Free Republic

Investigators found odd, little pills buried in the pockets of Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on Oct. 7. They were later identified as the drug Captagon, a powerful, synthetic stimulant. Captagon gained international notoriety in 2015 when it was discovered to be used by ISIS fighters to suppress fear and fatigue prior to carrying out terrorist operations. Now, because it’s cheap, as well as easy to make and smuggle, Captagon and its counterfeits are likely to remain a favorite tool of extremist militant groups to enhance their soldiers’ violent tendencies. Some reports have even labeled Captagon as “the jihadists’ drug,”...

Jean-Pierre claimed President Biden "has always supported the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes..." Almost 14 months out till the 2024 Presidential election, the Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asked the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on Tuesday to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substance Act at the request of President Biden. According to Bloomberg, a DEA spokesperson confirmed the department received a letter from HHS Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram with the request, and will now initiate its own review of the drug. When asked about the recommendation Wednesday, White...

The detained American basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a court near Moscow on Thursday, her lawyer said. “I’d like to plead guilty, your honor. But there was no intent. I didn’t want to break the law,” Ms. Griner said in English, which was then translated into Russian, Reuters reported. Ms. Griner has been detained in Russia since Feb. 17, accused by the Russian authorities of having a vape cartridge with hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow. Aleksandr Boikov, her lawyer, said cartridges appeared in Ms. Griner’s luggage “because of carelessness.”

Brittney Griner is speaking for herself for the first time in a long time as she's been detained in Russia pending a trial -- and her words are an emotional plea to President Biden. Excerpts of a letter sent to the White House this week on behalf of Griner were published Sunday, through reps for Griner, and it consists of bullet point thoughts she's expressing as she faces years behind bars for allegedly bringing hash cartridges into the country.

Democrats in Washington state are cracking down on marijuana — not the actual drug, the word itself. The Evergreen State legislature recently passed a bill banning the word “marijuana” from official state law and documents over concerns that it is “racist.” At the same time, to help increase diversity in the cannabis business, a taxpayer-funded task force has been spending the last two years focusing on helping minorities in Washington state break into the marijuana business. “The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist,” Washington state Representative Melanie Morgan (D) said during testimony regarding the piece of legislation officially known...

Peter Clark, 51, flew from Las Vegas to Dubai on Feb. 24, where he went to the hospital after suffering an attack of pancreatitis. Doctors there found traces of hashish in his urine – considered possession in the UAE – and reported Clark to authorities. Clark claims he brought no drugs to Dubai, nor consumed or purchased drugs while there. He’s not the first Westerner who has suffered under similar charges

The Palestinian Authority (PA) Security Forces have been revealed to be actively policing in Arab suburbs of the capital city of Jerusalem, in a region classified as Area B in the 1994 Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported on Thursday that the PA's Al-Quds (Jerusalem) suburb police were active in Eizariya, a neighborhood located east of Abu Dis between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim. In the suburb, the PA force seized illegal drugs, consisting of 55 pills of Ecstasy (MDMA) as well as other drugs including crystal meth and hashish. The myriad of regions in Judea and Samaria classified...

Teens are increasingly turning to electronic cigarettes not to get their tobacco fix, but instead to inhale pot. A new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics found that teens have devised ways to turn e-cigarettes into devices for hashish oil, marijuana, wax and other cannabis products. Researchers surveyed 3,847 Connecticut high school students about their drug and e-cigarette use and found that students using e-cigarettes to vaporize cannabis was 27 times higher than the adult rate. According to the study, 5.5 percent of the students surveyed had used an e-cigarette to vaporize cannabis. In total, nearly 30 percent of...

Elite Army Green Berets are knocking the performance of the Afghan National Army, telling war tales of its soldiers hiding and quitting the fight.The Green Beret criticisms, contained in a U.S. Central Command “friendly fire” investigative file, provide a window into the flaws of a national army more than a decade in the making.The Special Forces soldiers gave poor marks to the institution that is supposed to keep Afghanistan’s democratically elected governments in power. The security force must rebuff an expected Taliban offensive, on its own, once all American troops leave after 2016.The soldiers gave statements to investigators after going...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Among the most tantalizing mysteries surrounding Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s departure from his U.S. military base in 2009 is this: Was he trying to find the Taliban? Or did he simply wander away and get captured? Politicians and members of the military have criticized the Obama administration’s decision to swap five jailed Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, saying the soldier may have deserted. Until now, few details have emerged about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance from his base. But The Washington Post has reached Afghan villagers who spotted Bergdahl shortly after he slipped away from his base. To them, it’s clear something...

A small fire at a West Berkeley business Tuesday, which sent a man to a San Francisco burn center for treatment, appears to have been caused by what police described Wednesday as “a hashish production operation.” Scant information was available from authorities, but officer Jennifer Coats, Berkeley Police spokeswoman, said that officers who responded to the fire Tuesday found an illegal marijuana grow and hashish production operation on-site.

Jim Andersen has a 40-year history with hashish, the concentrated cannabis sometimes referred to as the cognac of the marijuana world. When he served in the Air Force in Southeast Asia, he said he smuggled it home in his boots. When he was in grad school in California, he made it with a centrifuge in a lab after hours. So when Washington was on the verge of legalizing the sale of taxed pot last fall, Andersen decided to move back to his home state and turn his hobby into a full-time, legitimate paycheck—a business that would supply state-licensed, recreational marijuana...

A new law in Oklahoma that allows penalties of up to life in prison for converting marijuana into hashish has created an unintended byproduct: accusations of an unduly harsh, unnecessary law that will further clog the state's already-overcrowded prison system. "It makes little sense. I've never heard anything like it," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based advocacy organization. "It's just pure hysteria. Where did this idea even come from?" The law -- which was overwhelmingly approved by the Oklahoma Senate last month and later signed by Republican Gov. Mary Fallin on April 29...

An American man has been detained in the mountains of Pakistan after local authorities found him carrying a sword, pistol and night-vision goggles on a Rambo-style solo mission to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden. Friends and family say construction worker Gary Brooks Faulkner is a devout, good-humored Christian who often talked about building a porch or framing a house — not taking down the world's most-wanted terrorist. They had few clues to explain his 7,300-mile journey. "I'm like, 'What? They got him where?'" said Daren Paredes, a friend who met Faulkner in the northern Colorado town of Greeley....

A bomb attack in a crowded market selling hashish in north-western Pakistan has killed at least 10 people and injured up to 100, officials say. The market had been set up close to a militant recruitment centre, a witness to the bombing told the BBC. The blast occurred in the Khyber tribal region, close to the Afghan border, in an area where the Taliban is known to have a strong presence. Over the past year north-west Pakistan has been hit by numerous attacks. The army recently finished an offensive in the area against the Taliban. The bomb had exploded in...

SANAA, 24 January 2006 — A Yemeni man repatriated last year from the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appeared before a state security court in Sanaa yesterday charged with drug trafficking. Karama Saeed Khamsan, 33, was accused of traveling to Pakistan to secure the delivery of two tons of hashish for $533,000 for a Yemeni partner. The consignment was due to be smuggled across the Arabian Sea to the southern Yemeni province of Al-Mahra and then through the porous borders to Saudi Arabia. It was not clear from the court documents whether the shipment had been delivered. It...

Istanbul Police said 222 kg of heroin, 184 kg of hashish, 2 kg of cocaine and thousands of synthetic pills were confiscated in 141 operations in several parts of the metropolis.

THE world's biggest drug bust has been executed by narcotics agents in Afghanistan, who say they uncovered 236 tonnes of hashish hidden in trenches in the south of the country. The massive haul, found in the southern province of Kandahar on Monday, was worth more than $US400 million ($426 million) and would have netted the Taliban about $US14 million in profits, NATO officials said yesterday. It weighed as much as 30 double-decker London buses. "To our knowledge, this was the biggest drug seizure in the world," said Afghanistan's deputy interior minister Abdul Hadi Khalid. He said the drugs were found...

World's biggest drug seizure in Afghanistan By David Blair, Diplomatic Editor Last Updated: 12:38AM BST 12/06/2008 Afghanistan's police claim to have made the largest drugs seizure in history after they discovered hashish worth at least £200 million. Afghan counter narcotics officials uncovered 260 tons of hashish hidden in 6-foot-deep trenches in southern Afghanistan About 260 tons of narcotics were found in trenches and bunkers in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. No previous haul comes close to matching this find, which weighed roughly the same as 30 double-decker buses. The previous record was set by Colombia's security forces when they uncovered...

Political terrorism is as old as human history-the very word assassins derives from the Arabic hashshashin (hashish takers), after a terrorist cult that was established in Iran in the 11th century. The followers of this cult are the forerunners of today's terrorists. As their story is told by the great historian Bernard Lewis in The Assassins (first published in 1967), these cultists operated from castles in remote mountain areas under a shadowy leader known as "the Old Man of the Mountain." Their victims were rulers of Islamic dynasties and some lords of the Crusader principalities in the land of Islam....