May 11th, Honduran police and DEA agents engaged in a disastrous series of heavy-handed tactics, mistakenly killing four innocent Hondurans before inspiring a machete-yielding mob.
Phillip Smith, Drug War Chronicle. March 31, 2012.
The United States have spent billions on coca plant busts; if passed, the bill would eliminate the threat of prison for illicit crop production in Colombia.
Maer Roshan, Hunter R. Slayton, The Fix. March 8, 2012.
Not a single mainstream media outlet or website dared to publicly raise the question of substances. Instead, the media began giving airtime to right-wing conspiracy theories.
The murder and "disappearance" of vast numbers of Colombians is part and parcel of the U.S.'s policy to "drain the sea [the civilian population] to kill the fish [the insurgents]."
Emily Dickinson, Washington Monthly. January 16, 2012.
Colombia’s incredible turnaround strategy has become a rare success story in the drug war, as well as its most formidable brand and export. It is, however, problematic.
Phillip Smith, Drug War Chronicle. November 22, 2011.
Obama granted pardons to five people, three with marijuana-related convictions, and commuted the sentence of a woman doing more than 20 years on a crack charge.
Fighting drug traffickers isn't the same as fighting guerrilla insurgencies. Fracturing trafficking groups merely creates job opportunities for aspiring drug dealers.
By speaking out for treatment instead of imprisonment, Hilton could help the cause of millions of other Americans are arrested for minor drug law violations.
Phillip S. Smith, Drug War Chronicle. July 16, 2010.
With $7.3 billion spent and 21,000 fighters from all sides and an estimated 14,000 civilians killed, Plan Colombia's positive effects aren't easy to distinguish.
West: "Obama has a team that understands the black agenda to be a narrow, parochial, provincial slice of America that he can assume he always has because he’s a black President."
Testing municipal wastewater for drugs may be the next big thing in public health research. The methodology will likely confirm the universality of drug use.
Now that the climate for political candidates has eased on personal drug use, we should focus on punishing elected officials who still believe in the drug war.
