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In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Paul Anderson said the majority's decision "does not make sense, and borders on the absurd." He said it isn't consistent with what the Legislature intended when it wrote the state's drug laws. And he blasted Rice County authorities for charging Peck with such a serious crime. If bong water is considered a drug mixture, and it weighs enough to raise the crime to a first-degree drug offense, the presumed sentence for a first-time offender is seven years and two months in prison, and a felony drug offense goes on his or her record, Paul...

WASHINGTON — More than 300 suspects have been arrested in a series of drug raids across the country that law enforcement officials say is the largest single strike at a Mexican drug cartel operating in the United States. The arrests are aimed at the U.S. operations of the La Familia cartel, two officials said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the results of the operation. In the latest legal assault on La Familia, a New York grand jury has indicted an alleged cartel leader, Servando Gomez-Martinez. He is linked to one of the...

4 Police Officers Shot in NJ The Associated Press LAKEWOOD, N.J. - Four Lakewood police officers have been shot executing a search warrant in New Jersey. Deputy Chief Michael Mohel (mohl) says members of the tactical unit were serving a no-knock narcotics and weapons warrant around 2:25 a.m. Thursday when Jamie Gonzalez opened fire

(English-language translation) During a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in Caracas, American essayist and political analyst Noam Chomsky yesterday criticized the use of Colombian military bases by the United States Army. "The U.S.'s justification to establish military bases in Colombia is narcotraffic. However, this justification is not very serious," the essayist said and added: "There exists an intervention attitude under the pretext of narcotraffic." President Chávez greeted Chomsky at Miraflores Palace, where he received "the warmest welcome". "It was time you visited us and for the Venezuelan people to see and hear you directly," Chávez told the Professor Emeritus...

TULSA, Okla. (AP) - This is the new formula for methamphetamine: a two-liter soda bottle, a few handful of cold pills and some noxious chemicals. Shake the bottle and the volatile reaction produces one of the world's most addictive drugs. Only a few years ago, making meth required an elaborate lab—with filthy containers simmering over open flames, cans of flammable liquids and hundreds of pills. The process gave off foul odors, sometimes sparked explosions and was so hard to conceal that dealers often "cooked" their drugs in rural areas. But now drug users are making their own meth in small...

SAO PAULO, Brazil — In one murder after another, the "Canal Livre" crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim. Too uncanny, say police, who are investigating the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking. "The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get...

Libertarians on Drug Liberalization by: Emily Kanyi, July 30, 2009 President Barack Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, picked up the mantle on the drug war scene by expressing a desire to shift from the descriptive language often used to refer to the drug problem. During an interview with the Wall Street Journal on May 14, Kerlikowske described the terminology “war on drugs” as unhelpful. “Regardless of how you try to explain to people ‘it’s a war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as war on them. We’re not at war with the people...

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the violence that continues to plague our southern border region by Mexico’s well armed, well financed, and very determined drug cartels. Despite the increased efforts of President Calderon to stamp out these blood-thirsty and vicious drug cartels, violence has increased dramatically, claiming over 6,000 lives in Mexico last year alone. The murderers carrying out these crimes are as violent and dangerous as any in the world. Many have extensive military training and carry out their illegal activities with sophisticated tactical weapons and no regard for human life. Last week,...

Hemisphere: A congressional report released last week left little doubt that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is turning his country into a narcotraffickers' paradise. So why isn't Venezuela an international pariah?A new report released last Monday, "U.S. Counternarcotics Cooperation With Venezuela Has Declined," by the Government Accountability Office, offers the harshest assessment yet about Venezuela's rising role in Latin America's drug trade. The GAO said that state corruption, Chavez's aid to Colombia's FARC guerrillas, and Venezuela's refusal to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement agencies add up to trouble — an outlaw narcostate in the making and trouble for the U.S. on the...

COLONIA LEBARON, Mexico -- Mormon pioneer Alma Dayer LeBaron had a vision when he moved his breakaway sect of polygamists to this valley 60 years ago: His many children would live in peace and prosperity among the pretty pecan orchards they would plant in the desert. Prosperity has come, but the peace has been shattered. In the past three months, American Mormon communities in Mexico have been sucked into a dust devil of violence sweeping the borderlands. Their relative wealth has made them targets: Their telephones ring with threats of extortion. Their children and elders are taken by kidnappers. They...

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

One of the most dangerous places on earth is our own 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Our southern border is a drug-war zone, and we’re losing. Know it. Before she became secretary of Homeland Security, former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano declared a state of emergency along the Arizona/Mexico border because of drug trafficking, shootouts and an increasing illegal immigration invasion. The Justice Department stated that Mexican drug cartels are the “largest threat to both citizens and law enforcement agencies in this country” with gang members loose in nearly 200 U.S. cities.” This in the big, bad, brave United States of America!...

Two more narcotics officers have been placed on desk duty as FBI and local investigators delve deeper into allegations of police misconduct.Officers Robert McDonnell and Richard Cujdik, both veterans of the Narcotics Field Unit, were recently removed from the street, though they retain their department-issued guns and police powers, Internal Affairs Chief Inspector Anthony DiLacqua said yesterday.The officers' removal comes in the wake of the Daily News series "Tainted Justice," which began in February with allegations that Officer Jeffrey Cujdik, Richard's brother, lied on search warrants to get into targeted drug homes, and got too close to his informants.Jeffrey Cujdik...

In 1995, Payer Ahamed, who emigrated from Bangladesh, opened a store he called Mohamed's Oasis ... snipIn nearly two decades in America, Ahamed, 49, never had any brushes with the law. Until May 22, 2007. Little did he know, but Ahamed had been targeted by a team of Narcotics Field Unit officers who increasingly turned their focus in 2007 on merchants who supplied the small zippered packets used to contain drugs. Selling them is illegal if they are intended for the drug trade. But a disturbing pattern is emerging among many of the merchants the narcotics officers targeted. Most are...

Alcohol did not create Al Capone's gang violence in the hometown of our current president. Prohibition did. Marijuana does not create murderous drug cartels in Mexico. America's War on Drugs does. Surely President Barack Obama, one of the smartest men to inhabit the White House, must understand that truth—even if he chooses to laugh-off those of us who want to get serious about the need to end the social insanity of neo-Prohibition by legalizing marijuana and other psychoactive chemicals. French essayist Georges Bernanos wrote, "The worst, the most corrupting of lies, are problems poorly stated." It is an outrageous lie,...

One of the interesting things about the economy is how fortunes change with time. In the 1970's, the Rust Belt was hit particularly hard; in the dot.com (Web 1.0) era, vast fortunes were made in California; today, it is the Deep South who prospers -- Louisiana has actually gained jobs, while New York as the financial center, and California, with its profligate spending, have fallen upon hard times. Everyone seems to know about the travails of the banking industry. What about California? First of all, recall that their problems are not new. The Governator (and Kennedy spouse!), if you recall,...

(CNN) -- The United States shares the blame for Mexican drug trafficking and the attendant violence that has killed thousands in the past year alone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday. "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she said en route to Mexico City, according to pool reports. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians. So, yes, I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility." Clinton arrived in the Mexican capital a day after the United States...

MEXICO CITY, March 25 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Mexico on Wednesday with a stark mea culpa, saying that decades of U.S. anti-narcotics policies had been a failure and contributed to the explosion of drug violence south of the border. "Clearly what we've been doing has not worked," Clinton told reporters on her plane at the start of her two-day trip. "It is unfair for our incapacity to have effective policies" on curbing drug use, narcotics shipments and the flow of guns "to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people...

The State Department has turned down an offer by the government of El Salvador to renew a joint drug interdiction program that allows the U.S. Navy to base P-3 maritime search aircraft at Comalpa International airport in El Salvador. The 10-year agreement, which went into force after the Salvadoran legislature approved it in 2000, is set to expire next year. The Office of National Drug Control Policy recently estimated that more than half of the drugs destined for the United States pass through the Pacific corridor patrolled by the P-3 aircraft based in El Salvador.

ON A SWELTERING July afternoon in 2007, Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and his narcotics squad members raided an Olney tobacco shop. Then, with guns drawn, they did something bizarre: They smashed two surveillance cameras with a metal rod, said store owners David and Eunice Nam. The five plainclothes officers yanked camera wires from the ceiling. They forced the slight, frail Korean couple to the vinyl floor and cuffed them with plastic wrist ties. "I so scared," said Eunice Nam, 56. "We were on floor. Handcuffs on me. I so, so scared, I wet my pants." The officers rifled through drawers, dumped...

LAGOS - NIGERIA'S anti-drugs agency has arrested a 114-year-old Nigerian man after discovering 100 bags of cannabis behind his house in south-west Ogun state, a senior official said on Saturday. NDLEA Ogun state director Chinyere Obijuru said Sulaimon Adebayo who denied ownership of the illicit drug was arrested early in the week at Odeda following a tip-off. 'Imagine what could have happened if this drug had not been seized. Imagine the lives that would have been destroyed by this illicit drug,' she queried. Last November, the agency seized 30,000 kilogrammes of cannabis contained in 5,923 bags in southern Edo state,...

PHOENIX (Reuters) – U.S. border police have arrested four men and seized three shipments of guns, ammunition and weapons parts bound for Mexico, authorities said on Wednesday, weapons that would likely have been used by warring drug cartels. U.S. and Mexican authorities are working closely to curb the illegal trade in arms to Mexico, where more than 7,000 people have been murdered by the cartels since the start of last year.

Mexico City (dpa) - Mexican police found five human heads Tuesday in portable coolers on a road in Ixtlahuacan del Rio, some 600 kilometres northwest of Mexico City. On the inside of the coolers' lids, two messages had been written in black ink, with threats addressed to someone that was only identified as ``Goyo,'' a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in the state of Jalisco told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. The authorities said the heads of the five men had been severed just hours before they were found. Police were combing the rural area where the heads were found, some...

Many people ABC-7 talked to in Juarez believe if the military does indeed take over the police department, which we refer to as “martial law” in the U.S., the calm will end and the attacks will increase to a whole new level.

When an infra-red camera on the police helicopter identified a suspicious heat pattern coming from Colin Rowe's workshop, officers were convinced it was the site of a cannabis factory. They obtained the necessary search warrant and forced the door to raid the property while the owner was out. But instead of finding an illicit drugs operation, the officers discovered nothing more sinister than a wood-burning stove. The heat source police regarded as highly suspicious was simply a stove used to warm the garage workshop where Mr Rowe restores cars in his spare time. Not surprisingly Mr Rowe was furious when...

ELKTON, Md. (AP) -- The Cecil County Sheriff's Office said a deputy about to take a bathroom break at a gas station smelled crack cocaine and made a quick arrest. Police spokesman Lt. Bernard Chiominto said Deputy John Lines was waiting to use the bathroom Friday at a Wawa convenience store when he smelled crack cocaine from outside the bathroom.

Border crossings to Mexico closed by protests Largest display of discontent against the army's crackdown on drug cartels Protesters block a main avenue during a demonstration against the Mexican army in Monterrey, northern Mexico, on Tuesday. The army has blamed protests on drug cartels targeted by the government. Monterrey is not on the border but is southwest of Nuevo Laredo. CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Hundreds of people blocked bridges to the United States in three border cities Tuesday, demanding the army leave in another challenge for the Mexican government as it struggles to quell escalating drug violence. The protests in...

SEATTLE — Washington State law prohibits the possession of marijuana except for certain medical purposes. Hempfest is not one of them. Yet each summer when the event draws thousands to the Seattle waterfront to call for decriminalizing marijuana, participants light up in clear view of police officers. And they rarely get arrested. “Police officers patrolling are courteous and respectful,” said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. One reason for the officers’ approach, said Ms. Holcomb and others who follow law enforcement in Seattle, is the leadership of R. Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of...

By Tim McGlone The Virginian-Pilot © February 5, 2009 CHESAPEAKE The trial of Ryan Frederick in the shooting death of a police officer - a case that tore apart two families and a community - left all sides disappointed Wednesday. The jury refused to convict Frederick of capital murder but recommended a maximum 10-year prison term for voluntary manslaughter. Family, friends and colleagues of Detective Jarrod Shivers, shot and killed by Frederick on Jan. 17, 2008, wept in astonishment as the jury returned its verdict. Across the aisle, Frederick's family and supporters were relieved. About an hour later, the jury...

Mexico slams Border Patrol clemency. Criticizes commutation for former Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean. Plus, President Bush and Administration Corruption Exposed Part II 01.22.09 CNN Lou Dobbs Video: "Mexico Meddling" (Ramos-Compean, Bush Corruption Exposed Pt II) 01.14.09 CNN Lou Dobbs Video: President-Elect Barack Obama and Mexico's President Felipe Calderon met SEGMENT INTRO: New questions about Mexico's brazen meddling in the case against former border patrol agents Ramos and Compean who remain in prison tonight, we'll have special coverage of this continuing miscarriage of justice and the intervention of the Mexican government in the Bush administration's policy making. # And...

THOMPSON — Sheriff's deputies and investigators have broken a heroin distribution ring that dished out narcotics across more than half of Sullivan County. A total of five men and women were arrested Wednesday night following a three-month investigation, during which undercover police purchased decks of heroin from street dealers. Undersheriff Eric Chaboty said the dealers were selling heroin in towns that stretched from Monticello to Livingston Manor. The alleged dealers were pushing a variety of heroin that they called "Obama." Chaboty said dealers are known to stamp the glassine wax paper that carries the heroin with brand names — like...

“Lou Dobbs Tonight: Transcript” Justice Delayed: (Because of Bush) Ramos & Compean could be in prison for 2 more months Outrageous President Bush, Administration, and Mexican government collusion and corruption against our border patrol agents January 21, 2009 # This was Lou Dobbs first broadcast this week. SEGMENT INTRO: Former Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean, their sentences commuted, but they may be in prison for another two months. There is rising anger at the continued imprisonment of former Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean two days after President Bush commuted their sentences. And there is outrage at the Mexican...

Two Texas border guards sentenced each to about a dozen years in prison have had their sentences commuted by former President George W. Bush in one of last official acts. But the campaign on their behalf is not yet over. In 2005 Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos shot drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks as he fled across the Rio Grande, away from an abandoned van load of marijuana, according to Associated Press reports. The two men, who did not report the shooting and tampered with evidence by picking up spent shell casings, were convicted...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Shadowy vigilante groups are threatening Mexico's drug gangs near the U.S. border in retaliation for a wave of murders and kidnappings that killed 1,600 people in this city alone last year. ">snip<"

I like most Mexican people, just as I like most Americans. I don’t have prejudice against them, they are God’s children, just like me. So let’s get that out of the way. What I do hate, is illegal activity. I don’t like it when people ignore our laws, and sneak into our country. Yes, yes, we are a country of immigrants, I get that, I love that, I respect that, and encourage that. But, we are not a country of illegal immigrants. Law and order should be followed in all things. What I hate more than illegal immigration, is when...

On Tuesday afternoon El Paso Mayor John Cook vetoed a resolution unanimously passed by city council that would have asked the U.S. government to begin a serious debate on legalizing narcotics. Earlier in the day city council passed a resolution, rationing that the best way to stop the drug wars in Juarez may be to legalize the drugs here in the United States. It was part of a larger resolution outlining several steps for the United States and Mexico to take in order to cut down on the number of murders between rival drug cartels. Last year more than 1,600...

Marijuana isn't known for being a friend to memory; its short-term effects notoriously impair recall. And although the data is conflicting, some studies link cannabis with memory deficits in those who use excessive doses for long periods of time But new research suggests that one of the active ingredients in marijuana—THC—and similar compounds could possibly prevent or even reverse one of the most devastating memory disorders of all: Alzheimer's disease.

What part of illegal alien is so difficult to understand? Apparently, there are those who are either too confused, too unwilling or too incapable of understanding the meaning of those simple words. Instead, they'd rather emotionalize any debate on illegal immigration with cries of racism, discrimination and an alleged lack of compassion for our fellow human beings. They choose this course rather than honestly dealing with the established fact we are a nation of laws - laws intended and necessary to preserve civility and order for our common good. I, for one, refuse to be intimidated or influenced by such...

Riverside and San Bernardino counties added more Latino residents between 2000 and 2007 than all but three other U.S. counties, a new analysis of U.S. Census data found. The report, by the nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center, also found that most Latino population growth is now from new births. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was mostly from immigration. That means no matter what happens to the immigration rate, the Latino population of Riverside and San Bernardino counties will continue to grow steadily, reaching a majority within several years, experts say. Riverside County's Hispanic population surged 60 percent between...

Las Vegas police officers served a search warrant at the Seven Hills home of Emmanuel Dozier on Panorama Ridge Drive in Henderson at about 9:30 last Sunday evening. The officers say they announced themselves, got no response, and opened fire to break the lock off the metal front door. At that point, the suspect, a 32-year-old sheet-metal worker, also opened fire. Three police officers were wounded. Mr. Dozier, who was suspected of cocaine trafficking and is now held in lieu of $3 million bail, says he thought it was a home invasion. "I want you to know something in your...

After being arrested in the shooting of three SWAT officers, Emmanuel Dozier sat in the back of a police patrol vehicle Sunday night. After a while, he asked to speak to somebody about what had happened. A Las Vegas police narcotics detective opened the car door and asked what he needed. "I want you to know something in your heart," Dozier told the detective, according to his arrest report. "I did not mean to shoot any cops." The detective replied that he wanted to believe him. "Please know in your heart," Dozier pleaded again. "I did not mean to shoot...

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house. The trap was set and less than 24...

Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during the first seven days of his first term. And what did he do on the eighth day? "I think this would be a good time for beer," he said. Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo, booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million...

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Mexico has a serious drug problem these days. So serious that over 5,000 people have died this year due to drug-related violence. More than 5,000 dead. And that number keeps growing every day. How do you begin to understand that so many people are dying in Mexico? More than 5,000 casualties because of "narcotrafficking." That’s more than all of the American troops that have died fighting an actual war in Iraq. It is hard to keep a tally, but Mexico´s El Universal newspaper does a good job of keeping score. Mexican drug cartels, dominated by the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels,...

A jury sentenced a Lakeview man to 10 years in prison for growing nearly 7,500 marijuana plants. Andrew Stever, 40, was sentenced on Monday after a three-day trial in the Federal District Court in Medford.Ten years is the mandatory minimum sentence for anyone convicted of growing 1,000 or more pot plants. In July 2007, officers from several local, state and federal agencies found 7,459 plants growing on Stever's Lakeview property, which bordered Forest Service land. Two men fled the scene, leaving behind personal property and three firearms, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Portland. Physical evidence and testimony linked...

Tags: Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. His definition fits America’s war on drugs, a multi-billion dollar, four-decade exercise in futility. The war on drugs has helped turn the United States into the country with the world’s largest prison population. (Noteworthy statistic: The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population and around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners). Keen demand for illicit drugs in America, the world’s biggest market, helped spawn global criminal enterprises that use extreme violence in the pursuit of equally extreme profits. Over the years, the war on...

http://www.reason.comhttp://www.reason.com/blog/show/130429.html Gotcha! Radley Balko | December 6, 2008, 1:28pm Like Mark Draughn, I've been somewhat skeptical of Barry Cooper, the former drug cop turned pitchman for how-to-beat-the-cops videos. He comes off as more of a huckster than a principled whistle-blower, which I think does the good ideas he stands for (police reform) more harm than good. But damn. I have to hand it to him. This might be one of the ballsiest moves I've ever seen. KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing...

MEXICO CITY — The U.S. government finally released the first part of a $400 million aid package Wednesday to support Mexico's police and soldiers in their fight against drug cartels. The money comes at a critical time: Mexico's death toll from drug violence has soared above 4,000 so far this year, and drug-related murders and kidnappings are spilling over the U.S. border as well. U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza formally released $197 million at a signing ceremony in Mexico City. The rest will be disbursed throughout the year. Garza said the Merida Initiative aid will enable the U.S. and Mexico to...

When you combine contraband, poverty, desperation and lots of spare time, you get the bizarre world of the smuggler. Everything from cocaine to human beings is waiting to cross tight borders into lands where they're not welcome. And wherever you find them, you find an army of smugglers using every ounce of their creativity to get them through. Also, it appears quite a few of them are insane.