Tag Archives | War On Drugs

State Department Offering Contractors $10 Billion To Operate Overseas Drug-War Airforce

By on December 8, 2012 in News 3

With such an effort, surely this war on drugs will be won soon. Wired reports:

Unsure how your private security firm makes money as the U.S. war in Afghanistan winds down? One option: Go into the drug trade — more specifically, the lucrative business of fighting narcotics. The State Department needs a business partner to keep its fleet of drug-hunting helicopters and planes flying worldwide. You could make up to $10 billion.

Starting next month, the State Department will solicit some defense-industry feedback on a contract to help operate its 412 aircraft, based in at least eight nations, before it reopens the contract for bidding. Among the missions: “Provide pilots and operational support for drug interdiction missions such as crop spraying.”

In Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Pakistan, and Guatemala, State Department air operations mostly perform “counternarcotics and law enforcement activities,” explains State Department spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala, and in Afghanistan it does transportation support as well.

… Read the rest

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Police Officer Admits He Plants Drugs on Strangers’ Cars to Test K9 Alerts

By on December 6, 2012 in News 8

Via Information Liberation:

You may or may not remember last year’s “Breakfast in Collinsville” video recorded by two men who were illegally stopped and searched by a K9 officer on their way back from a Star Trek convention. (Link Here). Well, the story has just taken an interesting turn: During a five hour deposition conducted by one of the men’s lawyers, the officer involved admitted that he sometimes plants drugs on the vehicles of unsuspecting strangers to test his K9′s drug detection abilities. Not coincidentally, many of these same “strangers” are later targeted for traffic stops. Sounds legit, right? Watch below, and be sure to record your utter surprise and loss of faith in our legal system in the comments section below.

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Private Contractors Will Conduct Our War On Drugs In Afghanistan For Years To Come

By on November 27, 2012 in News 11

Wondering what exists at the center of the War on Drugs vs. War on Terror Venn diagram? Wired reports that well into the foreseeable future, our military will be pumping billions of dollars into the pockets of Blackwater-esque private contractors in a battle against Afghanistan’s drug economy:

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is supposed to be winding down. Its contractor-led drug war? Not so much. Inside a compound in Kabul called Camp Integrity, the Pentagon stations a small group of officers to oversee the U.S. military’s various operations to curb the spread of Afghanistan’s cash crops of heroin and marijuana, which help line the Taliban’s pockets. Only Camp Integrity isn’t a U.S. military base at all. It’s the 10-acre Afghanistan headquarters of the private security company formerly known as Blackwater.

Those officers work for an obscure Pentagon agency called the Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office, or CNTPO. Quietly, it’s grown into one of the biggest dispensers of cash for private security contractors in the entire U.S.

… Read the rest

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Why Cannabis Doesn’t Make Most People Psychotic

By on November 21, 2012 in News 47

Picture: Psychonaught (PD)

If you sit toking on carrot sized joints all day every day it’s almost inevitable you will encounter problems when trying to live a productive life. However, it’s an often noted fact that plenty of people live that lifestyle and do not go round the proverbial bend. For years this has confused people when, on the other hand, there are some who clearly lose the plot after getting into the habitual ‘wake and bake’ mentality.

Lies and disinformation are a fact of life when it comes to illegal recreational substances. However, this story from Live Science, has a certain ring of truth about it:

People who smoke pot may be at increased risk for psychosis if they have a certain genetic marker, a new study finds.

The results show people with this genetic marker who use cannabis are twice as likely to experience psychosis compared with those who use the drug but do not have the genetic marker.

… Read the rest

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New Film Explores Human Rights Implications of War on Drugs

By on October 17, 2012 in News 0

Filmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live In tells the stories of individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the narcotics officer, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s criminal justice system, revealing the profound human rights implications of U.S. drug policy. Winner of the 2012 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, The House I Live In will be released in theaters on October 5th.

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Thousands of People Falsely Convicted for Drugs in Boston Scandal

By on October 14, 2012 in News 19

Picture: Vectorportal, Flickr (CC)

Although ‘scandal’ implies this is some sort of isolated incident, those who follow these sorts of stories know that problems are rife in the War on Crime and the War on (certain) Drugs, with a flawed methodology and biased ideology resulting in thinly-veiled acts of war against minorities and the impoverished classes.

Phillip Smith writes in the Drug War Chronicle (found via AlterNet):

Court administrators in Massachusetts are scrambling to set up special court sessions to address the cases of more than a thousand people imprisoned after being convicted of drug crimes based on lab evidence submitted by Annie Dookhan, the now disgraced former state crime lab analyst. Dookhan herself was arrested last Friday for her fraudulent work at the lab, as the scandal continues to reverberate across the state’s criminal justice system.

According to State Police reports obtained by the Boston Globe, Dookhan has admitted not performing proper lab tests on drug samples for “two or three years,” forging colleagues’ signatures, and improperly removing evidence from storage.

… Read the rest

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Matt Groff’s Viral Drug War Spending Chart

By on October 13, 2012 in News 4

Filmmaker Matt Groff is raising money for a documentary film about the war on some drugs. A simple chart he created for the project has spread far and wide across the interwebs (at right) and Matt has been taken to task for the way the numbers add (or don’t add) up. He responds on his blog:

As the rough chart from my trailer has gone somewhat viral, I’ve started to get some questions on what it represents and I wanted to offer up some clarity on how it came about. The three questions that have arisen most often are the following: where does the 1.3% addiction rate statistic come from? How does this chart add up to $1.5 trillion? Does it make sense to use a relative measurement (addiction rate) with an absolute measurement (spending)?

Where does the 1.3% addiction rate statistic come from?

One of the challenges of evaluating America’s system of drug prohibition is tracking down and assembling the raw data that comes from various entities.

… Read the rest

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United States Challenged At United Nations Over War On Drugs

By on October 1, 2012 in News 11

Reuters reports that U.S. allies in Latin America are applying the pressure:

The presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala all called for a vigorous global debate of anti-narcotics laws at the United Nations on Wednesday, raising new questions about the wisdom of the four-decade-old, U.S.-led “war on drugs.”

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who leaves office on December 1 after spending much of his presidency locked in a bloody battle with drug-smuggling gangs, called on the United Nations to lead a global debate over a less “prohibitionist” approach to drugs.

Guatemala’s President Otto Perez Molina echoed Calderon’s call and went even further, saying that “the basic premise of our war against drugs has proved to have serious shortcomings.”

The speeches, which were a few hours apart, constituted some of the most public challenges to date of anti-drug policies that have been mostly unchanged since the 1970s. Obama has ruled out any major changes to drug laws, but some U.S.

… Read the rest

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