Source : Counterpunch | 06 September 2011

by DAVID ROSEN

In 1982, Nancy Reagan formally launched the post-modern prohibition movement, the war on drugs.   While begun under President Richard Nixon, her infamous “Just Say No” speech at the Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, CA, officially established the war on drugs as national policy.
Her original campaign sought to address an assortment of alleged youthful vices, including alcohol and drug use, peer violence and premarital sex.  However, shrewd moralists, clever politicians and opportunists within the police-corporate system (the domestic corollary to President Dwight Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex) used the speech to capture the new cash cow, the war on drugs.
During the last three decades, the war on drugs has proven an ever-deepening failure.  Like 1920s Prohibition that fashioned the modern crime syndicate, this “war” established a new service business for corporate capitalism, the prison-industrial complex.
While it is impossible to tabulate the full costs of drug use in the U.S., even the most conservative estimates are staggering. Millions of people (some estimates run as high as 20% of the population) either regularly abuse or are addicted to “drugs,” whether legal or illegal, whether a commercial or underground product.  One estimate places the costs associated with of drug addiction/abuse at “over $484 billion per year” that includes costs for policing, healthcare, crime and lost earnings.

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Source : Rebelion | 19 August 2011

La raíz del "problema de las drogas" está en Estados Unidos, no en México, asegura el lingüista
La Jornada

La raíz del problema de las drogas está en Estados Unidos, no en México, y las estrategias de ambos países no pueden resolver el problema, afirmó Noam Chomsky.

En entrevista con la revista cibernética estadunidense Guernica, afirmó: El problema de las drogas está en Estados Unidos, no en México. Es un problema de demanda y tiene que ser abordado aquí, pero no se hace así. Se ha demostrado una y otra vez que la prevención y el tratamiento son mucho más efectivos en costos que la acción policiaca, operaciones fuera del país, control fronterizo y más. Pero el dinero va en otra dirección y nunca tiene impacto. Cuando los líderes aplican durante décadas políticas que no tienen consecuencias para el objetivo declarado y son muy costosas, uno debe preguntarse si están diciendo la verdad y si esas políticas son para otro objetivo, porque no reducen el uso de drogas.

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Source : Tom Burghardt - Global Research | 30 December 2010

 Kosovo's Prime Minister Accused of Running Human Organ, Drug Trafficking Cartel

In another grim milestone for the United States and NATO, the Council of Europe (COE) released an explosive report last week, "Inhuman treatment of people and illicit trafficking in human organs in Kosovo."

The report charged that former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) boss and current Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, "is the head of a 'mafia-like' Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe," The Guardian disclosed.

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Source : Tom Burghardt - Global Research | 21 July 2010

When investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker broke the story four years ago that a DC-9 (N900SA) "registered to a company which once used as its address the hangar of Huffman Aviation, the flight school at the Venice, Florida Airport which trained both terrorist pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, was caught in Campeche by the Mexican military ... carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine destined for the U.S.," it elicited a collective yawn from corporate media.
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