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The Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside experts. "We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that wrote one of the reports. "I think we have wasted our money hugely," agreed Bruce Bagley, who studies US counter-narcotics efforts and chairs international studies at the University of Miami. "The effort has had corrosive effects on every country it has touched."

The reports criticize the government's growing use of contractors, which were paid more than USD 3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment, and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America. The majority of US counter-narcotics contracts are awarded to five companies: DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT, and ARINC. DynCorp received the largest total, USD 1.1 billion. Among other jobs, the US contractors train local police and investigators, provide logistical support to intelligence collection centers, and fly airplanes and helicopters that spray herbicides to eradicate coca crops grown to produce cocaine.

Ten years ago, Jamaica's government-appointed National Commission on Ganja produced a report calling for marijuana decriminalization, which the government, under pressure from the US, promptly forgot about. But now, the government will again review those recommendations.

The report, which was authored by academics and physicians, found that pot smoking was "culturally entrenched" in the island nation, and that most moderate users suffered no ill effects. While it called for decriminalization, the US Embassy in Kingston ensured that the notion died a quiet death.

Ganja has broad public acceptance in Jamaica, where it is considered a sacrament by Rastafarians. But its possession or cultivation is illegal under Jamaican law. The US has long worked with Jamaican authorities to eradicate marijuana cultivation and smuggling from Jamaica to the US.

Gunmen kidnapped a 28-year-old woman who was the sole police officer in the Mexican town of Guadalupe, close to the violent northern border city of Ciudad Juarez. Unidentified gunmen set Erika Gandara's home ablaze before abducting her. She was the last police officer in Guadalupe after her colleagues either resigned and fled or were killed. Guadalupe, population 9,000, is in an area used by traffickers to smuggle drugs into the United States. The town is just up the road from the town of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, where a 20-year-old college student and mother named Marisol Valles took over as police chief in October.

Since 2006, violence has become intractable in Mexico, and almost 29,000 people have died. Human and civil rights have been this war's other casualty. Anti-drug laws are used against trade unions. Homes can be searched without a warrant.

The army now virtually occupies communities throughout the country, carrying out functions that, under the constitution, are not the responsibility of the armed forces: it has set up checkpoints, de facto curfews, and inspections.

The situation in several northern states resembles a state of siege. In Guerrero, military forces have engaged in low intensity warfare whose tactics include stealing crops, raping women, extrajudicial killings, and even forced sterilisation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/12/drugs-war-on-mexican-people/print

At least 25,000 people have been slaughtered in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón hurled the Mexican Army into the anti-cartel battle. The war, assisted by the US, terrorizes the Mexican people and generates thousands of documented human rights abuses by the police and Mexican Army. Here is the US policy in a nutshell: we pay Mexicans to kill Mexicans, and this slaughter has no effect on drug shipments or prices.

How does the escalation in violence benefit the drug smuggling business which has not been diminished at all during the past three years of hyper-violence in Mexico? Each year, the death toll rises, each year there is no evidence of any disruption in the delivery of drugs to American consumers, each year the United States asserts its renewed support for this war. And each year, the basic claims about the war go unquestioned.

Let us make this simple: no one knows how many are dying, no one knows who is killing them, and no one knows what role the drug industry has in these killings. There has been no investigation of the dead and no one really knows whether they were criminals or why they died. There have been no interviews with heads of drug organizations and no one really knows what they are thinking or what they are trying to accomplish.

The United States has "ended its war on drugs" and is now moving its focus to prevention and treatment, the US drugs chief has told top Irish drug officials. President Barack Obama’s drugs adviser Gil Kerlikowske said the US had formally ended its much heralded -- and hugely expensive -- "war on drugs". "We've talked about a war on drugs for 40 years, since President Nixon. I ended the war," said Mr Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan -- often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport -- as part of a cash exodus that is confounding US officials and raising concerns about the money's origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to US and Afghan officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022404914_pf.html