Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Colombian Lawmakers Approve Bill To Legalize Marijuana

Lawmakers in Colombia have advanced a bill to legalize marijuana through its first step in the legislative process.

The First Committee of the House of Representatives approved the measure from Rep. Alejandro Ocampo on Tuesday, sending it to the full chamber for consideration. If approved there, the legislation would then go to the Senate for two additional votes.

“We just approved the regulation of cannabis in the first debate. It’s time to regulate. We’re going to regulate everything from seed to finished product,” Ocampo said in a social media post. “We’re going to keep marijuana off the streets so that it can only be sold in places where you have to show your ID, have a permit, and have a license.”

The bill will “help homeless people, help farmers and indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who have lived with this plant for many years,” he said.

Colombian lawmakers have considered cannabis legalization legislation over multiple recent sessions, with one such proposal to insert the reform into the nation’s constitution falling short at the final stage of the process in 2023.

A separate bill to legalize marijuana advanced through the first stage of the process last year, but then stalled.

President Gustavo Petro, for his part, is supportive of legalizing cannabis—and he’s put pressure on legislators to advance the reform. He said in late 2023 that lawmakers who voted to shelve a legalization bill that year only helped to perpetuate illegal drug trafficking and the violence associated with the unregulated trade.

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San Francisco plots outdoor smoking ban as locals erupt

San Francisco is rolling out a sweeping outdoor smoking ban that would snuff out cigarettes on bar patios and parklets across the city.

The move has ignited outrage among local business owners, who argue the draconian measure is just the latest example of government overreach putting neighborhood bars at risk.

The controversial ordinance, being crafted by Supervisor Myrna Melgar and Dr. John Maa of the San Francisco Marin Medical Society, would require bars and taverns to follow the same smoke-free outdoor regulations already imposed on restaurants under state and local law, KTVU reported.

If passed, customers would no longer be allowed to smoke while enjoying drinks at outdoor bar spaces across the notoriously left-leaning city.

Maa, a surgeon backing the proposal, insisted the crackdown is necessary to protect patrons, workers and pedestrians from secondhand smoke.

“This is to protect the patrons of these establishments and also importantly, the employees and anyone who might be exposed to secondhand smoke,” Maa told the outlet.

He argued San Francisco should put public health ahead of business profits.

But furious bar owners have slammed the proposal as an example of heavy-handed government meddling.

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An AI Shift You Can’t Ignore Is Already Burying One of Medicine’s Most Promising Treatments

A medical substance most people have never heard of is quietly treating autoimmune disease, nerve injury, and even conditions doctors say are “untreatable.”

But those conditions are not untreatable — and DMSO is proving it.

Dr. James Miller says DMSO works so well for so many things that it “seems unbelievable.”

Here’s what it’s helping patients recover from:

• Autoimmune disorders

• Chronic nerve inflammation

• Diabetic neuropathy

• Stroke-related disability

• Debilitating arthritis

• Vaccine injuries

• Chronic pain

• Even cancer

Best of all, it is “extremely safe.”

“It’s like salt—you can hurt someone with too much salt, but it’s really hard. And DMSO is in that category. It’s just very, very safe,” Dr. Miller says.

If you’re wondering, “Why have I never heard of DMSO?” — there’s a reason for that.

The story of DMSO is like ivermectin all over again… except the war against it never stopped.

DMSO occupies a strange and uncomfortable position.

It’s been widely studied, used internationally, and even incorporated into FDA-approved therapies.

Yet in the U.S., it’s largely absent from mainstream medicine—meaning countless patients never even hear about an affordable and potentially effective option that should have been considered.

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Feds Take Back Notorious L.A. Open-Air Drug Market, Humiliating Karen Bass’ Failed Leadership


For years, MacArthur Park has been a glaring symbol of Los Angeles’s decline, an open-air drug market and a haven for crime hiding in plain sight.

Despite repeated denials and false assurances from Democrat officials like Mayor Karen Bass, the truth couldn’t be denied any longer.

Federal law enforcement finally stepped in and did what the city’s so-called leadership refused to do: take back control and clean up one of the most dangerous public spaces in Los Angeles.

Back in July, the park was already infamous for its heavy drug activity, rampant homelessness, and frequent violence.

When federal agents launched an immigration sweep at the time, Bass and then-Rep. Eric Swalwell jumped to condemn the operation, mocking concerns about safety and insisting the park was “family-friendly.”

Anyone who had actually been there or lived nearby knew that claim was laughable.

As locals complained about the needles, overdoses, and nonstop criminal activity, Bass secretly approved a multi-million-dollar “revitalization” project months later, quietly acknowledging the mess she had spent months pretending didn’t exist.

Her “solution,” like most Democrat urban policies, was more about optics than outcomes.

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Spain’s Socialist Government Is Sacrificing Its Own Police to Ruthless Drug Cartels — Another Officer Dead as Spain Becomes Europe’s Weak Link for Drugs and Illegal Migration

Picture Mexican and Colombian cartels using high-speed go-fast boats to flood cocaine and hashish into the U.S. via Florida or California, while U.S. agents chase them in outdated vessels — all while millions of illegal immigrants pour across the border using the same smuggling networks.

Replace the U.S. southern border with Spain’s southern coast, and that’s the crisis unfolding in Europe right now under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government.

Americans familiar with border security debates at home will recognize the pattern: when politicians deprioritize enforcement, criminals and cartels exploit the vacuum.

Today, two Guardia Civil officers were killed in the line of duty off Huelva in Andalusia, southern Spain. Three more agents were injured — one seriously — when their patrol boat collided with a narcolancha (a powerful drug-smuggling speedboat) during a dangerous pursuit.

This tragedy is the direct, predictable outcome of chronic underfunding, outdated equipment, and a policy of weakness that has turned Spain into one of Europe’s softest entry points for both narcotics and illegal immigration.

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Democrat Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger Responds to FBI Raid on Office of Ally State Senate Pro Tem L. Louise Lucas

Democrat Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger on Wednesday afternoon responded to the FBI raid on her friend and ally L Louise Lucas.

The FBI on Wednesday raided the office of Virginia’s Democrat Senate President Pro Tempore L Louise Lucas in connection to a major corruption probe, Fox News reported.

Federal agents served multiple search warrants, approved by a federal judge, at Lucas’ office and the cannabis dispensary next door, Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported.

Lucas is a close ally of Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger.

Fox News reported that Lucas showed up on the scene as the FBI raided her office.

Fox News and The New York Times are reporting that the corruption probe into Lucas was opened by the FBI during the Biden Administration.

Federal officers raided the cannabis dispensary with their weapons drawn.

Three people from the cannabis dispensary were taken into custody.

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300 Federal Agents Descend on LA’s MacArthur Park in Massive Raid Targeting Mexican Drug Cartels 

At least 300 federal agents descended on Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park in a massive drug raid targeting Mexican cartels.

At least 17 people were arrested and 19 kilos of fentanyl were seized.

The Sinaloa cartel brought the fentanyl and meth to the area controlled by the 18th street gang and rival MS-13, according to Fox News reporter Matt Finn.

Fox 11 reported:

Federal and local law enforcement are conducting a massive drug raid at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles Wednesday afternoon.

The raid is spearheaded by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and also involves Los Angeles police, authorities said.

At least 17 people have been arrested, FOX LA confirmed. The raid is part of the Department of Justice’s Free MacArthur Park operation, which aims to address the park’s “open air drug market.”

The operation also included arrests in San Gabriel and Calabasas, authorities said.

Federal authorities say they have recovered 19 kilograms of fentanyl, worth more than $10 million.

The DEA says it’s targeting drug dealers related to cartels.

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Trump’s Killing Spree Isn’t Stopping the Flow of Drugs Into the U.S.

The Pentagon claims that attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have severely curtailed the import of illegal drugs to the United States. And President Donald Trump says this has saved more than 1 million American lives. Experts call these assertions laughable and reporting by The Intercept shows that claims by the White House and War Department are baseless, phony, or both.

“The administration has failed to explain the long-term objectives of this mission or provide any evidence of reduced drug flows into the United States,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said about the campaign on Thursday. “I would ask for a credible answer to this most fundamental question: What is the operation actually meant to accomplish?”

Under Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. military has conducted attacks on 54 so-called drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, killing more than 185 civilians, since September. The latest strike, on April 26 in the Pacific, killed three people. The Trump administration claims its victims are members of at least one of 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name.

Experts in the laws of war, as well as members of Congress from both parties, say the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. These summary killings are a deviation from the standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs, in which law enforcement agencies generally detained suspected drug smugglers and brought them to trial on criminal charges.

“These are extrajudicial executions, or even just murders — something similar to a cop shooting a fleeing suspect in the back when there is no self-defense justification,” said Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. He called the growing death toll “a gross human rights violation.”

While Trump consistently lies about various aspects of the boat strikes, including the illicit narcotics allegedly on the boats and the number of lives supposedly saved by the attacks, the Pentagon has followed suit, using rhetorical sleight of hand and seemingly disingenuous statistics to bolster the claims of their commander-in-chief.

“I can’t imagine how you could come to some of these conclusions regarding illegal smuggling and drug overdose deaths based on the facts as we know them,” said retired Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, the former commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, who oversaw drug-interdiction operations in the Southeast U.S. and the Caribbean Basin.

The Pentagon and White House for months failed to respond to detailed questions from The Intercept on the boat strike campaign.

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Rare Survivors of Pacific Boat Strikes Allege U.S. Forces Kidnapped and Tortured Them

The extraordinary story you’re about to read, by Camila Lourdes Galarza, is a dark look into what it’s like to live and die on the other side of U.S. headlines. As we expand deeper into reporting on South and Central America, particularly with the hiring of our Latin America bureau chief José Luis Granados Ceja, this is the kind of journalism we hope to be bringing you more of. (Granados Ceja just returned from a reporting trip to Cuba; watch him discuss the situation there on Breaking Points.)

The last time Roxanna Mero heard from her husband Carlos was January 19. Calling from sea on an emergency line, he said an “American aircraft, two drones, and a blue patrol ship” had been circling La Fiorella, the Ecuadorian fishing boat he captained. The presence of an airplane worried him, given that Trump’s extrajudicial airstrikes across the Pacific and Caribbean have killed more than 170 people in 6 months, but a local coast guard had already inspected the vessel, found nothing and cleared them to continue.

The next day, the boat went up in smoke. The eight fishermen aboard have not been seen since.

Three independent accounts from relatives of the missing crew assert that eyewitnesses, on a nearby raft at the time of the incident, saw La Fiorella engulfed in flames. “They’ve been threatened not to speak to the press. They’re scared for their lives,” said Angelica Lourdes Mero, whose son and spouse are among the disappeared men.

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Small-Town Virginia Mayor Arrested for Showing Up Drunk to Train Derailment

A small-town Virginia mayor was arrested this week after he allegedly showed up intoxicated at the scene of a train derailment.

The derailment and arrest happened this past Tuesday near the West Virginia border, where emergency crews were responding to a Norfolk Southern derailment.

According to WSLS-TV, Rich Creek Mayor Paul Morrison was taken into custody at the scene.

Jail records showed the 57-year-old was arrested by deputies from the Giles County Sheriff’s Office on a public intoxication charge.

Authorities have not released further details about what led directly to the arrest.

Morrison was later released on his own recognizance.

According to the New York Post, Morrison was cuffed and booked after allegedly arriving inebriated at the derailment scene.

The derailment itself involved a train that spilled soybean oil into the Bluestone River.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection said the oil was not hazardous.

Morrison was elected mayor this past November through a write-in campaign.

He won 77 out of 106 votes cast in the town of roughly 700 residents, according to WSLS.

Morrison issued an apology for the arrest on Thursday.

“To my Family, the First Responders, the Town’s Employees, Town Council and the residents of Rich Creek, I would like to offer apologies for my state and any actions on 04/28 at the railroad incident,” the mayor said.

He added that he regretted “any inconvenience as well as embarrassment this may have caused.”

“I am truly sorry to have let you down and can assure you that nothing like this will happen again,” Morrison said.

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