Free Republic

Murders in Maravatio raise concerns about drug gangs trying to sway local races.. Two candidates for mayor in the Mexican city of Maravatio have been gunned down within hours of each other, raising worries that drug gangs are trying to influence the June 2 election. Campaigning doesn't formally begin until Friday. State prosecutors said Tuesday that Armando Pérez was found shot to death in his car just before midnight, per the AP. He was the candidate for the conservative National Action Party. Hours earlier, officials with the ruling Morena party confirmed their candidate, Miguel Ángel Zavala, was found shot to...

[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]After Biden’s withdrawal, the fighting ended in Afghanistan and moved into Europe.Even before the Taliban takeover, a massive traffic in migrants and drugs flowed over the ‘Balkan Route’ that took Afghans into Iran, Turkey and then Eastern Europe. One of the biggest holes in Europe’s armor was the former Yugoslavia, illegally invaded and partitioned by the Clinton administration, with a large Muslim population in Bosnia and heavy criminal organizations across the former republic that tie together the Russian mob, local gangs,...

The Qataris, and their ruling al-Thani family, are slavers, narcotics traffickers, and financiers of international terrorism. They also happen to be America’s closest ally under Obama. When analyzing the foreign policy interventions of the Obama administration with respect to the Middle East, it is hard to reconcile their respective approaches Libya (2011) and Iraq (2014). In 2011, Obama justified the military action to remove Muammar Gaddafi on the basis of anticipated genocide by the Gaddafi regime. Speaking at the National Defense University on March 28, 2011, Obama explained “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves...

The 20-year-old 'Percocet Princess' who allegedly sold Robert De Niro's grandson drugs before his death warned him that they could potentially kill him before she sold him the pills. Sophia Haley Marks, 20, is accused of selling 19-year-old Leandro De Niro Rodriguez drugs shortly before he was found dead in his New York City apartment. Marks, who has been nicknamed 'the Percocet Princess', was arrested Thursday night at around 6 p.m. in an NYPD undercover sting operation, according to the New York Post. Legal documents say that police found pills at the scene where Rodriguez died and used the teenager's...

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she's worried that President Joe Biden may derail a bipartisan push to address psychedelics due to his past rhetoric that questioned cannabis usage. "I am concerned about the president," Ocasio-Cortez of New York told The Washington Post's Ben Terris. Ocasio-Cortez said that her fears about Biden's approach to mind-altering drugs which have been gaining broader public acceptance are rooted in how he has talked about marijuana in the past. "I believe the president has displayed a regressiveness for cannabis policy," she said. "And if there's a regressiveness toward cannabis policy, it's likely to be worse...

“The increased risk of getting schizophrenia after drug-related psychosis is even higher than what we find in first-degree relatives of those who have been given the diagnosis,” Bramness says. First-degree relatives are parents and children. The risk of being diagnosed with the malady for sons and daughters of a sick mother or father is "only" five to ten per cent. In other words, there is no other risk factor for schizophrenia that is higher than related to drug-induced psychoses. Trauma, infections and moving to another country are other known risk factors for schizophrenia, but these increase the risk to a...

The wife of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman has been arrested at Washington DC's Dulles Airport and charged with drug trafficking, with an informant accusing her of masterminding a $3 million plan to break him out of Mexico's jails. Emma Coronel Aispuro, a 31-year-old former beauty queen with both U.S. and Mexican citizenship, was detained on Monday in the first major cartel detention of Joe Biden's administration. She will appear in court on Tuesday before Judge Harvey G. Michael, charged with participating in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana for importation into the U.S.

Mexico’s president said Thursday that his country does not produce or consume fentanyl, despite enormous evidence to the contrary. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared to depict the synthetic opioid epidemic largely as a U.S. problem, and said the United States should use family values to fight drug addiction. His statement came during a visit to Mexico by Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House homeland security adviser, to discuss the fentanyl crisis. It also comes amid calls by some U.S. Republicans to use the U.S. military to attack drug labs in Mexico. The Mexican government has acknowledged in the past that...

After bags of heart-shaped Valentine’s Day candy found inside a man’s car led to his arrest on a drug charge, he decided to sue police in New Jersey, according to a federal lawsuit. Fernando Saint-Jean, of Massachusetts, says he was “falsely charged” with possession of MDMA/ecstasy after officers found the candy inside his car during a traffic stop in New Jersey, court documents state. However, lab test results proved that the pastel-colored candy, commonly found in stores around Valentine’s Day, did not contain illegal substances more than two months after Palisades Interstate Parkway Police officers arrested Saint-Jean in May 2018,...

$3.6 million project will distribute syringes to country's overdose 'epicenter' The Biden administration is set to spend $3.6 million to deploy vending machines filled with drug supplies in rural Kentucky—an effort the Biden administration claims will reduce stigma for drug users. The project from the National Institutes of Health was launched in August and will study the effectiveness of "harm reduction kiosks" in rural Appalachia that contain "injection equipment, naloxone, fentanyl test strips, hygiene kits, condoms, and other supplies." The vending machines allow drug users to obtain items such as syringes without interacting with a health professional, in hopes of...

This Fourth of July, watching people fight over what the Constitution means, I ask people, if you could change the Constitution, what would you change?"The forefathers knew what they were doing," said one woman.But the Constitution originally accepted slavery. It's good that we can amend it.So what should we change?"Add a balanced budget amendment," suggests Glenn Beck.David Boaz of the Cato Institute recommends 18-year terms for the Supreme Court. "Maybe confirmation fights would be less bitter and partisan."Others suggest term limits for Congress. Stossel TV's Mike Ricci takes the idea further. "If your father, mother, siblings, uncle, cousins were elected...

Democratic senators are putting pressure on the Biden administration to use its authority to deschedule cannabis, as a Senate proposal to legalize marijuana faces an uphill battle. Democrats press Biden to use ‘existing authority’ to take step toward marijuana legalization Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and others on Wednesday sent a letter calling on the Biden administration to “use its existing authority to (i) deschedule cannabis and (ii) issue pardons to all individuals convicted of nonviolent cannabis-related offenses.”

When Oregon voters approved a ballot measure in 2020 to decriminalize hard drugs, they were promised the lives of everyone would be improved and funds would be diverted to addiction recovery centers for which $300 million was allotted. But after more than one year, the rate of overdoses has spiked, and few offenders have used the treatment centers, DailyMail.com reported. At a legislative hearing Thursday, Steve Allen, Oregon's behavioral health director, acknowledged a "dramatic" increase in overdoses and overdose deaths statewide. One Republican state lawmaker said that her Southern Oregon community of Grants Pass has suffered a 700% increase in...

Bill Maher has argued Republicans could easily 'steal' the issue of federal marijuana legalization by making it an issue about freedom after Democrats inserted 'too much stuff' about racial 'equity' in the House-passed measure aimed to decriminalize pot. The comedian, argued Friday night that legalization of marijuana swings in the favor of Republicans and is 'something we ought to do.' 'Republicans are gonna steal the issue. I think eventually,' Maher told former Attorney General Eric Holder after being asked why President Joe Biden hadn't yet pushed for federal legalization of pot. 'I mean, it could be one of those freedom...

The House is poised to pass legislation this week that would legalize marijuana, just the latest example of the swiftly changing attitudes on drug laws that marks a near reversal from the Reagan-era “war on drugs” that also reverberated through the 1990s. The bill legalizing marijuana has near-uniform support among Democrats and a top ally in Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.), who has been aiming to introduce a similar measure this spring. And it’s just one of several pieces of legislation that underlines the shift in Congress’s attitude — a change that has come about in part because of...

Denver police chief ‘very disappointed’ by new fentanyl bill by: Gabrielle Franklin Mar 24, 2022 DENVER (KDVR) — Stakeholders and community members have been asking lawmakers to beef up fentanyl laws for months. The calls grew louder after the deaths of five people in Commerce City due to the likely overdose of the drug they may not have known they were taking. Thursday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers revealed a new proposal they hope will address the overdoses that are happening more and more. The bill lawmakers are proposing seeks to hold drug dealers accountable for selling the lethal drug...

Florida authorities this week said LGBTQ+ dating apps have helped them make upwards of 60 drug-related arrests. In a six-month sting operation which officers called “Swipe Left for Meth,” undercover detectives used dating apps like Grindr and Scruff – targeted toward men who have sex with men – to locate a number of people suspected of buying and selling drugs online. The operation produced more than 60 arrests, according to a news release, and detectives have obtained warrants for at least eight other suspects. Detectives during the investigation filed 159 total felony charges and 72 misdemeanor charges against the suspects,...

On October 27, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra announced a sweeping federal plan to address and reduce the devastating toll of overdoses in America with the release of the HHS Overdose Prevention Strategy. In the agency’s press release, Secretary Becerra noted that with the new strategy, HHS will be “breaking new ground to address the full range of drug use and addiction.” Specifically, Becerra commented that the “new strategy focuses on people – putting the very individuals who have struggled with addiction in positions of power.” The HHS strategy will focus on four areas including “primary prevention,...

Jose Rafael Vasquez tried to smuggle guns from the U.S. to Mexico, but was arrested as part of Homeland Security's Operation Without a Trace. A Washington man drove to a U.S. border crossing last year in his teal Ford pickup truck loaded with a hidden arsenal bound for a Mexican cartel war zone. Miguel Diaz Calderon never made it out of Texas. U.S. Customs agents searched his vehicle at the Eagle Pass crossing and found 43 shotguns, rifles and pistols. They also discovered more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition hidden in an ice chest in the gas tank and inside...

On Tuesday, California moved another step closer to decriminalizing psychedelic drugs amid a debate over whether their prohibition is an outdated remnant of the “War on Drugs.” The bill cleared the Assembly Public Safety Committee 5-3, with proponents touting the benefits to military veterans and others they say can benefit from the use of psychedelics to treat trauma. The measure already passed the state Senate on a 21-16 vote and now heads to the health committee before it can go to the full Assembly, NBC Bay Area reports. If passed, Senate Bill 519 would allow those 21 and older to...