War on illegal drugs

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Near record bust in Mexico...

More than 11 tons of cocaine seized in western Mexico
Friday, November 2, 2007 - Mexican authorities seized more than 11 tons of cocaine in the western port city of Manzanillo, and said it was one of the nation's biggest drug busts ever.

During a routine inspection, federal police and marines discovered a cargo container filled with packets of the drug aboard the Hong Kong-flagged ship Esmeralda, which departed from Buenaventura, Colombia, the federal attorney general's office said in a statement Wednesday.

Authorities were still weighing the drugs but the statement said their weight had already surpassed 11 tons, making Tuesday's seizure "one of the greatest quantities of cocaine that has been decommissioned in the history of our country," the statement said.

On Oct. 5, authorities said they seized about 10 tons of cocaine following a shootout in the northern city of Tampico. President Felipe Calderon has made the fight on drugs and organized crime a cornerstone of his administration, and the U.S. unveiled a proposal earlier this month to give Mexico US$1.4 billion (euro970 million) to fight narcotics-related crime.

Source

[waltky]

Granny says, "Say what???!!!"...

Release of 19,500 Crack Offenders Considered
Nov. 13, 2007 - Sentencing Panel May Retroactively Apply New Guidelines to Group of Cocaine Convicts

The U.S. Sentencing Commission heard testimony Tuesday on whether it should reduce the prison sentences of an estimated 19,500 people currently incarcerated for crack cocaine offenses. In May, the commission proposed reducing crack cocaine sentences by an average of 27 months. The amendment affects individuals convicted after Nov. 1, but now the commission is considering making the rule retroactive for previously sentenced offenders.

According to an analysis by the Sentencing Project, a group in favor of retroactively applying the decision, a majority of the people affected by the new policy have been sentenced since 1995. Congress passed increased penalties on crack cocaine over powder cocaine in 1986 as the crack epidemic led to increased violence and addiction in U.S. cities. The mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine offenses were the same as individuals convicted of possessing 100 times as much powdered cocaine.

There is a racial disparity in the federal crack statues, Mark Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, noted in a statement to the commission. "Currently, more than 80 percent of the people prosecuted under the federal statues are black. Whether or not this is evidence or bias in policy or practice it clearly demonstrates that a retroactive change would disproportionately benefit African-Americans," Mauer stated.

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Yellow submarine?...

Colombian armed forces seize another drug trafficking submarine
Nov. 16, 2007 -- Colombia's armed forces seized one of the largest submarines designed for drug trafficking through the Pacific to Central America, Navy officials said Friday.

Colombia has captured 11 homemade submarines for drug smuggling since 2005. This latest fiberglass vessel, whose construction was nearing completion, was seized in Tumaco, a rural area in the southern province of Narino bordering Ecuador. It had space for four crewmembers and was capable of carrying 12 tons of illicit drugs.

Colombia's Pacific coast has become a key route for drug traffickers seeking to enter sea lanes north to Mexico and the United States. There have been occasional reports of fighting over Pacific Ocean drug routes among guerrillas, paramilitaries and traffickers.

Meanwhile, rudimentary submarines and submersible containers dragged behind container ships are being developed into a major means of shipment by traffickers. Colombia is the world's No. 1 cocaine producer, with an output of some 6,000 tons a year. The country is a major recipient of U.S. aid to fight traffickers and guerrillas.

Source

[waltky]

Granny says, "Is why dey don't support the war on terror - dey's too high to fight!"

Cocaine use in Europe hits record high
Thursday 22nd November, 2007 - A record high 4.5 million Europeans are likely to have used cocaine this year, making it the continent's second most commonly used illicit drug after cannabis, according to a report published in Brussels Thursday.

Once confined to the most affluent fringes of society, cocaine has now become a much more popular drug, overtaking ecstasy and amphetamines in the number one choice of drugs after cannabis. The 2007 annual report on drug use by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) estimates that cannabis and heroin use in Europe may be stabilizing after posting steady increases during the 1980s and 1990s. Previous cocaine estimates suggested a figure of 3.5 million users.

Overall, around 12 million Europeans say that they have tried cocaine at some stage, while cocaine seizures have risen by 45 percent to 107 tonnes between 2004 and 2005. The spread of cocaine is reflected on public health data. In 2005, 33,027 people required cocaine-related treatment in Europe, compared with 12,633 in 1999. Cocaine is particularly popular in Britain, Spain and the Netherlands, but its use is also on the rise in Italy and Denmark. Cannabis remains by far the most popular drug in Europe.

Around 70 million people, or nearly a quarter of all adults in the EU, say they have tried cannabis at some stage in their lives while 23 million of them say they have used it in the last year. Around three million, or one percent of all European adults, say they use cannabis on a daily basis. Overall, between 7,000 and 8,000 drug-related deaths were reported in the EU and Norway in 2005.

Cocaine use in Europe hits record high

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Another cocaine lab busted...

Colombian police seize $24 mln worth of cocaine in lab raid
Nov. 25, 2007 -- Anti-drug police in Colombia said Sunday they have seized 950 kg of drugs worth some 24 million U.S. dollars while raiding a cocaine manufacturing lab on the nation's northeastern border with Venezuela.

Drug squad chief General Alvaro Caro said the drugs had been found in a rural area 23 km from border city Cucuta. "It (the drug) was pressed into a ball shape and not the typical shape used to pack cocaine," said Caro.

He said that the police had also seized 1.9 tons of solid chemical used in producing cocaine, alongside 10,500 liters of liquid feedstock. Some 50 officers took part in the raid and no arrests were reported.

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Albanians make record seizure...

Albania seizes record cannabis haul
November 27, 2007 - ALBANIAN police seized 2 tonnes of cannabis bound for Greece, their biggest haul of the widely traded drug, officials said today.

The estimated street value of yesterday's haul at the southern crossing point of Kakavije is about €2 million ($3.4 million). Successive Albanian governments have half-heartedly fought a losing battle with villagers planting the lucrative crop in their yards, orchards or on remote mountainous areas, especially in the south of the country.

Most of it goes to Greece, eventually finding its way to other European Union countries. Brussels has said Albania must improve its weak policing and effectively fight trafficking in drugs, contraband and people if it hopes to join the wealthy bloc.

In this instance, the drug was packed into about 80 bags and hidden in a secret section of the truck, a police spokesman said. The driver had loaded the rest of the truck with slate, and initially told police he was on his way to Greece to pick up tangerines.

Albania seizes record cannabis haul | NEWS.com.au

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`nother big ol' pot bust...

$1 million in marijuana found in truck
Nov. 28, 2007 -- Police in a Michigan township discovered more than $1 million worth of marijuana in a truck they stopped for speeding on Interstate 94.

Lt. Tony Geigle of the Emmett Township Department of Public Safety said the marijuana was wrapped in plastic and concealed inside a hollowed-out stack of plywood in the back of the truck, which had driven from New Mexico, the Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer reported Wednesday. Officers said they discovered an estimated 959 pounds of marijuana that had been divided into 30-pound packages.

The truck driver was arrested on a federal warrant for the alleged transport of illegal aliens. Police said they are working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and expect to file charges related to the marijuana against the driver.

The vehicle was seized and officers said Tuesday they were continuing to search it.

Source

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A Gulf War closer to home...

Gulf war - Pressure mounts on Mexico's Gulf Cartel
05 December 2007 - Mexico's Gulf Cartel has become one of the major traffickers of cocaine and migrants into the US. Increasing pressure from security forces has led to an escalation of violence

In December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a major security initiative, designed to crack down on the drugs trafficking networks operating throughout Mexican territory. Since December 2006, the government has deployed nearly 30,000 troops from both the military and the police force in 10 different states: Michoacan, Tijuana, Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa, Sonora, Nuevo Leon, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Guerrero. Calderon's long-term aim is to break the grip of the drugs cartels.

The security initiative has put heavy pressure on the operations of the country's drug trafficking organisations, which have retaliated with escalating levels of violence. One of the organisations most hard hit by the offensive is the Gulf Cartel, which had already been under pressure from rival organisations. This group is now in danger of fragmenting, with elements of its previously dominant organisation beginning to act autonomously.

The Gulf Cartel originated in the 1970s as a small-scale operation smuggling contraband, mostly alcohol, up through the Gulf of Mexico to the US. However, it expanded rapidly in the 1980s, when it was taken over by Juan Garcia Abrego, who diversified the group's operations to include cocaine and marijuana. Under Abrego, the organisation gained its reputation for extreme violence, eliminating rival groups in its area of control. The group expanded from its stronghold in Matamoros along the border, taking control of the strategic Nuevo Laredo plaza. Expanding operations along the Pacific coast gave it greater access to cocaine shipments from Colombia, which tended to ship directly from the Pacific port of Buenaventura up the Pacific coast.

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Fighting back - Mexico declares war on drug cartels
13 March 2007: Within days of taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderón began a major offensive against the drug cartels, deploying 5,000 military and federal police personnel to the Pacific coastal state of Michoacan and a further 3,000 to the US-border city of Tijuana.

Subsequent deployments to other areas of the country during January and February this year brought the number of troops and federal police deployed against the cartels to nearly 30,000 since Calderón took office.

The strategy consisted of three main tactics. First, the army and the federal police were deployed side-by-side in order to monitor each other and create an incentive to both sides to prevent leaks of information and to control their personnel more closely. Second, federal troops and police were kept largely separate from state security personnel in an attempt to insulate them from local dynamics including corruption and intimidation. Third, the federal forces attempted to 'seal' the state, installing checkpoints on main roads, patrolling the sea coast as a kind of sea blockade, to control Lazaro Cardenas seaport and patrolling the main towns.

The strategy and its limits

Despite the determined early steps taken by the government, it is too early to judge whether these will achieve the desired effect. The aggressive counter-criminal campaign could help to expel drug gangs from affected states and restore public security. However, it could equally simply transfer the criminal activity to neighbouring states.

President Calderón has described his campaign against the cartels as a war and, as the body count increases, it increasingly resembles one on the ground. Like most wars, victory is likely to be dependent on long-term political commitment, sustained funding and public support. It is this third variable that represents a particularly tough challenge for Calderón, who won the 2006 presidential elections by the smallest of margins and is strongly opposed by governors in many of the targeted states. The Calderón administration and the war on drug cartels are likely to succeed or fail together.

Source

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Dealers win a big one...

Justices Widen Sentencing Powers of Federal Judges
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2007 — The Supreme Court today enhanced the power of federal district judges to use their discretion in arriving at sentences in criminal cases as it upheld a relatively light sentence imposed on a crack cocaine distributor.

By 7 to 2, the court held that “the cocaine guidelines, like all other guidelines, are advisory only,” in the words of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote for the majority. She cited a 2005 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Booker, that “mandatory guidelines” in federal cases gave judges too much fact-finding responsibility, and that the guidelines should be “advisory” instead.

The majority concluded today that a district judge in Virginia acted properly in April 2005 when he refused to follow federal sentencing guidelines calling for far harsher penalties for trafficking in crack cocaine than they do for dealing in the powder form of the drug. In a nutshell, the effect of this ruling is to give sentencing judges considerably more discretion in criminal cases.

In the Booker decision of 2005, the court did not spell out clearly what it meant by “advisory,” so there has been considerable confusion throughout the criminal justice system. In a second sentencing case, also decided today by 7 to 2, the court upheld the three years’ probation imposed upon Brian M. Gall, who was part of a ring that sold the illegal drug Ecstasy while in college in Iowa.

The trial judge concluded that prison would do him no good, since he had finished college and turned his life around. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, found that the judge had not sufficiently justified his departure from the guidelines, which called for three years in prison. Today, the Supreme Court said the trial judge was right.

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Panel Votes to Reduce Crack Sentences...

Crack Sentence Reduction May Free Nearly 20,000 Drug Offenders
Dec. 11, 2007 - Sentencing Panel Decides to Make Reduced Crack Sentences Retroactive

A federal sentencing panel has voted unanimously to make new guidelines that ease sentences for crack cocaine retroactive, a move that makes more than 19,500 convicted drug offenders currently serving time in prison eligible for early release. The decision by the seven-member U.S. Sentencing Commission will affect a predominately black group of inmates already serving time by allowing judges to lessen their sentences by two to three years on average, an effort to close a gap between sentences for crack cocaine versus the powder version of the drug.

Offenders, judges or the Director of the Bureau of Prisons can make the motion to apply for early release, but ultimately, "These decisions are left to the discretion of federal judges," Commissioner Dabney Friedrich said. Career or very violent offenders, as determined by criminal history and the nature of offenses committed, are not eligible, but as many as 3,800 inmates who do qualify could be released in the first year. The decision will take effect March 3, 2008.

"This is not a get out of jail free card," said commission member Michael Horowitz. "It will provide a greater sense of fairness." Judge William Sessions, also a member of the commission, said at Tuesday's meeting, "These penalties have had dramatic impact on African American families," as more than 80 percent of federal crack defendants are black. "This is a historic day," Sessions said. "The system of justice must always be color blind."

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Granny says, "More like deaf, dumb, blind an' stupid...

... dey gonna be lettin' all dem crack-heads out an' the first thing dey gonna go is rape, rob, plunder an' steal just like dey did before dey went to jail."