By MARK STEVENSON (AP) – Aug 21, 2009

MEXICO CITY — Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday — a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government’s grueling battle against drug traffickers.

Prosecutors said the new law sets clear limits that keep Mexico’s corruption-prone police from extorting casual users and offers addicts free treatment to keep growing domestic drug use in check.

“This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty,” said Bernardo Espino del Castillo of the attorney general’s office.

The new law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution.

Espino del Castillo says, in practice, small users almost never did face charges anyway. Under the previous law, the possession of any amount of drugs was punishable by stiff jail sentences, but there was leeway for addicts caught with smaller amounts.

“We couldn’t charge somebody who was in possession of a dose of a drug, there was no way … because the person would claim they were an addict,” he said.

Despite the provisions, police sometimes hauled in suspects and demanded bribes, threatening long jail sentences if people did not pay.

“The bad thing was that it was left up to the discretion of the detective, and it could open the door to corruption or extortion,” Espino del Castillo said.

Anyone caught with drug amounts under the new personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory.

The maximum amount of marijuana for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four joints. The limit is a half gram for cocaine, the equivalent of about 4 “lines.” For other drugs, the limits are 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams for LSD.

Mexico has emphasized the need to differentiate drug addicts and casual users from the violent traffickers whose turf battles have contributed to the deaths of more than 11,000 people since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006.

But one expert saw potential for conflict under the new law.

Javier Oliva, a political scientist at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, said the new law posed “a serious contradiction” for the Calderon administration.

“If they decriminalize drugs it could lead the army, which has been given the task of combating this, to say ‘What are we doing’?” he said.

Officials said the legal changes could help the government focus more on big-time traffickers.

Espino del Castillo said since Calderon took office, there have been over 15,000 police searches related to small-scale drug dealing or possession, with 95,000 people detained — but only 12 to 15 percent of whom were ever charged with anything.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By KEVIN HALL

Updated 9:00 AM PDT, Tue, Sep 15, 2009

Argentina’s Sinapsis design studio has come up with this “After Office Tie” that’ll seamlessly take you from your nine-to-five to your five-’til-last-call. Nothing too fancy here, nor is the bottle opener even hidden. It’s right at the tip of the tie — your coworkers will know you’re ready to party.

The “After Office Tie” is one of 100 shortlisted entries in a contest by Designboom and will be displayed in the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Designboom, via Crunch Gear

For more gadget news, check out DVICE.com.

By R. STICKNEY

Updated 3:01 PM PDT, Mon, Sep 14, 2009

People trying to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S. have used hidden compartments in cars, tractor trailers, boats and even tunnels.

U.S. Border Patrol agents report they confiscated a WaveRunner along the Imperial Beach coastline Saturday night that they believe was used to help two men cross the U.S./Mexico border illegally.

At about 9:20 p.m., an agent reported seeing a watercraft heading north into the U.S. from Mexico. Once the agents arrived at Seacoast Drive they found the abandoned Yamaha WaveRunner but no one else. They searched the area and arrested two men hiding in a bush near the WaveRunner, agents said.

Upon questioning, agents charged one of the arrestees with human smuggling and seized the Yamaha WaveRunner.

Updated 8:45 AM PDT, Tue, Sep 15, 2009

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said today that the worst recession since the Great Depression has probably come to an end.

“The recession is very likely over at this point,” Bernanke said at the Brookings Institution.

Bernanke made the blockbuster announcement and said he is confident Congress will help guard against another financial meltdown of this magnitude with legislation that will help rewrite the U.S. financial playbook because the collapse was “too big a calamity” for the government to ignore.

“I feel quite confident that a comprehensive reform will be forthcoming,” he said.

Updated 8:30 AM PDT, Tue, Sep 15, 2009

Meet the Geriatric Bandits: One has a cane, the other needs an oxygen mask. They’re old enough to be your grandfather. This past week, they’ve both robbed banks. And one is still at large.

On Saturday, a man carrying an inhaler or an oxygen tank robbed the San Diego National Bank in La Jolla. The man, wearing a white beret, argyle sweater and sports coat, walked into the bank on Ivanhoe Avenue with a demand note.  In the picture caught by surveillance cameras, he looks to be in his 70s. An oxygen tube appears to hang from his face.

Investigators don’t know if he was armed, but they do know that he got away with some cash. Just look at him – would you stop him?

Then, two days later, another bank robbery. This time, the target was the Bank of America on El Cajon Blvd in City Heights. A 70-year old man — with cane, mind you — walked into the bank with a note and demanded a large amount of cash.

The bank manager attempted to evacuate the bank and lock the suspect inside, but Geriatric Bandit No. 2 was too crafty. Despite dozens of police cars surrounding the bank, he hobbled out of the bank using a side door and tried to hide on the porch of a home a few blocks away.

Police found him lying on the porch and arrested him — maybe his bright red hawaiian shirt gave him away.

First Published: Sep 15, 2009 7:47 AM PDT

San Diego Reader | Pedicab Wars.

February 25, 2009

» Discuss Article (79 Comments)

Today’s culture warriors have better things to argue about than pot-smoking hippies, yet federal marijuana laws are still stuck in the Nixon-era days when conservatives feared that reefer madness was destroying the minds of America’s youth. Amid that time warp, efforts by California and other states to nudge Washington in the direction of more sensible drug laws have largely been welcome. But whether or not you’re in the camp that thinks marijuana should be legalized, a proposal to regulate and tax its sale as a way of helping to balance California’s budget is an idea whose time has not come.
A bill from Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco — where else?) that would do precisely that was introduced Monday. It would, first, decriminalize the possession and sale of marijuana under state law, and, second, set up a system for regulating and taxing it. The sales and taxation part only happens, though, if the federal government decriminalizes marijuana too, or at least allows states to make their own decisions about the drug.

Ammiano and his supporters argue that the state is losing out on more than $1 billion a year in tax revenues because its biggest cash crop, marijuana, is illegal and therefore not taxable. Further, they argue that by passing the law, the state would send a strong message to Congress and the Obama administration about revisiting federal marijuana policies.
It is almost beyond dispute that the federal laws are unjustified by science or common sense. Under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, cannabis is a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it has no medical use and cannot be prescribed by a physician. The many medical uses of marijuana are well documented, and it is not nearly as addictive or intoxicating as less-restricted Schedule 2 drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. Moreover, the active ingredient in marijuana, THC, can be sold in pill form as a Schedule 3 drug. So what makes the plant so dangerous?
The problem with Ammiano’s bill, AB 390, is that it would only widen the gray area between California and federal laws on medical marijuana. Though the state’s acceptance of medicinal marijuana has brought many public benefits, it also has resulted in even more illicit cultivation in places such as Humboldt County, as well as legal and regulatory chaos. AB 390 would do nothing to increase tax revenues in the absence of federal action, and would probably only further enrich the state’s marijuana black market.

The Obama administration should reexamine the Controlled Substances Act because it’s the right thing to do, not because of an ill-considered taxation scheme from California.

- via LA Times

February 22, 2009

Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges issued a tentative ruling that California must reduce its state prison population by more than 55,000 to relieve intense overcrowding and poor medical and mental health care.
If the order holds, the state will have to figure out how to release prisoners on a scale never before seen.Joan Petersilia, professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine and the author of "When Prisoners Come Home," spoke about the ruling and its potential effects with Opinion page contributor Sara Catania. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Is there a precedent for an early release of this magnitude?
Never on the scale we’re talking about here. The most dramatic example occurred in Illinois in the 1980s, when the state released 1,200 people early.
Did crime increase as a result?

No, but there are crucial differences in the circumstances of the Illinois release and the proposed California release. In Illinois, the total number of prisoners released was a fraction of what we’re looking at for California. The Illinois numbers were low enough that if all the released prisoners were rearrested, it probably wouldn’t affect the state’s overall reported crime rate. Illinois also had some ability to limit releases to lower-level offenders.
Do you think early release can work in California?
I’m in favor of early release at a lesser level. I think we could safely release 15,000 to 18,000 prisoners. That would include very low-level technical parole violators, the elderly and low-level drug offenders. Nearly everyone who has studied this issue recommends removing less serious parole violators from state prisons.
How does the poor economy affect early release?
In two primary ways. First of all, whether you are conservative or liberal, everyone agrees that we don’t want to be spending $46,000 a year to house a prisoner who represents no public safety risk when it takes about $12,000 a year to fund a really good community-based program for that person.
Unfortunately, the services these former prisoners would need revolve primarily around substance-abuse treatment, and those are exactly the programs that are being cut. Limited early release is a good idea, but it could not be happening at a worse time. Just opening up prison doors and releasing 55,000 prisoners with no preparation is harsh to the offender and dangerous to the public.
Is there an early release approach that might mitigate the fallout?
Yes. In 1994, California’s Legislature created the Community-Based Punishment Act. It was never funded, but now people are talking about reactivating it. Under the act, if you’ve got prison-bound parole violators and you’re willing to keep them locally rather than sending them to state prison, you get a kickback from the state to pay for programs to ease their reentry into society. This approach could include short-term incarceration, intensive supervision, house arrest with electronic monitoring, enrollment in a work-release program, day reporting and mandatory substance-abuse treatment.
In our prisons, the overcrowding crisis is caused by parole violators returning to prison. Every year, we send some 70,000 parolees back to prison, about 30,000 of those from L.A. County alone. Most serve two to three months. Everybody knows this revolving door does not protect the public and in fact puts it at greater risk. These are the lower-level people who may have been in drug treatment, may have found a job and housing. When you send them back to prison, you break those connections and destabilize them. A few months later, they’re back on the street and expected to start all over again.
You recommend a far more limited early release than the one being proposed. Is it possible to do the release right with four times as many prisoners than you recommend?
No, not with the way California currently operates its prison and parole system. If we start releasing prisoners in such high numbers, those who are released are bound to include prisoners with lengthy criminal histories and violence in their backgrounds.
The best way we can reduce the risk these more serious prisoners represent is to transfer them from prison to intensive residential reentry facilities, or perhaps to electronic monitoring and house arrest. Once there, parole agents and community providers would need to closely monitor the prisoners’ behavior and try to interest them in rehabilitation and work training. Simply releasing this larger group of prisoners without the necessary housing and services is asking for more crime.
Is anyone talking about how to pay for the community approach, or are already overworked probation and parole officers just going to have bigger caseloads?
There is a lot of discussion going on in Sacramento about how to fund "intermediate sanctions" to be used instead of sending someone back to prison. If a prisoner who violates parole, for example, no longer returns to prison but remains in the community, who is responsible for his surveillance and services? We can’t ignore their parole failures because often those failures are a signal that the parolee is slipping. Other states have used intermediate sanctions, such as those described in the Community-Based Punishment Act. But in order to employ this model, we have to provide money to counties to expand these types of intermediate sanctions. If we can transfer the state prisoner to a community-based program, we save money — and perhaps more important, provide services that might actually help the prisoner stay out of crime in the long run — which, of course, saves even more money.
Even if early release went according to the best possible plan, there will still be the same number of cells and the same level of administration. Will there really be much in the way of savings inside prisons?
No, we won’t see any cost savings immediately. If prisoners are released, the remaining prisoners will simply spread out so as to not be as crowded, thereby satisfying the court’s requirements.
Of the $46,000 we spend a year to house a prisoner in California, $2,500 goes to food and clothing, $9,000 goes to healthcare and $2,000 goes toward education and employment training to prepare the inmate for release. That’s a total of $13,500 per prisoner. More than two-thirds of the cost of housing an inmate in California goes toward security and operations, making the overall cost of housing a prisoner in California the highest in the nation. There are no plans to close prisons any time soon, so the cost of running the prison system will remain rather unchanged for quite some time.
If the early release order is enacted on the scale proposed, there is a risk of a high level of recidivism, which carries a hefty price tag. In the end, will any money be saved?
The key to all of this — the real money — is in the California prisons, to the tune of $10 billion a year. If we’re to solve the state’s prison crisis, we’ve got to figure out how to shift some of that away from state prisons and into local programs. If we don’t, we’re setting the system up for failure.
Without sufficient financial support, we’re going to release these people and they’re going to fail. You’ll wind up with another victim, plus the cost of the prisoner’s reincarceration. If we don’t do this right, all of these people will be back in prison. We will have saved in the short term, but the long-term consequences will be huge.

- via LA Times

Advertisement

US Attorney General Eric Holder on the arrests of drug cartel suspects

A major crackdown on Mexican drug traffuckers operating in the US has led to the arrest of 755 people, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced.

These included 52 people detained on Wednesday in California, Minnesota and Maryland in raids targeting the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

The 21-month operation involved US, Mexican and Canadian authorities.

A 2008 justice department report found Mexican traffuckers were the biggest organised crime threat to the US.

Operation Xcellerator was carried out across the US

Most of the cocaine available in the US is smuggled via the US-Mexican border, while Mexican drug traffuckers control most of the US drug market.

Announcing the arrests, Mr Holder described the cartels as a threat to US national security.

"They are lucrative. They are violent. And they are operated with stunning planning and precision, " he said.

As well as 755 arrests, Operation Xcellerator led to the seizure of :

• money totalling $59.1m (£41.5m)
• 23 tonnes of narcotics, including 12,000 kg cocaine, 7,257 kg of marijuana, 544 kg of methamphetamines and 1.3m Ecstasy pills
• 149 vehicles, three aircraft, 3 maritime vessels
• 169 weapons

"We successfully concluded the largest and hardest hitting operation to ever target the very violent and dangerously powerful Sinaloa drug cartel," said Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

"From Washington to Maine, we have disrupted this cartel’s domestic operations, arresting US cell heads and stripping them of $59m in cash."

She said the investigation had uncovered a "super meth lab that is so sophisticated that we’ve seen none like it anywhere" and drug factory machines able to produce 12,000 ecstasy tablets an hour.

Operation Xcellerator had also disrupted the gang’s operations in Canada, Ms Leonhart said.

US officials say that over the past two years the street price of cocaine has more than doubled and purity fallen.

Turf wars

The Sinaloa cartel is one of four main Mexican drug-traffucking gangs, the others being the Gulf cartel, the Tijuana cartel and the Juarez cartel.

Turf wars led to the deaths of some 6,000 people last year as the traffuckers fought each other and the authorities, and Mexican media say so far this year there have been around 1,000 drug-related murders.

Mexico has deployed some 40,000 troops to tackle the drug gangs

Mr Holder told reporters he was concerned that drug violence from Mexico could spill over to the US.

"The problems that Mexico faces are also problems that we face," he said.

Mr Holder said the Obama administration would push for reinstating a ban on assault weapons.

This has been a long-standing request of the Mexican government which says guns smuggled over the border constitute a major threat to Mexico’s security.

Echoing the growing concern about the drug-related violence in Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a congressional committee on Wednesday it had become one of her top priorities.

"Mexico right now has issues of violence that are of a different degree and level than we’ve ever seen before," she said.

The US Congress has authorised the spending of $1.6bn (£1.1bn) dollars to confront the threat of drug traffucking and organised crime from Mexico and Central America.

So far, $197m (£138m) has been released for military and law enforcement training and equipment in Mexico.

- via BBC