As we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, the death toll in Mexico’s drug wars has reached new highs, or lows, with 69 people dying in a 24 hour period. A total 283 individuals have died in drug war violence since the New Year turned, including several beheadings.
The context of this rising tide of violence and death lies in the struggle to control the country’s hugely lucrative illicit drug trade. When President Calderón came to power in 2006, he launched an unprecedented campaign to destroy the organized crime groups that control the trade. It has so far resulted in around 14,000 deaths, and some 50,000 soldiers and Federal Police have been deployed by the government. Nonetheless, the death toll continues to escalate. The trade is structured around the activities of 6 major cartels, and killings and arrests of various high profile figures have served only to sharpen the competition for power. Not only cartel soldiers but police and vigilantes are implicated in murder and torture.
The situation has strong historical parallels to the other great 20th century Prohibition: the USA’s ‘Noble Experiment’ with the prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933, which issued in bloody gang violence and gave American organized crime access to almost unlimited funds, and the political and law-enforcement corruption that went them. Mexico’s response to the ills of prohibition has primarily been a military one, a strategy that has received the support of the United States (which is also the source of the firearms used on all sides). It is becoming increasingly clear that this strategy is not working, and that more fundamental measures are necessary to take the drugs industry out of the control of criminal organizations.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Friday, 8 January 2010
Anthrax deaths in injecting drug users
Several anthrax infections in injecting heroin users came to light in Scotland during December 2009. The cases were centred on Glasgow, but have since spread to other Scottish cities; six people have now died as a result of the infection. Other cases are presently in hospital, and though the outbreak is so far confined to Scotland, police and health services in Cumbria have issued warnings to heroin users about a suspected batch of contaminated heroin, which is believed to be the source.
Anthrax is an illness that is caused by a bacterium called Bacillus anthracis; it usually enters the body through a wound or broken skin, and cannot be passed from person to person through airborne contact. In these cases it appears to have been picked up by injecting contaminated street heroin. Anthrax can be fatal if not treated. If it is caught in time, however, the disease can be successfully treated with antibiotics. Symptoms may consist of severe redness and/or swelling at an injection site, fever and an intense flu-like illness. It is vital to seek urgent medical attention (from a GP or an Accident and Emergency unit) if you suspect you may have contracted anthrax.
The batch of heroin in question was probably either made or stored near animals, soil or faeces containing the bacteria. The conditions of production and transport of street heroin are not regulated by any governmental agency, and are consequently covered by no public health or quality controls. One result of this lack of regulation is that dangerous chemicals or infections periodically get into illegal drugs and result in death and illness.
The Heath Protection Agency last night issued a bulletin about the outbreak, which is available here.
Anthrax is an illness that is caused by a bacterium called Bacillus anthracis; it usually enters the body through a wound or broken skin, and cannot be passed from person to person through airborne contact. In these cases it appears to have been picked up by injecting contaminated street heroin. Anthrax can be fatal if not treated. If it is caught in time, however, the disease can be successfully treated with antibiotics. Symptoms may consist of severe redness and/or swelling at an injection site, fever and an intense flu-like illness. It is vital to seek urgent medical attention (from a GP or an Accident and Emergency unit) if you suspect you may have contracted anthrax.
The batch of heroin in question was probably either made or stored near animals, soil or faeces containing the bacteria. The conditions of production and transport of street heroin are not regulated by any governmental agency, and are consequently covered by no public health or quality controls. One result of this lack of regulation is that dangerous chemicals or infections periodically get into illegal drugs and result in death and illness.
The Heath Protection Agency last night issued a bulletin about the outbreak, which is available here.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Women drug mules imprisoned around the world
Sasha Brooks and Kimberley Anderson are two young working class British women from Nottingham. They are currently in prison in Sao Paolo, Brazil, charged with trafficking offences, having been found with 5 kilograms of cocaine. A chance meeting with some local dealers resulted in what seemed like an attractive proposition—the chance to make some decent money. Instead, they are now trying to come to terms with life in a tough foreign prison, far from those they know and love. The two women share their predicament with large and growing numbers of women around the world: West Indians locked up in the UK for carrying Colombian cocaine, Tajikistanis in Moscow’s notorious gaols for carrying Afghan heroin, Philippinos languishing in Chinese prisons, captured on their way from a resurgent Golden Triangle bearing white heroin from Myanmar. These are just the beginning of a long list.
What all these have in common is that they are mostly female, all poor, and at the lowest rungs of the drug trading hierarchy. The very term “mules” denotes a beast of burden, that which does the labour no-one else wants to do. They are easily recruited, faceless, functional and disposable. Usually they know little or nothing about the people organizing the trade, made up of a sophisticated global alliance of shifting networks, whose upper ranks make money that the mules can barely dream of. Put these people in prison and others just take their place; the only way to dry up the supply is to alleviate the poverty of wealth and opportunity that drives them to take such risks with their lives and liberty.
What all these have in common is that they are mostly female, all poor, and at the lowest rungs of the drug trading hierarchy. The very term “mules” denotes a beast of burden, that which does the labour no-one else wants to do. They are easily recruited, faceless, functional and disposable. Usually they know little or nothing about the people organizing the trade, made up of a sophisticated global alliance of shifting networks, whose upper ranks make money that the mules can barely dream of. Put these people in prison and others just take their place; the only way to dry up the supply is to alleviate the poverty of wealth and opportunity that drives them to take such risks with their lives and liberty.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
China and drug law executions
On 29th December 2009, Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen, was executed by the Chinese authorities by means of lethal injection. Mr Shaikh had been in custody since 2007, when he was arrested for carrying 4 kilos of heroin into China. Despite last minute appeals for clemency by his family and the British government, and protests from around the world, China has stubbornly defended its actions and its independent right to punish as it sees fit.
There’s a colonial and imperial background to this: in China, the memory of the opium trade from British India, which was carried on against the express wish of the Chinese government, and against Chinese law, is still fresh, along with the “Treaty Ports” system that allowed the writ of European law to run in Chinese centres of maritime trading.
In this context, one might expect that intervention on the part of the United Nations would have been more effective. However, Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on summary and extra-judicial executions, wrote to the Chinese asking them to explain the rationale behind Mr Shaikh’s sentence, pointing out that he suffered from a mental illness. His letter was ignored.
This intervention from the UN is welcome. However, the stream of rhetoric coming from the UN drugs agencies, as well as from British and other politicians around the world, helps to maintain the climate that is used to justify the execution. The Chinese embassy in London stated that, “The amount of heroin he brought into China was 4,030g, enough to cause 26,800 deaths, threatening numerous families.” The question of mental illness aside, China regularly executes people for drugs crimes, and the extreme and exaggerated account of the danger that drugs pose lies at the root of the reasoning involved. The ‘War on Drugs’ may be a rhetorical device, but the bodies are real.
There’s a colonial and imperial background to this: in China, the memory of the opium trade from British India, which was carried on against the express wish of the Chinese government, and against Chinese law, is still fresh, along with the “Treaty Ports” system that allowed the writ of European law to run in Chinese centres of maritime trading.
In this context, one might expect that intervention on the part of the United Nations would have been more effective. However, Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on summary and extra-judicial executions, wrote to the Chinese asking them to explain the rationale behind Mr Shaikh’s sentence, pointing out that he suffered from a mental illness. His letter was ignored.
This intervention from the UN is welcome. However, the stream of rhetoric coming from the UN drugs agencies, as well as from British and other politicians around the world, helps to maintain the climate that is used to justify the execution. The Chinese embassy in London stated that, “The amount of heroin he brought into China was 4,030g, enough to cause 26,800 deaths, threatening numerous families.” The question of mental illness aside, China regularly executes people for drugs crimes, and the extreme and exaggerated account of the danger that drugs pose lies at the root of the reasoning involved. The ‘War on Drugs’ may be a rhetorical device, but the bodies are real.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Cannabis, Skunk and Psychosis
Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry in London have published a study looking at the impact of cannabis use on psychosis, which has been a hot political topic in recent years. The research had a specific focus on high-potency, “skunk” varieties of the drug. It compared patients admitted to hospital with first episodes of psychosis with a group of people from the nearby community. There were no differences between the two groups in terms of the proportions of their ever having used cannabis or age at first use. However, amongst the cannabis users, patients with psychosis were nearly seven times as likely to smoke the high potency skunk varieties as the second group. Researchers suggest that the apparent greater risk involved in the use of skunk is linked to its higher THC content and low cannabidiol (CBD) content, two of the main chemicals in the drug. In the traditional resin hash preferred by the control group, levels of THC averaged at 3.4%, with similar levels of cannabidiol. Skunk, by contrast, contains 12-18% THC and 1.5% CBD. It appears that cannabidiol may help to protect against psychosis.
The lead researcher, Dr Di Forti said, “Our study is the first to demonstrate that the risk of psychosis is much greater among people who are frequent cannabis users, especially among those using skunk, rather than among occasional users of traditional hash.” It is unclear whether the researchers are suggesting that heavy skunk use causes psychosis, or whether there is merely a correlation, in which case it may be that those already troubled by symptoms of mental illness are using stronger varieties of cannabis to alleviate symptoms. What is clear is that production of the skunk varieties has been driven by commercial factors in an unregulated market where profit is the sole governing principle.
The lead researcher, Dr Di Forti said, “Our study is the first to demonstrate that the risk of psychosis is much greater among people who are frequent cannabis users, especially among those using skunk, rather than among occasional users of traditional hash.” It is unclear whether the researchers are suggesting that heavy skunk use causes psychosis, or whether there is merely a correlation, in which case it may be that those already troubled by symptoms of mental illness are using stronger varieties of cannabis to alleviate symptoms. What is clear is that production of the skunk varieties has been driven by commercial factors in an unregulated market where profit is the sole governing principle.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Cocaine Purity impacts on drug trends
Release is concerned about the impact that low purity cocaine will have on the drug scene in general. The staff on the drugs team, who regularly provide expert testimony at Court, are increasingly seeing cases involving large cocaine seizures where purity can be as low as 3%-4% purity and is on average about 15%. The cost of purchasing on the street is about £40 per gram.
As such many long term recreational stimulant users are not purchasing coke – this is confirmed by calls on the Release National Helpline. Whilst it could be argued that this decrease in purity could be linked to successful law enforcement it is more likely that greed is the real motivator behind this change. Often cocaine powder is being stamped and re-stamped into blocks, being continuously cut, so that the numbing effect traditionally associated with cocaine is now more often the benzocaine or lignocaine used as cutting agents.
Gary Sutton, Head of Drugs at Release states: ‘In my opinion, it is an effect of the recession that we have experienced a lengthening of the supply chain as cocaine passes through more hands from importer to consumer. In a situation not unfamiliar to viewers of ‘The Wire’ we are beginning to see that as benefits become less available to young people and as the availability of work constricts that selling cocaine is seen by as an attractive alternative to unemployment or a MacJob’.
This drop in purity may mean some people are choosing to use other drugs such as Ketamine; mephedrone and other various legal highs. However, it likely that weak cocaine will open the way for methamphetamine – and we will finally witness what has been predicted for years. Not because it is the natural next step in drug use patterns but because when supplies of one drug dry up, people will generally seek out an alternative and, unfortunately, in most cases this will involve a drug that causes much greater harm.
As such many long term recreational stimulant users are not purchasing coke – this is confirmed by calls on the Release National Helpline. Whilst it could be argued that this decrease in purity could be linked to successful law enforcement it is more likely that greed is the real motivator behind this change. Often cocaine powder is being stamped and re-stamped into blocks, being continuously cut, so that the numbing effect traditionally associated with cocaine is now more often the benzocaine or lignocaine used as cutting agents.
Gary Sutton, Head of Drugs at Release states: ‘In my opinion, it is an effect of the recession that we have experienced a lengthening of the supply chain as cocaine passes through more hands from importer to consumer. In a situation not unfamiliar to viewers of ‘The Wire’ we are beginning to see that as benefits become less available to young people and as the availability of work constricts that selling cocaine is seen by as an attractive alternative to unemployment or a MacJob’.
This drop in purity may mean some people are choosing to use other drugs such as Ketamine; mephedrone and other various legal highs. However, it likely that weak cocaine will open the way for methamphetamine – and we will finally witness what has been predicted for years. Not because it is the natural next step in drug use patterns but because when supplies of one drug dry up, people will generally seek out an alternative and, unfortunately, in most cases this will involve a drug that causes much greater harm.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Fear of Music
Release has always had a close relationship with drugs and music. When the organization began, in the heady days of the 1960s (a “more generous decade”, as Leonard Cohen has observed, when it seemed that the world really could be changed by the youth), Release was funded by the counter culture. In practice, that meant largely by rock stars; there were lots of high profile donations, and venues would even put a “tax” on the door so that the bands and audiences who were using the drugs were the ones that paid for Release services: help with bad trips, health and welfare problems and, especially, drug busts. With finances thus secure, Release could even turn down offers of funding by the Home Office, which, to its credit, recognized that the service was worthwhile and deserved government money. My, how the times have changed.
Enough of this wistful sighing. Release aside, the wider point is that there has been a long relationship between drugs and popular music: indeed, it goes far back beyond the 60s. And, of course, it still features big in the media today. As the Mail Online put it yesterday:
“Singer Joss Stone has been condemned for glamorising drugs after an astonishing diatribe in which she claimed cannabis is less harmful than alcohol.”
Hmmm, sounds familiar. Doesn’t this put Joss Stone into the honoured company of Professor David Nutt, with whom we launched ourselves into the Blogosphere last week? Or perhaps the other way around? Either way, the Mail is filled once more with a righteous wrath, commenting that the 22 year-old singer has “enraged anti-drug campaigners” and added that her remarks may be seen in the context of her desire to stump up publicity for her new album. She went on, we are told, to dismiss the dangers of cannabis, in spite of the fact that ministers upgraded the drug’s legal classification from C to B last year. Whatever her motivation, she too seems to have been sending out the wrong message. In another echo of the Nutt affair, David Raynes of the National Drugs Prevention Alliance remarked, “People like Joss Stone should keep their mouths shut about things like this.” Right then.
Since jazz music first appeared in the dance clubs of Soho in the early twentieth century, provoking fears of sexual primitivism and the madness of dancing women, racial interbreeding and the swamping of national identity (yes, all the old favourites), drugs and music have been entwined in the passion of the cultural imagination. Jazz and blues singers smoked marijuana and took cocaine; as the century progressed they became associated with heroin use—and it’s true, a lot of the bebop jazzers believed the drug helped them play. Maybe it did. In the 1950s, the large scale immigration of West Indians into the UK led to new fears, especially when white girls appeared to be drawn to their shadowy all-night clubs, their rhythms and their reefers, their reportedly outsized anatomical adaptations. Cannabis was the symbol of all this. For the authorities it was a fearful thing, to be repressed. For the youth, a marker of new experiences and a promise of exciting social freedoms.
Drugs, it would seem, are made of symbolism as much as they are made of chemicals. It is this symbolic struggle which is still being played out in contemporary culture. And while drugs are associated with music, itself an element of a libertarian popular culture that celebrates drug experience, no amount of “education” is going to stop people using them.
Release blog will return to the relationship of drugs and music in the near future.
Enough of this wistful sighing. Release aside, the wider point is that there has been a long relationship between drugs and popular music: indeed, it goes far back beyond the 60s. And, of course, it still features big in the media today. As the Mail Online put it yesterday:
“Singer Joss Stone has been condemned for glamorising drugs after an astonishing diatribe in which she claimed cannabis is less harmful than alcohol.”
Hmmm, sounds familiar. Doesn’t this put Joss Stone into the honoured company of Professor David Nutt, with whom we launched ourselves into the Blogosphere last week? Or perhaps the other way around? Either way, the Mail is filled once more with a righteous wrath, commenting that the 22 year-old singer has “enraged anti-drug campaigners” and added that her remarks may be seen in the context of her desire to stump up publicity for her new album. She went on, we are told, to dismiss the dangers of cannabis, in spite of the fact that ministers upgraded the drug’s legal classification from C to B last year. Whatever her motivation, she too seems to have been sending out the wrong message. In another echo of the Nutt affair, David Raynes of the National Drugs Prevention Alliance remarked, “People like Joss Stone should keep their mouths shut about things like this.” Right then.
Since jazz music first appeared in the dance clubs of Soho in the early twentieth century, provoking fears of sexual primitivism and the madness of dancing women, racial interbreeding and the swamping of national identity (yes, all the old favourites), drugs and music have been entwined in the passion of the cultural imagination. Jazz and blues singers smoked marijuana and took cocaine; as the century progressed they became associated with heroin use—and it’s true, a lot of the bebop jazzers believed the drug helped them play. Maybe it did. In the 1950s, the large scale immigration of West Indians into the UK led to new fears, especially when white girls appeared to be drawn to their shadowy all-night clubs, their rhythms and their reefers, their reportedly outsized anatomical adaptations. Cannabis was the symbol of all this. For the authorities it was a fearful thing, to be repressed. For the youth, a marker of new experiences and a promise of exciting social freedoms.
Drugs, it would seem, are made of symbolism as much as they are made of chemicals. It is this symbolic struggle which is still being played out in contemporary culture. And while drugs are associated with music, itself an element of a libertarian popular culture that celebrates drug experience, no amount of “education” is going to stop people using them.
Release blog will return to the relationship of drugs and music in the near future.
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