Federal Drug Enforcers Seek More Focus on Reducing Demand

Federal and state law-enforcement officials told a congressional panel in Arizona yesterday that efforts to combat drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States must include reducing the demand for illegal drugs in this country, not just more enforcement, the Arizona Republic report. The officials cited examples in which increased collaboration between law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Mexico, especially when it comes to sharing intelligence, has been effective in combating international drug organizations that use Arizona as a major corridor to smuggle marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin into the U.S..

"When I first started, I thought I was going to arrest my way out of the problem," said Elizabeth Kempshall, a former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Arizona office who is now executive director of the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federal program that coordinates drug-control efforts among local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies. Matthew Allen,  agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix, said, "You might find this surprising coming from someone in law enforcement," but addressing the demand for illegal drugs in the U.S. is as important as cracking down on drug-smuggling organizations. "It wouldn't get produced and it wouldn't come here if we didn't use it," Allen said.

DEA Probed in Colombia; Senator Cites "Troubling Culture" Among Agents

The Justice Department inspector genera is investigating possible misconduct by two or more Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Colombia unrelated...

Student Charges Torture, Seeks $20 Million for Mistaken DEA Lockup

The University of California San Diego student mistakenly locked up by federal drug officials for five days with no food or water filed a $20 million claim...

DEA Leaves Innocent Student in Cell For Five Days With No Food, Water

A San Diego engineering student says he was left alone in a federal holding cell for five days with no food or water, apparently forgotten by the federal drug agents who detained him, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. Daniel Chong, 24, a University of California San Diego senior, said he was swept up in a Drug Enforcement Administration raid near campus April 20. After questioning, he was told he would be released.

Then the DEA left him locked inside a five-by-10-foot windowless cell. He screamed. He kicked madly at the door. He cried like a baby. Days crawled by. No food. No water. No bathroom. He remembers biting his eyeglasses and using the broken shards to scrawl a note onto his left arm. The DEA acknowledged that agents left someone in a cell after a raid on April 21 — until they found him and had to call paramedics. San Diego Fire-Rescue Department said that medical call came on April 25. At the raid, DEA said it apprehended nine suspects and netted 18,000 ecstasy pills, three weapons and other drugs.

Feds Raid Businesses, Home of CA Pot Advocate Richard Lee

Dozens of federal agents raided the Oakland businesses and apartment of Richard Lee, California's most prominent advocate for the legalization and regulation of marijuana, carting away loads of pot and belongings but not revealing the purpose of their investigation, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The agents targeted Oaksterdam University, the internationally famous school Lee established to train people in the marijuana industry, a medical cannabis dispensary called Coffeeshop Blue Sky, and three properties being rented by Lee.

The armed and sometimes masked agents from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service came with a battering ram, a sledgehammer, power saws, and a locksmith. They left Oaksterdam University carrying numerous file boxes, a safe and black trash bags. From other downtown properties, agents carried away sacks with dozens of marijuana plants. "This is really an attack on regulation," said Dale Sky Jones, executive chancellor of the university. Without regulation, she said, "what's going to change is who is selling it, the good guys or the bad guys."

Meth "Super Labs" Believed Driving Crime In Central California

When a Fresno, Ca., woman, 23, fatally shot her two toddlers and a cousin, critically wounded her husband then turned the gun on herself last week, the Associated Press reports, investigators immediately suspected methamphetamine abuse. It turned out the mother had videotaped herself smoking meth hours before the shooting.

"Once people who are on meth become psychotic, they are very dangerous," said Dr. Alex Stalcup, who works with addicts in the San Francisco Bay Area suburbs. "They're completely bonkers; they're nuts." The Central Valley of California is a hub of the nation's meth distribution network, making extremely pure forms of the drug easily available locally. Law enforcement officials believe meth abuse is driving much of the crime in the vast farming region. "They have the potential to make 150 pounds per (each) cook," said John Donnelly of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Fresno. "There are more super labs in California than anywhere else."

DEA Launders Drug Money in Effort to Defeat Mexican Cartels

Undercover U.S. narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico's...

Lapse In Meth Lab Clean-Up Funding Throws Stats In Doubt

A funding flap in Washington has thrown what was previously the best system for counting clandestine meth labs into uncertainty, says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which used to track the number of meth labs by counting the number of requests for financial assistance from local law enforcement agencies, can no longer rely on that method. Federal funding for disposing of the toxic waste from clandestine meth labs ran out nine months ago, forcing police departments and sheriff’s offices in Georgia to pick up a $500,000 tab.

A new federal appropriations law restored $12.5 million for cleaning up meth lab waste. But it’s not yet known whether Georgia will be among the states that benefit, DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said. Now the local police agencies no longer have an incentive to report meth labs to the DEA, which previously kept accurate records, said Special Agent Fred Stephens of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Up until this year, those records showed clandestine meth lab incidents, such as lab seizures, were soaring in Georgia, from 165 in 2009 to 289 in 2010 — a 75 percent increase. Police still can submit information about meth lab incidents to the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center or to the GBI’s website. Those statistics, however, are not reliable because both systems rely on voluntary submissions.

WA, RI Govs Ask DEA To Allow Medical Pot RX in Pharmacies

A decades-long effort by marijuana activists to allow cannabis to be prescribed and sold in pharmacies has gained allies in governors' mansions for the first time, says the Seattle Times. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, joined by Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, petitioned the Drug Enforcement Administration to reclassify marijuana, recognize that it has therapeutic value and allow it be treated as a prescription drug.

The petition, citing hundreds of peer-reviewed research articles, adds political heft and urgency for the federal government to resolve what Gregoire called "chaos and conflict" among 16 states with laws recognizing medicinal use of marijuana and a federal law that does not. "In the year 2011, why can't medical cannabis be prescribed by a physician and filled at the drugstore just like any other medication? The answer is surprisingly simple. It can. But only if the federal government stops classifying marijuana as unsuitable for medical treatment," Gregoire said. The petition comes as America's attitudes toward marijuana are softening, but the Obama administration is cracking down on medical-marijuana dispensaries — in Washington and other states — at an unprecedented level. Governors in medical-marijuana states were briefed on the petition to the DEA last fall, Gregoire said, and some were alerted Wednesday. "I have every expectation you'll see other governors join us," Gregoire said.

Colombian Cartels 101

By Lisa Riordan Seville

What did the DEA learn from its battle with the Medellin and Cali cartels?

How 46 DEA Chemists in Virginia Try to Detect Synthetic Drugs

Day after day, inside a tightly guarded federal lab in suburban Washington, D.C., chemist Arthur Berrier probes packages of dangerous new synthetic drugs in search of secrets he can share with criminal investigators before the substances kill or seriously harm someone else, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It's a game of catch-up. As soon as he tips off law enforcement to the kinds of chemical compounds turning up in the drugs, another form of them emerges.

Drug makers can choose from an almost endless menu of chemicals to concoct, putting the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration at a disadvantage as it tries to help states crack down. "They're keeping ahead of us," Berrier said. Hardly anyone saw the scourge coming. Wild names and strange mixes of substances in the drugs are constantly changing, quickly rendering state or federal bans against them weak or moot. Enforcing new laws against synthetic drugs -- sometimes sold as "bath salts" over the Internet by shadowy foreign companies or at local stores -- is difficult. Berrier is one of 46 chemists working in this nondescript facility in a Virginia suburb. It's one of nine DEA labs around the country, but this is the one where chemists spend all of their time using science to help the government take down drug kingpins and warlords.

Drug Traffickers Use GPS, Cellphone Trackers To Protect Cargoes

While pumping narcotics and cash through the nation's highway system, drug-trafficking organizations use GPS and cellphone-based trackers to protect...

How (Not) To Deal with Drug Kingpins

By Jazmine Ulloa

Shipping Mexican cartel bosses to the U.S. for prosecution could be a recipe for more violence.

DEA Runs Out Of Funds To Aid Local Methamphetamine Lab Cleanups

Local law enforcement authorities may no longer be able to get aid from a federal program that funds cleanups of hazardous methamphetamine labs, reports the Scottsboro...

In Trend, Criminals Targeting Contents Of Medicine Cabinets

The New York Times says the contents of medicine cabinets are driving a nationwide crime trend. Opiate painkillers and other prescription drugs, officials say, are driving addiction and crime like never before, with addicts singling out the homes of sick or elderly people and posing as potential buyers at open houses just to raid the medicine cabinets. The crimes, and the severity of the nation’s drug abuse problem, have so vexed the authorities that they are calling on citizens to surrender old bottles of potent pills like Vicodin, Percocet and Xanax.

On Saturday, the police will set up drop-off stations at a Wal-Mart in Pearland, Tex., a zoo in Wichita, Kan., a sports complex in Peoria, Ariz., and more than 4,000 other locations to oversee a prescription drug buy-back program. Coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, it will be the first such effort with national scope. Data suggests the country’s prescription drug problem is vast and growing. In 17 states, deaths from drugs — both prescription and illegal — now exceed those from motor vehicle accidents, with opiate painkillers playing a leading role. The number of people seeking treatment for painkiller addiction jumped 400 percent from 1998 to 2008.