Tag: the war on (some) drugs

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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Terminally Ill Patients Would Be Able To Use Medical Marijuana In Pennsylvania Hospitals Under New Bipartisan Bill

Bipartisan Pennsylvania senators have introduced a bill that would allow terminally ill patients to use of medical marijuana in hospitals.

Similar to a law previously enacted in California, the Pennsylvania legislation from Sen. John Kane (D) and 17 bipartisan cosponsors aims to ensure that cannabis patients with severe illnesses such as cancer retain access to regulated products as an alternative treatment option.

“Hospitals are incredible places where patients receive top notch care,” Kane wrote in a cosponsorship memo in August. “They need guidance and legal protections to provide terminally ill patients with options to manage pain, while providing settings that support family and friends who are saying goodbye to a loved one.”

The policy that’s being proposed in the bill filed on Friday is known as “Ryan’s law,” a reference to Ryan Bartell, a cancer patient who inspired the legislation.

“During his treatments in California the hospital provided him with opioid medications that caused him to be sedated and unable to interact with family and friends,” Kane said. “Ryan and his family wanted to ensure that his remaining days could be filled with visits from his loved ones. So, Ryan moved to a hospital in the State of Washington where he used medical marijuana to manage his pain effectively and allow him to stay awake and alert to spend time with family and friends during hospital visits.”

“Ryan’s law would allow terminally ill patients to use non-smoking forms of medical marijuana in Pennsylvania hospitals,” he said. “Right now, the use of medical marijuana in hospitals is a gray area due to marijuana being a Scheduled I Narcotic, while also being legal for medicinal purposes in Pennsylvania.”

The four-page bill would amend the state’s existing medical cannabis law to make it so terminally ill patients can use non-smokeable marijuana products at hospitals, create storage requirements for the medicine and require health facilities to develop guidelines about the regulated use of cannabis for qualifying patients.

It also stipulates that a “health care facility is not required to provide a patient with a recommendation to use medical marijuana in compliance with this act or include medical marijuana in a patient’s discharge plan.”

Additionally, the measure says that, if the federal government initiates enforcement actions against a hospital regarding the cannabis policy or issues rules expressly prohibiting the medical marijuana allowance, the health facility is empowered to suspend the practice.

However, the proposed law “shall not be construed to permit a health care facility to prohibit patient use of medical marijuana due solely to the fact that cannabis is a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act or other Federal constraints on the use of medical marijuana that were in existence prior to the effective date of this paragraph,” it says.

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Trump Says Another Drug Boat Hit by US Airstrikes Off Venezuelan Coast

U.S. forces carried out airstrikes on another vessel allegedly carrying illegal drugs off the coast of Venezuela on Saturday, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday.

“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,” Trump said during remarks at Naval Station Norfolk, flanked by two U.S. aircraft carriers.

The administration has carried out several strikes on vessels off the South American coast in recent weeks, including one strike carried out Friday that was referenced by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during his remarks.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Trump was referencing new strikes, but he later confirmed to reporters that the strikes were carried out Saturday.

When asked to provide additional details about those strikes, Trump told reporters, “My people will give you those.”

Information such as casualty counts, the specific reason for the airstrikes, and other details related to the most recent attack have not yet been released.

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Trump Fabricates a War to Cover Up Murder

The president made up some more lies about his murder spree in the Caribbean:

President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week.

There is no such armed conflict. The president has dressed up his summary executions of alleged criminals by pretending that the U.S. is fighting a war with these groups, but these groups are not engaged in hostilities with our government. They aren’t carrying our armed attacks on our country or our military. Calling them terrorist organizations doesn’t authorize or legitimize the killing Trump has ordered. Branding noncombatants as combatants doesn’t make them lawful targets.

The administration has dubbed this a “non-international armed conflict” for the purposes of creating a fig leaf for the president’s murders. That is another lie. A non-international armed conflict is one where a state or a non-state group is fighting with an armed non-state group. To qualify as a non-international armed conflict, the non-state party or parties to the conflict must be organized and the violence between them and the state must be intense.

As we can see, there is no conflict of any kind happening. There is no one fighting back. Our military is simply blowing up boats full of civilians because the president feels like it.

Trump wants to use the language of the “war on terror” to excuse his serial murders of Venezuelan fishermen, but he doesn’t have a leg to stand on:

Noting that it is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even suspected criminals — Mr. Corn called the president’s move an “abuse” that crossed a major legal line.

“This is not stretching the envelope,” he said. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

Even if there were a conflict between the U.S. and an armed group taking place, the attacks on the boats would still be illegal.

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New Ohio Senate Bill Would Ban Sale Of Intoxicating Hemp Products To People Under 21

Ohio state Sen. Bill DeMora (D) recently introduced a bill that would ban the sale of intoxicating hemp products to people under 21. Unlike some others that have been introduced, this bill would focus solely on hemp and not on changing voter-passed marijuana law.

Ohio Senate Bill 266 would also ban the sale of intoxicating hemp products that have not been tested under the same rules as marijuana and would prevent selling intoxicating hemp products that are “considered attractive to children,” according to the bill’s language.

This bill would prohibit selling an intoxicating hemp product “that bears the likeness or contains the characteristics of a realistic or fictional human, animal, or fruit, including artistic, caricature, or cartoon renderings,” according to the bill’s language.

“I put this bill in to get rid of the stuff that everybody agrees is bad,” Columbus Democratic state Sen. DeMora said. “Everybody agrees [intoxicating hemp products are] targeted to children to look like Skittles and Oreo cookies and that it’s unregulated… We need to act because this stuff is poisoning kids [and] making kids sick.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has previously asked lawmakers to regulate or ban delta-8 THC products.

“It’s a huge problem,” DeWine said talking to reporters on Monday. “There’s really no regulation at all. We need regulation. We need the legislature to take action on this. We’re also looking, frankly, at some things that I might be able to do without legislative action.”

DeMora thinks marijuana and hemp products should be dealt with separately.

“Hopefully this bill will, if nothing else, we can all agree on one thing—to get the bad stuff out of the hands of kids and stop the marketing toward kids,” he said.

The 2018 Farm Bill says hemp can be grown legally if it contains less than 0.3 percent THC.

Ohio is one of about 20 states that does not have any regulations around intoxicating hemp products, according to an Ohio State University Drug Enforcement and Policy Center study from November 2024.

This is one of a handful of bills in the Ohio legislature that are trying to regulate intoxicating hemp products.

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FBI Takes Down Money Laundering Network Tied To Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro – Two Men Indicted as DOJ Joins Pressure on Socialist Regime

FBI is gunning for Maduro, too.

Besides the major military deployment of assets to the Caribbean, with multiple reports warning of possible ground operations in Venezuela, other areas of the US government are also focused in curtailing the reign of terror of Nicolas Maduro, ‘the butcher of Caracas’.

The Treasury and the Department of Justice are also working against the international arms of the criminal cartels.

Fox News reported:

“The FBI says two men have been indicted in connection with an alleged money-laundering scheme tied to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s children.

The indictments come after a years-long investigation that dates back to 2019 when the FBI’s Miami Field Office launched the probe based on indications that Arick Komarczyk opened U.S. bank accounts for Maduro’s children and their U.S.-based associates. Suspicious Activity Reports allegedly showed that Komarczyk received wire transfers from individuals and businesses in Venezuela, according to the FBI.”

Komarczyk and his associate, Irazmar Carbajal, allegedly moved $100,000 of suspected sanctioned money belonging to members of Venezuela’s regime.

The men are said to have moved about $25,000 into the U.S.

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Defending the Summary Execution of Suspected Drug Smugglers, Trump Declares an ‘Armed Conflict’

This week, President Donald Trump sought to justify his new policy of summarily executing suspected drug smugglers by declaring that his targets are “unlawful combatants” in an “armed conflict” with the United States. But that terminology, which Trump deployed in a notice to Congress, does not change the reality that he has authorized the military murder of criminal suspects who pose no immediate threat of violence.

So far, Trump has ordered three attacks on speedboats in the Caribbean Sea that he said were carrying illegal drugs, killing a total of 17 people. The first attack was a September 2 drone strike that killed 11 people on a boat that reportedly “appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it.” On September 15, U.S. forces blew up another speedboat in the Caribbean, killing three people whom Trump described as “confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela.” Four days later, Trump announced a third attack that he said killed three people “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” who were “conducting narcotrafficking.”

Contrary to Trump’s implication, that designation does not turn murder into self-defense. “The State Department designation merely triggers the government’s ability to implement asset controls and other economic sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and other statutes,” Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman noted after the first attack on a suspected drug boat. “It has nothing to do with authorizing [the Defense Department] to engage in targeted killings…which is why the U.S. military doesn’t go around killing members of all designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”

According to White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, Trump’s literalization of the war on drugs is fully consistent with international law. “The president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores,” she told The New York Times this week. “He is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”

That framing is logically, morally, and legally nonsensical. The truth is that Americans like to consume psychoactive substances that legislators have deemed intolerable, and criminal organizations are happy to profit from that demand. The fact that Americans who use illegal drugs sometimes die as a result—a hazard magnified by the prohibition policy that Trump is so eager to enforce—does not transform the people who supply those drugs into murderers.

If it did, alcohol producers and distributors, who supply a product implicated in an estimated 178,000 deaths a year in the United States, would likewise be guilty of murder. And by Trump’s logic, they would be subject to the death penalty based on nothing more than the allegation that they were involved in the alcohol trade.

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