Underground Website Lets You Buy Any Drug Imaginable

• By Adrian Chen, Gawker
• From: http://www.wired.com/

Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

About three weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service delivered an ordinary envelope to Mark’s door. Inside was a tiny plastic bag containing 10 tabs of LSD. “If you had opened it, unless you were looking for it, you wouldn’t have even noticed,” Mark told us in a phone interview.

Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit “check out.” He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins — untraceable digital currency — worth around $150. Four days later, the drugs (sent from Canada) arrived at his house.

“It kind of felt like I was in the future,” Mark said.


Silk Road, a digital black market that sits just below most internet users’ purview, does resemble something from a cyberpunk novel. Through a combination of anonymity technology and a sophisticated user-feedback system, Silk Road makes buying and selling illegal drugs as easy as buying used electronics — and seemingly as safe. It’s Amazon — if Amazon sold mind-altering chemicals.

Here is just a small selection of the 340 items available for purchase on Silk Road by anyone, right now: a gram of Afghani hash; 1/8 ounce of “sour 13″ weed; 14 grams of ecstasy; .1 gram tar heroin. A listing for “Avatar” LSD includes a picture of blotter paper with big blue faces from the James Cameron movie on it.
The sellers are located all over the world, a large portion from the United States and Canada.



But even Silk Road has limits: You won’t find any weapons-grade plutonium, for example. Its terms of service ban the sale of “anything who’s purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction.”

‘It’s Amazon — if Amazon sold mild-altering chemicals.’

 

Getting to Silk Road is tricky. The URL seems made to be forgotten. But don’t point your browser there yet. It’s only accessible through the anonymizing network, TOR, which requires a bit of technical skill to configure.
Once you’re there, it’s hard to believe that Silk Road isn’t simply a scam. Such brazenness is usually displayed only by those fake “online pharmacies” that dupe the dumb and flaccid. There’s no sly, Craigslist-style code names here. But while scammers do use the site, most of the listings are legit. Mark’s acid worked as advertised. “It was quite enjoyable, to be honest,” he said. We spoke to one Connecticut engineer who enjoyed sampling some “silver haze” pot purchased off Silk Road. “It was legit,” he said. “It was better than anything I’ve seen.”

Edgarnumbers is selling these 2C-B "blue bees" tablets. Price: 1.15 bitcoins ($10) per tablet.

Silk Road cuts down on scams with a reputation-based trading system familiar to anyone who’s used Amazon or eBay. The user Bloomingcolor appears to be an especially trusted vendor, specializing in psychedelics. One happy customer wrote on his profile: “Excellent quality. Packing, and communication. Arrived exactly as described.” They gave the transaction five points out of five. 

“Our community is amazing,” Silk Road’s anonymous administrator, known on forums as “Silk Road,” told us in an e-mail. “They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other.”

Sellers feel comfortable openly selling hard-core drugs because the real identities of those involved in Silk Road transactions are utterly obscured. If the authorities wanted to ID Silk Road’s users with computer forensics, they’d have nowhere to look. TOR masks a user’s tracks on the site. As for transactions, Silk Road doesn’t accept credit cards, PayPal or any other form of payment that can be traced or blocked. The only money good here is Bitcoins.
Bitcoins have been called a “crypto-currency,” the online equivalent of a brown paper bag of cash. Bitcoins are a peer-to-peer currency, not issued by banks or governments, but created and regulated by a network of other bitcoin holders’ computers. (The name “Bitcoin” is derived from the pioneering file-sharing technology Bittorrent.) They are purportedly untraceable and have been championed by cyberpunks, libertarians and anarchists who dream of a distributed digital economy outside the law, one where money flows across borders as free as bits.
To purchase something on Silk Road, you need first to buy some Bitcoins using a service like Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange. Then, create an account on Silk Road, deposit some bitcoins, and start buying drugs. One bitcoin is worth about $8.67, though the exchange rate fluctuates wildly every day. Right now you can buy an 1/8 ounce of pot on Silk Road for 7.63 Bitcoins. That’s probably more than you would pay on the street, but most Silk Road users seem happy to pay a premium for convenience.

‘It kind of felt like I was in the future.’

Since it launched this February, Silk Road has represented the most complete implementation of the Bitcoin vision. Many of its users come from Bitcoin’s Utopian geek community and see Silk Road as more than just a place to buy drugs. Silk Road’s administrator cites the anarcho-libertarian philosophy of Agorism. “The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion,” Silk Road wrote to us. “Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market.”
Mark, the LSD buyer, had similar views. “I’m a libertarian anarchist and I believe that anything that’s not violent should not be criminalized,” he said.

1UP of Canada is offering 1/8 ounce of "the infamous Jack Herer." He writes: "This is just classic stuff, well grown, well cured, well smoked." Price: 7.42 bitcoins ($64)

But not all Bitcoin enthusiasts embrace Silk Road. Some think the association with drugs will tarnish the young technology, or might draw the attention of federal authorities. “The real story with Silk Road is the quantity of people anxious to escape a centralized currency and trade,” a longtime bitcoin user named Maiya told us in a chat. “Some of us view Bitcoin as a real currency, not drug barter tokens.” 

 

Silk Road and Bitcoins could herald a black market eCommerce revolution. But anonymity cuts both ways. How long until a DEA agent sets up a fake Silk Road account and starts sending SWAT teams instead of LSD to the addresses she gets? As Silk Road inevitably spills out of the bitcoin bubble, its drug-swapping utopians will meet a harsh reality no anonymizing network can blur.

Dumbest Criminals: Man Complains To Police About Being Shorted By His Cocaine Dealer

From: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/

Believing that he had been ripped off in a commercial transaction, Antonio Recinos decided to contact Connecticut cops to register a complaint.

Perhaps the Better Business Bureau would have been a better choice considering that Recinos, 35, thought he had been cheated by a cocaine dealer who had sold him $40 of the drug Sunday evening.

According to the East Hartford Police Department, Recinos initially dialed 911 to lodge his complaint, but when he spotted a patrolman he approached the cop to deliver his beef face-to-face.

This was a mistake on the part of Recinos, who is pictured in the above mug shot.

Recinos, who displayed a small bag of cocaine, told the officer that he had been shorted by his dealer. While it is unclear what Recinos, who apparently had been drinking, expected the cop to do on his behalf, he likely did not expect to end up in handcuffs over his consumer complaint.

Recinos, an El Salvador native, was arrested early Sunday on a narcotics possession charge. He was later freed on $5000 bail and has a March 30 court appearance, according to police.

Rio's drug war (PICS)

boston.com — After recent efforts by officials to pacify Rio's drug and gang-related violence ahead of the upcoming the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics Games, drug gangs struck out last week - attacking police stations and staging mass robberies. After days of preparation, Brazilian security forces launched a raid in the Complexo de Alemão, where between 500 and 600 drug traffickers were holed up. At least 42 people were killed in the violence last week, with security forces taking control of many neighborhoods. 

Police move to positions during an operation against alleged drug traffickers at the Complexo do Alemão slum, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010. Rio police backed by helicopters and armored vehicles started invading a shantytown complex long held by traffickers on Sunday, slowly moving their way through small alleys amid heavy gunfire. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) 

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL GALLERY:  http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/rios_drug_war.html

Botched Raid: Mayor To Meet With Cops About Pot Enforcement

By Steve Elliott
From http://www.tokeofthetown.com/

Photo: The Washington Apple

Way cooler than your average mayor: Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is reviewing marijuana enforcement policies after the botched raid of a legal patient

​
Battering Ram Raid Of Legal Seattle Patient By Machine Gun-Toting Officers Results In Review

Activist Group Invoices City For Cost Of Patient's Door

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn will sit down Monday with top law enforcement officials to talk about how city police and King County deputies are enforcing marijuana laws.

McGinn, who supports legalizing marijuana, said a recent Seattle police raid in which only two legal medical marijuana plants were found shows the difficulties law enforcement officers face, report Emily Heffter and Sara Jean Green of The Seattle Times.

Seattle Anti-Crime Team officers brandishing machine guns burst through the door of Will Laudanski, a renter who was following state law and city policy on marijuana, according to a Seattle Police Department spokesman. The officers had a search warrant they had obtained after sniffing around Laudanski's apartment and claiming to smell marijuana.

When officers realized the tenant had valid medical marijuana documentation, they left without arresting Laudanski. While the Seattle Times reported that the cops fixed the man's door, they got it exactly wrong. The repair was in fact paid for by the Cannabis Defense Coalition (CDC), a Seattle-based activist group which advocates for medical marijuana patients in Washington state.

"The CDC paid for, and replaced, Will's door," spokesman Ben Livingston confirmed to Toke of the Town Monday morning. "End of story."

The CDC had pledged to repair Mr. Laudanski's front door after it was severely damaged by a police battering ram during the October 25 raid. Police left the door in disrepair and the disabled Gulf War veteran lacked the resources to replace it.

"Wasting our limited tax dollars on these worthless pot raids is bad public policy," Livingston said. "Failing to repair Will's door is just plain bad manners."

The CDC announced on Monday that it will invoice the City of Seattle for the cost of fixing Laudanski's front door. The group said it would hand deliver the invoice at 3 p.m. Monday at the executive forum called by the mayor to discuss the incident.

"This makes my blood boil," commented CDC activist Phil Mocek on Facebook. "The police are apparently lying about cleaning up the mess they made -- that we at CDC cleaned up because they didn't do a damned thing about it.

"We're not going to let this drop," Mocek said. "They bust into this guy's home with no indication that he was doing anything illegal other than possibly using marijuana, and in this city, busting adults for marijuana is, by law, our police department's lowest law enforcement priority."

"They went in with a half-dozen cops in SWAT gear with a battering ram," Mocek said. "And found two plants. Legal ones."

Mayor McGinn, meanwhile, is questioning whether there's not a better way to guide police behavior on pot raids.

"We're not giving -- the law doesn't give -- clear policy guidance to the police or prosecutors necessarily, or even the public, and the recent raid highlighted that issue," he said.

Joining the mayor for the meeting will be City Attorney Pete Holmes, who has followed through on his promise he made while running for office a year ago to stop prosecuting people for simple marijuana possession. Also planning to attend the meeting are Police Chief John Diaz, King County Sheriff Sue Rahr, King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, and City Council member Nick Licata.

McGinn has already asked Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel to "review" all marijuana investigations when officers are asking for a search warrant.

"We just want to give them greater security and determine whether there are other methods that we could use... but the raid reflects the fact that we don't necessarily give police officers the clarity they need to do their job," McGinn said.

In Washington state, patients who are authorized by their physicians to use cannabis for medical conditions can legally grow it. Washington allows medical marijuana patients to grow 15 plants and possess 24 ounces of dried marijuana. Patients can be authorized to have more under certain conditions.

Seattle Police Department spokesman Sean Whitcomb claimed the laws put officers in a tough position, because they don't know who is legally authorized to grow marijuana.

"Is it our job to compromise the investigation to give the benefit of doubt to people?" Whitcomb whined. You know, when your potential pot raid targets could be chronically or terminally ill patients -- as is required by Washington's medical marijuana law -- I'd say maybe that is your damn job, Officer Whitcomb.

But of course, just knocking on the damned door and asking is out of the question for these bush-league Rambos.

But without a state database of legal marijuana patients, it's difficult to know if a grower is authorized, according to Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff to King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. Goodhew said for-profit, large-scale marijuana growers "are often well-armed," and officer safety is always a consideration.

A quick check was unable to turn up any instances of Seattle officers ever being shot or even fired upon in a marijuana grow raid.

In the Laudanski case, officers claimed they were following up on a citizen complaint. They went to his apartment and spotted ventilation equipment "common to marijuana grow operations."

Anti-Crime Team Officer Tyrone Davis and Sgt. Garth Green saw that a window was boarded up and rigged with a fan. They climbed the stairs to a second-floor landing and smelled "an odor consistent with the smell of marijuana plants," according to the search warrant.

Davis and Green got a search warrant and returned on Oct. 25 about 9:45 p.m. According to their incident report, they knocked on Laudanski's door and then broke the door and entered after nobody answered.

Laudanski, 50 said he was tying his robe and trying to answer the door when officers barged in and forced him face down to the floor.

They found two scrawny potted cannabis plants in the bedroom, and two glass jars containing dried marijuana.

Laudanski had valid paperwork showing the marijuana was for medical purposes.

"In hindsight, it looks like more force" was used than necessary, Goodhew admitted, "but you have to remember that police didn't know what they would find."

Whitcomb claimed the officers had "no reason" to consider Initiative 75, the 2003 measure Seattle voters approved that made arresting and jailing adults for possessing personal amounts of marijuana the departments lowest law-enforcement priority.

The Laudanski search wasn't considered a "possession" case, Whitcomb claimed.

While that's technically true, Mayor McGinn said I-75 does apply to the situation "on a practical level" because it reflects the public's changing attitude toward marijuana.

"Both the medical marijuana law and I-75 reflect the public's intent with regard to marijuana, and that does influence how you think about your policies regarding it," the Mayor said.

'I'm going to get high, dude!': 105 TONS of marijuana seized with colour-coded packaging and Homer Simpson labels

By Daily Mail Reporter
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Some 105 tonnes of marijuana has been seized in Mexico, in what is expected to become the country’s biggest ever drug bust.

Eleven people were arrested yesterday in the city of Tijuana after a pre-dawn gun
battle between members of the drug cartel and police and soldiers - two people were injured.

The marijuana was found in six cargo containers in a warehouse, wrapped in 10,000 packages and has a street value of
£215million.

Scroll down for video report

Biggest bust: Police recovered 10,000 packages containing 105 tonnes of cannabis in Tijuana

Inscriptions: The parcels were colour coded and some included a picture of cartoon character Homer Simpson accompanied with the writing: 'I'm going to get high, dude!'

Busted: Eleven men were arrested by the Mexican authorities after a pre-dawn shootout on Monday

It was discovered after police on a routine patrol intercepted a
convoy of vehicles escorting a tractor-trailer that had left the warehouse,
officials said.

A shootout ensued before the 11 arrests in the city, which is across the U.S. border from San Diego, California.


Police and soldiers, acting on information from the suspects, raided the warehouse and two homes, where smaller amounts of marijuana were found.

Border: The city of Tijuana is located at the north of Mexico - across the border is San Diego

The neatly packaged cannabis - guarded by masked, heavily armed soldiers - was later displayed for the media at Morelos Army Base in Tijuana. 


General Alfonso Duarte Mugica, the military’s top commander in Baja California, said the drugs had an estimated street value of 4.2billion Mexican pesos - about £215million.
General Duate said that the marijuana was destined for America, and that authorities were still counting and weighing the packages, meaning the amount could increase.

Colour coded: The cannabis was destined for America, General Alfonso Duarte Mugica - the man leading the bust - said

Seized: Alfonso Duarte Mujica, the military's top commander in Baja California, said the drugs had an estimated street value of 4.2billion Mexican pesos, or about £215million

Gun battle: Two people were injured - one police man and one member of the cartel - in the pre-dawn shootout

The drugs, he said, were wrapped in different colours and labelled with apparently coded phrases and pictures that included cartoon character Homer Simpson.
The inscription on that particular package - 'Voy de mojarra, que wey!' - is roughly translated as 'I'm going to get high, dude!'

On other drug parcel there were the names of animals, such as bulls and wolves, and on some there were symbols, including arrows.
The colours and the symbols are thought to be indicators as to where the parcels were destined.

Rounded up: The suspects are shown standing before the cannabis wrapped in 10,000 brown and silver packages, which had been hidden in six cargo containers

Symbols: The parcels had symbols and words on them - believed to indicate where the drug were to be shipped to

Coded: Here smiley faces are shown on the parcels. The drugs were destined for America, officials believe

Although Mexican drug cartels smuggle marijuana from South America, the drug is increasingly produced in Mexico.

Cannabis production in Mexico increased 35 per cent to 12,000 hectares
(29,652 acres) in 2009, from 8,900 hectares (21,991 acres) the previous
year, according to the U.S. State Department's 2010 International
Narcotics Control report.

The report attributed the increase to drug cartel efforts to 'diminish reliance on foreign suppliers'.

The seize marks a big break through against the cartels in the ongoing drug war in Mexico that has claimed 28,000 lives since 2006.

Battle: Some 28,000 people involved in the drug war have died since Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced the crackdown in 2006

President Felipe Calderon, who recently visited Tijuana, launched the nationwide crackdown four years ago, deploying some 50,000 troops.

Last year, Mexican security forces confiscated a total of 2,105 tonnes of marijuana, according to government figures.

Mexico's border regions, especially the major towns directly on the U.S. frontier, have witnessed the brunt of the conflict with notable spikes in particularly gruesome violence in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, which borders Texas further to the east.

Violence peaked in Tijuana in 2008 amid a showdown between two crime bosses - Fernando 'The Engineer' Sanchez Arellano and Teodoro 'El Teo' Garcia Simental, a renegade lieutenant who rose through the ranks by dissolving bodies in vats of lye.
Garcia was arrested last January. While killings have continued, the most gruesome displays of cartel violence - decapitations, hangings and daylight shootouts - subsided.

Last week, in the wake of President Calderon's visit, several bodies were found beheaded and hanging from bridges in Tijuana, leading to fears that the cartels were resuming brutal tactics to send a message that the government is not in control.

In Ciudad Juarez, gunmen burst into a private party on Sunday and shot
dead nine people, including six members of one family, security
officials said.

Four people died on the spot, two others died in hospital, and the remaining two
were hunted down by the gunmen and shot dead near the airport.

Nine others were killed in separate attacks in the past 24 hours in Mexico's
most violent city, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, according
to police.

Forget Taxing Marijuana; The Real Money's In Cocaine

From: http://www.npr.org/

Different strains of medical marijuana at Coffeeshop Blue Sky in Oakland, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

By Jacob Goldstein

A Harvard economist has estimated how much money states would raise by legalizing and taxing marijuana and cocaine.

In a podcast a while back, Harvard's Jeffrey Miron told us that his estimates for what California would bring in from taxing marijuana are much smaller than some of the numbers that are floating around out there (including a $1.4 billion estimate from state officials).

Since that interview, Miron has come out with a paper estimating, among other things, potential tax revenues from cocaine and marijuana.

It turns out the big tax money is in cocaine.

Sure, legalizing marijuana is highly unlikely and legalizing cocaine isn't even on the table in mainstream politics. Still, it's interesting to know what the numbers would be -- particularly when they're coming from a Harvard economist.

Here's a table that shows Miron's estimates for the annual tax revenues each state would get from marijuana and cocaine. (The figures are in millions; for more details, see the explanation and links after the table.)

State	Marijuana	Cocaine
Alabama	25.59	80.54
Alaska	6.53	16.28
Arizona	41.91	177.67
Arkansas	19.87	54.49
California	201.74	767.73
Colorado	46.97	133.74
Connecticut	22.57	72.53
Delaware	6.07	18.76
Florida	142.05	362.34
Georgia	86.75	213.96
Hawaii	10.09	21.59
Idaho	11.73	22.66
Illinois	83.98	263.93
Indiana	43.44	120.04
Iowa	18.72	45.94
Kansas	16.69	53.95
Kentucky	28.05	77.79
Louisiana	30.02	97.43
Maine	6.64	25.46
Maryland	37.68	113.79
Massachusetts	44.94	167
Michigan	69.04	174.55
Minnesota	45.43	102.31
Mississippi	19.67	41.17
Missouri	54.99	111.28
Montana	7.94	19.29
Nebraska	13.87	29.13
Nevada	13.97	53.19
New Hampshire	9.03	29.18
New Jersey	74.6	140.31
New Mexico	11.92	47.42
New York	136.81	464.05
North Carolina	87.88	191.04
North Dakota	4.02	9.54
Ohio	88.7	248.79
Oklahoma	29.23	58.23
Oregon	24.09	76.88
Pennsylvania	73.73	211.85
Rhode Island	7.75	37.12
South Carolina	26.29	79.71
South Dakota	7.28	11.96
Tennessee	39.94	146.9
Texas	270.39	483.02
Utah	16.34	53.16
Vermont	3.67	15.86
Virginia	53.35	175.63
Washington	35.76	143.55
West Virginia	8.97	36.65
Wisconsin	61.12	114.16
Wyoming	3.72	11.26
DC	4.82	25.94
Total	2,138.47	6,234.11

On top of state revenues, Miron estimates that a federal taxes would amount to $4.28 billion for marijuana and $12.47 billion for cocaine.

Miron figures taxes on the drugs would be comparable to taxes on alcohol and tobacco. His estimates for how many people in each state use marijuana and cocaine are based on a government survey. (He notes that the number of users would likely rise if the drugs were legalized, but his estimates don't account for this.) He estimates that if marijuana and cocaine were legalized, their prices would fall by 50% and 80%, respectively. The research was funded by the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation; here's the foundation's take on drug policy.

categories: Drugs

Duo Pushes Rhode Island to Decriminalize Pot

By JOEL MILLMAN

From: http://online.wsj.com

Reuters

Officer Chad Vanderklok executes a search warrant for marijuana at a Kalamazoo, Mich., home in November.

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—A retired police officer and the proprietor of an organic eatery make an odd couple when it comes to trying to overturn marijuana laws in this tiny state, but Jack Cole and Josh Miller are giving it their best shot.

Mr. Cole, 71 years old, is a veteran of decades with the New Jersey State Police, almost all with the drug squad. Mr. Miller, 55, runs Local 121, a restaurant favored among "buy local" diners, and also serves in the state Senate, where he leads a special commission to study marijuana prohibitions. The panel began hearings in January to discuss an overhaul of the state's pot laws, starting with decriminalization of small amounts.

As legislators across the U.S. struggle to rescue state budgets hammered by the recession, decriminalization is one idea gaining traction. Advocates say states could cut costs of policing, prosecuting and incarcerating offenders, and even raise money by taxing users.

"Any respect for this issue lies right now in its impact on the budget," said Mr. Miller.

His committee will hear testimony Wednesday from Mr. Cole, the founder of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, a national lobby seeking an end to the drug war. LEAP's 10,000 members include many former police officers, corrections workers and federal agents of the Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration.

Decriminalization faces resistance from district attorneys and police departments that have grown used to making arrests and building criminal cases in a longstanding war-on-drugs tradition, and often equate decriminalization with being "soft" on crime.

The first steps state legislatures take tend to be narrow: legalizing marijuana use for cancer or glaucoma patients, or allowing municipalities to impose fines on casual smokers.

In California, one of 14 states that allow marijuana use for medical purposes, legislators are weighing a bill to legalize most marijuana sales and create tax and licensing fees for the industry. The measure was approved by the state Assembly's Public Safety Committee last month, but probably won't advance further this session.

New Hampshire is considering a pair of House bills, one to legalize and tax pot sales, and another to decriminalize possession. A medical-marijuana bill passed last year but was vetoed by the governor.

Decriminalization measures have also been introduced in Vermont, Virginia and Washington, while medical-marijuana bills are being considered in Maryland, Delaware and Wisconsin, among other states.

Mr. Miller said that in Rhode Island, which allows medical-marijuana use, decriminalization was the next step. He noted that last month a bill was introduced in the House to make possession of an ounce or less a civil offense punishable by a fine of $100, rather than a criminal offense.

Rhode Island has run budget deficits of just over $200 million in each of the past two years, and is looking at a $400 million deficit in the next fiscal year on a budget of $7 billion. Savings from decriminalization wouldn't be great, Mr. Miller conceded—say, $2 million to $3 million a year by freeing prison beds occupied by pot offenders. Rhode Island spends about $33,000 a year per inmate.

Not everyone agrees with that math. Matthew Dawson, deputy chief of the criminal division of the state attorney general's office, testified before Mr. Miller's panel last month that the state would achieve "zero savings" from decriminalization. He said police and prosecutors employed criminal charges for possession to plea bargain with suspects, and that suspects might otherwise have to be prosecuted for more serious crimes, at greater cost to the state. Others say possession charges help police cajole witnesses into cooperating in criminal inquiries.

Mr. Miller said such arguments may persuade some of his colleagues, but others would look to the decision two years ago in neighboring Massachusetts to decriminalize pot, which raised hopes among some legislators that a similar measure could pass in Rhode Island. "It's not far-off California, but the big state next door," Mr. Miller said.

Mr. Cole traveled to Providence recently to help Mr. Miller craft a strategy. He often wears a badge that reads: "Cops Say Legalize Drugs. Ask Me Why."

In his standard speech, he describes the epiphany he experienced early in his career as an undercover narcotics investigator. "I learned firsthand of the family-destroying consequences of sending drug users [often mothers and fathers] to jail. I can't think of a better policy for creating the next generation of drug addicts than to remove parents from children," he said. "I also realized that when police arrested a robber or rapist they made the community safer for everyone but when I arrested a drug pusher, I simply created a job opening for someone in a long line of people willing to take his place."

Messrs. Cole and Miller agreed the former cop's presentation must appeal to law-and-order politicians. Mr. Cole said the way to win them over was to show that chasing pot smokers keeps police from fighting other crimes.

"Look at the clearance rates for these crimes," he said. In the 1960s, before federal antidrug funds flowed heavily to states, "91% of all murders in this country were solved. Today, it's 61%." He cited similar drops for arson (60% unsolved) robbery (75% unsolved) and rape (60% unsolved).

Mr. Cole said the national addiction rate has remained unchanged for a century at about 1.3% of the population. He concludes that if drugs are legalized, the addiction rate would stay the same, "but we'll be spending a lot less to manage it."

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com

Former Police Chief Norm Stamper: 'Let's Not Stop at Marijuana Legalization'

By Norm Stamper, AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/story/144573/

These days, it seems like everyone is talking in earnest about marijuana legalization, once dismissed as little more than a Cheech and Chong pipe dream. Indeed, a new poll reveals that 53 percent of Americans now support ending marijuana prohibition.

Bolstered by increasing public support for something once considered to be a political third rail, lawmakers from Rhode Island to Washington State have put the issue on the table for consideration. And citizen initiatives (particularly in California) are cropping up faster than ditch weed.

These are welcome developments to a retired police chief like me who oversaw the arrests of countless people for marijuana and other drugs, but saw no positive impact from all the blood, sweat and tears (and money) put into the effort. Soon, it seems, cops may no longer have to waste time and risk lives enforcing pot laws that don’t actually prevent anyone from using marijuana.

Yet, I'm alarmed that the above-mentioned poll showing majority support for marijuana legalization also found that fewer than one in 10 people agree that it's time to end the prohibition of other drugs.

This no doubt makes sense to some readers at first glance, since more people are familiar with marijuana than other drugs like cocaine, heroin or meth. However, even a cursory study of our drug war policies will reveal that legalizing pot but not other drugs will leave huge social harms unresolved.

Legalizing marijuana only will not:

• Stop gangs from selling other drugs to our kids (since illegal drug dealers rarely check for ID);

• Stop drug dealers from brutally murdering rival traffickers for the purpose of controlling the remaining criminal market for other drugs;

• Stop drug dealers from firing on cops charged with fighting the senseless war on other illicit drugs;

• Stop drug dealers from killing kids caught in crossfire and drive-by shootings;

• Stop overdose deaths of drug users who refrain from calling 911 out of fear of legal repercussions;

• Reduce the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis, since marijuana users don’t inject their drug like heroin users (who sometimes share dirty needles and syringes because prohibition makes it hard to secure clean ones);

• Stop the bloody cartel battles in Mexico that are rapidly expanding over the border into the U.S;

• Stop the Taliban from raking in massive profits from illegal opium cultivation in Afghanistan.

Of course, none of this means that our rapidly growing marijuana legalization movement should slow down.

On the contrary, as the polls show, a majority of Americans understand that legalizing marijuana will produce many benefits. No longer will 800,000 people a year be arrested on pot charges, their lives damaged if not ruined; governments will be able to tax the popular commodity; regulation and revenues will help forge and finance effective programs of drug abuse prevention and treatment; and those vicious cartels will lose as much as half their illicit profits when they can no longer sell marijuana.

Further, once people get used to the idea of allowing legal sales of the previously banned drug we'll be able to point to successful regulation as a model for similar treatment of all other currently illicit substances.

Marijuana legalization is a great step in the direction of sane and sensible drug policy. But we reformers must remember that we’re working to legalize drugs not because we think they are safe, but because prohibition is far more dangerous to users and nonusers alike.

Norm Stamper, a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, is a 34-year police veteran and served as Seattle's chief of police from 1994-2000. He is the author of "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing."

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Deadliest Drugs: Deaths vs. Media Coverage [INFOGRAPHIC]

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

I’m doing a regular weekly visualisation for the excellent Guardian Datablog, the front-end for an amazing library of statistics and data, lovingly hand-gathered by The Guardian.

My first post is about Deadly Drugs.

There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.).

Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms.

Check out the article on The Guardian blog for detail and data. You want both right?

Undercover Narc and Judge Discuss Legalization Benefits

Retired undercover narcotics detective Jack Cole and Judge Andrew Napolitano discuss their support for legalizing drugs after spending careers sending drug offenders to jail. Lieutenant Cole is executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which any citizen can join for free at http://www.CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com.

My Father, the Drug Lord: Pablo Escobar's Son

From: http://www.time.com/
By John Otis / Bogota

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar with his son Juan Pablo

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

While on the phone with his son 16 years ago, Pablo Escobar stayed on the line just long enough for Colombian police to trace the call. Minutes later, the world's most violent and notorious drug lord was gunned down on a Medellín rooftop. Fearing for their lives, Escobar's wife, son and daughter sought safety in exile, but most nations shut their doors. After stopovers in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, South Africa and Mozambique — a whirlwind on par with the deposed Shah of Iran's desperate 1979 world tour — the widow and her children finally entered Argentina as tourists on Christmas Eve 1994. They've lived relatively quiet lives in Buenos Aires ever since.

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But the son on the phone on that fatal day is breaking his silence. Now an architect and industrial designer, Juan Pablo Escobar, 32, has changed his legal name to Sebastián Marroquín to avoid scrutiny and notoriety. He is, nevertheless, emerging as the central character in a documentary about his father's brutal legacy, Los Pecados de mi Padre (The Sins of My Father). The film shows Marroquín returning to Colombia to renounce Escobar's violent legacy and apologize to the families of some of the victims. "I wanted to do something positive that would help Colombian society," Marroquín told TIME in a telephone interview. "I wanted to show the errors of getting involved in drug trafficking." (See the tale of Pablo Escobar's son.)

Some observers wonder about the value of an apology from the son of the perpetrator of the crimes and not the criminal himself. But the film's Argentine director, Nicolás Entel, says the point is to promote reconciliation in Escobar's homeland. "Colombia is a nation in which cycles of violence can continue from generation to generation," he says. "If you do something to me, my family members will look for your family members ... So [the film] has the value of saying, 'It stops here. We are not going to inherit our parents' hatred.' " (See how police tracked and killed Pablo Escobar.)

Among the documentary's highlights are emotional meetings between Marroquín and the son of one of his father's most famous victims: Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara, who was killed in 1984. Lara's son, also named Rodrigo Lara, is a Colombian senator. He was just 8 years old when he helped bodyguards bring his bullet-riddled father to the hospital. Still bitter about the assassination, he was skeptical about Marroquín. But after receiving a gracious letter from drug lord's son, he met Marroquín in a Buenos Aires suburb and the two ended up embracing. (See a 1990 TIME story on the ferocious war against Pablo Escobar.)

In the film, which premieres this month in the Argentine city of Mar del Plata, Marroquín also meets with the three sons of Luis Carlos Galán, a charismatic presidential candidate whose public denouncements of Escobar prompted the kingpin to order his death in 1989. Marroquín says the meeting with the Galáns was more nerve-racking than the time when he, as a teenager in Medellín, was summoned by pistol-packing leaders of a rival cartel. (At the time, he made out his will beforehand.) "I felt 10 times more afraid, even though I knew that no one was going to hurt me physically," he said, "because I felt an enormous responsibility [to the Galán family.]"

At first, Carlos Fernando Galán, the slain politician's youngest son, wondered if his father would approve of the meeting. But he kept reminding himself that no one chooses their parents. "My father always told us that the first victims of the drug traffickers are themselves and their families. And that's something I found when I met Sebastián Marroquín. He was a victim, and he suffered a lot because of that. And I thought my father would say that this is the right thing to do."

Los Pecados de mi Padre also delivers a poignant message from Marroquín to Colombian youths, some of whom still view his father as a romantic, Robin Hood–like figure and remain tempted by the wealth and power of a new generation of drug lords. "Marroquín knows his father was an evil man, and he doesn't want to be like his father," Lara says. "Coming from the son of the most important and violent drug trafficker ever ... He says, 'Hey, I'm the son of Pablo Escobar. Don't be like my father.' That's an important message for the Colombian people."

Marroquín, who has the same thick face and wide girth of his father, describes Escobar as a doting parent. But as the manhunt for the drug lord intensified in the late 1980s, the family was forced underground and Marroquín saw his father only sporadically. Still, Escobar encouraged his children to lead their own lives. "My father did everything to keep us separated from his business," Marroquín says. "If I wanted to be a doctor, he said he would give me the best hospital. If I wanted to be a hairdresser, he said he would give me the finest salon in the whole city."

After his father's death, Marroquín suffered from depression. Landing in impoverished, war-ravaged Mozambique as his family sought refuge, he contemplated suicide as he considered how far his clan had fallen. The family's troubles continued in Buenos Aires. Escobar's widow, now known as Maria Isabel Santos, started a real estate business, but her accountant learned her true identity and tried to blackmail her, Marroquín says. His mother reported the extortion attempt but was forced to reveal her ties to Escobar. Startled Argentine authorities abruptly detained Santos, who was held for 18 months on charges of money laundering while Marroquín spent 45 days behind bars. Escobar's daughter, who is now a 25-year-old university student, was also ostracized as nervous parents demanded that she be expelled from school.

After a seven-year legal battle, the charges were dropped against the family. Marroquín married his longtime Colombian girlfriend and now, along with an Ecuadorian partner, designs buildings in Buenos Aires. Still, his upbringing among fabulously wealthy criminals can show through in his blueprints. "He's a very good architect," say Entel, the filmmaker. "But sometimes you can see the way he grew up around Pablo Escobar reflected in his ideas. Because I would never think of designing furniture for inside a swimming pool."

Reality show winner arrested on oxycodone charge in North Reading

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

The grand prize winner of last year's CBS reality show "Big Brother," arrested Saturday in Massachusetts on an oxycodone distribution charge, allegedly told federal investigators that he used his winnings to purchase large amounts of the drug.

Adam Jasinski of Delray Beach, Fla., was arrested at a North Reading strip mall and faces a charge of possession with intent to distribute oxycodone.

Jasinski allegedly agreed with a cooperating government witness to sell the witness 2,000 oxycodone pills. Jasinski flew from his home in Florida to Massachusetts on Saturday to deliver the drugs, according to an affidavit filed Monday in federal court by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in support of the charges.

The agent wrote that Jasinski and the witness met at Logan International Airport. On the drive to North Reading, Jasinski allegedly removed a sock from his "pelvic area" containing two plastic bags full of small blue pills.

When the two men stopped at the strip mall, agents approached the car. Jasinski allegedly struggled with agents and threw the sock under an adjacent parked car.

But after waiving his Miranda rights, the affidavit said, "Jasinski stated that for the past several months he had been obtaining thousands of pills of oxycodone and reselling them to customers all along the east coast."

"Jasinski was able to purchase large quantities of pills because he had received $500,000 as the grand prize winner of the CBS reality television show 'Big Brother Season 9,'" the affidavit said.

Jasinski made an initial appearance in court Monday. Jasinski is in the custody of the US Marshals until a detention hearing before US Magistrate Judge Leo T. Sorokin on Thursday.

Jasinski's defense attorney, Valerie S. Carter, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.

Report on weed use prompts call for legalization

By Tiffany Crawford, Canwest News Service

The foundation is urging the Canadian government to legalize and regulate marijuana, by allowing people to grow their own and taxing sales the way it regulates alcohol or tobacco

Photograph by: Mark Blinch, Reuters

A report released Thursday that shows the number of pot smokers in the world has grown to more than 160 million people has Canadian advocates renewing calls for legalization of the drug.

An Australian study, citing United Nations data from 2006 and published Thursday in the journal Lancet, found that about 166 million people aged 15-64 — or an estimated one in 25 in that age range — reported using cannabis. That's up from about 159 million people in 2005.

"It's not going away. So should one in 25 people be criminalized for smoking pot?" asked Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa professor and spokesman for the Canadian Foundation For Drug Policy. "What this number says to me is the world is not drug free. Some people prefer alcohol over cannabis and some people prefer cannabis."

The foundation is urging the Canadian government to legalize and regulate marijuana, by allowing people to grow their own and taxing sales the way it regulates alcohol or tobacco.

While the Australian study found pot use was greatest in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, followed by Europe, another report — from the United Nations — shows marijuana use in this country is actually the highest in the industrialized world.

That 2007 report, by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, found 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 smoked marijuana or used other cannabis products in 2004. That's the most recent year for which statistics were cited.

"I'd say 70 or 80 per cent of my university students smoke pot and they are perfectly normal people," said Oscapella. "If you've ever tried it you know its no big deal. So why are we using criminal law to deal with this behaviour? That's the real issue."

Other figures — from Statistics Canada — show the number of Canadians using cannabis is on the rise, from 6.5 per cent of Canadians in 1989, to 7.4 per cent in 1994 and then to 12.2 per cent in 2002.

The largest concentration of marijuana use in Canada is in British Columbia, while residents of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan had lower-than-average rates.

B.C. also leads the country in marijuana production with 40 per cent of Canadian cannabis produced there. That's followed by Ontario at 25 per cent and another 25 per cent in Quebec, the UN report said.

Unlike Canada, in Australia and New Zealand — where eight per cent of the population use cannabis — the numbers there are declining, the Australian study says. It says a similar trend is also happening in western Europe.

The full report, which analyzes the adverse effects of cannabis use, can be viewed at http://press.thelancet.com/cannabis.pdf

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers

Cartels Face an Economic Battle

By Steve Fainaru and William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service

ARCATA, Calif. -- Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.

Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.

Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.

The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico's war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.

While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels' revenue -- $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 -- came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Now, to stay competitive, Mexican traffickers are changing their business model to improve their product and streamline delivery. Well-organized Mexican cartels have also moved to increasingly cultivate marijuana on public lands in the United States, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center and local authorities. This strategy gives the Mexicans direct access to U.S. markets, avoids the risk of seizure at the border and reduces transportation costs.

Unlike cocaine, which the traffickers must buy and transport from South America, driving up costs, marijuana has been especially lucrative for the cartels because they control the business all the way from clandestine fields in the Mexican mountains to the wholesale dealers in U.S. cities such as Washington.

"It's pure profit," said Jorge Chabat, an expert on the drug trade at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City.

The exact dimensions of the U.S. marijuana market are unknown. The 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that 14.4 million Americans age 12 and over had used marijuana in the past month. More than 10 percent of the U.S. population reported smoking pot once in the past year.

Mexico produced 35 million pounds of marijuana last year, according to government estimates. On a hidden hilltop field in Mexico's Sinaloa state, reachable by donkey, a pound of pot might earn a farmer $25. The wholesale price for the same pound in Phoenix is $550, and so the Mexican cartels could be selling $20 billion worth of marijuana in the U.S. market each year.

"Marijuana created the drug trafficking organizations you see today. The founding families of the cartels got their start with pot. And marijuana remains a highly profitable business they will fight to protect," said Luis Astorga, a leading authority on the drug cartels at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who grew up in Sinaloa in 1960s and recalls seeing major growers at social functions in the state capital, Culiacan.

Led by California, 13 U.S. states now permit some use of marijuana; Maryland is considering such a law. In many cities, marijuana is one of the lowest priorities for police.

To some authorities, the new laws are essentially licenses to grow money. With a $100 investment in enriched soil and nutrients, almost anyone can cultivate a plant that will produce two pounds of marijuana that can sell for $9,000 in hundreds of medical marijuana clubs or on the street, according to growers.

Mexican Pot Growers Face U.S. Competition

The shifting economics of the marijuana trade suggests that new market forces, as much as law enforcement, can exact a heavy price on Mexico's drug cartels.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

High-end marijuana grown under such special conditions often fetches 10 times the price of poor-quality Mexican pot grown in abandoned cornfields and stored for months in damp conditions that erode its quality further.

"What's happened in the last five years, it's just gotten totally, totally out of hand, as far as a green rush of people coming from all kinds of different states and realizing the kind of money you can make," Jack Nelsen, commander of the Humboldt County Drug Task Force in Northern California. County residents who have a doctor's recommendation can legally grow as many as 99 plants.

Authorities found and destroyed about 8 million marijuana plants in the United States last year, compared with about 3 million plants in 2004. Asked to estimate how much of the overall marijuana crop was being caught in his area, Wayne Hanson, who heads the marijuana unit of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, said: "I would truthfully say we're lucky if we're getting 1 percent."

The Mexican traffickers' illegal use of public lands is a response to the dramatic increase in U.S. production, according to authorities and growers. In the northern woods of California, illegal immigrants hired by well-heeled Mexican "patrons," or bosses, lay miles of plastic pipe and install oscillating sprinkler systems for clandestine fields that produce a cheaper, faster-growing "commercial grade" of marijuana. Eric Sligh, the editor and publisher of Grow magazine in Northern California's Mendocino County, said the Mexicans use a fast-growing variety of marijuana and time their harvests to periods of low domestic production in the United States.

After establishing sophisticated farming networks in California, Washington and Oregon, the Mexican traffickers are shifting operations eastward to Michigan, Arkansas and North Carolina, federal agents say.

Like wily commodity traders, Mexican traffickers time their shipments to exploit growing cycles in the United States. They warehouse tons of pot south of the border to ship north during periods when demand peaks and domestic supplies are scarce, Mexican anti-narcotics officials said.

The traffickers are also engaged in an escalating race to achieve higher levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical ingredient that gives pot its potency. The THC content of Mexican marijuana seized at the southwest border jumped from 4.8 percent in 2003 to 7.3 percent in 2007, according to U.S. officials. Those levels are still less than half that of the highly potent marijuana found in places such as Arcata, where THC content often tops 20 percent.

Although most Mexican marijuana is still grown outdoors, Mexican security forces have begun to discover greenhouse operations, similar to those found in the United States and Canada. A Mexican army unit on routine patrol in Sinaloa arrested two men in a greenhouse the size of an American football field with more than 20,000 marijuana plants inside. The greenhouse was equipped with modern, highly sophisticated refrigeration, heating and lighting systems.

In the national forests and public timberlands of Northern California, Mexican growers shoot at U.S. law enforcement agents with growing frequency and use fertilizers and pesticides that pollute watersheds and start fires. A 90,000-acre blaze in Southern California's Los Padres National Forest in August began on a marijuana farm run by Mexican traffickers, according to authorities. The fields are so inaccessible that helicopters are needed to insert agents, who cut the plants with pruning shears, machetes and even chain saws before airlifting them to be destroyed.

This season, five teams from the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in California have seized 4.2 million plants worth an estimated $1.5 billion, a 576 percent jump since 2004.

Ralph Reyes, chief of operations for Mexico and Central America for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said intelligence suggests that the major cartels are directly behind much of the marijuana growth that is taking place on public lands. "The casual consumer in the U.S. -- the kid or adult that smokes a joint -- will never in their mind associate smoking that joint with the severing of people's heads in Mexico," he said.

But it has been difficult for U.S. authorities to prove the connection, partly because the individuals who cultivate the plants have no idea who they are working for and are able to give little information when arrested.

A Mexican grower in Humboldt County, who recently harvested 800 plants and asked not to be identified, said the pot farmers are usually approached by an anonymous boss, who puts up the money -- sometimes as much as $50,000 -- for the seed, fertilizer, hoses, camping equipment and food needed to live in the woods for three months growing "Maribel," as the Mexicans refer to the plants.

The grower said the patron pays the growers in cash or product, which they can then sell on their own.

"The mountain can eat you up," the grower said. "You're only thinking about the next day. You have to get up at 4 in the morning to water the marijuana, because the helicopter might come by when the sun is up, and if you water too late, he'll see the mist coming off the plants. You do this every day. There's no church on Sunday or anything like that. You have to be focused. You have to give everything for them."