Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Trump has yet to provide Congress hard evidence that targeted boats carried drugs, officials say

The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that alleged drug-smuggling boats targeted by the U.S. military in a series of fatal strikes were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

As bipartisan frustration with the strikes mounts, the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday voted down a war powers resolution that would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes on the cartels.

The military has carried out at least four strikes on boats that the White House said were carrying drugs, including three it said originated from Venezuela. It said 21 people were killed in the strikes.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly about the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs.

The administration has not explained why it has blown up vessels in some cases, while carrying out the typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs at other times, one of the officials said.

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Senate Votes Down Resolution Seeking to Halt Trump’s Use of Military Force Against Cartel Boats

The U.S. Senate has voted against legislation seeking to direct the withdrawal of the U.S. military from hostilities that have not been authorized by Congress.

The proposal was a direct challenge to President Donald Trump’s decision as commander in chief to use military force against drug cartels operating in waters around the United States.

The 48-51 vote on Wednesday was mostly split along party lines, although Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Maine) crossed the floor to support the Democrat-led resolution, while Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) crossed the floor to join the majority of Republicans to reject it.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) sponsored the measure, which was filed under the War Powers Act of 1973.

The resolution bill sought to direct the removal of the United States military from hostilities that Congress has not authorized. The bill came in response to U.S. military hits on four vessels linked to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. U.S. officials said the ships were involved in smuggling drugs into the United States. At least 21 people have been killed in these military operations.

The resolution said that drug trafficking could not be considered an armed attack or an imminent threat justifying military action, and that designating an organization as a foreign terrorist group did not authorize such use of force. It noted the United States retains the right to act in self-defense against an armed attack.

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From trips to treatments: how psychedelics could revolutionise anti-inflammatory medicine

Once synonymous with hippies and hallucinatory experiences, psychedelic drugs are now being explored for their medical potential. The stigma of that era resulted in research being suppressed by drug laws, yet with mental health treatments hitting limits, scientists have returned to this controversial corner of medicine.

Substances like psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) and ayahuasca are now being taken seriously by scientists and doctors, not for the visions they induce, but for the healing potential they possess.

Initially, this focused on treating mental health conditions like depression, where currently prescribed drugs only help a minority of patients. But these investigations have now expanded to include diseases driven by inflammation, which psychedelic drugs may help reduce by calming down the immune system.

In both human cells grown in laboratory dishes and animal studies, psychedelic drugs like DMT, LSD, and a compound called (R)-DOI can block the release of inflammatory molecules called cytokines. These protein molecules fuel conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and even depression, as well as increasing brain damage following traumatic brain injury.

Advantage over steroids

But these drugs have a considerable advantage over typical anti-inflammatory medications like steroid drugs because psychedelics appear to work without suppressing healthy immune function, which is a major problem with steroids.

Significantly, these laboratory findings are beginning to be confirmed in studies in humans. Evidence is growing that psychedelics could hold the key to managing inflammation, one of the body’s central drivers of many chronic diseases, including depression, arthritis and heart conditions.

Take psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. In a study involving 60 healthy participants, just one dose was enough to significantly lower levels of two key inflammatory molecules – TNF-alpha and IL-6 – over the following week.

However, not all studies have shown the same clear results. Some only had a few participants and others were complicated by the fact that some participants had previous drug experience, which could affect the results.

One big challenge with studying psychedelics in medical research is that it’s very hard to hide who got the real drug and who got a placebo. When someone has a strong psychedelic experience, it’s obvious they didn’t just take a sugar pill.

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A single psilocybin dose rapidly reverses chronic pain and depression in mice, study finds

In a stunning breakthrough that challenges the very foundations of chronic pain treatment, researchers have discovered that a single dose of a natural compound can rapidly reverse both physical suffering and the depression that accompanies it.

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania found that psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms, provided lasting relief from chronic pain and depression-like symptoms in mice by calming overactive brain circuits. This research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, offers a radical new pathway for treating the millions who suffer from the intertwined conditions of chronic pain and mental anguish.

For the 50 million Americans living with chronic pain, this discovery represents a beacon of hope beyond the dangerous and often ineffective world of opioid pharmaceuticals. The study reveals that chronic pain does not merely hurt the body but actively rewires the brain, creating a cycle of psychological suffering that intensifies the original physical pain. This vicious cycle has long been exploited by pharmaceutical companies pushing addictive painkillers that fail to address the root cause of the problem.

The research team created two types of lasting pain in mice, some with nerve damage and others with severe inflammation. Both groups developed hypersensitivity to touch and displayed behaviors mirroring profound anxiety and depression in humans. Brain imaging identified the culprit: a region called the anterior cingulate cortex, which processes both the emotional experience of pain and regulates mood, had essentially malfunctioned. Nerve cells in this area were firing 40% more than normal and refused to calm down.

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The Monroe Doctrine is back – dressed up as a war on drugs

President Donald Trump has hinted that US forces could soon move from sea to land operations in Venezuela, expanding what he called “a war on terrorist drug cartels.”

Speaking at a Navy anniversary ceremony in Norfolk, Virginia, Trump said American forces had struck another vessel off Venezuela’s coast allegedly carrying narcotics.

“In recent weeks, the Navy has supported our mission to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water … we did another one last night. Now we just can’t find any,” he said.

“They’re not coming in by sea anymore, so now we’ll have to start looking about the land because they’ll be forced to go by land.”

According to Washington, at least four such strikes have taken place in the Caribbean in recent weeks, leaving more than 20 people dead. Trump also declared members of drug cartels to be “unlawful combatants,” a label he said allows the US to use military force without congressional approval.

These remarks mark a sharp escalation in Washington’s so-called “anti-narcotics” campaign – the largest US military operation in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. Officially, it targets drug traffickers. In reality, it’s becoming something much larger: a test of American dominance in its old sphere of influence – and a direct challenge to Venezuela.

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Bringing a Howitzer to a Knife Fight: US Armada Off Venezuela

Donald Trump boasted striking small boats off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast to “blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water.”  Claiming destruction of enough drugs to kill 25,000, he called the extrajudicial murders “an act of kindness.” Then he ominously hinted at a US land invasion of Venezuela now that the marine route for drugs had been obliterated.

Mythical “Cartel de los Soles”

The Miami Herald described the “precision strike” as targeting the Tren de Aragua (TdA) criminal organization. Then, in the very next sentence, the newspaper lauded the strike at the “heart of Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles,” as if the two entities were one in the same. The rest of the article addressed the Cartel de los Soles, forgetting that it was TdA that had supposedly been blown out of the water.

The criminal network, we are told, had been “embedded within [Venezuelan President] Nicolás Maduro’s regime and accused of moving massive quantities of cocaine overseas.”

Trump sees no need to back his claims. His fourth estate stenographer based its investigative reporting on unidentified “sources with knowledge of the situation.” The Herald revealed that their three anonymous informants knew all about the “‘Caribbean Route’ — long one of the busiest corridors for speedboats ferrying cocaine to Europe and the United States.”

The Miami-based newspaper claimed, without presenting evidence, that “inside Venezuela, authorities have turned to…extortion of businesses.” But who needs evidence when the US Justice Department had indicted the Venezuelan political leadership as a “narco-terrorist enterprise” in 2020? Further, Washington placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro this August. If that is not proof of culpability, nothing is.

Regarding the Cartel de los Soles, the Herald allowed that “Maduro has denied the accusations.” And so has President Gustavo Petro in neighboring Colombia. He observed that it “does not exist; it is a fictitious excuse used by the extreme right to overthrow governments that do not obey them.”

Recently retired head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Pino Arlacchi, pronounced the cartel “a product of Trump’s imagination… useful for justifying sanctions, blockades and threats of military intervention against a country which, incidentally, sits on one of the planet’s largest oil reserves.” Venezuelan analyst Clodovaldo Hernández described the cartel and its alleged connection to Maduro as “nothing more than a reheated dish that was never edible.”

False narrative on drugs in the Caribbean 

Casting doubt on Trump’s avowal that the boats were carrying “fentanyl mostly,” a congressional CRS report reported that Mexico is the main source of illicit fentanyl entering the US. PolitiFact also found that most fentanyl comes from Mexico. And the State Department had hitherto mainly described land/over-the-border routes for fentanyl.

According to reports from the United Nations, the European Union, and the US Drug Enforcement Agency, Venezuela is essentially free of drug production and processing – no coca, no marijuana, and certainly no fentanyl. The authoritative UN 2025 World Drug Report identifies Colombia and secondarily Peru and Ecuador as the major coca growers and/or cocaine producers.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the cocaine traffic is from the Pacific, not from Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, according to the US National Drug Threat Assessment. The world’s leading cocaine exporter is Ecuador, using banana boats owned by the family of Trump’s ally and right-wing president of the country, Daniel Naboa.

The war on “terrorism” 

The Herald marveled how Trump dispatched an armada of warships – destroyers and a nuclear submarine – plus F-35 stealth jets and 4,500 troops for drug interdiction. In contrast, the knowledgeable military press, such as the US Army-funded Stars and Stripes, skeptically described the deployment as “bringing a howitzer to a knife fight.”

In fact, drug interdiction is a ruse for Washington’s goal of regime-change in Venezuela, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

US administrations have steadily merged the war on drugs with the war on terror, framing Latin American drug trafficking as a national security threat to justify military operations. George W. Bush rebranded Plan Colombia as counter-terrorism, and Barack Obama increased the military buildup.

This laid the present groundwork for Trump, who tied migration to terrorism and cast Venezuelan refugees as a criminal invasion. The president labeled Venezuelan migrants as terrorists to expand executive authority to carry out naval deployments, extrajudicial strikes, and mass deportations. And he weaponized the human rights discourse to criminalize migrants.

Further, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and directed the Pentagon to prepare options for military force against cartels. However, conflating “organized crime/drug cartel” with “terrorism/wartime enemy” is legally and conceptually problematic.

Such measures not only violate international norms but also amplify a narco-terror narrative. They falsely link the Venezuelan government to major drug trafficking while promoting domestic support for intervention in Venezuela.

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Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is Alleged to Have Coordinated CIA Drug Trafficking Network in Southeast Asia that Financed Black Operations

Richard Armitage, the number two official at the State Department from 2001 to 2005, died on April 13.

The New York Times and other obituaries emphasized that Armitage was a Naval Academy graduate and Bronze Star recipient in Vietnam who served senior roles in the State and Defense Departments starting in the 1980s; as an ambassador to Eastern European countries after the fall of the Soviet Union, and was part of a hawkish group of advisers to President George W. Bush who called themselves “the Vulcans.”

According to the Times, Armitage blackmailed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf into supporting U.S. policy in the War on Terror by threatening to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” if he did not.

The Times obituary concluded by noting that, after his retirement from government, Armitage founded Armitage International, a company that helps multi-national corporations secure business deals primarily in Asia, and supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns while signing a letter declaring Donald Trump “dangerously unfit” for public office.

The Times and other obituaries predictably left out that Armitage was involved, according to two former CIA operatives, in shady covert operations associated with a CIA cabal led by Theodore Shackley that was implicated in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

This cabal, also known as the secret team, used drug profits to finance state terror operations.

The Iran-Contra scandal resulted from the discovery that the CIA was using profits from illegal weapons sales to Iran and other illicit activity to covertly fund right-wing counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua to whom Congress had cut off aid .

In 1986, Armitage was named in an affidavit filed in a civil lawsuit by the Christic Institute as part of a conspiracy responsible for the La Penca bombing during the Contra War that killed seven people.

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Spain legalises medical cannabis in ‘historic’ move

Spain‘s government has today legalised medical cannabis in what has been described as a ‘historic’ move. 

The country’s Council of Ministers today approved cannabis to be prescribed to patients as an ailment to their illnesses. 

But prescriptions can only be handed out under strict conditions. 

Only specialists in hospitals may prescribe cannabis to patients. 

But the government has not set out what ailments the drug should be prescribed for, instead saying that a specialised government agency will set out the rules in the coming weeks. 

Carola Pérez, president of the Spanish Observatory of Medicinal Cannabis, described the decision as ‘historic’. 

She added: ‘All of us patients who were waiting for regulation are celebrating’.

She added that the move opens the door for cannabis to be prescribed for a wide range of illnesses. 

Studies have shown that it can help ease the pain of multiple sclerosis and certain forms epilepsy, and can limit nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy. 

But she added that she wants to make sure Spanish doctors correctly prescribe cannabis, especially in light of the high demand: ‘We’re afraid that doctors won’t know exactly when to prescribe it, because they’re generally untrained. 

‘And we’re also afraid that there will be a bottleneck in hospital laboratories due to the high demand for these compounds’.

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Tennessee Alcohol Wholesalers Are Grabbing Control of the State’s Hemp Market

Few things are more difficult to eradicate in our system of modern governance than a government-sanctioned monopoly or oligopoly. A recently passed bill in Tennessee, which will allow the state’s alcohol wholesalers to take over hemp distribution in the state, shows that these monopolies are not only difficult to eliminate but also often attempt to expand their reach.    

The new law sets up a distribution system for hemp—which was legalized at the federal level in the 2018 Farm Bill—that mirrors the notorious three-tier system for alcohol distribution, which requires producers, wholesalers, and retailers to be legally separate entities. The three-tier system restricts producers and suppliers from selling directly to their customers and mandates that they work through a wholesaler to reach the market. This allows wholesalers to operate as functional monopolies or oligopolies in certain parts of states where only one or two wholesalers operate.

The law, which takes effect on January 1, 2026, also requires all wholesalers and retailers of hemp products to maintain a physical presence within the state. Out-of-state hemp suppliers will be prohibited from engaging in direct-to-consumer shipping to customers in Tennessee, and instead will be forced to work through the state’s wholesaler and retailer tiers. While in-state Tennessee hemp suppliers cannot ship their products to Tennesseans either, they are able to sell on-site directly to their customers, providing a workaround to avoid the three-tier system.

Cornbread Hemp, a Kentucky hemp supplier that recorded $1 million in Tennessee-based sales last year, is challenging the new law in federal court. Cornbread Hemp argues that Tennessee’s law unconstitutionally discriminates against out-of-state competitors in favor of in-state businesses, which is a violation of the Constitution’s Dormant Commerce Clause.

Supreme Court observers will recognize how closely the case mirrors Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas (2019). In the case, the majority struck down Tennessee’s requirement that applicants for alcohol wholesaling or retailing licenses must have resided in the state for over two years, finding it to be unconstitutional discrimination against out-of-state economic interests.

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Trump Calls Off Diplomacy With Maduro As Secret DOJ-Approved Kill List Revealed

Several significant developments this week have paved the way for more likely US military escalation off the coast of and in Venezuela, at a moment of unprecedented numbers of Pentagon assets parked in the Caribbean.

First, President Trump has called off diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, The New York Times reported Monday. The president called his special envoy, Richard Grenell, who had been leading the efforts to negotiate with Maduro, informing him the US halting all diplomatic outreach with the Venezuelan government.

As of about two weeks ago, Grenell confirmed that contacts with the Maduro government had been ongoing, however, this statement caught other top members of the administration – especially Secretary Marco Rubio – off guard.

Another big development, following the Pentagon’s at least four strikes thus far on boats believed involved in drug smuggling operations, is the revelation of a classified legal opinion from the DOJ providing cover to use military force against an expanding list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers.

“The opinion, which was produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and has not been previously reported, argues that the president is allowed to authorize deadly force against a broad range of cartels because they pose an imminent threat to Americans,” CNN reports. “The list of cartels goes beyond those the administration has publicly designated as terrorist organizations, the people familiar with the opinion said.”

It essentially gives the US carte blanche for an open-ended war against these groups on the secret list, which hearkens back in parallel to the Obama years of secret drone wars in the Middle East, particularly Yemen.

Indeed analysts cited in the CNN report which broke the story compared the classified list to similar ones in the immediate yeas after 9/11.

“If the OLC opinion authorizing strikes on cartels is as broad as it seems, it would mean DOJ has interpreted the president to have such extraordinary powers that he alone can decide to prosecute a war far broader than what Congress authorized after the attacks on 9/11,” Sarah Harrison, a senior analyst at the Crisis Group, told the outlet.

“By this logic, any small, medium or big group that is trafficking drugs into the US – the administration could claim it amounts to an attack against the United States and respond with lethal force,” added Harrison. So far the US has been engaged in shoot to kill actions of the Venezuelan coast targeting ‘narco-terrorists’ and traffickers.

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