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When federal officials talk about a flood of heroin entering the country, they are not exaggerating. In recent years the amount of heroin produced in Mexico has more than doubled – from less than 60 tons to more than 140 tons last year. It’s cheap. It’s plentiful. And all of it is destined for buyers in the United States. [snip]New Mexico, as a border state, is a transit state for all drugs coming north from Mexico, whether the drugs are smuggled into California, Arizona or through the ports of entry in southern New Mexico or El Paso.

SAN FERNANDO, Mexico – Two cars exploded early Friday in a northern state where officials are investigating the killing of 72 Central and South American migrants, while a prosecutor investigating the massacre has disappeared. The prosecutor, Roberto Jaime Suarez, disappeared Wednesday in the town of San Fernando, where the bodies of the migrants were found, the Tamaulipas state attorney general's office said in a statement. A transit police officer in the town is also missing. President Felipe Calderon, speaking during a forum on security, said Suarez, a Tamaulipas state prosecutor, was involved in the initial investigation of the massacre, which...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — An attacker threw an explosive device over the wall around the U.S. consulate in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, breaking windows and startling employees inside but causing no injuries, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday.

(English-language translation) BOGOTA - On Saturday, Colombia extradited to the United States FARC [member] Nancy Conde Rubio, from whom the authorities intercepted her telephone conversations and thus secured the rescue of 15 kidnapping victims in the guerrilla [organization's] power. There were three Americans among the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) captives. Thirty-seven-year-old Conde was extradited on an airplane belonging to U.S. anti-drug authorities, said General Luis Ramírez with the Police Criminal Investigation Directorate. He added that the airplane was initially headed for Florida and, from there, the detainee, who was wearing handcuffs and a bulletproof vest, will be taken to the...

(English-language translation) During a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in Caracas, American essayist and political analyst Noam Chomsky yesterday criticized the use of Colombian military bases by the United States Army. "The U.S.'s justification to establish military bases in Colombia is narcotraffic. However, this justification is not very serious," the essayist said and added: "There exists an intervention attitude under the pretext of narcotraffic." President Chávez greeted Chomsky at Miraflores Palace, where he received "the warmest welcome". "It was time you visited us and for the Venezuelan people to see and hear you directly," Chávez told the Professor Emeritus...

Commentary Mel Gibson is the latest reminder of the perils of drunken driving. But in his case it was talking while intoxicated that attracted so much attention. Typically, of course, it is not what someone says under the influence that concerns the public, but what he does. Safety is our main worry. And the goal is to keep the person from driving while intoxicated. That was the aim of the judge who in June handled the case of another high-profile arrestee, Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island. Mr. Kennedy pleaded guilty to driving under the influence after crashing his...

Last month, the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was host to a conference about addiction for a small, invitation-only crowd of neuroscientists, clinicians and public policy makers. It was an unusual gathering. Addiction conferences are usually sober affairs, but M.I.T. offered a lavish cocktail reception (with an open bar, no less). More important, the conference was a celebration of the new ways scientists and addiction researchers are conceptualizing, and seeking to treat, addiction. While many in the treatment field have long called addiction a "disease," they've used the word in vague and metaphorical...

When the Supreme Court ruled in June that states could not legalize marijuana for medical uses, Justice Stephen Breyer voted with the majority. But during oral arguments, he suggested an alternative way for patients to get it: let the federal Food and Drug Administration decide if marijuana should be a prescription drug. "Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum," he said. In theory, that sounds reasonable. But what if the officials doing the regulation are afflicted with a bad case of Reefer Madness? If you doubt this possibility, you should have been at a hearing that began this...

America has a serious drug problem, but it's not the "meth epidemic" getting so much publicity. It's the problem identified by William Bennett, the former national drug czar and gambler. "Using drugs," he wrote, "is wrong not simply because drugs create medical problems; it is wrong because drugs destroy one's moral sense. People addicted to drugs neglect their duties." This problem afflicts a small minority of the people who have tried methamphetamines, but most of the law-enforcement officials and politicians who lead the war against drugs. They're so consumed with drugs that they've lost sight of their duties. Like addicts...

RELIEF for medical marijuana patients was snatched away this week. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that such patients will be subject to federal prosecution even if their own state's laws permit use of marijuana. Now, short of Congress legalizing medical marijuana, the only way that its users can avoid stiff financial penalties or jail is if it is turned into a prescription medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said as much during oral arguments last November with his comment that "medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum." Fair enough....

Rap diva Lil' Kim was convicted Thursday of lying to a federal grand jury to protect friends involved in a shootout outside a radio station. Lil' Kim and her assistant were both convicted of perjury and conspiracy but acquitted of obstruction of justice. They each face up to 20 years in prison; sentencing was set for June 24. The 29-year-old former sidekick and mistress of the late Notorious B.I.G., known for her revealing outfits and raunchy raps, testified that she did not notice two close friends at the scene of the 2001 shootout — her manager, Damion Butler, and Suif...

SEATTLE, March 2 - The drugs move across the Canadian border inside huge tractor-trailer rigs, pounds and pounds stashed in drums of frozen raspberries, tucked in shipments of crushed glass, wood chips and sawdust, or crammed into hollowed-out logs, in secret compartments that agents refer to as "coffins." Kayakers paddle them south from British Columbia across the freezing bays of America's northwest corner, and well-paid couriers carry up to 100 pounds at a time in makeshift backpacks, hiking eight hours over the rugged mountainous terrain that forms part of the border between the United States and Canada. Small planes drop...

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/kerry101804.htm KERRY CAMPAIGN FINANCED BY TERRORISTS October 18, 2004 Written by: Andy Wilcoxson Introduction John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, is being given money by an Albanian terrorist organization known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK in Albanian). The KLA is currently smuggling weapons into Kosovo as part of a plot to attack American and other UN peacekeepers, should the UN Security Counsel refuse their demand for Kosovo's secession from Serbia and Montenegro. About the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK) In order to fully understand the significance of John Kerry's involvement with the KLA it is first necessary to...