War On Drugs

[Wroberson]

I think this is good news...

Holder proposes changes in criminal justice system

 

[FA_Q2]

Move in the right direction though they need to simply do away with most of that asinine law. It is interesting though as the administration has not taken any real positions that would have foreshadowed this action. I wonder why and why now.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I think this is good news...

Holder proposes changes in criminal justice system

I think it would be better news if they just dropped charging people with drug crimes altogether.

 

[waltky]

Unknown bodies pile up in Mexico in war on drugs...

Fueling drug gangs' impunity, unidentified corpses pile up in Mexico
Sun Sep 7, 2014 - In Mexico's blood-soaked northern state of Sinaloa, a simple gravestone adorned with pink, blue and yellow plastic flowers marks the tomb of 42-year-old assistant carpenter Carlos Montano.

But Montano is alive and well in the city of Tijuana, hundreds of miles away near the U.S. border, the victim of different enemies: incompetence and indifference in a land where authorities have failed to identify thousands of people killed in grisly gangland violence. "Legally, I'm dead," Montano said, standing in the same Tijuana street where his death certificate says he was gunned down with shots to the neck and chest. "They buried me to banda," he said, referring to a brass-based traditional music genre popular in Mexico. Who the bullet-riddled corpse buried in his coffin last year in the western beach resort of Mazatlan belongs to is anyone's guess.

In a gross comedy of errors, Montano is now in legal limbo as he tries to reinstate his identity with the public records office. His 'death' illustrates the administrative chaos that families of drug war victims often face in Mexico. For many, the nightmare never ends. "All I want is to find my daughter," said Luz del Carmen Flores, clutching a photo of Angelica, who disappeared in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez in 2008. Aged 19, she left her home one day in search of work and never returned. Flores has searched relentlessly for Angelica, looking in seedy bars, traveling to follow up leads and regularly standing in public squares with pictures in case someone recognizes her daughter.

A Catholic priest blesses a coffin containing an unidentified body at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez

Police called her in to review two bodies, neither of which was Angelica. Beyond that, Flores say they have done nothing to help her and others looking for missing relatives. "They want me to look for her accepting that she is dead, but I look for her alive ... The only information they have is what we investigate using our own money and risking our own lives. Those who took them don't want us looking for them." "For these past 6 years, I have felt like a zombie." Authorities' failure to catch the killers in the vast majority of cases or even identify many of the dead is largely down to poor police work and a haphazard patchwork of forensic services across Mexico. It also helps fuel impunity and further violence. More than 100,000 people have been killed since former President Felipe Calderon ordered a military offensive against drug gangs in late 2006, a move that led to waves of extreme violence.

Despite repeated requests by Reuters, the attorney general's office did not say how many victims are yet to be identified. But partial figures from the National Human Rights Commission offer a glimpse: Between 2006 and 2011, more than half of the 40,000 people reported killed in armed confrontations were never identified. Since 2006, only 336 of some 2,000 corpses exhumed from mass graves scattered across the country have been matched with a name, according to official data obtained by Reuters via freedom of information requests. The figures often don't match those reported by state authorities. Durango state reported 300 corpses were found in mass graves in 2011, but data from the attorney general's office mentioned just 20 bodies.

CONFUSION

 

[FA_Q2]

That is what illegalizing a victimless crime does - it creates actual victims....

 

[whitehall]

Is Holder confused about the parameters of his job? He should be in jail for his part in the murder of a Border Patrol officer but right now he gets paid to enforce the law. He doesn't get to change the freaking law it to make his job easier.

 

[Abishai100]

Street Conquest

The entertainment industry has invested in stories about (drug-related) street crime, perhaps reflecting a modern age networking-related profiteerism explosion.

The Hollywood (USA) movie "Traffic" (2000) presents stories about USA-Mexico border problems as they relate to narcotics underworlds and how such bubbles affect community vitality.

The vigilantism-themed Batman (DC Comics) adapted television series "Gotham" (Fox TV) presents stories about motivated crusaders confronting a brooding city fertilizing the activity of 'hysteria chefs' such as daredevil profiteers, street kings, drug illusionists, and eco-terrorists.

Many critics feel that if the initiatives of social leaders actually reach the people touched by today's underworld of Afghani hashish smuggling realms and bordertown warlocks, then there has to be some tangible populist connection between law and culture.






Russian mafia - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Should decriminalize/legalize all illicit drugs. Banning something only creates illegal enterprises which get rich providing it. And for the government that makes it illegal it's little more than a jobs program ensuring law enforcement has something to do and the prison industry gets rich warehousing citizens for the banned offenses.

Plus people naturally desire whatever's forbidden. It's like how people used to get excited if the cable company mistakingly unscrambled the adult channels for a ltitle while and they'd sit there for hours enjoying themselve.s But if they could get the channel for a few bucks a month they don't bother. Same with drugs, make them legal and safer and after an initial spike in users as peopel experiment, people will settle back down and get on with their lives.

Alcohol's legal, and a generally positive experience being drunk yet no one's proposing we ban it again. Yet compared to pot, psychedellics, and other drugs, alcohol kills hundreds of thousands every where directly and indirectly (drunk driving et al.) yet no one's upset about alcohol. No one ever died from a THC overdose, nor could they as it has no toxic level. Can die real quick from too much alcohol though.

 

[Abishai100]

Surveillance Power


A Mexican emigrant on board British Airways is on a certain flight from Mexico City to London, England.

During the flight, he is walking to the airplane bathroom and passes by the stewardess station and notices that the stewardess is snorting cocaine. She quickly realizes someone is passing by and puts away her stash and tells the Mexican, "Oh, sorry...it's an herbal inhalant meant to clear my nasal passages."

The Mexican believes her but wonders how much access to drugs is common in the modern world of convenience transit.

The Mexican feels comfortable questioning this event but does not necessarily feel comfortable talking about it in public. This is because suspicion is such a sensitive and controversial issue.

Today, there is street-talk that the NSA (National Security Agency) is actively monitoring possible Internet hacker threats from foreign terrorist groups.

How can the problematic war on drugs be contemplated in terms of active surveillance and paranoia?





Surveillance - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Moonglow]

Damn I miss blonde Lebanese hash....

 

[Moonglow]

Thai stick

 

[Henrik]

Should decriminalize/legalize all illicit drugs. Banning something only creates illegal enterprises which get rich providing it. And for the government that makes it illegal it's little more than a jobs program ensuring law enforcement has something to do and the prison industry gets rich warehousing citizens for the banned offenses.

I think we should count with the benefits with baning a drog too. Drogs hurt people and makes people incompatible to live in the society. It is also not in the norm of living in a society with people running around and taking drogs in my opinion.

Plus people naturally desire whatever's forbidden. It's like how people used to get excited if the cable company mistakingly unscrambled the adult channels for a ltitle while and they'd sit there for hours enjoying themselve.s But if they could get the channel for a few bucks a month they don't bother. Same with drugs, make them legal and safer and after an initial spike in users as peopel experiment, people will settle back down and get on with their lives.

An illigal drog will hopefully decrease the exicitment of the drog becouse folks will accept a forbidden drog instead off taking it.

Alcohol's legal, and a generally positive experience being drunk yet no one's proposing we ban it again. Yet compared to pot, psychedellics, and other drugs, alcohol kills hundreds of thousands every where directly and indirectly (drunk driving et al.) yet no one's upset about alcohol. No one ever died from a THC overdose, nor could they as it has no toxic level. Can die real quick from too much alcohol though.

Yeah, their are several bad thing with alcohol. But I think for many people alcohol is a big part of their lives and it's a huge amusement factor. I think America should allow alcohol serving at bars or public observation at the age of 18 becouse I think people at that age is ready for alcohol and their are disadvantages with everything. You should be able to buy alcohol at the age of 20.

 

[Abishai100]

Speculation Bank

The greatest threat to modern age networking optimism is the nefarious airline narcotics rings which are rumored to be efficiently operating through the hands of involved pilots, airport employees, stewardesses, etc.

These smuggling-related rings are very difficult to investigate or track, since they are well-integrated into traffic-systems and human-transit tolls.

However, recent forays by inquirers has prompted the underworld to investigate alternative methods of narcotics infiltration/distribution such as suburban carpet cleaning service narcotics ring connections.

While we want to be wary of economics-related over-speculation or hysteria (i.e., "suburban ice cream trucks are distributing drugs"), we definitely want to stay abreast with this modern problem by allowing ourselves adequate 'paranoia talk.'






As Lion Air defends rules ex-stewardess receives threats The Jakarta Post

 

[Delta4Embassy]

War on Drugs is just a federal jobs bill. Some prison industry lobbyist came up with it I'm sure. Job security they figure. Make a buncha drugs illegal to ensure a steady stream of prisoners to incarcerate for lots of money while more money will be needed to build more prisons, more funding to law enforcement, and a whole new agency will be created called the DEA. Yet inexplicably, the one drug that does the most harm remains legal, alcohol. Maybe because it helps the prison industry making people stupid and violent where the the 'hippy drugs' like cannabis, ecstasy, acid, and mushrooms are illegal because they make you sedentary and peaceful.

 

[Abishai100]

The Stand

"A man named Ethen, son of a fearsome Nazi general who survives WWII grows up in suburbia, USA sort of psychologically depressed and anxious about globalization trends that have not handsomely welcomed Germania since the Holocaust.

Ethen becomes a drug addict. His wife and children are concerned but helpless. Ethen wanders from odd job to odd job. He becomes enslaved to the pocket of a local drug dealer, a powerful and vicious crimelord named Stan.

Stan is feared in the community. He has a wife who works for the FBI, and a mistress who doubles as his street drug runner and smuggler. Stan’s mistress Ellie is very attractive and rather devious. Ellie makes a proposition to Ethen --- she will give him free drugs if he becomes her sex slave. Ethen reluctantly agrees, realizing that Ellie makes this evil proposition to him so that he is more estranged to his wife and children.

Years go by and Ethen is more demoralized than ever. One day, Ethen forgets to pay his debt to Stan for his recent drug purchase. Stan orders Ellie to kill Ethen’s wife and she does. Ethen is devastated but can do nothing. Ethen is still a drug addict and also Ellie’s sex slave. Ellie tells Stan amusingly how she has made Ethen their spiritual slave. Stan knows of Ethen’s troubled Nazi-association background, and Stan is delighted and decides to give Ellie a new mission: she must procure from Ethen his terrible Nazi background secret if he is to receive more drugs from them. Ethen is given the command by Ellie, and overwhelmed, commits suicide.

It is an ironic fact that modern drug culture promoted by mass consumerism traffic and resulting unchecked national borders creates seedy and emotionally devastating underworlds. To undo this labyrinth of sin, we need to find ways to re-instill optimism about ‘consumerism creativity.’ Then, people may find more intrigue with other markets in the modern market besides drugs."







Traffic 2000 film - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[waltky]

Spain busts drug baron on the lam...

Spain detains drug baron after cocaine found with bananas
Fri, Oct 31, 2014 - GALICIAN STING: Police said the drug trafficker had been on the run since being sentenced to 17 years in prison in 2006 for drug smuggling and other crimes

Spanish police on Wednesday said they had arrested nine people, including one of the country’s biggest drug smugglers, after finding cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas from Colombia. The authorities said they opened their investigation after police with sniffer dogs uncovered 54kg of high quality cocaine hidden inside boxes of bananas as they were being unloaded at the port of Marin in the northwestern region of Galicia. Officers arrested six people who came to pick up the cocaine, as well as three others in the southern town of Dilar, who were allegedly part of the ring that organized the shipment, a statement said.

TOP DRUG DEALER

The detainees included the leader of the drug smuggling ring, identified only as Antonio Manuel BI, a Spanish national described by police as “one of Spain’s top drug dealers.” Police said the suspect had been on the run since being sentenced to 17 years in jail in 2006 for drug smuggling and other crimes. He was detained in Spain in 2001 on suspicion of being part of a ring trying to smuggle more than 1,000kg of cocaine out of Colombia.

CHANGED APPEARANCE

“In addition to using false documents, technological systems to prevent his communications from being intercepted and bodyguards, he also frequently changed his physical appearance,” the statement said. Three other Spaniards were arrested, along with a Russian, a Colombian, an Argentine, a Peruvian and a Mexican in the probe into the cocaine found in the banana shipment. Spain’s proximity to north Africa, a major source of hashish, and its close ties with its former colonies in Latin America, a key cocaine producing region, have made the country a major gateway into Europe for drug traffickers.

Spain detains drug baron after cocaine found with bananas - Taipei Times

 

[sjay]

The Stand

"A man named Ethen, son of a fearsome Nazi general who survives WWII grows up in suburbia, USA sort of psychologically depressed and anxious about globalization trends that have not handsomely welcomed Germania since the Holocaust.

Ethen becomes a drug addict. His wife and children are concerned but helpless. Ethen wanders from odd job to odd job. He becomes enslaved to the pocket of a local drug dealer, a powerful and vicious crimelord named Stan.

Stan is feared in the community. He has a wife who works for the FBI, and a mistress who doubles as his street drug runner and smuggler. Stan’s mistress Ellie is very attractive and rather devious. Ellie makes a proposition to Ethen --- she will give him free drugs if he becomes her sex slave. Ethen reluctantly agrees, realizing that Ellie makes this evil proposition to him so that he is more estranged to his wife and children.

Years go by and Ethen is more demoralized than ever. One day, Ethen forgets to pay his debt to Stan for his recent drug purchase. Stan orders Ellie to kill Ethen’s wife and she does. Ethen is devastated but can do nothing. Ethen is still a drug addict and also Ellie’s sex slave. Ellie tells Stan amusingly how she has made Ethen their spiritual slave. Stan knows of Ethen’s troubled Nazi-association background, and Stan is delighted and decides to give Ellie a new mission: she must procure from Ethen his terrible Nazi background secret if he is to receive more drugs from them. Ethen is given the command by Ellie, and overwhelmed, commits suicide.

It is an ironic fact that modern drug culture promoted by mass consumerism traffic and resulting unchecked national borders creates seedy and emotionally devastating underworlds. To undo this labyrinth of sin, we need to find ways to re-instill optimism about ‘consumerism creativity.’ Then, people may find more intrigue with other markets in the modern market besides drugs."







Traffic 2000 film - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


View attachment 33218

Just read your last 3 remarks and none of them make any sense,are you high on drugs?

 

[waltky]

Drug abuse boondoggle wastes $86M...

Obama Again Presses for More Resources to Fight US Drug Abuse
March 29, 2016 - President Barack Obama pledged again Tuesday to press for new federal funding to fight opioid abuse in the United States.

More than 28,600 Americans died in 2014 from abuse of opioids — a class of drugs that includes both legal painkillers and illegal heroin — according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It’s important to recognize that today, we are seeing more people killed because of opioid overdose than traffic accidents,” Obama said at the National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in Atlanta. Obama in February urged Congress to approve $1.1 billion in funds to help provide opioid abuse treatment to all Americans who want it.

The president told the summit that the U.S. would continue efforts to secure international borders to block the importation of illegal drugs, but he said more needed to be done to stop illegal drug use. “What we have to recognize is in this global economy of ours, the most important thing we can do is to reduce demand for drugs," he said. "And the only way that we reduce demand is if we’re providing treatment.”

The president announced that the Department of Health and Human Services was proposing a regulation to make the anti-addiction drug buprenorphine available to more drug-addicted patients through qualified physicians. The federal government is releasing $11 million to states to expand medication-assisted treatment services. That includes the purchase and distribution of the overdose drug naltrexone.

And a federal infusion of $94 million earlier this month to hundreds of community health centers across the country potentially could treat nearly 124,000 new patients. U.S. officials hope that by putting opioid addiction and treatment front and center on the U.S. health care agenda, they can make a dent in the illegal drug problem.

Obama Again Presses for More Resources to Fight US Drug Abuse

See also:

$86M US Counter-Narcotics Plane Still Sitting in Storage
Mar 31, 2016 | WASHINGTON -- An $86 million Drug Enforcement Administration plane purchased seven years ago to fly surveillance and counter-narcotics missions in Afghanistan remains grounded in the US and likely will never fly in Asia, according to a scathing audit released Wednesday by the Justice Department's inspector general.

The review, which was spurred by a July 2014 whistleblower's report, found that the Global Discovery program to modify the ATR 42-500 aircraft to provide the DEA with advanced surveillance capabilities was supposed to be completed in December 2012. But it has been plagued by missteps costing the agencies $86 million, or four times the initial estimated cost. The project was part of an agreement with the Defense Department.

A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) ATR 42-500 at the Defense Department's subcontractor's facility.​

The report said it was unlikely the plane will ever fly in Afghanistan because the DEA has ceased aviation operations there. "Our findings raise serious questions as to whether the DEA was able to meet the operational needs for which its presence was requested in Afghanistan," the review said. The DEA said in a statement that it agreed it "can and should provide better oversight of its operational funding" and was reviewing its policies and procedures.

The drug agency spent $8.5 million on parts for the plane, "the majority of which cannot be used utilized on any other aircraft in its fleet," and the Defense Department built a $2 million hangar in Afghanistan for the plane that was never used and likely never will be, the report said. The plane, which has missed every scheduled delivery date, is now estimated to be completed in June — nearly one year after the DEA pulled out of Afghanistan. The report said the DEA intends to fly the plane in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.

$86M US Counter-Narcotics Plane Still Sitting in Storage | Military.com

Related:

US spy plane cost $86m but 'never used'
Wed, 30 Mar 2016 - The US Drug Enforcement Administration spent $86m (£60m) on a spy plane to be flown in Afghanistan, but it was never used, a government report says.

The plane, to help fight the Afghan drug trade, cost a tenth of that sum and millions more went on upgrades. But to this day, it remains in storage in the US state of Delaware, a report by the Inspector General's Office of the US Justice Department says. It adds that the plane is unlikely to ever fly in Afghanistan. The programme for which the plane was bought ended in 2015. The ATR 42-500 plane was to be used in an anti-drug programme led by the DEA and the Pentagon, but costs to modify and house the aircraft quickly escalated.

Some $67.9m in funds from the US Department of Defence were spent on the plane and on a purpose-built hangar in Kabul, four times more than the original estimated cost. The report says aviation officials with the DEA "did not take into account, when purchasing the ATR 500, the time and cost it would incur to establish an infrastructure of pilots, mechanics, trainers and spare parts required to operate the aircraft". It adds that even though the plane was bought more than seven years ago, it "remains inoperable, resting on jacks, and has never actually flown in Afghanistan". A DEA official told investigators the plane, once ready, would fly in the Caribbean and Latin America, but the report notes "that was not, of course, the purpose of the funding".

Goats 'may have been eaten'

The revelations come two months after a US government watchdog accused a Pentagon agency of wasting millions on "ill-conceived" reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction John Sopko noted one programme that spent $6m to import rare blond Italian goats to help the Afghan cashmere industry. Oversight was so ineffective, Mr Spoko said, he could not be sure that the goats were not eaten. Last year, Mr Sopko said some $43m was spent on building a vehicle refuelling station in Afghanistan, 140 times the cost of an equivalent station in Pakistan. He said fraud and corruption may have increased the cost.

US spy plane cost $86m but 'never used' - BBC News