OTTAWA - Fulfilling a campaign pledge, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced legislation on Thursday to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Canada. Many nations have either decriminalized marijuana, allowed it to be prescribed medically or effectively stopped enforcing laws against it. But when Mr. Trudeau's bill passes as expected, Canada will become only the second nation, after Uruguay, to completely legalize marijuana as a consumer product. "Criminal prohibition has failed to protect our kids and our communities," said Bill Blair, a lawmaker and former Toronto police chief whom Mr. Trudeau appointed to manage the legislation. [continues 1434 words]
People in 29 states can legally use medical marijuana for a variety of problems, including the relief of pain, anxiety or stress. But what if they want to travel with it? Secure airport areas beyond the Transportation Security Administration checkpoints are under federal control, and the federal government classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 (most harmful) substance, even in states where it is legal for adults to consume it. The laws conflict, but federal law trumps state law, making it illegal to fly with marijuana in carry-on or checked luggage. It is also illegal to transport marijuana across state lines, even if both states have legalized it. [continues 930 words]
Maybe it was the ski masks that did it. Or it could have been the steely look in the eyes of Lake County, Fla., Sheriff Peyton Grinnell as he deadpanned: "We are coming for you. Run." Perhaps it was the muted background music: an eerie melody that wouldn't have been out of place in a Batman movie. In the end, what could have been an unremarkable public service announcement about opioid abuse in Lake County spread widely on the internet, garnering about a million views on the Facebook page of the sheriff's office, where it was first posted Friday. It sparked concerns about police militarization and drew more than a few comparisons to Islamic State recruitment videos. [continues 915 words]
QUINCY, Mass. - At the edge of an industrial park in this suburb south of Boston, past a used-car auction lot and a defunct cheese factory, is an unmarked warehouse bristling with security cameras and bustling with activity. Until recently, the cinder-block structure was home to a wholesale florist, a granite cutter and a screen printer. Today, it is home to just one tenant: a medical marijuana operation called Ermont. Legalized marijuana has already upset societal norms, created a large legal gray area and generated a lucrative source of tax revenue. Now it is upending the real estate market, too. [continues 2332 words]
At every school in New Rochelle, just north of the Bronx, in Westchester, there is a locked medicine cabinet in the nurse's office, stocked with things like EpiPens for allergic reactions, inhalers for asthma, Tylenol for aches and pains. Now, those cabinets also include naloxone, an antidote for people who are overdosing on opioids like heroin. Given as an injection or a nasal spray, naloxone can quickly revive someone who is not breathing. The city keeps it in every nurse's office, including in its elementary schools. [continues 1160 words]
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - In the heart of Northern California's wine country, a civil engineer turned marijuana entrepreneur is adding a new dimension to the art of matching fine wines with gourmet food: cannabis and wine pairing dinners. Sam Edwards, co-founder of the Sonoma Cannabis Company, charges diners $100 to $150 for a meal that experiments with everything from marijuana-leaf pesto sauce to sniffs of cannabis flowers paired with sips of a crisp Russian River chardonnay. "It accentuates the intensity of your palate," Mr. Edwards, 30, said of the dinners, one of which was held recently at a winery with sweeping views of the Sonoma vineyards. "We are seeing what works and what flavors are coming out." [continues 827 words]
Re "As Heroin Infests Farms, a Grieving Parent Fears for the Future" (front page, March 13): The view of Roger D. Winemiller, who lost two children to drug overdoses, that the solution to the drug epidemic is tougher penalties, while understandable, is misguided. As a former prosecutor, including time as a narcotics prosecutor, I can only conclude that the war on drugs is unwinnable. What good did tough narcotics laws do the Winemiller children? Would the results be better if sometimes draconian laws were made even more draconian? [continues 127 words]
With battering rams and flash-bang grenades, SWAT teams fuel the risk of violence as they forcibly enter suspects' homes. Five months and 85 miles apart, two cases took starkly divergent legal paths. SOMERVILLE, Tex. - Joshua Aaron Hall had been a resident of the Burleson County Jail for about a week when he requested a meeting with Gene Hermes, the sheriff's investigator who had locked him up for violating probation. The stocky lawman arrived in the featureless interview room on the morning of Dec. 13, 2013, placed his soda cup on the table and apologized for not getting there sooner. He asked in his gravelly drawl if they would be talking about Mr. Hall's own case. [continues 6445 words]
Recreational cannabis may be legal in California, but buying the actual stuff still makes Scott Campbell, a celebrity tattoo artist and fine artist, feel like a class-cutting teenage stoner. "You go in to buy weed, and it's like visiting your parole officer," said Mr. Campbell, who lives in Los Angeles. "You get buzzed through three metal gates." Inside, cannabis products are often packaged with loopy Deadhead-style graphics and goofy dorm-humor strain names like Gorilla Glue and Purple Urkle. [continues 841 words]
BLANCHESTER, Ohio - A life of farming taught Roger Winemiller plenty about harsh twists of fate: hailstorms and drought, ragweed infestations and jittery crop prices. He hadn't bargained on heroin. Then, in March 2016, Mr. Winemiller's daughter, Heather Himes, 31, died of an opioid overdose at the family farmhouse, inside a first-floor bathroom overlooking fields of corn and soybeans. Mr. Winemiller was the one who unlocked the bathroom door and found her slumped over, a syringe by her side. [continues 1994 words]
CORINTO, Colombia - For years, Blanca Riveros has had the same routine: After fixing breakfast and taking her son to school, she heads home to a large plastic trash bag filled with marijuana. She trims the plants and gets them ready for Colombian drug traffickers. After school, her son helps cut more. The business was long overseen by the country's largest rebel group, which dominated this region, taxed its drugs and became internationally notorious for trafficking in billions of dollars in illicit substances. But when the government signed a peace deal with the fighters last year, the state swept in and reclaimed this remote mountain village, threatening to end the trade. [continues 1347 words]
JERUSALEM - Israel, which has been at the forefront of research into medical marijuana and the drug's commercialization, took a major step on Sunday toward officially decriminalizing its recreational use. At a time when many American states and European countries are loosening marijuana laws, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan that would impose fines rather than criminal penalties on those caught using the drug in public. Growing and selling marijuana, which is widely used here recreationally and medicinally, would remain illegal. [continues 372 words]
The New York Times reported this month that expectant mothers are taking up marijuana in increasing numbers. We asked women who used marijuana during pregnancy to share their stories. Hundreds of readers wrote in; most had smoked, while a few vaped or ate marijuana-laced edibles. Roughly half said they had used pot for a medical reason. Most felt marijuana use had not affected their children, or were not sure; just a handful worried the children might have suffered cognitive deficits. [continues 1446 words]
Ruth Brunn finally said yes to marijuana. She is 98. She pops a green pill filled with cannabis oil into her mouth with a sip of vitamin water. Then Ms. Brunn, who has neuropathy, settles back in her wheelchair and waits for the jabbing pain in her shoulders, arms and hands to ebb. "I don't feel high or stoned," she said. "All I know is I feel better when I take this." Ms. Brunn will soon have company. The nursing home in New York City where she lives, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, is taking the unusual step of helping its residents use medical marijuana under a new program to treat various illnesses with an alternative to prescription drugs. While the staff will not store or administer pot, residents are allowed to buy it from a dispensary, keep it in locked boxes in their rooms and take it on their own. [continues 1331 words]
VATUKALO, Fiji - Before kava makes its way to a new wave of trendy bars in places like Brooklyn and Berkeley, Calif., it must be nurtured and plucked by people like Livai Tavesivesi. A sun-weathered farmer on the Fijian island of Ovalau, Mr. Tavesivesi, 47, once farmed kava - the main ingredient in a drink long used by residents to attain a mellow buzz - much the way people here did for centuries. First, he washed its gnarled roots in a nearby river. Then he diced them, dried them in the sun and pounded them into powder with a tabili, a supersize mortar and pestle. Finally, he carried it three miles into town to be sold. "If we didn't have a horse or car, we had to carry it," he said. [continues 1075 words]
Psychedelics, the fabled enlightenment drugs of the '60s, are making a comeback - this time as medical treatment. A recent study claimed that psilocybin, a mushroom-derived hallucinogenic, relieves anxiety and depression in people with life-threatening cancer. Anecdotal reports have said similar things about so-called microdoses of LSD. The allure is understandable, given the limits of our treatments for depression and anxiety. About a third of patients with major depression don't get better, even after several trials of different antidepressants. But I fear that in our desire to combat suffering, we will ignore the potential risks of these drugs, or be seduced by preliminary research that seems promising. [continues 713 words]
Even as more and more states allow their residents to use marijuana, the federal government is continuing to obstruct scientists from studying whether the drug is good or bad for people's health. A report published last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine points out that scientists who want to study cannabis have to seek approvals from federal, state and local agencies and depend on just one lab, at the University of Mississippi, for samples. As a result, far too little is known about the health effects of a substance that 28 states have decided can be used as medicine and eight states and the District of Columbia have approved for recreational use. [continues 408 words]
On the same evening Donald Trump became the president-elect, four states - California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada - voted to legalize recreational marijuana, and three others voted to allow it for medicinal purposes. It was one of the few things liberals weren't depressed about. Should the legalization trend not be challenged by the new Trump administration, a huge new industry surrounding the care, consumption and enjoyment of weed will hit the cultural mainstream. "Brave New Weed," a loving rethink of all things marijuana by the former Details editor in chief Joe Dolce, is likely to be a trusted hitchhiker's guide to this new universe. [continues 665 words]
JERUSALEM - Israeli scientists began their pioneering research to isolate the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana with a 10-pound stash seized by the Tel Aviv police. That effort, in the 1960s, helped propel Israel to the vanguard of research into the plant's medicinal properties and lay the foundations for a medical marijuana industry. Now the nation's burgeoning pot business, backed by an unlikely coalition of farmers, lawyers, scientists, entrepreneurs and the country's ultra-Orthodox health minister, is going mainstream - and eyeing markets abroad. [continues 1086 words]
MONTREAL - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but that doesn't mean Canada will turn into a giant, smoke-filled set for a Cheech and Chong movie. If Mr. Trudeau adopts the recommendations of a panel he appointed, marijuana's move from the black market to the open market will be highly bureaucratic, heavily taxed and tightly controlled, with advertising and promotion virtually banned. "The government doesn't want to have a country consuming marijuana," said Bruce Linton, the chairman and chief executive of Canopy Growth, which owns Tweed, one of 36 companies currently allowed to grow and sell medical marijuana. "They want a system for those who choose to consume it." [continues 603 words]
The Constitution gives presidents nearly unlimited authority to grant pardons and commute sentences - decisions that no future administration can reverse. Unfortunately, for most of his presidency, Barack Obama treated mercy as an afterthought. Even as thousands of men and women endured outrageously long sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses as a result of the nation's misguided drug war, Mr. Obama granted relief to only a tiny handful. In the last two years, however, Mr. Obama has changed course. In 2014 he directed the Justice Department to systematically review cases of people serving out sentences that would be far shorter had they been convicted under new, more lenient sentencing laws. [continues 512 words]
CHARLESTON, S.C. - After three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, C. J. Hardin wound up hiding from the world in a backwoods cabin in North Carolina. Divorced, alcoholic and at times suicidal, he had tried almost all the accepted treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder: psychotherapy, group therapy and nearly a dozen different medications. "Nothing worked for me, so I put aside the idea that I could get better," said Mr. Hardin, 37. "I just pretty much became a hermit in my cabin and never went out." [continues 1276 words]
On a summer morning in 2013, Octavian Mihai entered a softly lit room furnished with a small statue of Buddha, a box of tissues and a single red rose. From an earthenware chalice, he swallowed a capsule of psilocybin, an ingredient found in hallucinogenic mushrooms. Then he put on an eye mask and headphones and lay down on a couch. Soon, images flew by like shooting stars: a spinning world that looked like a blue-green chessboard; himself on a stretcher in front of a hospital; his parents, gazing at him with aching sadness as he reached out to them, suffused with childlike love. [continues 1358 words]
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in 2014, has made some progress in cutting back on the unfair and sometimes illegal police practices under which thousands of New Yorkers are arrested every year for possessing trivial amounts of marijuana. But despite research showing that whites and minority citizens use marijuana at similar rates, black and Latino New Yorkers are still far and away more likely to be singled out for low-level arrests that have little public safety value, but seriously damage their lives. [continues 422 words]
TUMWATER, Wash. - Behind the covered windows of a nondescript two-story building near the Olympia Regional Airport, hundreds of marijuana plants were flowering recently in the purple haze of 40 LED lights. It was part of a high-stakes experiment in energy conservation - an undertaking subsidized by the local electric company. With cannabis cultivation poised to become a big business in some parts of the country, power companies and government officials hope it will grow into a green industry. The plants here, destined for sale in the form of dried flowers, joints or edible items, were just a few weeks from harvest and exuding the potent aroma of a stash room for the Grateful Dead. But the energy-efficient LED lights were the focus of attention. [continues 1251 words]
Early this year, a disabled former automobile body worker named Greg Vialpando explained to lawmakers in New Mexico how medical marijuana helped his chronic back pain. State legislators were considering a bill backed by workers' compensation insurers that would have exempted them from paying for medical marijuana. But Mr. Vialpando and another patient described how smoking the drug let them escape years of stupor caused by powerful prescription narcotic drugs known as opioids. The lawmakers ended up dropping the bill, and Mr. Vialpando's expenses for buying marijuana are covered by insurance. [continues 932 words]
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - California's multibillion-dollar marijuana industry, by far the nation's largest, is crawling out from the underbrush after voters opted to legalize cannabis in this month's election. In Sonoma County alone, an estimated 9,000 marijuana cultivation businesses are operating in a provisional gray market, with few specific regulations, and are now looking to follow the path of the wine industry, which emerged from its own prohibition eight decades ago and rose to the global prominence it enjoys today. [continues 1362 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - To the red-and-blue map of American politics, it may be time to add green. The movement to legalize marijuana, the country's most popular illicit drug, will take a giant leap on Election Day if California and four other states vote to allow recreational cannabis, as polls suggest they may. The map of where pot is legal could include the entire West Coast and a block of states reaching from the Pacific to Colorado, raising a stronger challenge to the federal government's ban on the drug. [continues 1313 words]
"Our Reefer Republic," by Timothy Egan (column, Oct. 8), makes a good argument for the legalization of marijuana, but he concludes that although legalization is "not without its problems" it has "mostly been no big deal." It has been a "big deal" for children and adolescents. In Colorado, after the legalization of recreational marijuana, the number of visits to emergency rooms by children under 10 for marijuana-related reasons doubled; a third of those children needed care in an intensive care unit. How does this come about? The laws generally allow for "edibles," which include gummies, cookies and hard candy. [continues 96 words]
Credit Christopher DeLorenzo People in nine states, including California, Florida and Massachusetts, will vote Nov. 8 on ballot proposals permitting recreational or medical use of marijuana. These initiatives could give a big push to legalization, prompting the next president and Congress to overhaul the countryas failed drug laws. This is a big moment for what was a fringe movement a few years ago. A Gallup poll released on Wednesday showed 60 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana, up from 31 percent in 2000 and 12 percent in 1969. [continues 594 words]
Arrests for possessing small amounts of marijuana exceeded those for all violent crimes last year, a new study has found, even as social attitudes toward the drug have changed and a number of cities and states have legalized its use or decriminalized small quantities. And a disproportionate number of those arrested are African-Americans, who smoke marijuana at rates similar to whites but are arrested and prosecuted far more often for having small amounts for personal use, according to the study. The arrests can overwhelm court systems. [continues 831 words]
PORTLAND, Ore. - The budtenders of the Rose City are relentlessly helpful with tips pairing a marijuana strain that is "equal parts fruity and musky" with a stimulating Sichuan dish. As Oregon, the place where empires once clashed over the global trade of beaver furs, glides into a second year of legalized recreational pot, the state is determined to show the world that a certain kind of drug prohibition belongs in history's Dumpster. Soon, with the likely passage of legal pot in California next month, all of the West Coast - from the tundra of Alaska to the sun-washed suburbs of San Diego - will be a confederacy of state-regulated marijuana use. [continues 730 words]
They are not like other mourners. They are raw. "Hysterical crying," said Jackie Berger, a florist. Some arrive at the other extreme, showing quiet resignation, even relief. "They knew this day was coming," said Frank Lettera, a funeral director. They are the parents and relatives of young men and women who died on Staten Island after overdosing on heroin. The grieving families are passing through the rituals of death in numbers never seen before: a record 72 suspected overdoses so far this year. That number far surpasses the previous record of 41, in 2014. [continues 805 words]
BOSTON - The surge in deaths from drug overdoses has become an unexpected lifeline for people waiting for organ transplants, turning tragedy for some into salvation for others. As more people die from overdoses than ever before, their organs - donated in advance by them or after the fact by their families - are saving lives of people who might otherwise die waiting for a transplant. When Dave and Roxanne Maleham got the call in June that they had long dreaded - that their son, Matt, 38, was on life support after overdosing on heroin and fentanyl - they talked about donating his organs. [continues 1432 words]
Re "A Victimless Crime?," by Mario Berlanga (Op-Ed, Sept. 27): There's no doubt that much of the money spent in the illegal drug market goes into the pockets of very dangerous people and organizations, as Mr. Berlanga effectively argues. But trying to shame users into quitting, as the government has done in the decades-long failed war on drugs, hasn't ever been an effective way to diminish the drug trade. Only legalizing and regulating drugs can strip drug profits from organized crime, just as ending Prohibition took the booze market out of the hands of the gangsters who controlled the trade for part of the last century. [continues 70 words]
So many times I have wondered why the government or some antidrug agency or organization has not taken an approach that would highlight the true victims described by Mario Berlanga. Instead of "just say no" or "this is your brain on drugs," the ads should say "these are the victims of your drug use," or "this is what happens when you use drugs," with photos and videos of the police and judges slaughtered by drug gangs; innocent bystanders, including children, caught in the crossfire; and family members of gang members killed in recrimination. There are many images that we see in the newspapers that show the true horrors of drugs. It's time that users see them. It isn't the suppliers who create the drug problem; it's the users, who create the demand. McLean, Va. [end]
The man entered the Red Robin restaurant inside the Staten Island Mall two minutes after 6 p.m. on a Friday. He walked straight past the booths and tables and entered the men's room. A manager would find him there seven minutes later, lying on the floor with a needle and foaming at the mouth. His name was Jonathan Ayers, 27, and he was declared dead within the hour that evening, Sept. 9, apparently of a heroin overdose. Mr. Ayers's fatal overdose was the latest addition to a body count without precedent. So far in 2016, there have been 71 deaths that appear to be from heroin overdoses on the island, the Richmond County district attorney's office said, already on pace to more than double the record set two years ago. Nine people died of heroin overdoses in a recent 10-day period, prosecutors said. [continues 1789 words]
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica - Jamaica has long bemoaned its reputation as the land of ganja. It has enforced draconian drug laws and spent millions on public education to stem its distinction as a pot mecca. But its role as a major supplier of illicit marijuana to the United States and its international image - led by the likes of Bob Marley, whose Rastafarian faith considers smoking up a religious act - have been too strong to overcome. Now, its leaders smell something else: opportunity. [continues 1343 words]
NASHVILLE - Willie Nelson's famous habit of smoking marijuana is not seen as a badge of outlaw courage here anymore, so much as the frivolous foible of an eccentric uncle. A popular FM station disgorging the Boomer rock hits of yesteryear calls itself Hippie Radio 94.5; one of its sponsors is a smoke shop that incessantly hawks glass pipes and detox kits. Even mainstream country acts mention smoking marijuana now and again among the litany of acceptable American pastimes. So perhaps it is not surprising as much as telling that this city, which residents often refer to as the Buckle of the Bible Belt, may be on the cusp of joining the long roster of American cities, including New York, that have decriminalized the stuff. [continues 1074 words]
MANILA - Rayzabell Bongol, an 18-year-old mother and methamphetamine user, was afraid to die in President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs in the Philippines. So she turned herself in to the police. They made her sign a pledge that she would never take illegal drugs again, then sent her home. Once a week now, she is expected to attend a police-sponsored Zumba dance workout, where she gets a health check and a meal. Mr. Duterte "promised change," she said at a recent class as three dozen other recovering addicts bopped and swayed to a blaring Latin beat. "As you can see, I am changing." [continues 1290 words]
To the Editor: Re "Safer Alternatives to Opioids" (editorial, Aug. 30): As an anesthesiologist and president of the American Society for Enhanced Recovery, I applaud the surgeon general's campaign addressing the overprescribing and misuse of opioids. While I agree that minimizing opioid use will take a concerted effort by all those involved in the health care system, hospitals, in particular, have a critical role. Although often overlooked in the opioid discussion, hospitals have become an inadvertent gateway to opioid use in America. A recent survey found that one in 10 patients became addicted or dependent on opioids following a surgical procedure, and 91 percent of surgeons felt pressure to prescribe more opioids than a patient needed, in part because of the need to score well on patient satisfaction evaluations. [continues 86 words]
To the Editor: As a physician who specializes in pain management, I agree that we are overusing opioids and underusing other treatments. Certainly, the lack of insurance coverage for many of these other treatments is a significant problem. There is an even more important factor, however, that hinders patient access to them. Most physicians receive little education on pain management in medical school and in postgraduate training. It is unrealistic to expect physicians to recommend treatments about which they possess little knowledge. If the surgeon general really wants to have an impact on how we treat pain in this country, he needs to address this. Philadelphia [end]
CINCINNATI - On the day he almost died, John Hatmaker bought a packet of Oreos and some ruby-red Swedish Fish at the corner store for his 5-year-old son. He was walking home when he spotted a man who used to sell him heroin. Mr. Hatmaker, 29, had overdosed seven times in the four years he had been addicted to pain pills and heroin. But he hoped he was past all that. He had planned to spend that Saturday afternoon, Aug. 27, showing his son the motorcycles and enjoying the music at a prayer rally for Hope Over Heroin in this region stricken by soaring rates of drug overdoses and opioid deaths. [continues 1006 words]
With its open-air marijuana stalls festooned in psychedelic colors and its freewheeling, self-governing structure, the Christiania neighborhood in Copenhagen has been for decades emblematic of Danish liberalism and tolerance. On Friday morning, however, a symbol of hippie hedonism came crashing down - at least temporarily. At about 9 a.m., hundreds of residents began dismantling the drug market on Pusher Street in the heart of the city, where men in masks usually peddle marijuana and hashish from stalls. Video footage showed residents hauling away plants and using saws, drills and bulldozers to demolish the stands. Signs saying "no photography allowed" were ripped down. [continues 737 words]
JAKARTA, Indonesia - I.B. Agung Partha foresees an apocalypse, as he put it, on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. The threat is not a plague of locusts, nor one of Bali's dormant volcanos springing to life. It is in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital several hundred miles away, where Parliament is debating legislation that would ban beer, wine and spirits across the thousands of islands that make up this country. For Bali, whose beaches, lush landscapes and cultural attractions drew four million visitors last year, the effect would be something like the end of the world, said Mr. Partha, the chairman of the Bali Tourism Board. [continues 1143 words]
About half of opioid overdose deaths involve prescription drugs. With that stark fact in mind, the surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, sent an unusually direct plea last week to 2.3 million doctors and other health care workers to help fight the opioid epidemic by treating pain "safely and effectively." A website for his "Turn the Tide" campaign highlights alternative, nonaddictive treatments for pain. Not only doctors but also policy makers, insurance companies and other players in the health care system should pay attention. [continues 334 words]
ALBANY - Moving to address complaints about New York's new medical marijuana program, the state's Health Department is making substantial changes to expand access to the drug, including allowing home delivery, quite likely by the end of September. The program, which saw its first dispensaries open in January, has struggled to gain broad traction in the medical community and with potential patients. Advocates for the medical use of marijuana have said the program, allowed by a 2014 law signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, was too restrictive, and its regulations too cumbersome to fulfill its mandate. [continues 972 words]
MANILA - The soaring number of killings by the police in the Philippines is being caused by drug suspects who choose to battle officers instead of surrendering, the nation's top police official told lawmakers on Tuesday. "If they did not fight it out with police, they would be alive," said the national police chief, Ronald dela Rosa, who is heading the country's deadly antidrug war. He said the number of deaths since the campaign began on July 1 had jumped to 1,916 - 137 more than the figure he gave senators on Monday, the first of two days of hearings devoted to the killings. He said on Tuesday that reports of killings came in daily from police units around the country. "As I was presenting yesterday," he said, "there were people killed." [continues 725 words]
MANILA - Killings by the police and vigilantes in the Philippines' war on drugs have soared to nearly 1,800 in the seven weeks since President Rodrigo Duterte was sworn into office, the nation's top police official told a Senate hearing on Monday. Under Mr. Duterte, who campaigned on a pledge to rid the country of drug dealers, 712 suspects have been killed in police operations, National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa said. Vigilante killings have totaled 1,067 during the same period, he said, although it was unclear how many were directly related to the illegal drug trade. [continues 964 words]
MANILA - Even amid the slaughter of President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, the killings of Renato and Jaypee Bertes stand out. The Bertes men, father and son, shared a tiny, concrete room with six other people in a metropolitan Manila slum, working odd jobs when they could find them. Both smoked shabu, a cheap form of methamphetamine that has become a scourge in the Philippines. Sometimes Jaypee Bertes sold it in small amounts, relatives said. So it was unsurprising when the police raided their room last month. [continues 1297 words]
