The administration of former president Felipe Calderon had granted high-flying U.S. spy planes access to Mexican airspace for the purpose of gathering intelligence. Unarmed Customs and Border Protection drones had flown from bases in the United States in support of Mexican military and federal police raids against drug targets and to track movements that would establish suspects’ “patterns of life.” The United States had also provided electronic signals technology, ground sensors, voice-recognition gear, cellphone-tracking devices, data analysis tools, computer hacking kits and airborne cameras that could read license plates from three miles away.

Tony Papa of the Drug Policy Alliance says, "Breaking the Taboo, a film narrated by Morgan Freeman about the global drug war, is premiering in December. This is my quote from the film which sums up the insanity of the war on drugs in one sentence: 'If you can’t control drug use in a maximum security prison how could you control drugs in a freee society?'"

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this groundbreaking new documentary uncovers the UN sanctioned war on drugs, charting its origins and its devastating impact on countries like the USA, Colombia and Russia. Featuring prominent statesmen including Presidents Clinton and Carter, the film follows The Global Commission on Drug Policy on a mission to break the political taboo and expose the biggest failure of global policy in the last 50 years.

An excellent long read on the growing phenomenon of prescription drug overdoses in Southern California, which a Los Angeles Times investigative team reports "now claim more lives than heroin and cocaine combined, fueling a doubling of drug-related deaths in the United States over the last decade."

Health and law enforcement officials seeking to curb the epidemic have focused on how OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and other potent pain and anxiety medications are obtained illegally, such as through pharmacy robberies or when teenagers raid their parents' medicine cabinets. Authorities have failed to recognize how often people overdose on medications prescribed for them by their doctors.

A Los Angeles Times investigation has found that in nearly half of the accidental deaths from prescription drugs in four Southern California counties, the deceased had a doctor's prescription for at least one drug that caused or contributed to the death. Reporters identified a total of 3,733 deaths from prescription drugs from 2006 through 2011 in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and San Diego counties.

Not one of them was from marijuana, which remains a schedule 1 narcotic and is responsible for zero overdose deaths because one cannot die from a marijuana overdose.

Read the rest. Reporting by Scott Glover, Lisa Girion, with photos and video by Liz Baylen.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/11/11/legal-drugs-deadly-outcomes.html/feed 29 http://boingboing.net/2012/09/20/fiona-apple-busted-in-texas-fo.html http://boingboing.net/2012/09/20/fiona-apple-busted-in-texas-fo.html#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:57:04 +0000 Mark Frauenfelder http://boingboing.net/?p=182315

[Video Link] Police officers in Sierra Blanca, Texas made the world safer by arresting Fiona Apple for possession of hashish. She was scheduled to play in Austin.

The “Criminal” singer had her bus stopped for inspection in Sierra Blanca, Texas, the same place where Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg, and Armie Hammer have all been pinched in the past. Cops turned up the hash somewhere on the bus and arrested the singer for possession.

Fiona Apple arrested for hash possession, being a bad, bad girl

The election of the first black US president offered hope to millions of African Americans across the country. But have four years of an Obama presidency seen positive change for black communities in the US’ inner cities? Fault Lines’ Sebastian Walker spends time with those on the front lines of the failed drug war to understand some fundamental dynamics of race, poverty, incarceration and economic truths in the US in an election year.

Fault Lines : Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City (Via The Agitator)

Lawless (hitting theaters nationwide August 29) is the true story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers: bootlegging siblings who made a run for the American Dream in Prohibition-era Virginia. In this epic outlaw tale, inspired by true-life tales of author Matt Bondurant's family in his novel The Wettest County In The World, the loyalty of three brothers is put to the test against the backdrop of the nation's most notorious crime wave.

"How can you have 56 percent of Americans in support of fully ending the drug war, and zero senators in support of it?" asks Doug Fine, investigative journalist and author of new book, Too High To Fail.

Fine sat down with ReasonTV's Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss his time spent in the cannabis capital of California, Mendocino County, and why he thinks this drug can help save the American economy. And it's not just about collecting taxes.

"The industrial [uses] may one day dwarf the psychoactive ones. If we start using it for fermentation for our energy needs, it can produce great biofuels," says Fine, "already, cannabis is in the bumpers of Dodge Vipers."

I interviewed Doug in July about his book. Read it here.

How Cannabis Can Revolutionize Our Economy: Author Doug Fine on "Too High To Fail"

Like me, justice Reichbach has cancer. He has pancreatic cancer, and a prognosis that involves a short window of survival, and great pain and suffering during treatment.

"Medical science has not yet found a cure," he writes, "but it is barbaric to deny us access to one substance that has proved to ameliorate our suffering."

Read it and demand change: A Judge’s Plea for Medical Marijuana.

Snip:

Despite Obama’s promises during the 2008 campaign, federal prosecutors have lost faith in the ability of state and local officials to control a booming commercial industry for a drug that is still illegal to grow, possess or sell under federal law. As a result, a once broad exemption from prosecution for medical marijuana providers in state where it’s legal has been narrowed to a tiny one.

Furthermore, the fact that state laws clash with federal law in 16 states and the District of Columbia makes it all but impossible for state and federal law enforcement to work together cooperatively to develop a functional system for what Obama still claims to support: access to medicinal marijuana for the legitimately ill in states that approve of the practice. So the nation is left with an uneasy status quo: The federal government is not trying to eliminate medical marijuana altogether, but it has decided that it cannot stand for the commercialization or large scale production of marijuana for the stated purpose of helping the sick, even when that production is technically within the bounds of state law.

The result of that complex and conflicting array of laws? Cases such as the IRS action on Harborside Health Center, recently blogged here on Boing Boing.

Read the rest here, and do also check out his related magazine piece titled, "Hot Pot. How Barack Obama’s medical-marijuana plans went up in smoke."

Photo: JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES via TIME. A bowl of medicinal marijuana is displayed in a booth at The International Cannabis and Hemp Expo April 18, 2010 at the Cow Palace in Daly City, Calif.

Mark blogged yesterday about Daniel Chong, a 23-year-old college student in San Diego who was detained by the Drug Enforcement Administration on "420 day" without charges, then abandoned in a holding cell for 5 days with no food or water. He drank his own urine in an effort to stave off fatal dehydration.

Today, he received an apology from the DEA. The Associated Press reports that "San Diego Acting Special Agent-In-Charge William R. Sherman said in a statement that he was troubled by the treatment of Daniel Chong and extended his 'deepest apologies' to him."

Chong's attorney says that's not enough. They intend to sue for $20 million. From the Los Angeles Times:

Chong, the agency said, was "accidentally left in one of the cells." He told NBC San Diego he kicked the door "many, many times" in a futile attempt to get agents' attention.

When they finally found Chong, he was taken to Sharp Memorial Hospital, where he spent five days. Iredale said Chong, who was close to kidney failure and had trouble breathing, spent three of those days in the intensive-care unit. Chong also suffered hallucinations and "thought he was going insane," Iredale said. Chong told NBC San Diego he tried to kill himself by breaking his glasses and cutting his wrists.

"I didn't care if I died," he told the station. "I was completely insane."

Regarding the hallucinations, Reuters reports that they were anime-themed at times. His lawyer says he "had Japanese cartoon characters telling him where to find water."

More coverage at the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the local San Diego NBC affiliate, and the local Fox News affiliate. There's a cellphone video of a press conference with Chong from yesterday, but the audio isn't great.

(Photo: Daniel Chong. Credit: K.C. Alfred / San Diego Union-Tribune)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/03/student-abandoned-in-cell-for.html/feed 114 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/13/richard-branson-hosts-live-w.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/13/richard-branson-hosts-live-w.html#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:45:27 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=149041

Watch the first-ever live global debate on the War on Drugs today on Google+, hosted by Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson at 7pm GMT/ 2pm EST. Details on the webcast here.

Participants will include...

Julian Assange; Russell Brand and Misha Glenny; Geoffrey Robertson and Eliot Spitzer: experts, orators and celebrities who’ve made this their cause, are set to lock horns in a new debate format. Some of our speakers will be on stage in London's Kings Place in front of a ticketed audience, and others will join in from Mexico City, São Paulo or New Orleans, made possible through Google+ Hangouts; a live multi-person video platform.

About the content of the debate, Branson writes:

We’ve carried out two surveys in the last two weeks, one where we asked Twitter, Facebook and Google+ users globally whether they thought the war on drugs had failed, and one UK-specific survey through YouGov.In the global online poll, 91% agreed that the war on drugs has failed. Over 90% also thought that providing treatment for addiction would be a better approach than putting people in jail.Meanwhile, over 95% of 12,090 people surveyed online globally think governments should open the debate to look for other ways then jail to solve the drugs issue. More than 81% of people surveyed globally also agreed that drug use would decrease if governments focused on treatment and stopped putting people in jail for minor drug offences.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/13/richard-branson-hosts-live-w.html/feed 18 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/12/us-bill-to-go-after-border-t.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/12/us-bill-to-go-after-border-t.html#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:16:31 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=148918 In the San Diego Reader, more on a bill passed last week by The U.S. House Judiciary Committee to help law enforcement crack down on illicit tunnels along the US-Mexico border: "The bill would allow law enforcement to prosecute landowners, prosecute those that fund the tunnels, and wiretap communications in suspected buildings that house tunnels. Previously wiretaps were only available with proof of drugs or contraband."]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/12/us-bill-to-go-after-border-t.html/feed 20 http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/your-tax-dollars-at-work-afgh.html http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/your-tax-dollars-at-work-afgh.html#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:57:42 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=147840

At a cost of nearly $2 billion for two years’ worth of building the Afghan Air Force, the U.S. inadvertently purchased a more convenient mechanism for trafficking opium and weapons than Afghanistan’s drug lords were previously using. But it actually gets worse than that. The aerial trade in guns and drugs through the Afghan Air Force appears to be financing the rearmament of private militias hedging against the country’s implosion after the U.S. leaves.

Read more: Afghan Air Force: Flying Drug Mules That Fuel Civil War | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Related item at the Wall Street Journal, requires subscription.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/your-tax-dollars-at-work-afgh.html/feed 16 http://boingboing.net/2011/11/15/mexican-gov-detains-twitter-us.html http://boingboing.net/2011/11/15/mexican-gov-detains-twitter-us.html#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:33:35 +0000 Wookie Williams http://boingboing.net/?p=129317

[Ed. note: A Mexican Twitter user was detained by the government last week, after he posted a tweet that referenced a recent helicopter crash that killed a top official. Below, guest contributor Wookie Williams in Mexico shares more.—Xeni Jardin]

"How many tweets does it take to bring down a plane?"

That was the joke yesterday, circulating around outside of the PGR offices in Mexico City where Mario Flores was being held. Mario is often funny in his twitter account, he's an all around nice guy who's worst crime is working in publicity (aside from the often juvenile prank he performed with his posse when he was younger) and, let's face it, a dorky guy who loves comics and Batman, and probably wishes he had superpowers.

On 2008, he had the bad luck of working in the building right next to where Secretary of State Juan Camilo Mouriño's plane went down. He was given the afternoon free amid the chaos that reigned the whole neighborhood (the whole country really), something very uncommon for those poor lab rats that work for one of those huge publicity firms.

So on the afternoon of Thursday, November 10th, not five days ago, when he was given the afternoon free, he remembered that fateful day three years ago and took it to his account, @mareoflores. "Not since Mouriño's plane went down was I out of the office this early.

Take care, flying officials", he tweeted. ("No salía tan temprano del trabajo desde que se cayó la avioneta de Mouriño. Anden con cuidado, funcionarios voladores" is the original tweet).

On a cruel twist of fate, and a very strange coincidence, last Friday, a helicopter carrying Secretary of State Francisco Blake Mora crashed into a hill. All passengers were killed, leaving the country wondering how such bad luck could occur twice during the same President's tenure, specially in a country so entrenched in conflict as Mexico is right now, and specially when both Mouriño and Blake were close personal friends of Felipe Calderon.

There was a landslide of tweets regarding the crash, some in very poor taste, others asking what had happened and demanding an investigation.

The president was quick to inform that bad weather conditions were the cause of the accident. He vanished any possibility that this was other than a tragedy caused by fog, but promised to "pursue and exhaust all lines of investigations".

Mario's tweet, innocent enough at the time, started making the rounds with people curious enough to search for a connection between Mouriño's crash and Blake's accident.

Many twitter users faced and retweeted the prophetic lines of Mario and another user, @Morf0, who tweeted hours before the crash "Today, 11-11, a secretary will fall from the sky".

All the favs and RT gathered the attention of the public eye, and Mario started asking his friends if he should erase the tweet, along with a couple of other jokes he made afterwards. Debating between leaving things as they were or just pressing the delete button, he decided on the latter and carried on making small jokes and silly comments. After all, this unwanted attention was good for his twitterego.

But that attention turned sour within a couple of days. On Sunday, five unmarked cars showed up at his parent's door, grabbed him without giving any explanations or a warrant or any kind of official order, and without identifying themselves (It's still not clear if it was members of the PFP -Federal Preventive Police- or the PGJ -State Attorney General- who picked him up).

Mario resisted not really knowing what was going on and after a quick struggle, he was taken away.

His dad came out a few minutes too late.

Mario was already on his way to a government building to be questioned about his tweet and his relationship with the accident. He was held without an attorney until his father was able to find out who had taken his son.

When his friends found out, we took to twitter and tried to make as much noise as possible, because we had no information about him, didn't know if he was ok and even worse, why he was being held. The response of people was amazing. The outrage was everywhere. We all felt like it could've been one of us. Five days after Mexico was flagged by the Human Rights Watch for violating pretty much every human right in the book during Felipe Calderon's years as the head of the country, one of our own, not a random, faceless person in another state, was being held without apparent reason.

For 7 hours, #mareoflores became a Trending Topic and pushed the Mexican activists to act upon the case. This was more than a person being held. It was our right of free speech that was being kept locked.

I won't celebrate Mario's tweets after Blake died. He was foolish enough to get caught in the hype and even went so far as to change his bio to make another joke, this one a notch too distasteful.

But I won't judge his jokes either. It's his choice to have a particular sense of humor and his choice to go out and publish it on his personal account. And he should not be questioned because of it.

When the official statement from the PGR was released, it amassed more laughters than Mario's tweets. He was held as a "witness". "Of what?", everybody asked. Since when, if the official story is true, can a tweet alter the weather? Not even after he was released was Mario truly free. The statements also reads "right now, there is no relationship between his tweet and the accident". Well, I guess Mario's wish for superpowers must have come true.

When Mario was released, to the cheers of his friends and some 50 people gathered outside of the government office, he explained everything, he was calmed and collected, and he was a little bit nervous to have all this attention that "nobody could want", he said. He even was a little regretful of the things he tweeted afterwards, amidst the political climate of the country. So it wasn't the questioning, as much as the ways the police proceeded, basically kidnapping a guy from his front door, thinking none would notice.

He hugged and kissed his girlfriend, thanked his friends, and returned home, with the news of what had happened spreading to all corners of the web. The Washington Post, BBC News, Reforma and all the major mexican newspapers were aware of the situation. Trolls festered Mario and other people sympathized with him. But he's still the same dorky guy who handled the situation the best he could. When I talked to him this morning, still a little overwhelmed, we talked about this for 2 seconds, and then we moved on to more pressing stuff, like where will we hang out next weekend.

The good news is that this won't go unnoticed again. And hopefully, people will use Twitter more as a tool and less as an endless joke box. The only way to have freedom of speech is to not be quite and to fight for what's right, even if that means posting 140 character punchlines. They can't mess with our right to say what we want, because then they'd have to take us all for questioning. Mario is free, and so is the internet.

There's no evidence of foul play in the death today of Mexico's Interior Minister José Francisco Blake, but amid the country's raging drug war, there's plenty of suspicion. The helicopter carrying the country's top domestic security official and seven others crashed in the southern part of Mexico City en route to a meeting of prosecutors in nearby Morelos state. The cause of the crash is unknown.

Blake's death is seen as a symbolic blow to the government's military-directed assault on organized crime. 40,000 Mexicans have died in the drug war over the last five years.

The accident occurred almost exactly three years to the day after Mexico’s previous interior minister Juan Camilo Mouriño was killed in the crash of a small plane, also near Mexico City.

Another mysterious detail: Blake's last tweet before the crash was a nod to the anniversary of his predecessor's death.

Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Guardian, NYT, WaPo, CNN, AP Video, Global Voices.

Reports circulated early today that Mexican president Felipe Calderon had been scheduled to travel in the very same helicopter that crashed, but the administration later issued a statement denying. (via Andrés Monroy H.)

Related reading: the Wikileaks-leaked State Department cable on Mouriño's death, from November 5, 2008. (via Shannon Young) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/11/mexico-interior-minister-kill.html/feed 10 http://boingboing.net/2011/11/10/mexicos-war-on-drugs-lea.html http://boingboing.net/2011/11/10/mexicos-war-on-drugs-lea.html#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:53:13 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=128594

Human Rights Watch reports that instead of reducing violence, the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings, torture, and "disapparances." Read the report. [Video Link]]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/10/mexicos-war-on-drugs-lea.html/feed 34 http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/in-mexico-online.html http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/in-mexico-online.html#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:15:18 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=128437 UPDATE: One media outlet in Mexico reports that there is no proof that the man killed in Nuevo Laredo on Wednesday was a social media user. Police say they are still investigating. Unlike in previous cases involving administrators/contributors to the online message board in question, the newspaper affiliated with that forum has not come forward to confirm the identity of the dead.

UPDATE 2: Nuevo Laredo Live reports that the man killed is "not one of our collaborators," but "a scapegoat" whose murder serves to send a message of fear.

The moderator of an online discussion forum about local cartel-related crime is reported to have been killed in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Near the corpse, a "narco manta," or sign taking responsibility for the murder, was found and points to the ultraviolent cartel known as the Zetas.

Wired News reports that the victim was a 35-year-old man who went by the nickname “Rascatripas” or “Scraper” (literally, “Fiddler”) on the web-based chat network Nuevo Laredo en Vivo where he served as a community moderator. The body was handcuffed, with signs of torture, and was decapitated and was placed next to a monument for Christopher Columbus about a mile south of the Texas border. That same site has previously been used as a dumping ground for victims of this form of crime.

The discussion board in question is the same one at the center of the near-identical murder of two other Nuevo Laredo residents two months ago. They were outed as active participants in the site's crime-tip forum, and they were gruesomely murdered as "snitches." Their bodies were dumped in the same location, with a sign indicating that their killing should serve as a warning for others who share information about cartel activities on the internet.

Snip from Wired.com:

Below the man’s body was a partially obscured and blood-stained blanket. Written on the blanket in black ink: “Hi I’m ‘Rascatripas’ and this happened to me because I didn’t understand I shouldn’t post things on social networks.”

The discovery of the body Wednesday morning brings the total number of bloggers and social media networkers apparently killed in the past three months by organized crime in Mexico — and in the border city of Nuevo Laredo — to four.

One important caveat: some who cover this news beat point out that there are insufficient confirmed details to report the identity of the victim as fact just yet. Neither the police, the family of the deceased, nor the operators of the web forum have validated early online reports. It is possible that the victim's actual identity is not what the sign next to the body states. It is possible that the killing was staged by the Zetas or some other individual or entity for any number of purposes.

Given the nature of cartel-related crime in the region, those facts may take time to confirm. But the message delivered seems clear.

More at Wired.

(via Cyrus Farivar)

Related reports in Spanish: Univision, Milenio, Proceso, and Hoy Laredo (WARNING, GRAPHIC PHOTO).

Related reports in English: Houston Chronicle, AFP.

[Video Link] Over the last few days, word has spread of a purported #antisec operation by Anonymous against the most brutal of all Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas. One element in the story is this video, above. Weeks after it came out, George Friedman's Austin Texas-based consulting firm Stratfor issued this report, and media gobbled it up. A story was born: "Anonymous is taking on the most feared drug cartel in the world, for great justice."

What was unusual about the way this story spread was the speed at which it was amplified by credulous reports from larger media outlets, despite a dearth of confirmable facts. This op got lots of press, fast. Faster, in fact, than it got support from Anons.

Geraldine Juarez and Renata Avila were two of the earlier voices I read expressing doubt about the prevailing storyline—a report by Juarez is here. Some I spoke to within Mexico wondered if the Mexican government (no bastion of purity) might be involved.

Over at Wired News, a must-read piece by Quinn Norton that cinches the deal for me (and in it, she references the aforementioned Global Voices item). Quinn's been covering Anonymous extensively for some time, and I trust her spidey sense on this one.

"Everyone, Anonymous and not, seems to agree that going after the Zetas, who are known for hanging people by their own intestines, would be a new level of ambitious, and might even be the point where Anonymous would bite off more than they could chew," Quinn writes. "But there’s some nagging problems with the video that proposes the op."

Read the rest at Wired.

Charles Arthur at the Guardian covers the story here, asking smart questions.

Is it possible that the kidnapping was a hoax? And was the video a hoax? It doesn't feel consistent with previous, legitimate "Anonymous" videos to me. White balancing? Good lighting? An all-white backdrop? Looks like a hired actor in a quasi-pro production. What other forces could stand to benefit from this sort of thing, if it were staged? State? Private contractor?

As Damien Cave replied to this post just now, "Boing Boing is right to doubt #opcartel, but remember the Mexican context of fear. If it doesn't happen, it may not be a hoax. It may be that people have been scared off."

And that's the one thing Anonymous and the cartels have in common: the truth about their activities can be really hard to figure out.

In the Mexican city of Acapulco, where violence related to drug cartels has been escalating in recent weeks, police today found five decomposing human heads outside the Benito Juarez primary school [Google Maps link]. Armed men placed a wooden box outside the school early Tuesday, with a white cloth sack inside containing the severed heads and four handwritten cards inside threatening local officials and drug traffickers. The earliest reports appeared at the Milenio news website.

Prensa Latina reports that teachers in Acapulco schools have increasingly become the target of extortion demands, prompting the closure of schools and causing many teachers and children to stay away in fear. Just 200 feet from where the gruesome discovery was made today, a group of Mexican federal troops are stationed. More from news.com.au:

The discovery occurred in full view of young students and pedestrians, sparking fear in the area. Soldiers and police removed the remains and cordoned off the location.

Yesterday in the same city - a major port and tourist resort on Mexico's Pacific coast - police found five decapitated bodies: three badly burned inside a pickup truck, and two others outside the vehicle.

More: News.com.au, Associated Press, Sol de Acapulco, Telemundo Dallas, Univision.

(Photo: Javier Trujillo/Millenium; via Warren Ellis)]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/09/27/five-human-heads-found-outside-a-primary-school-in-acapulco-mexico.html/feed 29