sometimes, the expression is uttered enviously - how did we miss out? Other times, it is delivered with greedy sarcasm - how much more can we get before the feeding frenzy is over? [continues 1309 words]
The year 2008 was momentous. Lehman Brothers collapsed, Radovan Karad i was arrested, Russian troops massed on the Georgian border, and Barack Obama beat John McCain to the White House. But 2008 was also significant for something that didn't happen. It was the year that the world didn't eliminate the illicit drugs problem. This quixotic goal had been set a decade earlier at a United Nations general assembly special session when, under the vainglorious slogan "We can do it", the supranational body pledged that, by 2008, the world would be "drug free". [continues 2177 words]
The Money Governments Pour into Stopping the Flow of Drugs Could Be Better Spent on Education, Treatment and Better Healthcare. You may have read recently that the late John Ehrlichman, a senior policy adviser to disgraced United States president Richard Nixon, admitted that the administration's 1971 declaration of a "war on drugs" was an invention, a lie. Its purpose was a political diversion; to create the perception of fear and uncertainty among the US population. It was directed at young blacks and leftist "activists" who became the scapegoats and collateral damage of the so-called "war". Know thy enemy. [continues 759 words]
Gang Town, the City Press Tafelberg Nonfiction Award-winning book by Don Pinnock, is being released this month and is a comprehensive and relatable look at gangsterism on the Cape Flats. This edited extract looks at how the international 'war on drugs' means a war on our youth that need not be happening. Gang Town by Don Pinnock Tafelberg 280 pages R225 Cape Town has a youth drug problem that's out of control. It's possible to fix it, but it will need a government with both insight and guts. Drugs largely drive Cape Town's stratospheric levels of interpersonal violent crime. Users rob and steal to get them, gangs murder to retain their sales turf and drug lords hold neighbourhoods in thrall by violence. There is a solution to this, but it would take a brave and resolute government to implement it. [continues 1310 words]
MORELIA, Mexico - Pope Francis delivered his most searing indictment of the Mexican underworld Tuesday, encouraging the nation's youth to value themselves and resist the temptation to join forces with "criminal organizations that sow terror." Since his arrival Friday, Francis has made no secret of his desire to challenge the drug syndicates that have corroded Mexican life for decades. He commanded bishops to be more proactive in facing down the scourge of narcotics and denounced gangs as dealers of death. On Tuesday, in the cartel bastion of Michoacan, he mounted his most full-throated assault, imploring young people not to lose faith and become the "mercenaries of other people's ambitions." [continues 900 words]
MORELIA, Mexico - Alma Martinez got a call last year that made her whole body go cold. Her mom's voice sounded shaky and harsh: "They have him," she said, referring to Martinez's uncle. "But who has him?" Martinez asked. "Los narcos," her mother said. The narco traffickers. Martinez, 17, traveled miles Tuesday to see and hear Pope Francis, hoping his message would bring comfort to the thousands of victims of drug-gang violence like her and her family. "Something like that really hits you, you know?" she said, speaking of her uncle's kidnapping and eventual freedom, after the family paid a ransom. "And it's not just us - it happens to a lot of families here in Michoacan." [continues 1036 words]
GARMSIR, Afghanistan - The United States spent more than $7 billion in the past 14 years to fight the runaway poppy production that has made Afghan opium the world's biggest brand. Tens of billions more went to governance programs to stem corruption and train a credible police force. Countless more dollars and thousands of lives were lost on the main thrust of the war: to put the Afghan government in charge of district centers and to instill rule of law. But here in one of the few corners of Helmand Province that is peaceful and in firm government control, the green stalks and swollen bulbs of opium were growing thick and high within eyeshot of official buildings during the past poppy season - signs of a local narco-state administered directly by government officials. [continues 1896 words]
GARMSIR, Afghanistan - The United States spent more than $7 billion in the past 14 years to fight the runaway poppy production that has made Afghan opium the world's biggest brand. Tens of billions more went to governance programs to stem corruption and train a credible police force. Countless more dollars and thousands of lives were lost on the main thrust of the war: to put the Afghan government in charge of district centers and to instill rule of law. But here in one of the only corners of Helmand province that are peaceful and in firm government control, the green stalks and swollen bulbs of opium were growing thick and high within view of official buildings during the past poppy season - signs of a local narco-state administered directly by government officials. [continues 350 words]
The United Nations is aiming to set a new macro policy on recreational drugs worldwide, starting today. It has taken almost a generation even to get to this point, which is the token beginning of a UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs. There are strong feelings emerging that the UN itself might even take a stand leaning towards legalisation of such drugs. A kickoff meeting this evening in New York will hear testimony, mostly from the pro-enforcement side. This is, essentially, Thailand's time to stand up for this country's policies on illegal drugs - or to call for changes. It is certain that after today's "interactive panel discussions" on the subject that a handful of Latin American countries and most of the 279 NGOs registered to attend will be lobbying hard on the legalisation side. Thailand and Thais are not prepared to go that far. Yet changes must be made. [continues 429 words]
Billionaire warlords, who started as small-time weed smugglers, have swathes of Latin America under their bloody rule, and the chaos is creeping north. But, says IOAN GRILLO, they owe their power to white-collar crooks from the States, who first set up their deadly networks A chain of crime wars is currently strangling Latin America and the Caribbean, drenching it in blood. And the first link in the chain is found in the US. Specifically, in a Barnes and Noble bookshop in a mall in El Paso, Texas. [continues 2430 words]
MEXICO CITY - Armando Santacruz is a clean-cut father of five and successful business owner. Nothing at all about him screams "pothead." Yet, Santacruz, 54, is at the forefront of a growing movement to legalize marijuana in Mexico - a move that could have seismic repercussions both in Mexico and the USA. He talks about legalizing pot with the same impassioned fervor many here use to describe soccer clubs or favorite restaurants. Santacruz was one of four plaintiffs who won a pivotal Supreme Court case here in November, which allowed him and his co-plaintiffs their private consumption of cannabis and galvanized a national debate. [continues 639 words]
The hits just keep coming for Toronto cops. The already low morale among police officers was dealt another blow Thursday with the news that four of their colleagues are charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. "It's definitely having an impact on morale, but the officers who work in this city will keep doing their job to the best of their ability," Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack said. He said cops can't help but be concerned about how the public perceives them in the wake of the criminal charges for allegedly planting heroin during a bust and lying under oath at Nguyen Son Tran's trial. [continues 350 words]