drug war

Parents: End the War on Drugs - for Your Kids

As a person in long-term recovery and a drug treatment professional, I know a thing or two about drugs, addiction and the drug war. As a mother and a grandmother, I know more than I care to about how all of those things affect families - including my own. Addiction is a particularly painful health issue for any family to struggle with. Like most other chronic health conditions, like cancer and diabetes, it can be treated and managed. But unlike other chronic health conditions, our government is at war with it.

    Filthy Financiers & Dirty Money

    Published only recently, the UNODC has released its latest report titled, ‘Estimating Illicit Financial Flows Resulting from Drug Trafficking and Other Transnational Organized Crimes’.

     

      Misrepresentation of the facts justifies a senseless drug war

      Over previous years the Obama and Bush administration have hailed the increase in the average price of cocaine as an indication that the War on Drugs is achieving its goal. The logic behind this is simple demand and supply economics, a reduction in the quantity being supplied results in an increase in price. Between 2007 and 2010 (as the graph above shows) not only did the price of the average gram of cocaine increase but also purity decreased suggesting that less cocaine is making its way into the US.

        The impact on Mexican women

        Journalists in Mexico are resorting to increasingly extreme methods to avoid torture, kidnap and murder for reporting on drug crime and cartel warfare. Reporters at Mexico’s largest newspaper chain, Grupo Reforma, have taken to wearing bullet proof vests, while many are moving to high rise apartment blocks to reduce the risk of being kidnapped. Reporters are also posing as street vendors to maintain life-preserving anonymity when reporting at the scene of an incident and using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to publish their stories. 

          Another drug war in Myanmar

          There have been reports of a huge upsurge in the flow of drugs from Northern Myanmar into China and Thailand. The forthcoming elections in Myanmar has led to an increase in tensions between armed ethnic insurgents and the Military Government. The people living in many of the areas affected by insurgency have been excluded from voting in the elections. Literally millions of people are being denied the opportunity to vote in the first elections held in the country since 1990.

            $100 Million in Steroids Seized in Bangkok Drugs Bust

            Through the haze of several poorly-translated Thai news articles, it appears as though some sort of drugs bust has occurred recently in Bangkok, with a one-storey apartment raided by Thai police in co-operation with the DEA on the 30th July. In what was labelled a "major mistake" the owner of the company and his employees “ran away to escape", although contraband valued at $100 million was seized. Bravo, say the police, the politicians and the press, another victory in the drugs war!

              US Special Forces are operating in Mexico

              A former CIA operative has claimed that US Special Forces are operating in Mexico not only in providing intelligence and training  security forces but also “taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations.”

              According to William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee the group of heavily armed operatives are referred to as “Task Force 7” and played an important role in tracking down Arturo Beltran Leyva, a cartel boss killed in a huge military operation last December.

                Candy Machine: Interview with author Tom Feiling

                TalkingDrugs conducts an exclusive interview with Tom Feiling, a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker who is the author of The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World, published by Penguin in 2009. Tom spent a year living and working in Colombia before making Resistencia: Hip-Hop in Colombia.

                  Bowden on Mexico's Drug War

                  Charles Bowden, author of "Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields" on Mexico's drug war:

                  "Realize the war on drugs is a disaster. It's forty years in. We're at war with our own people. We're destroying nations like Mexico. If you're against drugs, most of your viewers and listeners are on them, only they got them from their doctor.

                  If you're against drugs, this is a public health issue. You don't send a cop if you're having a cardiac."

                    Four severed heads were found at the foot of a statue of the President

                    On Wednesday four severed heads were found beneath a statue of the Mexican president in Apatzingan, Michoacan, the bodies have yet to be found.  Apatzingan in Western Mexico is where Mexican leaders once gathered to write the first constitution however now the city of about 100,000 is becoming famous for another reason; a gruesome spate of decapitations perpetrated by local drug cartels. The heads found on Wednesday make it 18 decapitations in 2010 for that city alone.

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