Tag: the war on (some) drugs

A Trumpian Headache

President Donald Trump’s use of the U.S. military to kill persons on speed boats in international waters, or in territorial waters claimed by other sovereign nations – all 1,500 miles from the U.S. – has posed grave issues of due process. The Constitution’s guarantee of due process requires it for every person, not just Americans. The operative language of the Fifth Amendment is that “No person… shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

The Trump administration has claimed that it can kill whomever it designates as an unlawful enemy combatant – it prefers the political phrase “narco-terrorist” – and the due process it provides is the intelligence gathered by American spies and the White House analysis of that intelligence. This secret analysis, the government’s argument goes, satisfies the president that the folks he has ordered killed are engaging in serious and harmful criminal behavior, and somehow is a lawful and constitutional substitute for the jury trial and its attendant procedural protections that the Constitution commands.

To be fair, I am offering an educated guess as to the administration’s argument. The reason we don’t know the argument precisely is that the Department of Justice calls it classified. This is, of course, a non sequitur. How could a legal argument possibly be secret in light of well-settled First Amendment jurisprudence? It can’t. The Supreme Court has ruled consistently that there are no secret laws or secret rationales for employing the laws. Moreover, it has ruled that the First Amendment assures a public window on government behavior whenever it seeks to take life, liberty or property.

The last time we went through efforts to obtain the government’s legal argument for presidential targeted killing was during the Obama administration. When President Barack Obama ordered the CIA to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and his son – both natural born American citizens – it, too, claimed a secret legal rationale. Yet some brave soul who had access to that rationale leaked it to the press. The rationale likened killing al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son to police shooting at fleeing bank robbers who are shooting at the police.

The Obama justification was absurd, as al-Awlaki was not engaged in any violent acts. He had been followed by 12 intelligence agents during his final 48 hours of life. Those agents couldn’t legally arrest him, because he hadn’t been charged with a crime, but in the Obama logic, they could legally kill him.

When those of us who monitor the government’s infidelity to the Constitution publicly pointed out the flaws in the Obama argument, it reverted to the argument that I suspect the current administration is secretly using. Namely, that its secret internal deliberations are a constitutionally adequate substitution for traditional due process.

It gets worse.

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The Sordid History Of US “Aid” To Colombia

President Donald Trump is rattling his saber against Colombian President Gustavo Petro to punish him for accusing the US government of murdering Venezuelan fishermen. Trump has boasted of the killings by the US military but claims all the targets were drug smugglers. He has threatened to suspend all US government handouts for the Colombian government. Trump warned Petro that he “better close up” cocaine production “or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.”

Tapping his own psychiatric expertise, Trump proclaimed that Colombia has “the worst president they’ve ever had – a lunatic with serious mental problems.” Is anyone in the Trump White House aware of the long history of U.S. failure in that part of the world? In 1989, President George H.W. Bush warned Colombian drug dealers that they were “no match for an angry America.” But Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer despite billions of dollars of US government anti-drug aid to the Colombian government.

The Bill Clinton administration made Colombia its top target in its international war on drugs. Clinton drug warriors deluged the Colombian government with U.S. tax dollars as they literally deluged Colombia with toxic spray. The New York Times reported that U.S.-financed planes repeatedly sprayed pesticides onto schoolchildren, making many of them ill. Colombian environmental minister Juan Mayr publicly declared last year that the crop spraying program has been a failure and warned, “We can’t permanently fumigate the country.”

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China Is Smuggling Fentanyl to US Through Venezuela, Trump Says

U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed on Oct. 23 that China is smuggling fentanyl into the United States through Venezuela to bypass U.S. and Mexican controls.

“They are doing that, yes, but they are paying right now 20 percent tariff because of fentanyl,” Trump told reporters.

Trump said it is one of the issues he will bring up with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping at their bilateral meeting next week.

“The first question I’m going to be asking them about is fentanyl,” he said.

Trump said that with the tariffs on China, which will rise by an additional 100 percent on Nov. 1 if no deal is made, the fentanyl operation will no longer be sustainable for China.

“They make $100 million sell[ing] fentanyl into our country … they lose $100 billion with the 20 percent tariff. So it’s not a good business proposition,” Trump said. “They pay a very big penalty for doing that, and I don’t think they want to be doing it.”

Trump’s meeting with Xi will come at the tail end of his Asia tour, for which he is departing on Oct. 24.

Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel told lawmakers he had spoken to counternarcotics authorities in China and urged them to restrict exports of more fentanyl precursor chemicals.

The Chinese Ministry of Public Security in August added seven chemicals to an export control list, three of them central to producing fentanyl. The restrictions went into effect Sept. 1.

The United States has determined that China is the main supplier of the deadly illicit drug in the United States, and Trump in an executive order on Feb. 1 imposed initial tariffs on China for its “central role” in the fentanyl crisis.

In the order, Trump noted that despite a long history of discussions over the years, Chinese regime officials “have failed to follow through with the decisive actions needed to stem the flow of precursor chemicals.”

According to the order, in addition to subsidizing and incentivizing chemical companies to create and export fentanyl precursors, the regime has also provided “support and safe haven” for transnational criminal organizations that launder the related profits.

“The CCP does not lack the capacity to severely blunt the global illicit opioid epidemic; it simply is unwilling to do so,” the order reads.

In recent weeks, Trump has authorized nine strikes on vessels suspected of trafficking drugs.

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Ohio Health Agency Grants $400,000 To Fund Psychedelics Education And Training For First Responders, Doctors And More

An Ohio health agency is providing a state university with a $400,000 grant to educate first responders, law enforcement, emergency departments and behavioral specialists about how to deal with potential adverse psychedelic experiences as more people use the substances for medical or recreational purposes.

Amid the expanding psychedelics reform movement, there’s been increased attention to the possible health benefits of substances like psilocybin and ibogaine. But only a handful of states allow for the regulated use of certain psychedelics, typically in medically supervised settings.

Ohio is not among those states yet, but Ohio State University (OSU) is now launching its Psychedelic Emergency, Acute, and Continuing Care Education (PEACE) initiative, with nearly half a million dollars of funding from the state Department of Behavioral Health’s (DBH) SOAR Innovation grant program.

“People have started to learn about the benefits of psychedelics while, at the same time, the federal government categorizes these as controlled substances,” Stacey Armstrong, associate director of the OSU’s Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education (CPDRE), said in a press release last week.

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Trump Suggests US Strikes on Alleged Drug Shipments on ‘Land’ Are Coming Soon

President Trump on Wednesday suggested that US strikes on alleged drug shipments “on land” could be coming soon amid the US bombing campaign targeting boats in Latin America.

Trump has made similar comments before, and according to multiple media reports, the US is preparing to bomb Venezuela with the goal of ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and is using cracking down on drug trafficking as a pretext.

The president claimed to reporters at the White House that he had “legal authority” to launch the strikes, but Congress hasn’t authorized the bombing campaign, which the Constitution requires for launching a war. Trump said he may notify Congress of the plans to launch strikes on land targets, but didn’t say he would seek authorization.

“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land. And they haven’t experienced that yet, but now we’re totally prepared to do that. We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when [they] come to the land,” the president said.

The president previously told Congress that he believes the US is now in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. Trump has framed the airstrikes as self-defense, pointing to the large numbers of drug overdoses in the US, but they are primarily caused by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which don’t come from Venezuela, something Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been very critical of the campaign, has pointed out.

“There is no fentanyl made in Venezuela. Not just a little bit, there’s none being made. These are outboard boats that, in order for them to get to Miami, would have to stop and refuel 20 times,” Paul told British journalist Piers Morgan this week.

“It’s all likely going to Trinidad and Tobago. There are a lot of reasons to be worried about this. Number one is the broader principle of when can you kill people indiscriminately when there’s war. That’s why when we declare war is supposed to be done by Congress. It’s not supposed to be done willy nilly. When there’s war you just kill people in the war zone, there are rules of engagement,” Paul added.

Since September 2, the US has bombed at least seven boats in the Caribbean and one in the eastern Pacific near Colombia, extrajudicially executing 34 people at sea, according to numbers released by the Trump administration, without providing evidence to back up its claims about the targets. Sources told The Washington Post on Wednesday that any US airstrikes in Venezuela would likely first target alleged trafficker encampments or clandestine airstrips, but regime change remains the ultimate goal.

“There really is no turning back unless Maduro is essentially not in power,” a person familiar with the administration’s deliberations told the Post.

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US military conducts ninth lethal strike on drug smuggling vessels in Eastern Pacific

Three narcoterrorists were killed in what is believed to be the ninth deadly attack on vessels attempting to smuggle illegal drugs into the U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the strike on social media Wednesday evening.

Hegseth’s post included a video that showed a small boat moving along the water. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless in flames.

The latest strike took place in the Eastern Pacific, marking the second strike against a vessel in the Eastern Pacific within a day. The previous seven took place in the Caribbean.

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Ohio House Passes Bill To Remove Voter-Approved Marijuana Legalization Protections And Restrict Hemp Market

The Ohio House of Representatives has passed a bill that would make significant changes to the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law by removing several protections for consumers while also adding a series of new restrictions on hemp products that are intended to align the two sectors of the cannabis industry.

After moving through several House committees this week, with substantive amendments, the full chamber approved the legislation from Sen. Stephen Huffman (R) in a 87-8 vote on Wednesday.

While the measure previously passed the Senate in earlier form it will need to return to that chamber for concurrence, or go to a bicameral conference committee, before potentially heading to the governor’s desk.

Certain controversial provisions of the bill as passed by the Senate were scaled back by the House, but advocates are concerned that it would still make major changes to the marijuana law voters approved in 2023.

Rep. Brian Stewart (R), who has shepherded the legislation through the House, argued ahead of the floor vote that the legislation effectively reaches a “carefully crafted compromise” between lawmakers with differing perspectives on cannabis issues.

“This bill has been very difficult to wrangle, but most of our substantive bills usually are. Rather than being some kind of mushy muddle of weak sauce tie-breakers, this bill does what we all claim that we wanted to come to Columbus to do,” he said. “It tackles the issue head-on. It makes tough decisions. It respects and implements the feedback from residents and advocates across the affected industries. This bill wisely balances between Ohioans’ individual liberties, their safety, the financial wellbeing of our local communities and the need to protect the health and safety of Ohio’s children.”

Rep. Jamie Callender (R), who sponsored marijuana legalization legislation ahead of voters’ approval of the reform at the ballot, said the bill is “not perfect” but argued that lawmakers “have to act” to address intoxicating hemp and other pending issues.

“This is the revised code we’re writing,” he said. “I anticipate there will be numerous other bills on these topics in the near- and long-term future, as there should be… I’ll keep working with everyone to make it better.”

While its supporters have described it as a less heavy-handed approach compared to the original Senate bill, the measure would make substantive changes to the existing legalization law—with several provisions that advocates say directly contradict the will of voters and represent overreach on the part of lawmakers.

For example, the proposal would eliminate language in current statute providing anti-discrimination protections for people who lawfully use cannabis. That includes protections meant to prevent adverse actions in the context of child custody rights, the ability to qualify for organ transplants and professional licensing.

It would also recriminalize possessing marijuana from any source that isn’t a state-licensed dispensary in Ohio or from a legal homegrow. As such, people could be charged with a crime for carrying cannabis they bought at a legal retailer in neighboring Michigan.

Additionally, it would ban smoking cannabis at outdoor public locations such as bar patios—and it would allow landlords to prohibit vaping marijuana at rented homes. Violating that latter policy, even if it involves vaping in a person’s own backyard at a rental home, would constitute a misdemeanor offense.

Karen O’Keefe, director of states policies at the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), said in a letter to House lawmakers on Wednesday that SB 56 as currently drafted “eliminates essential protections from the voter-enacted law and recriminalizes innocuous conduct that voters legalized.”

“Please reject this erosion of freedoms enacted by voters,” she said.

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‘I am melting, help me’: The 30-year-old drug website that transformed psychedelic research

Thirty years ago, drug users flocked to a website called Erowid to describe experiences on everything from Advil to LSD. Today it’s become a goldmine for researchers and governments.

“I am melting, help me.” This is not only an unusual plea for assistance. It’s also the title of a “trip report”: one person’s experience with the powerful dissociative drug phencyclidine (known as PCP). And it’s just one of many thousands of mind-bending anecdotes filed to Erowid, a website that, since the early days of the internet, has built one of the world’s most influential records of drug use and its effects.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the scrappy, grassroots project, which hosts data on everything from caffeine to cannabis to paracetamol (also known as Tylenol) to heroin, like a Wikipedia on all things pharmaceutical. Users post information about purifying street drugs, rolling joints and the health implications of drug misuse. Visitors to the site can find information about drug toxicology and interactions between chemicals. They can even wade through the archives of Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who first synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide – or LSD.

But perhaps most intriguing of all are the 45,000-plus trip reports in the “Experience Vault”. These hallucinatory tales, with titles such as “Tripping Alone on 1.5 Grams From Hell”, “The Weekend At The Edge Of The Universe” and “The Thumbprint”, where an unfortunate soul loses their mind on a drug related to LSD called AL-LAD, do not just make for idle internet fodder. They have become vital for academic research, especially for esoteric and illegal substances where clinical data does not exist or is challenging to obtain.

“People publishing their personal experiences and experimenting outside of the legal and academic bubble has led to the science, in many ways,” says David Luke, associate professor of psychology at the University of Greenwich in the UK who studies psychedelics and has conducted clinical trials using microdoses of LSD. “There was so little published academic research and so few resources for exploring the use of psychoactive drugs that Erowid was invaluable for research, and to understand issues around safety and experiences.” 

Today, the social stigma around some types of drug use has softened to the point that Ayahuasca ceremonies, mushrooms and ketamine have even become a fixture in some corners of the business world. While these substances are still illegal in many countries, a growing number of places are choosing to decriminalise drugs that were previously subject to extensive crack downs. In recent years, psychedelics have also gathered renewed interest from the scientific community as a potential approach for treating conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Their use, however, remains controversial and in some places unregulated therapeutic use of these drugs has led to tragedy.

Back in 1995, when Erowid was founded, psychedelics were very much of the underground. This was a hostile time for drug reform, just over a decade since US president Ronald Reagan had expanded the war on drugs. 

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UN experts say US strikes against Venezuela in international waters amount to ‘extrajudicial executions’

U.S. strikes against Venezuela in international waters are a dangerous escalation and amount to “extrajudicial executions,” a group of independent United Nations experts said on Tuesday.

In recent months, U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered strikes on at least six suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean, killing at least 27 people. 

The strikes are part of Trump’s ongoing campaign against what he says is a “narcoterrorist” threat emanating from Venezuela and linked to its president, Nicolas Maduro.

The U.N. experts acknowledged Trump’s justification for the military action, but said: “Even if such allegations were substantiated, the use of lethal force in international waters without proper legal basis violates the international law of the sea and amounts to extrajudicial executions.”

The independent experts, who are appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said the strikes violate the South American country’s sovereignty and the United States’ “fundamental international obligations” not to intervene in domestic affairs or threaten to use armed force against another country.

“These moves are an extremely dangerous escalation with grave implications for peace and security in the Caribbean region,” they said in a statement.

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Ohio Lawmakers Advance Bill To Scale Back Voter-Approved Marijuana Law And Impose Hemp Regulations

Ohio House lawmakers on Tuesday approved an amended Senate-passed bill that would make significant changes to the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law while incorporating a series of regulations for hemp that are meant to align the two sectors of the cannabis industry.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee agreed to changes to the measure from Sen. Stephen Huffman (R) before advancing it to other panels and an expected floor vote on Wednesday. But while certain controversial provisions of the bill as passed by the Senate were scaled back, it would still make major changes to the marijuana law voters approved in 2023.

The measure will now go to the Rules Committee before being re-referred to the Finance Committee, after which point it’s expected to receive floor action.

“We’ve had years of testimony. We’ve heard from marijuana advocates, hemp advocates, public health advocates and everyone in between,” Rep. Brian Stewart (R) said. “We are generally going to take the feedback from the hemp industry, which said, ‘Treat us like marijuana,” he said. “They will have the same potency limitations, the same advertising restrictions, the same restrictions on quantities, serving size and how they operate.”

Rep. Jamie Callender (R), who has led the charge on marijuana policy in the House, said ahead of the vote that the revised bill would be “very thoughtful and targeted.” But at the hearing, he added that the legislation is “not perfect” or what he would have drafted.

“It’s a bill that can get passed that will help us implement some of the elements of Issue 2 that have been held up and give clarity to the rulemakers on some of the points that are outstanding,” he said, referring to the voter-approved legalization measure. “It also clarifies and cements a few of the gains that were gained over the years: Sharing, home grow, no new prosecutions [and] the taxes going to the local governments.”

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