Tag: War on Drugs

It’s That Darn War On Drugs

The War on Drugs was declared in a presser by Nixon in 1971 so we have been fighting this “war” for 46 years and spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs:  about $51 billion or about a trillion dollars over the lifetime of the program.

I bring this up because of a couple of articles I read…..

As if the United States needed more evidence that its sixteen-year mission in Afghanistan is an exercise in futility, a new United Nations report provides an additional reason for depression. The 2017 Afghanistan Opium Survey from the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, released on November 15, confirms that Washington’s effort to curb illicit narcotics trafficking in the country has failed.

Almost every aspect of the report contains bad news. Overall opium production reached nine thousand metric tons, compared to 4,800 tons in 2016. That was a record level since the UN began keeping statistics on the product in 1994. Some 328,000 hectares were used to grow poppy (the source of opium), an increase of nearly 50 percent from the previous record set in 2014. Poppy cultivation also spread to provinces that were previously free of such cultivation. That development means that twenty-four of the country’s thirty-four provinces now are directly involved in illicit drug production. Despite a 14 percent drop in price per unit, the overall value of the crop increased by 55 percent because of the sheer overall volume. An evaluation of the UN report from the Afghan Analysis Network aptly concluded that opium is “a low-risk crop in a high-risk environment.”

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/america-cant-win-drug-war-afghanistan

The part of the program to eliminate the Afghan opium trade is a failure after all the cash spent to rid the countryside of the poppy fields….

Then there is cocaine problem coming out of Columbia…..

European police organization Europol on Friday said that a “significant increase in production in Colombia has caused intensified trafficking activity” to the European Union.

Europol made the claim in its “How Illegal Armed Drugs Sustain Organized Crime in the EU” report on regional drug trafficking activity.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/increased-cocaine-production-colombia-driving-cocaine-trafficking-europol

Yet another failed program…the eradication of the cocaine production….farms and factories…..

WE are throwing money at these programs and are getting no positive results….time to find another way or legalize all drugs…..

Afghan Poppy Production

I have noticed that the opium production has hit a record high in Afghanistan….but it seems like it hits a record high every year….

Opium poppy cultivation has hit a record high in Afghanistan, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counter Narcotics. The milestone is just the latest in a long string of failures associated with Washington’s 16-year war in Afghanistan and its even longer ;war on drugs.

The U.S. has spent more than $100 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan since 2002, and more than $8 billion on counternarcotics efforts alone. Yet while 750 hectares of poppy fields have been eradicated there this year, another 328,000 hectares were cultivated in 2017—up from 201,000 hectares in 2016.

According to the U.N., the average yield this year has been about 27 kilograms per hectare—up from 23 kilograms last year. And three formerly poppy-free provinces are once again hosting poppy fields.

http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/15/2017-a-record-year-for-opium-poppy-culti

And then I read a story about a US airstrike that hit a Taleban opium processing plant……

In a move Pentagon officials say is directed at Taliban revenue streams, US F-22 stealth fighters and B-52 Stratofortress bombers attacked what they’re describing as “opium labs” in the northern part of the Helmand Province.

A pair of buildings were destroyed in the attack, which Gen. John Nicholson claimed caused “minimal collateral damage.” Nicholson noted there was a third building they didn’t attack, claiming it was to avoid civilian casualties.

Mich of Helmand Province is dedicated to opium farming, which is why the Taliban has long been interested in controlling the area. This talk of labs and factories is new, however, and it’s not clear what these buildings were actually for.

It’s been a recurring problem for the Pentagon that claims of destroying important militant facilities in airstrikes don’t ultimately prove to be true, and with recent reports of strikes destroying “ISIS bomb factories” actually just leveling a pair of civilian homes, this new claim of labs may be taken with a grain of salt.

(antiwar.com)

Here is a novel idea….why not destroy the crop in the field and avoid any screw ups trying to take out a factory?

Is that too complicated for the master minds that run our Afghan desk?

Closing Thought–16Nov17

Go Ask Alice!

Lots of talk about the opioid crisis here in this country…..the First Lady and her hubby are trying to make this some sort of signature issue for them…..

So far a lot of rhetoric without much substance but there is nothing but hollow words so far……

It’s no secret that opioid misuse has risen to the level of an epidemic. On November 1, 2017, the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, appointed by President Donald Trump last March, released its long-awaited recommendations on how best to tackle the nation’s opioid crisis.

The stakes have never been higher. Preliminary data indicate that in 2016, 64,000 people—more than the combined number of people killed by gun homicide and in car accidents in 2015—succumbed to drug overdoses. In most of these cases, opioids were involved. Natural and semisynthetic opioids were linked to more than 14,400 overdose deaths, while synthetic opioids other than methadone, which is often used in treatment, contributed to more than 20,100 fatalities. Heroin contributed to roughly 15,400.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/news/2017/11/02/441976/president-trumps-agenda-undermines-rhetoric-opioid-misuse/

Is this just another one of those plans that sounds good but has no bite in doing anything to change the trend?

A question for the experts…..me?  I am finished for the day…..see you guys tomorrow with more tantalizing stuff….Peace Out….chuq

Illegal Drug Trade Essential To Geopolitics

I have written extensively here on IST about my dislike for the War on Drugs….that I feel that it is a total waste of energy and cash…..

I read an interesting take on this war has on geopolitics…..it seems far fetched but it is something to consider…..

Peter Dale Scott notes that the connection between the CIA and BCCI enabled drug trafficking as a means of arming the resistance against the Soviet Union.

The illegal drug trade is an essential component of global politics, playing a central role in the proliferation of arms used to destabilize countries and unseat unfavorable regimes in the geopolitical quest to create favorable conditions for oil ventures while bolstering the banking industry.

Peter Dale Scott, a Canadian born scholar, poet and former diplomat, the world’s foremost researcher into the inner workings of government conspiracy (conspiracy meaning organized plans and programs). He has for decades been exposing the shadow elements operating under the cover of government, deep politics and big oil.

Source: Illegal Drug Trade Essential To Geopolitics, Says Former Diplomat

I believe that the whole war thing is a total made up story to waste money on non-essential “bad guy”…..legalize and tax….many of the problems would be solved…and yes there may create a few new ones but that is minor compared to the damage this war is doing worldwide.

Drug War Has Failed

Policy choices have consequences.

Trump made many many promises during his “glorious” campaign but the one failed policy that he seem to overlook was that of the Drug War….after 35+ years of wasted money this war is far from won…..

This whole war thing needs to be reconsidered….we keep wasting billions upon billions of dollars and NO substantial results can be found.

The opiate epidemic has reached an all-time high in the United States, with drug-related deaths now surpassing deaths from vehicle accidents. Statista’s Niall McCarthy wrote, “drug-induced deaths (have) reached 49,714 while road crash deaths fell to 32,675,” in 2014. Opioid- and heroin-related deaths have reached epidemic levels. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Since 2000, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137%, including a 200% increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin).”

With over 1 million heroin users in the U.S., heroin-related deaths are skyrocketing, made possible in part, as McCarthy says, by the cheap supply of heroin, governmental regulations, and Fentanyl-infused heroin (50 times more potent than heroin).

Source: Drug War Fail: Drugs Now Kill More People Than Car Crashes | Alternet

If Trump wants to impress more people then he needs to attack this policy and do something that will address the problem and save some taxpayer dollars……

Just a thought.

What Can Cambodia Teach The US?

How long has the US been fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan?  Don’t hurt yourself…..15+ years…..and by all reports it is not getting any better.

We have been fighting for a long time and our promise of destroying the opium production of the Taleban which is used to fund their ops has been a dismal failure…….

Opium production in Afghanistan rose by 43 per cent to 4,800 metric tons in 2016 compared with 2015 levels, according to the latest Afghanistan Opium Survey figures released today by the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the UNODC. The area under opium poppy cultivation also increased to 201,000 hectares (ha) in 2016, a rise of 10 per cent compared with 183,000 ha in 2015.

The higher production can be explained by the larger area under opium poppy cultivation, but the most important driver is the higher opium yield per hectare. The largest yield increase occurred in the Western region where the average yield grew by 37 per cent and the Southern region, with a 36 per cent rise. Since these two regions account for 84 per cent of the total opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the yield increases in these regions had a strong impact on the national potential opium production.

That is not the only problem……the allies are losing territory at an alarming pace….whole provinces have been lost to the Taleban.

But what can the US and its allies do to end this?

Cambodia in the 1970’s comes to mind….well at least to my mind….and that is what is important…….

In Afghanistan, as in Cambodia, bombing has hardened and radicalized the insurgents. Dean hoped that including elements of Prime Minister Marshal Lon Nol’s government, as well as religious leaders, in a coalition government would countervail the power of the Khmer communists and force them to temper their extremist ideology. The Taliban are a rural insurgency and incorporating them into a coalition government would expose them to huge changes that have taken place in Afghanistan’s cities in the past 15 years.

America’s continuing failure in Afghanistan, as in Cambodia five decades earlier, remains “the refusal to find an alternative to military solutions.”

Source: Learn From Cambodia and Reach a Settlement With the Taliban | World Report | US News

Sadly, a solution to our Afghanistan problem will not be on the table….for the winner of this election will just double down on the tactics used today……

There is an answer….but few want to pursue it.

The War on Drugs Failed, So Why Isn’t It Over?

With all the interests in the legalized marijuana trade we need to talk about the War On Drugs……

Could the US use a trillion dollars?  Or how about $15 billion a year?

That is the approximate cost of the war on Drugs a year….$15 billion and over 1 trillion has been wasted over the past 40 years with little evidence that the War is being won.

I have been a verbal critic of this “War” for the last 40 years…In the beginning I said it would be waste of money and resources….and NOTHING that has happened in those years has changed my opinion….I am shown the “busts” over the years and they are substantial…..i the same period the flow into this country has not dried up….with that equation one can only surmise that it is a FAILURE!

What could be the benefit by ending this worthless “War”?

Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard who studies drug policy closely, has suggested that legalizing all illicit drugs would produce net benefits to the United States of some $65 billion a year, mostly by cutting public spending on enforcement as well as through reduced crime and corruption. A study by analysts at the RAND Corporation, a California research organization, suggested that if marijuana were legalized in California and the drug spilled from there to other states, Mexican drug cartels would lose about a fifth of their annual income of some $6.5 billion from illegal exports to the United States.

If there are such benefits then why keep the fight going?

Why are politicians so far behind, even as calls for legalization go mainstream?

At the request of Latin American leaders who have grown weary of bloody battles over drugs, the United Nations held a summit last week on the “world drug problem” at its headquarters in New York City. For a moment, it seemed as if the global war on drugs was beginning to crumble under its own weight.

Before the summit even began, the UN officials were under fire for making concessions to powerful countries with harsh drug control regimes and failing to push the global discourse beyond the decades-old treaties that laid the foundation for international drug prohibition. Hundreds of political leaders and policy groups condemned the summit’s guiding statement for refusing to recognize that decades of prohibition have done more harm than good, fueling mass incarceration, organized crime, infectious diseases and general bloodshed across the world while failing to reduce supply or demand.

Source: The War on Drugs Failed, So Why Isn’t It Over?

I said 40 years ago and I feel the same today…..legalize, tax and be done with the waste…..there are worthy programs that could use an infusion of funds.

The War On Drugs–The Farce

I have been ranting about the massive wastes of taxpayer cash like the War on Drugs…….all those billions spent and nothing positive has happened to curb the flow of illegal drugs into the country.  If anything a case could be made that this program did more harm than good.

Prohibition comes to mind as an example of the ineffectiveness of a program……War on Drugs was the same results only 50 years later…..some things are NEVER learned.

But if you were to know what the program was really all about then you would be outraged….

Pres. Nixon was determined to have a war to destabilize the growing movements in the US….and thus the laughable program, the War on Drugs, was born……

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

I must have looked shocked. Ehrlichman just shrugged. Then he looked at his watch, handed me a signed copy of his steamy spy novel, The Company, and led me to the door.

Source: Jezebel

Read more on this absolutely laughable program dreamed up in the mind of an idiot……(scratch idiot insert CROOK)…….

Source: Former Nixon Aid Reveals Why The ‘War On Drugs’ Was Created — The Reason Will Make You Sick | The Fifth Column

The War on Drugs has done more damage than good….another fine plan by government.

Just another fine example of how a GOPer will dream up crap and then blame the failure on the poor and minorities.

I know let’s hire another one and see what waste of money he can come up with this time.  I will bet it will be a hum-dinger!

In The Shadow Of Panama

I do not know if many of my readers will remember the invasion of Panama in 1989 in Operation Just Cause….the US went into the country with guns a blazing and took down the country’s leader, Noriega.

Yep Reagan had his invasion…..that of the tiny island nation of Grenada and then Bush1 had to have his……Panama.

It is still a point of contention as to why the US invaded its once friendly ally……..Panama was an easy target because the U.S. already had a large military force in 18 bases around the country. Until 1979, the occupied Panama Canal Zone had been sovereign territory of the United States. The Panama Canal was scheduled to be turned over to Panama partially in 1990 and fully in 2000. The U.S. military would be able to crush a hapless opponent and ensure control over a vital strategic asset.

Washington began disseminating propaganda about “human rights abuses” and drug trafficking by President Manuel Noriega. Most of the allegations were true, and they had all been willingly supported by the U.S. government while Noriega was a CIA asset receiving more than $100,000 per year. But when Noriega was less than enthusiastic about helping the CIA and their terrorist Contra army wage war against the civilian population in Nicaragua, things changed.

Old news, right?

I bring all this up to write about a report I read on Venezuela from the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)………

The investigation is being carried out by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and federal prosecutors in New York and Miami—notably, this is not under the White House’s direction or coordination. And the case they’re building has foundations in the testimony of former cocaine traffickers, defectors from the Venezuelan military, and informants who were once close to top Venezuelan officials, including the former head of Cabello’s security detail.

All of this comes to light just months after the White House named Venezuela a threat to the national security of the United States, imposing sanctions on seven mid-level government officials on human rights grounds. And though in the lead-up to the Summit of the Americas in April, Tom Shannon, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere and current Senior Counselor to Secretary of State John Kerry, visited Venezuela to start bilateral dialogues, the new investigations could put a damper on subsequent efforts to address the U.S.-Venezuela relationship.

Shades of Panama?  Is this the same tactic used in the run up to the invasion of Panama?  Narco crimes are really easy subject to press….especially in the Southern hemisphere.

Is this the start of something big?  Will the government justify the invasion of yet another country?  How will this set with the American people?  Since drugs and terrorism has been used to justify many incursion why would this be any different?

Is this the next conflict that our troops will have to deal with in the near future?

 

 

 

The Drug War Doesn’t Work Abroad Either by Lucy Steigerwald — Antiwar.com

It is no secret that I think the War on Drugs like the War on Terror is a perfect way for people to get rich….there is NO real plan to win either of the wars….

My previous post is about the waste of money to fight opium production…waste of time and money…..but there is more…..

 

The Drug War Doesn’t Work Abroad Either by Lucy Steigerwald — Antiwar.com.