Posts Tagged ‘guns’

This Week In Drugs (April 18, 2011)

Apr 18th, 11 / 2 Comments

Thursday was the first day that patients could apply for medical marijuana cards in Arizona. More than 100 people applied, mostly for chronic pain. Read more from The Arizona Republic here.

A bill to authorize and regulate medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington is in trouble after the Department of Justice threatened to prosecute medical marijuana businesses and the state employees who license them. The bill, which has already passed both chambers of the Legislature, came in response to pressure from municipalities to regulate dispensaries that began popping up after the state’s 1998 initiative legalizing medical marijuana. Gov. Chris Gregoire said Tuesday that she cannot sign the proposal because of the federal threat to prosecute state employees, but she said she would work with legislators on a new bill.

Meanwhile, in Canada, an Ontario court has declared the country’s prohibition of marijuana unconstitutional because it bars some sick individuals from finding relief from their suffering by using the drug. Medical marijuana is legal in Canada, however patients testified that doctors were reluctant to prescribe it. The government has three months to fix the law before marijuana would become legal. Read editorials on the issue from The Toronto Star and The Winnepeg Free Press in favor of ending prohibition.

An Arizona gun dealer was allegedly encouraged to sell guns to suspected cartel gun traffickers by agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives – a revelation that came out this week in the continuing fall out over the agency’s Project Gun Runner. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released an email from the gun dealer on Thursday, which appears to contradict contentions by the ATF that they never let guns knowingly be transported into Mexico. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General is looking into the program, which was apparently intended to nab higher level gun traffickers and cartels leaders.

A Texas congressman wants Mexico’s six major cartels to be classified as terrorist organizations, CNN reports. Republican U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Security Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee has introduced a bill that would give law enforcement greater ability to go after the cartels’ financial property and lead to harsher punishments to those who provide material support for cartels. The Arellano Felix organization, Los Zetas, Beltran Leyva, Familia Michoacana, Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel/New Federation would be categorized as terrorist organizations under the plan. Read McCaul’s editorial published in The Arizona Republic on Friday.

After the discovery of the mass grave in Tamaulipas, the U.S. government issued a warning to employees and citizens for the first time that they could be the targets of drug gang attacks in three Mexican states. The warning, published on April 8 by the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey, was the first warning of its kind, according The Wall Street Journal. U.S. Officials said they had “information that Mexican criminal gangs may intend to attack U.S. law-enforcement officers or U.S. citizens in the near future in Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and San Luis Potosí.” In the past both governments have assured Americans in Mexico that they were not the targets of drug gang violence.

A leader of the Zetas cartel, Omar Martin Estrada (a.k.a. “El Kilo”) was arrested Saturday in connection with the discovery of the mass graves in the Tamaulipas city of San Fernando. So far 145 bodies have been found at graves around the city, which was also the location of massacre of 72 mostly Central American migrants last year. Sixteen local police officers are being questioned in the case, accused of protecting cartel murderers. Seventeen others allegedly connected to the Zetas cartel were also arrested.

The prosecutor in charge of state homicide investigations in Juarez was gunned down outside his home. Mario Ramon Gonzalez Chavarria, 31, was shot in his car on the way to work Friday morning, The El Paso Times reports.

As that kind of horrific violence builds in the Mexican drug war, it is changing the nation’s language. The Associated Press looks at the unique language of drug violence. For example, how a body is found determines the slang word for it: “encobijados” – wrapped in a blanket, “encajuelados” – stuffed in the trunk of a car and “encintados” – suffocated with tape. Read more here.

The drug war violence has also taken it toll on limes. The costs of limes have quadrupled in Mexico City markets to $4 a kilo (2.2 pounds) in December and January, The Christian Science Monitor reports.  Drug gangs meddle in the supply chain and require payments from lime growers.

-AJC

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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 (March 5, 2011)

Mar 4th, 11 / 1 Comment

Agent John Dodson of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has spoken out against the “Fast and Furious” program, saying it lets guns “walk” into the hands of Mexican cartels, CBS reports. The program, intended to track guns to the hands of criminals in order to build a case, allows straw-purchased guns to move into Mexico, something Dodson’s ATF bosses have denied. The gun that killed a U.S. immigration official in Mexico last week has been traced to a gun smuggling ring operating near Dallas, The Associated Press reported. After the bad press, ATF’s Chief Public Affairs officer sent an internal memo to ATF Public Information Officers in an effort to “lessen the coverage of such stories in the news cycle by replacing them with good stories about ATF.”

The Mexican military arrested three junior officers and 10 soldiers near Juarez last week in connection with the trafficking of 928 kilograms of methamphetamine and 30 kilograms of cocaine, the AP reported. With corruption notoriously widespread among Mexican police, many worry it may spread to the country’s tens of thousands of troops pitted against the drug cartels. Mexico’s defense secretary said in a statement that all 13 have been convicted of drug and organized crime charges in the trafficking of the more than $120 million worth narcotics, CNN reported.

Mexican president Felipe Calderon has said WikiLeaks’ release of diplomatic cables concerning Mexico’s handling of the drug war has caused “severe damage” to its relationship with the United States, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The State Department’s criticism of the Mexican government contributed to Calderon’s frustration, particularly one that suggested Mexican military officials had “risk-averse habits.” Although Calderon suggested tensions were such that he could not work with the American ambassador, he met with President Barack Obama this week in a meeting characterized as one to “mend fences,” NPR reported. They unveiled a deal on Thursday that would end a nearly 20-year ban on Mexican trucks crossing the U.S. border. Read more from The Wall Street Journal here.

While Calderon was in the U.S., 17 bodies were found in the state of Guerrero and gunmen killed four in Ciudad Juarez, PBS reports. Two Pemex oil workers were also murdered on Thursday near the Texas border, according to Reuters. Unsurprisingly, the violence has taken a toll on tourism in many parts of Mexico. Read more here. In spite of warnings from American officials, college students are once again heading south of the border for spring break. Read more from CBS here.

The 20-year-old who made headlines by becoming the police chief of her town has reportedly fled and is seeking asylum in the United States, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Marisol Valles Garcia, the police chief fled the city of Praxedis G. Guerrero and a single mother, has been receiving death threats from criminal gangs who wanted her to work for them for some time. It remains unclear if the reports of her fleeing are accurate.

Rights activists willing to speak out against the violence of the drug war are being targeted by violent cartel hitmen, Reuters reported. Their homes have been set ablaze, disabled family members have been murdered and children targeted, causing the very people willing to speak out to flee for their lives.

In Seattle, U.S. drug czar and former Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said he doesn’t “think legalization arguments hold up,” The Seattle Times reports. Kerlikowske was in town to be the keynote speaker at the convention of the Seattle-based Science and Management of Addictions Foundation to talk about prescription drug abuse but many in the Emerald City had questions of a greener nature. “If legalization is a way to fund the country and states and cities, I think we’re making a significant mistake when we think it’s just a benign drug,” he said. But the local and national attitude towards legalization is shifting, according to a Pew Research Center poll.  Some 45 percent of Americans now favor legalization, up from 16 percent in 1990, while 50 percent remain opposed, down from 81 percent two decades ago. Outside of the event, protesters gathered to support the Times’ endorsement of legalization. “Gil, get with the Times,” one sign read. Read The Seattle Times‘ interview with the drug czar here.

-DR

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This Week in Drugs (Feb. 25, 2011)

Feb 25th, 11 / 1 Comment

Federal authorities have launched a nationwide crackdown on drug cartels following last week’s murder of a U.S. agent in Mexico. Arizona’s acting Special Agent in Charge, Doug Coleman, said several hundred DEA agents teamed up with hundreds more federal and local officers, resulting in 31 arrests. “The overall message here is that we as U.S. law enforcement are going to do something when we see that a cartel in Mexico is going to target U.S. agents,” Coleman told The Arizona Republic. By Thursday morning, law enforcement nationwide had seized more than $4.5 million in cash and nearly 20 guns, arrested more than 100 people and confiscated about 23 pounds of methamphetamine, 107 kilograms of cocaine, 5 pounds of heroin and 300 pounds of marijuana. Read more about the crackdown from The Washington Post here.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon will meet with President Obama next week to address the drug war’s increasing violence, especially the murder of a U.S. agent near Mexico City, Business Insider reports. Mexican defense officials told The Wall Street Journal the attack was a mistake in identity, however some believe the agents may have been targeted by the cartel. Either way, U.S. lawmakers are considering ways of arming U.S. agents in Mexico, something that has not been allowed since a 1990 agreement. Read more from Fox News here.

The Pinal County (AZ) Sheriff’s Office reported Wednesday morning the arrest of 102 suspects and the seizure of 3,200 pounds of marijuana after a four-day operation in the Vekol Valley and Silver Bell Mountain areas, The Arizona Republic reports. The drug and human trafficking-focused operation also resulted in the recovery of seven stolen vehicles and 12 firearms.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill Tuesday outlawing the sale of synthetic marijuana, commonly known as ‘Spice,’ the Phoenix Business Journal reports. The federal and state government are moving to make Spice and its sister compounds, once legally sold at smoke shops, illegal.

Months after Butte County, Calif., law enforcement coordinated raids on seven marijuana dispensaries, the District Attorney’s Office has yet to file criminal charges or return confiscated money to the dispensary owners, Toke of the Town reports. More than 100 law enforcement officers on served search warrants June 30 on seven marijuana dispensaries and 11 residences.

A 10,000-square-foot hydroponics store enthusiastically marketing itself as the “Wal-Mart of weed” will open tomorrow in Sacramento, The Sacramento Bee reports. The first national franchise for a company that bills itself as a supply and training destination for legal pot growers, weGrow attracted national attention for its unfettered embrace of pot culture.

Washington’s largest newspaper, The Seattle Times, published an editorial last Friday calling for the legalization, regulation, and taxation of marijuana in the state of Washington. According to Seattle’s alternative news site The Stranger, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske contacted the newspaper to speak personally with the editorial board after the editorial appeared. Seattle Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey told The Stranger that the White House called “right after our editorial ran, so I drew the obvious conclusion… he didn’t like our editorial.” The meeting, scheduled for next Friday, hasn’t stopped The Seattle Times from publishing pro-pot editorials like one urging House Speaker Frank Chopp to allow a hearing on House Bill 1550, state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson’s bill to legalize marijuana and sell it through the Washington state liquor stores.

A man in Fitchburg, Mass., became the 10th to die in US drug enforcement operations this year after being shot by a state trooper on Tuesday, StoptheDrugWar.com reports. According to the police, 21-year-old Roger Padilla refused to pull over, leading the trooper on a brief pursuit to a cul-de-sac. The trooper stepped out of his black, unmarked SUV and repeatedly commanded Padilla to exit. According to police, Padilla began driving his car toward the trooper at which point he was fired upon and killed.

New Colombian criminal bands are springing up to take over cocaine production and fill a void created by the U.S.-backed drug war, Reuters reports. Linked to former paramilitary groups, the gangs have slaughtered human rights activists, public officials and civilians, the United Nations said on Thursday.

Finally, the wealthy Mexican city of Monterrey has become a ‘city of massacres’ as drug war violence erupts in the streets. Watch the PBS NewsHour video here:

-David Robles

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This Week in Drugs (Feb. 19, 2011)

Feb 19th, 11 / 1 Comment

On Tuesday, gunmen opened fire on two U.S. special agents near Mexico city, killing one and wounding the other, PBS NewsHour reports. Special agent Jaime Zapata was shot and killed driving a black SUV on a central Mexico highway. Agent Victor Avila was wounded and discharged from a hospital on Wednesday. It was unclear whether the agents were targeted specifically or not, although according to Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, new information suggests it was a sanctioned hit by the Zetas drug cartel and not a rogue incident, CNN reported. Reuters says Tuesday’s attack puts fresh pressure on Washington to take action in the rapidly advancing drug war. Read more on these increasingly limited options here.

The Director of Central Intelligence in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon was kidnapped and executed in the back of his government-issued armored SUV on Sunday night, Borderland Beat reported. Witnesses say they saw Homero Salcido Treviño kidnapped by alleged drug gang members who drove him to a central area of Monterrey and shot him five times before throwing a grenade into the director’s SUV.

Gunmen in Guadalajara opened fire and hurled a grenade into a crowded night club early Saturday, killing six people and injuring 37, the Associated Press reports. The attack came mere hours after a shootout between police and suspected gang members that left eight dead, including an innocent driver.

Early Saturday morning, the body of seven-year-old Antonio Rodrigo Jiménez Cortes was found in the Acapulco neighborhood where he lived, Borderland Beat reported. On his body was a handwritten note apparently directed at the boy’s mother that said, “This happened to me for stealing husbands and being a snitch.”

Increasing violence in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Acapulco continues to pale in comparison to Ciudad Juarez, “the most lethal place on earth,” according to PBS NewsHour. Read more here.

Despite copious negative PR regarding cartel violence in Mexico, spring break reservations from U.S. college students remain steady, the AP reports. Although violence in the most popular tourist areas is rare, Mexico’s tourism was dealt a heavy blow with the September attack on David Hartley and his wife on the Texas-Mexico border.

A Deputy U.S.  Marshal and a fugitive alleged crack dealer were killed in a shoot-out in Elkins, West Virginia, on Wednesday, StoptheDrugWar.org reported. Deputy U.S. Marshal Derek Hotsinpiller was shot and killed when U.S. Marshals and state police announced themselves and entered the house of Charles Edward Smith to serve a federal warrant. Smith opened fire with a shotgun, fatally wounding Hotsinpiller before a marshal and trooper returned fire, killing Smith. Hotsinpiller is the first marshal killed by gunfire since 1992, and his and Smith’s deaths are the eighth and ninth in U.S. drug law enforcement this year.

Mexican drug gangs are using U.S. public land to cultivate millions of marijuana plants in California’s Redwood forests, the AP reports. Employing armed guards, trip wires, and smuggled immigrants on grow operations of up to tens of thousands of plants is not out of the ordinary for Mexican drug gangs hoping to yield more than 30 tons of pot a year.

Federal authorities seized nearly 300 guns bound for Mexico and a federal grand jury has indicted 17 defendants in five cases of illegally trafficking firearms, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke announced Thursday. Watch CNN‘s report here and read more about the iron river to Mexico here.

An Associated Press review found that more than half the states are not complying with a “post-Virginia Tech” law that requires them to share the names of mentally ill people with the national background-check system to prevent them from buying guns.

An Oregon driver was arrested after his pit-bull mix threw a sock stuffed with marijuana and hashish out the window as the driver was being pulled over. The driver said he was trying to hide the marijuana when his dog began playing tug-of-war with the sock, causing it to fly out of the window. Those pricey training lessons aren’t looking so bad now, are they?

-DR

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This Week in Drugs (Jan. 28, 2011)

Jan 28th, 11 / 2 Comments

Amid the horrific violence seen in Mexico over the course of President Felipe Calderon’s drug war, the nation’s capital had become a safe refuge for Mexicans fleeing drug war violence in the country’s extremities. But according to the LA Times, the Mexican military has increased its presence in Mexico City recently, raiding a hotel and a house in middle-class districts and arresting one suspected member of the Zetas cartel.

The Mexican government has vowed not to back down in the fight against La Familia drug cartel despite the criminal organization claiming to have dissolved itself, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. Mexican officials remain skeptical on the mysterious banners making the claim, believing it could be a plot to divert focus from the cartel. Mexico’s security spokesman, Alejandro Poire, said “there would be no truce” with La Familia, however he did not comment on the banners in the state of Michoacan.

A group of middle-class Mexican women on pink motorcycles has begun handing out food and medicine to the poor in Ciudad Juarez, Reuters reported Monday. The motorcycle club that calls itself “Las Guerreras” (The Female Warriors) rides out on their hogs every Sunday to dangerous neighborhoods, handing out cash, medicines, food, clothing and even birthday cakes, all paid for out of their own pockets.

During her visit to Mexico this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commended Calderon’s fight in the drug war, calling it “courageous” and adding that there is “no alternative,” LA Times reported Tuesday.

Avelardo Valdez of The Houston Chronicle argues otherwise: “Failure to curb drug war exposes Mexico’s weakness.”

Surveillance video from last Friday at the U.S./Mexico border near Naco, Ariz., shows drug smugglers employing a catapult to launch small bales of marijuana across the border, ABC News reported. National Guard troops monitoring the surveillance cameras contacted Mexican authorities who arrived to find approximately 45 pounds of marijuana, the catapult and the SUV belonging to the smugglers who fled the scene before police arrived.

Federal officials said Tuesday they have busted a network of gun buyers and smugglers responsible for arming Mexican drug cartels, arresting 17 people named in a 53-count indictment, The Wall Street Journal reports. Authorities in Phoenix have busted gun-smuggling rings in the past—including last year’s seizure of 1,300 weapons that were heading south from Arizona and New Mexico. Dennis Burke, U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona called the smuggling and straw purchasing of weapons “a huge problem” for the state. “The drug cartels go shopping for their war weapons in Arizona,” Burke said. “One of Arizona’s top exports is weapons for drug cartels.”

During Thursday’s YouTube Q-and-A session, President Obama found out that a burning question on the mind of Americans is his stance on legalizing marijuana. Although he said he is not in favor of legalizing pot, he thinks that drug use should be looked at more as a public health problem than a legal issue.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne believes medical marijuana in the is subject to the state sales tax. One proposal would tax marijuana at a stunning 300 percent. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Steve Farley, said the tax could reduce the amount that people who use medical marijuana: “We all know that not all this will necessarily go to sick people,” he told the Arizona Republic. Andrew Myers, executive director of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Association said the tax would push medical marijuana out of reach of those who need it. 

So you think you know all the various conditions that people say can be treated with marijuana? Try this fun pot quiz.

–DR

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Pardon us. We’ve been distracted.

Jan 10th, 11 / 3 Comments

CrawfordOnDrugs has been a bit distracted so far in the New Year.

This week, I’m reporting on the horrific shootings of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a federal judge, a little girl and others in Tucson for People magazine.

Next week, I will be hanging out at drug court and in rehab clinics for an upcoming Phoenix Magazine story.

I’ll try to post something substantive soon: like my thoughts about Sarah Palin’s stupid map that had Giffords in the crosshairs. Or about the loopholes in federal and Arizona law that let any psycho buy an unlimited arsenal of military grade weapons and ammunition. Or more on the drug war that Giffords worried would spill over the U.S.-Mexico border and endanger her constituents.

Until then, here’s to hoping the cognizant majority (that I am certain still exists) can take back our political discourse.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their family and friends.

–AJC

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This Week in Drugs (Dec. 17, 2010)

Dec 17th, 10 / 8 Comments

Arizona’s state health agency released draft rules today on medical marijuana, legalized in November by voters’ approval of Proposition 203. (Read the draft rules here.) Among other things, the rules require that patients have an existing relationship with a physician or that they see the same doctor for their marijuana recommendation as they do to treat their condition — which would help to scale down the number of doctors whose practices center around marijuana. The rules also clarify what we’ve been pointing out to critics for a while: the only kind of chronic pain that counts in Arizona is pain associated with a debilitating disease or illness. The Arizona Republic does a good job of explaining the draft rules here. The public now has three weeks to comment on the proposed regulations.

The Los Angeles Times‘ editorial board delivered a well-earned slap down to Obama’s drug czar this week for blaming increased marijuana use by teens on medical marijuana and California’s failed Proposition 19 to legalize recreational pot. The newspaper points to a spring study that shows no increase in marijuana use by teens in states where medical marijuana is legal. And, indeed, the proof is undeniable that prohibition hasn’t stopped marijuana use: “There’s little evidence that continued criminalization has discouraged teen drug use, but better education might,” the newspaper writes.

The Obama administration is taking a logical (albeit probably overdue) step to stem the flow of assault weapons to Mexico by proposing a temporary requirement that gun dealers near the border report multiple sales of assault weapons. The feds already track multiple handgun sales, but not of semi-automatic weapons like AR-15s and AK-47s used by cartels for battles with the Mexican army. The National Rifle Association has already called out the move as an assault on the second amendment, according to The Washington Post. Read my take on our inconsistent and illogical gun laws and the “iron river” of guns flowing to Mexico here.

U.S. diplomatic cables published to WikiLeaks show Cuban frustration with Jamaica’s lack of response to drug smuggling to the United States, CNN reports. According to the cables, Cuban officials “collectively and continually … express frustration over the GOJ’s [Jamaica's] consistent ignoring of Cuban attempts to increase the flow” of drug-related information between the two countries.

Mexican officials announced this week that more than 30,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon launched his escalated drug war in 2006. About 12,500 people were killed from January-November 2010, compared with 9,600 in all of 2009, the Associated Press reports. The BBC reports Ciudad Juarez’ death toll has reached 3,000 for the year; 10 times the figures for 2007. In the past three years, 7,386 people had been killed in Ciudad Juarez. CNN looks at the new numbers in light of a new report from the Stratfor global intelligence company that shows the violent cost of the government’s efforts to take down cartel leaders. While dangerous individuals are eliminated, the efforts also upset the balance of power and lead to more bloodshed: “This imbalance has increased the volatility of the country’s security environment by creating a sort of vicious feeding frenzy among the various organizations as they seek to preserve their own turf or seize territory from rival organizations,” the report says.

The populace response to the death of a Mexican drug lord this weeks shows the complexity of the relationship between some cartels and citizens. Slain cartel leader Nazario Moreno Gonzalez (a.k.a. “The Craziest”) of La Familia Michoacana was mourned as a religious leader after being gunned down by authorities. His cult-like cartel bills itself as the protector of the Michoacan state. A peace march organized by the local government turned into a rally in support of Gonzalez, the Associated Press reports. Read the CNN profile of Gonzalez here.

Meanwhile, the Mexican government’s corruption case against 35 local officials for working with La Familia has fallen apart and all but one of the suspects has been released, The Los Angeles Times reports.

For once, the United States is exporting something marijuana-related to Mexico: growing techniques. Reuters reports on new more sophisticated production practices pioneered on marijuana in the U.S. that are now being used to produce higher-grade marijuana in Mexico. As part of the article, Reuters emphasizes that U.S.-sold marijuana provides the bulk of the cash used by cartels to finance their violent battle against the Mexican government.

An Afghan drug lord now facing narco-terrorism charges was a U.S. informant, The New York Times reports. The article illustrates the conflict the U.S. faces in fighting terrorism and the global drug war at the same time.

A video of pop-star Miley Cyrus smoking the natural herb, salvia, has been swirling around the internet. Salvia divinorum, also known as Diviner’s or Seer’s Sage, is a psychoactive plant smoked for its dissociative effects and hallucinatory experiences. Legal in Cyrus’ home state of California, it has been banned in states like Oklahoma, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Illinois, Virginia, North Dakota, and Delaware. See the TMZ video here.

The Open Society Institute* posted an interesting blog this week on the vilification of pregnant women who use drugs. The international non-profit points to governmental scare tactics in places like Russia that are not based in science and only serve to further marginalize women and prevent them from seeking treatment.

The Drug Policy Alliance and other criminal justice reform groups are asking supporters to fast on Dec. 22 and sign a petition to urge President Obama to create an “effective process” to review applications for commutations and grant sentence reductions to federal prisoners serving overly harsh time for drug violations and other crimes. Read and/or sign the petition here. Recently, Obama granted his first pardons, but did not take action, as some had hoped he would, to reduce sentences of people convicted before changes this year to alleviate some of the disparity between punishments for powder verse crack cocaine.

–AJC

*Full disclosure: Amanda J. Crawford is a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow with the Open Society Institute, which helps to support her work on CrawfordOnDrugs.com

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This Week In Drugs (Nov. 19, 2010)

Nov 19th, 10 / 2 Comments

Across the border from southeast Texas, the Mexican town of Ciudad Mier has become a ghost town after some 300 families were forced to flee the violent turf war between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, National Public Radio reported. The Lions Club in the nearby town of Miguel Aleman has been made into a shelter for fleeing residents, making it the first refugee camp of the Mexican cartel war. According to Mier residents, all but a dozen of the town’s 6,500 residents have fled the violence.

Mexican police detained a minor last Friday and are looking for another in connection with disturbing photos and videos posted online depicting torture and murder by supposed Gulf Cartel executioners, the Associated Press reported. Pedro Luis Benitez, the attorney general of central Morelos state, commented on the trend of increasingly younger cartel gunmen: “It is easy for [the cartels] to give them a firearm, making it appear as it if were a plastic weapon and that it is a game, when in fact it is not,” Benitez said. Mexican President Felipe Calderon also commented on the use of young mercenaries by the cartels: “In the most violent areas of the country, there is an unending recruitment of young people without hope, without opportunities.”

Amid the rampant drug cartel violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s medical workers are increasingly at the front lines of the drug war the AP reported. According to Physician Ramon Murrieta Gonzalez, the president-elect of the Medical College of Mexico, 15 doctors have been shot to death in Ciudad Juarez in the past two years, more than 250 Ciudad Juarez doctors now commute across the border from El Paso, and 30 percent of the city’s private practices have closed. “We are in the middle of a war without choosing to be,” Murrieta said. “Commandos assassinate wounded men in the hospital – once in the surgical suite while they were operating on the patient. This is a grave danger to the entire country.”

In a recent interview with CBS, Calderon told Peter Greenberg that the United States’ drug consumption is largely to blame for the drug war raging to the south. “My concern is, according to the official data in the United States, consumption of drugs is growing every single year. Second, at the same time the United States is the largest provider of weapons to criminals in Mexico,” Calderon said. (See the segment from Calderon’s interview here and read more about the flow of arms to Mexico here.)

In the U.S., though, the government wants you to believe we’re winning the drug war, and they’re pledging to keep fighting it in the same way. DEA nominee Michele Leonhart, a Bush holdover who is widely abhorred by drug policy reformers, is one step closer to confirmation by the U.S. Senate. In a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Leonhart reiterated her opposition to marijuana legalization and pledged to continue to enforce marijuana laws, even in states where medical marijuana is legal. Drug reform groups hoped she would face tough questions about the agency’s actions on medical marijuana, but that did not materialize. Instead Senators grilled her on DEA rules that make it more difficult for some nursing home patients to get prescription medications.

In the aftermath of the historic consideration of marijuana legalization in California, the DEA reissued a guide coaching parents and opponents to legalization. “Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization” takes on what the agency describes as “myths about drug legalization” and boasts of progress in fighting drug use and trafficking. You can see the guide here.

Meanwhile, a study in the British Journal of Criminology reports of the success of drug decriminalization in Portugal. Described as one of the first evidence-based examinations of drug decriminalization, the study found that decriminalization did not lead to increases in drug use, as predicted. “Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding.” Read the study here.

-DR & AJC
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Guns, Mexican drug cartels, This Week In Drugs, U.S.-Mexico border

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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Drug Policy, Drug War History, Guns, Mexican drug cartels, This Week In Drugs