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MARIN COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- A Marin County smoking ban is on hold while lawmakers consider weeding out marijuana from the measure. The ordinance as written would outlaw smoking in unincorporated county apartments and included marijuana and other herbs as well as tobacco. It was abruptly sent back to committee Wednesday when Supervisor Kate Sears said only tobacco should be banned...

Yesterday, my entire afternoon got eaten by my panic over shortages of Adderall, the drug that changed my writing life from daily torture that I slogged through because I'm a hard worker to sometimes-hard work I love. Instead of writing, I wasted my time on the phone to a bunch of local pharmacies, and emailing my very good-natured doctor multiple times ("Can you prescribe in Mexico?"), and searching for Canadian pharmacies -- maybe one in Windsor where maybe I could get Gregg to pick me up 10 or 20 or maybe even 30 pills...in all the spare time he has....

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Blacks are ~14% of the US population. Blacks are 56% of inmates convicted for drug violations, most are non-violent crimes.

Like them or hate them, the second generation Camaros have a special place in many Chevrolet Enthusiasts’ hearts. They are still readily available and in the gearhead’s hands they can become amazing restoration projects. But two men trying to cross the border into Mexico, may of found the easiest (mind you illegal) way of making a second generation Camaro extremely valuable. According to SignOnSanDiego.com, two men were recently apprehended while trying to cross the border at the Interstate 8 checkpoint in a 1980 Camaro. Apparently the Camaro was loaded with illegal drugs, and a lot of it! Here’s an excerpt...

Border Patrol agents pursue smugglers one moment and sit around in boredom the next. It was during one of the lulls that Bryan Gonzalez, a young agent, made some comments to a colleague that cost him his career. Stationed in Deming, N.M., Mr. Gonzalez was in his green-and-white Border Patrol vehicle just a few feet from the international boundary when he pulled up next to a fellow agent to chat about the frustrations of the job. If marijuana were legalized, Mr. Gonzalez acknowledges saying, the drug-related violence across the border in Mexico would cease. He then brought up an organization...

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul says his rivals’ militant stances on “the defense of liberty” would make it difficult for him to support any of them for president should he not get the Republican nomination, because their positions would lead to bigger government. But the Texas congressman also told Fox News’ Neal Cavuto Wednesday that despite these concerns, he probably would not run as a third-party candidate. “I would have trouble with what I heard last night because it is almost opposite of the defense of liberty that I’m talking about,” Paul told Cavuto, referring to Tuesday night’s presidential debate. “I...

Eighty-eight-year-old retired metallurgist Bob Wallace is a self-described tinkerer, but he hardly thinks of himself as the Thomas Edison of the illegal drug world. He has nothing to hide. His product is packaged by hand in a cluttered Saratoga garage. It's stored in a garden shed in the backyard. The whole operation is guarded by an aged, congenial dog named Buddy. But federal and state drug enforcement agents are coming down hard on Wallace's humble homemade solution, which he concocted to help backpackers purify water. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and state regulators say druggies can use the single ingredient...

<p>Five illegal immigrants armed with at least two AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles were hunting for U.S. Border Patrol agents near a desert watering hole known as Mesquite Seep just north of the Arizona-Mexico border when a firefight erupted and one U.S. agent was killed, records show.</p>

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents about drug cartels recruiting Texas high school students. DPS officials say they caught a 12-year-old boy driving a stolen pickup truck containing more than 800 pounds of marijuana last week. Last month, two Texas teenagers were lured to Mexico where they were kidnapped, beaten, ransomed and released in a remote area along the Rio Grande River. In one Texas border county, more than 25 juveniles were arrested for drug trafficking within the past year. “Mexican cartels have corrupted nearly an entire generation of youth living in Northern Mexico and...

The Harris family's life began to unravel around dawn on the last day of August. R.J. Harris, who is 77, was in bed when a noise jolted him awake. Bam. What was that? Bam. It sounded like an explosion. Bam. The front door swung open and officers in masks swarmed inside, pointing rifles. Police! Hands up! Police! Harris' wife, an aunt, a son, a grandson, a granddaughter, a great-grandson and a cousin all bolted awake. From the floor above, where one of the Harris daughters lives with her family, came the blast and stench of smoke bombs. Mr. Harris, standing...

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- A Missouri kindergartner brought his mother's crack pipe and an ounce of drugs to his school's show-and-tell day, police said. The children had been told to bring important family items to class at the Sweet Springs school, and school officials called police when the child produced the pipe and several baggies of drugs from his backpack, KCTV, Kansas City, reported Monday. Police said the child's mother, Michelle Marie Cheatham, 32, has been charged with possession of a controlled substance and one count of first-degree child endangerment. Police Chief Richard Downing said a child...

WASHINGTON — Some have described Hurricane Irene as "the most over-hyped event in history." Americans in the Northeast who were flooded out of their homes and businesses and those without electricity, fuel or water don't agree. But a U.S. official I spoke with this week told me, "The next storm coming from down south is already deadlier than Irene, and nobody is paying attention." My source wants to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to talk about these matters with the media. He doesn't work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency or...

Thomas Sowell on the War on DrugsMilton Friedman on the War on Drugs

New York businessman James Lieto was an innocent bystander in a fraud investigation last year. Federal agents seized $392,000 of his cash anyway. An armored-car firm hired by Mr. Lieto to carry money for his check-cashing company got ensnared in the FBI probe. Agents seized about $19 million—including Mr. Lieto's money—from vaults belonging to the armored-car firm's parent company. He is one among thousands of Americans in recent decades who have had a jarring introduction to the federal system of asset seizure. Some 400 federal statutes—a near-doubling, by one count, since the 1990s—empower the government to take assets from convicted...

I rarely post an article, even more rare that I post a vanity. I feel that this is a topic that involves everybody, both pro and against. I have a few thoughts of my own, but I would also like to hear from heads and tails. Law enforcement, if they wish, please add your viewpoints; I am certain that you have a unique perspective. I'm hoping that this doesn't turn into a flame war. I will submit from the start that I do not use drugs. So if anybody wants to issue a blanket statement that states 'If you don't...

The Drug War, with an impact stretching far beyond the inner cities, is one of America’s worst policies. It costs billions we don’t have; it promotes the growth of transnational criminal gangs and supports large black markets in money and arms that terrorists as well as drug lords can use; if fills the prisons and it hasn’t stopped either the use of existing illegal drugs or the development of new ones. Furthermore, as a Cato Institute paper estimates that legalizing and taxing drugs would yield more than $80 billion a year in savings and new revenue. (Something tells me that...

Less than a month after father's day, a Salt Lake City man was arrested for pot possession when his 12- and 13-year-old kids turned him in to the police. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, dad "faces two third-degree felony charges of child endangerment and one class B misdemeanor for possession of a controlled substance." While Salt Lake City proper apparently doesn't have a D.A.R.E. program, the executive director of Utah D.A.R.E. told Reason that she hadn't heard about the arrest, that "parents are going to do what they're going to do" and that the D.A.R.E. program "teaches life skills"...

"I feel this story should be heard." The following are the contents of a letter we received at Borderland Beat from a couple that until recently resided in the tourist destination of Ixtapa in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. We have independently corroborated certain facts in the letter and believe the contents to be true. Names and addresses have been deleted for obvious reasons. I feel that you should be made aware of an incident that occurred early in the morning of May 9 2011 and about the treatment we received after. My husband and I were sleeping at our...

Private companies received nearly $2 billion in Latin American drug war contracts between 2005 and 2009, according to a report released Thursday by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). That money may as well have been stuffed in garbage bags and dropped randomly from the backs of airplanes. The two major agencies tasked with overseeing the drug war in Latin America—the State Department and the Department of Defense—lack “a centralized database or system with the capacity to track counternarcotics contracts," McCaskill found. As a result, both agencies struggled to explain contracts worth millions of dollars that were awarded to unknown recipients to...

A well-dressed Mexican man checked into the ritzy Westin Oaks Hotel last week, bringing with him a large, black rolling suitcase and a gym bag packed with nearly $1 million in cash. For at least two days, the man came and went from the Galleria-area hotel room like any tourist, shopping in Houston’s mega-mall, dining in local restaurants and even taking in a movie, authorities said. All the while, federal agents watched him, acting on a tip that the man was tied into money laundering for a drug trafficking organization. As he went to check out May 26, federal agents...

In January 2010, Dee Starr and her grown children William Lamebull and Patricia Spottedcrow* were arrested in an early morning raid after selling $31 worth of marijuana to undercover police. According to Oklahoma City's KFOR-TV, it was their first felony arrests. Each was held on $100,000 bond. Each pled guilty. Here's what that got them: William Lamebull faced the least serious charge, possession of marijuana around children. He pleaded guilty and got two years probation, no jail time. Dee Starr, who was facing more serious charges, two felony counts for dealing drugs and for having drugs in front of children,...

Local and federal authorities seized a load of cocaine with an estimated street value of $12 million as smugglers tried to bring it in to Fajardo on a passenger-cargo ferry from Vieques. Three suspected smugglers, all adult male residents of Vieques, were arrested. The 560-kilogram (12,320 pound) load was split between a Dodge Durango truck and Ford Econoline van that had been driven on to the El Isleño ferry in Vieques for a Monday night crossing to Fajardo. Agents from the Police Department’s United Forces for Rapid Action (FURA by its Spanish acronym) and federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE)...

A school in Forest Hills, Michigan has a new policy: no Smarties and no Pixy Stix under any conditions. According to Principal Nancy Susterka, she was walking around the middle school and noticed Smarties wrappers on the ground. She then heard a rumor that kids are "smoking" them. Putting her facts together, she quickly banned Smarties and then Pixy Stix for good measure. As she put it: “In short, we have seen huge numbers of Smartie wrappers throughout the building and heard some rumblings about kids smoking it.” Ms. Susterka further explained in an email possible health hazards of smoking...

In the United States the number of people hospitalised for prescription drug abuse has increased four hundred percent in the past ten years. The small town of Portsmouth, Ohio is the epicentre of the problem. Over thirty people - many in their early twenties - have died from prescription drug abuse. One in ten babies born in Scioto County (Sy-oh-toe) last year tested positive for drugs. Fatal overdoses have surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in Ohio. I met Andrea Queen, a reformed abuser at her new place of work in Portsmouth a clinic helping today's...

MEXICO CITY - The drug-war death toll for Mexico in April was 1,400, the highest of any month since the Mexican government began its war on illicit drug trade four years ago. The previous high was 1,322 in August 2010, the daily newspaper Milenio reported Sunday. Most of the murders in April occurred in northern Mexico, reflecting the trend of recent months as drug cartels battle each other over drug and migrant routes.

SAN FERNANDO, Mexico — At the largest mass grave site ever found in Mexico, where 177 bodies have been pulled from deep pits, authorities say they have recovered few bullet casings and little evidence that the dead were killed with a gun. Instead, most died of blunt force trauma to the head, and a sledgehammer found at the crime scene this month is believed to have been used in the executions, according to Mexican investigators and state officials. The search continued Sunday, with state officials warning they expect the count to rise.They say as many as 122 of the victims...

For several years now, STRATFOR has been closely watching developments in Mexico that relate to what we consider the three wars being waged there. Those three wars are the war between the various drug cartels, the war between the government and the cartels, and the war being waged against citizens and businesses by criminals. In addition to watching tactical developments of the cartel wars on the ground and studying the dynamics of the conflict among the various warring factions, we have also been paying close attention to the ways that both the Mexican and U.S. governments have reacted to these...

Despite federal and state expenditures of billions of dollars per year, severe punishments, and frequent unconstitutional raids on private homes, the War On Drugs is a failure.  Since this futile war began, the number of drug users in the US has grown rather than shrink, and the rate of drug usage has grown along with the profits of drug cartels.  America's Southern border has become very dangerous as a result of the War, and Mexico is a failing state because wealthy, well-armed drug cartels can afford to fight a regular war in that country and bribe (or assassinate) its officials....

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will double the number of its agents deployed in Mexico and examine new security measures in the wake of the killing of one of its officers, director John Morton said Friday. "We're going to go from 20 people to 40 people" in Mexico, Morton told members of Congress in a hearing on his agency's budget for the upcoming fiscal year. "It will be by far our largest office." The comments come less than a month after ICE agent Jaime Zapata, 32, was killed and a second ICE agent wounded while driving...

WASHINGTON — More than 60 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the police were not entitled to enter a residence without a warrant merely because they smelled burning opium. Related Times Topic: U.S. Supreme Court On Wednesday, at the argument of a case about what the police were entitled to do on smelling marijuana outside a Kentucky apartment, two justices voiced concerns that the court may be poised to eviscerate the older ruling. “Aren’t we just simply saying they can just walk in whenever they smell marijuana, whenever they think there’s drugs on the other side?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor...

MORELIA, Mexico – A letter purportedly signed by La Familia drug cartel announcing a one-month truce circulated Sunday in the western state of Michoacan. In the one-page message, distributed by e-mail and in some cities door by door, the gang claims it will halt all crime activity during January to demonstrate that the cartel "is not responsible for the criminal acts federal authorities are reporting to the media."...

(CNN) -- Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, made its own history Tuesday as its homicide rate reached 3,000 deaths for the year -- 10 times the number of killings annually that the border city counted just a few years ago. With two weeks left in the year, 2010 is now the deadliest year Juarez has ever seen, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office told CNN. "At 12:15 p.m. we hit 3,000 murders for the year. The state attorney general's office had the number at 2,998 as of Monday and with the two murders today that brings us to 3,000,"...

Are marijuana-first activists dividing the world into two parts? I ask this because, on the one side, we see allegedly innocent law-breaking potheads depicted as martyrs. On the other side, are the (boo, hiss) baddy-bad policemen. It gets worse though. “Now we have a minion of billionaire currency speculator George Soros lecturing us for not leading the world on drug liberalisation,” writes Miranda Devine in the Sunday Herald Sun. “Ethan Nadelmann, 53, the executive director of Soros’s New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, has been jetting about the country meeting politicians such as Malcolm Turnbull and Rob Oakeshott.” The shocker: “He...

It’s an old trick mastered by marijuana-first libertarians. One: Pretend there’s a massive war on drugs – a complete failure. Two: Demand that we be even softer and kinder to drug users, because being tough is, like, mean. Three: Repeat the user’s lawyer-approved statements and parrot his cop-bashing stories. Four: In the name of “freedom” censor the failings of the soft-on-drugs movement, especially cracks in the Dutch experiment, attacks on family-run businesses and welfare-dependency concerns. Five: Uncritically thank the former-Nazi collaborator George Soros, for supporting your enlightened cause.

Medical Marijuana: Prop 203's Passage Means a New Billion-Dollar Industry for Arizona Phoenix -- In Arizona, you can ride a motorcycle without a helmet, conceal a handgun, and buy an AK-47. And soon, if you qualify, you'll be able to smoke a big, fat doobie. Legally. Proposition 203, the state's new medical-marijuana law, passed by the slimmest of margins once all the votes from the November 2 election were finally counted. But it passed by 4,341 votes, and now Arizona is on the verge of establishing a billion-dollar pot industry. The official canvass of votes from the election will take...

No matter how dangerous the dealer, or how promiscuous the user, Australia’s so-called war on drugs looks very much like a tea-and-cucumber-sandwich party. More evidence (from The Age): Judge shows mercy to tortured drug trafficker KADRI Sukalic walked from a Melbourne court yesterday a free man, but without a spring in his step despite a judge's merciful decision to wholly suspend a prison sentence for trafficking marijuana. Apparently, if you traffic drugs, and happen to be a victim of “torture” then your trade in torturing minds will be downplayed. Our soft-on-marijuana judges will mother you, our talk-therapists will offer you...

From the WSJ: The growing tendency here to question U.S. drug policy has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology or an affinity for drugs. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that while the "war on drugs" has done nothing to curb the U.S. appetite for mind-altering substances, its unintended consequence has been to empower organized crime networks. These gangs, which aggressively target children as customers and low-level employees on both sides of the border, are undermining the economy and the quality of life in the binational El Paso-Juárez metropolitan region. Right.  Just like Prohibition did nothing to curb the people's desire...

Churchgoers attending Sunday morning Mass in Palomas, Mexico, discovered three severed heads in the town's main plaza, law enforcement officials said. Eddie Espinoza, mayor of the town of Columbus, where many residents have family ties in Palomas just south of the border, said the horrific display by the perpetrators marked an intensification of the drug-related violence that had quieted somewhat in the area in recent months. "Compared to the killings of the past, this has escalated to a more severe, gruesome kind of exhibition," Espinoza said. After authorities were alerted to the presence of the heads in the plaza where...

What happens to property confiscated by the DEA and the ATF? Now, a look at how that process works, and an exclusive visit to a confidential storage facility where U-S Marshal's store seized vehicles. They haven't been selling Live Bait, Licenses, or anything else at Ivy's E-Z Stop for quite some time. The business was seized as part of a tri-state drug bust in September of 2007. U-S Marshal Brandon Johnson says, "on real property like this we have a contract with a company that comes and does the maintenance , they mow the lawns, they check up on the...

Mexican police say 77 bodies have been recovered from an abandoned mine that appears to have been used as a mass grave by drugs gangs. Human remains were first discovered in the silver mine near Taxco in Guerrero state at the end of May. The bodies appeared to have been thrown down a 200m (650ft) ventilation shaft over a period of time, police said. Only six have so far been identified - one was the director of a local prison.

MEXICO CITY - After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked. "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

Andrew has already posted this, and I'm late to the game because I couldn't bring myself to watch it, but nonetheless, I feel compelled to remark. Yes, folks, this is your war on drugs: VIDEO: After he watched it, my more temperate better half was literally shaking with anger. My anger is mixed with a sort of bleak despair that this sort of thing could happen in America, and worse, that so few people care. You shoot two dogs in front of a seven year old--who could have been killed by a stray round, and at the very least will...

The video of a Columbia, Mo., SWAT team shooting and killing a dog during a drug raid is now available online, due in part to the efforts of the Columbia Daily Tribune. The video shows members of the Columbia Police Department executing a narcotics raid on the home of Jonathan Whitworth. While the raid, which occurred in February, only turned up a misdemeanor amount of marijuana and a glass pipe, the Columbia PD was able to charge Whitworth with second-degree child endangerment because a child lives in the home. That same child, age 7, was present when the Columbia PD...

Police in Mexico raided a basement finding 31 diamond-studded guns, presumably belonging to a drug cartel boss. Officers in western Jalisco found 31 gold- and silver-plated handguns of varying caliber studded with diamonds and engraved with the name 'Lobo Valencia'

If the idea is to create a drug-free America, then we can safely say that after hundreds of billions of dollars spent, millions of arrests, and decades of escalating police and military efforts, the war on drugs is a complete failure. The reason is clear if you think about it. The attempt to use government force and central planning -- violence and socialism, essentially -- to effectively mold society by preventing people on an individual basis from growing, producing, transferring, and ingesting drugs of their choice, is a ridiculous fantasy and always has been. There will forever be ways to...

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico - Dozens of gunmen mounted rare and apparently coordinated attacks targeting two army garrisons in northern Mexico, touching off firefights that killed 18 attackers. The attempts to blockade soldiers inside their bases -- part of seven near-simultaneous attacks across two northern states -- appeared to mark a serious escalation in Mexico's drug war, in which cartel gunmen attacked in unit-size forces armed with bulletproof vehicles, dozens of hand grenades and assault rifles. While drug gunmen frequently shoot at soldiers on patrol, they seldom target army bases, and even more rarely attack in the force displayed during the confrontations...

Two officers, two suspects shot during drug search By Gavin Lesnick LITTLE ROCK — Two police officers were shot and a third was injured as authorities tried to serve a search warrant this morning at a Little Rock residence. Two people inside the apartment at 2200 Marshall Street were also shot when police returned fire. Neither of the officers' injuries are thought to be life-threatening, said Little Rock Police Department spokesman Lt Terry Hastings. One was shot in each leg and the other was shot in the stomach, but his protective vest prevented injury. The third officer suffered a...

Man arrested for crack use, because he had white mints in his mouth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_SBnZXCaGI&feature=email

http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=210415&page=3