Dramatic Video Shows U.S. Coats Guard Intercepting A Submarine Carrying Tons Of Cocaine

ABC News: Members of the US Coast Guard board alleged drug-smuggling vessel: Video

Dramatic video shows a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, the Munro, pursuing a speeding semi-submersible suspected drug-smuggling vessel in the middle of international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

In footage taken on June 18, a Coast Guard crew member repeatedly shouts "Stop the boat!" in Spanish at the submersible.

The crew member -- a member part of a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment -- calls out, “It’s going to be hard to get on.”

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More News On A Dramatic Video Showing The U.S. Coats Guard Intercepting A Submarine Carrying Tons Of Cocaine

Dramatic video shows Coast Guard leaping onto submarine carrying 17,000 pounds of cocaine -- NBC
Dramatic moment Coast Guard sailors leap from their boat onto moving submarine smuggling 17,000lbs of cocaine across the Pacific ocean and open the hatch to stunned traffickers inside -- Daily Mail
Video shows dramatic jump by Guardsmen onto vessel laden with cocaine: officials -- FOX News
USCGC Munro Returns from Patrol with Record Cocaine Haul -- USNI News

The U.S. Military Has Ended Its Campaign To Target Taliban Drug Labs And Networks

Afghan farmers work at a poppy field in Jalalabad province, May 5, 2012.

Time: The U.S. Sent Its Most Advanced Fighter Jets to Blow Up Cheap Opium Labs. Now It's Cancelling the Program

After hundreds of airstrikes failed to curtail the Taliban’s $200 million-a-year opium trade, the U.S. military quietly ended a yearlong campaign that targeted drug labs and networks laced around the Afghan countryside.

The end of the operation, code-named Iron Tempest, comes as Trump Administration officials engage in direct peace talks with Taliban leaders that could end the 17-year-old war.

The U.S. military first began targeting Taliban narcotics facilities with airstrikes and Special Operations raids in November 2017 when opium production jumped to record highs in Afghanistan. At the time, U.S. commanders estimated the Taliban operated up to 500 drug labs, which helped fuel their nearly two-decade long insurgency.

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WNU Editor: This is an admission that after years of anti-narcotics operations in Afghanistan, the entire program is a failure.

US Coast Guard Seizes A Narco Sub Laden With $73 Million Worth Of Cocaine

Business Insider: Watch the US Coast Guard seize a narco sub laden with more than 5,600 pounds of cocaine

Crew members of US Coast Guard Cutter Waesche intercepted and boarded a self-propelled semisubmersible, often called a narco submarine, carrying more than 5,600 pounds of cocaine in early September.

The Waesche's crew, working with interagency task force patrol aircraft from the US Navy, spotted the narco sub in the Pacific Ocean off the Central American coast, according to a release from the Coast Guard.

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WNU Editor: That is a lot of drugs being seized.

US Special Forces To Hunt Drug Cartel Kingpins

Report: Navy SEALs To Hunt Cartel Kingpin Like Bin Laden -- Danger Room

Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is arguably the world’s most wanted criminal, supplanting Osama bin Laden after the terrorist mastermind’s death during a Navy SEAL raid in May 2011. Now the Pentagon reportedly has a plan to send the SEALs after El Chapo too. There are lots of reasons why the report may be off. Chief among them: The Mexicans hate U.S. troops on their soil even more than the Pakistanis do.

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My Comment: I presume that the countries where these drug kingpins reside and/or are hiding in are OK with the idea of US military personnel on their territory.

New Ideas To Curb The Drug Wars Are Being Floated

How Latin America Is Reinventing The War On Drugs -- Sara Miller Llana, Christian Science

Frustrated with US dictates, countries across the region are floating new ideas to curb drug trafficking, from 'soft' enforcement to legalization.

Like thousands of other Bolivians, Marcela Lopez Vasquez's parents migrated to the Chapare region, in the Andean tropics, desperate to make a living after waves of economic and environmental upheaval hit farming and mining communities in the 1970s and '80s.

The new migrants, who spread across the undulating green hills here, planted bananas. They planted yucca and orange trees. But it was in the coca leaf that thrives in this climate that they found the salvation of a steady cash crop – and themselves at the nexus of the American "war on drugs."

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My Comment: What's my take .... in the end these drugs are going to be legalized and managed by government. It will be done to lessen the power of the drug cartels, and to put a handle on the violence that it brings. Unfortunately .... it is going to bring about other problems .... the number one problem being medical/social problems associated with drug addition. We see it in Afghanistan .... where a sizable portion of the population are already addicted to opium/heroin .... bringing enormous social and medical problems that are crippling what is already a crippled medical system. We may not like the war against drugs because of it's human toll .... but maybe it is the lesser of two evils.

Expanding The War Against Drugs To Africa

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

U.S. Drug War Expands to Africa, a Newer Hub for Cartels -- New York Times

WASHINGTON — In a significant expansion of the war on drugs, the United States has begun training an elite unit of counternarcotics police in Ghana and planning similar units in Nigeria and Kenya as part of an effort to combat the Latin American cartels that are increasingly using Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe.

The growing American involvement in Africa follows an earlier escalation of antidrug efforts in Central America, according to documents, Congressional testimony and interviews with a range of officials at the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Pentagon.

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My Comment: Africa has been used a major drug conduit to Europe for years. The difference now is that both the U.S. and Europe are now (finally) taking action against those responsible for this traffic.

Mexico's Drug Cartels Are Now Set Up In The U.S.

In Small-Town USA, Business As Usual For Mexican Cartels -- CNN

Wilmington, North Carolina (CNN) -- Less than a mile off a county road in Ivanhoe near the Black River, federal drug agents and local authorities found exactly what their informant had promised.

"We saw what looked like, as far as you could see, marijuana plants," said Drug Enforcement Administration agent Michael Franklin.

There were about 2,400 in all, surrounded by a makeshift camp where the growers had illegally squatted on private property, setting up a generator and pump to tap the river for irrigation. The camp, which had been recently inhabited, contained a tarp shelter, canned fuel, drinking water, toiletries and old clothing, some of it camouflage.

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My Comment: This is a problem that is only going to get worse.

A Look At Britain's Role In Colombia's Drug War

Fighting cocaine: Two 'Jungla' commandos in Colombia

'I Put The Pistol In My Mouth, To My Temple, Then Under My Chin. But I Just Couldn’t Do It': Former MI6 Officer Reveals True Cost Of Britain’s ‘Silent’ Drugs War In Colombia -- Daily Mail

On the edge of an airfield in Popayan, 200 miles south of the Colombian capital Bogota, two American Special Forces operatives, draped in weapons and wearing Oakley sunglasses, studiously ignore us.

We’re just yards apart, four ‘gringos’ in a foreign land, surrounded by dozens of heavily armoured Colombian ‘Jungla’ commandos. In return, we gamely pretend our American friends are not there.

My colleague and I are filming a Colombian police counter-narcotics operation.

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My Comment: Does not appear successful at all.

Today Is The 40th Anniversary Of The 'War On Drugs'

Former President Richard Nixon, who began the War on Drugs. (UPI Photo/Darryl Heikes/Files)

Ending 40 Years Of Drug War: The Impact On Latin America -- Patrick Corcoran, Christian Science Monitor

Today is the 40th anniversary of Nixon declaring a 'war on drugs.' Many Latin Americans are calling for an alternative strategy, but the short-term consequences could be dire for this region.

The 40th anniversary of Washington's war on drugs has sparked calls for the decriminalization of narcotics, but what may seem like common sense for the US could spell disaster for Latin America.

Pleas for reform have come from a wide variety of voices. David Simon, creator of the TV series "The Wire," recently published an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder offering a new season of the popular show in exchange for a reconsideration of the war on drugs. In The New York Times, Charles Blow called the war “an unmitigated disaster, an abomination of justice, and a self-perpetuating, trillion-dollar economy of wasted human capital, ruined lives, and decimated communities.”

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My Comment: While many believe that the war on drugs has been a failure, others believe that if drugs are legalized, greater problems would follow. What is my take .... tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands in jail, billions upon billions spent .... yup .... time to re-evaluate our present strategy for something else. Governments will probably (in the end) legalize the sale of narcotics .... but my suggestion is that if that becomes the case .... we should be ready for the onslaught of drug addiction and the social problems that it produces. How much of a problem this can be .... one only has to look at Afghanistan and its 1-2 million addicts to realize that we may get rid of one problem, but the next problem will dwarf what it replaced.

Is The War On Drugs About To End?

A Nicaraguan smokes a joint of marijuana in a poor district of the port of El Bluff. Campaigners say such areas are perfect for drug barons to cash in on people with few expectations. Photograph: Oswaldo Rivas/REUTERS

War On Drugs: Why The US And Latin America Could Be Ready To End A Fruitless 40-Year Struggle -- The Guardian

Mexico's president Felipe Caldéron is the latest Latin leader to call for a debate on drugs legalisation. And in the US, liberals and right-wing libertarians are pressing for an end to prohibition. Forty years after President Nixon launched the 'war on drugs' there is a growing momentum to abandon the fight

The birthday fiesta was in full swing at 1.30am when five SUVs pulled up outside the house. Figures spilled from the vehicles and ran towards the lights. They burst into the house and levelled AK-47s. "Kill them all!" A shouted instruction, only three words, and the slaughter began.

Gunfire and screams drowned the music. Some victims were cut down immediately, others were caught as they tried to escape. By the time the killers left there were 17 corpses, 18 wounded and 200 shell casings. Among the dead was the birthday guest of honour, a man local media named only as Mota, Mexican slang for marijuana.

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My Comment: With the bloodshed from the drug wars now approaching 30,000 in Mexico alone, the debate is now evolving towards how best to legalize drugs, with the government regulating (and probably selling) these products. This development is not a surprise .... everyone is now of the opinion that prohibition has not worked, and that alternative strategies and policies must be formulated.

Unfortunately ..... I personally believe that this debate is ignoring the consequences if drugs becomes legalized and regulated by the government. The reason why is that this is not the first time we are having this debate. All drugs were legal in the U.S. a hundred years ago, but the catastrophic impact of drugs being made available to the public made everyone realize (at that time) that prohibition was necessary to stem the exponential growth of drug addiction and the problems that are associated with it.

Are we going to repeat our history to a pre-prohibition era .... from my vantage point I will have to say that it is only a matter of time.

White House Czar Calls For End to 'War On Drugs'

Gil Kerlikowske, the new White House drug czar, signaled Wednesday his openness to rethinking the government's approach to fighting drug use. Brendan Smialowski for The Wall Street Journal

From The Wall Street Journal:

Kerlikowske Says Analogy Is Counterproductive; Shift Aligns With Administration Preference for Treatment Over Incarceration.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues.

"Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."

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My Comment: The reason why we have drug prohibition is because there was a time in American history .... at the turn of the century .... when almost all drugs (opiates, marijuana, cocaine, etc.) were legal in the United States. The huge number of addicts, coupled with the social and medical problems that came about from this lack of prohibition, forced the U.S. to change their policy to what it is today.

Reversing today's policy will only bring about the same environment and problems that existed a century ago. Is America prepared to spend the added mega billions in health care costs and social rehabilitation .... I doubt it. We spend an enormous amount of money on drug enforcement today .... but this amount will pale if we start to legalize drug use starting with the "softer" narcotics, and then taking care of the medical and social problems after.

The Colombians are very clear on this issue .... Colombia calls on Europe to do more in drug war -- EU Business

Could Mexico's Drug War Spread To The Central Valley?

California Central Valley county

From Visilia Times-Delta:

Experts say cartels have strong ties to drugs in county

We've heard the news stories about violence and outright warfare between Mexican law enforcement agencies and rival drug cartels there.

More than a dozen people were killed during a gunbattle between the rival Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels a year ago. More than 100 civilians were injured or killed in September when two hand grenades were thrown into a crowd at a Mexican Independence Day celebration in the state of Michoacà∞n.

Add to that numerous other murders, some involving torture and even beheadings more than 440 in the last three months of 2008 alone, according to the Associated Press.

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My Comment: With the majority of people in U.S. Federal prison being there because of drug convictions .... I would have to say that the Drug War has always been here.

On Lebanon-Israel Frontier, A Quiet Drug War

Lebanese policemen stand guard as they burn ton of cannabis in Deir al-Ahmar in the Bekaa region of eastern Lebanon on Oct. 27, 2008. AFP - Getty Images file

From MSNBC:

Israeli police believe the trade is controlled in large part by Hezbollah.

ALONG THE ISRAEL-LEBANON BORDER, Israel - Filmed with a night-vision camera just before Israeli narcotics officers pounced from nearby bushes, the video shows a Lebanese courier lobbing half-kilo packages of heroin over the border fence into Israel and an Israeli courier throwing back packages of $100 bills.

Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah guerrillas have been battling for years along this frontier. But a quieter war goes on here every night, one between Inspector Gal Ben Ish's narcotics teams and the smugglers who have turned this jumpy border into the main conduit for heroin bound for Israeli drug markets.

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Update: Lebanon's drug mafia blamed in death of 4 soldiers -- LA Times

My Comment: Poppy fields and growing marijuana has been a part of Lebanese culture and history for centuries. The difference now is that Hezbollah recognizes that these drugs are a strategic asset for them in their war against Israel. My only surprise is that they have not expanded this drug/narcotics industry into becoming a major player on the world's drug scene.

The Colombian-African Drug Link

The democratically elected President of Guinea-Bissau, Joao Bernardo Vieira, was killed by renegade soldiers. Both him and the chief of the Armed Forces, General Tagmé Na Waie, who died after a bomb attack, had been accused of complicity in cocaine smuggling.

From Semana International:

At the beginning of the week, when the President of the Western African country of Guinea-Bissau, Joao Bernardo Vieira, and the army chief, Batista Tagmé Na Wai, were killed in a gangland style, two questions quickly arose: Do the murders in this failed state have any relationship with the fact that Guinea-Bissau has become the first narco-state in the world? And second: Are the Colombian drug cartels, very present in Guinea-Bissau, related in any way to the assassinations?

The answer to the first question seems, at first glance, clear: Yes. The tiny African country, a former Portuguese colony, is permeated to such an extent by the drug traffickers and their organizations that it is facing a crisis of enormous proportions. Whereas the country, the world’s fifth poorest nation, has a bad infrastructure, a massive foreign debt and people struggling to earn a decent living, the Spanish-speaking drug traffickers use Mercedes and Porsche cars or four-wheel drive vehicles and live in fancy estates on the outskirts of the main cities.

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My Comment: As Africa deteriorates further .... expect the worse to come to Africa. Drugs is just the tip of the iceberg.

How The Production Of Cocaine And The War Against It Is Destroying The Rain Forest

More than $6 billion has been spent over the past eight years in an attempt to destroy the coca crops that keep the guerrillas and drug cartels in business

The Daily Mail:

The habit that's costing the earth

It doesn’t matter how many bottles you recycle. If you use cocaine, you’re turning virgin rainforest into coca farms – which soon become toxic barren strips like this. Live flies into the heart of the rainforest to expose the hypocrisy of the environmentally conscious middle-class drug user

In a drone of Bell Huey turbines we clear the razor wire and sandbagged machine-gun emplacements of the base, flying low while casting a racing black shadow over the landscape. We head north-west into hostile territory. The machine gunner on my left flicks a red switch on the 7.62mm six-barrelled minigun and a green

LED shows the system is armed. Belts of dull brass bullets stretch back into the bowels of the chopper. Sitting behind an inscrutable black visor, which reflects the topography below, he begins to scan the forest and ramshackle houses nestling on riverbanks for snipers lurking in the jungle drifting 500ft beneath my feet, as the chopper blades emit a pulsating whump.

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My Comment: The drug wars will go on until it is legalized and regulated by the governments of the peoples who consume it. As for the ecological damage .... while many bemoan the damage and voice their opposition to this destruction .... I would wager that many of those who protest have also used the drugs (at least once), and see nothing wrong to legalize it.

U.S. Now Impacted By Mexico's Drug War

Mexico Drug Wars Spill Across The Border -- L.A. Times

Oscar Reynoso was found by police in a home in suburban Atlanta. Authorities say cartel members had chained and tortured Reynoso over a $300,000 drug debt.
Few regions of the U.S. are immune to drug-trafficking organizations that have left a trail of death, kidnappings and other crimes.

The drug violence that has left about 4,000 people dead this year in Mexico is spreading deep into the United States, leaving a trail of slayings, kidnappings and other crimes in at least 195 cities as far afield as Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Honolulu, according to federal authorities.

The involvement of the top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations in distribution and money-laundering on U.S. soil has brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities.

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My Comment: This was inevitable. The money is here, and the legal system is far more gentler to the criminal gangs in the U.S. than in Mexico .... in other words, it is safer and more profitable to do business in the U.S. than in Latin America. Expect this problem to get worse as more gangs come to the U.S., and competition for territory starts to "heat up".

U.S. Drug Agents Being Expelled From Venezuela, Ecuador, And Bolivia

In Latin America, Leftist Leaders Evict US Drug Warriors -- Christian Science Monitor

Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela push back on US operations.

Mexico City - Bolivia has given US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers three months to leave the country – claiming that agents were stirring up political strife in the deeply divided nation.

This fall, Ecuadorians voted yes to a new Constitution that calls for the closure by next year of one of the most important US operations in its war against drugs.

And for the fourth year in a row, Venezuela was singled out by President Bush – as was Bolivia for the first time – for having "failed demonstrably" in antidrug cooperation.

The US has long had a presence in Latin America to stem the northward drug flow; Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the world's largest cocaine producers. The US still boasts strong partnerships with many countries, such as Colombia and Mexico. But in others, particularly those led by leftists who have risen in collective condemnation of Washington, leaders are increasingly severing ties.

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My Comment: I am curious to know what policies President Obama would pursue to stemming the drug trade/war. I have found very little if any specifics on what he would do.

The Heroin Invasion

Afghanistan has produced two record opium harvests, with Helmand province, where British soldiers are based, accounting for more than half the poppies grown. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

New Heroin Crisis Threatens Britain, Report Says
-- The Guardian

A glut of opium on the world market fuelled by a record Afghan harvest threatens a new heroin crisis in Britain, the European Union drug agency warns today.

And the UK remains at the top of the European "league table" for cocaine abuse for the fifth consecutive year, according to the annual report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

But it reports that there are "stronger signals" of the declining popularity of cannabis across Europe, with a strong downward trend especially noticeable among British school students.

The agency suggests this decline may be a byproduct of the introduction of widespread bans on smoking tobacco in public places. Nevertheless the drugs experts say that a quarter of all Europeans - 71 million people - have tried cannabis at some point in their lives, 12 million of them within the last month.

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Mexican Cartels 'Threaten State'

In Tijuana, a Mexican federal policeman stands guard as others lift bundles of drugs through a shaft that reaches down to a sophisticated clandestine tunnel passing under the U.S.-Mexico border.

From The BBC:

The head of Mexico's intelligence service has said that drug cartels are threatening the country's democratic institutions, including Congress.

Guillermo Valdes told the Financial Times newspaper that drug traffickers were trying to take over the power of the state.

Gangs have infiltrated police forces, justice departments and government bodies, he said.

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More News On Mexico's Drug Wars

Mexico Security Memo: July 14, 2008 -- Stratford
Eight shot dead in Mexico attack -- BBC
Mexican Drug Cartels & Islamic Radicals Working Together -- Mexidata
INTERVIEW-Mexican army abuses need civil trials -- Reuters

My Comment: Colombia's drug war culture is now in Mexico. Poverty, corruption, law enforcement that is inadequate, judicial judges targeted for murder and intimidation ..... this is now happening on our borders. The unfortunate part of this conflict is that there is no light at the end of tunnel. Expect this violence to continue its upward trend.