Jacob Hunter's blog

Vancouver Sun

Friday, March 13, 2009

In Tijuana, Mexico, drug gangsters have been breaking into police radio frequencies and threatening specific police officers with death. These are no idle threats; shortly after they're made, the marked police officers are found dead.

This reveals just how powerful drug gangs are in Mexico, and has led to deeply demoralized and increasingly corrupt police forces. More than 500 officers have been killed in the past year, and their worn-out equipment and body armour is no match for the state-of-the-art gear used by drug lords.

Since the police can no longer handle the situation, Mexican President Felipe Calderon called in the military soon after he took office in 2006. The result of this move was predictable: Some 6,000 people are murdered annually in Mexico's drug wars, and more than 20 soldiers have been killed since last October. Read more »

It's been seven years since that country decriminalized all drugs. What lessons are there for American drug policy debates?

Glenn Greenwald

Mar. 14, 2009 | Read more »

Thank you for your email about your concerns with bill C-15, the Conservatives so-called Anti-Drug strategy. I oppose this bill and the government’s move toward a failed US style war on drugs. Canada already spends 73% of its drug strategy budget on enforcement and yet drug use continues to rise. Mandatory minimums for drug use do not deter organized and violent crime, and do nothing to address the root causes of drug problems.

I am very mindful that while we need immediate action to prevent gun violence and shootings on our streets, we cannot ignore the big question of our drug laws and prohibition and the impact it has on all of us. Read more »

Click here to email Members of Parliament! WhyProhibition.ca now has a form emailer for Members of Parliament! Check out the link above to send an email to members of parliament opposing C-15, which is now headed back to the House of Commons having been amended, very slightly, by the Senate. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the letter, fill in the fields and click send! It's that simple! If your account info is up to date, the form is automatically filled in for you! We need everyone to send emails to our Members of Parliament if we are going to defeat C-15! Email your members of Parliament today! Read more »

A UN anti-narcotics drive has backfired by making drug cartels so rich they can bribe their way through west Africa and central America, UN crime agency chief Antonio Maria Costa has admitted.

The ten-year "war on drugs" had cut drug output and user numbers, he said yesterday. But as a "dramatic unintended consequence" profit-gorged trafficking gangs had destabilised nations plagued by poverty, joblessness and HIV-Aids.

"When mafias can buy elections, candidates, political parties, in a word, power, the consequences can only be highly destabilising," Mr Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told a UN drug policy review meeting.

"While ghettoes burn, west Africa is under attack (by Latin American traffickers transhipping cocaine to Europe], drug cartels threaten central America and drug money penetrates bankrupt financial institutions," he said. Read more »

California should explore a pilot program of legal, regulated marijuana,
Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said Thursday.

Sanchez, chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border,
Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, said that because of her state's
receptiveness to more lenient marijuana laws, it would be a good host for an
experiment in reform.

"Well, certainly, I have seen in my own state of California people over and
over voting a big majority the whole issue of marijuana and possession of
that," Sanchez said this morning on CNN. "So maybe it would be a good pilot
program to see how that regulation of marijuana might happen in California
since the populous, the majority of Californians believe maybe that's should
happen."

Taking a page from a number of those who favor the reform of pot laws,
Sanchez likened the issue to the prohibition of alcohol in the early 20th
century.

"Well, certainly there is one drug ‹ it's called alcohol ‹ that we Read more »

President Obama's nominee for drug czar, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, on Wednesday said his family has experienced firsthand the "human suffering" of drug abuse, but did not mention his adult stepson now being held without bail in a Florida jail.

Mr. Kerlikowske said the success of the nation's drug control efforts are "largely dependent" on its ability to decrease demand, especially among young people, and thanked the Obama White House for promising to include local police in that effort.

"Our nation's drug problem is one of human suffering. And as a police officer, but also in my own family, I have experienced the effects that drugs can have on our youth, our families and our communities," Mr. Kerlikowske, a 36-year law enforcement veteran, said when accepting the nomination.

Mr. Kerlikowske's 39-year-old stepson, Jeffrey, was arrested last month for a parole violation and faced misdemeanor marijuana-related drug charges in 2006 and 1998. Read more »

B.C. needs its own provincial police force, and the necessary control over it

By Gordon Gibson, Special to the Sun March 10, 2009

Until about 60 years ago, British Columbia did not use the services of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We had our own provincial police force.

Maybe it is time to revisit that idea, since our contract with the feds for the Mounties is up in 2012. It is being re-negotiated right now, shrouded in the usual secrecy. The reputation of the federal force has never been lower.

Ontario and Quebec have continued to run their own forces. Policing is a provincial responsibility under the Constitution. We just purchase the Ottawa version. But the contract leaves Ottawa in charge of discipline, investigation of police errors, deadly force levels, tactics and so on. Read more »

Council approves plan for municipal personnel to inspect homes that have unusually high electrical usage

Delta is going to make it tougher on those who have marijuana grow-ops and drug labs.

Delta council approved a proposal Monday to follow the lead of several other municipalities and create a public safety team that would target grow-ops by conducting inspections.

Saying they will look at what has worked and what mistakes have been made in cities, such as Coquitlam and Surrey, that have already established teams, fire chief Dan Copeland and deputy chief Byron Funnell outlined the Public Safety Initiative, a plan to create a Delta team involving the fire department and municipal hall staff.

The team would conduct inspections on homes where there is unusually high electrical usage, a telltale sign of a marijuana grow-op.

A report to council notes recent records from B.C. Hydro indicate there are over 230 properties in Delta that warrant further investigation. Read more »

The UN strategy on drugs over the past decade has been a failure, a European commission report claimed yesterday on the eve of the international conference in Vienna that will set future policy for the next 10 years.

The report came amid growing dissent among delegates arriving at the meeting to finalise a UN declaration of intent.

Referring to the UN's existing strategy, the authors declared that they had found "no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced". They wrote: "Broadly speaking, the situation has improved a little in some of the richer countries while for others it worsened, and for some it worsened sharply and substantially, among them a few large developing or transitional countries."

The policy had merely shifted the problem geographically, they said. "Production and trafficking controls only redistributed activities. Enforcement against local markets failed in most countries." Read more »