Police seize marijuana as Mexico-US drug tunnel found

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

The tunnel had lighting, ventilation and a pulley system

MEXICO'S DRUGS WAR

US and Mexican police have discovered a tunnel used to smuggle drugs across the California-Mexico border and seized some 25 tonnes of marijuana.

The tunnel, equipped with ventilation, lighting and a pulley system, was 550m (1,800ft) long but just waist high.

Police said it connected a warehouse on the US side with one in Tijuana, the main gateway for drugs into California.

Mexican cartels have dug scores of border tunnels, although many of those detected had not been finished.

The latest tunnel was discovered after US agents patrolling near the border crossing in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego pulled over a tractor trailer that had left a warehouse under surveillance.

Agents found some 10 tonnes of marijuana on the vehicle, while another 10 to 15 tonnes were seized in a subsequent raid on the building. A US citizen and his Mexican wife were arrested.

"This wasn't a mom-and-pop operation, or, in this case, a husband and wife operation," said John Morton, director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

"This is clearly organised crime at work. This was the cartels."

'Moved quickly'

At the warehouse, officers also found the entrance to the tunnel, which was just over a metre (4ft) high. The tunnel had lighting, ventilation and rails, which agents believed were used for a pulley system to ferry packets of drugs across the border.

It was the second major drugs bust in Mexico in the past fortnight

The entrance to the tunnel on the Mexican side was found in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Tijuana.

"The Mexicans moved as quickly as we did. It was an example of the co-ordination needed to be successful," said Mr Morton.

Authorities believe the tunnel had been in operation for less than a month.

Mexican soldiers confiscated some five tonnes of marijuana, a military spokesman said.

The seizures came a fortnight after Mexican authorities made a major haul of cannabis in Tijuana of some 134 tonnes.

Police say drug traffickers are building the tunnels to bypass ever more stringent controls aimed at curtailing the cross-border trade in illegal drugs and guns.

About 75 tunnels have been found in the past four years, many of them still being dug out.

In 2006, police discovered a 731m (2,400ft) tunnel, the longest found so far, also linking Otay Mesa with Tijuana.

Some 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006 when the government launched a crackdown on the gangs that control the routes for trafficking drugs into the US market.

Vancouver pot activist Marc Emery to plead guilty to U.S. drug charge

No hope of avoiding extradition, plea deal made

CBC News

Marc Emery is facing extradition on three drug charges for selling marijuana seeds by mail order to customers in the U.S. (CBC)

Marijuana activist Marc Emery says he plans to drop his fight against extradition to the U.S. and plead guilty to one charge of drug distribution in a Seattle courtroom next month.

Emery's extradition hearing in Vancouver was adjourned on Wednesday so his lawyer could negotiate a deal with the U.S. district attorney in which Emery could spend up to eight years in jail for one charge, while two other more serious charges are dropped, he said.

"I will be making a guilty plea to one count of marijuana distribution this summer, and then when I'm sentenced the U.S. district attorney is going to be asking for five to eight years in a federal U.S. penitentiary," he told CBC News on Wednesday.

After the guilty plea, Emery expects he will be sentenced in August or September and is hoping he will eventually be transferred to a Canadian jail.

Joint U.S.-Canada bust

This is not the first time the marijuana activist has said his lawyers are cutting a deal with U.S. prosecutors. In July 2008, Emery said he had made a deal in which he would serve a minimum of five years in jail, but he later blamed Canadian authorities when the deal fell through.

The marijuana activist is facing drug charges for selling pot seeds to U.S. customers, after his Vancouver-based mail order business was busted in a joint operation involving both U.S. and Canadian law enforcement agencies in 2005.

He's been fighting extradition ever since, but on Wednesday he said he now realizes it's a fight he's not going to win.

"Ultimately my lawyer is convinced that the Canadian government has never refused an extradition request from the United States and it's not going to start now," he said.

"Sometimes you have to face up to the reality of what's going to happen, and under this scenario I may be free out of prison in two or three or four years," he said.

Without the deal, Emery said, he would be facing much more time in jail.

"This is a preferential arrangement to the not-so-good-arrangement that would see me spend 10, 20, 30 years in a U.S. federal penitentiary, foreseeably the rest of my life, and that doesn't give a person a lot of hope," he said.

Prepared to do time

"The DA wants to paint me as a large player providing a lot of marijuana to people, and we'll bring up that it was only seeds and it was totally transparent. It was done in Canada out in the open for 10 or 12 years," he told CBC News during an interview at the busy downtown Vancouver hemp store he still operates.

"I didn't keep any of the money — $4 million. I gave it all away to activist groups around the world, so my motives are unusual, so that does mitigate in sentencing," said Emery, who frequently ran in provincial and federal elections as the leader of the Marijuana Party.

But the man who once spent more than two months in a Canadian prison for passing a joint to an undercover officer is now preparing for a much longer stay in a U.S. prison.

"You've got to keep busy in jail. You've got to be reading, in my case writing. I'll be learning Spanish, French. You've got to have projects," he said.

Fmr. Mexican Ambassador Says Legalize Drugs to Stop Cartels

Despite a surge of military and police forces across the country, the killings continue – more than 5,000 last year. Some regions are terrorized by a wave of kidnappings, assassinations and beheadings.

Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Somalia? In fact, the country – which a recent U.S military study warned could be at risk of "a rapid and sudden collapse" – is none other than Mexico. Two years into President Felipe Calderon's war against the drug cartels, and the cartels' ensuing war with each other, this is a nation at war with itself.

To be sure, the government has had its successes. Huge weapons caches have been seized, large tracts of illegal drug crops have been eradicated and an increasing number of cartel kingpins, couriers and foot soldiers have been put behind bars.

But despite these tactical victories, Mexico's fight – attacking the supply-side of the western hemisphere's drug war – will remain an unwinnable war so long as its northern neighbor fails to attack the demand side: Americans' insatiable appetite for illicit drugs.

When then-President-elect Barack Obama met President Calderon in January, he reaffirmed Washington's support for Mexico's heroic efforts. But he should remember Plan Colombia, which has cost American taxpayers $8 billion. While Colombian cartels have been weakened, there has been no significant reduction in the amount of cocaine and other drugs shipped out of Colombia, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

So long as the vast American market for cocaine, heroin and other drugs yields irresistible profits, the cartels will continue taking the risks of producing, transporting and distributing the products their customers want. Even with U.S. support for Mexico's fight – $450 million this year – the cartels will always have more money and guns at their disposal. Even if the U.S.-Mexico border were improbably sealed, the traffickers would find alternate routes to their American customers.

Mexico's war on supply must be matched, once and for all, by a real American war on demand.

Despite decades of a supposed U.S. "war on drugs" – including some of the harshest penalties for drug use in the world – the percentage of Americans using cocaine, heroin, crack, marijuana and methamphetamines has remained largely steady in recent years, according to the latest National Drug Threat Assessment. Given population growth, the number of users has actually increased to 35 million Americans, including the world's highest use rates of cocaine and marijuana.

So how to achieve major reductions in American demand for illegal drugs, as well as the profitability and criminality it fuels?

Seventy-five years after its repeal, Prohibition remains instructive. Like the 13-year ban on alcohol, the illegality of drugs failed to curb demand. Like the bootleggers and gangsterism of that era, today's drug cartels are simply serving popular demand.

As with the repeal of Prohibition, the U.S. must again follow a common-sense approach by thinking the unthinkable: the gradual legalization of some drugs.

For such a change in strategy, the U.S. must recognize that all drugs are not created equal. It is now clear that marijuana and methamphetamines do not have the same harmful effects as cocaine, heroin, opium and other hard drugs. Discriminating among different drugs – as does the new Massachusetts law decriminalizing possession of less than an ounce of marijuana – points the way toward a more rational approach.

At great cost, in blood and treasure, Mexico is fulfilling its responsibility with a war on supply. It's time the U.S. fulfills its responsibility with a real war on demand.

Ambassador Andrés Rozental, former deputy foreign minister of Mexico, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and may be reached at andres@mexconsult.com. Stanley A. Weiss is founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan Washington-based organization, and may be reached at sweiss@bens.org.