Posts Tagged ‘California’

This Week in Drugs (March 27, 2011)

Mar 27th, 11 / 2 Comments

Northern Arizona University associate professor Veronica Perez Rodriguez is reportedly safe after being briefly kidnapped in Juarez, The Arizona Republic reported. The 35-year-old anthropology professor was visiting her family last Friday when armed men abducted her in what is known as “express kidnapping.” Rodriguez was released in less than 24 hours, but it is unclear if she was forced to pay a ransom.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, approximately 230,000 people have been displaced by Mexico’s drug war, the Associated Press reports. The report is based on independent studies by local researchers; the Mexican government does not compile figures on people who have had to flee their homes because of turf battles between drug enterprises. “An estimated half of those displaced crossed the border into the United States, which would leave about 115,000 people internally displaced, most likely in the States of Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila and Veracruz,” the report states. According to the study, Mexico has done little in response to the mass displacement of its people, although a government census suggests an exodus in some areas.

Hundreds of Mexican news outlets agreed on Thursday to first-ever guidelines for covering the drug war that has drastically increased risks for journalists, The Los Angeles Times reported. Since Calderon’s term, 22 journalists have been murdered in Mexico, at least eight in direct response to reporting on crimes and corruption. The guidelines also urge news organizations to unite against threats to journalists, such as by jointly publishing stories. Under the 10-point accord, the companies should draw up standards for showing violent images such as decapitated bodies and provide more context when reporting on drug violence.

Fresh from a long and hard civil war, El Salvador is now struggling as Mexican drug gangs have begun utilizing the Central American nation’s new, U.S.-funded highway to traffic cocaine north, The Los Angeles Times reports. “El Caminito,” or the little pathway, is being infiltrated by street gangs with roots in Los Angeles and Mexican drug cartels using secretive networks left over from the civil war and the new land route to move drugs. Combined with El Salvador’s use of the U.S. dollar as official currency that makes it easier to launder money, the conditions set the scene of a new chapter in the violent turf wars of Mexican drug cartels.”

U.S. Border Patrol agents recovered more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana in two separate incidents Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Ajo Station agents used surveillance to locate 31 bundles of marijuana hidden in brush in the first incident. In the second, agents followed a suspicious vehicle later found abandoned containing 30 bundles of pot.

Months after the release of the first Wikileaks cables, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual resigned last week, The Economist reported. Although the Mexico City cables were “milder than most,” a furious Felipe Calderón criticized Pascual’s “ignorance” and believed he should go. Pascual’s assessments of Mexico’s mishandling of the drug war and the “grey” senior members of Calderón’s National Action Party, his relationship with the daughter of a leading opposition politician and the fact that he is an expert on the delicate subject of failed states likely all contributed to his ousting.

Four men straw purchasing guns in North Texas bought more than $100,000 in assault rifles over the past six months, including one that was used in a shootout in Mexico that killed eight, federal authorities allege. NBC reports that the men are accused of purchasing 129 assault rifles since October, usually two at a time, that have been used in Mexico’s bloody drug war. They face federal charges of conspiracy to deal firearms without a license.

Federal regulators are forcing banks on California’s North Coast to investigate the financial transactions of clients who may be dealing marijuana, including many operating legally in the medical marijuana industry, according to The Press Democrat. Bringing the local banks into the drug war and instructing them to spend time and money in search of illegal activity has led some banks to simply close the bank accounts of medical marijuana dispensaries to avoid the hassle.

A Las Vegas medical marijuana advocate was arrested in a raid of her house after Metro Police suspected she and her husband of selling marijuana, 8 News Now reports. Medical marijuana patient Rhonda Shade says about  40 mature plants were confiscated by police. Read more here. Read about recent medical marijuana raids by the DEA in West Hollywood here and in Montana here.

Meanwhile, a new report shows medical pot sales have grown to rival Viagra, Time reports. Sales have reached $1.7 billion in states where it is legal, compared to annual Viagra sales of $1.9 billion. The report’s editor, Ted Rose, “noted that 1 in 4 Americans lives in a state in which medical marijuana is legal, and that nearly 25 million people in those states have medical problems for which the drug can be prescribed.” Rose projects sales to reach $8.9 billion in five years.

A new study by CUNY Professor Harry Levine and attorney Loren Siegel shows New York City has spent $75 million arresting people for possessing small amounts of marijuana in 2010 alone. Each arrest costs at least $1,000 to $2,000 and 50,383 people arrested for marijuana in 2010. Most of the marijuana confiscated is found through controversial “stop and frisk” practices. The NYPD made 600,000 recorded “stop and frisks,” and many additional unrecorded stops last year.

As of Thursday evening, all ten representatives and all five senators of Seattle’s state legislative delegation has gone on the record in support of taxing, regulating, and legalizing marijuana, Slog reported. The unheard of uniform support for legalization in Seattle represents a significant shift in the mainstream acceptance of marijuana.

-DR & AJC

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This Week in Drugs (Feb. 5, 2011)

Feb 5th, 11 / 2 Comments

Mexican authorities in Guadalajara were scrambling Tuesday night to regain control of the country’s second-largest city after violent clashes between criminal gangs and police, the Associated Press reports. The suspected drug cartel gunmen used grenades and forced civilians out of their cars, using them as roadblocks on major streets. Fernando Guzman Perez, interior secretary of the state of Jalisco, said the seven coordinated attacks were likely in retaliation for  recent arrests of drug cartel members.

This prompted American officials to warn U.S. citizens not to drive at night in certain areas of Guadalajara, the AP reports. A message on the website of the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara posted  Thursday said the consulate had prohibited U.S. diplomatic personnel from traveling the highway to the airport at night, and that it “recommends that U.S. citizens consider similar precautions.”

The Ladies Professional Golf Association canceled the Tres Marias Championship in Morelia, Mexico, over safety concerns regarding the violence from the drug war. LPGA spokesman David Higdon told the AP that its security firm “determined the safety issues were too severe” but the association hopes to return next year if conditions have improved.

Emilio Gutierrez Soto, the Mexican journalist who fled across the border after saying he received death threats due to his critical coverage of the Mexican military, spent seven hours pleading his case to Immigration Judge Robert Hough in El Paso before it was rescheduled for May 9, 2012. The AP reports that Gutierrez and his son were placed in immigration jail for seven months but that Gutierrez has obtained a work permit and is supporting his son and himself with odd jobs in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Border Patrol Agent Bryan Gonzalez was allegedly fired for talking to a fellow agent about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and stating his opinion on the matter of legalization of marijuana. Gonzalez has filed a federal lawsuit alleging his termination violated the First Amendment.

Former South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel has recently spoke out on America’s drug war by calling the government’s response a failure and advocating the end of drug prohibition, The Post & Courier of Charleston, S.C., reports. Ravenel, who is still serving a term of three years of probation for a 2007 cocaine conspiracy charge, called drug abuse a “medical, healthcare and spiritual problem, not a problem to be solved with a criminal justice model.”

The largest medical cannabis dispensary in Berkeley, Calif., the Berkeley Patients Group, owes the state $6 million in taxes and interest from three years when it did not pay, reports The 420 Times. The group disputed the tax in 2007 saying medical marijuana should be left untaxed like other medicines, but lost its case. Now, California wants the money.

Washington Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson of Seattle has once again called for the state legislature to legalize marijuana for adults 21 and over, My Ballard reported. Dickerson says legalization could generate $400 million every two years and ease the budget shortfall.

With Republicans in the House looking to limit spending in the next fiscal year, supporters of drug policy reform are suggesting cutting the DEA’s budget. Marijuana Policy Project’s Steve Fox told Talking Points Memo, “The entire federal budget dedicated to keeping marijuana illegal and carrying out all the enforcement measures to do so is really something that is long past its prime.”

-DR

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This Week In Drugs (Dec. 10, 2010)

Dec 10th, 10 / 1 Comment

It looks like country music legend Willie Nelson will probably not see jail time after he was arrested Nov. 26 for possession of marijuana. Border patrol agents in Texas boarded Nelson’s tour bus and found marijuana allegedly belonging to the singer. At first, it appeared Nelson, who had a prior arrest for marijuana, would see several months in jail. But the pot weighed less than expected, and fell just within the limit for a misdemeanor. After Nelson’s arrest, he told CelebStoner that people should form a “Teapot Party” that would “lean a little to the left” and work to legalize marijuana. As of Friday evening, the “party” had nearly 42,000 fans on Facebook and chapters around the globe.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution this week condemning the cultivation of illicit marijuana crops on federal parklands and urging the Office of National Drug Control Policy to come up with a strategy to dismantle Mexican drug cartel operations on federal land. U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado, said on the House floor that he believes the only way to stop the cultivation of marijuana on public lands is to legalize and regulate it — a sentiment also expressed by drug policy advocates in response to the resolution.

Check out the Drug Policy Alliance’s Ethan Nadelmann’s take on the future of drug policy reform from this week in The Nation.

The Obama administration is gearing up to crackdown on California’s medical marijuana industry. California Watch reports that the administration has warned the city of Oakland that a plan to allow indoor pot farms to grow medical marijuana is a violation of federal law — part of a larger shift in federal strategy to clamp down on the state’s medical marijuana industry.

Students at Columbia University woke up Tuesday morning to police cars, drug dogs and battering rams in a raid on fraternity houses in which five students were arrested and charged with running a campus drug ring. The raid, dubbed “Operation Ivy League,” resulted in the arrest of five students who allegedly sold a variety of drugs, including Adderall, marijuana, Ecstasy, cocaine and LSD-laced Altoid mints, CNN reports. Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) blasted the raid as an example of the overly harsh response to drug use, which we cannot “arrest our way out of.”

A 14-year-old hitman for the South Pacific cartel was captured and arrested last Friday on his way to the Cuernavaca airport, Time reported. Known by his nickname, “El Ponchis,” San Diego-born Edgar Jimenez Lugo told Mexican authorities he was on his way to visit his stepmother when he and his older sister were detained. Jimenez says he was kidnapped at 11 and was forced to commit the murders and decapitations of  four men for the SPC. Officials have warned that cartels would hire teenagers to do their dirty work, a trend that has been seen more and more throughout the course of the drug war violence in Mexico.

Four people were killed, including a teenager, and seven people were wounded after nearly 500 shots were fired in separate attacks on a pair of drug rehab centers in Juárez on Sunday night. Meanwhile, officials in Acapulco are teaching school children how to duck for cover if they hear gun fire, Reuters reported.

Soldiers killed six gunmen across the border from Texas in the northern state of Tamaulipas on Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that soldiers also seized 24 assault rifles, five grenades, two grenade launchers and three bulletproof cars following the incident. The bodies of four men were also found in Cancun Tuesday night although police say they were found in neighborhoods far from where U.N. Climate Change conference is taking place.

As drug war violence rages on in Mexico, the nation’s capital has become the eye of the hurricane to which many small business are fleeing in an attempt to escape “the grizzliest drug murders and daytime shootouts,” The US Daily reports. Some 5,000 business owners fled to Mexico City recently from states near the U.S.-Mexico border.

For a look at the drug war’s effect on the Mexican state of Michoacan, see the Reuters timeline here.

Read intelligence consultant Sylvia Longmire’s CNN editorial comparing drug cartels to terrorists here.

–AJC & DR

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This Week in Drugs (Nov. 12, 2010)

Nov 12th, 10 / 2 Comments

by David Robles

Results from the Nov. 2 general election in Arizona are still coming in, with medical marijuana Proposition 203 now within 725 votes of winning as of Friday afternoon. Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell told The Associated Press that provisional ballots were leaning in favor of the measure. The gap has narrowed significantly since election day, when the measure was failing by about 7,000 votes. There were approximately 59,000 outstanding ballots left to count as of Friday afternoon. UPDATE: Prop. 203 passed!

Will California’s failed Proposition 19 launch a global conversation about marijuana prohibition? Reuters had an interesting post-election analysis on the measure here.

Gulf cartel leader Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cardenas, or “Tony the Storm,” was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, on Friday according to the Associated Press. The next day, gunmen from the rival Zetas gang hung messages mocking his death. The Zetas, a gang of hit men formed more than a decade ago by former Mexican soldiers, split from the Gulf cartel earlier this year. President Obama called his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon on Saturday “to reaffirm United States support for Mexico’s efforts to end the impunity of organized criminal groups,”  according to a statement from the White House. More than 31,000 people have been killed in Mexico since Calderon took office and launched his cartel crackdown in December 2006.

This week saw a continuation of the flagrant drug war violence in Mexico with at least 20 murdered over the weekend in Ciudad Juarez, the AP reported Monday. Seven men believed to be attending a family party were gunned down Saturday night and 11 others were killed the same day, including two whose bodies were found dismembered. Two Juarez police officers were gunned down in their patrol car on Sunday.

As the Mexican army’s role as Mexico’s chief policing force increases, reports of human rights violations have followed suit, according to Al Jazeera English. The National Human Rights Commission reported more than 1,800 violations allegedly committed by the army in 2009, a more than 800 percent increase since President Calderon took office in 2006.

A 12-year-old boy known only as El Ponchis, or “the cloak,” is allegedly working as a hired assassin for the South Pacific Drug Cartel leader Jesus Radilla, according to The Sun. Macabre videos of the boy depict him clubbing a man with a weapon marked “CPS” (Cartel Pacifico del Sur), posing with a rifle by a dead body, and slitting the throats of gang enemies nearly to the point of decapitation.

The ATF’s anti-gun trafficking initiative, Project Gunrunner, has “significant weaknesses,” according to a Department of Justice report Tuesday. The report criticized the ATF for focusing on less important gun dealers and “straw purchasers”rather than higher-level traffickers, smugglers, and the “ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns” in Mexico, Reuters reported, along with unsystematic sharing of intelligence with partners in the U.S. and Mexico. (Read our past coverage of gun trafficking to Mexico here.)

On Tuesday U.S. federal appeals court judge Juan Torruella told an audience at the University of Puerto Rico that legalizing marijuana and perhaps other drugs is a better way to combat drug abuse and crime. Nominated to be a federal judge by President Ford and elevated to the appeals court by Reagan in 1984, Judge Torruella believes legalization is the only “realistic” alternative following the loss of the drug war at great societal cost, according to AP.

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This Week in Drugs (Nov. 5, 2010)

Nov 5th, 10 / 7 Comments

By David Robles

As of Friday mid-afternoon, Arizona Proposition 203 to legalize medical marijuana had narrowed its loss to about 4,600 votes, according to campaign manager Andrew Myers. Myers told CrawfordOnDrugs he is optimistic the measure will pass because early ballots are trending in favor of medical marijuana. There remain about 300,000 early and provisional ballots left to count, he said.

California’s attention-getting Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana for recreational use by adults was defeated Tuesday, thanks in part to the elderly, Salon.com reported. According to a tweet from AP’s Jennifer Agiesta, six in 10 California voters under 30 say they voted “yes” while seven in 10 seniors say they voted “no” on Proposition 19. Although the  marijuana measure was defeated Tuesday, many proponents of marijuana policy reform believe that marijuana legalization is a matter of when, not if. Plans for new campaigns to legalize the drug by 2012 have materialized not only in California, but Colorado as well. Although the outcome is unknown, marijuana policy has become a mainstream issue.

Read more here.

Despite the astounding number of accidental deaths related to prescription drug abuse (seven every day in Florida), Gary Martin of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office told addiction prevention and treatment professionals attending a conference on prescription drug abuse that “the misuse of prescription drugs is second only to marijuana abuse as a drug problem.” U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske (who called for an end to the “War on Drugs”) told the Broward and Palm Beach New Times that legalizing marijuana would not answer the country’s problems, saying, “Marijuana is not medicine…Treatments should be determined by scientists and not by voters.”

According to a new British study that takes societal effects into consideration, alcohol is more destructive than crack cocaine and heroin. The study evaluated and ranked substances on how destructive they are to users and society as a whole. Heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine were the most lethal to users, but alcohol ranked above heroin and crack cocaine as having the most dangerous wider social effect.

The drug war saw a particularly eventful week with the seizure of 30 tons of marijuana following the discovery of a tunnel between Mexico and California. The San Diego Tunnel Task Force discovered the 600-yard underground tunnel after observing suspicious activity involving a tractor trailer truck later found to be carrying 10 tons of marijuana packed in large cargo boxes. The tunnel connects a warehouse in Tijuana to the warehouse in Otay Mesa and is equipped with a rail, lighting, and ventilation systems.

The bodies of 18 men found in mass grave outside Acapulco may solve the mystery of 20 men who were whisked away by gunmen in late September shortly after arriving in Acapulco on vacation, the Los Angeles Times reported. In a grainy Youtube video, two beaten, bruised men confess to killing the group of 20 and reveal where they are buried. On Tuesday, police checked an anonymous telephone tip that lead to the discovery of two corpses believed to be the men who appear in the video. The 6-by-12-foot mass grave was found near the men who had an attached note that attributed their murders to a drug-trafficking gang operating in the area.

Expreso de Matamoros daily reporter Carlos Alberto Guajardo Romero died today during a confrontation between Mexican federal agents and armed gunmen in the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, making him the 66th Mexican journalist killed since 2000.

At least three main papers in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state, across from Texas, are being forced to print press releases from the Zeta cartel, Global Post reported. The press releases began arriving by email to police reporter who acts as the Zeta liaison with the press. Newspaper editor Martha Lopez says “stories” often attempt to make the Mexican army look bad, such as stories about army human rights abuses. “Some of those stories are accurate in a small way, but they are exaggerated. Sometimes they are not true,” Lopez said.

-DR

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This Week in Drugs (Oct. 22, 2010)

Oct 22nd, 10 / 1 Comment

By David Robles

Authorities in Tijuana seized 105 tons of marijuana after a clash with suspected drug runners on Monday in what President Felipe Calderon says was the country’s largest marijuana seizure ever. Police seized more than 15,000 packages of marijuana and detained 11 people following the armed encounter that left a government agent and a suspected drug runner injured. (See Mexican officials incinerate the pot in this clip from MSNBC.)

During a recent panel presentation at the University of Texas at Austin, The Los Angeles Times‘ Mexico City bureau chief, Tracy Wilkinson, said reporting on the cartel violence in Mexico is no different than covering a war. Wilson explained that the foreign press struggles with three main obstacles when reporting on the drug war: getting sources  to talk, avoiding being made a pawn by one side or the other, and whether and how to use the “grisly images” and “horrific details,” according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas blog.

In the Mexican state of Chihuahua, a 20-year-old criminology student, Marisol Valles Garcia, was named the chief of police for the city of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero on Monday. No one else would accept the position of chief of police in the city where the former mayor and members of the local police force have been killed and at least eight people were murdered in the last week, MSNBC reported. Garcia said that her job would not be to fight the drug trafficking, which falls to the federal government, but instead will focus on preventative programs for schools and neighborhoods to make an impact on the community.

Mexican Ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, told the Dallas News that he believes his country needs to take a new stance on U.S. migration and border enforcement. Sarukhan says Mexico needs to boost economic growth and job creation “to anchor those women and men with well-paying jobs in Mexico” and “ensure that every single Mexican that crosses the border into the United States does so with papers, through a designated port of entry, and legally.” These are two key courses of action that he says Mexico has been unwilling to do in the past.

A new poll shows California’s Proposition 19 to legalize medical marijuana for recreational use by adults might fail. The Los Angeles Times/USC poll found voters opposing it 51 percent to 39 percent. Meanwhile, The Press-Enterprise sought to clear up confusion about the measure with a question-and-answer story here.

All 30 of Arizona’s elected county sheriffs and county attorneys have come out against the state’s medical marijuana measure, Proposition 203, as have the two leading candidates for governor. Republican Jan Brewer and Democrat Terry Goddard both announced their opposition to the measure this week. Meanwhile, officials at the Arizona Department of Health Services are beginning to contemplate new regulations, since they would have 120 days following the certification of the election to put regulations in place.

-D.R.

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This Week in Drugs (Oct. 15, 2010)

Oct 15th, 10 / 6 Comments

The federal government will enforce federal marijuana laws in California even if voters there legalize marijuana for recreational use by approving Proposition 19 on Nov. 2, the Associated Press reports. In a letter to former Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote: ”We will vigorously enforce the CSA against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law.” Holder said approval of the measure would undermine efforts to keep California communities safe from drug traffickers.

The campaign to legalize marijuana for medicinal use in Arizona, Proposition 203, put up campaign signs this week and released a new television ad. (Watch it here.) The act, if passed, will allow patients with debilitating conditions such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and Alzheimer’s disease to use marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation. If the measure passes, Arizona will be the 15th state in the nation with legal medical pot. And passage looks likely: a recent Rocky Mountain Poll found 54 percent of registered voters in favor of the law, with 32 percent opposing.

A memo from within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned that Mexican cartels planned to send armed hit-men into Arizona to assassinate bandits stealing marijuana near Casa Grande, The Arizona Republic reported Friday. The memo, which a spokesman for DHS said has since “proved to be inaccurate,” said members of the hit squad planned to establish positions in Vekol Valley, then send in men wearing backpacks pretending to haul loads of marijuana through the desert to trick armed thieves, called bajadores, into attacking them.

Meanwhile, the conflict between border security and environmental conservation along the border is heating up. Utah Rep. Rob Bishop released a draft report this week documenting conflicts arising from the U.S. Border Patrol’s efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border on land protected by the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Government Accountability Office report shows that only four of the 26 Border Patrol stations along the border have encountered problems patrolling protected lands. Bishop and other Republicans are pushing a measure to do away with wilderness and endangered species protection at the border.

According to a post on the U.S. Department of State Official Blog, the agency has developed a secure tipline for residents of Juarez, Mexico, to report cartel crime. According to a recent survey by Mexico’s Institute for Studies on Insecurity, 78 percent of crimes go unreported in Mexico and only two percent actually result in convictions. The state department hopes that with the anonymous hotline those in Juarez who witness a crime will feel safe enough to contact the authorities and help combat the city’s rampant drug war violence.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is also turning to technology to fight drug cartels. According to The Latin American Herald Tribune, Calderon plans to launch three satellites to be used for national security and expanding telecommunications capabilities. The satellites, expected to cost about $1.5 billion, will be finished by the end of Calderon’s administration in 2012. His announcement comes as some 2,000 delegates from 122 countries convene at 18th Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union in Guadalajara.

Tijuana has seen a sharp rise in its murder rate following Calderon’s claim last week that the city is an example of success in the drug war. Since last Sunday, there have been 16 killings. Three headless bodies were also found along with a head, which did not belong to any of the bodies.

Mexican criminal enterprising are becoming increasingly involved in sex trafficking, reports the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. With profits from human trafficking estimated at as high as $6.6 billion, the organization says “conservative estimates conclude that over 100,000 women, a number predicted to increase by the end of 2010, are trafficked out of Latin America annually for the purpose of prostitution.” With other varieties of drug war violence dominating the headlines, the group said human trafficking from Latin America too often is overlooked or mislabeled as illegal immigration when, in reality, thousands of women and children are forced into sexual slavery on both sides of the border.

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Today’s Funny: The Taiwanese Take on Prop. 19

Oct 15th, 10 / 0 Comments

Next Media Animation TV in Taiwan, which produces cartoon-animated news items, has released this Reefer Madness-like take on California’s Prop. 19. So what does NMA predict will happen if California legalizes marijuana? Pot ice cream trucks will lure school kids and executives, who have seen their beer profits plummet, will go on shooting rampages — of course! I can’t believe opponents haven’t started using this yet.

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Drug Policy

This week in drugs (Oct. 8, 2010)

Oct 8th, 10 / 4 Comments

The U.S. is hypocritical about drug policy? Say it ain’t so! In a recent interview with the Associated Press in which he touted the successes of the drug war in reducing violence in Tijuana, Mexican President Felipe Calderon blasted the U.S. for pushing his country to escalate the drug war while not doing enough to combat drug use by U.S. citizens. He called government surveys showing that consumption of drugs in the U.S. is up “truly disappointing” and said California’s upcoming vote to legalize marijuana is part of a “terrible inconsistency” in U.S. drug policy:

“They have exerted pressure and demanded for decades that Mexico and other countries control, reduce and fight drug trafficking, and there is no discernible effort to reduce the consumption of drugs in the United States,” Calderon said.

While Calderon criticized Prop. 19, a major U.S. Latino political group endorsed it this week. According to The Sacramento Bee, LULAC’s California director, Argentina Dávila-Luévano said prohibition is not working for Latinos or U.S. society:

“Far too many of our brothers and sisters are getting caught in the cross-fire of gang wars here in California and the cartel wars south of our border. It’s time to end prohibition, put violent, organized criminals out of business and bring marijuana under the control of the law.”

Accusations of abuse and injustice by Mexican law enforcement officers continue. Reuters reported this week that poor residents of Ciudad Juarez complain that they are being unfairly targeted and unjustly arrested by corrupt police who use them as scapegoats while allowing powerful drug lords to operate freely. To combat police corruption, Calderon is pushing to do away with municipal police forces.

Meanwhile, both tourism and the economy in Mexico seem to be doing well. The Los Angeles Times reports that foreign visitors to Mexico jumped nearly 20 percent this summer over last year. And, according to CNN, the Mexican stock market is up 6.7 percent year-to-date, compared to just a 5 percent gain in the Dow Jones industrial average.

The search resumed this morning for the body of a man presumed dead after his wife said he was shot in the head by cartel-connected pirates while jet skiing on a lake on the Texas-Mexico border. U.S. officials, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have criticized Mexican officials for not doing enough to find the man’s body, the AP reports.

In Arizona, a forensic test appears to give credence to the story of a Pinal County Deputy who claims he was wounded in a shoot-out with drug cartels. The Arizona Republic reports that tests by the Arizona Department of Public Safety did not find any gun powder on his shirt, which would have supposedly been present if he had shot himself. Some experts and critics had speculated that Deputy Louie Puroll made up the story to bolster public support for Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB1070. At a press conference this week, Puroll lashed out at critics and said: “I can’t imagine why anybody would shoot themselves.” The fact that people did believe it possible that he would shoot himself is important. It says far more about the level of rancor and insanity in the border security debate than it does about this individual deputy.

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This Week in Drugs (Oct. 1, 2010)

Oct 1st, 10 / 1 Comment

by David E. Robles

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a measure today that makes possession or marijuana the equivalent of a traffic ticket. The governor’s unexpected decision comes a month before voters will decide on Proposition 19 to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults. The law, which decriminalizes marijuana, reduces possession of an ounce or less of marijuana from a misdemeanor crime to an infraction. The measure eliminates the need for police to book people caught with marijuana and for courts to hold trials, according to the San Fransisco Chronicle.

Texas officials renewed warnings about attacks by pirates in the border-straddling Falcon Lake after a Colorado man was gunned down in Mexican waters on Thursday while riding his jet ski. His wife, who escaped the ambush by gunmen on boats, said her was shot in the back of the head after the photographed a church on the Mexican side of the lake. The man is missing and presumed dead. According to the Associated Press, there have been five incidences with pirates on the lake this year. State Rep. Aaron Pena, as well as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said they have little doubt that the pirates are associated with Mexican cartels.

Mexican authorities arrested suspected drug lord Soto “El Tigre” Reyes on Sunday near Guadalajara. Reyes allegedly smuggled a ton of drugs into the United States monthly. The BBC said police believe he replaced Ignacio Coronel, a top member of the Sinaloa cartel, after Coronel was killed by Mexican soldiers in July.

Authorities in Ohio have discovered huge “megafarms” of pot, four of which have been tied to Mexican criminal enterprises in the past three years. Cincinnati News 5 WLWT.com reported the arrest of 11 men on Sept. 21. The men face charges of conspiracy to cultivate more than 100 marijuana plants. Police say they are collecting evidence from the sites but that DNA evidence is difficult to match as many of the suspects are not American citizens.

According to an article in USA Today, U.S. officials admit that vehicle searches along the border have been frustratingly ineffective in slowing the flow of guns to Mexican criminal enterprises. After Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced an increased vehicle search program beginning in March 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection went five straight months without recovering a single weapon in El Paso. Experts estimate 2,000 arms per day are smuggled across the border into Mexico. (Read more: Amanda Crawford writing for Phoenix Magazine and blog posts on gun laws and a recent gun trafficking sweep in Phoenix.)

An Economist Blog post reported that the murder rate in Mexico stabilized from June to August and decreased in September. Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s spokesman on security, Alejandro Poiré, said, “in certain areas like Baja California and other places where the violence is concentrated, [there has been] a diminishing of the violence rates.”

-DER

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