DEA Splits, Bolivia Hits
July 7th, 2009 by RickA factory converted into a cocaine laboratory in Bolivia, that could produce up to 100kg (220 lbs) of cocaine per day, was raided by Drug Enforcement officers of the Bolivian government. According to senior Bolivian anti-narcotics officer, Oscar Nina, five Colombians were arrested.
The factory was the 4th largest raided since early 2009. Bolivian Interior Minister Alfredo Rada blames U.S. anti-narcotics officials for not locating the factory, that they estimate has been running for a year.
Previously in 2008, Bolivia booted the DEA from it’s borders and accused Washington with conspiring against the left wing government of President Evo Morales.
As a reward for doing and finding what the DEA could not, the U.S. announced last week that they were cutting trade benefits for Bolivia and reimposing duties on some imported Bolivian goods.
Drug Court Sympathetic to Affluent Frat Boy
July 2nd, 2009 by Russ
Christopher Duncan of Copiague, NY is thanking his lucky stars that he was born a white, rich, child. This week, his lucky accident of birth earned him a free pass in a federal drug court that fell all over itself to spare him the humiliation of going to prison for knowingly breaking the law.
A former University of Vermont student, Duncan, was running a cocaine trafficking operation out of his frat house back in 2007. Local authorities raided the house the week of graduation finding it full of drug paraphernalia, coke, and cash. In danger of receiving some serious jail time, the judge let him off with 100 hours of community service and two years of probation.
District Court judge William Sessions III saw fit to take it easy on the young cocaine trafficker because he was “a stupid kid” and, as he said to the defendant:
It shows your lack of serious involvement and your absolute naivete, frankly.
Speaking of naivete, one wonders why judges find their soft streaks only when faced with the Caucasian Children of the Rich? Couldn’t a little leniency be in order for the bus baggage-handler busted by the DEA for passing along small packages of contraband? What about the church minister that set up a little weed garden for some of his sick parishioners? Or any number of low level street dealers who were certainly naive, certainly bit players in their own little neighborhoods. Where is their leniency? Where is the compassion for them?
The simple truth is, what was going through this young man’s mind when he decided to play Blow Daddy with the local sorority girls, is the same exact thing that goes through the mind of every aspiring drug dealer, large or small. It’s a mixture of greed, opportunism, and indifference for his fellow man. Once this mindset is in place, it’s all just a question of scale; of entrepreneurship. And when the hammer comes down, it’s all a matter of skin tone.
UK Doctor Claims Cannabis Clear Cause of Death
July 2nd, 2009 by Rick
The drug warriors must be salivating at the mouths from the following story run by the UK site The Daily Mail. Cheshire deputy coroner Geoff Roberts is apparently attempting to become the first person in history to successfully link smoking marijuana to a death.
Adie Gardner, a 17-year old former pot smoker, had a seizure last year in October which led to a heart attack. Despite past drug use with amphetamines and cocaine and having a heart attack a year before the one that killed him, the coroner believes that his cannabis use caused his death.
Dr. Roberts said:
Very sadly this young man died as a result of the direct toxic effects on the heart that the use of cannabis had, as such it was an avoidable death. [...] The post mortem showed no findings of recent drug use. But his body was left with a legacy of using cannabis in the past which directly led to his death.
Really? It’s curious to note that he had a history of drug use, including meth and coke, yet the doctor attributes smoking herb as the cause of his death. It would be more credible that he was nervous on his second day of his new job and he had a heart attack, the direct result being stress combined with a weakened heart from past drug abuse and already having suffered a heart attack once before.
The really crazy part of this story is the fact that there are other doctors that agree with the coroner.
Dr. Mark Nicol, the doctor that treated him before said:
Drug problems were acknowledged at that time. This case highlights that Cannabis is potentially life threatening.
At least he said potentially. Many things in life can be potentially life threatening. Mere case of wordplay.
Dr. Sally Hales, the doctor that conducted the post-mortem, said:
A history of using cannabis, amphetamines and cocaine would appear to be the most likely cause’ of the teenager’s death.
At least she included the other drugs… maybe the fact that he had a heart attack before and this time around he had myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) factored into his death. Once someone has a heart attack they are susceptible to future heart attacks.
There are simply too many factors that could have led to the teenage Gardner’s death to come out and say that marijuana was ultimately the cause of his persistent condition. Unfortunately, this is how the drug warriors operate… keeping the truth from the news and obscuring it with anything and everything that will justify their prohibition against marijuana and inane scientific claims.
Frozen Sharks Are the New Drug Mules, Mexico Cracks Down
June 18th, 2009 by RickArmed officers of the Mexican Navy patroling the Gulf coast port of Progreso in Yucatan state seized a ton of cocaine on board a freight ship. X-ray machines and drug sniffing dogs helped uncover the smuggling operation, which stashed “slabs” of cocaine within more than 20 frozen sharks.
Mexican Navy Commander Eduardo Villa said:
We are talking about more than a ton of cocaine that was inside the ship. [...] Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent but after checks we confirmed it was cocaine.
On Tuesday the Mexican Navy revealed the largest methamphetamine lab in Mexico. Initially thought to be used to water a marijuana plantation, a holding tank, in the remote part of the northern state of Sinaloa, was discovered to feed water into two huge sheds, which contained ephedrine (12,905 gallons), a chemical agent used to make methamphetamine.
Officials claim that it was enough to manufacture 40.2 tons of material, which could equate to 309 million individual hits. That’s enough to give everyone in the United States one dose and still have 3 million left over. That was from one source. How many other high level operations are scattered throughout the country that are under the radar? Too many.
For this reason, Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent 45,000 troops and federal police to wage war with the cartels to try and stop the drug violence in his country. This year alone 2,700 people have been killed due to drug related violence, while last year 6,300 were killed.
President Obama should take note because the cartels have already crossed the border in numerous ways, which has brought their violence and drugs into the states. However, Mexico realized that the problem was not just the organized crime element, they discovered that prohibition wasn’t working. They had the fortitude and sense to go ahead and legalize personal amounts of various recreational drugs and stop populating their prison system with drug related offenses.
Mexico was given $1.4 billion by the United States to fund their war on the cartels. That money allowed to purchase the mobile technology used by the Mexican Navy. Many high level bosses have been already captured and many more are now being hunted down. Corrupted officials connected to various cartels have been uncovered. Cartel operations have been uncovered in all of North America.
Your Great-Grandma Was Hopped Up on Stuff
June 12th, 2009 by Russ
For those of us caught up in the day to day world of drug politics, it can be easy to forget just how new the concept of ‘illegal drugs’ really is. Pharmacy blog, Pill Talk, provided a big dose of historical perspective this week in releasing a collection of old posters and billboards hocking all manner of substances that no upstanding company would affiliate itself with in today’s whitewashed corporate culture.
Most stemming from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the ads feature some truly amazing concoctions.
Miss Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was designed to quiet restless babies especially at the time of teething. Little did babies and their mothers know that the syrup’s secret ingredient was morphine. Those babies were soothed alright. There’s even a terrific vintage testimonial in the New York Times archive lauding the syrup’s ability to quiet entire households of screaming rugrats.
Bayer, the long-time drug manufacturer, experimented with several substances before focusing on wonder drug, aspirin. One such substance was heroin, which, not surprisingly, turned out to be a terrific cough suppressant. As it happens, it also tended to suppress just about everything else, except for the desire to buy more Bayer Heroin, of course.
And finally, there’s the soft drink of lore, Coca Cola. As urban legend (and PillTalk) tells us, the name came from the fact that the drink used to be a simple mix of wine and cocaine. I fail to see how corn syrup and phosphoric acid could ever hope to compete with their far more stimulating predecessors.
Cocaine Study Suppressed By U.S. Government
June 11th, 2009 by Rick
In a bombshell of a suppressed March 1995 study of cocaine by the UN World Health Organization (WHO), it is now confirmed that the U.S. government forced WHO to suppress their publication by threatening to withhold funding, because it directly contradicted the myths that have perpetuated the war on drugs for years.
Two of the main points of the report:
Health problem; from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use.
Few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health. Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users. [See Page 1]
So, legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco create greater health problems and generally cocaine problems are more common for the sniffing veterans than the social snorters. That just sounds like common sense and now we have a WHO report (warning: PDF) to support it.
The Transform Drug Policy Agency cites many other examples in the report, which leaves the government with egg on their face and both feet in their mouth. Unfortunately, this report was never published and is denied to even exist. Project advisors from the report are now trying to have it published, much to do with the fact that it has already been leaked.
Warning: Cocaine, Crack Being Cut with Levamisole
June 9th, 2009 by Rick
A reported three drug users required hospitalization in Seattle stemming from close to fatal poisoning from the drug Levamisole, a deworming medication for animals, that was used to cut the crack and cocaine they consumed.
Public Health of Seattle & King County claimed that one patient alone had a medical bill of $100,000 and another needed surgery. Apparently, Levamisole can wipe out a human’s white blood cell count and create other serious health problems:
- high fever
- chills
- swollen glands
- painful sores on the mouth and anus
They issued an alert last Thursday to rehab centers in an effort to reach the users about Levamisole. Director of the public-health department, David Fleming, said:
You can’t tell if the cocaine or crack is contaminated with Levamisole by looking at it. [...] Don’t take a chance and risk your life.
According to Bob Wood, AIDS-control officer with Public Health, until last fall, little was known about Levamisole, because it was “obscurely reported” in the medicinal field despite it being discovered in the 1960’s.
Wood noted:
It’s a good time to remind people that cocaine is a dangerous drug. [...] Now, it’s dangerous for another reason.
Cases in a couple of states as well as areas in Canada and England have appeared within the past two years — so apparently it’s a growing epidemic. Cocaine and crack users are essentially playing Russian roulette while chasing their next high.
Cocaine Smuggling Becomes Sneakier
June 3rd, 2009 by Rick
Police intercepted a 26-year-old Argentine woman carrying two suitcases at the Santiago airport in Chile, ready to board a flight to Spain. The police suspected, and later confirmed, that the woman was trafficking cocaine. In and of itself, not particularly noteworthy, but this bust was unique due to the fact that she had no cocaine in the suitcases — the cocaine was the suitcases.
The travel bags, heavier than the items inside them, were made from a substance combining cocaine with resin and glass fiber. An officer assigned to the case, Detective Leandro Morales said that a chemical process could extract the cocaine.
It’s no surprise that smugglers are begining to think out of the box when it comes to moving their product. This constant game of cat & mouse with law enforcement keeps traffickers finding new ways to conceal and transport their goods. For instance, back in February, in Mexico City, a pick up truck sitting in a shipping container from Colombia, was seized and later found to have side panels and a bumper fused with fiberglass and cocaine.
One wonders if this is the same international crew that shipped dinner plates made from cocaine to Barcelona back in March.
