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Tag: War on Drugs

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Hometown Fans Remember Him A Year After His Death

    It’s been a year since actor Philip Seymour Hoffman passed away after overdosing from a cocktail of drugs and fans are still mourning the loss of a talented character actor.

    Hoffman’s hometown in Fairport, New York remembers the actor as a happy kid who was “really living and burning brightly and having fun.” Hoffman’s teachers in Fairport High School remember the actor as a curious student. When Hoffman starred in P.T. Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love back in 2002, the entire theater erupted to a rousing applause when their hometown actor appeared on the big screen.

    All over the world, fans are remembering the great actor who starred in films like Capote, The Hunger Games, Boogie Nights, and The Master. Caleb Slain, a fan of the actor spent almost 200 hours to produce an emotional tribute video that features some of Hoffman’s best work. From the actor’s bit part on Law and Order to his defining roles in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Charlie Wilson’s War, Slain wanted to show the dedication of the late actor to his craft. “Please take a breather and raise your glasses to one of our finest,” Slain wrote to describe the video.

    Meanwhile, in an opinion piece on The Huffington Post, Johann Hari, author of the book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs used Hoffman’s death as an example to drive his point about the war on drugs. Hari argues that Hoffman could have been spared if drugs were decriminalized. He cited Portugal as an example; the country decriminalized all drugs and used the budget for busting users to provide help for recovering addicts. This act resulted in a decrease in drug activity and a huge dip in the number of deaths related to overdose.

    “Today, one hundred years into the drug war, we have a decision to make,” Hari wrote. “We can wait for the next death, and the next death, and the next after that — or we can decide to choose to let addicts live. It’s up to us.”

  • Mexican Cartel Sinaloa’s Leader Guzman Arrested

    According to a senior law enforcement official, a man alleged to be the world’s most powerful drug lord is now in custody.

    The Associated Press is reporting that Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, head of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, was captured overnight through the teamwork of Mexican and American authorities. Guzman was said to have been apprehended at a condominium in Mazatlan, Mexico. Reports are claiming that he was in the company of a woman, but her identity has not been revealed.

    The 56-year-old man was apparently taken alive by Mexican marines, though Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on whether or not the person captured was indeed Guzman.

    The news of Guzman’s capture came by way of a source who spoke to the AP on the condition that their identity remain anonymous.

    “This is a huge success for Mexican authorities,” said Samuel Gonzalez. Gonzalez, a former anti-drug prosecutor in Mexico, says that the victims of Guzman “deserve” to see the drug lord back behind bars.

    “…After so many years, [Guzman] will return to prison.”

    If Guzman has indeed been apprehended, he faces a mountain of criminal charges, including multiple indictments in the United States for drug trafficking.

    Guzman is at the head of a cartel that is blamed for the woes of many Mexican citizens. Many innocent lives have been lost to the cartel’s bloody drug wars that have gripped parts of the country for much of the last decade. The Sinaloa Cartel is said to be a drug empire whose connections reach as far away as Australia.

    Their global influence is why the drug lord’s capture, while somewhat good news for those waging a war on drugs in Mexico, is hardly a reason to consider the Sinaloa Cartel closed for business.

    College of William and Mary government professor George Grayson said that, “the take-down of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera is a thorn in the side of the Sinaloa Cartel, but not a dagger in its heart.”

    Grayson, who studies Mexican drug cartels, also added that it’s likely someone else will step in for the captured cartel boss.

    Image via YouTube

  • School Drug Testing Doesn’t Work, Shows Study

    Though states such as Colorado and Washington are easing up on marijuana, the war on drugs is still in full force throughout the U.S.

    As part of the drug war, many high schools across the country test students for drugs. New research, however, shows that such programs are not only not effective, but could have the opposite of their intended effect on students.

    A new study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs shows that students in the around 20% of U.S. high schools that drug test students are just as likely as other students to try marijuana, smoke cigarettes, or consumer alcohol.

    “Even though drug testing sounds good, based on the science, it’s not working,” said Daniel Romer, a co-author of the study and a pubic policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “So as a prevention effort, school drug testing is kind of wrong-headed.”

    According to Romer, the best that parents and school officials can hope for with drug testing programs is that students stay away from commonly-tested-for drugs such as marijuana. Meanwhile, the atmosphere of suspicion such programs create might be the opposite of what actually works to keep kids off drugs.

    According to the study, a “positive climate” at schools is what works best to keep student away from drugs. The study’s authors say that cultivating such a climate involves mutual respect between teachers and students and “clear rules.” Students in such schools were found to be around 20% less likely to try marijuana and 15% less likely to smoke cigarettes. Positive school climates were not seen to have an effect on students’ alcohol consumption.

  • Obamacare Heroin: Someone’s Idea Of A Joke?

    Obamacare Heroin: Someone’s Idea Of A Joke?

    If you’re in the drug-trafficking business, usually there comes a time when you decide it’s not enough to call what you’re selling by its common name. In this case, heroin. The usual suspects (“Big H”, “smack”, etc.) aren’t working for you either. So why not come up with a unique reference that will make your illegal product stand out from the rest while at the same time showing just how “witty” you are?

    Of course, there’s no way of knowing that this is what 23-year-old Tyler Robenstein of Colchester, VT had in mind. What is known is that the cops who pulled him over on Friday morning were thrown for a bit of a loop.

    State Police Trooper Joseph Petty was in the midst of a traffic stop in the area of Route 91 in Northampton, MA when he says the suspect’s vehicle flew past him. Petty noted several violations (some drug traffickers aren’t that subtle when transferring illegal products), which resulted in a pursuit of the car.

    Petty ended up stopping Robenstein in Hatfield, MA. It was during the course of conversing with the driver and passengers that Petty found evidence of narcotics. After requesting a State Police K-9, law enforcement discovered roughly 1,250 bags of individual packets of heroin in the vehicle.

    Many of those packets had “Obamacare” stamped on them in big red letters. Obamacare is a common nickname for the Affordable Care Act. State Police Lieutenant Daniel Richard says it’s common for drugs to be stamped with words and numbers, usually to identify the product or seller. He does admit this is the first he’s heard of anyone using the term Obamacare for such purposes.

    Tyler Robenstein and his passengers 22-year-old Marquese Jones and 24-year-old Sherod Green, both of Newark NJ, are being held until their appearance in Northampton District Court. In addition to answering to charges ranging from speeding to possession with intent to distribute, maybe they will bother to explain why they named their drugs after the president’s health care bill.

    Image via the Massachusetts State Police Facebook

  • Canadian Travel Scam Turns Australian Couples into Drug Mules

    The Australian reports that a Perth couple were conned into being drug mules by a bogus Canadian travel agency.

    It all looked legit, at least on the surface. A 72-year-old man and his 64-year-old wife entered a sweepstakes for a bargain holiday to Canada, and ended up back in Australia with 3.5kg in crystal meth rocks instead of their original luggage.

    “Be very careful if you win anything,” the woman cautions reporters under the conditions of anonymity. “I could have ended up in jail for 25 years, and they could have ruined my life. So be very wary, be very careful and check everything out.”

    Australian Customs Officials and Australian Federal Police uncovered the scam earlier this month in a joint investigation. A Canada-based website that was a front for a fake Canadian tour company named AUSCAN Tours was responsible for managing the sweepstakes, which specifically targeted elderly Australian couples with an all-expenses-paid trip.

    Once the “lucky winners” have enjoyed their peaceful vacation, their bags are swapped at the airport and the couple carries the drugs back to their home country. An agent was scheduled to meet with this particular couple when they returned, but they thought there was something wrong with their bags, and reported them to Customs officials.

    A search warrant was issued, and a car and hotel room were searched. Police reported uncovering documents relevant to the con job, more bags just like those used to smuggle the drugs, and $15,000 in cash. A 38-year-old Canadian was arrested at the airport the same day the warrants were carried out, and he is being charged with importing commercial quantities of a border-controlled substance.

    The AFP’s Airport Police Commander, David Bachi, said “The organizers of this scam went to great lengths to provide a façade of legitimacy. Thankfully the travellers contacted Customs and didn’t dismiss their concerns, allowing us to make the arrest.”

    [Image via this YouTube video about Australian Border Security]

  • Drug Cartel Leader Shot… By Clown

    Reuters and The New York Post have both reported that one of Mexico’s most powerful ex-drug lords was shot by children’s clowns as he attended a party in Cabo San Lucas.

    A former Tijuana Cartel boss, the 63-year-old Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix sustained a bullet to the head at point-blank range during a family gathering at the Los Cabos resort in the southern part of Baja California. Francisco Rafael was the oldest of the seven Arellano Felix brothers, who helped to popularize trafficking drugs between Mexico and California. Their story inspired Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 drug war film Traffic.

    Rafael was first arrested in 1980 for selling drugs in San Diego. He returned to Mexico, where he continued to sell drugs. A second arrest in 1993 connected with the murder of a Roman Catholic Cardinal, Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, did not dampen his efforts, and in 2006 the cartel made headlines when smuggling tunnels were discovered connecting Tijuana to the United States.

    Security experts have indicated that they believe Tijuana’s cartel is still operational, and that the Arellano Felix legacy is being continued by their sister and her son, alias “The Engineer.”

    Although Rafael was released in 2008 for good behavior, his enemies were more than willing to wait for the opportune moment to strike. Since most of the Arellano Felix brothers have been arrested or killed, their rivals have supplanted their place in the Latin American illicit drug trade, and officials have speculated that the assassins had ties to organized crime.

    The AP reported a former San Diego prosecutor who penned one of the cartel’s indictments, John Kirby, as saying “[Rafael] was never really part of the leadership of the big organization, mostly because he was in [Mexican] jail. He was arrested before they became what they really became.”

    Mexican authorities had hoped to let the United States deal with Rafael, but even after an extradition request to finish out a weapons possession sentence, Kirby said “The Mexicans were very concerned he was going to get out.” The Mexicans were right; Rafael’s 2008 release followed a six-year prison sentence from 2006 for drug trafficking, but he was released on parole and was deported to Mexico shortly after.

    [Image via Google Maps]

  • Justice Dept: ATF Lost 420 Million Cigarettes in Botched Stings

    An audit newly released by the U.S. Department of Justice has made public a series of mistakes from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, including 2.1 million missing cigarette cartons (or 420 million cigarettes) which disappeared during a series of stings, and almost $5 million was paid to an informant… for no documented reason.

    The Washington Post quoted the Justice Department’s inspector general who oversaw the audit, Michael E. Horowitz, as saying that the investigation “found a significant lack of oversight and controls to ensure that cash, cigarettes, equipment and other assets used… were accurately tracked, properly safeguarded and protected from misuse.”

    Horowitz’s office looked at 20 different undercover stings conducted by the ATF between 2006 and 2011. Those stings netted the ATF a cool $162 million as it elected to prosecute cigarette smugglers. One case in particular saw $15 million in illegal cigarettes sold undercover, with $4.9 million allowed to be kept by an informant, no strings attached. He submitted no documentation as to why he needed the cash.

    Of the cigarettes the ATF purchased for the operation, 2.1 million of almost 10 million cartons are unaccounted for. A spokeswoman for the ATF, Ginger Colbrun, defended her organization by saying that the numbers were inaccurate; that only 447,218 cartons were missing, not 2.1 million.

    Although the audit was released today, the questions started with a pair of investigative reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who sought to check out an ATF operation in their city being run out of a cigarette warehouse called Fearless Distributing on the south side. The reporters discovered that in that operation, the ATF found themselves burglarized as two thieves (pictured above) stole $10,000 worth of cigarettes from the Fearless Distributing warehouse.

    Only nine people were arrested as a result of the Milwaukee operation, and of those nine, only one got jail time. The reporters also discovered in the course of their investigation three major mistakes by the ATF, including using a brain-damaged man with the mind of a child to set up drug and gun deals and paying him with cash, cigarettes, and merchandise, and the occurrence of a second burglary of ATF property that led to the loss of three government-owned firearms including an automatic machine gun.

    For more on the origins of the story, check out this YouTube video from the authors of the Journal Sentinel report.

    [Image via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

  • Colorado Marijuana Law: Feds Won’t Block It!

    Colorado Marijuana Law: Feds Won’t Block It!

    A Colorado CBS local affiliate reported that the Obama administration has announced that it will not sue states like Washington and Colorado for violating federal law, although it “reserves the right” to sue them later if it wants.

    The Denver Post cites an official memo that was sent out. You can read the memo for yourself here, but it essentially represented a declaration from Attorney General Eric Holder’s office that closing down recreational or medicinal marijuana dispensaries would not be a priority if the dispensaries followed the new rules outlined in the memo. Getting high should now be nice and simple, right?

    Not exactly. The states that have legalized must comply with a new series of rules regarding marijuana’s regulation. The memorandum sent out included eight official guidelines, which were:
    • preventing marijuana distribution to minors,
    • preventing money from sales from going to criminal groups,
    • preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal to states where it is illegal,
    • preventing criminal groups from using state laws as cover for trafficking of other illegal drugs,
    • preventing violence and the use of illegal firearms,
    • preventing drugged driving,
    • preventing the growing of marijuana on public lands,
    • and preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property.

    Prosecutors have said that they won’t target pot smokers or legal pot businesses, but the kids just cannot be allowed anywhere near the stuff, and criminal gangs are not to be involved at any level of the process.

    Thankfully, none of the official concerns are outside of the realm of expectations held by Colorado voters. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said “today’s announcement shows the federal government is respecting the will of Colorado voters… we share with the federal government its priorities going forward.” Hickenlooper had spoken with Attorney General Holder and Washington Governor Jay Inslee in a phone conversation around noon today that cleared the smoky air regarding the federal government’s intervention in marijuana legislation.

    The memorandum is hardly indicative of President Obama’s firm federal support for the measure, but Kevin Sabet, formerly with the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said it best when he quipped that “This is not the end of the story… this is the beginning, [but] this is not a free pass for states. I think they [Colorado and Washington] are going to have to be very careful in setting up their regimes.”

    [Image via a Reason TV Youtube about Colorado’s marijuana legalization]

  • 165 Rescued: Kidnapper Caught Near U.S. Border

    Mexican authorities this week rescued 165 kidnapped people near the U.S.-Mexican border.

    According to a Reuters report, the kidnapped people were mostly Central American migrants, and included women and children. Groups of them were reportedly attempting to cross the border into the U.S. when they were kidnapped by gunman and held less than a mile from the border, in a crowded house in the Gustavo Diaz Ordaz municipality.

    A spokesperson for the Mexican government stated that the kidnappers may have been human traffickers, who, along with criminal gangs, arranged for people to be kidnapped. The state of Tamaulipas, where these kidnapping took place, is the site of dispute between two Mexican drug cartels.

    Mexican drug cartels have, according to Reuters, began dabbling in human trafficking in recent years. In addition to the high death toll that comes with the drug war, kidnapping has become a danger in northern Mexican states such as Tamaulipas. Extortion or forced drug muling is not an uncommon fate for those kidnapped.

  • U.S.-Canada Border Shooting Suspect Arrested

    The U.S. border with Canada is generally more peaceful than the U.S. border with Mexico, but an incident this week shows that the northern border is also used for drug smuggling. A drug bust that took place this week in both Washington state and British Columbia means that parties in the Northwest U.S. will be a bit more demure over the next few weeks.

    According to an Associated Press report, four people have been arrested in connection with an attempt to smuggle drugs across the U.S.-Canadian border.

    Two of those arrested were men caught by the American Border Patrol trying to smuggle a reported 58 pounds of MDMA (also known as ecstasy) into the U.S. near the small town of Sumas, Washington this week. They were dressed in camouflage clothing and carrying backpacks. One of the men was captured, and the other was reported by the border patrol to have fired gunshots and fled back into British Columbia, where he was later caught.

    The other two suspects are reported to be a man and a woman who told authorities they would be paid $11,000 to haul the MDMA to San Francisco.

  • Drug Bust: 100 Arrested in Connecticut Crackdown

    There are many places in the U.S. associated with the illegal drug trade, but the state of Connecticut isn’t usually mentioned as one of those places. However, U.S. officials demonstrated this week the the U.S. war on drugs extends to the Northeast as well.

    Reuters is reporting that around 100 people were arrested today in connection with heroin and cocaine trafficking. Authorities claim those arrested were part of two “gangs” that imported the drugs to Southeastern Connecticut from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

    The arrests took place in four different New England states (Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts), as well as in Puerto Rico. Those arrested will be tried in the U.S. District Court in New Haven.

    The arrests came after a 15-month investigation led by federal prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. According to the Reuters report, the investigation included “more than a dozen law-enforcement agencies.” In addition to the arrests, police claim that they seized money, weapons, and drugs during the bust.