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MEXICO CITY — The capture was worthy of an action thriller: elite Mexican troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a mysterious submarine. The 33-foot vessel turned out to be crammed with parcels believed to contain cocaine, possibly tons. Its disheveled crew of four emerged in stocking feet and baggy shorts, saying they had shipped out from Colombia a week earlier under threat of death. Mexico's military confirmed Thursday that the men are Colombian but offered little new information...Capt. Jose Luis Vergara, a spokesman for the Mexican navy, said authorities were hauling the "very well-constructed" vessel to shore...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The "spiritual" effects of psilocybin from so-called sacred mushrooms last for more than a year and may offer a way to help patients with fatal diseases or addictions, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday...

A Rogers husband and wife who worked as a pastor and school bus driver were sentenced Monday to four years in prison for cooking methamphetamine in their family home. Joseph and Barbara Sisneros pleaded guilty last week to a reduced charge of possession of drug paraphernalia with intent to manufacture as part of a plea agreement between Deputy Prosecutor Drew Ledbetter and defense attorneys Blake Warren and Bobby Digby. "This meth lab was not a small operation," Ledbetter told Benton County Senior Circuit Judge Tom Keith. "Certain people should be held to a higher standard. At best, the court could...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States leads the world in rates of experimenting with marijuana and cocaine despite strict drug laws, World Health Organization researchers said on Tuesday. Countries with looser drug laws have lower rates of abuse, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. The survey of 54,000 people in 17 countries found that 16 percent of people in the United States had used cocaine in their lifetimes -- far higher than the next highest rate, found in New Zealand, where 4.3 percent of people reported having used cocaine. More than 42 percent of...

More than a third of Danes have used cannabis at least once in their lives, making them the top users of the drug in Europe. The new statistics from the European Centre for Monitoring of Drugs and Drug Addiction show that Denmark comes out ahead of France and the UK for use of the illicit drug. Of Danish adults 36.5 percent have tried it at least once in their lives, compared to 30.6 percent in France and 29.8 percent in the United Kingdom. However, Denmark only lies in seventh place for the use of cannabis in the last year, which...

You can still light up in a Dutch cafe after July 1, but only if you're smoking marijuana, not tobacco. Bloomberg reported June 20 that the Netherlands' new indoor-smoking ban allows patrons to smoke inside marijuana "coffee shops" as long as the joint is pure cannabis. But cutting joints with tobacco will be illegal. Tobacco smoking also will be banned in other public places except in separate, unstaffed rooms. "Every customer will have to learn how to smoke pure,'' said Robert Kempen, co-owner of The NooN and Mellow Yellow Amsterdam coffee shops. "Sales will definitely fall," said Rida Oulad, a...

A sign in front of Mauro Morales' Rio Grande City home announces his business for everyone to see. "Peyote Dealer," it proclaims in large block letters. Each day, drivers passing by slow down for double takes and some even pull over, get out and snap photos. Who can blame them?, Morales asks with a mischievous grin. He is, after all, part of a dwindling fraternity. The slight, 65-year-old Rio Grande City man is one of only three people in the United States - all in Starr and Webb counties -authorized to harvest and sell the psychedelic cactus. But as overharvesting...

Authorities say it's the biggest pot bust in Cocke County in the last five years, maybe more. Around 10 a.m. Monday, helicopter pilots spotted hundreds of thousands of marijuana plants growing in the Cherokee National Forest in Cocke County. They alerted officers on the ground, and the crew trekked more than a mile into the forest from Interstate 40, where they came upon what they call a DTO, or drug trafficking organization. "They just live in it, move in, grow, and that's all they're there to do is grow marijuana," Special Agent Jason Poore said of the growers. Poore is...

Bill Stamps Jr., a local businessman and community activist, was detained recently at Del Norte County Airport after marijuana was found in his luggage. Stamps was not arrested and faces no criminal charges, according to county District Attorney Mike Riese. Stamps has agreed to take part in a 30-day "home-study" diversion program, said his attorney, George Mavris. Riese said Stamps is being treated "like any other individual who has possession of less than an ounce." Stamps told The Triplicate he has a doctor's approval to use marijuana for treatment of stress that dates to his service during the Vietnam War....

Marijuana potency increased last year to the highest level in more than 30 years, posing greater health risks to people who may view the drug as harmless, according to a report released Thursday by the White House. The latest analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project tracked the average amount of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in samples seized by law enforcement agencies from 1975 through 2007. It found that the average amount of THC reached 9.6 percent in 2007, compared with 8.75 percent the previous year. The 9.6 percent level represents more than a doubling of...

Guatemala plans to send hundreds of troops, elite presidential guards and anti-drug police to its border with Mexico to stem growing drug violence, the government said on Saturday. "The unit should be ready within about 90 days. We are talking about 500 troops" and members of the presidential guard, Interior Ministry spokesman Ricardo Gatica said. Gatica declined to say how many counternarcotics police would be sent to the border, where drug smuggling into southern Mexico, bound for the United States, goes unchallenged. In southern Mexico, suspected drug gunmen dumped a man's head outside a newspaper in Tabasco state on Saturday...

Mexico is beginning to look like a real war zone. The headlines in the news media are reminiscent of those from some of the most brutal days of the Iraq War. They speak of executions, beheadings, cryptic messages and dozens of people killed in a single day. But the war against drugs that Mexico is waging is not one that can easily eliminate the enemies. snip The Mexican government has made the fight against drugs its No. 1 priority.snip The rival drug cartels are killing each other off, law enforcement agents are hunting down drug dealers, and their hit men...

River Dell Regional High School was one of three schools statewide to get a grant for its random drug testing program, federal officials said today. The school was awarded $43,100 for the upcoming school year as part of a $5.8 million grant program from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Schools in Hillsborough and Brick also received grants. “It’s another tool to reinforce positive decisions,” said Stephen Schatz, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “It’s really geared toward treatment.” River Dell Superintendent Patrick Fletcher said the money will fund better testing that...

Seven officers named in previous list killed CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - We're getting word a drug cartel in Mexico left another hit list with the names of 12 police officers. Now some of the officers named have already resigned. A similar list of 22 names appeared earlier this year at a monument for fallen police officers in Ciudad Juarez. That list had this message: "For those who still don't believe..." Of the 22 named, seven were killed. Three were wounded in assassination attempts, and all but one of the rest quit their jobs. This new list of officers left at...

The latest threat assessment prepared for special border enforcement teams says pleasure boats are among the increasingly inventive means used by crafty couriers to slip illicit cargo — including drugs, guns and people — from one country to the other. The marine environment “is viewed as particularly vulnerable and porous to smuggling activity” due to the many challenges in keeping tabs on lakes, waterways and tiny coves, says the August 2007 report, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act. One American criminal group has children carrying bags of tobacco swim across the St. Croix River between...

Federal and local law enforcement have arrested seven alleged members and associates of the Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos prison gang over the last week.Prosecutors say the seven people from Laredo and 17 from the Houston area were involved in a conspiracy to transport large amounts of cocaine from Laredo to Houston and launder the proceeds in Laredo. Pedro Gil III, 37, also known as "Master P," "PG" and "Carwash," was arrested over the weekend and charged with five counts of conspiracy with intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and one count of money laundering. Police later arrested his...

WEED, Calif. — This town is in a tempest over a bottle top. The federal government is telling the owner of a small brewery here that the pun he's placed on caps of his Weed Ales crosses a line. The U.S. Treasury Department's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says those three little words allude to marijuana use.

Canada's laws prohibiting possession and trafficking of drugs were struck down as unconstitutional Tuesday by the B.C. Supreme Court, in a case focusing on the plague of drug addiction in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. But Justice Ian Pitfield gave Ottawa until June 30, 2009, to fix the law and bring it in line with the Constitutional principle of fundamental justice. The ruling, in a case challenging the federal government's jurisdiction over Vancouver's controversial safe-injection site, goes well beyond the site itself. The case was launched by the non-profit organization that runs Insite and a group of addicts, who argued the site...

ANTA, Ecuador — The scene at the Manta Ray Cafe, a mess hall here at the most prominent American military outpost in South America, suggests all is normal.

About a month ago I got a call from a reporter for the Arkansas Times inquiring about my research into paramilitary drug raids. He'd been reporting on a raid in North Little Rock involving a 40-year-old man named Tracy Ingle. When he told me the story over the phone, I was floored, even given all the abuses and mistakes I've reported and read about over the last few years. What makes the case especially egregious is not that the police may have gotten the wrong home, that they shot a man, or that they were covering it up or going...

WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors are investigating Wachovia Corp. as part of a broad probe of alleged laundering of drug proceeds by Mexican and Colombian money-transfer companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Wachovia is one of several large U.S. banks that have come under scrutiny for their relationships with such companies. It is in discussions with the Justice Department about reforms in its compliance system and faces a possible deferred-prosecution agreement that would require extensive federal oversight. An official of Wachovia said it is cooperating in the probe. Wachovia, based in Charlotte, N.C., and some other U.S. banks severed...

WEED, Calif. — Vaune Dillmann thought the wording on his bottle caps was just a clever play on the name of the Northern California town where he brews his beer — Weed. Federal alcohol regulators thought differently. They have ordered Dillmann to stop selling beer bottles with caps that say "Try Legal Weed." While reviewing the proposed label for Dillmann's latest beer, Lemurian Lager, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau said the message on the caps he has been using for his five current beers amounts to a drug reference.

"Nine, eight, seven ..." A crowd of about 10,000 people collectively began counting down on the University of Colorado's Norlin Quadrangle just before 4:20 p.m. Sunday. Yet the massive puff of pot smoke that hovers over CU's Boulder campus every April 20 -- the date of an annual, internationally recognized celebration of marijuana -- began rising over the sea of heads earlier than normal this year. "Oh forget it," one student said, aborting the countdown to 4:20 p.m. and lighting his pipe early. He closed his eyes, taking a deep, long drag. "Sweet." Although it's become an annual and renowned...

The state’s top drug prosecutor was fired on Friday, hours after reports were published that he was under investigation for possessing child pornography. Assistant Attorney General James Cameron of Hallowell, who worked as the drug prosecution coordinator for the Attorney General’s Office, had been on paid administrative leave for several months, according to one law enforcement source.

Last month, police in Kentucky went on a 24-hour drug raid blitz. According to local media accounts, the raids uncovered 23 methamphetamine labs, seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana, identified 16 drug-endangered children and arrested 565 people for illegal drug use. That's quite a day's work.What inspired the blitz? Complaints from the citizenry? A vicious string of drug-related murders? An outbreak of overdoses?No, none of that.It seems that they were concerned that the federal government is about to turn off the funding spigot."During 'Operation Byrne Blitz,'" a local television station reported, "state police and highway patrol agencies, local police...

There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage. It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not...

The brick house with the enormous black satellite dish in the driveway sits empty now, the tenants evicted. The building is fenced, its windows are boarded and a For Sale sign hangs outside. Last year, the Los Angeles city attorney's office sued to close the house at 3304 Drew St. in Glassell Park as a public nuisance. Authorities are now seeking to demolish it. For more than a decade, the Satellite House, as it's known in the neighborhood, was the center of the drug trade on two-block Drew Street, where dealers and gang members have operated with near-impunity for years,...

Rep. Barney Frank said he plans to file a bill to legalize "small amounts" of marijuana. Frank announced his plans late Friday on the HBO show "Real Time," hosted by Bill Maher. "I’m going to file a bill as soon as we go back to remove all federal penalties for the possession or use of small amounts of marijuana," Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Maher. Frank didn’t define "small amounts." Efforts to reach Frank on Saturday were not immediately successful. Frank said he’d filed a similar bill in the Massachusetts Legislature in the 1970s, but hasn’t tried since he was...

AS HE TROOPS about Europe, with notebook and camera crew, guidebook author Rick Steves witnesses what the late historian Barbara Tuchman called "The March of Folly," the sites of wars and witch hunts waged by feckless rulers. Steves has come home with a mind to take on our leaders' folly, the federal government's enduring, woefully unsuccessful War on Drugs, and the battle front against marijuana. He would replace a strategy of locking people up with a policy designed to lessen harm. It's a lot like the "Four Pillars" approach to drug use adopted by Vancouver, B.C.: treatment, harm reduction, prevention...

Randy Dean Sievert drew ire from Manatee County sheriff's deputies as he aimed his cell phone camera at undercover investigators executing a search warrant in his neighborhood. A deputy confronted Sievert, demanding that he destroy any photos of investigators and their vehicles. Sievert was not a welcome observer of the drug raid. Authorities called him a "known drug dealer" based on a couple of past arrests. Taking photos of undercover officers jeopardized their lives, deputies said. Sievert refused to remove his hands from his pockets and step away from his car after he was confronted about the pictures. Deputies forced...

Study aims to clear haze surrounding pot addiction By Terri Somers UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER March 14, 2008 Atrophy of the brain and cirrhosis of the liver are long-term side effects of heavy alcohol dependence. And withdrawal for alcoholics can bring sometimes fatal delirium tremors and convulsions. Those facts are well known. Barbara Mason But much less is known about marijuana, the nation's most widely used and socially accepted illicit drug. Our knowledge of marijuana is often based on personal experience, observation or anecdotes, despite a growing collection of scientific studies on the topic. Scripps Research Institute addiction expert Barbara Mason...

A fractured state Supreme Court has ruled that random drug testing of student athletes is unconstitutional, finding that each has "a genuine and fundamental privacy interest in controlling his or her own bodily functions." The court ruled unanimously Thursday in favor of parents and students in the lower Columbia River town of Cathlamet who opposed the tiny Wahkiakum School District's policy of random urine tests of middle school and high school student athletes, but some justices said random tests could be justified under different circumstances.

In the increasingly divided American landscape, where language, faith, and prime-time television no longer unite us as they once did, a thin golden line holds the nation together. It connects entities as disparate as Britney Spears, the Miami Dolphins, the Tecumseh High School Science Club, the cashier at your local Walgreen’s, even George W. Bush. Its domain is the restroom stall. Its associated features include tiny plastic cups, attentive strangers, and, on occasion, latex stunt penises and disposable heat packs. It is, of course, the precautionary drug test. In 2008 it doesn’t matter if you’re a millionaire entertainer, a service-industry...

6th Graders To Get Drug TestsPOSTED: 10:41 am EST March 7, 2008 UPDATED: 5:59 pm EST March 7, 2008 ROYAL OAK, Mich. -- A new drug testing system could soon take place in Royal Oak starting in September. Superintendent Thomas Moline said he will be taking a proposal to the school board that will allow voluntary and random drug testing for students as young as 11 years old. Moline said nobody can predict who's going to use drugs and he wants to include middle school and elementary school students. He said it is part of the Save Our Youth Task...

We write a television show. Measured against more thoughtful and meaningful occupations, this is not the best seat from which to argue public policy or social justice. Still, those viewers who followed The Wire — our HBO drama that tried to portray all sides of inner-city collapse, including the drug war, with as much detail and as little judgment as we could muster — tell us they've invested in the fates of our characters. They worry or grieve for Bubbles, Bodie or Wallace, certain that these characters are fictional yet knowing they are rooted in the reality of the other...

Villagers in remote areas of Badakhshan Province, north-eastern Afghanistan, have been using opium as a substitute for medicine for years. They are oblivious to the harm it can do to their health. There is no official data about the number of drug addicts in Badakhshan. However, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) says one million people are addicted to drugs there, 45,000 of whom are women. This video short shows a women’s opium smoking session in the village of Jukhan, tucked away in mountainous Badakhshan. While efforts are being made to rehabilitate drug addicts in the village,...

In the slide show I narrated about the late William F. Buckley, Jr., I didn’t have room to get into a couple of issues we’ve been debating here at the Lab: the Drug Enforcement Administration’s campaigns against medical marijuana and against doctors who treat chronic-pain patients. Mr. Buckley was worried about the D.E.A. well before the OxyContin scare inspired the agency’s Operation Cotton Candy and led to doctors like William Hurwitz and Bernard Rottschaefer being sent to prison. In 1995, after criticizing presidents and members of Congress for pursuing a war on drugs he considered futile, Mr. Buckley wrote: But...

U.S. incarcerates more than any other nation: report Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:20pm EST By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world and for the first time in the nation's history, more than one in every 100 American adults is confined in a prison or jail, according to a report released on Thursday. The report by the Pew Center on the States said the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults at the start of the year. The far more populous nation of China ranked second with...

" For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs."

William F. Buckley, author, columnist, TV talk show host, and founding editor of National Review magazine, died today at age 82. Buckley was one of the people most responsible for making the conservative movement a powerful force in the United States during the past six decades. Especially through his influential magazine, Buckley set the agenda for the American right and made it appealing to a mass audience. His editorial approach and political philosophy combined to create an ecumenism on the right that allowed the various factions to work together, although the relationships have always been strained to some degree. However,...

Very sad...

Dead at 82

Just breaking on NRO...

Oklahoma City police recently caught a woman suspected of trafficking drugs. Officers were a bit surprised by who they arrested. The woman has been identified as 41-year-old Susan Freeman, an employee at the North Carolina Attorney General's office.

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - A leading U.S. doctors group has endorsed using marijuana for medical purposes, urging the U.S. government to roll back a prohibition on using it to treat patients and supporting studies into its medical applications. The American College of Physicians, the second-largest doctors group in the United States, issued a policy statement on medical marijuana this week after it was approved by its governing body, the group said on Friday. The group cited evidence that marijuana is valuable in treating severe weight loss associated with AIDS, and nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy in cancer patients....

An explosion has rocked the centre of Mexico City, killing at least one man and injuring two other people. The device was set off near the city's police headquarters, Mexico City police chief Joel Ortega said. No group has so far said it carried out the attack. Investigators believe the bomb was activated remotely by a mobile phone. The dead man's hand was blown off, the police chief said. It is unclear whether he was responsible for the bomb or if he simply picked up the package. The blast occurred at about 1430 (2030 GMT) near the tourist area known...

Jailed: Keith Brown had a speck of cannabis on his shoe A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison. Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport. A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than...

Medical marijuana in San Francisco may be going up in smoke. In late December, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sent letters to landlords of buildings that housed medical cannabis dispensaries in the city, telling them they face the loss of their property and possibly prison if the businesses stay open. Now, less than two months later, seven of the city's 28 dispensaries have closed or are on the verge of closing, according to medical marijuana supporters and activists. They fear more will follow. "It's like a dagger in the heart," said Wayne Justmann, a medical marijuana advocate. "We're barely holding...

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama Backs Federal Decriminalization -- “I think the war on drugs has been a failure, and I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.” Share This Page del.icio.us | digg | Stumble Upon | Facebook January 31, 2008 - Washington, DC, USA Washington, DC: A newly discovered video of a 2004 appearance at Northwestern University by Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, in which he calls for the federal decriminalization of marijuana, was posted online today by The Washington Times. In that appearance, Obama states, "I think the war on drugs has been a...

The Geopolitics of Dope January 29, 2008 | 2103 GMT By George Friedman Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres...