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Some information about Marijuana
Study says marijuana no gateway drug
10 Pot Studies Government Wished it Had Never Funded
The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States
Study finds marijuana use leads to brain development in rats
Marijuana Water Pipe and Vaporizer Study
FRANCIS L. YOUNG, Administrative Law Judge
NY Times F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit From Marijuana
Researchers surprised to find no link between marijuana, lung cancer
The Nose Knows: The Odor of Marijuana and Probable Cause
Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection
Marijuana Cuts Lung Cancer Tumor Growth In Half, Study Shows
THC (marijuana) helps cure cancer says Harvard study
Heavy Marijuana Use Doesn’t Damage Brain
On Role Models and their Bongs
Pot Smoking Not Linked to Lung Cancer
VIDEO Cannabis Cures Cancer – “Run From The Cure” The Rick Simpson Story
New Study: Marijuana Does Not Cause Psychosis, Lung Damage, or Skin Cancer
Cannabis extract shrinks brain tumours
Marijuana May Stall Brain Tumor Growth
MARIJUANA AND HEMP the Untold Story
Stoned drivers are safe drivers
Chemicals in Marijuana May Fight MRSA
Illegal Hemp? The facts Don’t Support the Propaganda
What does a pot smoker look like?
Cannabis in Amsterdam and in San Francisco
TRENDS AND PATTERNS IN CANNABIS USE IN THE NETHERLANDS
Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States
American College of Physicians Speaks Out for Medical Marijuana
The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High
San Francisco-based medical cannabis collective
Marijuana Does Not Raise Lung Cancer Risk
Study clears cannabis of schizophrenia rap
Cannabis less harmful than drinking, smoking: report
Who Supports Marijuana Legalization? Support rising; varies most by age and gender
Marijuana Smoking Doesn’t Kill
Marijuana May Stimulate Brain Cell Growth
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
UNDERSTANDING YOUR HIGH -The Effects Of Marijuana On Consciousness
Against the drug war but not sure what to do about it?
Fibromyalgia and Medical Marijuana
Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection
THC cuts lung cancer growth, spread
Study Finds No Link Between Marijuana Use And Lung Cancer
Evaluating the drug use “gateway” theory using cross-national data
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How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory
Visitors to Monticello don’t learn how Jefferson cultivated poppies, and his personal opium use may as well never have happened.
Alternet – March 3, 2010
The following is an excerpt from Jim Hogshire’s “Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature’s Best Pain Medication” (Feral House, 2009).
Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson’s famous estate.
Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal. Now, the trouble was the folks at the Monticello Foundation, which preserves and maintains the historic site, were discovered flagrantly continuing Jefferson’s crimes. The agents were blunt: The poppies had to be immediately uprooted and destroyed or else they were going to start making arrests, and Monticello Foundation personnel would perhaps face lengthy stretches in prison.
The story sounds stupid now, but it scared the hell out of the people at Monticello, who immediately started yanking the forbidden plants. A DEA man noticed the store was selling packets of “Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppies.” The seeds had to go, too. While poppy seeds might be legal, it is never legal to plant them. Not for any reason.
Employees even gathered the store’s souvenir T-shirts — with silkscreened photos of Monticello poppies on the chest — and burned them. Nobody told them to do this, but, under the circumstances, no one dared risk the threat.
Jefferson’s poppies are gone without a trace now. Nobody said much at the time, nor are they saying much now. Visitors to Monticello don’t learn how the Founding Father cultivated poppies for their opium. His personal opium use and poppy cultivation may as well never have happened.
The American War on Drugs started with opium and it continues today. Deception is key to this kind of social control, along with the usual threats of mayhem. Ever since the passage of the Harrison Act made opium America’s first “illicit substance” in 1914, propaganda has proven itself most effective in the war on poppies. This has not been done so much by eradicating the poppy plant from the nation’s soil as by eradicating the poppy from the nation’s mind.
Prosecutions for crimes involving opium or opium poppies are rare. But that has less to do with the frequency of poppy crimes and everything to do with suppressing information about the opium poppy. A public trial might inadvertently publicize forbidden information at odds with the common spin about poppies and opium. This might pique interest in the taboo subject and, worse, undermine faith in the government.
The U.S. government strategy to create and enforce deliberate ignorance about opium, opium poppies, and everything connected with them has proven remarkably effective. The Monticello campaign exemplifies an effective tactic. The poppies were swiftly removed, and sotto voce threats ensured no one would talk about it afterward. Today, visitors to Monticello learn nothing about opium poppy cultivation or why Jefferson cultivated it in his garden.
Disinformation about poppies has been spread far and wide. Some of it is subtle, like when the New York Times talks about people growing “heroin poppies.” Some misinformation is so bald-faced as to stun the listener into silence, as when a DEA agent tells a reporter that the process of getting opium from opium poppies is so complex and dangerous that “I don’t even think a person with a Ph.D. could do it.”
This enforced ignorance reduces the chances of anyone even accidentally discovering the truth about poppies. Poring through back issues of pharmaceutical industry news from Tasmania might yield a mother load of cutting edge poppy science — from genetically altered poppies that ooze double-strength opium to state-of-the-art machines designed to manufacture “poppy straw concentrate.” Tasmania’s output meets roughly a third of the world’s narcotic requirement. But how many people know that Tasmania is the home of the world’s largest and most modern opium industry?
Opium and opium poppy ignorance is augmented by widespread false beliefs, chief among them that it is extremely difficult for opium poppies to grow anywhere in the United States. Opium poppies surely require exotic climates or special climatic conditions, don’t they? They’re found on remote mountainsides in the Golden Triangle and Afghanistan, where growing them is a secret art known only to a few indigenous people who jealously guard the seeds from hostile competitors.
These beliefs are all widely held, but entirely untrue. Opium poppies, in fact, grow nearly everywhere but the North and South Poles. The second prong of the strategy is the copious propaganda that demonizes opium, opium poppies and opiates. At times this demonization has been brazenly racist, catering to the xenophobic American mind at the beginning of the twentieth century. Later propaganda linked opium with the despised German “Hun” who ate babies and (as was reported) had been mixing narcotics into children’s candy and women’s face powder in a diabolical plot to weaken the nation from the inside. Later, Germans were replaced by communists, who also shipped narcotics to America’s youth to weaken and enslave us. This was the authoritative word from Harry Anslinger, the infamous first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
Another example of false history is the mythical “soldier’s disease” or “army disease” that supposedly plagued the land after the Civil War. According to the story, opium and morphine were used so extensively during the war as a painkiller for wounded soldiers (especially amputees) that the inevitable result was opium and morphine addiction. As a result, crowds of broken-down men roamed the countryside, ramming themselves full of holes with their crude syringes, having been turned into dope slaves by the good intentions of doctors.
erfect example of anti-drug propaganda sounds plausible enough that few ever question it. And it has endured long after researchers discovered that this mythical legend was purely invention.
There is no documentation of any mass opiate addiction after the Civil War. The term “soldier’s disease” or its variants did not appear in literature until decades later. Yet the story fits the officially approved stereotype by portraying opium and morphine as so powerful and addictive that they could rob anyone’s soul.
If you knew that opium poppies do not grow in the U.S., you would not recognize an opium poppy even if you were staring directly at it. So, the idea of making opium tea from a bunch of dried decorative flowers purchased at K-Mart is ridiculous–absurd, really. If it were that easy, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?
Perhaps. But the establishment prefers to not test it. The idea of an individual having control over one’s own life, especially regarding pain relief, is far too democratic to be embraced by tyrants.
The government and its allies in the narco-military complex have gone to great lengths to set things up as they are, and not allow a shift in control would affect licit or illicit sales of narcotics, poppy seeds, and any products derived from Papaver somniferum. In a market the size of America, nothing is too insignificant to generate huge sums of money. And the opium poppy is hardly insignificant.
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Jury nullification sets Vietnam vet free after marijuana charge
“Jurors should acquit, even against the judge’s instruction… if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.” ~ Alexander Hamilton, 1804.
‘The Vietnam veteran walks with a cane, has bad knees and feet and says he uses marijuana to relieve body pain, as well as to help cope with post traumatic stress.’
Maybe this is how the war on marijuana ends.
A rural Illinois jury has found one of their peers innocent in a marijuana case that would have sent him to prison. Loren Swift (pictured below) was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, and he faced a mandatory minimum of six years behind bars.
According to Dan Churney at MyWebTimes , several jurors were seen shaking Swift’s hand after the verdict, a couple of them were talking and laughing with Swift and his lawyer, and one juror slapped Swift on the back.
The 59-year-old was arrested after officers from a state “drug task force” found 25 pounds of pot and 50 pounds of growing plants in his home in 2007. The Vietnam veteran walks with a cane, has bad knees and feet and says he uses marijuana to relieve body pain, as well as to help cope with post traumatic stress.
This jury exercised their right of jury nullification. Judges and prosecutors never tell you this, but when you serve on a jury, it’s not just the defendant on trial. It’s the law as well. If you don’t like the law and think applying it in this particular case would be unjust, then you don’t have to find the defendant guilty, even if the evidence clearly indicates guilt.
In jury nullification, a jury in a criminal case effectively nullifies a law by acquitting a defendant regardless of the weight of evidence against him or her. There is intense pressure within the legal system to keep this power under wraps. But the fact of the matter is that when laws are deemed unjust, there is the right of the jury not to convict.
Jury nullification is crucially important because until our national politicians show some backbone on the issue of marijuana law reform, it’s one of the only ways to avoid imposing hideously cruel “mandatory minimum” penalties on marijuana users who don’t deserve to go to prison.
Prosecuting and jailing people for marijuana wastes valuable resources, including court and police time and tax dollars. Hundreds of thousands of otherwise productive, law-abiding people have been deprived of their freedom, their families, their homes and their jobs. Let’s save the jails for real criminals, not pot smokers.
The American public is very near the tipping point where a majority no longer believes the official line coming from Drug Warrior politicians and their friends at the ONDCP, gung-ho narcotics officers protecting their profitable turf, and sensationalistic, scare-mongering news stories used to boost ratings. They are starting to see through the widening cracks in the wall of denial when it comes to marijuana’s salutary medical effects on a host of illnesses and its palliative effects for the terminally ill and permanently disabled.
People are coming to realize that not only have they been sold a lie when it comes to marijuana — they’ve been sold a particularly cruel lie, a self-perpetuating falsehood of epic proportions that has controlled U.S. public policy towards the weed for 70 years now. The extreme cruelty of the lies told about marijuana by drug warriors is in the effects this culture of fear and intolerance has in the real world — effects like long prison sentences for gentle people who are productive and caring members of society.
Because citizens are coming to this long-delayed realization, we are going to be seeing more and more cases like this where juries have chosen not to punish people for pot. As this consciousness permeates all levels of society, it is going to get harder and harder for prosecutors to get guilty verdicts in marijuana cases — and that’s a good thing.
Maybe this is how the war on marijuana ends… Not with a bang, but a whimper, as cousin T.S. would say.
What You Can Do
* If you ever serve on a jury where the defendant is accused of a marijuana crime, don’t forget about jury nullification. Tell the other jurors you don’t have to convict, even if all the evidence points to guilt, if you don’t agree with the application of the law in this instance. And if you can’t swing your peers to your way of thinking, at least you can cause the jury to return a hung verdict.
* American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): Drug Policy
* Change The Climate: Time to Tell the Truth About Marijuana
* Drug Policy Alliance: Alternatives to Prohibition and the Drug War
* National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
“It is not only the juror’s right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.” ~ John Adams, 1771.
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Shock study: 12% of kids sexually abused in govt. custody
By Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 — 8:02 pm
Some 12 percent of minors held in government custody are sexually abused, and in some facilities the rate reaches a stunning one in three children, says a report released Thursday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The first-ever National Survey of Youth in Custody found that no less than 10 percent of the 26,550 juveniles being held in detention facilities in the US are abused by staff at the facility, while another 2.6 percent report abuse at the hands of other inmates. Among the facilities studied were six identified to have rates of sexual abuse as high as three in 10. According to the Associated Press, those six facilities are Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana; Corsicana Residential Treatment Center in Texas; Backbone Mountain Youth Center in Swanton, Maryland; Samarkand Youth Development Center in Eagle Springs, North Carolina.; Cresson Secure Treatment Unit in Pennsylvania; and the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center, Long Term, in Mitchells, Virginia. “The widespread sexual abuse of children in juvenile facilities shows that public officials either aren’t paying attention or can’t be bothered to do the right thing,” said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch. “The high rates of victimization are powerful testimony to the failure of governments to safeguard the boys and girls in their care.” The study was mandated by a 2003 law, the National Prison Rape Elimination Act, which also created the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Human Rights Watch notes that six months ago the commission set out “comprehensive, effective standards for the prevention, detection, and punishment of prison rape,” but the Justice Department has yet to act on those recommendations.“Every day Attorney General Eric Holder fails to promulgate national prison rape elimination standards is another day in which kids and adults are being abused behind bars,” Fellner said. “The attorney general already has on his desk proposed standards that reflect the best thinking and effective practices to end this widespread scourge. There is no need to reinvent the wheel or to delay moving forward.”
The survey found that gay youth were at higher risk than heterosexual youth, with one in five reporting abuse at the hands of a staffer or fellow inmate. Males were more likely to report being abused than females (10.8 percent to 4.7 percent). And 95 percent of those abused by staff reported that the abuser was female. But that number may be influenced by the fact that 91 percent of youth in custody are male.
The AP reports:
Although advocates said the level of abuse wasn’t surprising, the prevalence of sexual abuse by staff, particularly female workers, was shocking, said Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, which fights to end sexual abuse of those who are detained.
“Many of these are already the most vulnerable and traumatized youth from all of our communities and they’re placed for custody because they’re considered to be a danger,” she said. “If sexually abused in those very institutions that are supposed to help them prepare for life in the community, then it’s just an incredible travesty.”
The Associated Press also notes that sex abuse by staffers was higher in state-run facilities than in privately-run or municipal detention centers, and smaller facilities appear to have lower abuse rates than larger ones.
The study investigated a 12-month period, and was carried out from June, 2008, to April, 2009.
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CDC: Two-thirds of cocaine seized on US borders cut with cancer drug
Raw Story
By Stephen C. Webster
Sunday, December 20th, 2009If you’re doing cocaine, chances are this story will not make you quit. But it may make you think twice about your supplier.
A new report by the Centers for Disease control follows 21 cases of the otherwise rare disorder known as agranulocytosis, which is hallmarked by a severe weakening of immune function.
The condition is brought on by the drug levamisole, which used to be given to colon cancer patients. It is also widely used to deworm cattle.
Citing the Drug Enforcement Agency, the CDC report claimed that 69 percent of all cocaine seized at US borders contains levamisole. The average concentration was near 10 percent. Tainted cocaine was also seized in New Mexico and Washington.
While only one death is known to have been caused by the substance, the report warned that other cases may have gone unnoticed since the DEA first began tracking the increasing rate of levamisole contamination in 2002. Cocaine users, the CDC said, may be less likely to seek medical treatment; and even if they did, the patient may not disclose cocaine use to their doctor.
As for why the drug taints such a large portion of cocaine in the United States, the CDC does not venture a guess. “The reason why levamisole is added to cocaine remains unclear,” the agency said. It added that levamisol was found in less than three percent of heroin seizures, and it was at much lower concentrations than those typically found in cocaine.
“Some studies suggest it intensifies the high by boosting dopamine levels in the brain,” Bloomberg News noted. “Other reports say it is used to dilute, or cut, the drug.”
The CDC said almost all of those suffering from agranulocytosis experienced “fevers and most also had sore throats,” MedPage added. “Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and mouth sores were common. A few patients reported pain and/or sores elsewhere in the body.
“CDC has begun national surveillance for agranulocytosis in association with suspected cocaine or heroin use, collecting information via medical abstraction form and patient interview,” the CDC added. “As of December 15, eight states had agreed to participate.”
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An unsurprisingly disingenuous look at “marijuana”
As many of my readers know, I like to pull a lot of breaking science news from Eurekalert. One particular article today has drawn my attention, and I’d like to point out to the very disingenuous manner in which it was presented to the lay audience, who may lack the time, educational background, or simply a healthy amount of skepticism to see the spin.
Entitled “Cannabis and Adolescence,” the press release from Eurekalert is as follows:
Montreal, December 17, 2009 – Canadian teenagers are among the largest consumers of cannabis worldwide. The damaging effects of this illicit drug on young brains are worse than originally thought, according to new research by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a psychiatric researcher from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. The new study, published in Neurobiology of Disease, suggests that daily consumption of cannabis in teens can cause depression and anxiety, and have an irreversible long-term effect on the brain. [...]
“Teenagers who are exposed to cannabis have decreased serotonin transmission, which leads to mood disorders, as well as increased norepinephrine transmission, which leads to greater long-term susceptibility to stress,” Dr. Gobbi stated. [...]
It is also the first study to demonstrate that cannabis consumption causes more serious damage during adolescence than adulthood.
Fair enough. Cannabis effects some neurotransmitters and stuff, and affects the development of the brain. It sounds plausible…
…except the actual study was neither performed on humans nor even involved any actual compounds present in marijuana.
This study (actual pubmed link) used adolescent rats and a compound known as WIN 55,212-2. WIN 55,212-2 is known to both be stronger in its affinity for CB1 receptors than marijuana, and beside that structurally quite different.
Mentioned in the actual paper, but not in the “press release” was that the study did not find that exposure to WIN55,212-2 influenced anxiety-related behaviors, at least not in all of the assays. The elevated plus maze test results did not show an increase in basal level anxiety. In other words, the adolescent exposure to this highly-cb1-agonizing drug did not effect the rats propensity to visit an “open arm” at all. Nor was chronic, daily exposure to WIN 55,212-2 found to effect the rats behavior in the open field test. Both of these tests are considered extremely important in assessing a rats propensity towards anxiety/depressive-like behavior.
The rats did show a reduced tendency to feed in new environments after high exposure to the marijuana-analogue, in a task known as the novelty suppressed feeding task.
However, what about DOSING?
Grabbed from the always helpful reddit commentary:
Lets take a look at the dosage.”the adolescent exposure group received for 20 days once-a-day i.p. injections of a low dose (0.2 mg/kg) or a high dose (1 mg/kg) of WIN55,212-2 or the vehicle.” Lets take an average human weighing 80kg. And an average rat weighing .5kg2mg dose to a human, divided by 80kg is .025 mg/kg the LOW dose to the rat was .1mg/kg intravenous injection. that’s 4 times the human oral ingestion to get high. the high dose was .5 mg/kg thats 20 times the human oral ingestion to get high.Injection should be using A LOT less than an oral ingestion, correct?
Something seems off with the dosages, but I’m not a scientist. Is there anything wrong with my reasoning?
No, sir, the dosing does sound a wee bit high to correlate too strongly to adolescent smoking.
Now, to be fair:
Animal model systems are an essential component to research, as are chemical analogues, and inferences can be made using these. The fact that these techniques were used doesn’t in and of itself invalidate the underlying premise that habitual use of any drug can change human behavior. Nor should data be completely be disregarded simply because one aspect lacks in robustness, but given the actual content of the paper I’ve got to wonder — did the P.R. department even read the paper before typing up their blurb? At what point does over-simplification become deception and misdirection? -
UN: Drug money saved banks
I like the casual tone of this article. It’s like the 800 lb gorilla in the room that people can’t ignore any longer. We already know about CIA South American coke operations dating back to Iran-Contra and ongoing even now, US troops guarding opium fields in afghanistan, and CIA drug dealing activities in Vietnam. Drugs have long been a major source of funding for black-budget NWO operations, and its risky to store and move billions in cash.
You think the banks care that they’re laundering money that your daughter stole from you to buy a bag of coke that was shipped in by the CIA, or that the money will be used to kill innocent people to further the NWO agenda?
Rajeev Syal – The Observer
Sunday 13 December 2009Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions
Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations‘ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” he said.
Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.
“Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.
“That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidisation to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was,” he said.
The IMF estimated that large US and European banks lost more than $1tn on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009 and more than 200 mortgage lenders went bankrupt. Many major institutions either failed, were acquired under duress, or were subject to government takeover.
Gangs are now believed to make most of their profits from the drugs trade and are estimated to be worth £352bn, the UN says. They have traditionally kept proceeds in cash or moved it offshore to hide it from the authorities. It is understood that evidence that drug money has flowed into banks came from officials in Britain, Switzerland, Italy and the US.
British bankers would want to see any evidence that Costa has to back his claims. A British Bankers’ Association spokesman said: “We have not been party to any regulatory dialogue that would support a theory of this kind. There was clearly a lack of liquidity in the system and to a large degree this was filled by the intervention of central banks.”
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Do 90 Percent of the Guns Used in Mexican Drug Crimes Really Come From America?
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
The Agitator
From Hillary Clinton to Diane Feinstein to Bob Schieffer to the New York Times, gun control proponents keep repeating the claim that 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico’s drug war were sold in the United States.
William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott say it just isn’t true. As it turns out, the 90 percent statistic actually concerns only those guns Mexican authorities sent to the U.S. for tracing. Since the U.S. really has no means of tracing guns not manufactured in the U.S., Mexican authorities don’t bother sending U.S. officials guns that were obviously manufactured elsewhere (generally guns that lack a U.S. serial number, or don’t show signs of once having had one). So the 90 percent figure isn’t surprising, and it isn’t really alarming. It means that 90 percent of the guns Mexican authorities thought were probably made and sold in the U.S. were indeed made and sold in the U.S.
But that’s not what gun control proponents have been saying. They’ve been saying nine of 10 guns used in all Mexican drug crimes came from the U.S. That number, La Jeunesse and Lott report, is closer to 17 percent.
The report explains that most of the weapons used by Mexico’s drug cartels are actually illegal in the U.S. Even if they weren’t, it makes little sense to suggest drug cartels are going through the hassle of sending thousands of “straw buyers” across the border to legally purchase guns in America when more powerful black market weapons are available from Russia, South America, China, and Guatemala without the bureaucracy and risk of registration. The L.A. Times hinted at as much in an article a couple of weeks ago, but seemed to miss the obvious connection that if the cartels are arming up with black market weapons unavailable in the U.S., the 90 percent figure trumpeted by U.S. politicians probably isn’t correct.
Here’s the other thing: According to one Mexican official, 150,000 Mexican soldiers have defected in the last year, taking their government-issued M-16s with them. Those guns are ending up in the hands of drug dealers. The U.S. is also continually sending more money and arms to Mexico to support President Calderon’s military crackdown on the drug trade, but we send all of that aid knowing the high rate of defection among both soldiers and Mexican police officers, and the high rate of corruption and high percentage of Mexican officials on the cartels’ payrolls. One firearms expert told LaJeunesse and Lott that some guns…
“…are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way — the fully auto versions — they are not smuggled in across the river.”
In other words, not only are U.S. politicians flat wrong when they say that 90 percent of the guns used in Mexico’s drug war are coming from U.S. gun dealers recklessly selling legal American guns to cartel straw buyers, they’re ignoring the fact that a not-insignificant number of the guns used by the cartels likely came from the U.S. government, in the form of the drug war aid.
Yet the federal government’s strategy, as outlined by Hillary Clinton last week, is apparently to harass legitimate U.S. gun dealers while sending more weapons and money to the Mexican government. More power for the government, less freedom for the citizenry. Seems about consistent with politicians’ solution to most problems.
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