America’s War on Drugs Sputters to an End

[longknife]

by Diane Dimond

I’m going to make a bold prediction: America’s War on Drugs is now officially over.

Oh, no one in Washington is going to make any sort of announcement to confirm this, but take it from me: Our four-decades-old drug war strategy is now formally kaput. To be entirely honest, it has been sputtering along for years now accomplishing little and costing us upward of a trillion dollars.

Citizens in two states — Washington and Colorado — sealed the deal. They voted that marijuana should be legalized, no prescription or medical excuse needed. And not only is recreational pot smoking by adults legal in those two places now, but medicinal use of marijuana is already the will of the people in 18 other states and the District of Columbia.

Sure looks like a trend to me.

Read more @ America’s War on Drugs Sputters to an End | Right Wing News

 

[waltky]

Obama goin' after dem drug traffickers...

US military expands its drug war in Latin America
Feb 3,`13 - The crew members aboard the USS Underwood could see through their night goggles what was happening on the fleeing go-fast boat: Someone was dumping bales.

When the Navy guided-missile frigate later dropped anchor in Panamanian waters on that sunny August morning, Ensign Clarissa Carpio, a 23-year-old from San Francisco, climbed into the inflatable dinghy with four unarmed sailors and two Coast Guard officers like herself, carrying light submachine guns. It was her first deployment, but Carpio was ready for combat. Fighting drug traffickers was precisely what she'd trained for. In the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War, the U.S. has militarized the battle against the traffickers, spending more than $20 billion in the past decade. U.S. Army troops, Air Force pilots and Navy ships outfitted with Coast Guard counternarcotics teams are routinely deployed to chase, track and capture drug smugglers.

The sophistication and violence of the traffickers is so great that the U.S. military is training not only law enforcement agents in Latin American nations, but their militaries as well, building a network of expensive hardware, radar, airplanes, ships, runways and refueling stations to stem the tide of illegal drugs from South America to the U.S. According to State Department and Pentagon officials, stopping drug-trafficking organizations has become a matter of national security because they spread corruption, undermine fledgling democracies and can potentially finance terrorists.

U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, pointing to dramatic declines in violence and cocaine production in Colombia, says the strategy works. "The results are historic and have tremendous implications, not just for the United States and the Western Hemisphere, but for the world," he said at a conference on drug policy last year. The Associated Press examined U.S. arms export authorizations, defense contracts, military aid, and exercises in the region, tracking a drug war strategy that began in Colombia, moved to Mexico and is now finding fresh focus in Central America, where brutal cartels mark an enemy motivated not by ideology but by cash.

The U.S. authorized the sale of a record $2.8 billion worth of guns, satellites, radar equipment and tear gas to Western Hemisphere nations in 2011, four times the authorized sales 10 years ago, according to the latest State Department reports. Over the same decade, defense contracts jumped from $119 million to $629 million, supporting everything from Kevlar helmets for the Mexican army to airport runways in Aruba, according to federal contract data. Last year $830 million, almost $9 out of every $10 of U.S. law enforcement and military aid spent in the region, went toward countering narcotics, up 30 percent in the past decade.

MORE

See also:

Musicians caught up in Mexico's drug wars
3 February 2013 - The violent deaths of all but one member of a musical band in northern Mexico have thrown a spotlight on the murky world of musicians who play for the country's drug gangs, says the BBC's Will Grant in Mexico City.

When the families and the authorities arrived at the scene of the party in the northern Mexican town of Hidalgo, they found it deserted. There were bottles of beer and whisky strewn around on the ground, and the cars belonging to members of the musical band, Kombo Kolombia, had been left open and abandoned. But there was no sign of the missing musicians. The men's bodies began to turn up a few days later. Some 30km (20 miles) away, 17 bodies were discovered down a well with gunshot wounds to the head. One member of the band had managed to escape their captors and lead the authorities to where the corpses had been dumped.

Kombo Kolombia, who specialised in Colombian vallenato music, are the latest in a long list of musical acts to be murdered by Mexico's violent drug gangs. The men's families were quick to rebuff any suggestion that the musicians were involved in the drugs trade. "My son was a healthy boy," said Maria Sagrario Saenz, mother of the group's percussionist, Ricardo Alfonso, after identifying his body. "He was a veterinarian. He gave percussion lessons to kids. He wasn't involved in anything he shouldn't be, should they try to link him to such things."

Money

For the journalist Javier Valdez, who has written extensively on the drugs war, it is generally unfair to "condemn a musician [as a criminal] for simply having played at a 'narco' party". One musician who agrees is Antonio (not his real name). Antonio has played at a number of "narco-parties" and spoke to the BBC's Spanish-language website, BBC Mundo, via email. For him, the reason for performing at such events is simple: money. "This is a business, and it's about making money through what we do [music]", he told BBC Mundo. "They pay well, in cash, and without any problems."

The parties themselves conjure up images of lavish, debauched affairs such as depicted in Hollywood films about drug lords, such as Scarface or Blow. The reality isn't too different, says Antonio, though he is understandably wary of giving away too many details of what he has seen while onstage. "There is a lot of security and no expense is spared," he writes. "There's a lot of booze, food and other things. There is money to throw around. In truth, the parties are quite calm because there is so much vigilance and security on hand. There's always someone who has one too many drinks, but it's almost always calmed down quickly, so that there aren't arguments or fights."

Chronicle of life

 

[Katzndogz]

Legalization of pot is already getting some second thoughts. I have relatives in Colorado, traffic accidents are up 13% due to drugged driving and the veterinarians have overflowing offices because of pot poisoning in animals.

 

[waltky]

New tools in the war on drugs...

US tries new tools in anti-drug fight
Mon, Apr 29, 2013 - Drug smugglers who race across the Caribbean in speedboats typically jettison their cargo when spotted by surveillance aircraft, hoping any chance of prosecuting them will vanish with the drugs sinking to the bottom of the sea.

That may be a less winning tactic in the future. The US Navy on Friday began testing two new aerial tools, borrowed from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, that officials say could make it easier to detect, track and videotape drug smugglers in action. One of the devices on display aboard the high-speed vessel Swift is a large, white balloon-like craft known as an aerostat, which is tethered about 600m above the ship’s stern. The other tool on board for tests in the Florida Straits is a type of drone that can be launched by hand from the deck. Together, they expand the ability of navy and US Coast Guard personnel to see what is beyond their horizon, according to officials from both military branches and the contractors hoping to sell the devices to the US government.

The devices should allow authorities to detect and monitor suspected drug shipments from afar for longer sustained periods, giving them a better chance of stopping the smugglers. They also should allow them to make continuous videotapes that can be used in prosecutions. “Being able to see them and watch what they are doing even before we get there is going to give us an edge,” said Chris Sinclair, assistant officer in charge of a law enforcement detachment on board the Swift, a private vessel leased to the navy that is about to begin a month-long deployment to the southwestern Caribbean, tracking the busy smuggling routes off Colombia and Honduras. Crews practiced launching and operating both systems, before a small contingent of news media on board the Swift, managing to bring back video of vessels participating in a mock surveillance mission as well as radar and video images of the fishing charters and sailboats that dot the choppy seas separating Cuba from the US mainland.

The drone, officially a Puma All Environment unmanned aircraft system from Aerovironment of Simi Valley, California, splashed into the water on one landing and had to be retrieved. On the second round, it clacked noisily, but intact on the shifting deck of the 100m ship. Rear Admiral Sinclair Harris, commander of the navy’s Fourth Fleet, said the devices are necessary at a time when the service is making a transition to smaller, faster ships amid budget cuts. The aerostat, formally the Aerostar TIF-25K and made by a division of Raven Industries of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is filled with helium. It is an old technology, models of which have been used for decades, but it is packed with cameras and sensors that expand the ship’s radar capability from about 8km to about 80km. That can help teams in an on-board control center to identify larger ships, which now would appear as just dots on the horizon, from as far as 25km away.

Meanwhile, the Puma can be sent out to inspect a vessel flagged by the larger aerostat and give a “God’s eye view,” of what’s happening on board, a job usually handled by a plane or helicopter, said Craig Benson, director of business development for the company. Both the aerostat and the drone have been used widely by the US government for overseas actions, but Harris and others aboard the Swift said neither has been used before by the navy to conduct counter-drug operations.

US tries new tools in anti-drug fight - Taipei Times

 

[editec]

by Diane Dimond

I’m going to make a bold prediction: America’s War on Drugs is now officially over.

Oh, no one in Washington is going to make any sort of announcement to confirm this, but take it from me: Our four-decades-old drug war strategy is now formally kaput. To be entirely honest, it has been sputtering along for years now accomplishing little and costing us upward of a trillion dollars.

Citizens in two states — Washington and Colorado — sealed the deal. They voted that marijuana should be legalized, no prescription or medical excuse needed. And not only is recreational pot smoking by adults legal in those two places now, but medicinal use of marijuana is already the will of the people in 18 other states and the District of Columbia.

Sure looks like a trend to me.

Read more @ America’s War on Drugs Sputters to an End | Right Wing News

Never underestimate the willingness of people driven by profits to reverse this trend.

The anti-drug industry (police, legal and prisons) generates more profits for War on Drugs warriors than the drug business generates for their criminal counterparts.

the fact that the people are becoming saner in no way insures that their governments will likewise.

 

[there4eyeM]

Maybe we could display some prominent public figure in front of, oh, say, some kind of sign or drape that says, "Mission accomplished!" and have done with it.

 

[Katzndogz]

There never was a war on drugs, beyond use of the words themselves. There's been an accommodation of drugs, but no war on drugs. The real money is IN drugs. Not the prohibition of drugs. The real money is in rehab, suing people who refuse to accommodate drug addicts, counseling, clean needle programs, safe use of drugs, half way houses, and an entire drug accommodation industry.