Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 7:47 pm | By: Radical Russ
(World Politics Review) For roughly four decades, a clear foreign policy rule set has existed between the United States and Latin America, centering largely on the question of counternarcotics. Starting with Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs,” an explicit quid pro quo came into existence: U.S. foreign aid (both civilian and military) in exchange for aggressive Latin American efforts to curb both the production and trafficking of illegal narcotics (primarily marijuana and cocaine).
By virtually all accounts, that logistics-focused strategy has proven to be a massive failure. America’s focus on interdiction and prohibition has not stemmed domestic drug abuse. Instead, all indications are that preventative education — on a generational scale — has proven far more effective, meaning that demand reduction has trumped supply curtailment as a means of reducing overall prevalence.
Meanwhile, across Latin America, there’s been widespread movement toward decriminalization. Why? Because the benefits of remaining on America’s “good side” on this hot-button issue have been overwhelmed by the negative externalities of overcrowded prisons, rampant drug-related violence, police corruption, and growing organized criminal networks.
The author points to four main reasons why countries like Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay are decriminalizing personal drug possession:
The rise of a Latin American middle class feeling economic independence from United States aid;
The increase in foreign aid to Latin America from Asia and Latinos sending money back home from the US;
The increase of Latin American trade to China and the European Union that decreases American economic influence; and
The rise of drug cartels, terrorism, and violence that led Latin American countries to directly confront the issue.
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 2:35 pm | By: Legalize-SaveLives
The Mexican drug cartels feed on the marijuana prohibition, deriving two-thirds of their incomes from selling marijuana in the U.S. The violence they use to protect this cash flow is among the most vicious, sadistic brutality committed in the world today.
Unable to convey the full horror of the acts being committed with normal words, the Mexican media invented new ones. This is their glossary (Los Angeles Times):
Levanton: the kidnapping of one or more members of a rival gang, or other enemy. Unlike traditional kidnappings, the point is not ransom, but to torture and kill a foe. Victims of a multiple levanton may end up fusilados.
Fusilados: from the Spanish for rifle, to be executed in the style of a firing squad, or with a shot to the head, known as a tiro de gracia. This occurred in an attack at a Ciudad Juarez drug-treatment clinic in early September.
Encajuelado: Based on the word for “trunk,” a body dumped in the trunk of a car. This is a common method of disposing of victims of a drug hit. Often, the bodies are bound and gagged with packing tape or are encobijados, wrapped in blankets. Sometimes they are accompanied by a handwritten narcomensaje.
Narcomensaje: A scrawled drug message, often rambling or peppered with misspellings. Such missives are typically meant to threaten rival drug cartels or government security forces. Messages sometimes take the form of banners, known as narcomantas, and hung from bridges or in other public places to demonstrate a gang’s audacity.
Plaza: Not the quaint public square you see in nearly every Mexican town, but rather any defined drug marketplace, such as a smuggling point. Much of the violence since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug cartels, is due to fighting among gangs over coveted plazas, or turf, including street-level sales taking place in tienditas.
Tiendita: Any place where drugs are sold in small quantities on the street — a house, apartment building or even a little store. Tienditas, or “little stores,” play a big role in what Mexican officials say is a worrisome increase in domestic drug use and addiction in Mexico, which once served mainly as a pipeline to the United States with little local consumption.
Halcones: To guard strongholds, trafficking groups rely on a network of street-level informants — taxi drivers, fruit vendors, teen boys — known as halcones, or falcons. Halcones provide early warning of the arrival of federal police or soldiers that have been dispatched around Mexico as part of Calderon’s drug war.
Cuerno de chivo: “Goat horn,” nickname for the AK-47 assault rifle, a favorite of cartel gunmen. The name refers to the curved shape of the magazine. Hit men are increasingly making use of even more powerful weapons, including .50-caliber machine guns and 40-millimeter grenade launchers. Authorities also report a rise in the use of potent pistols, able to fire through body armor, that are known here as matapolicias, or cop killers.
Narco-(anything): It’s handy for headline writers and coiners of terms that narco combines with almost any noun. Alone, narco can refer to a trafficker or the entire illegal drug trade, as in, “The government’s war against el narco.”
A little creativity yields narco-fiestas (opulent, drug-laden parties featuring foreign dancers or big-name musical groups), narco-zoologicos (narco-zoos, collections of exotic animals that, for some reason, are collectors’ items for traffickers) and narco-candidatos (politicians reputed to be in cahoots with drug gangs).
Attorneys who defend suspected capos are narco-abogados, or narco-lawyers.
Narco-policias are cops on the take.
And representing the drug war’s next generation: Narcojuniors, the well-heeled children of traffickers accused of helping run the criminal enterprises.
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 7:03 am | By: Radical Russ
(Washington Post) ARCATA, Calif. — Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.
Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.
Wait, are you telling us the limited legalization of marijuana has put more of a hurt on Mexican drug gangs than all that law enforcement expenditure on arrests and interdiction? Are you telling us that the best way to battle a supply and demand problem is to legalize the supply to satisfy the demand?
While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels’ revenue — $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 — came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The exact dimensions of the U.S. marijuana market are unknown. The 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that 14.4 million Americans age 12 and over had used marijuana in the past month. More than 10 percent of the U.S. population reported smoking pot once in the past year.
There is no better marijuana on the planet than American-grown marijuana. We’d be more than happy to put Mexican growers out of business. Just let us grow our own! In addition to the elimination of 60% of violent drug gangs* revenue, we’d also create many new jobs right here when we are in an unemployment slump. It would also drive demand for all the stuff growers need, like lights, fertilizer, timers, air conditioning, air filtration, growhouse construction, and so on. Then there are the payroll taxes and sales taxes we’d raise from legal marijuana.
So many who oppose this common-sense solution fear that we’d be sending the message that it’s OK to smoke pot. Well, the messages we’ve been sending so far haven’t convinced anyone to not smoke pot, so are we just funding violent Mexican drug gangs out of stubbornness? Forget about “messages”; people smoke pot, period. Accept the reality that millions of us like to use cannabis responsibly and that the only harms to society from that use are due to its prohibition, not the cannabis.
*By the way, it’s “drug gangs” not “drug cartels”. Cartels are economic units of cooperation, like OPEC, where all the members work together to fix prices and control production. Cartels don’t fight amongst each other and decapitate their rivals.
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Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 9:54 am | By: Radical Russ
“They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no…”
(Comcast) CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center, lined people against a wall and shot 17 dead in a particularly bloody day in Mexico’s relentless drug war. The brazen attack followed the killing of the No. 2 security official in President Felipe Calderon’s home state.
The attackers on Wednesday broke down the door of El Aliviane center in Ciudad Juarez, lined up their victims against a wall and opened fire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors’ office. At least five people were injured.
Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico’s most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone.
I can’t quite figure out the motivation for gunning down people in rehab. Usually these cartels are targeting police, federal officials, and rival cartels. Maybe some of the people in the rehab were formerly involved with the cartels and trying to “go straight”. It’s a shame – “duck and cover” isn’t usually covered in the Twelve Steps.
Gunmen killed the No. 2 security official and three other people in Calderon’s home state of Michoacan, where the government is locked in an intensifying battle with the ruthless La Familia cartel, blamed for a string of assassinations of police and soldiers.
Jose Manuel Revuelta, who was promoted less than two weeks ago to state deputy public safety director, is the highest-ranking government official killed in the wave of assassinations sweeping Michoacan, the cradle of La Familia drug cartel.
Attackers drove up alongside Revuelta as he headed home and opened fire, state Attorney General Jesus Montejano said.
Revuelta tried to speed away, but only made it a few blocks before he was intercepted by two vehicles. Six gunmen got out and sprayed Revuelta’s car with bullets, killing him, two bodyguards and a truck driver caught in the crossfire, Montejano said.
Sounds like a scene from a Hollywood movie, but this is the reality many Mexicans live with every day. Just like Chicagoans in the 1920s.
Calderon first launched his crackdown against drug cartels in Michoacan, sending thousands of federal police and soldiers to his home state after taking office in late 2006. Tens of thousands more have since been deployed to drug hotspots across Mexico.
Drug gang violence has since surged, claiming more than 13,500 lives, including more than 1,000 police officers.
Calderon defended his battle against drug trafficking in a speech to Congress on Wednesday. He said the government has taken on the cartels as no previous Mexican administration has dared to do.
“As never before, we have weakened the logistical and financial structure of crime,” the president told legislators.
You might say we’ve “turned a corner” in battling the cartels and that the insurgency is in “its last throes”, huh, Mr. Cheney… er, Calderon? That’s the problem with putting a medical issue in the hands of warriors – war is their justification, not public health. Is the violence subsiding or are there fewer people using drugs? Great, that means the Drug War is working, let’s keep at it. Is the violence increasing or are there more people using drugs? That must mean we’re not fighting the Drug War hard enough, let’s redouble our efforts. Never can it be uttered that perhaps the Drug War itself is the problem, for it is always drugs that are the problem and war is the only solution.
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ARCHIVE: Interview with Mark Stepnoski, Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl winner and NORML Advisory Board member. Stash founder Chris Goldstein interviews Mark in 2007, who will be appearing at the 2009 NORML National Convention in San Francisco.
Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 1:18 pm | By: Radical Russ
We reported last week on the new law in Mexico decriminalizing personal possession of drugs. As is often the case, what can look like a great law on first read can have many unintended consequences in actual practice. We received an email from Jorge Hernández Tinajero of the Mexican drug reform organization CUPIHD (Colectivo por una PolĂtica Integral Hacia las Drogas) explaining the issue (official news release in English / Spanish):
The new law determines the quantities of drugs allowed to be carried for personal consumption, and it is here where some important concerns arise. First of all, the amounts of drugs permitted (5 grams of marijuana, equivalent approximately to 4 or 5 cigarettes, 0.5 gr. of cocaine, close to four lines, 0.04 g of methamphetamine or ecstasy, maybe 2 pills) are not realistic in terms of the illicit drug market. Cocaine, for example, sells by the gram on the streets. Also, these quantities are not realistic in terms of what a user actually consumes. In comparison, Paraguay for example allows 2 grams of cocaine for personal consumption, four times as much as Mexico.
Establishing such low thresholds can be dangerous because it can become a way to improperly categorize a large number of users as traffickers. Under the new Mexican law, a person is considered a small scale trafficker if caught with more drugs than the quantities allowed, with sentences from 4 to 10 years if they have the “intent to sell”. It remains unknown how this intent will be determined or proven, opening up the door to extortion and increasing the possibility of corruption of both police and the judicial power, already a significant problem in Mexico. The risk of corruption and extortion is now even greater because the new law allows local and state institutions to pursue, prosecute and sanction small level trafficking
—something that was limited before to the federal level. It is a this local level where corruption and inefficiency is greatest and where reforms have not been implemented.
Worse, even when the intent to sell cannot be proven, users found with quantities of drugs greater than those allowed can receive a sentence of up to three years in jail, an increase from before the law was passed. The new law now establishes these quantities of drugs as the determining factor to distinguish between a user and a trafficker. For these reasons, this law runs the risk of criminalizing a vast group of users, as well as those who make a living off the small-scale dealing but who in reality are not part of the organized crime networks. Imprisoning these users and dealers will not diminish the supply of drugs on the street, nor will it improve Mexico’s current public security situation and overwhelming violence. It will however allow the government to justify its current strategies against organized crime by boasting about the number of people incarcerated, but in reality worsen Mexico’s already serious prison overpopulation problem.
Marijuana on the street is usually sold in eighths, which is 3.5 grams (if your dealer’s honest), so the 5g limit for personal possession seems reasonable. However, as Jorge points out, many people who are mere personal users will have more than 5 grams and low-level dealers are more than likely to carry more than that. This new law is supposed to put the focus on the high level traffickers, but they have the bribe money to avoid prosecution, so once again the low-level dealer and unlucky who possess more than a “personal” amount will be the true targets
Decriminalization of personal amounts is a step in the right direction, but only under legalization will the problems at both the low-level personal-use/dealing range and the high-level murderous and corrupting cartels range be solved.
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Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 9:42 am | By: Radical Russ
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico now has one of the world’s most liberal laws for drug users after eliminating jail time for small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and even heroin, LSD and methamphetamine.
But stunned police on the U.S. side of the border say the law contradicts President Felipe Calderon’s drug war, and some fear it could make Mexico a destination for drug-fueled spring breaks and tourism.
Tens of thousands of American college students flock to Cancun and Acapulco each year to party at beachside discos offering wet T-shirt contests and all-you-can-drink deals.
“Now they will go because they can get drugs,” said San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne. “For a country that has experienced thousands of deaths from warring drug cartels for many years, it defies logic why they would pass a law that will clearly encourage drug use.”
That’s strange. I don’t recall the police chiefs calling on Mexico to raise their drinking age from 18 to 21. One major reason American college kids flock to Cancun is because under age 21, they can’t go to clubs and can’t easily acquire alcohol in America. Prohibition of alcohol for adults who can vote, smoke, and join the military is what makes those adults fly to Mexico.
Decriminalization does not encourage drug use. In the thirteen US states that have decriminalized marijuana use, the perceptions of risk and the rates of use remained virtually unchanged. Countries that have decriminalized have lower drug use rates than the US and lower rates than before they decriminalized.
Laws don’t encourage or discourage drug use. Drugs encourage drug use. Drugs have their own built-in public relations and advertising campaign – when you take them, you get high. The only things that discourages drug use are education prior to drug use and health care after drug use.
Supporters of the change point to Portugal, which removed jail terms for drug possession for personal use in 2001 and still has one of the lowest rates of cocaine use in Europe.
Foreigners caught with drugs still face arrest in Portugal, a measure to prevent drug tourism.
The same is not true for Mexico, where there is no jail time for anyone caught with roughly four marijuana cigarettes, four lines of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine or 0.015 milligrams of LSD.
That’s what concerns U.S. law enforcement at the border.
“It provides an officially sanctioned market for the consumption of the world’s most dangerous drugs,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said. “For the people of San Diego the risk is direct and lethal. There are those who will drive to Mexico to use drugs and return to the U.S. under their influence.”
So you’re telling us that someone who could easily score pot, coke, heroin, meth, or LSD right in downtown San Diego is instead going to get a passport, drive to Tijuana, try to find a dealer, avoid cartel violence, score some drugs, get really high, and drive back across the heavily-fortified cop-laden inspection-ridden US border? Wow, Reefer Madness is so much more mind-altering than anything Mexico decriminalized.
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 11:33 am | By: Radical Russ
(CNN) — The Argentina Supreme Court ruled Tuesday it is unconstitutional to punish an adult for private use of marijuana as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.
Argentina becomes the second Latin American country in the past four days to allow personal use of a formerly illegal drug.
The seven-member Argentina Supreme Court decision was unanimous, the court’s Web site said.
The case in question involved five young men who were arrested for having a few marijuana cigarettes in their pockets.
Supreme Court Justice Carlos Fayt, who at one time supported laws that make personal use of marijuana illegal, told the state-run Telam news agency that “reality” changed his mind.
Argentina’s action came amid growing momentum in Latin America toward decriminalization.
Mexico enacted a law Friday that decriminalizes possessing low quantities of most drugs, including marijuana, heroin, cocaine and LSD.
Earlier this year, a Brazilian appeals court ruled that possession of drugs for personal use is not illegal.
Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue policy institute in Washington, sees the shift in attitude toward drugs as recognition that current policy is not working.
“It’s all part of a harm-reduction approach,” Hakim said, noting that policy is shifting toward figuring out how to reduce harm to the users and to society.
Remember the old days when those of us in the United States used to look down our noses at Latin America and South America for their corrupt governments and lack of personal freedom? Kinda like we used to make fun of the anti-democratic Soviet Union and their “czars”.
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Latin American countries no longer fear US in setting drug policy
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
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