A Year Since Uvalde. Connections are Being Made

On May 24, 2022, Salvador Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers and wounded seventeen others at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Earlier that day, the perpetrator shot his grandmother in the face, severely wounding her. It appears Salvador is likely another mass murderer who used pot. He said he hated his mother and grandmother who restricted his marijuana use.   It has now been a year since that horrific day and some are beginning to make the connection between marijuana use and violence. Some studies from May of 2023   Heavy Marijuana Use Increases Schizophrenia in Men, Study Finds   Massive Danish study finds strong link between marijuana addiction and mental illness   For over 6 years AALM has been warning about the connection between marijuana use and mass murder. This warning was given to US Attorney General Merrick Garland in March. Our letter received no response. Please refer to exhibit 5 for a list of mass murderers who where also marijuana users.      In the wake of recent mass shootings and mass murder events, AALM demands toxicology reports of shooters be released to the public. Marijuana use and psychotic violence go hand-in-hand.   More Sources: In 2007 the prestigious medical journal Lancet recanted its previous benign view of marijuana, citing studies showing “an increase in the risk of psychosis of about 40 percent.” A seminal long-term study of 50,465 Swedish army conscripts found those who had tried marijuana by age 18 had 2.4 times the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia in the following 15 years than those who had never used the drug. Heavy users were 6.7 times more likely to be admitted to a hospital for schizophrenia. Another study, of 1,037 people in New Zealand, found those who used cannabis at ages 15 and 18 had higher rates of psychotic symptoms at age 26 than non-users. A 2011 study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) of 2,000 teenagers found those who smoked marijuana were twice as likely to develop psychosis as those who didn’t. Another BMJ study estimated that “13 percent of cases of schizophrenia could be averted if all cannabis use were prevented.” In 2014, people who had cannabis use disorder made up about 1.5 percent of Americans. But they accounted for eleven percent of all the psychosis cases in emergency rooms—90,000 cases, 250 a day, triple the number in 2006.  The National Academy of Medicine found in 2017 that “cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.” Also, that “regular cannabis use is likely to increase the risk for developing a social anxiety disorder.” A Study showed cases in which marijuana led to unnecessary violence, health risks, and, in many cases, both.  In a Secret Service study (pg 13) over half of the attackers had a history of illicit drug use and/or substance abuse. This abuse, which included alcohol and marijuana, was evidenced by such factors as the attacker receiving treatment for the abuse, suffer legal consequences, or having significant problems in their personal lives stemming from the abuse. Marijuana and Psychosis AALM calls on public officials to release the toxicology reports on all mass murderers. Below is a shortlist of some of the well-known murderers who were pot users. Most often toxicology reports are not made public. Perpetrators’ marijuana use is often discovered via interviews with acquaintances, military records, or some other secondary source.    Darrel Brooks, The Waukesha Wisconsin driving rampager was a user of marijuana with domestic abuse and multiple episodes of violence in his past. He had more recently been caught with meth which is a natural progression from marijuana. On his twitter profile he describes himself as a stoner and avid user of pot.   Ian David Long Killed 13 people on November 7, 2018, in Thousand Oaks, California, United States, at the Borderline Bar and Grill, a country-western bar frequented by college students. Toxicology later revealed he had marijuana in his system   Nikolas Cruz On February 14, 2018, opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. He blamed his marijuana use for his actions.   Manchester terrorist Salmon Abedi blew himself up and killed 22 in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2017. Abedi was a pot-smoking university dropout.   A toxicology report on Devin Patrick Kelley, who shot and killed 26 at a church in Texas, revealed marijuana. November 5, 2017   Diagnosed with cannabis-induced psychosis, Satoshi Uematsu killed 19 handicapped people in Japan and injured many others. July 26, 2016   Nice terrorist Mohammed Bouhlel smoked very strong weed in high school, and had his first psychotic break at 19. July 14, 2016   Omar Mir Seddique Mateen was an American mass murderer and domestic terrorist who murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, before he was killed in a shootout with the local police. He was an avid pot user.   Robert Dear, Planned Parenthood shooter, November 27, 2015. He was described as a “marijuana newcomer” by neighbors brought to Colorado by the promise of legal weed.   Noah Harpham, was in mania when he shot three people in Colorado Springs. He had marijuana metabolites in his urine at the time of his death in 2015.    Eddie Routh, veteran with PTSD, smoked pot the morning before he killed Chris Kyle Chad Littlefield. February 2, 2013   James Holmes, Aurora shooter used to smoked weed behind his apartment constantly. 2012   Jared Loughner killed six and injured many in Tucson, AZ, 2011. He was a habitual pot user.   Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh killed 168 in 1996. He experimented with marijuana and meth.   “Senseless violence and mass murders are in the news and in the minds of Americans once again. Mental health problems are also considered a potential contributing factor. With the dramatic increase in the potency and use of marijuana, senseless violent acts are and will become more and more common.”  – Carla Lowe, President of AALM “The link between marijuana use and psychosis, depression, and schizophrenia has been known for decades. Yet, the general public is not being informed.”  -Scott Chipman, Vice President of AALM   Join the National Register of Anti-Marijuana Groups and Persons   REGISTER     We appreciate your generous donation!   Donate

The Latest Casualty of Bad Drug Policy – Harm Reduction that Isn’t!

Canada is Dying – The Movie

“We live in an open prison yard!”

“What we are doing now is almost capital punishment by neglect!”

“This is the industrialization of addiction – it is as scary as it gets!”

“A case of the Inmates running the asylum!”

“Devastating Battle with Addiction.”

“I hate the word ‘safe supply’!”

“What is the solution?”

“Violent crime in Canada has increased 32% since 2016!”

“People live in fear for their safety on a daily basis!”

Also see…

• Seattle is Dying
• Portland is Dying
• San Francisco is Dying  
• L.A. Is Dying
• Vancouver is Dying
• Denver in Decay

New York Times – Opinion May 2023

Marijuana legalization as we’ve done it so far has been a policy failure, a potential social disaster, a clear and evident mistake.

Of all the ways to win a culture war, the smoothest is to just make the other side seem hopelessly uncool. So it’s been with the march of
marijuana legalization: There have been moral arguments about the excesses of the drug war and medical arguments about the potential
benefits of pot, but the vibe of the whole debate has pitted the chill against the uptight, the cool against the square, the relaxed future
against the Principal Skinners of the past.
As support for legalization has climbed, commanding a two-thirds majority in recent polling, any contrary argument has come to feel a bit
futile, and even modest cavils are couched in an apologetic and defensive style. Of course I don’t question the right to get high, but perhaps
the pervasive smell of weed in our cities is a bit unfortunate …? I’m not a narc or anything, but maybe New York City doesn’t need quite so
many unlicensed pot dealers …?
All of this means that it will take a long time for conventional wisdom to acknowledge the truth that seems readily apparent to squares like
me:

Marijuana legalization as we’ve done it so far has been a policy failure, a potential social disaster, a clear and evident mistake...

For complete article Opinion | Legalizing Marijuana Is a Big Mistake – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Also see

Pot Pandamonium

“Legalize Weed & Release Cornucopia”, and the litany of other broken promises.

Pot-repreneurs Not Happy with Watch Dog Report!

Decriminalize and They Will Come

Who is really running drug policy?

Four Corners barely uncovers what most in the prevention sector already know…

“We’ve sold to football players, professional athletes, lawyers, celebrities on TV, people in the media, surgeons, doctors, nurses…It’s so ubiquitous, even those meant to be upholding the law are using cocaine. I’ve personally seen judges take it with a glass of single malt.”

‘As Australia’s appetite for cocaine grows, dealers and traffickers like Jason are getting on with the business of meeting that demand.’

 This is the reason why we are having a War FOR Drugs! Many of those best suited to create and model a safer, healthier and more ethically sound society are the ones pretending they are above such practices and can ‘play’ in the shadows – but want to be able to come out of those shadows and use with impunity. Change the laws and you get your wish – to hell with the consequences for children, families and communities.

Demand Reduction is the imperative, but all ‘permission models’ do is increase demand!

(for more Cocaine Nation – ABC)

Also see Cocaine – The ‘Drug of Choice’ for the Cashed Up

The text from her son Randy that Heather Bacchus received at at 1:26 AM on July 17, 2021, seemed like good news.

“I’m quitting weed for good and want to surround myself with healthy and happy people,” he wrote. “This has been too much for me and for you guys.”

Less than an hour later, at 2:09 AM, a second text arrived.

“I love you and am sorry for everything. I love dad and the same to him. I wish I would have been a better person.”

It was his suicide note. That night, Randy killed himself.

His death followed a months-long struggle with psychotic episodes and paranoid delusions — something his parents, Heather and Randy Sr., say was triggered by years of heavy cannabis use.

Now research suggests they were right: a study published by the National Institutes of Health warns that cannabis use is implicated in 30% of cases of schizophrenia among men aged 18 to 30.

The study links schizophrenia to cannabis use disorder: the inability to stop using cannabis despite the negative impacts it is having on the user’s life. And separately, the Centers for Disease Control say a third of pot-smokers are plagued by the disorder. 

At the same time an NIH-supported study last year found young adult cannabis use is at a historic high, with 43% of 19- to 30-year-olds using within the previous year.

The findings add to a growing body of research about the link between schizophrenic symptoms and cannabis — but many parents are woefully unaware of the danger. Those numbers included Heather.

“We didn’t know that marijuana could cause that,” the St. Paul, Minnesota resident told The Post.

Randy’s parents tried desperately to get him help and checked into treatment, but things only continued to devolve until his final days.

Now, his parents — Heather and husband Randy Sr.— want to stop history from repeating itself.

“It’s just heartbreaking, Heather said. “People who are going through it don’t even know it. People need to wake up. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

Randy’s parents are far from alone.

For complete article go to New York Post May 2023

#cannabisindustry #StonerFam #cannabisculture

Also see ADVERTISING DRIVES HIGHER YOUTH USE OF MARIJUANA IN LEGALIZATION STATES https://blog.dontlegalizedrugs.com/advertising-drives-higher-youth-use-of-marijuana-in-legalization-states/

Former Drug Dealer Tells How San Francisco Failed the Homeless – Ricci Wynne

When we confuse a care-less pity with genuine compassion, you get the chaos that San Francisco is now unleashing on it’s citizens.

Pity cares little for outcomes and is so often one-dimensional in its focus. Compassion – true compassion (geared to more than the now demanding ‘felt need’ of a broken individual) always seeks to restore to wholeness. Anything less is either pointless or pandering; Or worse a belief that this deeply damaged, but precious individual is little more than a self-harming ‘entity’ who has invoked a ‘human right’ to self-destruct and been given pass by the ‘careless’ to do just that.

And we are calling this ‘progress’??

Watch ‘California Insider’

In a recent opinion piece by Sam Quinones for the Washington Post – Only one thing will solve the fentanyl crisis – a number of valid concerns about this egregious mess were expressed, and possibilities for a way forward tabled, mostly geo-political. Again valid and worthy of pursuit

One excerpt as follows…

The trafficking world’s shift to synthetics is all about supply creating demand. Many towns and counties are at the mercy of this supply. Money dislodged from drug companies in lawsuits over their role in creating the nation’s opioid epidemic now risks being squandered on stopgap measures required by the urgency of combating these supplies — rather than being invested in the longer-term initiatives that might fortify communities to help people with addictions successfully recover.

There is nothing preordained about this situation. Rather, it is born of the impunity traffickers enjoy, which stems from deep and tangled corruption within Mexico combined with a relentless flow of guns, primarily assault weapons, easily bought in the United States and smuggled south.

Mexico sues U.S.-based gunmakers over flow of arms across border

In Mexico, the cost of that corruption is the annual slaughter of the country’s citizens and the corrosion of its civic institutions. In the United States, the price of those guns is measured in cheap and potent meth and fentanyl, available everywhere, deranging and killing Americans.

Mexican drug traffickers are technically not terrorists; they are criminal capitalists, albeit with an increasingly global vision. But the drugs and assault weapons that enable them are wreaking a more complete devastation in Mexico and the United States than any ideological terrorist could.

Many U.S. communities have found that local collaboration — involving a wide range of groups in anti-drug task forces, teaming up social workers and police, rethinking jail as a place of recovery — sparks synergies that lead to a more unified defense.

I believe this can be true of Mexico and the United States. How about starting with a sustained attempt to gain control of and regulate the supply of chemicals entering Mexican ports? How about a far more aggressive approach to stopping weapons heading south into Mexico?

These days, there’s a saying on U.S. streets: “Fentanyl changes everything.” It refers to illicit fentanyl’s transformative effect on drug production, smuggling, addiction, overdose and treatment. But my hope is that it will also change relations between the United States and Mexico — for the sake of people on both sides of the border. (For complete article go to Washington Post )

One would think all drug use prevention and recovery focused vehicles would be a significant factor in policy applications in any of the strategies for change being tabled. However, the policy ‘microphone’ seems to have been unceremoniously ‘secured’ by a emerging sector bully. This now amplified voice is increasingly indifferent, and at times adversarial to what is still best practice drug policy of demand reduction, primary prevention and recovery.

Options, advice and even evidence-based practice that does not align with this new mantra, is a best ignored – at worst impugned.

Reducing harm by maximizing prevention is still – on all health and fiscal metrics – overwhelming better than mere ‘damage management’.

If we are going to invest in saving lives, then we cannot ignore or worse impede practices and policies that would enable those enslaved by the tyrant of addiction to exit said drug use, not merely maintain a life diminishing ongoing engagement with these toxins.

However, reducing harm always starts with prevention – always. This includes logistical interdictions like ever diminishing, not increasing, trafficking routes. Genuine harm reduction also always seeks to separate the drug user from the agent of perpetual harm – the drug, in this instance, Fentanyl – not enable, equip or empower it.

The following commentary by Drug Watch International President, John J. Coleman is one such example of helpful but excised, opinion….

Where Is Our National Fentanyl Strategy?

Last year, for the third year in a row, fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. topped 100,000. The primary culprit was illicit fentanyl manufactured in China. The fentanyl is sold to drug cartels in Mexico where it is mixed with heroin or fabricated to resemble well-known branded prescription drugs like OxyContin®, Percocet®, Roxicodone®, and Xanax®. The fentanyl-laced heroin and pills are smuggled into the U.S. via our open southern border. To date, the Biden administration has shown very little interest in ending this deadly commerce that already has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans while generating billions of dollars a year for the criminal cartels in charge of a border that they – not we – control.

Don’t bother trying to Google our National Fentanyl Strategy. It does not exist. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy – the latter home to President Biden’s drug czar – have issued no such strategy. The reason is simple. To have any hope of making a difference, a national fentanyl strategy would have to begin by describing how smugglers manage to get tons of the deadly drug across a border that the White House continues to insist is “secured.” No presidential appointee is about to risk his or her job by publishing something that openly disputes this demonstrably false claim.

As required by law, last April President Biden presented his annual National Drug Control Strategy to Congress. The plan has a dozen chapters, but don’t look for the one on fentanyl. It didn’t make the cut. But a chapter specifically titled Harm Reduction did make it into the report. The chapter begins by defining this controversial strategy: “Harm reduction is an approach that emphasizes working directly with people who use drugs ….” For anyone wishing to see the results of this approach, it is in plain view in every major American city where the disease of addiction is facilitated in the twisted idea of reducing harm.

Last year, an estimated 2.3 million migrants unlawfully entered the country via our secured southern border. According to a DEA press release, enough fentanyl was seized last year “to kill every American.” In promising to step up the fight against the Mexican drug cartels, the DEA’s press release tactfully ignored mentioning the southern border.

Make no mistake: drug addiction is a serious, life-threatening, chronic condition. Treatment can be highly effective and even complete recovery is possible. Helping street addicts to remain addicted by facilitating and enabling their drug use is not a drug control strategy. Our failed experiments over several decades with misused and prevention separated harm reduction strategies have destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom died alone and abandoned during what should have been their most productive years. Our decaying and crime-ridden cities are further proof of this failure.

It is not too late to begin to turn this around.

First, we need to admit the obvious, that our past policies have not worked. We must implement specific diplomatic objectives in source countries like Mexico and China, focus law enforcement resources on identifying, arresting, and prosecuting criminal cartel networks at home and abroad, and, above all, we must ensure that our border security forces are sufficient in number and equipped with the latest technology to prevent the smuggling of people and drugs. Treatment policies that focus on restoring the addict or at least managing the problem should be supported over those that facilitate the disease. If we just do these things as part of a National Fentanyl Strategy, we will save many lives and, in the process, restore the beauty and tranquility of our once great cities.

– John J. Coleman, MA, MS, PhD, retired Assistant Administrator of Operations, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and current President of the Board of Directors of DrugWatch International, Inc.

Ah, but what you do when you’re stoned on Weed, that’s what gets you incarcerated!

New prison data blows up narrative that low-level drug offenders are filling up US prisons: experts

Violent crime, not drug crime, is driving state prison populations…

Newly revealed state inmate population statistics contradict the popular argument from criminal justice reform advocates that prisons are largely filled with nonviolent drug offenders, some experts said.

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) show only 12.6% of state prisoners are behind bars for drug-related crimes and only 3.2% are locked up on possession charges – while five times as many people are in state prisons for violent crimes rather than drug charges.

“If you listen to people on the left, you’d think that everyone who has a joint in their pocket is getting sent to prison for 20 years, which just is not the case,” Zack Smith, a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

Prominent Democrats and some Republicans across the country have pushed to decriminalize drugs by arguing, in part, that harsh drug laws have led to a prison-population boom.

In a 2019 tweet, Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested on Twitter that the “reality” of the U.S. prison system is “nonviolent” people “stopped w/ a dime bag.”

President Joe Biden has issued thousands of pardons for marijuana crimes while insisting that “no one should be in a federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana; no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.”

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, said in 2018 that “more people [are] locked up for low-level offenses on marijuana than for all violent crimes in this country.”

Smith and Keith Humphreys, an American psychologist and Esther Ting Memorial professor at Stanford University, told Fox News Digital that those positions simply aren’t backed up by the data.

“It’s been a longtime talking point, particularly around cannabis legalization, to say our prisons are full of pot smokers and nonviolent drug offenders,” Humphreys told Fox News Digital. “It’s just something that has never been true, certainly for cannabis. You can get a night in a jail still for cannabis but going to prison is pretty much impossible anymore, not that it ever was possible.”

Humphreys said that even at the height of the crack cocaine explosion in the 1980s, only about one in five state prisoners were incarcerated for a drug charge of some form.

Humphreys explained that “violent crime is driving” prison populations in the United States as evidenced by the data showing 62.4% of state prisoners are serving sentences for violent crimes. The other 40% includes people who previously committed violent crimes or who pleaded down from a violent offense to a lesser offense, he said.

Smith agreed, saying people with simple possession charges – especially first-time offenders – “probably pled down” to those charges from a more serious charge.

“For instance, a lot of times if someone is potentially facing possession with intent to distribute charges, which carry much higher penalties … the prosecutor might plead down to simple possession charges in that case,” Smith said. “So, most of the time, I would suspect that’s what’s going on.”

Smith also echoed the conclusion that prison populations are driven by violent crime and not “low-level drug offenders” not just in recent years but historically.

“Between 1960 and 1990, the rate of violent crime in the United States surged by over 35%,” Smith told Fox News Digital. “It’s the biggest increase in our country’s history, and so it’s that increase in violent crime that was the increase in incarceration and the increasing of incarceration rates. It’s not minor drug offenses or really drug offenses, period.”

Smith said there were 43 million drug arrests in the United States between 1980 and 2012, which “sounds like a lot” until you consider that there were 445 million total arrests during that same time frame, which he said shows that “drug arrests accounted for less than 10% of all arrests over that roughly 32-year period” and runs contrary to the reform narrative.

“Even if you go all the way back to 1997, the heart of the tough-on-crime era, if you will, only 1% of all prisoners were in prison for a first- or second-time nonviolent drug offense, and only 4% of state prisoners in 1997 were considered to be drug kingpins,” said Smith, who is authoring an upcoming book titled “Rogue Prosecutors” about the progressive prosecutors across the country implementing what they call criminal justice reform.

Liberal mega-donor George Soros, who has spent billions pushing for criminal justice reform and backing the progressive prosecutors that Smith’s book discusses, has often advocated for an end to “mass incarceration” through his Open Society Foundations, which contends that “minor crimes” have “filled U.S. jails and prisons to overflowing.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Open Society Foundations for comment on the latest BJS statistics – a spokesperson for the group responded only with a disparaging comment about Fox News.

Humphreys also took issue with the argument from many activists who claim that violence is driven by the fact that drugs are illegal and violent crime would go down if drugs were legalized.

“The problem with that reasoning is that the No. 1 drug involved in violence in the United States by a big margin is alcohol, which is, of course, legal,” Humphreys said. “So, it doesn’t follow at all – from this data – that this just proves their point all along. No, it doesn’t really.”

Hannah E. Meyers, a fellow and director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute, responded to the latest BJS statistics by pointing out the connection between drugs and violence that is often ignored by the political left.

“Those who decry how the U.S. justice system treats drug offenders also ignore the disturbingly tight relationship between drug offending and other, often violent, offending,” Meyers told Fox News Digital. “An earlier BJS survey found that 22.4% of drug offenders in state prison were violent recidivists and 26.4% had three to five prior sentences. Over 13% of sentenced drug offenders had six to 10 prior sentences.”

Meyers also pointed to a BJS survey that found that 38.4% of state drug possession offenders were rearrested within a year of release; by year 5, that percentage grew to a 73% rearrest rate.

Of all state drug offenders, 28% of those released in 2012 were rearrested for a violent offense within five years; released drug offenders were more likely to be arrested again within five years for a violent offense than were those released for homicide or rape.

“Therefore, the new BJS data only adds to a longstanding picture: it is not possible to simply separate out offenders held in for drug possession – or even for all drug crime – and safely reduce the U.S. prison population by showing them lenience,” Meyers said. “Not only do they make up a small and diminishing proportion of a concurrently shrinking number of total state inmates, drug offending and violent offending are deeply interwoven among the prison population.”

Proponents of the idea that inmates with drug convictions are filling up prisons often point to the fact that 46.7% of prisoners in federal prison are serving drug sentences. Humphreys told Fox News Digital that argument is a “dishonest” one considering the federal prison population is much smaller than the state population and that federal drug convictions are not for low-level drug crimes but rather serious trafficking charges or crimes with unusual jurisdictional qualities.

“It’s a very unusual set of things that bring people into federal prison,” Humphreys said. “Also, violence is not charged at the federal level, hardly ever. Murder is charged almost entirely by states. Even if you average that in with state data you still, because it’s so small, you still end up with the conclusion that there’s really not that many people in prison for drugs.”

Prisoners in 2021 – Statistical tables report released December 2022. (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

Federal inmates make up roughly 11% of inmates in the United States, about 142,000, while 89% of inmates, about 1.04 million, are in state prisons, according to BJS data.

Smith told Fox News Digital that more than half of all prisoners in state prisons are there for violent offenses like rape and robbery.

“You hear some of these advocates saying they want to reduce the prison population by half or more – you’re going to have to let [out] people who’ve committed very serious, very heinous crimes,” Smith said.

The new BJS numbers are also a sign, according to Humphreys, that the narrative from many progressives that drug convictions are driving Black imprisonment is also not accurate given that the data shows “people in state prison for drug crimes are disproportionately whiter.”

“So, what that means is if you just tomorrow release every drug prisoner in the United States, racial disparities in imprisonment would go up, not down,” Humphreys said.

Smith told Fox News Digital that “especially with the push for more lenient bail policies” across the country and the effort to decriminalize possession, he “would be surprised if very many people who truly are just having simple possession issues, especially the first-time offenders, are spending any time incarcerated at all.”

Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to [email protected].

For complete article https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-prison-data-blows-up-narrative-that-low-level-drug-offenders-are-filling-up-u-s-prisons-experts

Drug Decriminalization Behind Terrifying Cartel-Style Killings In California

Over the last 30 years, many voters and policymakers in California and other states came to believe that decriminalizing drugs would reduce and even end drug-related violence in America. As drugs like marijuana were decriminalized and penalties for the possession of harder drugs were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors, the thinking went, we would see a decline in criminal gangs, mafias, and cartels that use violence to control production and distribution and to resolve disputes over market territory.

It’s now clear that the opposite has occurred. California’s marijuana decriminalization incentivized Mexican drug cartels to create illegal farms in the state’s redwood forests and bring their criminal lifestyles along with them. Cartel-connected murders, gun fights, sex trafficking, and missing persons are on the rise in Humboldt County. Environmental pollution from illegal pot farms is increasing. And the cartels have so frightened residents that they asked reporters with The Los Angeles Times not to use their names. 

Meanwhile, California’s 2014 reduction of drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, and the de facto decriminalization of open-air drug markets by the city governments of San Francisco and Los Angeles, greatly expanded the reach of the Sinaloa cartel. Young men from Honduras, who are in the U.S. illegally, and protected by California’s sanctuary laws, publicly deal drugs supplied by the cartel in downtown San Francisco.

Just last week, a small town in California’s Central Valley saw a cartel-style killing of six people, including a 72-year-old woman, a 16-year-old girl, and her 10-month-old baby who she was cradling in her arms as she ran away from the killers. The massacre has raised the specter that the brutal violence that plagues much of Mexico, including the killing of children and family members by drug cartels, has arrived in the U.S. The killing occurred in the small city of Goshen, about a 30-minute drive southeast of Fresno on highway 99. 

“We don’t know what it is yet,” said reporter Ioan Grillo, a journalist who has covered the Mexican drug cartels for 20 years. “I’d be surprised if the cartels were directly doing it because the Sinaloa cartel doesn’t want to bring all the heat on their people in the area. But whatever it is, I think it’s significant. You do not want this to become the norm in the United States, where cartels are everywhere.”

For complete story https://public.substack.com/p/drug-decriminalization-behind-terrifying?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The cannabis cartel is upset with the latest ONDCP High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) report that was sent to Congress. The report is attached. Here is what Marijuana Moment, the cartel’s online newspaper, has to say about the report.

It compiles a long list of law enforcement complaints about cannabis legalization.

The Northern California HIDTA, for example said in the report that illicit cannabis “remains readily available” in the region despite the state’s legalization law” and that “consequently marijuana use remains extremely high and prices remain stable.”The California officials cited by the White House argue that state-level marijuana legalization “has likely invited more criminality connected to the production and transportation of the drug, especially by [drug trafficking organizations] and organized criminal groups” and that criminal groups “have created or partnered with ostensibly legal businesses to conduct illicit production and trafficking” in the state’s “highly accessible and lucrative cash-sales commodity.”They also claim that violent incidents and “weed rips” in which products are stolen “have become more common since legalization,” citing further concerns about human trafficking and smuggling related to the cannabis trade. Illegal growing on public lands like state and national parks “continues to pose a serious environmental threat, polluting and diverting water sources, and poisoning wildlife,” the section of the report says, adding that “THC extraction labs are a significant public safety hazard” with the propensity for explosions. There are now “many large labs selling manufactured products to legitimate storefronts,” it says.

Separately, the North Central HIDTA, which covers parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, said that “demand for higher-potency marijuana and marijuana-related products has remained high over the past several years,” claiming that illegal trafficking groups “source the majority of marijuana and THC products from Colorado and West Coast states that have legalized” cannabis for recreational and medical use.“There is continued concern over the relationship between marijuana trafficking and distribution and firearms and violent crime associated with these activities,” the regional outfit said. “In addition, the demand for and use of high-potency edibles, oils, and vaping products has remained high, creating a serious health risk to the user community.”

Meanwhile, the Ohio-based division of HIDTA had additional negative comments to make about the implications of state-level reform, arguing that the state’s medical cannabis program “has led to an even greater amount of marijuana usage” and that marijuana “remains the number one recreational drug used in the” region. But it also said that other states with broader recreational legalization are source points for cannabis that’s being consumed in the Ohio area.“Nearly all of the respondents to the 2020 Ohio HIDTA Drug Threat Survey reported the majority of marijuana consumed in their area was coming from the Western Region of the United States. It is not uncommon to see bulk shipments of high-grade marijuana products being brought into Ohio from states that have legalized marijuana such as California, Colorado, and Washington.”Cannabis vaping “has become one of the most common forms of illegal use of marijuana,” it said, expressing concern that such vaping products contain exceptionally high concentrations of THC. It added: “Edibles are becoming more popular with the legalization of recreational marijuana in Western States and medical marijuana in Ohio.”

The South Florida HIDTA, meanwhile, said that cannabis poses a “material threat” to the region, expressing concern that “the perceived danger of marijuana by the public is diminishing in scope due to the legalization of medical marijuana” in the state.“In addition, marijuana grow operations and the parcel shipment of commercially packaged marijuana from states where it is legal to Florida, where these activities are prohibited, are vast,” it said.

The Texoma HIDTA, which covers parts of Oklahoma and Texas, similarly cited concerns about drug trafficking organizations that “specialize in distribution of high-grade marijuana obtained from states with legalized forms of marijuana.”“These controlled substances are every bit as destructive as other ‘hard-core’ drugs and negatively impact the quality of life and safety of communities throughout Texas and Oklahoma.”

Read the full story at: Marijuana Moment

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