Eideard

The first international drug treaty was signed a century ago this week. So what was the war on drugs like in 1912?

Today it is taken for granted that governments will co-operate in the fight against the heroin and cocaine trade. But 100 years ago, narcotics passed from country to country with minimal interference from the authorities. That all changed with the 1912 International Opium Convention, which committed countries to stopping the trade in opium, morphine and cocaine.

Then, as now, the US stood in the vanguard against narcotics. While the UK’s position is unequivocal today, a century ago it was an unenthusiastic signatory, says Mike Jay, author of Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century.

The real concern a century ago was over alcohol, he argues. “There was a big debate over intoxication as there was concern about the heavy, heavy drinking culture of the 19th Century…”

And opium use was viewed in the mid-19th Century in a very different way from modern beliefs about drug use. It was possible to walk into a chemist and buy not only opium and cocaine, but even arsenic…

“There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new,” wrote Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

But the fashion in drugs was changing from the “downer” of opium to the “upper” of cocaine – hence Arthur Conan Doyle making Sherlock Holmes a cocaine injector…

But in the US, cocaine came to be associated with street gangs, alongside racist propaganda that the drug sent black men insane and put white women at risk…So these domestic concerns helped drive the international agreement in the form of the 1912 treaty. But while it tackled the trade, in the UK at least, the authorities were slow to crack down on individual users…

In reality, there was no “drug scene” in Britain back then, says Jay. What existed was confined to a few streets in Soho and a handful of dealers in Limehouse. And once the drug laws came in banning cocaine and opium, the problem was easily contained by the police…

“The baby boomers were the first generation in history to become real global consumers. People were suddenly going to Morocco to smoke hash, or hitching with lorry drivers who were using amphetamines.”

So the floodgates opened. Where once the authorities were fighting relatively small groups of offenders in a tiny drugs subculture, now they must fight millions of users and powerful international cartels.

RTFA for an understanding of laws and “wars” on drugs in the time when the community of users was small, coppers ruled the streets – instead of gangbangers – and profit hadn’t yet driven drugs into a global economy.

Not that today’s governments seem to be any more capable of understanding changing circumstances.

Taoufik Didi and Marina Gregory, wife #2 – sort of – in 2008 wedding

Home Office lawyers hoped the deportation of foreign criminal Taoufik Didi would be an open-and-shut case. He had been sentenced to three years in prison for selling cocaine to undercover police officers, and so exceeded the criteria for “automatic deportation” under the law.

However, the Moroccan launched a human rights appeal, telling immigration judges he had been in a loving relationship with a British woman, Marina Gregory, for 10 years. He now intended to wed her and start a family.

The judges believed the 47-year-old criminal and, to the disappointment of Home Office officials, granted his appeal under the Human Rights Act – ruling that his “right to private and family life” entitled him to stay on in Britain…

The judges reached their decision despite two surprising admissions made by Didi in court. He told them he already had a wife, who he had married in 1989, and was awaiting a divorce which would free him to remarry. Furthermore, he admitted that he had initially kept his first wife’s existence a secret from Miss Gregory – although he claimed that she had now forgiven his deception.

Now The Sunday Telegraph has established that Didi did not tell the whole truth in the immigration hearing – and that his family life is even more convoluted than the version the judges heard.

In fact, Didi has two “wives”. He committed bigamy by “marrying” Miss Gregory three years ago in an open-air ceremony in Cyprus, while legally wed to his first wife…

Didi came to Britain in 1986 when he was aged 22. Three years later, on May 12, 1989, he married Karen Ann Ridley at the register office in Redbridge, north-east London…Didi was granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain on the basis of that marriage…

He was arrested in 2009 after selling £160 “wraps” of cocaine to undercover police officers on four occasions, and was jailed for three years at Snaresbrook Crown Court in March 2010. The criminal, who has previous convictions for false accounting, criminal damage and perverting the course of justice, served half the sentence and was freed last October.

Apparently, the Home Office will now consider whether or not their kindness has been “abused”. I would say it’s been bloody-well trampled.

In 2008, for the first time in nearly 30 years, more people died of poisoning than in car crashes. Poisoning is now the leading cause of injury death, and 90 percent of poisonings were caused by drugs.

An analysis published last week by the National Center for Health Statistics found that opioid painkillers like morphine, hydrocodone (sold as Vicodin and other brands) and oxycodone (Percocet and other brands) were involved in more than 40 percent of drug poisonings in 2008. These drugs were implicated in more poisoning deaths than heroin or cocaine.

Opioid analgesics accounted for 14,800 of the 36,500 fatal drug poisonings in 2008. About 12,400 people died after taking other kinds of drugs, and for 25 percent of the cases where drugs were listed as a cause of death, no specific drug was mentioned…

Non-Hispanic whites had higher rates of death from drugs than Hispanics, and rates among African-Americans were lower than both.

In 30 states, poisoning is the leading cause of injury death. New Mexico, West Virginia, Alaska, Nevada and Utah have the highest rates in the country…

According to the article, more than five million Americans in 2009-10 reported using pain relievers without a prescription or only for the feeling they caused.

It’s a wonderful life, eh?

Another example of how NOT to dress for a casual stroll through customs

A stunning model proved to be more than meets the eye after she was arrested by Italian police trying to smuggle more than £250,000 of cocaine into the country inside breast and buttock implants.

The 33-year-old woman, identified only by the initials MFM, was held by officers as she tried to distract them with her plunging neckline and tight-fitting outfit at Rome’s Fiumicino airport. But her plan backfired as they were so captivated by her looks they pulled her over for questioning and discovered the drugs when she failed to explain why she had been to South America.

The woman had flown to Rome from Sao Paolo in Brazil and a search by female officers revealed the fake breast and buttock implants she was wearing had also been used to hide 5.5lbs of cocaine…

”She had tried to distract them with a plunging neckline and tight outfit but they stopped her for questioning because she was so alluring and her story about why she was in South America just fell apart.

‘She actually became quite aggressive and was taken away for more detailed questioning by two female officers and that’s when the drugs were found hidden in the plastic breast and buttock implants.

‘The extremely pure cocaine crystals were found moulded into the implants that she was wearing…’

Commenters almost everywhere seem to agree it was a nutty attempt to sneak the drugs through – by making this babe look even more curvaceous. I would think that NOT attracting attention makes more sense than focusing the eyeballs of customs coppers on her bosom and butt.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Soldiers in Mexico have seized $15.3 million in cash, believed to belong to the country’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.

The security forces said they found the money when they searched a car in a well-to do neighbourhood of Tijuana, on the US-Mexico border. They said the money was being taken to a safe house used by Shorty Guzman and his gang, the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

It is the second largest cash seizure since Felipe Calderon became president.

Defence Ministry spokesman Gen Ricardo Trevilla said the find was made during a “surprise operation” in the Cumbres de Juarez neighbourhood of Tijuana, in Baja California state.

He said the soldiers found $15.35m in cash, 3kg of cocaine, four weapons, and jewellery inside the car…

He did not say what led the troops to the cash. No arrests were made.

No arrests were made? No idea who the car belonged to? No search of nearby houses?

Are we to think the drogas drop a car full of cash and coke blocks away from easy access?

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

An 87-year-old Indiana man was arraigned on drug charges in federal court in Detroit on Monday after police found 228 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $2.9 million in his pickup following a routine traffic stop.

A state trooper patrolling Interstate 94 near Ann Arbor pulled over Leo Earl Sharp on Friday for following too closely and executing an improper lane change, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

When the trooper asked Sharp if he could search the truck, the octogenarian refused. So the trooper requested a backup unit with a dog trained to detect bombs and illegal drugs.

…During a subsequent search of the truck bed, troopers found 104 bricks of cocaine stashed in five bags…

Sharp was charged with conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. If convicted, he faces at least 10 years in prison.

This is beginning to give me an idea. Just as young punks often score a break on being convicted of a crime – “Don’t saddle this poor child with a lifetime of shame because of his first mistake” – I wonder if grayhead gangsters might start looking for special dispensation because of age?

BTW – no mention of how a couple hundred pounds of blow got all the way up to Indiana? And only $10,000 bail for a dude trucking around almost $3,000,000 in drugs?

Imagine a vaccine against smoking: People trying to quit would light up a cigarette and feel nothing. Or a vaccine against cocaine, one that would prevent addicts from enjoying the drug’s high.

Though neither is imminent, both are on the drawing board, as are vaccines to combat other addictions. While scientists have historically focused their vaccination efforts on diseases like polio, smallpox and diphtheria — with great success — they are now at work on shots that could one day release people from the grip of substance abuse…

Unlike preventive vaccines — like the familiar ones for mumps, measles and so on — this type of injection would be administered after someone had already succumbed to an addictive drug. For instance, cocaine addicts who had been vaccinated with one of Dr. Kim Janda’s formulations before they snorted cocaine reported feeling like they’d used “dirty coke,” he said. “They felt like they were wasting their money.”

The scientific principle behind Dr. Janda’s vaccines is, as he put it, “simplistically stupid.” Much like vaccines against disease, they introduce a small amount of the foreign substance into the blood, causing the immune system to create antibodies that will attack that substance the next time it appears…

The contrast, he said, is to anti-opiates like Suboxone or methadone that are currently used to treat heroin addiction. Rather than blocking the drug’s effects, they seek to replace the heroin high…

He is quick to caution that taking away someone’s ability to get high off of one drug hardly cures them of their addiction problems. There’s nothing to stop a vaccinated cocaine addict, for example, from turning to methamphetamines.

Like any anti-addiction treatment, his vaccines are simply meant as “a crutch for people wanting to go into abstinence,” Dr. Janda said. “The whole thing with addicts is you have to want to get off the drug, or it’s not going to happen.”

RTFA. Dr. Janda is at least as interesting as his work. He has a sound scientific outlook about his work, about the patients his work could be treating.

I’d say he has a sound analysis about the unlikelihood of his work ever being funded by pharmaceutical companies that want more frequent product usage to keep their pockets full enough to motivate support. His treatment once every six months probably wouldn’t be profitable enough to satisfy corporate medicine.

FBI agents have arrested a Webb County deputy constable on bribery charges.

Eduardo Garcia, 44, was apprehended in Laredo on an indictment alleging he acted as an escort for a federal informant who Garcia thought was a drug smuggler, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Houston.

The indictment alleges that in 2007 and 2008, Garcia, a mental health officer whose duties included driving a prison transport van, escorted loads of cocaine being transported through Laredo by a local trafficker…

But in late 2008, the trafficker who employed Garcia became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and began setting up the deputy, according to the indictment…

If convicted, Garcia, a law enforcement officer since 1993, faces up to 20 years in prison on the three bribery charges and up to five years in prison on one charge of unauthorized access to protected computer information, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston.

Amazing what a career change will do for you. The drug runner got to be a federal employee. The deputy is in line to be a custodial client of the US taxpayer – for up to 20 years.

U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.

The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman and the son of Ismael “Mayo” Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel…Zambada-Niebla claims he was permitted to smuggle drugs from 2004 until his arrest in 2009…

According to the court documents, Mexican lawyer Humberto Loya-Castro, another high-level Sinaloa cartel leader, had his 1995 U.S. drug-trafficking case dismissed in 2008 after serving as an informant for 10 years for the U.S. government…

“Loya himself continued his drug trafficking activities with the knowledge of the United States government without being arrested or prosecuted,” the court documents state.

Just get the same sleazy lawyers that helped Ollie North get beyond his “Drugs for Guns” conviction. The courts will roll over. The DEA, the FBI and the rest will continue corrupt policies untouched.

Federal agents toppled two separate drug rings today run by baggage handlers who allegedly imported marijuana and cocaine from Jamaica and Houston while working at Detroit Metro Airport.

Twelve people — including 10 baggage handlers — were arrested early today in an investigation dubbed “Operation Excess Baggage” and accused of exploiting weaknesses at several airports to run drug-smuggling pipelines since at least 2009.

Complaints filed in federal court in Detroit — where nine defendants were ordered held behind bars until at least Friday — describe intricate drug-smuggling rings that used crude tactics, an exotic locale and employee access to bypass security and transport hundreds of pounds of illegal drugs to Detroit’s streets…

The Jamaica case dates to January 2010 when a federal agent in Jamaica contacted another agent locally about the seizure of about 53 pounds of marijuana discovered inside a suitcase that was about to be placed on Northwest Airlines flight No. 2321 bound for Detroit.

The suitcase had a seemingly legitimate baggage tag bearing the name of an unidentified person who was an unwitting participant in the smuggling attempt, according to court records.

Federal agents let the plane depart for Detroit.

While in the air, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and the Homeland Security Department decided to intercept all baggage once the plane landed in Detroit before baggage handlers could touch them.

Investigators focused on five suitcases. Inside, agents found approximately 35 pounds of cocaine and almost 284 pounds of marijuana, according to court records…

The Jamaica case relied on several handlers in Detroit who were born in Jamaica.

The Houston pipeline used similar methods and operated separately, but simultaneously, according to prosecutors…[It] relied on two baggage handlers who transferred from Detroit to Texas so they could arrange the drug shipments, according to court records.

Not the toughest bit of analytics in the world. What was required was the staff and motivation. The opportunity to catch crooks like this ain’t going away anytime soon.