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, [...]

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 [...]

‘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 [...]

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) [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.  [...]

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. [...]