Mexican Cartels Increasingly Targeting Hawaii for Meth and Fentanyl Trafficking
Excerpt:
Locals tout the tangerine sunsets from Oahu’s quieter west coast, but homeless tents that dot the ocean’s edge hint at a growing problem — poisons in paradise brought in by Mexican cartels.
The dominant super cartels — Sinaloa and its rival, the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, known as CJNG — run drug pipelines through California and Nevada to flood Oahu with meth and other drugs, including fentanyl, said Victor Vazquez, assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s operations in Hawaii.
“It’s alarming,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the ocean, the drugs would be driven straight to Waikiki,” referring to the bustling tourist spot of Honolulu’s south shore, lined with high-rise hotels, restaurants and shops.
Similar to remote Alaska, cartels face less competition in Hawaii, when compared to the mainland, so they can demand a higher price. Drug networks also sneak cocaine and heroin into Hawaii, along with the meth and fentanyl, said U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors, who oversees federal prosecutors in the District of Hawaii.
.....Drug shipments first arrive in the state capital of Honolulu, often smuggled in air passengers’ luggage or in mailed packages, she said. Then they are trafficked to the other Hawaiian islands. “We also still see a lot of it coming in through body carry,” Connors said, meaning from airline passengers hiding it on their bodies or in carry-on luggage.
“It is somehow making its way through TSA operations,” she said, referring to the federal Transportation Security Administration checkpoints.
Mexican cartels’ determination to target Hawaii — despite its remote location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — illustrates a key money-making strategy to reach their tentacles far beyond major U.S. cities and into more remote states with fewer competitors and fewer police resources.
.....To better understand the scope of the drug crisis in Hawaii, a Courier Journal reporter spent several days on Oahu in June talking to the DEA, local police, an emergency room doctor and leaders and participants of a leeward region recovery program for Native Hawaiian men, most of whom served time in jail.
Synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl and meth, are blamed in nearly all fatal drug poisonings across the U.S., according to the DEA’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment.
Gary Yabuta, a veteran lawman and retired Maui police chief, said meth has remained the dominant drug plaguing Hawaii for decades. The drug brings a jolt of energy, but also can lead to paranoia and violence. Meth doesn’t always get the full blame it deserves, doctors say, because it can kill slowly over time, often causing heart failure.
Meth on the streets today, dubbed “ice,” typically has a purity close to 100%, much more lethal than the 50% purity of one-pot home labs popular across the U.S. years ago. “I call methamphetamine death a cancer ― you die one day at a time,” said Yabuta, who now works in Honolulu overseeing the state’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces.
“It’s smuggled across the border by the cartel gatekeepers,” Yabuta said. “It has devastated Hawaii.” Yabuta and DEA agents also have noticed an increase in fentanyl, a manmade opioid that now reigns as the No. 1 drug killing Americans.
A “Blue 30” or fake oxycodone pain pill sells for as low as $2 in Los Angeles, but can fetch $16 or more in Hawaii, exemplifying what attracts the cartel powerhouses to the islands, Vazquez said. Seven out of every 10 pills seized in the U.S. by the DEA now contain a potentially lethal dose, according to the agency’s cautionary “One Pill Can Kill” campaign.
North Carolina election board stalls on two, approves Constitution Party
Presidential hopefuls Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of We the People and Cornel West of Justice for All Party still denied
https://www.thecentersquare.com/north_carolina/article_59f7c86c-3e22-11ef-a57f-7b6a7d229fc9.html
Excerpt:
Sparks flew as the North Carolina Board of Elections decided Tuesday to further delay voting to approve ballot access for the We the People Party and the Justice for All Party.
The Constitution Party, a third which met the signature threshold as mandated by state statute, was approved. Randall Terry is its presidential nominee. Conservative values are the party’s calling card; the two delayed trend in the opposite direction and threaten to siphon votes for Democrats.
This comes as the board, which met June 26 and delayed all three parties’ access, faces a federal investigation by the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
“I’m just completely at a loss for what is going on here,” Kevin Lewis, a Republican, said in the Tuesday meeting. “It’s not making sense to me. I think the board is bringing a lot of bad publicity on the board. Your motives are starting to be questioned.”
At the last board meeting, each of the parties were denied 3-2 by a party-line vote.
Chairman Alan Hirsch, Jeff Carmon and Siobhan Millan, all Democrats, voted against while Republicans Stacy Eggers and Kevin Lewis voted in favor.
The federal investigation launched a week ago. It comes two years after the state board was litigated and shown to have improperly denied the Green Party access to the ballot in 2022.
“The Committee on House Administration and the Committee on the Judiciary are concerned that the NCSBE’s decision was politically motivated and may have been done to influence the 2024 presidential election by limiting the candidates for which voters may cast their ballots,” wrote Jordan and Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wisconsin, and chairman of the House Administration Committee.
While longshot Terry will gain access, still awaiting are presidential hopefuls Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (We the People) and Cornel West (Justice for All Party).
.....North Carolina has 16 electoral college votes and is considered one of seven key battleground states representing 93 electoral college votes. The others are Pennsylvania (19), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10) and Nevada (six).
.....Hirsch, the chairman, asked to discuss Lewis’ concerns “offline” before saying he will “promptly” schedule the next meeting. He said he wanted to allow staff to complete their investigations into the signatures submitted by the We the People party and the Justice for All Party.
The Democrat’s reasoning is ironic. Photo identification laws and U.S. citizenship laws are routinely challenged by his party, inclusive of litigation despite overwhelming approval by North Carolina voters in the case of the former.
In response, Eggers said the board should avoid going on a “fishing expedition” to try to find invalid signatures, especially as both parties were significantly over the required threshold for signatures.
.....The Justice for All Party also called the board’s subpoenas “illegal.”
“This is political persecution orchestrated by Marc Elias and the NC Democrats. Regardless of your party affiliation, should be rebuked entirely,” the party said in a statement.
The North Carolina GOP also released a statement in favor of the parties.
.....“This board is yet again engaging in blatant partisanship, this time clearly aimed at preserving the political prospects of Democrats, specifically President Joe Biden in this state’s General Election,” said North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons in a letter to the board.