Free Republic

Highly rigorous and respected Cochrane systematic studies in 2010 and 2012 of chronic pain patients found addiction rates in the 1 percent range, and a report on over 568,000 patients in the Aetna database who were prescribed opioids for acute postoperative pain between 2008 and 2016 found a total “misuse” rate of 0.6 percent. The continued clampdown by the DEA also shows a complete lack of understanding about the nature of addiction.

Tucked inside a narrow wedge of a traditional open-air market is one of Mexico’s most dangerous black market operations. It’s known as the Tepito. It’s a barrio where even the police mostly remain outside. Inside, it’s under the tightly controlled thumb of the Union de Tepito, otherwise known as the Union Cartel – one of the capital city’s most violent and well-financed criminal players. ... And, the ATF itself became a contentious piece of that puzzle between 2009 and 2011 in what became known as “Operation Fast and Furious,” when the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division allowed illegal gun sales in...

Federal narcotics agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided several Kaiser Permanente pharmacies along the West Coast Sept. 18, according to The Oregonian. The inquiry is part of a Los Angeles-based investigation. Federal narcotic officers from the agency's diversion control office used administrative inspection warrants to search records to determine if legitimately made controlled substances were being diverted for illicit drug use. "We are fully cooperating with the DEA to provide the agency with the information they are seeking. As always, we are committed to complying with all state and federal regulations and ensuring the safety of our patients and...

After a seven-day trial, Chad A. Scott, 51, of Covington, Louisiana, was found guilty of two counts of perjury, three counts of obstruction of justice and two counts of falsifying government records. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo of the Eastern District of Louisiana, who presided over the trial, has scheduled sentencing for Dec. 4, 2019.

The DEA was audited by the DOJ inspector general in a report released Thursday, detailing numerous instances of mishandling weapons and ammunition. DEA Agents lost 26 of their own firearms from 2014 to 2018, and their means of tracking them down is flawed. DEA facilities also routinely mishandled ammunition and non-lethal devices. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents are reportedly losing their own weapons, and their system for tracking them down is obsolete, a Department of Justice (DOJ) audit of 16 locations released Thursday reveals. ... The 26 firearms, both carbines and handguns, were stolen or lost in 24 different instances,...

PHILADELPHIA — U.S. authorities seized more than $1 billion worth of cocaine Tuesday from a ship at a Philadelphia port, calling it one of the largest drug busts in American history. The U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia announced the massive bust on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, saying law enforcement agents seized about 33,000 pounds of cocaine from a large ship at the Packer Marine Terminal. Members of the crew were arrested and face federal charges.

Pearland police are warning residents to be on the lookout for a couple of fake DEA agents roaming the area. They were caught on camera trying to get inside a home on Ivory Creek Drive. The masked men were wearing black shirts with DEA lettering on the front and “police lettering” on the back. Both appeared to be armed with handguns, according to Pearland police. They pounded on the door of the home around 7:15 p.m. Tuesday and shouted, “DEA! DEA!” The woman inside warned them she was going to call the police so they ran off.

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. federal court documents show Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and some of his closest advisers were among the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.</p> <p>A document filed by prosecutors on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York mentions Hernández as part of a group of individuals investigated by the DEA since about 2013 for participating “in large-scale drug-trafficking and money laundering activities relating to the importation of cocaine into the United States”.</p>

“DEA is dying.” So lamented to me recently an old friend, now a senior DEA official, whom I’ve known since we worked together in that agency in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations. While our investigative careers took different paths, I’ve always held my brave former DEA colleagues in the highest regard. The patriotic men and women of DEA need and deserve our support and gratitude. Under Barack Obama, they received neither. President Trump can right this wrong. And he can do that very simply - by finally installing Mike Braun, whose selection has languished in the White House, as...

Officials in San Diego County have issued an alert after three people have suffered documented fatal overdoses from a new form of the drug fentanyl know as carfentanil. It would only take 2 mg of the drug to cause a deadly overdose meanwhile it would only take .02 mg of carfentanil to have the same fatal results, CBS Sacramento reported. Langdon Fielding is an emergency veterinarian at Loomis Basin Equine. He said he uses fentanyl on horses for pain relief. "Basically it's super strong morphine-like a really strong drug to control pain," said Fielding. Carfentanil is similar to fentanyl but...

The government makes very few demands for data from password managers, but when it does it expects a lot, including login information, Forbes has learned.In one case—the first documented government request to any major password manager—the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) demanded logins and physical and IP addresses, as well as communications between a user and LogMeIn, the owner of massively popular tool LastPass. It’s an encrypted vault for storing passwords. The DEA was seeking information related to a LastPass customer, Stephan Caamano, suspected of dealing drugs via the dark Web and Reddit, according to a search warrant detailing the request....

HOUSTON, Texas — The Drug Enforcement Administration in Houston is looking for a contractor to burn 1,000 pounds of marijuana per hour through September. The DEA’s posting says the contractor would need to have enough space and resources to burn the marijuana for eight consecutive hours per day. The burns are needed to reduce unneeded evidence from the DEA’s inventory. The incinerator must burn 1,000 pounds of marijuana per hour, which would be delivered in “bales” or “bricks,” each weighing up to 200 pounds. DEA agents would accompany the contractor during the burns, and all employees would receive drug tests...

HOUSTON — The Drug Enforcement Agency needs to clear its evidence vaults of marijuana that is no longer needed for evidentiary purposes, and it’s looking for a contractor in Texas that can incinerate a very high volume of pot. According to a document outlining the DEA’s requirements, the incineration provider must be able to process at least 1,000 pounds of marijuana per hour, for eight hours a day. The contractor must be able to accept tightly compressed bricks or bales of pot in packages weighing up to 200 pounds each. “The incinerator facility shall have a secured fence around it....

A San Jose man has been arrested for impersonating a federal agent following an investigation which began when the suspect pulled over someone who was actually a federal agent, authorities said. The Drug Enforcement Administration said Tuesday that Alex Taylor, 49, was arrested March 2 outside his home in San Jose, with agents seizing a Volkswagen Jetta with police-type lighting, two firearms, an imitation DEA badge and concealed weapons badge, handcuffs and a small amount of methamphetamine. In a press release, DEA Special Agent in Charge Chris Nielsen said the investigation began in December 2018 when Taylor allegedly conducted a...

Former FBI agent missing in Iran By PAT MILTON, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK - An American who disappeared in Iran while on a business trip is a former FBI agent in New York and Florida known as a meticulous investigator and an expert in busting Italian and Russian mobsters. The retired agent was identified as Robert Levinson, 59, of Coral Springs, Fla., a U.S. official familiar with the case told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He was last heard from around March 11 while in a coastal area of southern Iran, where he was working for an independent filmmaker,...

A now-retired agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency wants to see Sean Penn “in jail” for putting lives at risk when the actor interviewed notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman for Rolling Stone in 2015. Jack Riley, 60, came close to seeing El Chapo arrested on Oct. 2, 2015, but the operation conducted by Mexican marines was interrupted when Penn, accompanied by Mexican soap opera actress, Kate del Castillo, arrived at the El Tuna compound, the New York Post reported. "If I could get my hands on Sean Penn!” Riley, a former top agent with the DEA, told...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish prosecutors demand aggravated life imprisonment for a local US Consulate employee, Metin Topuz, who they charge with espionage for a foreign nation, membership in a terrorist organization, and participation in conspiracies to overthrow the government of Turkey.Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Parliament Speaker Binali Yildirim, former ministers Ali Babacan, Muammer Guler, and Zafer Caglayan – the last two themselves targets of a high-level corruption investigation in 2013 – and former Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag are among 30 officials who claimed victimhood and are plaintiffs in an indictment released this weekend against Topuz.The Turkish national who...

My title. Go to the 3 minute mark.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have put an "undisclosed number of covert surveillance cameras inside streetlights" across the country, according to federal procurement documents obtained by Quartz. It's unclear how many cameras the agencies purchased or where, exactly, the "video recording and reproducing equipment" has been placed. But the documents obtained by Quartz show the DEA paid a company called Cowboy Streetlight Concealments LLC about $22,000 since June 2018, while ICE made payments of $28,000 over the same time period. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio provided funding for the cameras, while...

A Kuwaiti paper reveals another monstrous Obama betrayal. We thought the Obama administration could stoop no lower when it was revealed that the administration transferred $1.7 billion in untraceable cash to the Islamic Republic as ransom for the release of four Americans hostages they were holding. We were wrong. In its twilight weeks, the administration gave its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia as compensation for its export of tons of reactor coolant. According to experts familiar with the transaction, the uranium could be enriched to weapons-grade sufficient for the production...