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In what seems like a scene straight out of a Monty Python movie, Mexican soldiers seized a giant catapult believed to have been used to fling drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Acting on a tip from the U.S. Border Patrol, the Mexican military confiscated 45 pounds of marijuana, an SUV and a metal-framed catapult just south of the border with Arizona last Friday. The U.S. tip was based on surveillance video of the border region, recorded by National Guard troops deployed to help U.S. border guards.
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By David Jackson, USA TODAY
The YouTube generation is speaking, and many of them want to legalize marijuana.
Changing the nation’s drug laws is dominating the questions submitted by YouTube users in advance of President Obama’s 2:30 p.m. question-and-answer on the video website.
UPI is reporting that “the top 10 questions all involved ending or changing the government’s war on drugs, legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana and embracing industrial hemp as a “green” initiative to help farmers.”
A coalition of groups that support legalization of marijuana report that the top 100 questions deal with their issue, and says, “the American people want to know why our country is continuing the failed, catastrophic policy of drug prohibition.”
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By Lucia Graves
In September of 2009, border patrol agent Bryan Gonzalez was fired for expressing his views on drug legalization to a fellow agent. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has joined Gonzalez in filing a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Gonzalez, 26, alleges that he was dismissed from his job in El Paso, Texas after saying in casual conversation that legalizing and regulating drugs would help stop cartel violence along the southern border with Mexico. His letter of termination stated his comments were “contrary to the core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication, and esprit de corps.”
Gonzalez told his colleague Shawn Montoya in April of 2009 that “legalization of drugs would end the drug war and related violence in Mexico,” adding that “the drug problems in America were due to American demand for drugs supplied by Mexico,” according to the complaint he and the ACLU-NM filed in federal court.
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Ex world leaders, Branson launch drugs campaign
GENEVA — Former world leaders and other personalities including Virgin chief Richard Branson on Monday launched a global drive to tackle drug abuse, amid signs that a crackdown on drugs crime is failing.“There is a growing perception that the ‘war on drugs’ approach has failed,” the Global Commission on Drug Policies said in a statement, as it began an inaugural two day meeting in Geneva.
The commission, a private venture chaired by ex-Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, also includes the former presidents of Mexico and Colombia, Ernesto Zedillo and Cesar Gaviria, ex-EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and former Norwegian minister and international negotiator Thorvald Stoltenberg.
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Strong-arms Other Countries to Follow Suit
By Daniel Ernesto Robelo, Alternet
Why is the United States formally objecting to Bolivia’s request to the UN to allow its ancestral practice of coca leaf chewing?
Last week the United States formally objected to Bolivia’s request to the United Nations to allow the ancestral practice of coca leaf chewing. In doing so, it revealed the corruption, hypocrisy and futility of the global war on drugs, which it clearly values over the rights of indigenous peoples.
Bolivia’s proposal is modest. It would strike two clauses from the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs, which require that coca chewing “be abolished within twenty-five years” after taking effect. The existing system of cocaine prohibition would remain.
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The campaign to legitimize what is called “medical” marijuana is based on two propositions: first, that science views marijuana as medicine; and second, that the DEA targets sick and dying people using the drug. Neither proposition is true. Specifically, smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science–it is not medicine, and it is not safe. Moreover, the DEA targets criminals engaged in the cultivation and trafficking of marijuana, not the sick and dying. This is true even in the 14 states that have approved the use of “medical” marijuana.
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As Mexico drowns in drug related bloodshed — suffering almost 12,000 murders in 2010 — it is perhaps unsurprising that government critics turn up their screaming that the war on drugs isn’t working. But it was a bit of a bombshell when former president Vicente Fox added his voice to the chorus. The cowboy-boot wearing leader, who ruled Mexico from 2000 to 2006, had once declared the “mother of all battles” against crime and rounded up drug kingpins. But before he left office, he had witnessed the first big spike in violence as the narcos retaliated. In August of 2010, evidence surfaced that his vision had changed when he wrote on his blog that prohibition wasn’t working. Now, in a recent interview with TIME in his hometown in Central Mexico, he explains that his views have moved on to the other end of the spectrum: favoring full-on legalization of production, transit and selling of prohibited drugs. Fox is most explicit about marijuana, but argues that the principle applied to all illegal drugs.
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Drugged: High on Marijuana uses visual effects and CGI to take the viewer on a trip through the human body. Using testimony from those who enjoy using the drugs, and those who have been addicted, the episode offers an insight into the realities of these drugs. Some of Britain and America’s top scientists and doctors will also explain the surprising bio-chemical effects of these popular drugs as well as their unintended consequences.
