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(CNN)Bandidos, Hells Angels, Mongols. They're not just motorcycle clubs, but organized criminal enterprises. "The Bandidos constitute a growing criminal threat to the U.S.," the agency says. "The Bandidos are involved in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana and are involved in the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine." Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Officials say the gang is heavily involved in the drug trade -- including the production and distribution of methamphetamine and the transportation of cocaine, hashish, heroin, LSD, Ecstasy and PCP. That's not all. "The Hells Angels are also involved in other criminal activity including assault, extortion, homicide, money...

Nootropics, the new staple ‘brain enhancers’ in Silicon Valley that purport to increase productivity and perception, exist in an unregulated legal gray area in the U.S. In Colombia, you can pick up even the shadiest kinds over the counter. I did just that. In the months before a recent trip to Colombia, off to visit an expat friend living there, I had been hearing about nootropics. Or “smart drugs,” as they’re referred to. Brain enhancers. Mental magic. Depending on which site you’ve read that’s proclaimed them the new “It” drug for bio-hackers of every stripe, all roads lead to the...

Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat In January 2014, in the state of Michoacán, Mexico, a conflict known as the rising up of the autodefensas breaks out. Citizens, farmers, and civil professionals tired of the abuses from drug traffickers and the obvious complicity of government structures, decide to take up arms and form a community police in order to address the problem directly. A group of them decided to move towards the coast, but they are not alone, they are accompanied by two independent journalists, Rafael Prime (México) and Nicolás Tapia (Chile). Everything that happened during those turbulent days...

At least 43 people died Friday in what authorities described as a fierce, three-hour gunbattle between federal forces and suspected drug gang gunmen on a ranch in western Mexico, the deadliest such confrontation in recent memory. All the dead were suspected criminals except for one federal police officer, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said. He said the officer died trying to help a colleague wounded in the shootout.

California might be ready to legalize cannabis for adults 21 and over, but some members of the Oakland community are worried it will be a job-killer for their street dealers. Support for legalization proved mixed at a public meeting of the ACLU’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Legalization in Oakland this week. "Street-level drug dealers who are now selling to 17- to 25-year-olds could see legalization cut their market in half," said Robert Dousa. “Many of these dealers are doing it to support their families — they need to make money,” Dousa said.

The city’s narcotics cops are being told to stop arresting suspects over the age of 40 — a major strategy shift designed to target younger dealers, who are more likely to carry guns and use them, The Post has learned. Top brass issued a directive that makes it all but impossible for cops to bust older drug suspects, in order to combat a spike in shootings — which are up 7 percent in 2015 compared with the same period last year and 12 percent over the last four weeks, police sources said. The new policy was laid out in a...

Researchers have figured out how to get yeast to produce morphine, codeine and other similar drugs and have immediately urged regulators to control these drug-brewing yeasts before people start trying to make them at home. They genetically engineered simple brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and came up with a strain that can make very complicated plant compounds that include opioid drugs such as morphine, as well as some antibiotics and muscle relaxants. It's an important technical step, because now these drugs have to be synthesized directly from plants—an inefficient process. The yeast process isn't that efficient yet, either, but once it's...

The name of Sheik Mubarik Ali Gilani has been little-known in California, except to a small number of African-American Muslims who follow his teachings, and to law enforcement authorities who have tracked their movements across the state. But two other names are prominent in the history of Gilani's followers here. Abdullah Baqi was once described by law enforcement authorities as the West Coast leader of a dangerous group they called Ul-Fuqra. And an analysis of public records indicates that Baqi was married to the woman now called Khadijah Ghafur, who later founded the community outside Fresno known as Baladullah. ...

Bill Bennett, a great American and a great Republican was all over television promoting his new book Going to Pot co-written with Robert A. White. This is a topic I have followed for years and previously written about so I thought I would read the book and hope for an interview with Dr. Bennett. I was unable to land the big fish, but did interview his co-writer for an hour discussing the issue of whether the legalization of marijuana should continue. I have previously written that the experiment of legalization should go forward in Colorado and Washington and let us...

A leaked draft of a trade agreement under negotiation among 12 Pacific rim countries, including the US and Japan, contains language that could delay the entrance of generic competition for much-needed medicines and keep pharmaceutical prices high, according to the Foundation for Aids Research (amfAR), an international non-profit headquartered in New York. The organisation is lending its voice to those expressing similar concerns, like humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders. Although details of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have been kept confidential, leaked texts of the treaty have offered some clues, such as its embrace of intellectual property protections that go...

Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul will host a meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus next week to discuss criminal justice reform. The libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky has long been an outspoken advocate for changing how the American criminal system prosecutes and sentences. Now he’s teaming up with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), and other black lawmakers, to craft a strategy for advancing legislation as law enforcement issues have taken center stage following the death of several unarmed black men at the hands of police. “Not only is Senator Paul the [S]enate co-sponsor of the Justice Safety Valve Act, which...

A dangerous new drug is on the streets — it is called flakka or gravel or “$5 insanity.” And there’s a reason it has that last nickname. The drug spikes a user’s body temperature to dangerous levels, gives them paranoid hallucinations and makes them incredibly strong. In one case, a man in Florida ran naked down the street and then tried to have sex with a tree before being arrested. He told cops he was Thor — yes, the mythical god of thunder.

A couple gave their teenage daughters cocaine and marijuana if they went to school and did household chores, authorities said. Chad and Joey Mudd, of Largo, a suburb in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, gave their daughters, ages 13 and 14, drugs as a “bargaining tool” for school attendance and doing chores, Pinellas County Sheriff’s detectives said. They were arrested Monday. According to an affidavit, the mother said she smoked pot with her daughters five times and the father snorted cocaine with the teens and one of his daughter’s boyfriends in his truck. …

Maybe he should have taken traveler’s checks. But it’s too late for that now. All the money – $16,000 in cash – that Joseph Rivers said he had saved and relatives had given him to launch his dream in Hollywood is gone, seized during his trip out West not by thieves but by Drug Enforcement Administration agents during a stop at the Amtrak train station in Albuquerque. An incident some might argue is still theft, just with the government’s blessing. Rivers, 22, wasn’t detained and has not been charged with any crime since his money was taken last month. That...

A British grandmother on death row in Indonesia is writing goodbye letters to her family and believes she could be executed at any time, she wrote in an article on Sunday. Lindsay Sandiford, 58, said she was expecting to die shortly, after seven foreign drug convicts were executed last week, causing a storm of international protest. "My execution is imminent and I know I might die at any time now. I could be taken tomorrow from my cell," Sandiford wrote in British newspaper the Mail on Sunday. "I have started to write goodbye letters to members of my family." Sandiford,...

Under Governor Scott Walker's leadership, Wisconsin will join eleven other states as the newest state to require welfare recipients to pass a drug test before they can receive state welfare funds. While some liberals and liberal-minded religious groups have called out Walker for "targeting" the poor and those with addictions, Walker's response has been spot on: if they're receiving funds from the state, the state should be able to make rules for these people to live by before they can receive a dime. But Walker's drug test isn't simply a play to restrict the number of people who will be...

Nearly fifteen years ago, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population addicted to heroin. They had tried a drug war, and the problem just kept getting worse. So they decided to do something radically different. They resolved to decriminalize all drugs...

The search continued for several suspects who shot and killed two men and wounded two others in a gun battle six miles east of Gila Bend. The shootings occurred a high-traffic corridor known for human and drug smuggling. The bodies of the two men were found by Maricopa County sheriff's investigators in a cave about six miles east of Gila Bend Monday afternoon. Two other men who were seriously hurt were airlifted to the West Valley Hospital in Goodyear. “We're hoping one will be able to talk and give us more information,” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said at a...

Over the past several months, Mediaite has produced a handful of posts asking the question: Where is Fox’s The Five co-host Bob Beckel? ... In our first report, we noted that Fox told us Beckel was out receiving and recovering from back surgery. However, our own sources at the network indicated there was more to the story, including possible addiction (as cable watchers know well, Beckel is open about his drug history). And now Fox confirms that there is, indeed, an addiction therapy element to the story after all.

THE nauseating canonisation of executed convicted heroin smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran was well under way before their corpses had been returned to their families. At Castle Hill High, the words “merciless”, “barbaric”, “futile” and “weak” were plastered on the noticeboard on Wednesday by principal Vicki Brewer after students ­expressed horror at the executions of Chan and Sukumaran, and six others in Indonesia. “I think it’s affecting students and staff, they’ve been chilled by it, haunted by it and there’s been certainly a good deal of reflection and discussion about the ethical and moral dilemmas this has caused,” she...