3-Day Crackdown In 5 Northeast Counties Results In 355 Arrests BOAZ - One of the country's most dangerous gangs is believed to be behind drug dealing and other crimes in DeKalb and Marshall counties, according to law enforcement officials. At a news conference Friday in Boaz, Assistant FBI Director Kenneth Kaiser said the El Salvador-based gang MS-13 has a presence in the area. "We have a major concern about them," he said. "They are a very violent, prevalent group." [continues 420 words]
A Politician Says That If the U.S. Doesn't Pass a Free-Trade Agreement, His Country Could Be Forced to Withdraw. BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- A prominent politician closely allied with President Alvaro Uribe said his nation should pull out of a U.S.-financed effort to fight drug trafficking and terrorism if the American Congress does not pass a free-trade agreement with his country. Sen. Carlos Garcia, a presidential aspirant and leader of the largest bloc in Colombia's Congress, said Monday in an interview that the failure to pass the trade accord could force the government to withdraw from Plan Colombia, which has cost the United States about $5 billion over seven years. [continues 705 words]
Five More Lawmakers Are Arrested, Accused of Having Ties to Illegal Paramilitary Groups. BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- The scandal involving alleged links between Colombian lawmakers and illegal paramilitary groups widened Thursday with the arrest of five more members of Congress, including a senator who is the brother of Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo. The arrests of Sen. Alvaro Araujo and the others could further tarnish President Alvaro Uribe, who since being reelected to a second term in a landslide last year has been rocked by allegations that some close legislative supporters have ties to the right-wing armies. The arrests are also bound to increase calls that Maria Araujo resign. [continues 299 words]
The lush, green replacements began arriving the day after an Olympic Peninsula-based drug task force raided Steve Sarich's North Everett home, carting away an estimated 1,500 marijuana plants. By Sunday, nine days after the Jan. 13 raid, Sarich's new nursery numbered 50 plants -- eight big enough for their own pots, 15 starter-sized plants with roots and 27 freshly cut clones, each stuck into its own egg-sized pod of sod. "If they didn't arrest me with 1,500, it's not likely they're going to come back and arrest me for 50," said Sarich, whose advocacy group, CannaCare, says it has provided marijuana plants for 1,200 patients all over the state. Some of his new plants, delivered by patients in Longview, Federal Way and Vancouver, Wash., are descendants of the plants he lost. [continues 790 words]
San Francisco -- Kevin Reed launched his medical marijuana business two years ago, armed with big dreams and an Excel spreadsheet. Happy customers at his Green Cross cannabis club were greeted by "bud tenders" and glass jars brimming with high-quality weed at red-tag prices. They hailed the slender, gentle Southerner as a ganja good Samaritan. Though Reed set out to run it like a Walgreens, his tiny storefront shop ended up buzzing with jazzy joie de vivre. Turnover was Starbucks-style: On a good day, $30,000 in business would walk through the black, steel-gated front door. [continues 1926 words]
U.S. Likely Will Back Effort, Officials Say BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - Colombia to the rescue? Overwhelmed by a flourishing opium trade, Afghanistan's government is getting help from a country that knows about narcotics operations. A team of Colombian narcotics police, which spent two weeks in Afghanistan, has come up with a series of recommendations, including better evidence-gathering, airport surveillance, training and organization. U.S. State Department and congressional sources said this week they support Colombia's suggestions and would push for implementation. [continues 474 words]
Washington -- Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of driving under the influence of prescription drugs in a plea bargain with prosecutors stemming from a middle-of-the-night incident last month in which he nearly sideswiped a police cruiser. District of Columbia Superior Court Magistrate Judge Aida Melendez placed the six-term congressman on supervised probation for a year. He was ordered to attend weekly meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, confer regularly with a psychiatrist, submit to random urine tests and contribute $100 to a crime victims fund and $250 to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington, where he will also do 50 hours of community service. [continues 100 words]
Both political parties represented in the B.C. Legislature deserve praise for agreeing on Bill 25, the Safety Standards Amendment Act. This act will require B.C. Hydro to tell municipalities about homes with unusual rates of power consumption -- too high or too low. They will then have the authority to search those homes, after giving 48 hours notice. One NDP MLA, Nicholas Simons, and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis see this as an invasion of privacy. They are correct -- but it is such a minimal intrusion that no law-abiding citizen has anything to worry about. [continues 260 words]
Both political parties represented in the B.C. Legislature deserve praise for agreeing on Bill 25, the Safety Standards Amendment Act. This act will require B.C. Hydro to tell municipalities about homes with unusual rates of power consumption -- too high or too low. They will then have the authority to search those homes, after giving 48 hours notice. One NDP MLA, Nicholas Simons, and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis see this as an invasion of privacy. They are correct -- but it is such a minimal intrusion that no law-abiding citizen has anything to worry about. [continues 250 words]
MAPLE RIDGE - Ridge Meadows Hospital can't contain its crystal-meth addicts. Maple Ridge-Mission MLA Randy Hawes said he's been in touch with Solicitor-General John Les about it, and is hoping a solution can be found as soon as possible. Hawes said he has spoken to Les on the need for a "holding place for people that are in drug psychosis and considered dangerous." "They are violent and they are a medical problem . . . they're not a police problem, but the hospital's not equipped for that," he said. [end]
Forum Elicits Sharp Differences, Often Provocative Views Make every sixth-grader pass a reading test before graduating. Strap satellite locators to all sex offenders. Lock up employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Ax a well-know anti-drug program from public classrooms. Create separate stand-alone schools for gifted children. Seated on a riser at the front of a ballroom in the Holiday Inn in Huntsville on Friday, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley found herself as the lone big-money candidate awash in a river of provocative ideas from four lesser-known people who also hope to become Alabama's next governor. [continues 661 words]
New Fight: Agency contradicts Findings of Scientist On Uses WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of smoked marijuana. The statement, which contradicts a 1999 review by top government scientists, inserts the health agency into yet another fierce political fight. Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said Thursday's statement resulted from a combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded "smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment." She said that the FDA was issuing the statement because of numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill but would likely do nothing to enforce it. [continues 152 words]
For 500 years the fiercely independent Kuna people of Panama have fought off everything from conquistadors to tourism pushers. Now they face an interloper that threatens them with the scourge of addiction. After keeping the world at bay for five centuries, the Kuna Indians on Panama's unspoiled Caribbean coast now confront an insidious intruder: cocaine traffickers. The fiercely independent tribe inhabits Kuna Yala, a semiautonomous area that includes a coastal strip and the San Blas islands. The region is known mainly to foreign eco-tourists who can afford to reach its isolated white sand beaches. [continues 913 words]
Gov. George E. Pataki on Saturday commuted the sentence of a Bronx man serving nine years in prison for drug possession, the 33rd time he has taken such action in his 11 years as governor. The clemency granted to the man, Darryl Best, 49, who is imprisoned at Otisville Correctional Facility in Orange County, was the first this year. The governor granted no executive clemencies last year. Best will now be eligible for release form prison in January. He was originally sentenced in 2001 to a prison term of 15 years to life on a charge of first-degree possession of a controlled substance, according to the governor's office. It was his only criminal convection. [continues 162 words]
When Gov. George E. Pataki signed a law a year ago reducing what he called "unduly long sentences" for drug crimes, he predicted that hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders would be released from prison. But so far, only 142 prisoners - about 30 percent of those originally eligible for new sentences under the revised law - have been freed, according to a report released yesterday by the Legal Aid Society. The new sentencing provisions of the Drug Law Reform Act of 2004 changed the mandatory sentencing laws imposed in 1973 when Nelson Rockefeller was governor. [continues 152 words]
MAPLE RIDGE - District of Maple Ridge staff members are planning a bylaw change that could penalize people who carry drug paraphernalia into public parks. The change to parks regulations, which is aimed at a variety of anti-social behaviours, will likely be presented to council in the next few weeks, according to Brock McDonald, director of business licensing, permits and bylaws. McDonald said the city is also looking at constructing more public washroom facilities as an alternative to people using the bushes as a latrine. Many of the violations are committed by Maple Ridge's population of homeless people and drug addicts. But the municipality might be overstepping its jurisdiction if it attempts to pass such a regulation, said Murray Mollard, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Regulations haven't solved it in the past and he doubts they will now. [end]
ABBOTSFORD - His business licence application is still being reviewed by City of Abbotsford officials, but Tim Felger says that isn't stopping him from conducting business. Known for his pro-marijuana activism, Felger has applied for a business licence for a bookstore and political office in a leased building in downtown Abbotsford -- an office he says he'll need in order to prepare for November municipal elections. "It's too early to tell how much of a run-around they're giving me," Felger said of city officials "I'm going to get my message out if I have to sit on the street corner and do it." [continues 57 words]
CHILLIWACK - City council took a couple of steps last week aimed at public safety. They supported a motion to join the B.C. Crime Prevention Association and they also have directed staff to organize a public forum about the use and production of methamphetamines, commonly known as crystal meth. "This is a very big concern in the community, and it's something we have to get ahead of very quickly," Coun. Chuck Stam said. No date was set for the forum at the council meeting but the event is likely to take place sometime in the fall. While the city is at the forefront of things when it comes to organizing the forum, they will be looking for other groups and individuals to play key roles, including the Sto:lo Nation who recently put on a forum examining the drug's perils. [end]
The Rhode Island legislature passed a bill yesterday allowing the use of medical marijuana, three weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities could prosecute those who use the drug for medicinal purposes, even in states with laws allowing it. The bill passed the State Senate by a vote of 33 to 1 last evening and will head to the desk of Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, who is likely to reject it. Supporters of the bill, which passed the House 52 to 10 last week, are confident they have the necessary three-fifths majority to override a veto and make Rhode Island the 11th state to authorize patients to use the drug. [continues 100 words]
WASHINGTON - U.S. Officials warned this month in an internal assessment that an American-financed poppy eradication program aimed at curtailing Afghanistan's huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership." A cable sent on May 13 from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said the provincial officials and village elders, many of whom are suspected of having ties to the drug trade, had impeded destruction of significant poppy acreage and that top Afghan officials, including Karzai, had done little to overcome the local resistance. [continues 333 words]
CHILLIWACK - The city is using a new weapon in its ongoing battle with people whose homes are used to grow marijuana. Earlier this month the city held show cause hearings concerning a couple of properties, and more were slated for Monday night. The tactic council is taking, using powers from a recent bylaw, is to place notice on the titles of properties stating they are hazardous, in order to force the owners to make the homes inhabitable. "Under the bylaw we can order them to bring the homes into compliance," Mayor Clint Hames. [continues 109 words]
ABBOTSFORD - A 90-day Grow Op Public Safety pilot project that kicked in Thursday should give Abbotsford one of the most effective marijuana-growing operation busting tools in Canada, said Mayor Mary Reeves. The aim of the project is to improve public safety, eradicate growing operations and to recover fire, police and city costs from owners whose properties contain marijuana growing operations or street drug labs. "We've been getting lots of calls from other jurisdictions across the country wanting a copy of this bylaw," Reeves said at the official launch at city hall Thursday. [continues 138 words]
CHILLIWACK - Council wants to hear from owners of two properties on which marijuana-growing operations were found as to why the city should not close the homes until they are no longer hazardous. Council has passed motions inviting the owners of 45832 Wellington Ave., a numbered company from Vancouver, and 4985 Cultus Lake Rd., owned by Michael Anthony Janecky and Eva Maria Janecky, to a show cause hearing May 2. City staff have found in both cases the homes fail to meet building permit requirements for health and safety reasons. [continues 52 words]
Target Corp., the United States' second-largest discount retailer, has announced that it will begin selling a wide range of nonprescription cold and allergy medications only from behind the pharmacy counter because they contain a key ingredient used in making methamphetamine. Medications containing the decongestant pseudoephedrine, known as PSE, include NyQuil, Claritin-D, Sudafed, Tylenol Flu and more than a hundred other products used to treat cold, allergy and sinus symptoms. Target said on Monday that it was the first national retailer to voluntarily restrict sales of such drugs to the pharmacy counter. [continues 186 words]
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- By insisting that California make rehabilitation a focus of prison, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is joining political leaders who think it is time for a new approach to incarceration. For almost three decades, politicians have belittled efforts to rehabilitate inmates as ineffective. Led by California, the nation undertook a prison-building binge and adopted tough crime laws that pushed the inmate population past 2 million. Now, with states under persistent economic stress and evidence showing that most inmates are rearrested within three years of release, lawmakers nationwide are acknowledging the need for change. There now is broad agreement that locking up and mostly ignoring offenders has been far from a cure-all for crime. [continues 286 words]
ABBOTSFORD - The City of Abbotsford wants businesses who sell hydroponics supplies and used goods -- especially guns or equipment used in marijuana growing operations -- to pass their customer information on to local police. That was one of three resolutions city council approved this week to send to the next annual gathering of the Lower Mainland Municipal Association, held May 11-13. The council debated four resolutions, but combined two of them related to growing-operation equipment. That resolution calls for an amendment to the Community Charter and a request to the provincial government to require "all businesses retailing or wholesaling equipment and supplies that are associated with marijuana grow operations . . . to keep track of their customers and notify the chief constable that has jurisdiction in the local government." [end]
CHILLIWACK - For property and business owners along Alexander Avenue, the problem over a needle exchange moving into their neighbourhood boils down to one of communication. About 30 of them gathered for an information meeting Monday morning at city hall. At one point, one person even threatened to stop paying city taxes, and it was clear most were unsettled by the prospect as well as the lack of notification about the move. "I just found about it this morning," Ken Popove, a local business operator, said. Another man described the development as a "real cloak-and-dagger little deal." [continues 59 words]
Our Health Nearly one in five eighth-graders said they have attempted to get high by inhaling potentially toxic vapors such as those found in glue, gasoline, paint thinner, butane lighters, nail polish remover and aerosol sprays. In a nationwide survey conducted at 147 schools, about 17.3 percent of 17,413 U.S. eighth-graders said they had tried sniffing such substances. The anonymous questionnaires, collected last year by University of Michigan researchers, showed the second consecutive surge in the abuse rate -- up from 15.3 percent in 2003 -- after a 40 percent decline following a campaign in the mid-'90s against the solvents' dangers. [continues 175 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan - Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the source of most of the opium and heroin on Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching the highest levels in the country's history and in the world, the United Nations announced on Thursday. " In Afghanistan, drugs are now a clear and present danger," said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the U.N. Office of Drugs and crime, on the release of the 2004 Afghanistan opium survey. " The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality. [continues 258 words]
FRASER VALLEY - A marijuana find locked down Kent Institution Wednesday night. Prisoners in the Unit 1 general population were locked in the cells after staff discovered 69 grams (about 2.5 ounces) of marijuana in the exercise yard during the prison's "recreation period." [end]
Weldon H. Angelos, a 25-year-old producer of rap records, will be sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Salt Lake City for selling several hundred dollars in marijuana on each of three occasions, his first offences. He faces 63 years in prison. Laws that set mandatory minimums sentences require 55 of the 63 years because Angelos carried a gun while he sold the drugs. "It would appear effectively to be a life sentence," the judge, Paul G. Cassell of U. S. District Court there, wrote in a request to the prosecution and the defense for advice about whether he has any choice but to send the man to prison forever. [continues 153 words]
ABBOTSFORD - Vancouver resident Mark Boyer, who was a Marijuana Party candidate for Kingsway East in the June federal election, is taking the Abbotsford Police Service to court this week, claiming that they breached Sect. 337 of the Canada Criminal Code in refusing to return property that was taken from an Abbotsford marijuana growing operation. Boyer said the Abbotsford operation was legal, as he had arranged to have a crop raised for his marijuana compassion club. But he said the July 5 bust was illegal as the police came into the home without a warrant and removed equipment. [continues 57 words]
ALBANY - One of the enduring mysteries here in recent years is why the state has been unable to overhaul the Rockefeller drug laws, which force judges to sentence drug offenders to lengthy prison terms that the three most powerful state officials, Gov. George E. Pataki and the leaders of both houses of the Legislature, agree are draconian. Officials came within a hair's breadth of rewriting the laws last year, only to have the deal dissolve in the middle of the night behind closed doors. [continues 524 words]
CHEVALIER, Haiti - The riches that arrived in this tiny village came from the sea - not in fisherman's nets but in an abandoned speedboat that washed up last year stocked with dozens of cellophane-wrapped bricks of Colombian cocaine. "Everyone else was grabbing it, so I took some," said Vital, a young fisherman. I gave it to my father, and the men came from Port-au-Prince to buy it for a lot of money." The cargo taught this southern coastal village what Haitian police and government officials have known for years: The drug trade is one of the few ways in Haiti to amass a fortune. [continues 277 words]
'Shame on you," I say when I want to put my grandson in check. He hangs his head, lowers his eyes, and tears well up. It is only when I tell him that I still love him and forgive him that his dimpled smile returns. In most instances, I know the hangdog look is an act. Still, he's got my number. Shame is burdensome. All my parents had to do was make me feel humiliated, and I straightened up. "Whatever happened to good ol' fashioned shame," a friend asked me recently as she considered the unrepentant way writer J.L. King is bragging about his sordid sex life. In most circumstances, remorse is a good emotion. It is our moral compass, so even if we haven't been to church since we moved out of our parents' house, shame lets us know we are perilously close to the hellfire the preacher warned us about. [continues 744 words]
TOPPENISH, Wash. - After 55 years of packing Eastern Washington asparagus, the Del Monte Foods factory here moved operations to Peru last year, eliminating 365 jobs. As the global economy churns, nearly every sector has a story about U.S. jobs landing on cheaper shores. But what happened to the U.S. asparagus industry is rare, farmers here say, because it became a casualty of the government's war on drugs. To reduce the flow of cocaine into the U.S. by encouraging farmers in Peru to grow food instead of coca, the United States in the early 1990s started to subsidize the Peruvian asparagus industry, and since then U.S. processing plants have closed and hundreds of farmers have folded. [continues 258 words]
The American prison system will release more than 600,000 prisoners this year --- and half will commit new crimes and be back in prison three years from now. There is at least one proven way to break the cycle: Inmates who earn college degrees tend to stay out of jail. But former offenders have found it increasingly hard to educate themselves since Congress began to cut them off from federal education aid in the 1990s. Lawmakers may not be prepared to revisit the federal ban that made convicted felons ineligible for Pell grants, the federal tuition aid aimed primarily at poor and middle-income students. But the House of Representatives is at least talking about changing the 1998 law under which more than 140,000 students have been turned down for federal student loans because of drug offenses, some of which are minor. [continues 134 words]
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said it's an issue that "is so serious I believe the General Assembly will want to address it.'' The issue is methamphetamine labs, and yes, it is an issue the General Assembly should address. Methamphetamine, or meth, production has skyrocketed in North Carolina, and the western part of the state is no exception. The production curve is alarming. In 1999 nine meth labs were investigated in North Carolina. That number jumped to 18 in 2000, 34 in 2001, 98 in 2002 and as this year winds down, 171 labs have been busted to date. [continues 395 words]
Under-age drinkers consume about 20 percent of all the alcohol imbibed in this country, according to a report published last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Many parents are already aware of the horrific problem young Americans have with binge drinking, but it's time to spread the alarm. The alcoholic beverage industry dismisses the new study, by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, as an "attempt to manipulate data to get headlines." But the study gains credence from being published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, where an editorial by the heads of two federal substance abuse agencies called its findings on under-age drinking "of particular concern." [continues 356 words]
As a marijuana celebrity, Ed Rosenthal has been on a career roll. The author of a dozen cannabis self-help books and a magazine advice column, "Ask Ed," Mr. Rosenthal is the pothead's answer to Ann Landers, Judge Judy, Martha Stewart and the Burpee Garden Wizard all in one. Can't get rid of the powdery mildew on your cannabis seedling? Try a 20 percent skim-milk solution. The feds got you in court on charges of cultivation? Challenge their crop yield estimates. Want a high without the harmful tar? Use a pipe that vaporizes it. [continues 526 words]
In 1999, the 17-year-old son of New Jersey resident Carol Thomas used her car without her knowledge or consent to sell marijuana to an undercover police officer. Though no drugs were found in the car and Carol Thomas was clearly an innocent owner, the state moved to take her car anyway. With the help of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, Thomas fought to get her $1,500 car back. She also challenged the constitutionality of a statutory scheme that creates an incentive for law enforcement to seize property without worrying too much about guilt or innocence. [continues 477 words]
Baltimore Blaze Killed Activist Mom And 5 Of Her 6 Children BALTIMORE - In this city where 60,000 people, about 1 in 10 residents, are addicted to narcotics, a simple message appears on billboards, police cruisers, city buses, T-shirts, brochures and in TV commercials: "Believe." That slogan from a $2 million anti-drug campaign Baltimore began six months ago, is part exhortation, part call to action, part desperate plea to take back the neighborhoods, to report drug dealers, to seek drug treatment, to become a police officer or a mentor to a troubled youngster. [continues 521 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- Officials in the liberal seaside town of Santa Cruz may not be marijuana smokers, but on Tuesday they became pot purveyors with a political cause. In a display of defiance triggered by a recent federal bust of a local medical marijuana club, Mayor Christopher Krohn and six City Council members met outside City Hall to watch as workers from the Women's Alliance for Medical Marijuana dispensed the drug to sick people. Several hundred residents filled City Hall plaza to cheer speakers and throw an old-fashioned anti-government rally. [continues 231 words]
LAS VEGAS -- The state that legalized cathouses and craps is now considering condoning cannabis. A voters initiative on the November ballot would permit possession in Nevada of up to 3 ounces of marijuana by people 21 and older. They would be allowed to smoke it in the privacy of their own homes, but not in their car or public places. While law enforcement officials are railing against the measure, state officials are quietly pondering how the state-licensed sale and taxation of marijuana may stoke the state's coffers by tens of millions of dollars annually. [continues 107 words]
WASHINGTON - A broad narcotics sweep involving 25,000 law enforcement officers and coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration across 15 countries of Central Asia and the Balkans has resulted in the arrest or detention of thousands of suspects, federal officials said last week. The sweep this summer - from June 10 to July 11 - seized more than 3,700 pounds of heroin and nine tons of other narcotics. For years, the agency has conducted multinational actions in Latin America, but this operation was the first to cover the Balkans and Central Asia, the officials said. [continues 330 words]
WASHINGTON -- The United States has determined that about one-third of foreign terrorist organizations traffic in narcotics on a large scale, providing authorities "shocking" insight into how two of the nation's most serious threats are connected, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Tuesday. "Law enforcement has been aware for some time of significant linkages between terrorism and drug trafficking. But we have not had the tools to quantify the drugs-terrorism nexus until now," Ashcroft said in a speech before the annual conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. [continues 165 words]
MANAUS, Brazil - For as long as Brazil has been a nation, outlaws of every type, from gold smugglers and slave traders to drug traffickers and gun runners, have taken refuge in the Amazon, the world's largest jungle wilderness, secure in the knowledge that they could not be tracked down. As of Friday, though, that shelter is no longer guaranteed. A new American-financed, $1.4 billion system of radar and sensors has begun monitoring activity in a 1.9 million-square-mile area of trackless rain forest and rivers that is larger than half the continental United States. [continues 275 words]
WASHINGTON -- The United States has determined that about one-third of foreign terrorist organizations are trafficking in narcotics on a large scale, providing authorities with "shocking" insight into how two of the nation's most serious threats are connected, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Tuesday. "Law enforcement has been aware for some time of significant linkages between terrorism and drug trafficking. But we have not had the tools to quantify the drugs-terrorism nexus until now," Ashcroft said in a speech before the annual conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force. [continues 303 words]
BANGALORE: Narcotic drugs like heroin, mandrax and other precursor drugs continue to be smuggled into India from Afganistan and Pakistan. India remains a transit point for the smuggling. However, the manufacture of these drugs in Afganistan, which is a prime source for heroin, has come down. According to statistics, in the year 2000, 320 tonnes of heroin was produced, whereas in 2001, only 30 tonnes were produced. However, the problem of drug traficking continued to be a problem both in the Golden triangle - Burma, Laos, Thailand and in the Golden Crescent - Pakistan, Iran and Afganisthan. [continues 219 words]
Hopes of making big cuts in Afghanistan's opium production this year have been abandoned and officials in Europe and the United States are bracing for a harvest large enough to inundate the world's heroin and opium markets with cheap drugs. While the officials have considered measures such as paying Afghan opium poppy farmers to plough up their fields, they have concluded that continuing lawlessness and political instability make such a scheme all but impossible. Instead, US officials say, they will try a less ambitious strategy: getting Afghan leaders to conduct a modest eradication program as opium poppies are harvested over the next two months. [continues 218 words]
