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Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling t...

Gretchen Peters certainly has a sense of timing. She spent the last decade covering Afghanistan and Pakistan, first for the Associated Press and later for ABC News, and managed to bring "Seeds of Terror" to press just as the US and its NATO allies in Afghanistan begin lurching toward a new approach to drug policy there. Just this past weekend, the US announced it was giving up on trying to eradicate its way to victory over the poppy crop, and for the past few weeks, news accounts of US and NATO attacks on traffickers, opium stockpiles, and heroin labs have been coming at a steady, if not escalating, pace.

Afghan opium Peters' thesis -- that the immensely lucrative opium and heroin trade is funding the Taliban and Al Qaeda to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which they use to wage their insurgency against the West and allies in Afghanistan -- while portrayed as stunning and shocking, is nothing new to readers of the Chronicle, or anyone else who has been following events in Afghanistan since before the 2001 US invasion.

But where "Seeds of Terror" shines is in its unparalleled detail and depth of knowledge of the drug trade, the Taliban/Al Qaeda insurgency, the Pakistan connection, and the intricate and complicated linkages between the actors. With access to government and security officials from the US, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and through interviews with everyone from simple famers to fighters to opium traders and even some amazingly high-up people in the international heroin trade, Peters is able to navigate and share with readers the murky, ever shifting nature of the beast.

She is especially useful in unraveling the various groupings that are simplistically referred to as "the Taliban." There is no single Taliban, Peters explains; there are rival warlords (Hekmatyar, Haqqani, Mullah Omar) running their drug empires and fighting to drive out the Westerners, their jihadist convictions clouded more each year in a haze of opium smoke and illicit profits. And then there are what are in essence criminal drug trafficking organizations. They, too, will identify themselves as Taliban for pragmatic reasons -- the intimidation factor, mainly -- but have little interest in holy war, except as it provides the chaotic cover for their underground trade.

Actually, as Peters details, the story goes back a generation further, to the last great American intervention into this Fourth World country on the other side of the planet. Then, during the Reagan-era sponsorship of the Afghan mujahedeen fighting to drive out the Soviet Red Army, millions of Afghans fled into refugee camps in Pakistan, and would-be warlords and foreign jihadis (including a young Osama bin Laden), tussled for the billions of dollars coming from Washington and doled out by Pakistani intelligence, or, alternately, from funding sources in Saudi Arabia.

Those warlords turned Pakistan, particularly the refugee-ridden Northwest Frontier territories into a leading opium producer during the 1980s, to ensure sources of funding for their armies, and secondarily, to turn as many Russian soldiers into junkies as they could. The Pakistani drug trafficking networks, including some very highly placed army and other officials, set up then are still the main conduits for the opium and heroin leaving Afghanistan today. Man, talk about your blowback.

Peters has a keen grasp of local affairs, knows how to write, and has constructed a gripping and informative narrative. But, faced with a counterinsurgency effort that has floundered, in good part because of profits from the illicit drug trade keeping the Taliban well-supplied with shiny new weapons, she cannot resist the temptation to try her own hand at recommending more effective policies. Here, unfortunately, she is decidedly conventional and unquestioning of the prohibitionist paradigm.

For example, the proposal floated by The Senlis Council in 2005 to simply buy up the poppy crop and divert it into the legitimate medical market gets remarkably short shrift. Peters devotes a mere paragraph to the plan, dismissing it as not pragmatic -- a position not universally held by experts.

Similarly, her policy prescriptions, while including such progressive developmentalist planks as alternative livelihood programs, strengthening institutions, and opening new markets for new crops, also include a call to "arrest or kill" drug kingpins, heroin lab chemists, and even mid-level traffickers. She also advocates air strikes against smuggling convoys, "smarter" counterinsurgency, and beefed up law enforcement against the "bad guys."

Peters' thinking on drug policy may be decidedly inside the box, but her contribution to our understanding of the complex nexus between the illicit drug trade in Afghanistan, local insurgencies, and global jihadi ambitions is important and chilling. This is the best layperson's guide to that nexus out there.

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As summer arrives in Afghanistan, it's not just the temperature that is heating up. Nearly 20,000 additional US troops are joining American and NATO forces on the ground, bringing foreign troop totals to nearly 90,000, and an insurgency grown wealthy off the opium and heroin trade is engaging them with dozens of attacks a day across the country. But this year, something different is going on: For the first time, the West is taking direct aim at the drug trafficking networks that deliver hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the insurgents.

the opium trader's wares (photo by Chronicle editor Phil Smith during September 2005 visit to Afghanistan) Last week, hundreds of British and Afghan troops backed by US and Canadian helicopters and US jets engaged in a series of raids in southern Helmand province, the country's largest opium producing and heroin refining region, seizing 5,500 kilograms of opium paste, 220 kilos of morphine, more than 100 kilos of heroin, and 148 kilos of hashish. They also uncovered and destroyed heroin labs and weapons caches, fending off Taliban machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade attacks as they did so.

"This has been an important operation against the illegal narcotics industry and represents a significant setback for the insurgency in Helmand Province," said Lt. Col. Stephen Cartwright, commanding officer of some of the British troops. "The link between the insurgents and the narcotics industry is proven as militants use the money derived from the drug trade as a principle source of funding to arm themselves with weapons and conduct their campaign of intimidation and violence. By destroying this opium and the drug making facilities we are directly target their fighting capability. The operation has been well received by the Afghan people."

It wasn't the first Western attack on the Afghan drug trade this year, and it certainly won't be the last. Operating since last fall on new marching orders, Western troops and their Afghan allies are for the first time engaging in serious drug war as part of their seemingly endless counterinsurgency. And they are drawing a sharp response from the Taliban, which must be seen not so much as a monolithic Islamic fundamentalist movement, but as an ever-shifting amalgam of jihadis, home-grown and foreign, competing warlords, including the titular head of the movement, Mullah Omar, disenchanted tribesmen, and purely criminal drug trafficking organizations collectively called "the Taliban."

So far this year, 142 NATO and US troops have been killed in the fighting, putting 2009 on a pace to be the bloodiest year yet for the West in the now nearly eight-year-old invasion, occupation, and counterinsurgency aimed at uprooting the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies. Also dead are hundreds, if not more, Taliban fighters, and an unknown number of Afghan civilians, victims of Western air strikes, twitchy trigger fingers, and unending Taliban attacks on security forces and public places.

There will be "tough fighting" this summer and beyond in Afghanistan, top US commander Gen. David Petraeus said Wednesday in remarks to reporters in Tampa. As US and NATO troops go on the offensive "to take back from the Taliban areas that they have been able to control, there will be tough fighting," he said. "Certainly that tough fighting will not be concluded just this year. Certainly there will be tough periods beyond this year," he added, noting that the Taliban insurgency is at its bloodiest levels since 2001.

That rising insurgency, financed in large part by drug trade profits, has sparked a rethinking of Western anti-drug strategy, as well as the deployment of nearly 20,000 additional troops, with some 7,000 of them headed for Helmand, which, if it were a country, would be the world's largest opium producer.

Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out the new thinking in testimony to the Senate last month. The West is losing the battle against opium production, he said, so instead of merely going after Taliban militants it is time to "go after" the powerful drug lords who control the trafficking and smuggling networks in Afghanistan.

"With respect to the narcotics -- the threat that is there -- it is very clearly funding the insurgency. We know that, and strategically, my view is that it has to be eliminated," Mullen said. "We have had almost no success in the last seven or eight years doing that, including this year's efforts, because we are unable to put viable livelihood in behind any kind of eradication."

While the new approach -- de-emphasized eradication of farmers' fields and targeting the drug trade, especially when linked to the insurgency -- is better than the approach of the Bush years, it is still rife with problems, obstacles, and uncertainties, said a trio of experts consulted by the Chronicle.

"We are seeing a clear shift away from eradication being the dominant focus and a clear emphasis on rural development as a way to proceed, and that is a major positive development," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a scholar of drugs and insurgency at the Brookings Institution. "Interdiction was always nominally part of the package, but there is now a new mandate. Since October, NATO countries can participate in the interdiction of Taliban-linked traffickers. Certainly, the US and the UK are planning to vastly engage in this mission."

"The whole policy has changed," agreed Raheem Yaseer, assistant director of the Afghanistan Studies Center at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. "There was lots of criticism about the troops not going after the drug leaders and the trafficking. They were concentrating on the terrorists, but now they realize the opium traffic has actually been used to finance their activities, so now they are trying to eliminate the traffickers and promoters of the trade," he explained.

"There is more emphasis on reconstruction," said Yaseer. "There will be some compensation for people who are giving up the poppy, and shifting from poppy to saffron, things like that. Still, security is key, and there are some problems with security," he added in a masterful use of understatement.

"The administration appears at least to understand that eradication should target cartels rather than poor local farmers," said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst with the libertarian leaning Cato Institute. "I hope they continue down that path; it's the best of many horrible options. The best policy would be legalization," she said, adding wistfully that she would prefer a more sensible drug policy.

"I have a feeling this is going to be a very bloody summer," said Malou. "There will be more violence because of the Afghan elections this August, as well as the Taliban's annual spring and summer offensive, which this year is going to be a sort of counteroffensive to the Western surge."

What the new emphasis on going after traffickers will accomplish remains to be seen, said Felbab-Brown. "Interdiction could provide a good reason for the Taliban to insert itself more deeply into the drug trade, or it could encourage traffickers to join the Karzai government," she said.

The effect of the new campaign on security in the countryside also remains to be seen, Felbab-Brown said. "Our reconstruction capacity is so weak after decades of neglect and a systematic effort to destroy those projects," she noted. "At bottom, though, the effectiveness of rural development programs depends on security. Without security, there is no effective program."

Western military forces also have some image-building to do, said Yaseer. "Because of wrong policies of the past and high civilian casualties, the original favorable perception of the foreign troops has changed from favorable to antagonistic. It will take some time to get back the good image."

Yaseer also had doubts about the utility of the massive foreign, mainly US, troop increase now underway. "Unless the sources of the problem, which lie in Pakistan, are attacked, adding more troops will not be very useful," he said. "They will just make the region more volatile and create more resentment, and they will provide the insurgents with a larger target than before," he said.

"The new administration's desire to change the policy makes one a bit optimistic, but again, time will tell whether the West is serious about them," Yaseer continued. Progress will depend on the nature of the operations and whether the new policies are actually implemented, whether this is real."

For Malou, the clock is ticking, and Western soldiers have no good reason to be remaining in Afghanistan for much longer. "We haven't found bin Laden in eight years, and most of the high-level Al Qaeda we've captured have been the result of police detective work, not military force. The foreign military presence in Afghanistan is perceived as a foreign occupation by many people in the region on both sides of the border, and that's poisoning the well even further," she said.

The US needs to be planning an exit strategy, said Malou. "When you look strategically and economically, the US just doesn't have a vital interest impelling us to stay in the region indefinitely," she said. "We need a timeframe for withdrawal within the next several years. We need to narrow our objectives to training security forces. I don't see any reason why we need to stay in this region any longer."

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Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor

Regardless of what you may think about cocaine -- party favor or demon drug -- one thing is clear: Cocaine is big business. These days, the illicit cocaine industry generates dozens of billions of dollars in profits annually and, in addition to the millions of peasant families earning a living growing coca, employs hundreds of thousands of people in its Andean homeland and across Latin America, and hundreds of thousands more in trafficking and distribution networks across the globe.

There is a flip-side: The cocaine industry has also resulted in the creation of an anti-cocaine enterprise, also global in scope, but centered in the United States. It, too, employs tens of thousands of people -- from UN anti-drug bureaucrats to DEA agents to prison guards hired to watch over America's imprisoned street-level crack dealers -- and generates billions of dollars of governmental spending.

It wasn't always this way, and, with "Andean Cocaine," commodity historian Paul Gootenberg of SUNY Stony Brook has made a magnificent contribution in explaining how in just under a century and a half cocaine went from unknown (discovered in 1860) to licit global commodity (1880s-1920s), to illicit but dormant commodity (1920s-1950s) to the multi-billion dollar illicit commodity of today.

In a work the author himself describes as "glocal," Gootenberg used previously untapped archival sources, primarily from Peru and the US, to combine finely-detailed analysis of key personages and events in the evolution of the trade in its Peruvian hearth with a global narrative of "commodity chains," a sociological concept that ties together all elements in a commodity, from local producers and processors to national and international distribution networks and, ultimately, consumers.

The "commodity chain" concept works remarkably well in illuminating the murky story that is modern cocaine. How else do you explain the connection between a Peruvian peasant in the remote Upper Huallaga and a street-corner crack peddler in the Bronx or between entrepreneurial Colombian cocaine traffickers, weak governments in West Africa, and coke-sniffing bankers in the city of London?

Still, Gootenburg is a historian, and his story ends -- not begins -- with the arrival of the modern illicit cocaine trade. He applies the commodity chain concept to cocaine from the beginning, the 1860 isolation of the cocaine alkaloid by a Francophile Peruvian pharmacist, who, Gootenburg notes, worked within an international milieu of late 19th Century European scientific thought and exchange.

Within a few short years, cocaine had become a medical miracle (the first step on the now all-too-familiar path of currently demonized drugs) and a nascent international trade in cocaine sulphate (basically what we now refer to as cocaine paste), primarily to German and Dutch pharmaceutical houses. At the same time, just before the dawn of the 20th Century, the dangers of cocaine were becoming apparent, and moves to restrict its use got underway.

The key player in last century's cocaine panic was the United States -- ironically, the world's number one consumer of cocaine's precursor, coca. US patent medicines of the ear featured numerous coca-based tonics and concoctions, the granddaddy of them all being Coca-Cola, whose monopoly on legal (if denatured) coca leaf imports played a shadowy role in US coca and cocaine policies well into the 1950s. But some of those patent medicines also contained cocaine, and more was leaking out of medicinal markets. By the first decade of the last century, cocaine was under attack in the US.

Cocaine was banned in the US before World War I, and by the 1920s, blues singers were singing sad songs about its absence. With use levels dropping close to absolute zero, cocaine use was largely a non-issue for the US for the next 50 years. But, Gootenburg strongly suggests that the US obsession with stifling cocaine production and use sowed the seeds of the drug's stupendous expansion in the decades since the 1970s.

A particularly fascinating section revolves around the social construction of the "illicit" cocaine trade in Peru during World War II. At that point, cocaine was still a legal and treasured, if slightly over-the-hill, commodity in Peru. But some of cocaine's most lucrative customers were in Germany and Japan, the Axis foes of the US and its Latin American allies. Peruvian producers, desperate to retain their markets, sold to their traditional clientele regardless of US wishes, becoming the first "illicit" Peruvian cocaine traffickers and paving the way for the reemergence of cocaine as a black market commodity.

For someone like me, who has more than a passing familiarity with the Andean coca and cocaine trades, "Andean Cocaine" is especially fruitful for deepening my historical understanding. Peruvian family surnames prominent in coca and/or cocaine decades ago -- Durand, Malpartida, Soberon -- continue to play prominent roles in Peruvian coca politics today.

There is much, much more to this book -- suffice it to say it could be the basis of a post-graduate seminar or two -- but one lasting lesson Gootenburg seems to draw from his research is the futility, if not downright counterproductiveness, of the efforts to suppress cocaine and the cocaine trade. From the original "illicit" cocaine sales during World War II, which generated nascent trafficking networks to the crop eradications in the 1970s and 1980s in Peru and Bolivia, which turned Colombia, where indigenous coca production was almost nonexistent, into the world's leading coca and cocaine producer, every effort to stifle the trade has perversely only strengthened it. Perhaps someday we will learn a lesson here.

"Andean Cocaine" is an academic work written by an historian. It's not light reading, and, by the author's own admission, it concentrates on the Peruvian producer end of the commodity chain, not the US -- and increasingly, global -- consumer end of the chain. Nonetheless, it is a sterling contribution to the literature of cocaine, and should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand cocaine in context.

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Late last week, both houses of the Mexican Congress approved a bill that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs. The measure is part of a broader bill aimed at small-scale drug dealing and rationalizing Mexico's struggle against violent drug trafficking organizations.

The bill was sponsored by President Felipe Calderón, but support for it from his ruling National Action Party (PAN) has dwindled. Still, most observers who spoke to the Chronicle this week think he will sign the bill.

The Mexican Congress passed similar legislation in 2006, but then President Vicente Fox refused to sign it after hearing protests from the Bush administration. This time, though, there has not been a peep out of Washington either for or against the bill.
Among the bill's main provisions:

The amounts of various drugs that are decriminalized for personal use are:

The measure comes in the midst of ongoing high levels of violence as President Calderón attempts to crack down on Mexico's wealthy, powerful, and bloody-minded drug trafficking organizations -- the so-called cartels. Approximately 10,000 people have died in prohibition-related violence in Mexico since Calderón called out the armed forces against the cartels in early 2007. The multi-sided confrontation pits the Mexican state against the cartels, the cartels against each other, and even factions of the same cartel against each other.

discussion growing: Feb. '09 drug policy forum held by Mexico's Grupo Parlamentario Alternativa (grupoparlamentarioalternativa.org.mx/node/227) The US backs Calderón's war on the cartels, allocating $1.4 billion over three years for Plan Mérida. President Obama reiterated his commitment to the Mexican drug war during a visit to the country last month.

The measure also comes against a backdrop of increasing drug use levels in Mexico and increasing concern about the problems associated with that drug use. In recent years, the cartels have figured out that their home country is also an increasingly lucrative market for their wares. Now, if you travel to the right neighborhoods in virtually any Mexican city, you can find storefront retail illegal drug outlets.

"This looks like one step forward, two steps back," said Isaac Campos Costero, an assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati and visiting fellow at the University of California at San Diego's Center for US-Mexican Studies. "If we're talking about reducing the crisis of violence in Mexico, I don't think this bill does anything good, and may even exacerbate it. It won't reduce demand, and at the same time it seeks to prosecute small-time dealers more energetically."

"That this suggests growing support for decriminalization, reduces the criminality of drug users, embraces harm reduction, and acknowledges cultural uses is a good thing and consistent with what is going on elsewhere in Latin America," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "The idea of decriminalization of possession based in part on human rights and public health grounds has gained real traction in the region, which is somewhat surprising given the long preoccupation with drugs and organized crime," he said.

"But there's this other part of it that is all about Calderón's war on the traffickers; it's part and parcel of empowering law enforcement," Nadelmann continued. "There is serious concern that law enforcement has lost the upper hand to the gangsters, and the risk here is that the new law will give police all the more opportunity to go after low-level distributors and addicts who sell drugs to support their habits, while diverting attention from serious violent criminals."

For Mexican drug reformers organized as the Collective for Integrated Drug Policy, while the bill is an advance, its failure to more fully incorporate public health and human rights perspectives runs the risk of creating negative consequences for the country. In a statement released after the bill passed the Congress, the group praised the legislation for distinguishing between consumers, addicts, and criminals, for increasing the amount of marijuana from two grams to five, for acknowledging the role of harm reduction, and for removing the provision that would have required drug treatment for those caught holding.

But the group also expressed its preoccupation with other parts of the bill. "The law only marginally considers the problem of drug consumption and limits itself to legally defining it," the collective noted. "On the other hand, it focuses on intensifying a military and police strategy that has proven to be a failure."

The collective also worried that "the law will criminalize a vast group of people who make a living off small-time drug dealing" who are not cartel members but impoverished citizens. "Imprisoning them will not diminish the supply of drugs on the street, nor will it improve public security; yet it will justify the war on drugs, since the government will be able to boast the number of people incarcerated with this policy," the group wrote.

The decriminalization quantities are too small, the group said, and that will lead to problems. "These amounts are not realistic in terms of the drug market (for example, the initiative allows a consumer to have a half-gram of coke, when coke is sold on the streets by the gram), and we thus can anticipate a significant increase in corruption and extortion of consumers by police forces," the statement said.

Jorge Hernández Tinajero, an advisor to Social Democratic Party Deputy Elsa Conde, is also the leader of the collective. "Elsa went to the session and loudly criticized the bill, saying it was not an integrated policy but a new way to make more corruption and put more people in jail, especially women who desperately need to work and earn some money," he recounted. "She said 70% of the women in jail are there because they are small dealers."

"While the bill doesn't go far enough, it at least decriminalizes possession for personal use, and treatment is no longer mandatory if you get caught carrying your personal dose," said Dr. Humberto Brocca, a member of the collective. "Now, you will not have to show that you are an addict and thus a candidate for treatment," he said, referring to current Mexican law, which creates a loophole for addicts in possession of drugs.

"It's a mixed bag," said Ana Paula Hernández, a Mexico City-based consultant on drug policy and human rights. "The headlines will be that drug possession has been decriminalized, but when you look at it more closely, the consequences could be very serious," she said. "Now, state and local authorities will be able to prosecute crimes related to small-scale drug dealing. That would be good if Mexico were a different country, but corruption is so extreme at those levels that giving these authorities these powers could greatly increase their level of involvement in organized crime."

Whether the bill will have any impact at all on the major trafficking organizations who are ostensibly the target of the Mexican government's offensive remains to be seen.

"I don't think this is going to have any impact on the government's war against the cartels," said Hernandez. "For that to happen, we need to have a structural, democratic reform of police forces and the judiciary at the state and municipal level by reallocating resources for prevention and information campaigns on drug use with a risk and harm reduction perspective; and of course by other measures such as real decriminalization."

Brocca, too, foresaw more arrests as a result of the bill, but little impact on the violence plaguing the country. "Yeah, they will sweep up mostly small-timers so the party in power can look good," he said, "but it will probably have no impact whatsoever on the prohibition-related violence."

Whatever action Mexico takes is likely to have little impact on the violence without changes in US drug policies, Campos Costero said. Still, passage of the bill could have an important psychological effect, he said.

"From a symbolic point of view, once this goes into effect and Armageddon doesn't happen and society doesn't crumble, this may help break down attitudes a bit and pave the way for more substantive reforms in the future," said Campos Costero.

The bill could also undercut Mexico's historic opposition to relaxation of the drug laws north of the border. "Mexico has opposed US reform efforts on marijuana in the past, but by passing this bill, Mexico effectively reduces its ability to complain about US drug reform in the future," said Campos Costero. "And that's significant."

But that doesn't mean Mexicans would not raise a stink if the US moved toward radical drug reforms, Campos Costero noted. "For years and years, Mexicans have been hearing condescending remarks from the US about how they're not tough enough on drugs, so if the US were to pursue legalization, the Mexican public would go crazy. They see it as a demand problem, but of course, it's really a policy problem," he said. "If there were more rational drug policies, we could have demand at the same levels, but eliminate these problems."

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Beware San Malverde! Watch out, Santa Muerte! The enemies of Mexico's violent and thriving illicit drug trade are after you. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported last weekend that Mexican authorities destroyed dozens of religious shrines paying homage to Santa Muerte (Saint Death), an informal Catholic saint favored by the poor as well as by criminals and drug traffickers, and San Malverde, a similar figure based on a peasant highwayman of the late 19th century.

San Malverde picture, with Malverde pot leaf, Malverde keychain and Malverde pot leaf belt buckle (author's personal collection) Images of both saints have been appropriated by Mexico's drug traffickers and have been found on walls, tattoos, pendants, belt buckles, even engraved into the grips of pistols. For US law enforcement, coming across either saint is strongly indicative of drug trade activity. But the saints are also widely revered by Mexico's Catholic poor. Marches for Santa Muerte have drawn thousands of adherents in Mexico City, and San Malverde branded beer is available in Sinaloa, his home state and home of the Sinaloa cartel.

Four shrines to Santa Muerte and one to San Malverde were destroyed last Saturday in Tijuana and nearby Rosarito Beach. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos said it was a military action, but the military has not confirmed that. Two days later, city and federal officials destroyed 34 more Santa Muerte chapels that had sprung up in recent years along the highway between Monterrey and the border town of Nuevo Laredo.

For officials, the unsanctioned saints are, like the narcocorridos (drug ballads), celebrating the exploits of drug traffickers, evidence of the drug culture seeping into broader civic culture. "This is a subject that must open a great social debate in Tijuana," Ramos said in an interview last week. "Should we permit these spaces where hired assassins who kill children, families, police seek protection? What side are we on? I am on the side of tranquility and security."

Ramos, a member of President Felipe Calderón's National Action Party (PAN), is pushing censorship as a response to the spreading drug culture. He is agitating for a package of bills before the Baja California legislature that would ban the broadcast of narcocorridos, as well as videos and images that would "glorify" drug traffickers.

But such plans have their critics, who argue that destroying shrines will not accomplish anything and that the informal saints are adored by many who have nothing to do with drug trafficking. "Destroying these chapels is not going to do anything to diminish crime," said Jose Manuel Valenzuela, a researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a Tijuana think-tank. "Someone who's going to commit a crime could just as easily go to a Catholic church as a Santa Muerte shrine, or go nowhere at all."

The people who came to the Tijuana shrines last week only to find they had been destroyed were not happy. "I feel so angry," said Zaida Romero, 33, a used-clothing vendor and single mother of seven, standing by the pile of rubble and twisted metal on the day the shrines were destroyed March 21. "She has helped me so, so, so much," said Romero, explaining that La Santa Muerte helped her overcome cancer.

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The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) met this week in Vienna to draft a political statement and plan of action to guide international drug policy for the next decade. The statement largely affirms existing prohibitionist policies and ignores harm reduction, as the CND has done it the past. [Editor's note: The draft statement had not been formally approved as of press time, but is likely to be approved as is.]

Vienna International Center, home of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime The political statement is supposed to evaluate the implementation of the previous political declaration and action plan approved by the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) in 1998. At the 1998 session, UNGASS adopted the slogan "A Drug-Free World -- We Can Do It" and launched a "campaign" to wipe out all drug crops -- from marijuana to opium to coca -- by 2008.

But while the international community continues to slide down its century-old prohibitionist path regarding non-medicinal drug use and sales, it is encountering an increasing amount of friction. The United States, as leader of the hard-liners, continues to dominate the debates and set the agenda, but an emerging bloc of mainly Latin American and European countries is expressing deep reservations about continuing the same policies for another decade.

The atmosphere in Vienna this week was circus like, complete with street protests, as national delegations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other interested parties heatedly debated what an increasingly vociferous minority called a "failed" approach to the issue. Debate was particularly intense about the inclusion of harm reduction in the political statement -- a position rejected by the US delegation, led by outgoing acting drug czar Edward Jurith.

The drug summit came as the UN, the CND, and the countries pushing the prohibitionist hard-line have come under repeated attack for essentially maintaining the status quo. On Tuesday, the European Commission issued a report that found while in the past decade policies to help drug users and go after drug traffickers have matured, there was little evidence to suggest that the global drug situation had improved.

"Broadly speaking the situation has improved a little in some of the richer countries, while for others it worsened, and for some of those it worsened sharply and substantially, among which are a few large developing or transitional countries," an EC media statement on the report said. "In other words, the world drugs problem seems to be more or less in the same state as in 1998: if anything, the situation has become more complex: prices for drugs in most Western countries have fallen since 1998 by as much as 10% to 30%, despite tougher sentencing of the sellers of e.g. cocaine and heroin in some of these markets."

SSDP's Kris Krane, caged as part of HCLU demonstration at UN (drogriporter.hu/en/demonstration) Current anti-drug policies also came under attack from a growing coalition of NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, the International Harm Reduction Association, the European NGO Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies (ENCOD), and the International Drug Policy Consortium, as well as various NGOs from the US, Brazil, Canada, and England, among others, all of whom were in Vienna for the meeting. Human Rights Watch urged the CND to undo a decade of neglect, while the English group Transform Drug Policy Foundation called for a moratorium on global strategic drug policy setting, a review of the consequences of prohibitionist policies, and a commission to explore alternatives to the failed war on drugs.

"Every state that signs up to the political declaration at this commission recommits the UN to complicity in fighting a catastrophic war on drugs," said Danny Kushlick, policy director for Transform. "It is a tragic irony that the UN, so often renowned for peacekeeping, is being used to fight a war that brings untold misery to some of the most marginalized people on earth. 8,000 deaths in Mexico in recent years, the destabilization of Colombia and Afghanistan, continued corruption and instability in the Caribbean and West Africa are testament to the catastrophic impact of a drug control system based upon global prohibition. It is no surprise that the declaration is unlikely even to mention harm reduction, as it runs counter to the primary impact of the prevailing drug control system which, as the past ten years demonstrate, increases harm."

Not all the action took place in the conference hall. Wednesday saw a lively demonstration by NGO groups including Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the drug user group INPUD, ENCOD, and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, among others. Protestors spoke to reporters from jail-like cages, waved signs and passed out pamphlets to delegates forced to run their gauntlet, and decried the harms of drug prohibition. One particularly effective protestor was dressed as a sun-glass wearing, cigar-puffing Mafioso, celebrating that business was good thanks to prohibition.

Even UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) head Antonio Maria Costa, while whistling past the graveyard to insist that progress had been made in the past decade, acknowledged that current global policies have backfired in some ways. Giving the opening address Wednesday, Costa said "the world drug problem has been contained, but not solved" thanks to international anti-drug efforts.

But global drug control efforts have had "a dramatic unintended consequence," he added, "a criminal black market of staggering proportions." The international drug trade is "undermining security and development and causing some to make a dangerous wager in favor of legalization. Drugs are not harmful because they are controlled; they are controlled because they are harmful." Drug legalization would be "a historic mistake," he said.

Even so, Costa painted a dire picture of what prohibition had wrought: "When mafias can buy elections, candidates, political parties, in a word, power, the consequences can only be highly destabilizing" he said. "While ghettoes burn, West Africa is under attack, drug cartels threaten Central America and drug money penetrates bankrupt financial institutions".

activists from International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD) at demo (drogriporter.hu/en/demonstration) Not everybody was buying into the UNODC-CND-US position of more of the same. Bolivian President Evo Morales brandished a coca leaf, then chewed it during his address to the delegates to underline his demand that coca be removed from the list of proscribed substances.

"This is coca leaf, this is not cocaine; this is part and parcel of a culture," Morales said. The ban on coca was a "major historical mistake," he added. "It has no harmful impact, no harmful impact at all in its natural state. It causes no mental disturbances, it does not make people run mad, as some would have us believe, and it does not cause addiction."

Neighboring Brazil was also critical. "We ought to recognize the important progress achieved over the last decade," said Brazilian delegate Jorge Armando Felix. "But the achievements have not been accomplished. The aim of a world free of drugs has proven to be unobtainable and in fact has led to unintended consequences such as the increase of the prison population, increase in violence related to an illegal drug market, increase in homicide and violence among the young population with a dramatic impact on mortality and life expectancy -- social exclusion due to drug use and the emergence of synthetic drugs."

Felix also had some prescriptions for UNGASS and the CND. "At this historic moment with the opportunity to reassess the past 10 years and more importantly to think about the challenges to come, Brazil enforces the need for recognition of and moving towards: harm reduction strategies; assessing drug dependence, and HIV AIDS populations; securing the human rights of drug users; correcting the imbalance between investments in supply and demand reduction areas; increasing actions and programs of prevention based on scientific evidence with an emphasis towards vulnerable populations and towards increase of access to and care for problematic or vulnerable drug users; and to the acknowledgment of different models of treatment for the need for increased funding of these efforts."

Brazilian Luiz Paulo Guanabara, head of the NGO Psicotropicus, observed it all with mixed feelings. "Early on, I thought the NGO strategy for harm reduction would not result in anything and that we should aim for drug regulation instead," he said. "And in the end, the term harm reduction is not in the political declaration, but the Beyond 2008 document is very strong and has not gone unnoticed."

Mafioso-looking activist distributing ''United Nations of Prohibition'' 1,000 note bills with UNODC chief Costa's face on one side, and a thank you from the In Memoriam Al Capone Trust on the other (drogriporter.hu/en/demonstration) Guanabara had harsh words for both the Americans and the UN. "It seems like the American delegates believe harm reduction is a sin -- or they favor harm increase, so they can lock up more people and have more HIV patients, increase crime, sell more weapons and make money out of the disgrace of others and families' destruction. Their prohibitionist stance is obscene," he declared. "And these guys at the CND understand nothing of drugs and drug use, they are just bureaucrats. To put drugs in the hands of bureaucrats is as dangerous as putting them in the hands of criminals."

But despite the lack of results this time around, Guanabara was thrilled by the participation of civil society. "The civil society mobilization is enormous and intense," he said. "The NGO events around the meeting were the real high-level meetings, not the low-level ones with the bureaucrats at the CND."

While the sentiments from Brazil and Bolivia were echoed by various national delegations, mainly European, and while even the UNODC and the US are willing to give nods to an increased emphasis on treatment and prevention, with the US delegation even going so far as to approve of needle exchanges, at the end of the day, the CND political declaration and action plan represents a stubborn adherence to the prohibitionist status quo.

"Government delegations could have used this process to take stock of what has failed in the last decade in drug-control efforts, and to craft a new international drug policy that reflects current realities and challenges," said Prof. Gerry Stimson, executive director of the International Harm Reduction Association. "Instead, they produced a declaration that is not only weak -- it actually undermines fundamental health and human rights obligations."

American attendee and long-time drug reform activist Michael Krawitz also had mixed feelings. "The slow train wreck that Harry Anslinger started with the 1961 Single Convention is finally grinding to a halt," he said. "The argument here has been a semantic one over harm reduction, but the subtext is much more important, and the subtext is that the treaties were set up to protect public health and are currently being interpreted in such a way as to do the opposite. The declaration wound up being watered down and piled high with reservations. The next five years should prove interesting."

The IHRA and other NGOs called on governments with reservations about the political declaration to refuse to endorse it. That probably will not happen, but some governments have indicated they will add reservations to their approval of the declaration. After a century of prohibition, the first formal cracks are beginning to appear at the center of the legal backbone of global drug prohibition. Given that the dissent has largely appeared only since the last UNGASS in 1998, perhaps this isn't such a bad start.

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Police in small town Tenaha, Texas, near the Louisiana line, have found a way of turning law enforcement into a lucrative racket. According to a recently filed federal lawsuit, police there routinely stopped passing motorists -- the vast majority of them black -- and threatened them with felony arrests on charges such as money laundering unless they agreed to sign over their property on the spot.

teaching evil: US Dept. of Justice assets forfeiture program logo More than 140 people accepted that Hobson's choice between June 2006 and June 2008, according to court records cited by the Chicago Tribune, which ran a lengthy article on the practice this week. Among them was a black grandmother who handed over $4,000 in cash and an interracial couple from Houston who handed over $6,000 in cash after police threatened to arrest them and send their children to foster care. Neither the couple nor the grandmother were charged with any crime.

The waiver form that the couple signed giving up their rights is particularly chilling. "We agree that this case may be taken up and considered by the Court without further notice to us during this proceeding. In exchange for this agreement, no criminal charges shall be filed on either of us as a result of this case, and our children shall not be turned over to CPS."

Officials in Tenaha, which sits on a heavily traveled highway between Houston and popular gambling destinations in Louisiana, said they were fighting drug trafficking and were operating in accord with state asset forfeiture law, which allows local police agencies to keep drug money and other goods used in the commission of a crime.

"We try to enforce the law here," said George Bowers, mayor of the town of 1,046 residents, where boarded-up businesses outnumber open ones and City Hall sports a broken window. "We're not doing this to raise money. That's all I'm going to say at this point," he told the Tribune.

But civil rights attorneys said what Tenaha was doing amounted to highway robbery and filed a federal class action law suit to halt the practice. Tenaha officials "have developed an illegal 'stop and seize' practice of targeting, stopping, detaining, searching and often seizing property from apparently non-white citizens and those traveling with non-white citizens," according to the lawsuit, which was filed in US District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

One of the attorneys involved, David Guillory of Nacogdoches, told the Tribune he combed through county court records and found nearly 200 cases where Tenaha police had seized cash and property from motorists. In only 50 of those cases were drug charges filed. But that didn't stop police from seizing cash, jewelry, cell phones, and even cars from motorists not found with contraband or charged with any crime.

The practice was so routine in Tenaha that Guillory was able to find pre-signed and pre-notarized police affidavits, lacking only the description of the "contraband" to be seized.

"The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African-Americans," Guillory said. "None of these people have been charged with a crime, none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable."

It's not just Tenaha, and it's not just blacks. Hispanics in Texas allege they are the victims of discriminatory highway stops and seizures, too. The practice is especially prevalent on the handful of US highways heading south from the I-10 corridor toward Mexico.

One prominent state legislator, Sen. John Whitmire, chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said police across the state are increasingly relying on seizures to fund their operating budgets. "If used properly, it's a good law-enforcement tool to see that crime doesn't pay," said Whitmire. "But in this instance, where people are being pulled over and their property is taken with no charges filed and no convictions, I think that's theft."

Whitmire said the problem extends beyond Tenaha, and he's going to do something about it. On Monday, he filed a bill that would require police to go before a judge before attempting to seize property under the asset forfeiture laws. Ultimately, he said, he is looking for a law that allows police to seize property only after a suspect is charged and convicted in court.

"The law has gotten away from what was intended, which was to take the profits of a bad guy's crime spree and use it for additional crime-fighting," Whitmire said. "Now it's largely being used to pay police salaries -- and it's being abused because you don't even have to be a bad guy to lose your property."

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It's jail and prison guards gone wild this week, and a veteran California cop whose pill problem got the best of him. Let's get to it:

In Bangor, Maine, a former Penobscot County jail guard was sentenced Tuesday to six months in jail for smuggling marijuana and prescription drugs into the jail for prisoners. Lori Call pleaded guilty to two counts of trafficking in prison contraband. She also faces two years probation, random drug tests, and substance abuse counseling.

In New York City, a guard at the Sing Sing state prison was indicted Monday for accepting cash and cocaine from an undercover agent. Ashley Harris, 47, was arrested February 19 at a Bronx gas station after taking $500 and eight ounces of cocaine from the agent, who was posing as a drug dealer. Harris was indicted on six counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance, which prosecutors said was destined for the prison. His arrest was the culmination of a three-month sting by state narcs and the Department of Correctional Services.

In Kingston, New York, an Ulster Country Jail guard was arrested last Friday on charges he trafficked drugs at the jail. Guard Peter Portalatin, 23, went down after investigators determined he had smuggled heroin, Oxycontin, marijuana, and tobacco into the jail and set him up in a sting. He now faces charges of bribe receiving in the second degree, attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, receiving reward for official misconduct in the second degree, attempted promoting prison contraband in the first degree and tampering with physical evidence, all felonies. He was also charged with official misconduct and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors. He returned to the county jail as a prisoner until he makes his $10,000 cash bail. Oh, and he's now a former jail guard. He was fired the same day he was arrested.

In Texarkana, Arkansas, a former Miller County jail guard was sentenced February 26 to a whopping 28 years in prison for smuggling contraband hidden in food items to inmates. Jordan Michael Waller, 26, carried tacos, pizzas, and chili to work with him and used the food to hide cell phones, chargers, methamphetamine, marijuana, syringes, tobacco, and rolling papers. Family members testified that Waller suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, but that it was manageable with medication.

In Alameda, California, an Alameda police officer was arrested February 26 for visiting the residence of a terminally ill person and telling the family police provided medication disposal services, but keeping the pills for his own use. It did not appear to be an isolated incident, said police commanders. Sgt. Ronald Jones, a 26-year-year veteran of the department, was charged with two felony counts of using fraud, deceit or misrepresentation to obtain a controlled substance. He is on administrative leave.

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A federal judge in Atlanta Tuesday sent three former Atlanta narcotics officers to prison for their roles in a misbegotten drug raid that ended in the death of a 92-year-old woman and shone a disturbing light on police practices in the Atlanta police drug squad. The victim, Kathryn Johnston, was killed when the three officers fired 39 rounds at her after she fired one shot at them as they were breaking down her door on a bogus drug raid.

Kathryn Johnston US District Court Judge Julie Carnes sentenced former officer Arthur Tesler to five years in prison, Gregg Junnier to six years, and Jason Smith to 10 years. All three sentences were less than those called for by federal sentencing guidelines.

Johnston was killed about 7 p.m. on November 21, 2006. Three hours earlier, Tesler arrested and roughed-up a small-time drug dealer named Fabian Sheats and threatened to send him to prison unless he gave up another drug dealer. Sheats eventually pointed out Johnston's home, apparently at random, telling Tesler and his partners he saw a dealer named "Sam" with a kilo of cocaine there.

The three officers wanted to make a buy, but didn't consider Sheats reliable, so they called an informant named Alex White to come make the buy. But White was unavailable, so the trio simply wrote a false affidavit saying they had watched White make a cocaine buy at Johnston's home. Shortly before 6:00 p.m., they had their no-knock search warrant. An hour later, Johnston was dead after firing upon the intruders she apparently thought were robbers.

Then the cover-up kicked in, with the trio creating more false documents to hide the truth. But their cover-up fell apart when their informant, Alex White, grew frightened and went to the FBI.

In her sentencing statement, Judge Carnes criticized the Atlanta Police Department for its performance quotas for search warrants and arrests, saying the "pressures brought to bear did have an impact on these and other officers on the force." If anything good came from Johnston's death, it will be "a renewed effort by the Atlanta Police Department to prevent something like this from ever happening again," Carnes said. "It is my fervent hope the APD will take to heart what has happened here," the judge said.

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David Borden, Executive Director

David Borden The drug war is intellectually slippery business -- it's impossible to talk straight and effectively defend it. But sometimes a drug warrior is a little too honest.

That was the case this week when an interview with UN anti-drug chief Antonio Maria Costa was published in an Austrian magazine, in which Costa claims black market drug profits propped up the global banking system in 2008. That is, some banks that have survived would have failed, or might have, were it not for drug money laundered into the financial system.

This seems like a bold claim. But it makes sense -- drug money has to go somewhere -- and Costa isn't some local police chief exaggerating the value of a drug seizure to get headlines, he's an economist. The UN isn't always a reliable reporter of the drug situation, but it's worth something. I don't think there's a strong reason for Costa to want to make something like that up.

If the drug trade has saved the financial system, then, or helped to, this requires an evolution of thought. We're accustomed to regarding drugs and drug selling as bad things, but like everything they have their upside. Suppose the drug war magically started to work and the trade were wiped out, or people suddenly stopped using drugs. What would happen to the economy? What would happen to countries like Afghanistan or Colombia or Mexico where a lot of the money being made is in drugs and a lot of people are dependent on that money? Or in some sectors of US society, for that matter?

It would be a catastrophe. Eventually economies would rearrange themselves, to be sure. But the sudden implosion of a large sector of the economy would wreak havoc, not just on the people making a living in the drug trade now, but on the local, national and global economies of which they are a part.

Drug users and even sellers, then, are an integral part of human society -- the larger economic weal depends in part on theirs -- and so our evolution of thought should be about people too, not just economics. We need our drug users, and even our drug sellers, for the most part -- not because they use or sell drugs, but because they're here and we're connected to them, for better or worse.

And if we need them, if in a somewhat flawed way they contribute to the economy on which all of us depend, then they also don't deserve to be persecuted, jailed, have their rights taken away and their lives scarred. If a participant in the drug trade engages in violence, that is one thing; but if a person's only "crime" is a drug offense, it's another.

Along with tolerating these members of society who are now persecuted, we should not ignore the corrupting effects that this situation of money laundering and drug money -- this situation created by prohibition -- can have. With care and planning, we should chart a path away from prohibition, to some form of global legalization instead. Only then will the flood of illegal drug money be stemmed, and the suffering prohibition has caused to individuals and society alike be addressed.

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Police Corruption

Stop the Drug War (DRCNet) - Police Corruption

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

It's been a relatively quiet week on the corrupt cops front, with just two stories this week, but one of them is a real doozy. Let's get to it:

In Memphis, a former Memphis police officer was sentenced Wednesday to a whopping life plus 255 years after being convicted of 44 counts of civil rights, narcotics, robbery, and firearms offenses. Arthur Sease IV was one of a group of rogue Memphis police officers who from November 2003 through April 2006 robbed drug dealers of cash, cocaine, and marijuana, and then sold the stolen drugs for their own profit. Sease was linked to at least 15 armed robberies during the trial. Three other Memphis police officers and two civilians have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced in the case, though none to anywhere near as long as Sease.

In Bentonia, Mississippi, a part-time Bentonia police officer was arrested Monday on felony drug charges. Officer Carl Fleming, 49, is charged with two counts of selling cocaine. He will remain behind bars until trial. He is not eligible for bail because he is already under indictment for assaulting a school teacher and was out on a felony bond at the time of his arrest.

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More drug corruption in Philly, more fallout from the Kathryn Johnston killing in Atlanta, and yet another crooked border guard. Let's get to it:

In Philadelphia, a Philadelphia police detective was arraigned June 18 on charges he tipped off a major drug suspect about an imminent search warrant. Det. Rickie Durham pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements, and given advance notice of a search. He is accused of alerting Philly "drug kingpin" Alton "Ace Capone" Coles of a pending police raid in August 2005 and then lying to investigators when they questioned him. Durham has been suspended for 30 days, and the department says it is on track to fire him. He is on house arrest pending trial.

In Yuma, Arizona, a US Customs and Border Protection officer pleaded guilty June 18 to bribery and drug charges. CBP Officer Henry Gauani, 41, copped to conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to import Ecstasy for accepting $33,000 to allow vehicles loaded with Ecstasy to pass through the Port of Entry from Mexico without inspection. Gauani went down after a federal investigation and a sting on January 27 in which he allowed a vehicle containing what he believed to be a half million Ecstasy tablets pass through his lane without inspection. He is looking at up to 20 years in federal prison and $1,250,000 in fines.

In Atlanta, a former Atlanta Police narcotics unit supervisor was sentenced last Friday to 18 months in prison for his role in an illegal break-in search of a Dill Avenue duplex in 2005. Former officer Wilbert Stallings had pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the civil rights of the homeowner. At sentencing, US District Court Justice Julie Carnes said the sentence also reflected Stallings' role in allowing a culture of corruption to run rampant in the unit he supervised. Members of that unit were responsible for the 2006 killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in a raid based on fabricated evidence. Stallings went down as investigators looking into the Johnston killing put his unit under the microscope.

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The stench emanating from Philadelphia's Narcotics Field Unit grew even more rank this week, an Arizona cop steals cash to feed his pill habit, and two Indianapolis cops turned thugs are headed for prison. Let's get to it:

In Philadelphia, the festering narcotics squad scandal just keeps getting uglier. The Philadelphia Daily News reported Wednesday that at least three women who were present at addresses raided by the Narcotics Field Unit have accused a unit member, Officer Thomas Tolstoy, of sexually assaulting them. None of the women have criminal records, none were arrested during the raids, and none of them knows the others. You can read the ugly details at the link above. This is just the latest sordid tale to emerge about the Narcotics Field Unit since February, when the Daily News reported that unit member Officer Jeffrey Cujdik lied on search warrant applications in order to get into suspected drug houses. In March, the same newspaper reported that Cujdik, Tolstoy and other dope squad members routinely raided corner stores that sold small plastic baggies, disabling surveillance cameras, threatening owners with arrest, and stealing thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise. Tolstoy is now on desk duty as the department and the FBI investigate.

In Yuma, Arizona, a Yuma Police officer was arrested June 8 for allegedly stealing more than $11,000 in cash from seized evidence to buy prescription drugs to which he was addicted. Officer Geoff Presco is charged with one felony count of theft and has been placed on paid leave. Presco went down after a detective following up on a case noticed the missing cash and other evidence and tracked it back to Presco, who had apparently been dipping into the till since February. He was named Yuma's patrol officer of the year last year. He was being held on a $55,000 bond.

In Indianapolis, two former Indianapolis Police narcotics detectives were convicted last Friday for their roles in a scheme to steal marijuana and money from pot dealers. Former detectives Robert Long, 35, and Jason Edwards, 38, were found guilty by a jury of conspiracy to distribute more than 50 kilograms of marijuana, as well as several counts of drug possession or attempted possession with the intent to distribute. The pair went down during an FBI sting in which they were videotaped stealing pot and cash from a stash house in one incident and ripping off $20,000 from a supposed drug courier. A third officer, James Davis, earlier pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme. He faces 10 to 15 years in prison, while Long and Edwards are now looking at 20 years.

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It's a question I've often pondered and one that anybody with strong opinions about drug policy should consider, regardless of where you stand on the issue. Surely, there exists no realistic formula with which to approximate an answer, but one need only observe and understand what the drug war is and how it works to know that grave injustices are forever embedded into the drug war equation.

The question resurfaced this week in an AP report that tells the story of Jose and Maximo Colon. The brothers were arrested and charged with cocaine distribution stemming from an alleged encounter with undercover officers in a sketchy NY bar. The case imploded when surveillance tape from the establishment revealed that the pair had simply not committed the crime or even interacted with the agents. They were arrested moments later by a back-up team, without a clue as to the reason why. Worse still, an outdoor camera captured footage of the undercover investigators "literally dancing down the street" afterwards, apparently pleased with their accomplishment.

It's a striking and gratuitous example of police misconduct to be sure, but the larger question is how many similar cases have led to convictions and prison time for their victims:
Jose quickly got the tape to defense attorney Rochelle Berliner, a former narcotics prosecutor. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.

''I almost threw up,'' she said. ''Because I must've prosecuted 1,500, 2,000 drug cases ... and all felonies. And I think back, Oh my God, I believed everything everyone told me. Maybe a handful of times did something not sound right to me. I don't mean to sound overly dramatic but I was like, sick.''

If it were only possible somehow to reveal the full scope of wrongful, fraudulent convictions in the war on drugs, I don't doubt that the entire nation would be stunned and sickened. Yet, for anyone who's paying attention, it's not necessary to fantasize about the true extent of injustice and corruption that the drug war has unleashed on innocent people. You can read about it in the newspaper all the time.

In Ohio, we saw a DEA agent indicted for helping frame 17 innocent people. In Atlanta, we saw police plant drugs in the home of an innocent 88-year-old woman after shooting her to death. In Tulia, TX we saw a rogue narcotics officer frame and arrest most of the black people in town. In Hearne, TX we saw the same damn thing. And across the country, we've seen dozens of innocent people who might well have ended up in prison if they hadn't been killed first by the police who raided their homes.

Behind all of this lies a matrix of perverse incentives, loose evidentiary requirements, and diminished accountability mechanisms that make mind-blowing miscarriages of justice more than inevitable. A central element of modern drug enforcement involves the use of informants, who trade information on other people for leniency in their own criminal cases. They have every incentive to lie and they do so constantly, as we've seen over and over again. Prosecutors offer leniency in exchange for "substantial assistance" in helping convict others, a practice that inherently favors the guiltiest party. Inevitably, those most directly involved in a criminal conspiracy are armed with names and other critical details that prosecutors crave, while peripheral players and innocent bystanders who become entangled in drug investigations are placed at a remarkable disadvantage.

Of course, it shouldn't be necessary to persuade anyone that our drug laws are designed to make things easy for police and hard for criminal suspects. These vast drug war powers are bestowed on police and prosecutors by legislators who are eager to provide law-enforcement with every necessary tool in the fight against crime. That much power creates countless innocent casualties even at the hands of our most honest public servants, and it's a nightmare when passed along to corrupt cops like the men who framed the Colon brothers.

Yet, when these dramatic fiascoes get exposed, police can often be found downplaying it and insisting that you can't fight the drug war without these sorts of aggressive and dirty tactics. If that's even remotely true, then the war on drugs is just far too filthy and corrupt to tolerate in a free and civil society.

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It never ends. Another week of greedy jail guards and thieving policemen. This whole cops robbing drug dealers thing is getting kind of old, too. But let's get to it:

In Carlisle, Indiana, a Wabash Valley Correctional Facility guard was arrested June 4 as he attempted to go to work carrying marijuana, cell phones and chargers, tobacco, and a video game player. Guard James Sheerin, 25, faces drug trafficking and possession charges. When investigators searched his car after his arrest, they also found cocaine, heroin, and more cell phones. Sheerin was last reported being held at the Sullivan County Jail.

In St. Louis, three jail guards were indicted by a federal grand jury June 4 for distributing drugs to inmates at the St. Louis City Justice Center. Correctional officers James Lamont Moore, Peggy O'Neal, and Marilyn Denise Brown are accused of repeatedly delivering what they thought was heroin to prisoners this year. In a sting operation, the hapless trio received purported heroin from an individual outside the Justice Center, along with cash, and secretly delivered the fake smack to an inmate inside. Moore and Brown face one count each of attempted distribution of heroin; O'Neal faces two counts. Each count carries a maximum 20-year sentence upon conviction.

In Philadelphia, a former Philadelphia police officer was convicted Monday of using his police badge and gun to rob drug dealers. Former officer Malik Snell was found guilty of conspiracy, attempted robbery, and a weapons charge for an attempted home invasion robbery in Pottstown. He was also convicted in another incident in which he ripped-off $40,000 from a South Philly drug kingpin during a bogus traffic stop. Snell had endured two earlier trials than ended in mistrials, but the third time was the charm. He faces up to 17 1/2 years when sentenced on September 9.

In Laredo, Texas, a former Laredo airport police officer was sentenced last Friday to 20 months in federal prison on cocaine distribution charges. Former airport cop Vidal Gerardo Sepulveda went down in an FBI sting after selling $700 worth of cocaine while in uniform.

In Benton Harbor, Michigan, a former Benton Harbor narcotics officer was sentenced Wednesday to 37 months in prison and four years probation for staging phony drug raids where he stole drugs. Former officer Andrew Collins, 26, went down after an FBI investigation found crack cocaine and other drugs in his locker. He pleaded guilty to intent to distribute more than five grams of cocaine.

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Dear Men and Women of Law Enforcement,

There are video cameras everywhere these days. In people's pockets, on trees and lampposts. On your squad car and in front of local businesses. So maybe you should think twice before beating people up for no reason and filing false charges.

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Cops pocketing drug money, cops ripping off drug dealers, cops protecting drug dealers, cops stealing dope, and, of course, another dope-smuggling jail guard. Let's get to it:

In South Memphis, Tennessee, a Shelby County sheriff's deputy was arrested last Friday for pocketing money seized in a drug arrest. Deputy Jeff McCall, who worked for the Shelby County Narcotics Unit, went down in a sting after the sheriff's office received tips he was stealing drug money he confiscated on the streets. The sheriff's office and the FBI set up a phony traffic stop where it was McCall's job to inventory the $4,200 in cash and marijuana seized. Only $3,800 made it to the evidence room. When confronted later that same night, McCall admitted he had taken the money, left work, gone to a local mall, and used the money to buy a Playstation 3. Officers found the game in his work vehicle. He is currently facing state charges of official misconduct and theft of under $500, but federal charges could follow.

In West Manchester Township, Pennsylvania, a former West Manchester Township police detective was charged May 27 with stealing drugs from the department evidence room. Former Det. Steven Crider, 54, has admitted to state police that he stole and ingested cocaine, heroin, and marijuana from more than a hundred cases since 2001. He allegedly replaced some of the stolen drugs with chalk and tampered with records to cover it up. The 32-year veteran was fired last month.

In Texarkana, Arkansas, a former Miller County jail guard was arraigned May 28 on charges he smuggled marijuana into the jail for inmates. Adrian Trevone Tate, 24, was arrested after another guard saw pot inside a soda cup from a convenience store that Tate had brought into the jail. He has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts: furnishing a prohibited item into a correctional facility and possession with intent to deliver marijuana into a jail. Tate is free on $50,000 bond.

In Los Angeles, a former Huntington Park police officer was found guilty May 27 of ripping off cocaine and methamphetamine from drug dealers. Former Sgt. Alvaro Murillo was convicted of two counts of drug conspiracy, one count of extortion, and one count of submitting a false tax return. Murillo was a member of a multi-agency federal drug task force and used his job to recruit informants, then used them to help steal dope from dealers and traffickers. He and his informants formed what they called the "black tactic group" to identify dealers they could rob. Among the thefts were five kilograms of cocaine in 2002 and two kilos of methamphetamine in 2006. Murillo went down after attempting to steal cocaine from a dealer who turned out to be an undercover DEA agent. He faces a mandatory minimum 10-year federal prison sentence.

In Lake City, South Carolina, a former Lake City police officer was sentenced May 27 to 20 years in federal prison for conspiring with drug dealers to help them avoid getting busted. Shanita McKnight had been convicted in October of drug conspiracy and extortion, tipping off local dealers to impending police actions. McKnight must also do five years of supervised release after finishing her prison sentence.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, two former Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers were sentenced May 27 to nine years in prison for conspiring to distribute cocaine. Former officers Gerald Holas and Jason Ross admitted they protected a cocaine dealer's operation, but claimed to no avail that they did so in an effort to gain information they could use to arrest his suppliers and customers. Holas tipped off the dealer about police activities, and both officers helped him get revenge on a rival whose home was firebombed. Some 50 criminal cases in which the pair were involved had to be dismissed after they were arrested.

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Via The Agitator, it looks like the out-of-control narcotics unit in Philly that I keep writing about is even worse than we thought. It was bad enough when they were caught stealing from local businesses, but now one of these guys has been accused by multiple different women of groping them during drug raids. The accounts sound disturbingly consistent and credible.

Really, is there any limit here? Any at all? It's time for the city to jettison these maniacs once and for all.

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Another jail guard goes down, a California cop takes the bait, an NYPD officer gets slapped, a Massachusetts cop gets busted, a Massachusetts trooper cops a plea, and a Houston drug test watcher gets greedy. Just another week in the drug war. Let's get to it:

In Glendora, California, a former Glendora officer was arrested May 20 for allegedly stealing cash and methamphetamine last year during a sting operation. Former officer Timothy Radogna, 33, was charged with grand theft, drug possession for sales, and possession of drugs with a firearm. Glendora police conducted an "integrity investigation" against Radogna after receiving information he was failing to book drugs and cash into evidence. They left cash and meth in a bait car and asked him to book the evidence. He pocketed $1,000 and a small amount of meth. The three-year veteran was placed on leave after the sting last fall and fired in December. He faces up to nine years in prison.

In Houston, a Harris County drug test monitor was arrested May 21 for taking a $200 bribe to turn in a fraudulent drug test form. Community Supervision and Corrections Department employee Thomas Walker, 22, had worked for the county for only two months when he accepted money from an undercover district attorney's office investigator to report a clean urine sample when the investigator didn't provide one at all. He is charged with bribery and tampering with a government document. He has resigned after being told he would be fired. Walker faces up to 20 years in prison for bribery.

In Mashpee, Massachusetts, a former Mashpee police officer was arrested May 20 on drug charges after Barnstable Police executed a search warrant at his home. Former officer Joseph Kelley, who resigned from the force in February, is charged with one count of trafficking in opiate derivatives after police found 200 oxycodone tablets and various other pills and liquids. Police obtained a warrant for Kelley's home as part of an "ongoing OxyContin investigation," they said.

In New York City, an NYPD sergeant was acquitted May 21 of drug sales charges, but convicted of official misconduct. Sgt. Michael Arenella had been accused of supervising a rogue group of narcotics officers charged with stealing crack cocaine and cash from dealers and using it to pay informants. A state Supreme Court judge found him not guilty of sale and possession charges, but did convict him of official misconduct for falsifying police reports and for stealing $40 from undercover officers posing as drug dealers and giving it to an informant. With his conviction, he is automatically dismissed from the force. He faces up to one year in prison.

In Saugus, Massachusetts, a former Massachusetts state trooper pleaded guilty May 20 to cocaine conspiracy and distribution charges. Former trooper John Foley, 64, a 37-year veteran of the force, was arrested in December 2007 by FBI, DEA, and state and local officers for peddling cocaine in Saugus. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine when sentenced July 29.

In New York City, a former New York City corrections officer was sentenced May 20 to three years in prison for smuggling drugs into Rikers Island. Tamar Peebles, 27, had admitted to accepting $1,500 from an undercover investigator and picking up what she thought was heroin and marijuana for delivery to the prison. She pleaded guilty to one count of attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance and one count of receiving a bribe. Peebles was one of six city jail guards swept up in a 16-month sting operation that found guards willing to deliver contraband to inmates in return for cash. Cases for the other five are still pending.

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There's an embarrassment of riches for the corrupt cops file this week. We've got pot-dealing sheriffs, we've got corner-cutting DEA agents, we've got sticky-fingered cops, and of course, we have dope-peddling prison guards. And that Philadelphia narc squad scandal just keeps reverberating. Let's get to it:

In Shawneetown, Illinois, DEA agents Monday arrested the Gallatin County Sheriff on federal marijuana distribution charges. Sheriff Randy Martin provided marijuana to a confidential informant, typically in one-pound lots, between November 2008 and this month, according to DEA affidavit in the case. The affidavit also says the informant wore a wire and several of the transactions were videotaped. Sheriff Martin would meet the informant at rural locations, "front" the weed to the informant, and take cash payment for the previous shipment. He is charged with three federal counts of marijuana distribution and two counts of carrying a firearm -- his service revolver -- during the commission of a drug crime.

In Cleveland, Ohio, a DEA agent was indicted May 12 for his role in a 2005 drug operation that put more than two dozen residents behind bars. DEA Agent Lee Lucas, 41, faces seven counts of obstruction of justice, seven counts of perjury, three counts of violating individuals' civil rights, and one count of making false statements in an official report. In the 2005 operation, Lucas' informant, Jerrell Bray, intentionally framed 17 people by doing controlled drug buys but intentionally misidentifying the drug sellers, providing people with his drugs and then retrieving the stash so they looked like drug sellers, and staged scripted recorded conversations to make individuals appear to be drug sellers. Lucas allegedly knew his snitch was rogue, but covered it up, included false and misleading information in reports, and concealed potentially exculpatory evidence. Bray got 15 years. Let's see what his DEA handler gets.

In New York City, an NYPD officer was arrested May 13 and charged with trying to steal $900,000 left in a Manhattan apartment by a drug dealer who had been deported. Officer Shawn Jenkins, 41, plotted with a confidential informant to go to the apartment, serve an official looking document on the new tenant, immobilize him with a stun gun, and retrieve the money from its hiding place under the floor. He is now charged with conspiracy to commit robbery and attempted robbery. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison on each charge.

In Temple Terrace, Florida, a Temple Terrace Police officer was arrested last Friday on charges he stole drugs recovered in a recent case. Officer Zachariah Brown, 33, was arrested after investigators found missing hydrocodone and Xanax pills in his police cruiser. He was booked and released on bail and has been placed on administrative leave with pay until the internal investigation is concluded. He is charged with drug possession, petty theft, and tampering with evidence.

In Philadephia, prosecutors dismissed the first of what could be dozens of drug cases last Friday as fall-out from the ongoing corruption scandal in the Philadelphia police narcotics squad continues to spread. The scandal began with Officer Jeffrey Cujdik, who is alleged to have falsified affidavits in order to get judges to sign drug search warrants. Now, because of the cloud over Cujdik, prosecutors are seeking delays in his pending cases. The case dropped Friday was not one where Cujdik is alleged to have lied on affidavits, but prosecutors dropped it because they had run out of time to stall any longer and Cujdik's credibility in any case is now in doubt. Cujdik, his brother, Richard Cujdik, and another Philly narc, Robert McConnell have all been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, which has since broadened to include allegations that Philly narcs routinely raided convenience stores, turned off surveillance equipment, and stole cash and goods from the stores before arresting their owners for selling small plastic bags. At least 52 more cases could be dismissed, according to Philadelphia public defenders.

In Summerville, South Carolina, a state prison guard was charged May 14 with selling cocaine to undercover Dorchester County deputies. Guard John Lambert, 28, is charged with distribution of cocaine and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. He is now on administrative leave from his post at the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville.

In Newark, New Jersey, a former Passaic County sheriff's officer was sentenced Monday to seven years and one month in federal prison for stealing $250,000 worth of cocaine from the department evidence room and selling it to drug dealers. Former officer Alan Souto, an 18-year veteran of the force, was a member of the Sheriff's Evidence Unit, and used his access card to gradually begin stealing drugs until he had stolen 95 pounds of cocaine and 1.5 pounds of heroin. He was arrested in March 2008 after authorities noticed a GPS device missing and cooperated with investigators, leading to two other men also being charged in the case. Maybe that's why he got seven years instead of the life sentence he could have received.

In Toledo, Ohio, a former Sylvania Police officer was sentenced May 14 to three years in prison for stealing drug money from the department property room. Former officer Carl Beckman, a 36-year-veteran of the department, nickel-and-dimed more than $30,000 over a 13-year period. He had pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice.

In Hammond, Indiana, a former St. Joseph County Police officer was sentenced May 13 to more than six years in prison for burglarizing a mobile home and stealing plasma TVs and computer monitors from it -- oh, and cocaine, too, which he tried to sell. Former officer Andrew Taghon was one of three local police officers indicted by the feds in the case dating back to 2004. The other two await sentencing.

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