In a Texas community, border violence is getting so close that an end to the drug war is starting to look more appealing to some newspaper editorialists compared to attempts at enhanced enforcement. And, where is that enhanced enforcement going to come from? Federal anti-drug money has been slashed so deeply that not even longtime hard-core drug warrior legislators like Indiana's Mark Souder can manage to bring home much prohibition pork these days.
]]>More judicial developments from Canada where the courts further eroded the constitutionally questionable medicinal cannabis policy on which cannabis prohibition depends.
One step forward and a Nebraskan senator wishes to take a step back by overturning a successful 30-year-old law that lets Nebraskans off with a $100 fine for possessing less than an ounce.
In the spirit of emergency room "mentions", the Daily Telegraph blamed cannabis abuse for 500 hospital admissions per week! Be sure to see "Drugscope debunks misleading Telegraph canna-panic stats" at http://drugsense.org/url/foS750XYCq
]]>Few are looking while Canada's rightist government expands plans for a made-in-the-USA prison-happy drug war. While loudly beating their chests that this is only "for the children", the rightist government of Steven Harper is proceeding with plans for prison-packing mandatory minimums for "serious" drug (read: marijuana) offences. Mandatory minimums make judges into powerless rubber-stampers as prosecutors get all the power by fine-tuning indictments for what often is a single act of simple drug possession. Proceeding along the same authoritarian lines as the USA, expect Canadian police to become even more brutal, and prisons to become Canada's new growth industry: a boon to demagogic "get tough" politicians who will paint opposition as "soft on drugs."
The money laundering laws, enacted in the U.S. in the 1980s, were sold as an important "tool" to "fight drugs" to "save the children". Of course, such laws have prevented no one from getting all the illicit drugs they want, so, in that sense (the stated, original intent), money laundering laws failed miserably. This week we learn of yet another trick illegal drug smugglers use to launder drug money: using other currencies, in this case, Euros.
Meanwhile, back in New Guinea, the people of the Kakagl villages in Simbu province, have been praised by local police for publicly testifying as to their conversion from a previous life of sin and marijuana use. Swearing off reefer for good, one regretful Kakagli young man related, "while I am under the influence of marijuana I am always forced to steal domesticated animals and cause unnecessary fight with village elders", something police worldwide will recognize as effects of the illicit weed.
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