Medical Marijuana Business Attracts Hedge Funds, Venture Capitalists

Marijuana has been a cash crop for many years in this country. The only problem is that most of that crop had been grown illegally. Now, that medical marijuana is legal in 15 states and the District of Columbia, legalized marijuana has quickly become so popular it is attracting attention from hedge fund managers and [...]

Rep. Lewis passed over for powerful chairmanship

Republicans passed over  Rep. Jerry Lewis in favor of a veteran Kentucky lawmaker Wednesday to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The party’s steering committee rejected Lewis’s request to waive term limits that bar him from reclaiming the post he held when Republicans last held the majority. The decision deprives Lewis of a position that [...]

Mexicans Say U.S. Drug Crackdown Feeds Violence

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – A Mexican law enforcement agency is blaming recent violence along the border in large part to a U.S. crackdown on drug traffickers, prompting skepticism from American government agencies. Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Security (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública) reported that in the past six months the value of cocaine in [...]

A little brain food for the perpetually Recovering City of Big Bear Lake Council and other prostitutes of the Prison-Industrial Complex

Big Bear’s Out, Aspen’s in Cannabis competition coming to Aspen this spring aims to find out

[ Don't waste your time in the Recovering Big Bear, where the Nazi Republican pigs are stinking, business sucks and attitudes offend visitors.  Big Bear is now devoted to AA and urine samples.  Let's head for Aspen! ] ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — It’s like a beer competition for marijuana. A cannabis festival in Aspen, Colorado, [...]

Meth hype by DEA Agent, prosecutor, gets life sentence overturned

Some 3-1/2 years ago I highlighted a case out of my hometown in Tyler, Texas, where two newlyweds were sentenced to life in prison for possessing 255 grams of meth. A Drug Enforcement Administration agent testified at trial that 255 grams was enough to get 45,000 people “high” — “If those people were lined up [...]

Jury selection begins in trial of Ohio DEA agent

CLEVELAND — Jury selection began Wednesday in the trial of a federal drug agent charged with framing 17 people in a case that could influence the way confidential informants are handled. Prospective jurors crowded the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. for the opening of the government’s case against Lee Lucas, 41. Lucas, [...]

Small Town Illinois Sheriff Charged With Pot Dealing And Murder-For-Hire

Raymond Martin had been sheriff in tiny Gallatin County, Illinois, for 20 years. So when he was arrested on federal drug and gun charges last May for allegedly running a large-scale marijuana dealing operation out of his police SUV, residents were shocked. But that was only the beginning. On Saturday, when Martin’s wife Kristina Martin [...]

Old school meth: Mexican cartels go back to basics

Mexican cartels are increasingly going “old school” to keep supplying America with methamphetamine despite an ingredient squeeze. Some gangs have responded to a Mexican crackdown on their meth chemical of choice — pseudoephedrine — by reviving a production method so old, it was used by U.S. motorcycle gangs and bathtub chemists in the 1970s and [...]

FARC in Colombia : A History of Armed Resistance

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — In May 2003 a leak from the Bush Treasury Department indicated that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was about to add to its extensive narcotics traffickers list. This time it would add someone in Colombia. OFAC would be using one of the enlightened Republican Congress’s new drug war [...]

Are America’s Mercenary Armies Really Drug Cartels?

News out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India reports massive corruption at the highest levels of government, corruption that could only be financed with drug money. In Afghanistan, the president’s brother is known to be one of the biggest drug runners in the world. In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari is found with 60 million in [...]

Dutch MP: Curaçao is US spy base

Mr. Harry an Bommel has asked Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen whether he is aware that a Boeing RC-135 aircraft has been making regular reconnaissance flights from the Caribbean island’s Hato International Airport airport over the past few weeks. War on drugs The flights were the cause of angry reactions by Venezuelan president Hugo Rafael Chávez, [...]

US to stop funding scandal-prone Colombian spy agency

The US Congress has voted to stop subsidizing Colombia’s soon-to-be dismantled Administrative Department of Security (DAS – Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad) intelligence agency. The Colombian government recently decided to disband DAS, after it was found to have illegally wiretapped the phones of several public figures, including the chief of the Colombian National Police (Policía Nacional [...]

Record High Federal Prosecutions in 2009

FY 2009 Federal Prosecutions Sharply Higher Analyzing data from the United States Department of Justice, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has released this report showing a 9% increase in federal prosecutions compared to last year. At a total of 169,612, the swell in prosecutions is attributed to “an unusual flood of [...]

Mumbai terror suspect David Headley was ‘rogue US secret agent’

A key terror suspect who allegedly helped to plan last year’s attacks in Mumbai and plotted to strike Europe was an American secret agent who went rogue, Indian officials believe. David Coleman Headley (aka Daood Sayed Gilani), 49, who was born in Washington to a Pakistan diplomat father and an American mother, was arrested in [...]

A video to warm the heart of Big Bear’s new “appointed” shill, “Doc” Harris

Another win for Big Alcohol: The Recovering City of Big Bear Lake Council bows to the prison-industrial complex

[ BBOP Comment: There's a related post at Cactus Thorns. Liz, didn't you and your deceased husband once feed yourselves by brokering jailhouse meals?  Still in the business? Greg, enough with the deceitful propaganda.  Your boss, like Assembly candidate Paul Chabot, is developmentally disabled from childhood trauma due, significantly, to the war on drugs.  Direct [...]

Arizona Dictator Sheriff Joe Arpaio Approaching Retirement

The day after the federal government told Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph M. “Joe” Arpaio that he could no longer use his deputies to round up suspected illegal immigrants on the street, the combative Arizona sheriff did just that. He launched one of his notorious “sweeps,” in which his officers descend on heavily Latino neighborhoods, arrest [...]

‘Counterinsurgency’ to Fight U.S. Crime? No, Thanks

After the sickening murder of a 9-year-old boy in Washington, our friend Spencer Ackerman made an impassioned plea: U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus for D.C. metro police chief. The idea of America’s leading counterinsurgent taking on one of its most crime-ridden towns definitely has a certain visceral appeal. But militarizing our approach to [...]

ACTION ALERT: Force DEA to Tell the Truth About Medical Marijuana

In a significant reversal, the American Medical Association on November 10 acknowledged the medical value of marijuana and called for the U.S. government to reconsider marijuana’s current classification as a Schedule I substance (drugs that the government says have “no currently accepted medical use”). However, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) still claims on its website [...]

Mexico : Drug Decrim and the 10,000-Ton Monkey

Pot smoker in Mexico City. Mexicans consume an estimated 342 tons of marijuana a year. Photo by Castillo / AP. Legalization is the only answer… Mexico’s massive drug problem As poet Juan Pablo Garcia posited long ago in his 1985 Pacheco (marijuana user) Manifesto: ‘drugs don’t make us criminals but laws against drugs do.’ By [...]

The Strength of the Pack: The People, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA

Through interviews with former narcotics agents, politicians, and bureaucrats, this exposé documents previously unknown aspects of the history of federal drug law enforcement from the formation of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) up until the present day. Written in an easily accessible style, the [...]

The Drug War Leads to Gun Control

A fundamental principle of interventionism holds that one government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions, in order to “fix” the problems of the previous interventions. At the end of this road lies omnipotent government and the loss of freedom. A good example of this phenomenon is being provided by a group called the Binational Task [...]

Feds issue new medical marijuana policy (to Good Ol’ Boy Hoops)

WASHINGTON – Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department. Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good [...]

Is war on drugs worth it? Maybe not, new FBI data suggest

Many law enforcement officers now say the drug interdiction effort is costly and unsuccessful. The bulk of drug arrests in 2008 were for simple possession, almost half for marijuana. Atlanta – Every 18 seconds, an American is busted for drug possession, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation‘s (FBI) crime statistics released Monday. The new statistics [...]

Report: Top anti-drug official was ’secret ally of drug lords’

DEA says key ICE official sold info about informants, ran Panamanian cocaine to Spain via US ports Richard Padilla Cramer, a 26-year veteran anti-drug official, is behind bars, arrested after officials accused him of directing a massive cocaine shipment to Spain via the United States, and selling important information in law enforcement databases to a [...]

EX-MIAMI DEA CHIEF INDICTED IN ALLEN STANFORD SCANDAL

The former chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration‘s Miami office, who led the agency’s cases against infamous Panama strongman Manuel Noriega and Medellín Cartel kingpin, Fabio Ochoa Vázquez, was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for ordering the shredding of records belonging to disgraced banker Allen Stanford. Tom Raffanello, who left the DEA [...]

The Justice Department wages war on pain relief

No good deed goes unpunished when a private citizen is up against the federal drug warriors–those members of the Department of Justice who have been seeking, with increasing success in recent decades, to effectively control the practice of pain relief medicine. But a current drama being played out in federal court in Kansas portends an [...]

Feds will help battle cartels

LOS ANGELES – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday the Obama administration can help area officials fight street gangs in the San Gabriel Valley and Whittier. Speaking at a downtown news conference where he announced the distribution of $30 million in federal stimulus money, Holder said the federal government will continue to strengthen its [...]

DEA Agent Lee Lucas indicted on perjury, civil rights charges; pleads not guilty

CLEVELAND — Lee Lucas, the federal drug agent whose full-throttle approach led to major convictions and questions about his credibility, faced the toughest court appearance of his 19-year career Wednesday. His own. A federal grand jury in Cleveland charged Lucas, 41, of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in an 18-count indictment that accuses him of [...]

Drug-Friendly Netherlans to close prisons for lack of criminals

For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this: The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they [...]

DEA AGENT CHARGED WITH OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE, PERJURY IN CONNECTION WITH MANSFIELD, OHIO DRUG INVESTIGATION

CLEVELAND (AP) – A federal drug enforcement agent has pleaded not guilty to a federal indictment that accuses him of framing 17 people during controlled drug buys through an informant. Lee Michael Lucas, 41, of Cleveland appeared Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver on charges, including obstruction of justice and violating civil rights. Lucas [...]

Cheap High: Cocaine Prices Still Falling

The findings appear to contradict claims by U.S. law enforcement officials that the drug has become more expensive. “[Over] the last two years there’s been a sustained increase on the price of cocaine,” said Drug Enforcement Administration operations chief Tom Harrigan in a recent interview with ABC News. Harrigan credited efforts by the United States, [...]

GAO Report on DEA’s Post-9/11 Drug Control Responsibilities

Drug Control: Better Coordination With the Department of Homeland Security and an Updated Accountability Framework Can Further Enhance DEA’s Efforts to Meet Post-9/11 Responsibilities “Given the global context of the war on drugs-coupled with growing recognition since September 11, 2001 (9/11), of the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism-the mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration [...]

Why Secretly Funded DEA Surveillance Planes Aren’t Flying

WASHINGTON — The first sign of trouble with the Drug Enforcement Administration‘s new surveillance planes surfaced almost immediately.  On the way from the manufacturer to the agency’s aviation headquarters, one of them veered off a runway during a fuel stop. The malfunction last spring was only the beginning.  A month later, the windshield unlatched in [...]

Justice Department will stop medical marijuana raids, Attorney General says

In a little-noticed remark Wednesday, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder said that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries established under state laws but technically prohibited by the federal government. The decision marks a shift from the Bush Administration, which was more draconian in its approach to hunting those who sought to [...]

DEA Spends $123,000 To Fly Agency Chief To Colombia

WASHINGTON — The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration spent more than $123,000 to charter a private jet to fly to Bogota, Colombia, last fall instead of taking one of the agency’s 106 planes. The DEA paid a contractor an additional $5,380 to arrange Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart‘s trip last Oct.  28-30 with an outside [...]

Last of 36 DEA agents leave Bolivia

LA PAZ, Bolivia — The last U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents left Bolivia on Thursday, ordered out by President Evo Morales even as Bolivian police reported that coca cultivation and cocaine processing are on the rise. Morales demanded the DEA’s exit in November as part of a dispute between U.S. and Bolivian officials that included [...]