Tag: the war on (some) drugs

New Texas Emergency Rules Ban Hemp Sales To People Under 21 In Line With Governor’s Executive Order

Texas officials have quickly adopted changes to the state’s hemp laws, consistent with the governor’s recent executive order, making it so people under the age of 21 will no longer be permitted to purchase consumable hemp products.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) issued an emergency rule that took effect on Tuesday, stipulating that no businesses licensed under the agency may sell cannabis to those under 21. Doing so will now result in an automatic license or permit cancellation.

Failing to check IDs to ensure that a patron is of age will also carry the penalty of an automatic license cancellation.

“This emergency adoption is necessary to help prevent minors from accessing and using consumable hemp products (CHP) that will negatively impact the minors’ health, which in turn negatively impacts the general welfare and public safety,” TABC said in a notice.

And while it was just two weeks ago that Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed an executive order laying out new rules for the hemp market, the agency said that the rules are being adopted on an “emergency basis” and take effect immediately “because an imminent peril to the public health, safety, or welfare requires adoption on fewer than 30 days’ notice.”

“The harms associated with cannabis/THC use by minors are well documented,” it said.

State statute says emergency rules can only be effective for up to 180 days, and TACB said it ‘intends to propose these or similar rules under the normal rulemaking process and will consider any additional action necessary in the event unforeseen issues arise with the adopted sections. Future rulemaking may also provide additional guidance.”

While the rules are actively in effect, the agency noted that it will begin enforcement on October 1.

The Texas Cannabis Collective, which strongly resisted recent proposals in the legislature to ban hemp with any amount of THC, said the TABC action “follows Governor Abbott’s decisive steps earlier this year” when he vetoed a Senate bill to recriminalize consumable cannabinoid products.

Meanwhile, Texas officials have separately taken another step toward implementing a law to significantly expand the state’s medical marijuana program—proposing rules to to let physicians recommend new qualifying conditions for cannabis and to create standards for allowable inhalation devices in line with legislation enacted by lawmakers and the governor earlier this year.

Last month, the Department of Public Safety (DPS) also posted a set of additional rules in the Register to increase the number of licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in Texas under the recently enacted legislation.

DPS will ultimately be issuing 12 new licenses for dispensaries across the state. Currently there are only three. The additional licensees will go through a competitive process, with officials prioritizing Texas’s public health regions to optimize access.

The first round of licenses will be awarded to nine of 139 applicants who submitted their forms during an earlier application window in 2023. DPS will select those nine licensees on December 1. The 2023 applicants that didn’t receive a license, as well as any new prospective licensees, will have another shot at getting their license during a second round where awardees will be announced on April 1, 2026.

DPS has separately previewed future rulemaking to comply with the medical marijuana expansion law.

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Bodies found in Mexico may be missing Colombian musicians

Mexican authorities have recovered two bodies that match the description of the Colombian musicians reported missing a week ago in the country, the prosecutor’s office in the state of Mexico said on Monday.

Forensic tests were underway to obtain official confirmation of the identities of the deceased, the prosecutor’s office said.

Earlier on Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that local authorities were investigating the whereabouts of reggaeton artist Bayron Sanchez, known as B-King, and Jorge Herrera, a DJ who performed under the name Regio Clown, after Colombian President Gustavo Petro requested Sheinbaum’s aid in locating them.

In a social media post on Monday afternoon, Petro appeared to confirm the musicians’ deaths by sharing a news article saying their bodies were found, blaming an “international mafia” that he said had been strengthened by the “war on drugs.”

“More young people killed by an anti-drug policy that is not an anti-drug policy,” Petro wrote.

On Sunday, the prosecutor’s office in Mexico City, which borders the state of Mexico, said the two artists were last seen on September 16 in Polanco, a high-end neighborhood in the Mexican capital.

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U.S. Threats to Venezeula Are Ramping Up, Not Down

Reporting has recently emerged that the United States is considering direct strikes on Venezuela that could increase volatility in the region and the risk of war.

Under the pretext of disrupting the flow of drugs into the United States by Venezuelan drug cartels, the U.S. has militarized the waters off the coast of Venezuela, flooding them with Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast track submarine, P-8 spy planes and F-35 fighter jets. On September 2, American forces fired on a small speed boat that the U.S. claims was running drugs for a Venezuelan cartel.

The Donald Trump administration is yet to offer evidence for its claim. They have neither publicly identified who the eleven people who were killed on the boat were nor what drugs they were carrying. Congress has still not been briefed.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the boat was “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean.” Trump says it was bound for the United States. Turns out, it was headed back to Venezuela.

U.S. officials familiar with the operation have now told The New York Times that, having “spotted the military aircraft stalking it,” the boat has already “altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started.” The twenty-nine second video that Trump posted on social media spliced together several clips but edited out the boat turning around. Despite this lack of imminent threat, the aircraft, either an attack helicopter or an MQ-9 Reaper drone, “repeatedly hit the vessel before it sank.”

The Trump administration has claimed the right to supplant the National Guard and law enforcement with the military and lethal force on the grounds that the drug cartels are terrorist organizations who pose a threat to the national security of the United States because the drugs they bring into the country to kill Americans. The U.S. has invoked the right to self-defense, and Rubio has insisted that the speed boat was “an immediate threat to the United States.” Except that if it had turned around, it wasn’t.

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US Officials Say Regime Change in Venezuela Is the Real Goal of Military Action in the Caribbean

US officials have told The New York Times that the real goal of the US military buildup in the Caribbean, and the bombing of boats in the region, is regime change in Venezuela.

The policy is being largely driven by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long wanted to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power. Back in 2019, when the first Trump administration attempted to back a coup against Maduro, Rubio posted a photo on Twitter of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the moment he was being brutally murdered in an apparent threat to the Venezuelan leader.

The Trump administration claims that Maduro is the leader of a drug cartel, but has not produced any evidence for the charge. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials have forcefully rejected the accusation and have pointed to data that shows the majority of the cocaine that is produced in Colombia doesn’t go through Venezuela.

President Trump has also framed the military campaign in the region as a response to overdose deaths in the US due to fentanyl, but fentanyl isn’t produced in Venezuela, and it does not go through the country on its way to the US.

The Times report, which was published over the weekend, reads: “Several current and former military officials, diplomats, and intelligence officers say that while fighting drugs is the pretext for the recent US attacks, the real goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power, one way or another.”

The US began bombing boats allegedly running drugs in the Caribbean on September 2. According to numbers released by President Trump, at least 17 people have been extrajudicially executed by the US military since the campaign began. US officials have said the Trump administration is considering direct strikes on Venezuelan territory, which could lead to a full-blown war with the country.

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Congress Must Not Rubber Stamp Trump’s Murder Spree

The Trump administration reportedly wants Congress to rubber stamp the president’s murder spree in the Caribbean and to endorse possible attacks on other countries:

Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would hand President Trump sweeping power to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any nation he says has harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.

When Congress approved the 2001 AUMF, it made the mistake of giving the president extraordinary, open-ended authority to wage war against Al Qaeda, which then morphed into a unending global campaign. Ever since then, every administration has abused that authority to target a number of armed groups that had nothing to do with the original attacks on the United States. The bill described in this report would be far worse than the 2001 AUMF by endorsing a much more wide-ranging campaign when there is absolutely no military threat to this country. Congress was wrong to endorse endless war in 2001. It would be insane to endorse an even worse version of endless war when there is no reason for it.

The Trump administration seeks to merge the “war on terror” with its new campaign against cartels by pretending that the latter are terrorists, but all of this is a lie. The drug trade is a serious problem, but it is not one that can be solved by the military. It is not terrorism, and drug traffickers aren’t terrorists. All that involving the military will do is kill a lot of civilians by design.

Drug traffickers aren’t lawful targets. Congress can’t give the president the authority to murder civilians. Trump’s barbaric boat attacks are illegal under U.S. and international law no matter what Congress does with this bill.

We need to reject the administration’s war framing in its entirety. While they may want to claim that there is an armed conflict that lets them kill these civilians, no such conflict exists. None of the groups that they have wrongly designated as terrorist organizations is engaged in an armed conflict with the United States. There is no war to be fought. When the administration uses force against alleged cartel members, they are just summarily executing suspected criminals outside the law. This is as illegitimate and despicable as it gets.

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Adam Schiff, Tim Kaine Introduce Bill To Protect Caribbean Drug Traffickers From Trump Strikes

Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced a resolution on Friday aimed at halting U.S. military strikes on drug trafficking operations in the Caribbean, saying the actions were launched without congressional approval.

The measure, filed under the War Powers Act, would prohibit use of the military against non-state groups involved in drug trafficking unless Congress authorizes it. War powers resolutions are privileged, meaning the Senate must take up the measure for debate and a vote.

The move follows two recent military strikes in the Southern Caribbean Sea—on Sept. 2 and Sept. 15—that targeted vessels that were carrying narcotics. Democratic lawmakers say they have not received key details about the incidents, including who was on board, the cargo, and the legal basis for lethal force.

President Donald Trump has said the vessels belonged to “extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists” operating out of Venezuela. He said the boats were carrying narcotics bound for the United States, calling them a direct threat to U.S. national security and vital interests.

“If you are transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you,” Trump said after the Sept. 15 operation, which killed three people. He added there was “recorded evidence” that drugs were on board, including large bags of cocaine and fentanyl scattered in the water after the strike.

“Congress alone holds the power to declare war,” Schiff said in announcing the resolution. “And while we share with the executive branch the imperative of preventing and deterring drugs from reaching our shores, blowing up boats without any legal justification risks dragging the United States into another war and provoking unjustified hostilities against our own citizens.”

Kaine alleged the Trump administration had failed to explain why standard interdiction methods were not used.

“President Trump has no legal authority to launch strikes or use military force in the Caribbean or elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere,” Kaine said, adding that “Congress simply cannot let itself be stiff-armed as this administration continues to flout the law.”

The White House has said the earlier strike on Sept. 2 targeted the operations of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization, and that it was conducted in defense of U.S. national interests.

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Venezuela Announces Capture of Alleged DEA Agent With Massive Drug Shipment

Venezuelan authorities announced on Wednesday the seizure of nearly 3.7 metric tons of cocaine and the arrest of several individuals, including a man they claim is a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said security forces intercepted a speedboat in the waters off Falcón state on September 14, carrying 100 sacks of cocaine and 2,400 liters of fuel. The operation, which Cabello described as “clean,” ended with five arrests. The detainees were identified as Joel Luis Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús Antonio Quilarte Carreño, Jhonny José Salazar Gutiérrez, Carlos Alberto Bravo Lemus, and Levi Enrique López, who Cabello alleged is linked to the DEA.

According to Cabello, the detainees confessed the shipment was part of a “false flag operation” designed to incriminate Venezuela in international drug trafficking and justify external aggression. “The four detainees are saying they work for the DEA,” Cabello told state television, calling the alleged plan a “maneuver for destabilization.”

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Democrats Introduce Bill To Prevent Strikes on Narcoterrorists

Senate Democrats have introduced a new resolution in an attempt to prevent military action against drug smugglers in the Caribbean.

Sens. Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine introduced a resolution on Friday to prevent further military strikes, on the basis that Congressional approval has not been sought.

The resolution, filed under the War Powers Act, would prevent the use of the US military against non-state groups taking part in drug smuggling unless Congress approves.

Because War Powers resolutions are privileged, the Senate will be forced to consider the resolution for a vote.

On Friday, the US military carried out a third lethal strike on a boat alleged to be carrying drug smugglers in the Caribbean.

In a post on Truth Social, President Trump said, “On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the [United States Southern Command] area of responsibility,” which intelligence had confirmed was “trafficking illicit narcotics.”

The strike took place in international waters.

According to President Trump, “three male narcoterrorists” were killed. The President did not say which group the men belonged to.

The President ended his social-media post with a warning: “STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA, AND COMMITTING VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICANS.”

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Democratic Congresswoman Calls Out GOP Colleague’s Marijuana Arrest As He Works To Upend D.C. Sentencing Reform Law

A Democratic congresswoman is accusing a Republican lawmaker of hypocrisy for sponsoring legislation to upend a Washington, D.C. sentencing reform law when his own charge for marijuana possession in his youth was dismissed under a court’s discretion.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday took up bills targeting D.C. policies that recently advanced through the Oversight and Government Accountability. That included a measure titled the DC Crimes Act from Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), which would restrict the District’s ability to enact sentencing reform.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said the GOP congressman’s push for the legislation represents a double standard given his own personal history with cannabis criminalization as a young adult and whose case was dismissed, enabling him to reach Capitol Hill.

“As a young man, he went through pretrial diversion for misdemeanor marijuana possession,” Crockett said. “As an adult yet younger than 24, he was placed on felony robbery charges, which ultimately, too, were expunged.”

“As I sat and listened to the beginning of this debate, my heart simply broke. And many people know me for being able to do alliterations, and all I could think about was ‘amnesia allows adolescent accountability avoidance, agility from across the aisle,’” she said.

“Work with me for a second: Imagine being a young man born to Jamaican and Panamanian parents who messed up not once but twice. Imagine standing in front of a judge with your life hanging in balance, and instead of prison you’re given a promise of mercy. Your record is wiped clean, and you’ve got a second chance at life. Imagine turning that into a promotion and you go to college and get a job and even become a member of Congress. That’s what redemption looks like.”

“That’s what America is supposed to be about. And that is exactly the story of the next wannabe governor from Florida, as a young man, he went through,” the congresswoman said, referring to Donalds.

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The Return of Drug War Imperialism

The Trump administration is escalating U.S. drug wars in Latin America as a cover for imperialism.

While the administration directs a military buildup in the Caribbean, killing people who it claims are drug smugglers, it is preparing to intervene in Latin American countries for the purpose of opening their markets to U.S. businesses. The administration’s priority is gaining access to Latin American resources, a main focus of its foreign policy, just as the highest-level officials have indicated.

“Increasingly, on geopolitical issue after geopolitical issue, it is access to raw material and industrial capacity that is at the core both of the decisions that we’re making and the areas that we’re prioritizing,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in June.

Drug War Imperialism

One of the major contributions of the United States to imperial history is drug war imperialism. Developed as part of the so-called “war on drugs,” which the Nixon administration began in the 1970s and the Reagan administration expanded in the 1980s, drug war imperialism has been one of the primary means by which the United States has intervened in Latin America.

During the late 1980s, the United States set the standard for drug war imperialism in Panama. After discrediting Manuel Noriega with drug charges, officials in Washington organized a military intervention to remove the Panamanian ruler from power.

Under the direction of the George H. W. Bush administration, the U.S. military invaded Panama, captured Noriega, and brought him to the United States, where he was tried, convicted, and imprisoned on drug charges. U.S. officials framed the operation as part of the war on drugs, but their primary concern was bringing to power a friendly government that acted on behalf of U.S. interests. U.S. officials valued Panama for its location and for the Panama Canal, a critical node for U.S. trade.

In the following decades, the United States exercised other forms of drug war imperialism in Latin America. In 2000, the administration of Bill Clinton implemented Plan Colombia, a program of U.S. military support for the Colombian government. U.S. officials framed Plan Colombia as a counter-narcotics program, but their objective was to empower the Colombian military in its war against leftist revolutionaries, especially the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In 2007, the administration of George W. Bush pushed forward a similar program in Mexico. With the Mérida Initiative, the Bush administration empowered the Mexican government to intensify its war against drug cartels. U.S. officials saw the program as way to forge closer relations with the Mexican military and confront the country’s drug traffickers, who were making it difficult for U.S. businesses to operate in the country.

Multiple administrations faced strong criticisms over the programs, especially as drug-related violence increased in Colombia and Mexico. A Colombian truth commission estimated that 450,000 people were killed in Colombia from 1985 to 2018, with 80 percent of the deaths being civilians. There have been hundreds of thousands of drug-related deaths in Mexico, with the numbers still increasing by tens of thousands every year.

Although most U.S. officials insisted that criminal organizations in Latin America bore primary responsibility for drug-related violence, some began to question the U.S. approach. They wondered whether U.S.-backed drug wars were ignoring root causes of the drug problem, such as the U.S. demand for drugs.

“As Americans we should be ashamed of ourselves that we have done almost nothing to get our arms around drug demand,” Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly said in 2017. “And we point fingers at people to the south and tell them they need to do more about drug production and drug trafficking.”

In recent years, some critics have even cast the drug wars as a failure. Decades of U.S.-backed military operations, they have noted, have brought terrible violence to Latin America while failing to stop the flow of drugs to the United States.

“Drugs have kept flowing, and Americans and Latin Americans have kept dying,” Shannon O’Neil, who chaired a congressionally-mandated drug policy commission, told Congress in 2020. “Something is not working.”

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