Category Archives: War On Drugs

The 25-page report Killed in Crossfire: Allegations of Extrajudicial Executions in Bangladesh in the Guise of a War on Drugs reveals extensive allegations of enforced disappearance and evidence fabrication by law-enforcement agencies, with hundreds dying.

Reports of extrajudicial executions in Bangladesh have shot up since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina launched an anti-drugs crackdown on 3 May 2018, with 52 people killed by law-enforcement agencies within just ten days of the announcement. In total, during 2018 there were 466 suspected extrajudicial executions in the country, more than three times the number recorded in 2017.

Instead of launching proper investigations into these killings, the authorities have allegedly sought to fabricate evidence to support their gunfights or crossfire claims. In interviews with Amnesty, supposed witnesses revealed that they had not seen the killings but were asked by the police to provide false statements supporting the police version of the deaths.All the victims of the supposed gunfights appear to have been forcibly disappeared by the police and the Rapid Action Battalion sometimes for up to six weeks prior to their bodies being discovered. When relatives sought information over their whereabouts, the authorities either denied they were in their custody or refused to say where they are.

Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty Internationals Deputy South Asia Director, said:

The war on drugs has led to the death of at least one person per day.

Wherever there has been involvement of the Rapid Action Battalion, it appears they have acted outside of the law the victims were not arrested, let alone put on trial.

The anti-drugs operations have spread terror in some of the countrys poorest neighbourhoods, where people fear the slightest suspicion of being involved in drug abuse may lead to their loved ones being subjected to another alleged extrajudicial execution.

These killings have taken place in the wider context of a blanket prohibition of drugsunder which the government has deliberately punished and violently attacked people, particularly those from the most marginalised communities.

The Bangladeshi authorities must put an end to these killings immediately.

Bangladeshi officials have routinely claimed that the victims of apparent extrajudicial executions were caught up in crossfire, where suspects fired the first shot at the members of law-enforcement agencies, forcing them to resort to lethal force.

Amnesty spoke to supposed witnesses who said that they were involuntarily taken to the crime scene only after the killings had taken place. One witness said:

We did not see anything. They called and took me with them to the location around 5.30am and asked me to witness what they were taking from there. I only saw a motorbike and nothing else.

At least five witnesses interviewed by Amnesty said that they were involuntarily taken to the spot after the incident. They said they could not refuse police requests to act as witnesses, fearing harsh consequences. Security forces took names, signatures, phone numbers and personal details of the witnesses.

Families repeatedly told Amnesty of how their relatives were killed following a gunfight with the Rapid Action Battalion. Rahim* was forcibly disappeared from the home of his in-laws. Eight days later, Rahims corpse was discovered, and the Rapid Action Battalion claimed he had died during a gunfight.

Bablu Mia* was forcibly disappeared from the street by two Rapid Action Battalion officers dressed in plainclothes, according to his brother, who filed a police complaint detailing the disappearance. A month-and-a-half later, the Rapid Action Battalion said that Bablu Mia had been killed in a gunfight.

Suleman*, a 35-year-old-man who lived with his young daughter in a thatched hut, was killed in what police said was a gunfight though his relatives say police attempted to extort money from them for his release from detention. Before his death, Suleman phoned a relative saying that police were demanding 20,000 takas (190) for his release. One of Sulemans family confirmed to Amnesty that he paid this sum, however police then allegedly demanded another 50,000 takas or else they will kill me, Suleman told the relative. Desperate to locate him, relatives went to a police station where they were told he had been transferred to prison. Three or four days after the phone call, they were told Suleman had died in a gunfight. This is how hundreds dying in Bangladesh live out their final hours.

Amnesty is calling on the Bangladesh authorities to carry out a prompt, impartial, independent and effective investigation into the wave of apparent extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations committed by the police and Rapid Action Battalion as part of its ongoing anti-drugs operations.

Amnesty documented a total of seven cases of alleged extrajudicial executions by visiting the locations of the incidents as well as interviewing 40 people including families of the victims, witnesses whose statements were coerced by law- enforcement agencies, people in the neighbourhood where the incidents happened, and human rights activists in Bangladesh.

Names have been changed (indicated by an asterisk) to protect the families of those concerned.

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Why are hundreds dying in the 'war on drugs'? - Open Access Government

Can anyone end the drug war in Mexico, asks The Guardian Weekly on the cover of this weeks magazine. In it, with red paint, appears the legend: 100 deaths a day.

This Wednesday, the British media shared the cover of the magazine that will be published on November 8. It will present an investigation into the roots of the battle against drug trafficking in Mexico.

The war on drugs that has paralyzed hundreds of thousands of Mexican lives for more than a decade shows few signs of slowing. The country witnesses nearly 100 murders related to drug gangs every day and the battle to stop the carnage that has been the ruin of the presidential administrations of Felipe Caldern and Enrique Pea Nieto, the magazines description points out.

It also notes that in the last presidential elections in 2018, President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador pledged to end the long war against the cartels by fighting the root of crime with social policy.

However, the magazine points out, almost 30,000 murders later, little progress has been made and a wave of high-profile attacks has shaken AMLOs government.

The Guardian Weekly will circulate after two events that have marked the national security agenda: the October 17 operation in Culiacn to try to arrest Ovidio Guzmn Lpez, son of capo Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn, and the attack on the LeBarn family in Sonora on Monday.

Regarding the first fact, the federal security secretary, Alfonso Durazo, indicated in various reports after the operation that Guzman Lopez was not formally arrested.

Meanwhile, according to Julin LeBarns statement Monday night, the murder of his relatives was perpetrated in three different attacks on three vehicles in which three women and minors were traveling.

Durazo said Tuesday that the group was traveling from Galeana, Chihuahua, to Bavispe, Sonora, in a convoy of vans when it was attacked by an armed group around 1:00 p.m. local time, he added.

In addition, he indicated that the final balance for the attack of the vans was nine people killed, mostly minors, and six children injured.

The Yucatan TimesNewsroom

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100 Deaths a Day': The Guardian Weekly dedicates its cover to the drug war in Mexico - The Yucatan Times

As he set off into the wilderness under a punishing midday sun, Jesse Barajas clutched an orange-handled machete and the dream of finding his little brother, Jos.

Hes not alive, no. They dont leave people alive, the 62-year-old said as he slalomed through the parched scrubland of tumbleweed and cacti where they had played as kids. Once they take someone they dont let you live.

It has been six months since Jos Barajas was snatched from his home near the US border, for reasons that remain obscure.

I think he was working so hard that he forgot his own safety, you know? Jesse said as he recounted how his 57-year-old brother was dragged from his ranch and joined the ever-swelling ranks of Mexicos desaparecidos now estimated to number at least 40,000 people.

Jesse, the eldest of seven siblings, said US-based relatives had implored Jos to join them north of the border as the cartels tightened their grip on a region notorious for the smuggling of drugs and people.

We told him how big a monster is organised crime. It is a huge monster that nobody knows where it is hiding, he said.

But Jos who had built a successful business making decorative concrete columns for ranches and was in the process of erecting a new house was adamant he would abandon neither his workers nor his homeland.

He was a man that believed in Mexico, said Jesse, who left Mexico as an undocumented migrant aged 14 and is now a US citizen. He chose to stay here because he thought that he could change things, you know?

The disappeared are perhaps the dirtiest secret of Mexicos drug conflict, which has shown no sign of easing since leftist leader Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador took power last December promising a new era of peace.

Caldern sends in the army

Mexicos war on drugs began in late 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Caldern, ordered thousands of troops onto the streets in response to an explosion of horrific violence in his native state of Michoacn.

Caldern hoped to smash the drug cartels with his heavily militarized onslaught but the approach was counter-productive and exacted a catastrophic human toll. As Mexicos military went on the offensive, the body count sky-rocketed to new heights and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, disappeared or killed.

Kingpin strategy

Simultaneously Caldern also began pursuing the so-calledkingpin strategyby which authorities sought to decapitate the cartels by targeting their leaders.

That policy resulted in some high-profile scalps notably Arturo Beltrn Leyva who wasgunned down by Mexican marines in 2009 but also did little to bring peace. In fact, many believe such tactics served only to pulverize the world of organized crime, creating even more violence as new, less predictable factions squabbled for their piece of the pie.

Under Calderns successor, Enrique Pea Nieto, the governments rhetoric on crime softened as Mexico sought to shed its reputation as the headquarters of some the worlds most murderous mafia groups.

But Calderns policies largely survived, with authorities targeting prominent cartel leaders such as Sinaloas Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn.

When El Chapo was arrested in early 2016, Mexicos president bragged: Mission accomplished. But the violence went on. By the time Pea Nieto left office in 2018, Mexico had suffered another record year of murders, with nearly 36,000 people slain.

"Hugs not bullets"

The leftwing populist Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador took power in December, promising a dramatic change in tactics. Lpez Obrador, or Amlo as most call him, vowed to attack the social roots of crime,offering vocational trainingto more than 2.3 million disadvantaged young people at risk of being ensnared by the cartels.

It will be virtually impossible to achieve peace without justice and [social] welfare, Amlo said, promising to slash the murder rate from an average of 89 killings per day with his hugs not bullets doctrine.

Amlo also pledged to chair daily 6am security meetings and create a 60,000 strong "National Guard". But those measures have yet to pay off, with the new security force used mostly to hunt Central American migrants.

Mexico now suffers an average of about 96 murders per day, with nearly 29,000 people killed since Amlo took office.

In August Mexican authorities, who after years of public pressure are beginning to demonstrate greater interest in investigating such crimes, acknowledged over 3,000 clandestine burial sites. More than 500 had been discovered since Lpez Obrador took power.

One as-yet undiscovered grave is thought to guard the remains of Jos Barajas. And one recent morning his family set off to find it, in the company of a government forensic team and a heavily armed federal police escort.

It just sucks not knowing where hes at, said the missing mans 28-year-old son, who is also called Jos and had travelled from California to join the search.

The mission one of the first conducted in conjunction with a newly created state search commission began shortly before noon as searchers formed a human chain to comb a stony heath east of Joss ranch.

Jesse struck out ahead, pausing occasionally to skewer the ground with his machete. After puncturing the earth, he would raise the blades tip to his nose in the hope of detecting the sickly scent that might reveal the whereabouts of his brothers corpse. Other searchers probed soft patches of soil with T-shaped steel rods.

Minutes later, Jesse spotted a black bomber jacket, half buried in the soil. He quickly decided it was not his brothers but photographed the garment with his smartphone: Maybe somebody is looking for somebody with this jacket, huh?

As Jesse marched on shadowed by a rifle-toting police agent the hidden perils that lay behind his brothers disappearance became clear.

Pickup trucks, apparently sent by cartel bosses to monitor the search party, rattled past on the country lane down which Joss abductors fled.

These assholes are halcones, Jesse complained, using the Spanish slang word for lookouts.

Unsettled by their presence, Jesse radioed another nearby search team to request a protective roadblock.

Theyre spying on us watching our movements to see what we are looking for and what we are doing, the police officer said.

Nerves jangled as the hawks continued to circle. The criminals here are very bloody. They are beyond limits, Jesse murmured as the police agent trained his gun on the road.

Twenty tense minutes later, reinforcements arrived. But the drama was not yet over. As Jesse clambered into the open back of a police vehicle two shiny SUVs appeared on the horizon and sped down the sun-cracked asphalt towards the group, before being forced to stop.

As the police cars occupants braced for a gunfight, two men descended from the first SUV and exchanged a few inaudible words with the federal agents before the second car was allowed to pass unmolested.

The identity of its occupants remained a mystery. But as the vehicle raced away it left the unshakable impression that a local crime boss had been inside and a serious confrontation narrowly avoided.

Were in a hostile place and its not Iraq, Jesse said as the team regrouped, heaving a collective sigh of relief.

After a lunch of energy drinks and granola bars, the hunt for Jos resumed.

All we want to do is give him a proper burial, like every human, the missing mans son as a sniffer dog joined the search.

Joss son said relatives had not told his 92-year-old grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimers, what had happened and had yet to fully comprehend it themselves. I guess we have to be OK with not being OK, he said.

Once his father was found, Jos said the family would sell up and cut ties with the land his father had so loved. Its not the same any more, you know what I mean?

Three hours later, nothing had been found but coyote bones and clothes ditched by migrants as they trekked towards the US. Back at his brothers ranch, Jesse busied himself handing out burritos and spicy nachos to the famished searchers.

Fernando Ocegueda, the activist who had organized the mission, insisted searchers should keep faith. Once we spent 15 days searching and found nothing and on the last day we found three bodies.

This kind of activism is about patience, not speed, Ocegueda later added.

Two days later, after a second fruitless hunt near the ranch, the Barajas family headed south to join another search, though this time not for Jos.

Outside a police station in the coastal town of Ensenada they met dozens of mostly female searchers members of a local collectivehoping to find their loved ones.

As the group explored its first location a rocky wasteland behind the towns country club terrible stories of violence, fear and grief emerged.

It was my nephew. They took him 18 days ago, said one thirtysomething woman, who like all of the collectives members asked not to be identified for fear of the cartels.

My brother, said a 15-year-old boy as he pummeled the earth with a shovel. Three weeks.

Another woman said she was seeking her son. In December it will be six years since they disappeared him and Ive been in this fight ever since, she said.

As the minutes and hours ticked by and no bodies were found, bloodshot eyes shed tears of sorrow and there were crossed words of frustration.

Its like looking for a needle in a haystack, Joss son complained after a traipse through the wasteland found only swarms of bees and a poisonous snake.

But as the group moved from the viper-infested wild to a reeking landfill and, finally, a junkyard police suspected had served as a torture centre and burial ground, there was also camaraderie and warmth.

The bleakness of the task was tempered by shared experiences and laughter. Jokes were told. New friendships formed.

We all have the same goal, which is finding our missing ones, said Ocegueda who became a campaigner after his own son was taken, in 2007, and has recovered more than 120 bodies since.

Ocegueda has yet to locate his son but he has found a calling. This is where I like to be because its here Ive found my people, the 62-year-old said. Along the way you make friends and this is the most important thing.

Also present was a woman still grappling with a more recent loss: Joss 49-year-old wife, Irma Bonilla Barajas.

Visibly drained, Irma threw herself into the search operation, determined to bring others closure, even if she had yet to find it herself.

Pausing from her digging, Irma remembered a hardworking family man whose absence was still sinking in. He was so, so intelligent, she said. He used to calculate all the exact measurements for the concrete and his gazebos in his head.

Six months after Jos vanished, Irma voiced bewilderment at the evil minds responsible for snatching so many Mexican lives.

I just cant make sense of it If theyve already killed them, why dont they leave them for us? she wondered. What more harm can they do to them, if they are already dead?

Additional reporting by Jordi Lebrija

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'The disappeared': searching for 40000 missing victims of Mexico's drug wars - The Guardian

VICEs new documentary, Rat Park, is now available on Crave.

Government officials from around Manila frantically stuck pieces of paper with names of various stimulants and street drugs onto a whiteboard. They had only a few minutes to identify the photos of substances from cocaine and weed to alcohol and cigarettes.

No Googling allowed! Ruod Ariete, one of the workshops organizers, bellowed into the microphone. The officials and other community leaders had gathered in this bright conference room in a resort on the outskirts of the Philippines capital late last year for a workshop on harm reduction and drug education.

A VICE crew attended the event during the production of Rat Park, our latest feature documentary that explores the effects of drug policies in the best and worst places in the world to use drugs. In Portugal, where drug use has been decriminalized since 2001, we witnessed one of the most humane approaches to drug policy.

While the Philippines is arguably among the most dangerous places for drug users, advocates are doing what they can to chip away at the stigma and criminalization of drug use. But the task is daunting as the ongoing anti-drug campaign remains popular among the vast majority of the population.

At the workshop in Manila, intense debate ensued among the people representing their home districtsbarangaysas they tried to name each drug.

One woman flipped through a pile of papers with different drug names on her lap: Ecstasy, GHB, tsongki (cannabis), poppers. She muttered that she had never heard of most of these drugs before.

There is no translation for harm reduction in local languages

If this one is fentanyl, whats that one? asked another woman, holding up two different photos.

If you really dont know, just guess, Ariete said.

These 50 or so barangay representatives had come together for the workshop hosted by NoBox Philippines, a local non-profit, to learn about harm reduction, a framework of strategies that helps curb harmful effects of substance abuse, amid the countrys bloody drug war.

But harm reduction is a largely unknown concept across the Philippines, where there isnt even a translation for the phrase in local languages.

Since Duterte came to power in 2016, an estimated 30,000 people have been killed by police or vigilantes for alleged involvement with illicit substances in the name of turning the Philippines into a drug-free nation. Thousands more have been placed on government watchlists or forced into drug treatment.

Since Duterte came to power in 2016, an estimated 30,000 people have been killed for alleged involvement with drugs. Screenshot courtesy of "Rat Park"

While the government claims its tactics will reduce crime and curb substance use, human rights advocates have decried the extrajudicial killings and violence as unjust and an excuse to target poor and vulnerable communities, as well as others perceived as threats to the government, such as human rights defenders and journalists.

This week, Duterte appointed his main political opponent, Vice President Leni Robredo, as his drug czar following harsh comments she made about his anti-drug crusade, that drug use should be viewed largely through a health and social lens. She is expected to respond to the appointment on Wednesday, but her spokesperson has described it as mere theatre.

These workshop participants, elected officials representing a tiny fraction of the more than 42,000 barangays in the Philippines, are responsible for the health and safety of their communities, while at the same time abiding by Dutertes anti-drug campaign thats still widely supported by most people in the country.

For most of them, this workshop was their first time openly discussing drug use and drug policies without fear of reprisals.

Leaders immersed themselves in the tenets of harm reduction: meeting people who use drugs where theyre at and making them feel safe to access health servicesregardless of whether or not they continue to use.

Classifying drugs at a harm reduction workshop in Manila.

The workshops drug-naming game, called The Wonderful World of Drugs, served as a palate cleanser in between the more serious discussions tackled throughout the day around stigma, addiction, and the effects of drug criminalization.

One of the only images on the whiteboard the groups seemed to agree on was the crystals of shabu, slang for the cheap methamphetamine that is one of the most common drugs in the Philippines and has become a particular target of the police.

Somebody [can] be using shabu because it helps him function. Why? It keeps you alert, awake for a longer periods, another workshop facilitator told the group.

So they can drive for longer periods of time, thus they can earn more in their taxi job. And it also suppresses appetite, so you dont even have to stop to eat.

The groups next task was to categorize the different drugs.

Its up to you on how you will group them, Ariete instructed.

Shabu, ecstasy, LSD, they all belong together, I think because theyre all chemicals, a woman on one team stated, looking confused.

The ecstasy, is that snorted?

Ariete assured her there are no bad questions.

Another woman stood up and addressed Ariete. To be honest, it was hard for us to classify them because some were new to us, and we really werent familiar [with them].

Thank you for being honest, Ariete said with a laugh. Because today we learned that we should always be honest.

Inez Feria, the founder of NoBox who organizes the workshops, exudes warmth even when she talks about the death and destruction stemming from Dutertes drug war. She always steers the conversation back to how shes optimistic about the future.

Ive actually had someone say how the Philippines is hopeless and I said, No, its not, Feria said in an interview at the NoBox headquarters in Quezon City.

She refrains from even referring to Dutertes drug policies as a war.

That legitimizes what it is, she said. What were trying to do is get away from that conversation of it being a war.

Feria initially helped run a drug rehabilitation centre. But in 2014, she rethought the whole thing, and turned her efforts toward harm reduction research and advocacy.

NoBox founder Inez Feria. Photo courtesy of NoBox

The office bookshelves hold multiple copies of the book High Price by American neuroscientist Carl Hart, head of psychology at New York Citys Columbia University.

Hes definitely one of my heroes, Feria said looking up at a framed photo of Hart hanging on the wall.

Hart, renowned for debunking myths around drugs such as methamphetamine and crack, gave a speech in Manila in 2017 in which he criticized Dutertes drug policies. He also disputed the claim that meth shrinks the brain and causes violent behaviour.

Duterte swiftly condemned Hart, calling him a son of a bitch who has gone crazy, according to local media reports. Hart then received death threats for his remarks, and fled the country.

In the Philippines, people will pay anywhere from $100 to $500 to kill people, Hart told reporters at the time. I had to take it seriously.

This hostile climate has made it difficult to discuss harm reduction openlylet alone convince government officials of its merit. But as the death toll has reached into the thousands, Feria says many Filipino people have reached a tipping point.

Over the last year, Feria has seen an increase in requests from government officials and members of the public for more information about harm reduction. This level of interest did not exist prior to the Duterte administration.

Some Filipino politicians are even attempting to push through two recent pieces of legislation that, if passed, would create better support services for people with drug addiction.

The Public Health Intervention For Drug Use Act, filed in the lower house of Congress in 2017, states that people with drug addiction are better served through the healthcare system and not the criminal justice system.

The other bill, dubbed the Harm Reduction Act, was filed in the Senate around the same time. If passed, it would establish a national centre and agency dedicated to harm reduction and, extraordinarily, it would allow for those charged with low-level possession to be diverted through the healthcare system. Further, it would prohibit discriminatory drug-related interventions and practices.

Both pieces of legislation sit in procedural limbo, and its unclear when or if they will be implemented.

But its efforts like this, Feria says, that could change the way law enforcement views drug use, whoever is president.

People are now more awake to the truth. People wont just accept this way of doing things, Feria said.

Back at the workshop, participants sat in a circle around Feria as she explained how if people fear the threat of being arrested, then the government services being offered cannot be effective.

Feria said that rehaboften snatching someone and putting them in a centreand abstinence are not always the answers for people with problematic drug use.

She took a few steps toward a woman seated on her left. Maybe you know a lot of people that use but didnt go to rehab, she said. Do you want to share?

"The truth is he's not an addict. He's a victim of the system"

The woman introduced herself as Crisanta Gatlabayan, a pastor and councillor for a barangay in Antipolo. Gatlabayan said it was her second time attending one of these seminars.

My partner became an addict, she said carefully in Tagalog as she locked eyes with those around her. You can talk about me behind my back if you want.

Members of the Gatlabayan family hold high positions in government. She said she used to be afraid of how her husbands addiction would affect their reputation. And, as a government official herself, she had to choose between her husband and her duties.

In the end, it was the principles of harm reduction that changed the way she thought about her husbands drug use. Instead of placing him in rehab, she and her family supported him.

He doesnt need to be jailed, nor be placed in rehab. Because the truth is hes not an addict, she said. Hes a victim of the system.

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Saving Lives Is Dangerous in the Philippines' Bloody Drug War - VICE

In 2011, the United States ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, became the first American ambassador forced to resign. A series of cables sent by Mr. Pascual to Washington, and published by WikiLeaks, revealed that when the American authorities detected the location of a high-value target, they were made to choose between several unpalatable alternatives: Notify the Mexican Army, which might tip off the target and was risk-averse; notify the federal police, which was essentially paralyzed; or notify the United States-trained Navy, which was effective but exceedingly violent.

This conundrum was often resolved by embedding American agents in the teams going after kingpins, and sharing intelligence only with Mexican forces highly vetted by the Americans beforehand.

One possible explanation for the humiliating defeat suffered by the Mexican military and President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador last week in Culiacn, Sinaloa, where government forces caught and then released a major drug lord, may lie in these precedents. There is no proof that the American authorities located Ovidio Guzmn Lpez, known as little Chapo or Chapito, but if so, it would follow a pattern.

His father, the drug lord known as El Chapo, Joaqun Guzmn Loera, was captured twice thanks to Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence. As were other high-value targets like Edgar Valdez-Villareal, known as La Barbie, arrested in 2010, and Arturo Beltrn Leyva, killed in 2009.

These factors may well have contributed to an improvised, sloppy, weak and ultimately catastrophic raid meant to nab El Chapos son, whose extradition to the United States had been requested by Washington.

After hundreds of Sinaloa cartel gunmen, or sicarios, closed off the city, attacked key sites and threatened to kill numerous hostages, Mr. Lpez Obrador had no choice but to free Mr. Guzmn Lpez. The press and social media in Mexico are rife with reports of the armys disgust with Mr. Lpez Obradors decision to let Mr. Guzmn Lpez go. But why go after him in the first place?

A possible theory could be that Mr. Guzmn Lpez was located by the D.E.A., and their Mexican counterparts were reluctant to detain him. Mr. Lpez Obrador stated months ago that he had abandoned the widely criticized United States-backed kingpin strategy of focusing on drug lords: 12 years of that strategy had only brought more violence and failed to curtail the size, power and ferocity of the cartels.

The battle of Culiacn illustrates that the Sinaloa cartel is no weaker today than before the war on drugs began. Perhaps the Mexican authorities who received the American tip-off understood that if they didnt nab Mr. Guzmn Lpez, the Americans would out them as complicit and so opted to proceed halfheartedly and disastrously. With the revised North American trade pact, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, stuck in Congress, Mr. Lpez Obradors may have felt coerced to act.

Normally, when the authorities go after high-value targets, they do so with overwhelming force. But just 35 troops were deployed to arrest Mr. Guzmn Lpez. Mexican forces were outmatched and quickly overtaken. The city was not sealed off by the government forces and there were no American Black Hawks to back them up. Only the Guzmn forces succeeded in bringing the city to a violent halt.

Its no wonder the Sinaloa cartel outnumbered federal forces last Friday in Culiacn. The Mexican military and the new National Guard may well have been too busy hunting Central American migrants along the border between the United States and Mexico. More than 20,000 troops have been deployed to the countrys borders to stem the flow of migrants since this summer. At any given time, the total number of active troops oscillates between 50,000 to 60,000. Nearly half the force available to the government has been channeled to migration-policing duties.

Mr. Lpez Obrador has not clearly outlined what to do with his predecessors drug wars, which have claimed more than 250,000 Mexican lives since 2007, and left more than 40,000 missing. During the campaign he called for an end to the drug war, and said he would send the military back to the barracks. As president-elect, he vowed to create a National Guard made up mostly of former army, navy and federal police troops, newly trained and better paid and pledged to legalize some drugs. Then he declared that the legalization of marijuana was not on the agenda, to his supporters dismay. He disowned the kingpin strategy, only to pursue it with El Chapos sons.

As a result of this erratic approach, violence has grown in Mexico since Mr. Lpez Obrador took office last December, reaching the highest recorded totals in Mexican history. Days before the battle of Culiacn, 14 policemen were massacred in the town of Aguililla, in the state of Michoacn, and 15 people were killed by the army in Tepochica, in the state of Guerrero. Mexico City has seen growing levels of crime, from holdups in Louis Vuitton shops to shootouts in poorer neighborhoods. The government has lost control of the situation.

Mr. Lpez Obrador had set a reasonable course until Culiacn. The war on drugs was no longer front and center on the Mexican agenda while American involvement had diminished. He is right to focus on reducing poverty and inequality, raising salaries and cash transfers, and encouraging firms to hire the young unemployed no longer in school, though Mexicans may not feel any relief in the short term.

He should continue on this course, ignore the Americans and look the other way when drug shipments flow to the United States. What is the logic of sending the army to burn marijuana fields in Sinaloa if cannabis is legal for recreational use in California? Mr. Lpez Obrador should clearly advise the D.E.A. and President Trump that the kingpin strategy has been discarded, that embedded American agents will no longer be allowed and that only he will decide if and when drug lords like El Chapos sons will be persecuted.

He should never find himself again in a situation where the only way out is the humiliating release of criminals and negotiating with terrorists.

Jorge G. Castaeda, Mexicos foreign minister from 2000 to 2003, is a professor at New York University and a contributing opinion writer.

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The Bigger Story Behind the Humiliating Release of El Chapos Son - The New York Times

With November elections less than two weeks away, the three candidates in the Campbell County sheriffs race each are hoping to replace retiring Sheriff Steve Hutcherson. Hutcherson announced in January he would not seek reelection after two terms as sheriff.

Among the candidates is Campbell County sheriffs office Captain Dwayne Wade, who has 25 years of service in the sheriffs office. Currently overseeing the field division, Wade said one of his strengths is his experience throughout the entire department serving as deputy, investigator, with the narcotics division and as captain over various departments.

He said he has a understanding of the inner workings of the sheriffs seat, from day-to-day operations to finance and budgeting.

Wade cited the drug epidemic as one of the biggest issues in the county. In order to combat drug trade, he said the office has to be proactive rather than reactive. Having worked narcotics for about 10 years on federal and state levels, Wade said they need to combat the issue on every level and be aware of the severity of the consequences it has in the community.

Other priorities include retaining officers through adequate salaries. A high turnover rate of deputies in Campbell County often is attributed to salaries that are not competitive with positions at other law enforcement agencies in the area.

The average starting pay for a new deputy without any previous experience in the Lynchburg area is about $34,000. In comparison, new troopers with the Virginia State Police make an annual salary of about $44,000 and new Lynchburg police officers make nearly $38,000.

Wade also hopes to continue enforcing safety in Campbell County schools.

This is my home; this is where my family has been my whole life, Wade said. Ive dedicated my life and career here.

Sgt. Terry Cook, a Campbell County Sheriffs deputy, also is running for the open seat. With 30 years of experience at the office, Cook also said he worked his way through the ranks, and is deeply connected with the Campbell County community.

Like Wade, he listed his primary priority as targeting drugs in the county, both through working closely with other agencies in Central Virginia and getting the department more deeply involved throughout the community.

He also prioritized deputy pay, keeping school resource officers in Campbell schools and addressing mental health issues in the county through continued work in programs like Project Lifesaver a rapid response program aiding victims of Alzheimers Disease and similar disorders.

My motto is being fair to the employees and fair to the public, Cook said. I want a more progressive department that gets out there in the community.

The third candidate is Whit Clark III, a retired Lynchburg police officer and current investigator with the Campbell County Sheriffs Office. He retired from the Lynchburg Police Department as a captain after 32 years and has worked with the Campbell Sheriffs Office for four years. With more than 25 years of leadership experience, Clark said he has worked in almost every facet of law enforcement.

He also listed addressing drug problems in the county and all across Central Virginia as a priority, and said he would continue to enforce present efforts to combat the problem, maintain relationships and partnerships with other jurisdictions and bring a K-9 program back to the department. The dogs would serve a dual purpose, said Clark both to track narcotics and to locate lost persons.

Other priorities include maintaining partnerships with the schools and increasing community engagement. By enhancing community policing, Clark said they could improve relationships with churches and businesses, and offer programming on things such as fraud prevention and personal safety to maintain a constant presence.

Clark also hopes to create a community advisory board with representatives from across the county in order to meet and listen to citizens.

If were doing all the talking, we arent learning anything, Clark said.

He also named deputy pay raises as a focal point of his campaign, but said retention was about more than salaries.

Do the deputies feel valued? Do the deputies feel like they have a voice? Are they being listened to? Clark said. When you talk about retention, you have to look at the global picture.

Sarah Honosky covers Appomattox and Campbell counties at The News & Advance. Reach her at (434) 385-5556.

Sarah Honosky covers Appomattox and Campbell counties at The News & Advance. Reach her at (434) 385-5556.

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War on drugs, deputy pay among priorities for Campbell sheriff's race - Lynchburg News and Advance

It is not our search for pleasure that is so damaging to the environment, but corporal greed, social injustice, and inequality.

You cant call yourself a climate change activist if youre doing coke, says Dan Burkitt inhis opinion piecefor the Metro. MDMA is killing trees, says avideoon VICE. It seems the idea that drug users should be blamed and shamed for destroying the planet is a very virulent one. The environmental damage these people refer to is real and it is related to the production of substances many people use, such as cocaine or MDMA. However, if you have a closer look at the arguments, you will see that it is not people who use these substances who should be blamed but governments who keep the production of these drugs unregulated.

In the early 20th century the coca leaf was a legal agricultural commodity and cocaine was a legal substance widely used in medicine. The German pharmaceutical company, Merck, imported coca leaf and crude cocaine paste from South America to produce hundreds of kilos of cocaine in its laboratories in Frankfurt. An Italian entrepreneur, Angelo Mariani, invented a popular beverage called Vin Mariani, containing low levels of alcohol and cocaine. He also imported coca leaf from Peru and produced thousands of bottles in his factory in Neuilly, France.

What makes this period different from today is that the whole process of cocaine production was legal and regulated. Even though there were no laws protecting the environment at that time, and people were not even aware of the long term damage they did to nature, the production of cocaine was not nearly as damaging as it is today. That is because neither farmers of coca leaf, nor laboratories producing cocaine had to hide from the authorities. They could cultivate coca bushes in agricultural areas, they did not need to move to the heart of the rainforest to avoid eradication. What is more, cocaine itself was rarely produced in Latin America at all: the raw product itself could be directly shipped to Europe, where it was produced in a supervised environment, in a professional way.

No deforestation by illegal laboratories, no dangerous chemicals poisoning the soil of the rainforest. And beyond environmental damage, no landmines protecting the laboratories and killings civilians. No dirty money going to organised criminals and terrorists, no violence fuelled by the illegal cocaine trade, no billions of dollars spent on interdiction and eradication.

The same applies to other drugs, such as MDMA, which is often produced in illegal laboratories in Western Europe, with dangerous drug waste being disposed of in forests. Here, again, what is really damaging is that the whole process is unregulated and is controlled by criminals who dont give a shit about the collateral damage they do to nature.

The production of these substances is not inherently and necessarily so damaging to the environment as it is today. These drugs could be produced in a sustainable way, following environmental regulations and security rules.

It is time to stop blaming and shaming drug users for the damage caused by the war on drugs. What is more, it is time to stop believing that consumer shaming itself is an effective method to protect the environment. Yes, we need to change the way we live. But expecting that simply changing our behaviour as consumers will save the planet is a myth. Without making substantial changes in our economic and political systems, without putting peoples health and wellbeing before (legal and illegal) profits, there is no chance we can save humankind.

We all need to sacrifice personal pleasure in order to do our bit for the planet, says Dan Burkitt. I disagree. Humans are pleasure-seeking creatures and it is not our search for joy that is so damaging to the environment but corporate greed, social injustice, and inequality.

This article was originally published by Drug Reporter, the drug policy website of theRights Reporter Foundation. Read the original article here.

* Pter Srosi is Editor in Chief of Drug Reporter.

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Drug Users are not Damaging the Environment, the War on Drugs is - TalkingDrugs

The talk of drug decriminalization has finally started to circulate around American political discourse. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has introduced a mild stance in his platform, and Oregon Gov. Kate Browns seminal legislation has laid the tracks for a complete drug decriminalization by November 2020.

A major concern from opponents is that a more liberal approach to drugs would create more addicts that would pervade society, eventually leading to the moral rot of the country. The simple truth is that most people arent addicts, and the answer to those who are is for them to get help. Humans have been using drugs for thousands of years, and the U.S. is the worlds largest consumer.

Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 to help reduce the rising HIV rate, and its worked. Socialist president Jorge Sampaio took a pragmatic approach and decided to help addicts get sober instead of locking them in cages. Why should it be a crime to do what you want with your body as long as you arent hurting anybody else?

This argument is no different than Roe v. Wade, which was supported by the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. To put it tersely, the Ninth Amendment gives one the right to do things that arent specifically mentioned in the written laws. For instance, I have a right to eat chicken because nowhere does it say that I cant eat chicken. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, after defining citizenship, says:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This country was founded on the repudiation of government interference in personal affairs. Not only is it a human right for one to do what they want to their bodies, decriminalizing all drugs and completely legalizing others would unclog our overcrowded prison population and eradicate the ruthless Mexican drug cartels.

The U.S. only makes up 5% of the worlds population, yet it incarcerates almost a quarter of the worlds prison population, with most of the inmates being nonviolent drug offenders. The government annually spends millions of taxpayer dollars to enforce prohibition on this failed war on drugs and propping up private prisons, a morally repugnant and racist business model in which funding is contingent on the number of people that remain incarcerated. If drugs such as marijuana and cocaine were legally regulated businesses, there would be significant tax revenue coming in instead of spending it on violating human rights.

The drug cartels would also suffer immensely from this. Any time something is made illegal that people want, an invariable black market is created in order to supply the demand. The Mexican government estimates that each month the Sinaloa cartel alone pushes 10,000 tons of marijuana and two tons of cocaine across the U.S. border.

Federally legalizing marijuana and, at the very least, decriminalizing cocaine would be enough to kneecap the cartels. A complete decriminalization would eradicate them almost completely. Domestic disputes involving drug deals would also more likely be settled in a courtroom instead of on the streets.

Decriminalization would also facilitate research regarding psilocybin mushrooms, which has shown immensely positive results in combating depression and PTSD. Psilocybin has also been shown to galvanize creativity and heighten ones senses to the point where microdosing has become an open secret in Silicon Valley.

There has been a proliferation of drug usage over the past five decades despite an ongoing war. The U.S. has been down this road before with the prohibition of alcohol, yet we cant seem to accept the same failed results this time around. Not only would decriminalizing all drugs free up courtrooms and jail cells, it would expand peoples right to autonomy. Its time to end the drug war.

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Miller: End the drug war | Opinion - Oregon Daily Emerald

Last Monday, a drug cartel killed 13 policemen in the state of Michoacn. The following day, on the 15th, a shootout in Guerrero left 15 people dead, including a police officer. On the 17th, a violent gun battle erupted this time in Sinaloa between cartel gunmen and Mexican security forces, who briefly captured one of El Chapo Guzmans son, only to release him immediately to avoid more violence.

This latest wave of terror in Mexico reminded me of something President Donald Trump said last month at a rally in New Mexico that we Hispanics understand the drug crisis better than other people. At the whole center of this crisis is the drugs that are pouring in, and you understand that when other people dont understand it.

Hes right about Hispanics understanding the drug crisis better than others, but not for the reasons he claims.

What we Hispanics understand is that the war on drugs has failed on both sides of the border. What we understand is that Hispanic communities in the U.S. and in Latin America have borne the brunt of U.S. drug-related policies and practices.

What we understand is that the guns the cartels use to kill innocents and intimidate communities come from the U.S. What we understand is that drug addiction in the U.S. is putting billions of dollars into the pockets of cartels, giving them the means to kill and disappear anyone who gets in the way of their profits.

There are plenty of stories about the opioid crisis in the U.S., but few connect the large-scale drug addiction to the never-ending war on drugs fought in Latin America. The U.S. demand for drugs is the reason my hometown in Guerrero is surrounded by poppy fields. It is the reason a port in Michoacn is a key entry point for chemicals used by the cartel to produce synthetic drugs.

The war on drugs in Mexico has been supported by the United States including the Trump administration through the billions of dollars in funding, training of soldiers, and provisions of military aircraft, weapons and vehicles to the Mexican government, according to the Congressional Research Service.

It has turned Mexico into one of the most violent countries in the world. In 2018, there were 35,964 homicides in Mexico, a 12% increase from the year before.

Our lax American gun laws and inadequate gun control have placed weapons of war, such as AR-15s and AK-47s, in the hands of drug traffickers. Seventy percent of guns recovered from criminal activity in Mexico come from the U.S., according to a PBS News report, a country that has produced more than 150 million firearms in the last 33 years.

The drug war has also led to an increase in migration. This year alone, an estimated 508,000 people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have fled their homes and headed north, according to the Congressional Research Service, many seeking refuge from drug-related violence. In August, migration from Mexico surpassed that of Central America. After the descent into further chaos from last weeks violence, there will be even more Mexican families fleeing their homes.

The drug crisis is something that we Hispanics understand because our communities on both sides of the border have suffered from it. In the U.S., most Hispanic families arent dealing with drug cartels and turf wars, but with different sorts of problems. The drug war has increased racial profiling, with Hispanics targeted disproportionately. We, along with blacks, are more likely to be convicted of drug use and possession than white people. Disparities in incarceration rates for drug offenses have led to 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison being black or Latino, according to data gathered by the Drug Policy Alliance. The immigrant community is the most vulnerable, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, with drug violations, however minor, leading to 40,000 deportations a year.

Hispanic Americans, they understand, Trump said at the rally in New Mexico last month. They dont want the criminals coming over the border. They dont want people taking their jobs, they want to have that security, and they want the wall. They want the wall!

But he is wrong. In 2018, a survey from the Pew Hispanic Research Center showed that 75% of Latinos opposed the border wall. We dont want a wall, because we understand, even if he doesnt, that a border wall wont keep drugs from entering the country, since most of the drugs are brought in through U.S. ports of entry. In fiscal year 2019, 210 pounds of fentanyl, 244,377 pounds of marijuana, 11,362 pounds of cocaine, 661 pounds of heroin, and 13,441 pounds of meth were seized at the ports, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In 2016, Americans spent $150 billion on those last four drugs alone, according to RAND Corp.

No border wall will solve this problem. What will stop the influx of drugs is for our political leaders to help put an end, once and for all, to the demand that fuels the supply of drugs in the country. We dont need a wall. We need health care, social and educational policies that work.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, every day, more than 130 people in the United States die as a result of overdosing on opioids. The drug epidemic is a public health crisis that is costing the U.S. billions of dollars a year from loss of productivity, crime and health care costs, but Hispanic communities are paying a higher price on both sides of the border.

Trump said we Hispanics understand the drug crisis better than others, and we do, but for the War on Drugs to finally end, it is crucial that everyone on this side of the border understands it as well, starting with our president.

Reyna Grande is a Mexican author living in the U.S. Her most recent book is A Dream Called Home. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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Hispanics continue to bear the brunt of US drug policies - The Dallas Morning News

CARTEL CHRONICLES is an ongoing series of dispatches from the front lines of the drug war in Latin America.

Ive been in places where theyve hung me up by my legs , covered me in shit and made me eat caldo de oso [a soup made of rotten vegetables]. They think that beating people up and screaming at them that they will die is going to make them stop using drugs, said Enrique Martinez, aged 55, who was addicted to heroin for 35 years in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico.

Before he got off heroin, in the bonafide rehab center called A New Vision that he now helps run, he was interned in one of the thousands of clandestine, unregulated drug treatment centers around the country, known as anexos.

Mexico, currently in the grip of the worst cartel violence since the start of its drug war more than a decade ago, is now also struggling with a growing drug addiction problem. Yet its drug treatment system is in disarray.

With limited and inadequate state resources, the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which took office in December, is leaving many drug users in the hands of an ill-equipped and hellish drug treatment system which has seen many vulnerable users kidnapped, abused, and beaten. Just one in ten private rehab clinics operating in Mexico has official permission to do so from the countrys anti-addiction agency, say experts who work with drug users. Other sources estimate a quarter of rehab clinics are registered .

Drug use generally across Mexico has nearly doubled in recent years, according to the government census on drug consumption. But worryingly this includes a doubling in the use of the addictive stimulant crystal meth, known as cristal in Mexico. Over the last decade, the huge amounts of meth produced in country by Mexicos powerful drug syndicates has begun to diffuse into the wider community, increasingly pushed onto the streets by vendors.

A man shows the heroin and meth he's about to inject. Image: Deborah Bonello

[ Cristal is] a threat because its very accessible and its super addictive, said Gady Zabicky, the head of Mexicos federal anti-addiction agency, CONADIC. But Zabicky admits that there simply arent enough state-funded clinics to tend to Mexicos growing army of addicted drug users. In the state of Guanajuato, where meth use has spiked alongside homicides, demand for treatment for cristal use has increased seven-fold in recent years, according to government figures.

Jose Gomez, a psychiatrist who treats drug users at one of the government centers in Guanajuato, said that they treat around 2,000 people a year, largely for cristal, but that demand far oustrips what they can offer. We need to open more spaces [for drug user treatment]," he told VICE.

So the government outsources its addiction problem to a vast network of private centers for treatment. Some of which are good, but most are either unreliable, shambolic, or dangerous. Government oversight and monitoring of these clinics is minimal. As an example, half of the hundred or so drug users in the New Identity clinic VICE visited in Mexico City had been placed there by Mexicos social services agency, the DIF. One of them was an 11-year-old boy.

The good, registered clinics can charge as much as US$1,500 for the minimum three-month program inmates are put on. But these are for the few. With a lack of free government rehab options, families desperate for help with their addicted loved ones turn to these private clinics, only one in five of which are registered with the authorities, the experts I spoke to estimate. There are some 2,200 clandestine clinics operating around the country, according to Zabicky. But there are likely more: Ruben Diazconti, who works with drug users in Mexico City, told VICE that he thinks in Mexico City alone, there are as many as 1,800.

In recent years, some centers have made efforts to get on the government register and conform to official norms, othersthe anexoshave been driven underground by those pressures. Nearly all of these private centers are run by and employ former drug users.

Patients who are interned in rehab centersboth registered and unregisteredare often kidnapped by employees and held against their will. Their families, meaning well and at their wits end, sign away their freedom. Its very common that people get tricked into thinking theyre going somewhere but instead theyre taken to these centers against their will, said Carlos Zamudio, an independent investigator on drug markets and consumption who wrote a report about drug treatment centers for the Open Society Foundations in in 2016.

Used bottles of nalaxone, the drug that reverses opioid overdoses, in a drug clinic in Prevencasa, Tijuana. Image: Deborah Bonello

Interviews with drug users in Guanajuato, Tijuana, and Mexico City confirmed this is a common practice by both registered and clandestine clinics. Even municipal police are sometimes contracted by families or clinics to take patients to these centers against their will, said users and observers.

I was asleep in the night and they woke me up, said Ceci, 20, who spoke to VICE in the New Identity center in Mexico City. I was super drugged up and it was awful. I didnt want to come and [the people from the center] tied my hands and feet and I was screaming my head off. They carried me out because me parents signed a formI was under 16 at the time.

Ceci started using drugs when she was 13 and has been in and out of clinics for much of her young life. She was most recently interned here for her meth use. This is her fourth stay at this center. This final time she came of her own accord but the other three she says they came for her.

The practice of emotional and physical violence by anexos to cure addiction is commonplace, according to Zamudio. They say that those methods are the only way addicts learn and value their lives, he said. His report estimated that at the time, some 35,000 drug users in Mexico were in centers operating outside of the law.

Another unnamed victim, who Zamudio interviewed for his study, told him: My dad brought me in with lies. He asked me to come along to my uncles house to get some stuff. We went there and some men came over. When they tried to put me in a van, I got pissed and so they tied me up with my feet and hands behind my back.

They tied me up as if I were a slab of pork, said another. They caught me from behind, tied up my hands and feet and [when] I arrived to the group, they put me in a place that they call the morgue...There they checked me and someone tells me to lie down. They tell me this will be your bed, today you will stay here until you sober up. Well, ever since I entered that observation room or morgue as they call it, I could hear people screaming. I would hear them at three in the morning, all the cursing.

Legal or not, rehab centers arent doing the job they set out to doeven the ones with good intentions. People just leave feeling bitter and damaged and start using again, said Martinez in Tijuana.

These clinics have become a decent business for some owners who can manage hundreds of patients at a time, but theyre not solving the problem of addiction. Alfredo Segura, at the New Identity registered rehab center in Mexico City, said he has just a 7% success rate with patients. This is very low compared to the success rates claimed (but rarely proved) by the majority of rehabs, but Segura was being honest about the difficulties of kicking addiction.

Zabicky said the other problem with Mexican rehabs is that the treatment they give is one size fits all, regardless of whether people are coming in for help with alcohol, heroin or cristal use.

But its not just meth that is causing problems among Mexicos increasingly distressed population. In the north of the country, on the U.S.-Mexico border, opioid overdosesrarely recorded in autopsies in Mexicoare on the up.

Mexico has been spared the opioid epidemic sweeping the States. Yet now observers who work with drug users in the cities of Tijuana and Mexicali are detecting fentanyl through tests on white powder, sold as heroin and called China White.

Mexicos cartels started producing fentanyl in clandestine kitchens in states such as Michoacn, Guerrero, Sinaloa and Baja California a couple of years ago, in response to growing demand for the synthetic opioid from users and dealers in the United States. Like with meth, fentanyl is also seeping into Mexicos drug diet, a bi-product of rising heroin use and domestic production of the highly lethal synthetic opioid.

Its with the arrival of 'China White' that we have started to see so many overdoses, said Luis Segovia. He and his colleagues at Prevencasa, a drug harm reduction NGO which runs a needle exchange in the north of Tijuana, have started handing out naloxone spray to users, a medication that reverses opioid overdoses if someone can administer it to a dying person in time.

His colleague Alfonso Chvez does the daily rounds on the blocks close to the center. Down a nearby alley, users cluster together on a curb, some of them nodding in and out of consciousness. Chvez hands them each naloxone, so it is on hand if someone ODs. Chvez chastises Yolanda, a middle aged user, for picking up a dirty needle from the ground and preparing to use it. He says naloxoneknown under the brand Narcan in the U.S.is prohibitively expensive in Mexico. Prevencasa has to rely on international donors, not the Mexican government, to fund its supply.

A two hour drive away, in the border city of Mexicali, heroin user Julio Moreno, 31, told VICE that he tried fentanyl for the first time in September. It made me really stupid, he said, but he liked it because it was so strong and so knowingly uses it. Verter, a community center there that works with drug users, tested the syringe he used to take the drug and it came up positive for fentanyl.

What the government needs to focus on, according to Tania Ramirez, from the influential nonprofit Mexico United Against Crime. is more and better measures of drug use to improve prevention effortsto deal with the risk factors that affect the most vulnerable populations such as children and teenagers.

But the future does not look good for anyone with a drug problem in Mexico. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador cut the funding to nonprofits such as Verter and Prevencasa, who are working on the frontline with vulnerable users, when he took office at the end of last year. The cuts were part of his fight against corruption, arguing that many nonprofits abuse government funds. Experts acknowledge that this can happen, but that the solution is to add a filter to the way money is handed out to prevent it falling into corrupt hands.

Meanwhile, the federal budget cuts have left organizations on the frontline of drug addiction scrambling for the resources to attend to a growing problem.

Follow Deborah Bonello on Twitter.

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Mexicos Other Drug War Is Addiction, and Its Rehabs Are Terrifying - Vice News