There’s so many gruesome and tragic stories about violence along the U.S.-Mexico border related to the drug war lately that it’s hard not to become desensitized.

However, this story from the El Paso Times about a young U.S. citizen and his friend being gunned down in Juarez, Mexico regardless of their apparent clean living, is a reminder of how bad it is.

Family members, who held his funeral Tuesday, said they did not know the reason behind the attack.  News reports said the two men were coming from a boy scout camp before they were gunned down.

Pubdate: Wed, 19 May 2010
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact: [email protected]
Author: David Luhnow
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon

MEXICO’S ‘ELIOT NESS’ SEEKS U.S.  HELP

MEXICO CITY-Ten days after taking power following a hotly contested election in 2006, Felipe Calderon sat in the gilded presidential chair and signed a decree that would shape his presidency: an order to deploy 6,000 army troops to his home state of Michoacan to take on drug gangs.  Like many, the president believed the army might have trouble with the drug lords, but would at least force them out of city plazas and back into the shadows.

It hasn’t worked out that way.  Some three years later, more than 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence across Mexico, according to government figures.  The bloodshed keeps rising despite the presence of an estimated 45,000 to 60,000 soldiers-roughly a fourth of Mexico’s army-in nine states.

The 47-year-old career politician begins his first official visit to Washington on Wednesday as a leader who started a battle on the doorstep of the U.S.  that turned into a war-a conflict whose consequences will shape Mexico for years to come.

Polls show that while most Mexicans support the president’s war, most think the drug lords are winning.  In the past few weeks, cartel gunmen burst into the Holiday Inn hotel in Monterrey and snatched guests from their rooms.  Drug gangs also blocked the highways leading out of Monterrey, Mexico’s business capital.  Among the victims of the war: a groom coming out of his wedding, a 12-year-old and his mother, and scores of teens.

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10.n371.a11.html

Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?131 (Heroin Maintenance)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites)

PRESCRIBE HEROIN ON THE NHS, SAYS NURSE LEADER

Injection Rooms ‘Would Cut Crime and Infection Rates’ But Opponents Warn of Slippery Slope

The NHS should offer heroin to drug addicts and open “consumption rooms” where users can go to inject under medical supervision in order to cut crime and keep public spaces free from dirty needles, the head of Britain’s biggest nursing union said today.

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing ( RCN ), said providing heroin on the NHS would cut crime rates and help wean addicts off the drug.

Speaking in a personal capacity after a debate on the issue at the RCN’s annual conference in Bournemouth, he said: “I do believe in heroin prescribing.  The fact is, heroin is very addictive.  People who are addicted so often resort to crime, to steal to buy the heroin.”

He said he was aware of the controversy over how chronic drug users should be treated, but said: “It might take a few years but I think people will understand.  If you are going to get people off heroin then in the initial stages we have to have proper heroin prescribing services.”

Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n326/a11.html

Pubdate: Sun, 18 Apr 2010
Source: Sunday Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: Telegraph Group Limited 2010
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/437
Author: Ben Leach

A new drug called MDAI is being advertised across the internet as a replacement for “miaow miaow”.

Miaow miaow, or mephedrone, became illegal in Britain this weekend after the Home Office pushed through legislation classifying it as a class B drug.

But analysts at the Psychonaut Research Project, an EU funded-organisation based at King’s College London which monitors the internet for new trends in drug abuse, said MDAI could replace the drug as a popular ‘legal high’.

Paolo Deluca, a co-principal investigator, told the Observer: “Websites are already starting to promote MDAI and this could become the next popular product.”

The drug, a synthetic chemical developed as an antidepressant, replicates many of the effects of MDMA, or ecstasy.

Experts believe it could soon be mass-produced by the Chinese manufacturers who flooded the UK with mephedrone, which was the fourth-most popular drug in Britain behind cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy.

Websites selling mephedrone closed down last week with the final deadline for placing orders 3pm on Wednesday.

Some sites immediately began advertising or offering MDAI, with most describing it as a “research chemical”.

One of the most popular mephedrone websites states: “New products for April – MDAI.”

The cost of the chemical is about twice that of mephedrone, with a gram costing UKP25.

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n301/a02.html

A story in today’s Boston Globe starts off by contrasting the glory of today’s Bogota, Colombia with the dark times before the U.S. anti-drug dollars really started flowing:

But it is a remarkably different setting for Colombia’s capital than a few years ago, when many people rarely left their homes after dark for fear of bombings, homicides, and kidnappings by drug cartels, criminal gangs, and guerrilla fighters.

With billions of dollars in military and development aid from the United States, Colombia’s image as one of the most dangerous destinations is fading.  And now, the Obama administration is hoping to transfer key elements of Colombia’s strategy to other nations in the region struggling with drug violence, lawlessness, and crushing poverty.

Then there’s a lot more about how great everything is turning out.

Until the very last paragraph where one observer’s concerns are compressed into a single sentence:

“The government has taken strong action,” he said.  But it has had consequences.  Millions of Colombians have been displaced in recent years by government action against the cartels and insurgents, he said, while there remains strong evidence, corroborated by a recent United Nations investigation, of extrajudicial killings by government forces.

What’s a little extrajudicial killing? Nightlife is back in Bogata.

The Los Angeles Times is citing new death toll figures in the Mexican drug war, suggesting 22,000 dead in three years. That’s up from previous estimates of 18,000.

Supporters of the Mexican government’s enhanced drug war have said increased violence is a natural outcome of the crackdown, a sign that the cartels are being broken up. Instead of looking at the phenomena as failure, they see it as a sign of success.

Whether the citizens of Mexico can endure much more success is another question.