Daily Archives: February 11, 2017

Mexican Marines raid the Zetas Photo Credit: Creative Commons/By Borderland Beat Reporter Buggs

Attention deficit disorder isnt usually a welcome presidential attribute, but Mexicans can be thankful that Donald Trump has temporarily shifted his focus away from their country to pick fights instead with Iran, the EU, China, California, and the U.S. news media.

The last time Trump addressed Mexico, right after the election, the peso fell 17 percent. Within days of his inauguration, Trump demanded that Mexico pay for a border wall, prompting cancellation of his planned summit meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto.

As former Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhanlamented, it took only one week of bilateral engagement between the new U.S. administration and Mexico to throw the relationship into a tailspin. That relationship would be better if Trump had stuck to theview he expressedin November 2015: I dont care about Mexico, honestly. I really dont care about Mexico.

Someday soon, however, Trump will rediscover his interest in Mexico, and relations will likely suffer again. But Mexico need not take his abuse lying down. As the buyer of more than aquartertrilliondollars in U.S. exportsthe second largest market in the world for U.S. goodsMexico has some leverage if Trump tries to play rough with tariffs and trade.

And if Trump persists in sending a bill to Mexico City for his wall, Pea should seriously consider sending a bill in return to Washington to pay for the U.S. drug war.

The high cost to Mexico of the U.S. drug war

For years now, Mexico has paid an extraordinarily high price in lives and social disruption for Washingtons insistence that North Americas drug problem be tackled south of the border, where the drugs are grown and transported, rather than primarily in clinics and halfway houses at home to treat the medical and psychological issues of users.

Successive administrations, starting with President Nixon, have demanded ever tougher border controls, aerial spraying programs, and DEA-backed anti-cartel operations in Mexico. All their efforts and sacrifices have been for naught. U.S. residentscurrentlyexport up to $29 billion in cash to Mexican traffickers each year to buy marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin.

Forcing that trade underground has taken a terrible toll on Mexico in terms of violence, corruption, and social upheaval. Since 2006, when President Felipe Caldern ordered his military to join the war on drug traffickers, Mexico has lost about200,000 livesand 30,000 more have disappeared,dwarfingthe civilian death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq over that period.

The majority of them were victims of criminal organizations, but human rights organizations also reportsoaring rates of human rights violations, including torture and killing, committed by security forces.

The2016 Global Peace Index, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace, estimates the total cost of violence in Mexico at $273 billion, or 14 percent of GDP, with no end in sight.Direct fiscal costsof fighting the war on crime were about $32 billion in 2015 alone. Yet the United States has contributed only about $2.5 billion since fiscal 2008 to Mexicos drug war, under the so-called Merida Initiative.

Mexicos pain shows no signs of easing. New York Timesreportedin December that Mexico suffered more than 17,000 homicides in the first 10 months of last year, the highest total since 2012. The relapse in security has unnerved Mexico and led many to wonder whether the country is on the brink of a bloody, all-out war between criminal groups, it said.

Time for an alternative

In his last phone call with Mexican President Pea,Trump reportedly complained, You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with. We are willing to help with that big-league, but they have to be knocked out and you have not done a good job knocking them out. According to one disputed account,Trump threatenedto send U.S. troops south of the border if Mexico doesnt do more to stop the drug problem.

Pea can continue to do Washingtons bidding,ensuring his political demise, or he can challenge Trump by asking why Mexico should fight North Americas drug war on its own soil and at its own expense. If he goes the latter route, hell have plenty of good company.

Former heads of state from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, along with other distinguished members of theGlobal Commission on Drug Policy, have called for normalization of drugseliminating black markets and incentives for violence by legalizing individual possession and cultivation of drugs while instituting public health regulations. They note that such programs have succeeded admirably in Portugal and the Netherlands at reducing both the criminal and public health costs of drug abuse.

The harms created through implementing punitive drug laws cannot be overstated when it comes to both their severity and scope, they assert in their 2016 report, Advancing Drug Policy Reform. Thus, we need new approaches that uphold the principles of human dignity, the right to privacy and the rule of law, and recognize that people will always use drugs. In order to uphold these principles all penalties both criminal and civilmust be abolished for the possession of drugs for personal use.

Support for decriminalization is growing in Mexico, where the supreme court in 2015approvedgrowing and smoking marijuana for personal use. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox nowadvocateslegalizing all drugs over a transition period of up to a decade.

Jorge Castaeda, a former Mexican foreign minister, recentlyopined, Mexico should take advantage of Californias decision to legalize recreational marijuana. Regardless of Mr. Trumps victory, the approval of the proposition in the United States most populous state makes Mexicos war on drugs ridiculous. What is the purpose of sending Mexican soldiers to burn fields, search trucks and look for narco-tunnels if, once our marijuana makes it into California, it can be sold at the local 7-Eleven?

Criticsrightly point out that what works in the Netherlands wont necessarily solve Mexicos problems. Its powerful drug gangs have diversified into a host of other violent criminal enterprises. They control territory, intimidate or corrupt law enforcement, and kill with impunity. Legalizing drug sales wont end their criminal ways, but it could erode their profits and let police focus on universally despised crimes with direct victimsmurder, kidnapping, extortion and the like.

As Mexican journalist Jos Luis Pardo Veirasremarkedlast year, Decriminalizing drug use will not fix a deeply rooted problem in this country, but it will allow Mexicans to differentiate between drugs and the war on drugs, between drug users and drug traffickers. This is the first step in acknowledging that a different approach is possible.

As for Trump, let him build his wall and see if that keeps out all the drugs. If not, maybe by then Mexico will be able to offer some useful advice on how to fight the drug problem not with guns, but with more enlightened policies.

Jonathan Marshall is an independent scholar and journalist.

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Mexico Should Ask Trump to Pay For The Drug War - AlterNet

Trump on Drug War: 'We're Going to be Ruthless ... We Have No Choice' CNSNews.com (CNSNews.com) -- Speaking before a prominent group of police chiefs and sheriffs from across the nation, President Donald Trump said his administration will fight a "ruthless" war against illegal drugs and assist state and local officials in stopping ... and more »

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Trump on Drug War: 'We're Going to be Ruthless ... We Have No Choice' - CNSNews.com

Saturday February 11 2017

Fahim Ali, one of the people undergoing rehabilitation at Kisauni Level Four Hospital, talks to a Nation reporter on February 8, 2017. He wants the government to deal with drug trafficking. PHOTO | LABAN WALLOGA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

It is business as usual at drug dens in Mombasa despite the government's tough talk against traffickers and promise to eradicate the menace.

Hundreds of drug addicts are still camped in some of the notorious dens in the county, with little being done to rehabilitate them, the Saturday Nation can reveal.

A spot check at drug dens in Kisauni, Old Town, Shimanzi and near the Coast General Hospital showed that the addicts have been left to fight for themselves despite assurances by the government to intervene.

The addicts still mill around the areas, injecting themselves with drugs in broad daylight.

According to the National Authority for the Campaign against Drug Abuse (Nacada) and US anti-narcotics Agency, some 96,752 people are addicted to hard drugs, including cocaine and heroin at the Coast, 40,000 of them are students aged between 12 and 17 years.

In August last year during his tour of the Coast, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed immediate crackdown on drugs, dealers and their dens and the rehabilitation of users.

He told local politicians to work with security forces and Nacada to ensure all drug dens are eliminated in the same manner illicit brews were destroyed in Central Kenya and Nairobi.

The President gave them a two-week ultimatum to set up a drug rehabilitation centre at the National Youth Service (NYS).

But six months down the line, nothing has been done.

On Friday, when the Saturday Nation visited the camp, construction of a perimeter wall, which began immediately after the directive for the purpose of securing the camp to ward off bad elements was still incomplete.

The wall is actually not a big problem because it is 90 per cent complete. We are waiting for Nacada to bring equipment and the county to send counsellors and medical personnel, an official at the NYS camp said on condition of anonymity.

'JOHO TARGETED' But speaking in an interview in Mombasa, a director at Nacada, Ms Farida Rashid, said the programme would kick off soon.

Currently we have addicts who are being rehabilitated at the Coast General Hospital, but soon we will open the NYS centre and take in others as planned, she said.

Last week, both Mr Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto reiterated their determination to arrest drug dealers.

But this degenerated into a war of words with Governor Hassan Joho, who claimed that he was being targeted.

The governor on Tuesday said the two leaders were not honest in the fight against drug lords, maintaining that the government was bent on derailing his political career in the pretext of fighting drugs in Mombasa.

He claimed that during the runup to the 2013 General Election, the same narrative was built up, with the view of discrediting him as a leader.

But even as the war of words intensified, those affected have appealed to authorities to come to their aid.

We were told we would be rehabilitated since last year but this is empty talk. We are still suffering. It is not that we like this life but there seems to be nobody to help us, Fahim Ali, a drug user in Frere Town, Kisauni, one of the hardest hit areas, said.

Ms Neema Said, who has been using drugs for more than 10 years, said politicising the matter had made matters worse, adding that those who were interested in being rehabilitated are back in the dens.

Yesterday, members of the civil society added their voice on the matter calling for a sober debate on fight against drug trafficking.

We are doubtful the government will measure up to the task and eradicate the drug menace. We will wait to see if the commitment will go beyond the 2017 election, Suba Churchill, Convener of Civil Society Reference Group, said in Mombasa.

Mr Shahbal said that a senior ODM official was a beneficiary of proceeds from the sale of drugs.

Two Seychelles nationals and two South Africans were arrested.

Trump's initial decree fell afoul of the law.

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Rights agency calls for sober talk in war on drugs - Daily Nation

In a speech before law enforcement leaders this week, President Trump vowed to be ruthless in the fight against drugs that are poisoning our people. Trump's comments represent a sharp departure from the Obama administration, which publicly disavowedthe harsh anti-drug rhetoric of previous decades in an effort to emphasize treatment of drug users overpunishment.

We're going to stop the drugs from pouring in, Trump told the assembled members of the Major Cities Chiefs Association on Wednesday. We're going to stop those drugs from poisoning our youth, from poisoning our people. We're going to be ruthless in that fight. We have no choice. And we're going to take that fight to the drug cartels and work to liberate our communities from their terrible grip of violence.

[In executive actions, President Trump vows crackdown on violent crime. Is America as unsafe as he thinks?]

Aside from the cartels, Trump did not elaborate on who would be at the receiving end of that ruthlessness. In a campaign speech in New Hampshire last October, Trump outlined the drug control policies he supported, including expanded treatment options for drug users and better access to anti-overdose drugs.

He also called for increasing mandatory minimum prison sentences for the most seriousdrug offenders, aggressive prosecution of drug traffickers, and cracking down on shipping loopholes that he said allowed countries such as China to send dangerous drugs to the United States via the Postal Service.

In that speech, Trump also criticized the Obama administration for commuting the sentences of record numbers of high level drug traffickers, many of them kingpins. He said continuing that strategy would amount to turning our streets back over to gangs, drug cartels, and armed career criminals.

This rhetoric is dangerous, disturbing, and dishonest, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in astatement. History has taught us that cracking down on drugs and building walls will not stop the supply or use of drugs. It mostly causes the death and destruction of innocent lives.

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Nearly 80 percent of Americans favor eliminating mandatory minimum drug sentences like the ones Trump called for expanding.

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey showed that Americans strongly prefer treating drug usersoverincarcerating them, 3 to 1. But federal policy has been slow to reflect that preference.

In the past decade, federal focushas shiftedsomewhatfrom supply-side anti-drug policies seizing drug shipments, incarcerating dealers and arresting drug users toward a more demand-side approach that uses substance abuse treatment and prevention programs to stop people from using or becoming addicted to drugs in the first place.

Ruthlessness is a great virtue for a gangster or a warlord, said drug policy expert Mark Kleiman of New York University. Not so useful for the leader of a republic.

Many public health experts agree that the war on drugs was a failure.The thinking behind supply-side drug policies is that by reducing the supply of drugs they become more expensive, and therefore less likely to be used and abused. But a 2013 study in the British Medical Journal found that since 1990, drug prices have decreased while drug purity has increased, making it easier and more affordable than ever to get high.

These findings suggest that expanding efforts at controlling the global illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing, the authors conclude.

From 1991through 2001, when many of these supply-side policies were in full force, the rate of illicit drug use among American teenagers increased sharply. Over the same period, the rate of teen cigarette use fell slightly, and the rate of underage alcohol consumption dropped sharply.

From a public health standpoint, theprimary difference between illicit drugs, alcohol and tobacco is that the latter two substances are legal for adult use.

A number ofexperts believe supply-side drug policies can be effective if used judiciously and in conjunction with other policies.

We overlearned the lesson that supply control doesn't work and failed to apply it to prescription opioids when we should have, Jonathan Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon University said in an interview. He said he believes this contributed to the federal government's inadequate response to pill mills and other criminal excesses in the supply of prescription opioids.

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In Trump's 'ruthless' vow, experts see a return to the days of the drug war - Washington Post