[photo] Duterte tells civilians 'don't get yourselves kidnapped' as he orders troops to BOMB hostage-takers and threatens to declare martial law as part of Philippines' drug war * President Rodrigo Duterte say kidnap victims may become 'collateral damage' * Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to al-Qaeda, earns millions kidnapping for ransom * Duterte also threatened to bring in martial law in his campaign against drugs * His government also acted at the weekend to ban Filipinos watching Pornhub President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the military to 'blast' Islamist militants who have been on a kidnap-for-ransom spree in the Philippines, even if hostages would also be killed. [continues 759 words]
ZARANJ, Afghanistan - Shortly after sunrise, an Afghan special operations helicopter descended on two vehicles racing through the empty deserts of southern Afghanistan, traversing what has become a superhighway for smugglers and insurgents. Intelligence showed that the men were transporting a huge cache of drugs and weapons from Helmand Province to Nimruz Province, a hub for all things illegal and a way station on the global opium trail. Hovering above, the troops fired tracer rounds into the sandy earth beside the vehicles, which skidded to a stop. [continues 1375 words]
Our government doesn't care enough about protecting Americans from terrorism. If government officials cared, they would end the drug war and focus instead on ISIS. Imagine our country without a drug war. I see a country with $40 billion extra per year to fight terror. I see a country that focuses all its current drug war might, which is used to arrest hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, with literally no reduction in drugs, on breaking up ISIS. I don't mean that we keep bombing them only. When we bomb, we may kill terrorists, but we also kill civilians, and those civilians have family and friends who join the terrorists in vengeance against us. I do not want us to back down at all. I want us to dedicate a massive amount of resources toward creating more professionals like Ali Soufan. He was an FBI agent who spoke fluent Arabic and he was able to flip many Al Qaeda terrorists to work for our side to break up terror networks. [continues 126 words]
As The Washington Post's Liz Sly recently noted, the war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by "al-Qaeda veterans, hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues and Western volunteers." On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas. Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon. A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and now widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war-torn country's black-market economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, fighters and the ability to keep the conflict boiling, according to the Guardian newspaper. [continues 593 words]
CHILAPA, Mexico - For nearly a week, gun-toting masked men loyal to a local drug gang overran this small city along a key smuggling route. Police officers and soldiers stood by as the gunmen patrolled the streets, searching for rivals and hauling off at least 14 men who have not been seen since. "They're fighting over the route through Chilapa," said Virgilio Nava, whose 21-year-old son, a truck driver for the family construction supply business, was one of the men seized in May, though he had no apparent links to either gang. "But we're the ones who are affected." [continues 1477 words]
The number of people murdered in the drug war in the United States is larger than the death toll of our military in Iraq and three times greater than the death rate of our soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Mexican drug cartels kill more people than ISIS and they proliferate mainly in the United States - killing teens and adults indiscriminately. The U.S. is on the verge of legalizing pot in many states. Why not all? In fact, why not legalize the sale of all drugs and tax them? [continues 177 words]
I am a peaceful, proud, patriotic pothead. As such, I relish the rights afforded to all Americans by the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and political expression. As a patriot I feel it's my duty to express my opinion on things my government does, whether it's popular or not. This is what I've always believed as I openly spoke out against our nation's war on drugs. Because of Mike Huckabee's presidential announcement, this column is dedicated to exercising my free speech rights again by voicing my opposition to America's daily bombing of the Middle East's Muslim populations. Which we've done for decades now, in the name of the goodness Huckabee-like Americans think we dole out. This is the real reason some of them want to attack us or bomb us back as Osama bin Laden did - not because they're jealous of our freedoms, as that self-righteous idiot from Texas claimed. [continues 967 words]
Make no mistake about it: the recent heroin epidemic is exactly what the Taliban and al-Qaeda were hoping to achieve. Sure, it took the tightening of prescription drug supplies to give it the boost it needed, but with introductory level pricing, it was just a matter of time before they'd sew the market up. So, when will this nation allocate real and serious dollars to fight this terror attack? Perhaps it would help to begin referring to it not just as an epidemic, but as the chemical weapon attack it is. Because that's what it's going to take -- a huge intervention. That and the acceptance that we cannot do this with our existing under-funded chemical dependency facilities and the half-baked policies of health insurance companies when it comes to drug addiction. ROCHESTER [end]
LONDON: (AFP) When Britain bans the herbal stimulant khat, Mohamod Ahmed Mohamed will lose his livelihood. But he fears most for his small Somali community without the leaf that fuels its social life. "I can switch to another business but what about the youth, where are they going to go-the street, the mosque, to hard drugs?" he says at his khat warehouse near London's Heathrow airport. "You are taking away their freedom. Why target us? You will never find somebody falling over on the street or fighting from khat like they do when they are drunk." [continues 625 words]
We can grow some drugs locally and fair-trade drugs can supply the rest. Following the principles of the 100-mile diet, medical marijuana is best grown close to home to reduce transportation costs and support local growers. Kamloops' city council is sensibly looking at zoning of industrial land for marijuana crops and the federal government wants to reduce small grow ops in favour of larger facilities. However, it's not practical to grow drugs such as coca and poppies close to home. And practicality aside, many of these growers could benefit from fair trade and legalization. [continues 423 words]
MAUA, KENYA-James Mithika is a farmer in chocolate brown wingtips. His plot of land lies not far from Mount Kenya, off a red dirt road and a short walk past the goat that bleats like an old man clearing his throat. Mithika moves cautiously to avoid tromping on the beans his mother insisted on planting and then shows us his prized two-acre field of moss-covered and gnarly trees, some more than 100 years old. "The best miraa in the world," Mithika proclaims. [continues 4292 words]
WASHINGTON - In a significant expansion of the war on drugs, the United States has begun training an elite unit of counternarcotics police in Ghana and planning similar units in Nigeria and Kenya as part of an effort to combat the Latin American cartels that are increasingly using Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe. The growing American involvement in Africa follows an earlier escalation of antidrug efforts in Central America, according to documents, Congressional testimony and interviews with a range of officials at the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Pentagon. [continues 1149 words]
The leafy stimulant khat has been smuggled into Canada in bongo drums, golf bags, boxes labelled "technical manuals" and "telecommunications equipment," airline luggage, courier packages and mail. But while khat smuggling has become a nuisance crime for Canadian authorities, who seize around 20,000 kilograms of it every year, a series of arrests in Britain on Tuesday suggests it is now being used to fundraise for terrorism. Counterterrorism police raided four homes in London, Cardiff and Coventry as part of what Scotland Yard described as "a pre-planned, intelligence-led operation into suspected fundraising for terrorism overseas." [continues 385 words]
BUENOS AIRES - In January, U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Marine Corps Lieutenant General John F. Kelly to head the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM). Based in Miami, Fla., USSOUTHCOM runs military operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and is the key U.S. "drug warrior" in the region. Across the region, the key question, among civilian and military leaders alike, is whether the change in commanders will bring with it a change in focus. The top priority for USSOUTHCOM is to fight narcotics trafficking from the Andes to the Rio Grande. With the Cold War's end, fighting communism was no longer the U.S. armed forces main objective; USSOUTHCOM increasingly concentrated on pursuing coercive anti-drug initiatives, and funds to fight the drug war were plentiful. But the change in commanders is an opportunity for the U.S. to revise, at long last, its regional doctrine in order to address other pressing security needs. [continues 537 words]
With Millions in Federal Funding, One Goes on the Trail of Synthetic Marijuana. Reporting from Little Rock, Ark.- When Jeffery H. Moran goes to work each day, he swipes his security badge, passes into an airtight chamber, opens a bombproof door and enters a lab full of deadly toxins. As chief of the counter-terrorism laboratory at the Arkansas Department of Health - one of 62 such federally funded labs in the country - he heads two dozen chemists who are on constant alert for the release of pestilence or poisons in the United States. [continues 924 words]
How a Republican Aristocrat and Loyal Bush Soldier Turned into a Marijuana Activist and Public Pot-Stirrer. One day in March, John McKay ran into Jodie Emery. It was an encounter that should have been awkward--to say the least. McKay, the former U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, had put Emery's husband Marc in prison. The so-called "Prince of Pot" is now serving a five-year-sentence in connection with the seed empire he ran from Vancouver, B.C., a business hailed as heroic by the legalization movement and demonic by federal law-enforcement authorities like McKay. [continues 5656 words]
Local Cannabis Cultivators at the Remedy Find a Home and Safe Haven in California It is easy for cannabis-using Californians to forget how good they have it. As of January 1 this year, possessing an ounce or less of marijuana is an infraction punishable by a $100 fine and no criminal record. If you have a medical-cannabis referral, it is basically legal for you to possess, ingest and grow marijuana in California. Not true in America's south, where medieval marijuana laws can ruin a pothead's life. In Florida, 25 marijuana plants is a felony that could get you 15 years in prison. If you get caught growing one plant in the state of Virginia, you can end up in prison for five to 30 years. Any amount of weed can get you a prison term of a year in Tennessee and Alabama. [continues 311 words]
On Feb. 15, Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila pleaded for their lives in Spanish, identifying themselves as American federal agents moments after members of a Mexican drug cartel forced their vehicle bearing U.S. diplomat plates off the highway in Central Mexico. The cartel responded by firing more than 80 rounds from automatic weapons. That event instantly changed the landscape of our nation's involvement in Mexico's bloody war. For the first time in 25 years, cartels are targeting American law enforcement. Avila recently described the ambush by the Zeta cartel, comprised of former Mexican military special forces as "pure evil." Even at the Mexican hospital, he feared that they would come back and finish the job. [continues 543 words]
WASHINGTON - The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where drug rings are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run roughshod over struggling governments. [continues 1926 words]
WASHINGTON -- When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons. But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a longtime American informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. Central Intelligence Agency officers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was building one of Afghanistan's biggest drug operations after the United States-led invasion of the country, according to current and former American officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large amount of cash by the United States. [continues 1773 words]
WASHINGTON - American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai. The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans. [continues 1558 words]
To Combat 'Narcoinsurgency,' Obama Administration Considers New Military And Intelligence Aid Against Drug Gangs WASHINGTON - The Obama administration sees the drug-related violence sweeping Mexico as a growing threat to U.S. national security and has launched a broad review of steps the military and intelligence community could take to help combat what some U.S. officials describe as a narcoinsurgency. U.S. and Mexican officials say the Pentagon's Northern Command, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies are discussing what aviation, surveillance and intelligence assets could be used-both inside Mexico and along the border-to help counter the drug cartels. [continues 1235 words]
GIVE MEXICAN President Felipe Calderon credit for honesty as well as courage. Last week he presided over a three-day public conference to assess the results of nearly four years of war against Mexico's drug cartels. Most of the facts were grim: - -- According to the chief of the national intelligence service, 28,000 people have died violently since Mr. Calderon deployed the Mexican army against the drug gangs in December 2006. That number represents an increase of 3,000 over the death toll the government reported earlier this summer. [continues 360 words]
Northern Mexico continues its descent into chaos. If any doubt remains about which side is winning the country's drug war, go ask a Mexican journalist in Nuevo Laredo to explain it. Can't find one? That's probably because they're hiding and refuse to receive visitors at their newspaper and television offices. Cartel informants are interspersed among their staffs, so nobody dares speak openly about what they know. Another possibility is to pick up a newspaper and read all the articles about rampant drug violence in Nuevo Laredo. [continues 474 words]
KHADAKALAY, Afghanistan-It took a few tense seconds for U.S. and Afghan soldiers to realize that a sudden burst of gunfire and explosions one recent afternoon wasn't aimed at them but at a different patrol a mile away. Everyone relaxed. A U.S. lieutenant resumed chatting with village elders. And four Afghan soldiers leaned back on some idle farm equipment and lit up a joint in full view of U.S. troops and an American reporter. Use of marijuana, opium and heroin among Afghan troops, even while on patrol, is just one of the challenges coalition forces face in working with the Afghan National Army as they begin a major push against the Taliban in and around the southern city of Kandahar. [continues 1766 words]
"Rocky Mountain Rambo" has hit the talk-show circuit. Gary Faulkner is the guy from Greeley who was thwarted this month while trying to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Pakistani police confiscated a small amount of hashish when they caught him near the Afghan border. He was carrying a pistol, 40-inch sword and night-vision goggles. As my colleague Tom McGhee tells me, he has proudly displayed a sticker advertising a Greeley-area medical marijuana dispensary on his apartment window. [continues 514 words]
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has invited leaders of seven African countries, plus Colombia, Jamaica and Haiti, to a special session of this month's G8 summit of industrial countries to discuss the international narcotics trade. The seven African invitees are Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. After Mr. Harper announced the 10 invitees yesterday, an official cited narcotics channels from the Caribbean and South America to Europe via West Africa, a hub for financing traffickers by groups in the organization called al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. [continues 171 words]
Lawlessness, Drug Crimes Down Sharply BOGOTA -- It is a pretty typical scene even for a weeknight. Restaurants and bars are teeming with patrons, the beat of traditional Latin music spilling out on the crowded sidewalks. Stores are packed with evening shoppers and a steady stream of international business executives and tourists are checking in to gleaming new hotels. But it is a remarkably different setting for Colombia's capital than a few years ago, when many people rarely left their homes after dark for fear of bombings, homicides, and kidnappings by drug cartels, criminal gangs, and guerrilla fighters. [continues 1103 words]
On the tarmac of Osvaldo Vieira, the international airport of the West African coastal country of Guinea-Bissau, sits a once-elegant Gulfstream jet, which in the normal course of events would have no reason to land in a country with no business opportunities and virtually no economy. In recent years, however, Guinea-Bissau has emerged as a nodal point in three-way cocaine-trafficking operations linking producers in South America with users in Europe; the value of the cocaine that transits this small and heartbreakingly impoverished country dwarfs its gross national product. [continues 2926 words]
Strong Demand and the High Profits That Are the Result of Prohibition Make Illegal Trafficking Unstoppable. They say that the first step in dealing with a problem is acknowledging that you have one. It is therefore good news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation to Mexico tomorrow to talk with officials there about efforts to fight the mob violence that is being generated in Mexico by the war on drugs. U.S. recognition of this shared problem is healthy. [continues 804 words]
'Either the Narcos, or the State.' In 1985, Mexican drug traffickers kidnapped, tortured and murdered Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, an undercover American DEA agent working out of the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara. The Reagan Administration reportedly hired bounty hunters to bring his killers to justice, in part because it could not rely on the Mexican government to do so. Americans are once again being killed by Mexico's narcos. On Saturday, Lesley Enriquez, an American employee at the U.S. consulate in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, was gunned down in broad daylight with her husband, orphaning their seven-month-old daughter. The Mexican husband of another consulate employee was also killed in a separate incident at nearly the same time. [continues 377 words]
The U.S. military assault under way in southern Afghanistan seeks to oust Taliban forces but has the secondary mission of disrupting insurgent drug trafficking in a region notorious for large-scale opium production, U.S. and Afghan officials said Sunday. A main goal of the military operation involving about 15,000 Marines, British troops and some Afghan soldiers that began Friday in Helmand province is to try to win support of local Afghans. The secondary mission of the operation, in what is seen as a shift in the military's strategy, is disrupting the Taliban's drug trade -- the key source of funding for weapons and explosives used in the insurgency. [continues 822 words]
Capture of 'El Teo' Add to Mexico's Momentum The arrest last week of reputed Mexican drug lord Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental underscores this newspaper's contention that Mexico is in the midst of a counter-terrorism war, which President Felipe Calderon must continue pursuing with full vigor in spite of pressures for him to reverse course. By capturing Garcia and putting him on trial, Calderon not only sends a strong message to his own people about respect for the rule of law but helps Americans drug users better understand the violence and misery they are helping fund across the border. [continues 392 words]
Al-Qaeda Links; Officials Worried Weapons Also Smuggled To Rebels In early 2008, an official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a report to his superiors detailing what he called "the most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11." The document warned a growing fleet of rogue jet aircraft was regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean. On one end of the air route, it said, are cocaine-producing areas in the Andes controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. On the other are some of West Africa's most unstable countries. [continues 645 words]
WASHINGTON -- The United States-led counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, viewed as critical to halting the flow of funds to the Taliban and curtailing corruption, lacks a long-term strategy, clear objectives and a plan for handing over responsibility to Afghans, the State Department inspector general said in a report released Wednesday. "The department has not clarified an end state for counternarcotics efforts, engaged in long-term planning or established performance measures," said the 63-page report, which evaluates work done by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the State Department. [continues 382 words]
The Complaint Against 3 Men -- the First of Its Kind -- Portrays Northwest Africa As a New Danger Zone. Three men alleged to be Al Qaeda associates were charged Friday with conspiring to smuggle cocaine through Africa -- the first U.S. prosecution linking the terrorist group directly to drug trafficking. The three suspects, who were charged in federal court in New York, are believed to be from Mali and were arrested in Ghana during a Drug Enforcement Administration sting. Although U.S. authorities have alleged that Al Qaeda and the Taliban profit from Afghanistan's heroin trade, the case is the first in which suspects linked to Al Qaeda have been charged under severe narco-terrorism laws, federal officials said. [continues 951 words]
U.S. prosecutors have charged three alleged al-Qaeda associates with conspiring to engage in narcoterrorism, attacking what experts say is a widespread source of illicit funding for terrorist groups across the globe. Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure and Idriss Abelrahman were brought to New York early Friday to face conspiracy charges that could send them to prison for the rest of their lives. They were apprehended in a sting operation coordinated by federal prosecutors in New York and agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration in the United States and Ghana, authorities said. [continues 533 words]
Prisons Should Abolish Long-Term Solitary Confinement. MANY ARE KEPT in their cells for at least 23 hours a day with minimal contact with other people, including guards. Food is delivered through a slit in the door, and most are prohibited from attending classes or counseling sessions with other inmates. They are not, by and large, the "worst of the worst" -- mass murderers or psychopaths in the mold of Hannibal Lecter. They are, instead, men and women serving time for all manner of offenses, some of them relatively minor. But they have been deemed disciplinary problems -- or potential disciplinary problems -- by prison staffers. And so they find themselves locked up in what is commonly known as solitary confinement, sometimes for months, sometimes for years and sometimes with devastating consequences. [continues 373 words]
Just last month, Mexico’s Senate passed a law that decriminalized small amounts of drugs for personal use in an effort to stem the flood of costly, and often unsuccessful, criminal drug prosecution, as well as to focus the efforts of law enforcement on the large producers and distributors. The law allows the possession of several drugs, including: marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and LSD. The amounts allowed are small, generally about the equivalent of two to three uses, but the consequences could be enormous. If this whole scenario sounds familiar, it’s because it has happened before. In 2006 the Mexican Senate passed the same basic bill, but it was vetoed by then President Vicente Fox after strong opposition from American politicians. After initially supporting it, Fox changed his tune and asked for a revision to “make it absolutely clear that in our country the possession of drugs and their consumption are, and continue to be crimes.” [continues 692 words]
WASHINGTON -- Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week. United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military's rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency. [continues 1118 words]
When It Comes to Treatment, the White House Should Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Is In Baltimore last week, new U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske made the case for expansion of drug courts to treat rather than imprison addicts and called for drugs to be considered a "public health crisis." Why, then, is the Obama administration proposing to spend an even higher percentage of its anti-drug resources on law enforcement than the administration of George W. Bush? Nowhere are these issues more resonant than in Baltimore. Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, a star of HBO's The Wire and a native of the city, said that her mother stole clothes off of her body for drug money and locked her in a closet. Darius Harmon, an 18-year-old learning-disabled boy from Baltimore, was killed in April by the Black Guerrilla Family gang because he was not good at selling drugs. Despite recent progress, the Drug Enforcement Administration in March found that Baltimore still has more drug-related crime than any other city in the nation. [continues 585 words]
U.S. Shifts Its Drug Focus From Eradicating Poppy to Targeting Trafficking, Seen As Aiding the Taliban. The U.S. government is deploying dozens of Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Afghanistan in a new kind of "surge," targeting trafficking networks that officials say are increasingly fueling the Taliban insurgency and corrupting the Afghan government. The move to dramatically expand a second front is seen as the latest acknowledgment in Washington that security in Afghanistan cannot be won with military force alone. [continues 1514 words]
A Lot More Canadians Are Likely To Die From Afghan Heroin Than To Perish On Afghan Soil SEEDS OF TERROR: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda By Gretchen Peters St. Martin's Press/ H.B. Fenn, 300 pages ($32.95) Last November, I met a beautiful and cheerful young woman who was literally bursting with song. She was high on heroin, arms bruised from needle punctures, and so terribly thin that her pyjamas flapped as she danced through the vomit- and urine-stained halls of one of Vancouver's cheapest hotels. [continues 1131 words]
Ted Nugent needs a brain scan. America's insane drug crusade has utterly failed for more than 90 years ["We could be winning the war on drugs," June 14]. Ignoring the fact drug prohibition is responsible for the United States being the world leader in incarceration, Nugent wants to expand this engine of destruction until we can no longer afford police and prison expenses. We already spend a $100 billion a year on a failed drug war without accomplishing a single worthwhile goal. [continues 147 words]
THE SAM BROWN CASE: RS reporter has covered illicit drug trade for Village Voice, Details One of the world's most iconic chroniclers of popular culture and longtime, outspoken critic of the US war on drugs is digging deep into the wild and tragic tale of Nelson's Sam Lindsey-Brown. Rolling Stone magazine is preparing a 7,000-word expose on Lindsey-Brown, the 24-year old West Kootenay man who reportedly killed himself in a Spokane jail cell this February after he was nabbed by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officers in a sting operation seemingly torn from the script of a Hollywood action flick. [continues 680 words]
1. Drug laws are unconstitutional. Yeah, you're reading right. Courts at every level have ruled on the fact that drug use and addiction are health issues, not legal infractions. It's image-conscious politicians who have chosen to wilfully ignore those rulings. Yet the courts have been unwilling to hold lawmakers accountable. It's a vicious circle - a conspiracy even. It's not clear how marijuana even got on the list of prohibited drugs back in 1923. It mysteriously appeared on the schedule without a debate in Parliament. [continues 978 words]
A SKINNY man opened the gate at the sprawling compound in Quetta, in western Pakistan. When I asked if the property belonged to Afghanistan's most powerful drug smuggler, he smiled and nodded. "Haji Juma Khan has 200 houses," he said. "And this is one of them." I had been trying to track down Mr. Khan for years when I found this residence on a dusty, garbage-strewn alley. It hardly seemed an auspicious address for a man who American officials say moved as much as $1 billion worth of opium every year, hiring the Taliban to protect his colossal narcotics shipments and paying corrupt officials in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to look the other way. [continues 986 words]
THE CRAFT FIRST surfaced like something out of a science-fiction movie. It was November 2006, and a Coast Guard cutter spotted a strange blur on the ocean 100 miles off Costa Rica. As the cutter approached, what appeared to be three snorkels poking up out of the water became visible. Then something even more surprising was discovered attached to the air pipes: a homemade submarine carrying four men, an AK-47 and three tons of cocaine. Today, the 49-foot-long vessel bakes on concrete blocks outside the office of Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich in Key West, Fla. Here, at the Joint Interagency Task Force South, Nimmich commands drug-interdiction efforts in the waters south of the United States. Steely-eyed, gray-haired and dressed in a blue jumpsuit, he showed me the homemade sub one hot February afternoon like a hunter flaunting his catch. "We had rumors and indicators of this for a very long period beforehand," he told me, which is why they nicknamed it Bigfoot. [continues 1956 words]
The war on drugs was lost long ago, but that hasn't stopped us from wasting more than an estimated $1 trillion fighting it, plus incurring millions of casualties in the form of lives ruined unnecessarily. In the process, we have purposely rejected effective weapons against drug use in favor of methods that had been proven unworkable, like massive arrests and harsh sentences for possession. That finally may be changing. Last week, President Obama appointed A. Thomas McLellan, University of Pennsylvania psychiatry professor, as second in command to the nation's drug czar. This will put one of the nation's leading authorities on addiction in charge of drug policy. [continues 419 words]
What do you talk about at lunch with Tom Tancredo? I thought I knew, but to my surprise (and relief), we spent much of the hour discussing the wisdom of legalizing drugs rather than rehashing our disagreements over illegal immigrants. "The status quo isn't working," Tancredo says, meaning the war on drugs has failed -- spectacularly. And while that's hardly a novel insight, most people who reach it don't take the next step of questioning the drug war itself. [continues 507 words]
