British Medical Journal On Harm Reduction
Strict laws on the criminalisation of drug use and drug users are fuelling the spread of HIV and other serious harms associated with the criminal market and should be reviewed, say experts. In this video, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani and other leading commentators describe which countries are leading the way in tackling HIV infection among injecting drug users.
The Adam Smith Institute Blog
The decriminalization of drugs has the potential to save the British taxpayer money, and simultaneously improve the security and health of the general public.
By Karthik Reddy, Guest blogger
Faced with the dire need to restore discipline to British public finances and a rising rate of reoffending among prisoners, Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke announced yesterday broad changes to the way in which the government administers criminal justice. The prison population of England and Wales recently surpassed 85,000 inmates this year, a historically unparalleled number that is expected to continue to grow even further in coming years. As a proportion of their populations, England and Wales lock up nearly 150 of every 100,000 residents, a number that represents one of the highest rates of incarceration in Western Europe.
Newshawk: The Constitution a Victim of the Drug War www.csdp.org/ads/const.htm
Pubdate: Sun, 4 Jul 2010
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: Front Page, continued on page A12
Copyright: 2010 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Author: Tracy Wilkinson, Reporting from Culiacan, Mexico; Ken
Ellingwood, Reporting from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
DRUG TIES LOSE POLITICAL STIGMA
Narcotic Traffickers’ Tentacles Are Sinking Deeper into Mexico’s
Power Structure
Fifteen years ago, Sinaloa state’s moneyed elite wouldn’t give Jesus
Vizcarra the time of day. His murky past and reputed personal ties to
major drug traffickers kept him out of the top social clubs and
business associations.
Today the same power brokers who once shunned him are Vizcarra’s
enthusiastic backers as he emerges as the solid favorite to become
governor of the key state.
To critics, Vizcarra’s election on Sunday would be the culmination of
a steady penetration by narcotics traffickers into Mexican political
power. Vizcarra, backed by the omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary
Party, or PRI, counters that he has done nothing wrong, and he has
not been charged with any crime. But he has refused to answer pointed
questions about his past, nor has he been able to explain away
compromising evidence and a fast-amassed fortune.
[snip]
Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n518.a01.html
Pubdate: Wed, 30 Jun 2010
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: A3
Copyright: 2010 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Author: Ken Ellingwood, Reporting from Mexico City
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
CALDERON CALLS ON MEXICANS TO UNITE AGAINST CRIME GANGS
Facing widespread dismay over the assassination of a leading
gubernatorial candidate, President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday urged
fellow Mexicans to join hands against the forces of organized crime
that he said were to blame.
The killing of Rodolfo Torre on Monday in northern Mexico has added
to Calderon’s political headaches as voters are to head to the polls
Sunday in 14 states to pick a dozen governors and hundreds of mayors
and lawmakers.
“United, Mexicans can and will overcome a common enemy that today
threatens to destroy not only our tranquillity but our democratic
institutions,” Calderon said in a broadcast message. “It’s in the
divisions between Mexicans where criminals find spaces and
vulnerabilities to harm Mexico.”
[snip]
Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n505.a03.html
Pubdate: Thu, 1 Jul 2010
Source: Boston Review (MA)
Webpage: http://bostonreview.net/BR35.4/hill.php
Copyright: 2010 Boston Review
Contact: [email protected]
Author: Sarah Hill
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/Juarez
The War for Drugs
HOW JUAREZ BECAME THE WORLD’S DEADLIEST CITY
In April 2007 Ciudad Juarez-the sprawling Mexican border city girding
El Paso, Texas-won a Foreign Direct Investment magazine award for
“North American large cities of the future.” With an automotive
workforce rivaling Detroit’s and hundreds of export-processing
plants, businesses in Juarez employed 250,000 factory workers, and
were responsible for nearly one-fifth of the value of U.S.-Mexican
trade. The trans-border region of 2.4 million people had one of the
hemisphere’s highest growth rates.
Just three years later, as many as 125,000 factory jobs and 400,000
residents have vanished. More than ten thousand small businesses have
closed, and vast stretches of residential and commercial areas are
abandoned. It is no surprise that the Great Recession temporarily
shuttered factories and forced layoffs in a city intimately tied to
American consumers. Mexico’s economy contracted by 5.6 percent in
2009, far worse than the United States’s “negative growth” of about 2 percent.
But Juarez has suffered from much more than recession. Its murder
rate now makes it the deadliest city in the world, including cities
in countries at war with foreign enemies. On average, there are more
than seven homicides each day, many in broad daylight. Some 10,000
combat-ready federal forces are now stationed in Juarez; their
armored vehicles roll up and down the same arteries as semis tightly
packed with HDTVs bound for the United States. Factory managers wake
up in El Paso-one of the safest U.S. cities-and go to work in the
plants of a city bathed in blood.
[snip]
Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n504.a04.html
June 26 marks International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. According to World Drug Report 2010 by the UN, drug use is shifting towards new drugs and new markets. To better understand the current situation on drug use around the world, we have ….
Guests:
Jack Cole, Executive director of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Prof. Dr. Liu Renwen，Director of the Department of Criminal Law with Law Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Prof. Lu Lin, Director of National Institute of Drug Dependence, Peking University Health Science Center
UN, Western Nations Complicit in Drug Offender Executions, Report Says
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #638, 6/25/10
With the United Nations’ International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking set for tomorrow, the timing couldn’t be better for a new report from the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) decrying the complicity of Western governments and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in international drug control efforts that result in the execution of drug offenders.
Take what happened in China on global anti-drug day 2008 as a case in point. As has been its wont in the past, the Chinese government used the occasion to execute numerous drug offenders, including Han Yongwan, a regional trafficker who had been arrested by police in Laos and later extradited to China. Han had been arrested thanks to the East Asian Border Liaison Office program, initiated by UNODC in 1993, and chiefly funded by the United Kingdom (24%), the United States (24%), Japan (24%), and Australia (10%). Other funders included the European Commission (3%), Sweden (3%), Canada (2%), and UNAIDS (5%).
Although the European Commission and nearly all of the donor nations reject the death penalty, the funding of programs like the East Asian Border Liaison Office means that those governments and organizations are complicit, if inadvertently, in the application of the death penalty to drug offenders, the IHRA found in a report issued this week, Complicity or Abolition? The Death Penalty and International Support for Drug Enforcement.
Newshawk: http://www.novembercoalition.org
Pubdate: Mon, 21 Jun 2010
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Page: 21
Copyright: 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Mary O’Hara
Cited: International Harm Reduction Association http://www.ihra.net/
Referenced: The report
http://www.ihra.net/Assets/2538/1/IHRA_DeathPenaltyReport2010.pdf
INTERNATIONAL DRUG CRIME MEASURES ‘LEAD TO EXECUTIONS’
Enforcement by Britain, the UN and the EU Backs Up Regimes That
Ignore Human Rights, Says Report
The United Nations, the European commission and individual states
including Britain are flouting international human rights law by
funding anti-drug crime measures that are inadvertently leading to
the executions of offenders, according to a report seen by the Guardian.
The International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), a
non-governmental organisation that advocates less punitive approaches
to drugs policy globally, says it has gathered evidence revealing
“strong links” between executions for drugs offences and the funding
of specific drug enforcement operations by international agencies.
It says programmes aimed at shoring up local efforts to combat drug
trafficking and other offences are being run “without appropriate
safeguards” that could prevent serious human rights violations in
countries that retain the death penalty.
The report concludes that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime are all
actively involved in funding and/or delivering technical assistance,
legislative support and financial aid intended to strengthen domestic
drug enforcement activities in states that retain the death penalty
for drug offences.
[snip]
Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n472.a05.html
Pubdate: Mon, 14 Jun 2010
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A13
Webpage: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/world/americas/15mexico.html
Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Marc Lacey
Cited: The presidential Website http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon
DESPITE KILLING, MEXICAN BACKS DRUG POLICY
MEXICO CITY — Faced with a surge in drug-related killings in recent
days, President Felipe Calderon on Monday offered a spirited defense
of his government’s antidrug offensive.
On Thursday night and Friday morning, attacks between rival drug
trafficking organizations left 85 people dead in states across
Mexico, according to newspaper tallies, making it the bloodiest
24-hour period in Mr. Calderon’s three-year-old presidency.
Mr. Calderon responded with his most extensive defense of his
administration’s drug war, a 5,000-word missive published on the
presidential Web site and in local newspapers that shifted some blame
for violence to previous administrations and to the United States and
insisted that backing down was not an option.
“If we remain with our arms crossed, we will remain in the hands of
organized crime, we will always live in fear, our children will not
have a future, violence will increase and we’ll lose our freedom,”
Mr. Calderon wrote.
On Monday, as television and radio commentators analyzed the
president’s statement, authorities announced another bad day, with 10
federal police officers killed and more than a dozen others wounded
in a clash with traffickers in Zitacuaro, a town in the central state
of Michoacan. The gunmen, some of whom died as well, used buses to
close off major highways and obstruct reinforcements by the
authorities, an increasingly common tactic employed by Mexico’s drug cartels.
In another episode on Monday, 28 inmates were killed and 3 guards
were wounded in an uprising led by detained traffickers in a prison
in Mazatlan, in the Pacific state of Sinaloa, authorities said.
The president, elected in 2006 to a six-year term, also condemned the
huge demand for drugs and the easy availability of guns in the United States.
“It is as though we have a neighbor next door who is the biggest
addict in the world, with the added fact that everyone wants to sell
drugs through our house,” Mr. Calderon said.