2025 December

 (translated using AI)
If a person who habitually drives under the influence of alcohol acquires a license again, a conditional license system that requires the attachment of a “drunk driving prevention device” will take effect in October next year.

According to the “2026 Road Traffic Act” released by the National Police Agency on the 28th, people who have driven drunk twice or more within the past five years must install a DUI prevention device on their vehicle when they re-acquire their license after a two-year disqualification period.

The device prevents the vehicle from starting at all when alcohol is detected. The cost of installation is about 3 million won, and the police said they are in talks with the Korea Expressway Corporation to allow rental.

In addition, driving without installing preventive devices could result in up to a year in prison or a fine of up to 3 million won. It is also possible to revoke a driver’s license.

If another person is caught driving after avoiding alcohol detection by breathing instead, he or she will be sentenced to up to three years in prison or fined up to 30 million won.

According to the police, about 40% of drunk drivers have recidivism within five years. The police’s plan is to “block the source” as a device to prevent the possibility of such recidivism.

From next year, punishment for “drug driving” will also be strengthened. The move comes as the number of accidents while driving under the influence of psychotropic drugs such as propofol and zolpidem increases rapidly.

When drug driving is caught, it has been raised from “imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of up to 10 million won” to “imprisonment of up to five years or a fine of up to 20 million won.” A new provision has also been established that will result in “imprisonment of up to five years or a fine of up to 20 million won” for non-compliance with drug measurements.

The issuance of Type 1 licenses will also become stricter. Previously, if only the seven-year accident-free requirement was met, type 2 driver’s license holders could obtain type 1 licenses only by aptitude tests. Starting next year, you can get a type 1 license after an aptitude test only if you prove your actual driving experience with a certificate of auto insurance.

The standard for calculating the renewal period of a driver’s license will be changed from the existing annual unit (January 1st to December 31st) to six months for each individual’s birthday. The related system will also be adjusted so that trainees can legally train on the road to the places and courses they want without visiting the driver’s license academy in person.

Kim Ho-seung, director of the National Police Agency’s Living Safety Transportation Bureau, said, “We will strongly crack down on activities that threaten the lives of the people on the road and actively improve daily inconveniences.”

Filed under: Alcohol,Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Drug Driving,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Others (International News),Prevention and Intervention :
 by Karim Easterbrook* – Oman Observer – Dec 27, 2025 the author is a former school principal and author

Early and decisive action is far less costly than attempting prevention too late. What is urgently needed, especially for parents and children, is a confidential drug hotline that can be accessed for guidance without fear of social stigma or repercussions
Preventative action in the earliest stages is urgently needed; the earlier the better. Silence is perceived as consent. Thus, schools in Oman carry a heavy responsibility. They are among the first places where changes in behaviour can be noticed. Experience from Western societies shows that drug dealers approach even very young schoolchildren, who are easily influenced. However, schools must be careful: drug warnings founded solely on fear soon lose their force.Fear fades and curiosity or defiance takes its place. What endures is clarity: age‑appropriate information about the physical and psychological harm of drugs, the legal consequences that follow and the social isolation that often accompanies dependency.

Teachers, frequently the first adults to sense that something is wrong, must be trained to recognise early warning signs and to respond with confidence.

A school ruled by punishment alone encourages concealment, whereas one that allows students to seek help without stigma and reprisal may prevent lasting harm. Strengthening life skills, particularly resistance to peer pressure regarding drugs, remains a practical and effective defence. The damage extends far beyond users. It spreads through public health, education and economic life, weakening each in turn. Careers are lost and communities lose capable members long before the problem is acknowledged.

Social stability is central to national identity and long‑term progress. Illegal drugs represent a serious threat to Omani society. The experience of North America and Europe offers a stark warning. There, widespread drug availability has contributed to rising addiction, increasing overdose deaths and the decline of once‑stable communities.

Drug dealers are everywhere, health services struggle with long‑term physical and psychological harm, families fracture and crime increases. Youngsters are especially vulnerable because judgement, concentration and emotional balance are still forming. Exposure to drugs at this early age can cause lasting impairment: academic failure, school dropout, mental illness and long‑term dependency.

Government action must therefore be firm and consistent. Drug trafficking thrives where enforcement is weak or uneven. Strong border controls, intelligence‑led policing, police departments dedicated to arresting drug dealers and swift prosecution send a clear message that trafficking will not be tolerated.

While users require rehabilitation rather than punishment, those who profit from supplying drugs must face severe penalties. Delay and denial allow the problem to grow quietly until it becomes deeply entrenched.

Rumours that illegal drugs in Oman are sold mainly by non‑Omani residents must be treated with caution. Assigning blame on the basis of nationality distorts justice and weakens enforcement. Responsibility must be determined by evidence and applied impartially to all involved: Omanis and expats.

Families can be the most influential line of defence. Young people who feel supported and connected to their families are far less vulnerable to external pressure.

Open discussion, clear boundaries, awareness of friendships and online influences and early intervention when concerns arise can prevent experimentation from becoming a habit.

Waiting for unmistakable signs is often waiting too long. International evidence also indicates that vaping devices are sometimes used to consume illegal drugs discreetly, increasing the need for awareness at home and in schools.

Protecting Omani youth requires coordinated effort rather than isolated gestures. Families, schools and authorities must act together. Oman’s stability has been built patiently over generations.

Allowing illegal drugs to spread would place that inheritance at risk. Early, decisive action remains far less costly than prevention attempted too late. What is needed immediately, especially for parents and their children, is a drug hotline which can be called for advice without fear of social repercussions.

Source: https://www.omanobserver.om/article/1181724/opinion/why-schools-must-act-early-against-drugs

Filed under: Age-related,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Others (International News),Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,Youth :

Posted by drug-watch-international@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Maggie Petito (of DWI) – Subject: TelegraphArticle12-22-25

Opening comments by Maggie Petito of DWI: the following is a report from The Telegraph, UK on transnational multi-purpose/multi-crime rackets/cartels. The report confirms much reliance on bitcoin/crypto to avoid detection. An FBI agent in Baltimore over a year ago told me that several of these Chinese-backed crime centers have located in rural India and now several in Pakistan and across Africa with a few in Mexico. I have no additional facts. -Maggie Petito

And a correspondent of Maggie added this comment: Subject: Re: TheAtlanticArticle12-20-25 – Maggie, You are correct in stating that there are Americans cooperating with the Chinese.  I found several real estate transactions between Americans and Chinese in rural Colorado that are very suspect and could even represent a form of money laundering.   The big problem is that these shady transactions are being overlooked or just outright ignored. Best, Jay

TELEGRAPH ARTICLE –  by Sarah Newey – 12.22.2025 :

The ‘special economic zone’ on the banks of the Mekong river has become famed for boundless criminality. Has its luck run out?

Newey reports “ The Telegraph has travelled to `Sin City’, a lawless zone in the Golden Triangle, where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet. Set up almost 20 years ago by Zhao Wei, a Chinese gambling magnate, the `special economic zone’ on the banks of the Mekong river has become famed for boundless criminality. The Zhao Wei Transnational Criminal Organisation (TCO) – as the operation is known to the US authorities – is allegedly involved in the illicit drug trade, human trafficking, bribery, wildlife trafficking and other forms of organised crime… In 2018, the US Treasury placed sanctions on it for alleged involvement in laundering money and assisting in the storage and distribution of heroin, methamphetamine, and other narcotics. Then in 2023, the UK followed up with sanctions on Zhao and his wife, Su, for their links to human trafficking and forced criminality.

`Wei is the owner and president of Kings Romans Group which controls the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone,’ reads the UK deposition. `Therefore, he bears responsibility for, supported and obtained benefit from the trafficking of individuals to the Zone, where they were forced to work as scammers targeting English-speaking individuals and subject to physical abuse and further cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.’

`Chatting companies’ is the euphemism locals use for the brutal scam centres described in the UK sanctions deposition quoted above.

Poor locals and migrant workers from across the developing world are trafficked or tricked into joining the `chatting companies’, which swindle billions from unsuspecting individuals and businesses across the globe.

Schemes – often aided with AI – include romance scams, cryptocurrency cons, impersonation schemes, long haul fraud and cyber crime.

Even as recently as August 2024, Sin City was booming. A census put the overall population at around 120,000 people, while karaoke bars, casinos and hotels were full and construction of new buildings continued apace.

At its height, it is estimated that roughly 300,000 people – many of them victims of human trafficking – were working in scam centres across the wider Golden Triangle region, including some 85,000 in Sin City and Laos.

Aided by armed groups and corrupt officials, the criminal syndicates operating these centres have made billions. In Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos combined, at least $43.8 billion (£33.8bn) is being stolen yearly, according to a report from the US Institute of Peace.

There is little doubt that on his way up Zhao Wei benefited from support from Beijing and close ties to the Laos government.

Only last year he was awarded a state medal for “contributions to policing” by the authorities in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, while local media have reported on friendships with the political elite. The Laotian authorities did not respond to Telegraph requests for comment.

`The evidence is just overwhelming that these are state-sponsored criminal industries,’ said Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Centre and expert on cybercrime in the Mekong. `The level of collaboration is historically unprecedented, in terms of the scale and the volume of money passing through these industries…’ `While we’re seeing less of the ‘dungeon’ set up with overt trafficking and torture, this is still a very abusive system… You don’t have a strong hand when a crime syndicate has taken your passport.’

There is also little sign of a real plan to systematically dismantle Sin City or Zhao Wei’s Kings Romans Group.”

Inside ‘Sin city’ 

The gamblers at the baccarat table have lost all track of time. Outside, night has given way to day, but inside the game of chance rolls on.

It’s a gaudy scene. The players – mostly Chinese and Thais, with a handful of Russians – smoke continuously, their bleary eyes fixed on the hands of an immaculately dressed croupier as she deals yet another round of cards. They all hoard chips denominated in Chinese Yuan, though the biggest pile now sits with the House.

As we look on, an unsmiling security guard eyes the Telegraph suspiciously. “There are no Western games here,” he says cryptically, pausing next to us on his patrol of the lush casino floor. The hint taken, we nod politely and get up to go.

Outside, a stretch Hummer and three Polaris Slingshots are parked by a side entrance, while a pair of gleaming Rolls Royce take pride of place in the forecourt. Across a waterway is a vast Venetian-style plaza, which looks like an abandoned set from a Hollywood fairytale.

The Telegraph has travelled to “Sin City”, a lawless zone in the Golden Triangle, where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet. Set up almost 20 years ago by Zhao Wei, a Chinese gambling magnate, the “special economic zone” on the banks of the Mekong river has become famed for boundless criminality.

The Zhao Wei Transnational Criminal Organisation (TCO) – as the operation is known to the US authorities – is allegedly involved in the illicit drug trade, human trafficking, bribery, wildlife trafficking and other forms of organised crime.

In 2018, the US Treasury placed sanctions on it for alleged involvement in laundering money and assisting in the storage and distribution of heroin, methamphetamine, and other narcotics. Then in 2023, the UK followed up with sanctions on Zhao and his wife, Su, for their links to human trafficking and forced criminality.

“Wei is the owner and president of Kings Romans Group which controls the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone,” reads the UK deposition. “Therefore, he bears responsibility for, supported and obtained benefit from the trafficking of individuals to the Zone, where they were forced to work as scammers targeting English-speaking individuals and subject to physical abuse and further cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

Much of this illicit activity is said to be conducted through the Kings Romans gambling group – the flagship casino of which we have just departe ‘The chatting companies have left’: If you are thinking Sin City sounds like a real-life Bond villain’s hideout you would not be wrong. Yet its golden facade now seems to be fracturing.

Less than a year ago, the streets, bars and brothels of this enclave were a hive of activity. But today the 10,000 hectare stretch of land, in which Zhoa is estimated to have invested $3.5bn since acquiring it in 2007, is all but a ghost town, its illicit industries relocating to new ground.

When the Telegraph visited ahead of Christmas, the streets were eerily quiet and new high rise buildings stood empty, their development stalled. At night, the faux-Venetian playground was cloaked in darkness, while the turreted casino – usually illuminated – had only a few lights on.

“They do not turn on those lights,” said a receptionist at Kings Romans casino and hotel, where we were able to book rooms at a discounted rate. “It’s to save the cost, the economy is not so good. It’s been bad for two months.”

Later that night at a strip of bars where images of scantily clad women are plastered across nightclub walls, locals told the same story.

“There is almost no one here because the situation is not good,” said one woman in her 20s, gesturing with long, claw-like nails. “I don’t know much about it, but I saw the police coming in and checking [buildings]. It was not so long ago.”

A barman adds: “It’s quiet because the chatting companies have left.” “Chatting companies” is the euphemism locals use for the brutal scam centres described in the UK sanctions deposition quoted above.

Since the pandemic, the enclave has become the global epicentre for this new type of industrialised telephone and internet fraud.

Poor locals and migrant workers from across the developing world are trafficked or tricked into joining the “chatting companies”, which swindle billions from unsuspecting individuals and businesses across the globe.

Schemes – often aided with AI – include romance scams, cryptocurrency cons, impersonation schemes, long haul fraud and cyber crime.

Even as recently as August 2024, Sin City was booming. A census put the overall population at around 120,000 people, while karaoke bars, casinos and hotels were full and construction of new buildings continued apace.

At its height, it is estimated that roughly 300,000 people – many of them victims of human trafficking – were working in scam centres across the wider Golden Triangle region, including some 85,000 in Sin City and Laos.

Aided by armed groups and corrupt officials, the criminal syndicates operating these centres have made billions. In Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos combined, at least $43.8 billion (£33.8bn) is being stolen yearly, according to a report from the US Institute of Peace.

The scam centres in Sin City and Laos alone were estimated to be generating $10.9bn (£8.76bn) in illicit revenue annually, it said.

But now things are changing. The criminal boom in Sin City has turned to bust as global regulatory authorities, including the Chinese have moved in.

‘State-sponsored criminal industries’: There is little doubt that on his way up Zhao Wei benefited from support from Beijing and close ties to the Laos government.

Only last year he was awarded a state medal for “contributions to policing” by the authorities in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, while local media have reported on friendships with the political elite. The Laotian authorities did not respond to Telegraph requests for comment.

“The evidence is just overwhelming that these are state-sponsored criminal industries,” said Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Centre and expert on cybercrime in the Mekong. “The level of collaboration is historically unprecedented, in terms of the scale and the volume of money passing through these industries.” But across the Mekong, efforts to crack down on the scam centres have been ramping up – with police raids, sanctions and even military action.

The junta in Myanmar, under pressure from China, recently bombed and demolished buildings used for fraud in two notorious scam centres called KK Park and Shwe Kokko, for instance.

International pressure is driving the change. Across Europe, America, the Middle East and even China itself too many citizens have been either defrauded or trafficked for the problem to be ignored.

In October, the US and UK sanctioned 146 entities and individuals connected to the Prince Group, another “sprawling cyberfraud empire”, this one based in Cambodia. Its chairman, Chen Zhi, was among those targeted.

“The leader of the network, Chen Zhi, and his web of enablers have incorporated their businesses in the British Virgin Islands and invested in the London property market, including a £12 million mansion on Avenue Road in North London, a £100 million office building on Fenchurch Street in the City of London, and seventeen flats on New Oxford Street and in Nine Elms in South London”, said the Home Office. “The sanctions will freeze these businesses and properties with immediate effect, locking Chen and his network out of the UK’s financial system”.

The Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper added: “The masterminds behind these horrific scam centres are ruining the lives of vulnerable people and buying up London homes to store their money.

“Together with our US allies, we are taking decisive action to combat the growing transnational threat posed by this network – upholding human rights, protecting British nationals and keeping dirty money off our streets”.

Mr Sims of Harvard said the action being taken by the US and others was changing the calculus of the fraudsters. “Instead of just raiding and performatively arresting low level perpetrators, you’re actually going after the kingpins,” he said.

Richard Horsey, a senior Myanmar analyst at Crisis Group, agreed. Noting the action of the Myanmar government, he said: “Claims of destruction have run ahead of the dynamite, but there’s a definite intent by the regime to demonstrate – to China, to the US, to the Thais and to everyone else – that they’re trying to do something serious about this problem. Even though the military are themselves complicit in some of it.”

“The same thing has happened in Laos – there was a crackdown because the scam centre became too high profile.”

‘Things may not be going well for Zhao’s criminal network’

As China has boomed, it has exported criminality to many areas, like most expansionist powers. Gambling and prostitution in particular have proliferated across the Pacific and large parts of Asia and Africa as Chinese businesses and entrepreneurs have set up there.

Such criminality is not typically sanctioned by Beijing but nor is it actively moved against until it becomes a diplomatic impediment.

Now, it seems, Zhao and the Kings Romans Group have crossed this line. Last August, just eight months after the first round of UK sanctions targeting Sin City’s scam centres, he appeared at a ceremony with a local governor and ordered all illegal online activity in the Special Economic Zone to be dismantled within a fortnight.

By December this year, some 900 people working in the scam centres had been arrested and repatriated by Laos authorities, according to the Mekong Risk Monitor published last week.

“Things may not be going well for Zhao’s criminal network,” according to Jason Tower, a senior expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and co-author of the Mekong Risk Monitor.

Zhao at a rare public appearance in 2024 Credit: SOPA Images

Not only have Zhao and his family been largely absent from public appearances, but the entire executive leadership of the Special Economic Zone have left their jobs. Census data suggests the city’s population has halved, to 65,300 people, while there was another crackdown targeting scam compounds there between the 2 and 18 November.

“At present, the strategy of the Kings Romans Group seems to be to work with authorities in a ‘campaign style’ to advance what are portrayed as crackdowns,” wrote Mr Towers. “This means that scam syndicates need to hand over several hundred individuals per crackdown and spend significant amounts of time operating outside of the zone.”

“The police raided there,” confirmed a rickshaw driver in Sin City, pointing at a padlocked brown high rise as we cruised through the outskirts of town. “A lot of African and South Asian people recruited to run cyber scams used to live here, but it’s all shut now.”

‘This is still a very abusive system’: So what now for Sin City and the scam centres across the Mekong?

Most experts are not optimistic and say the current enforcement actions are unlikely to lead to lasting change. For the most part they are just displacing the problem, they say.

“We’re seeing a metamorphisation of the scam centres,” said Mr Horsey of the Crisis Group. “They’re constantly evolving across the region … after a crackdown, we see them dislodged to other areas.

“At the moment, there’s a sense that the big hotspots are expensive to build but too easy to shut down if there’s a will. So a tonne of the operators, especially smaller ones, are spreading to office buildings or guest houses in new areas.”

One such area is Vientiane, some 400 miles downstream from the Golden Triangle. Here taxi drivers told the Telegraph that the last six months had seen a surge in people from South Asia and Africa who said they were in Laos to work rather than travel. The city’s casinos are also booming. “The general trend is that scam centres are now trying to blend in and not be obvious,” said Mr Horsey. “There’s always been a range, from really sordid operators who treat their staff as prisoners, to those who let them do whatever they want when not on shift.

“While we’re seeing less of the ‘dungeon’ set up with overt trafficking and torture, this is still a very abusive system… You don’t have a strong hand when a crime syndicate has taken your passport.”

There is also little sign of a real plan to systematically dismantle Sin City or Zhao Wei’s Kings Romans Group.

“The primary issue is that Laos and Chinese authorities continue to rely on the Kings Romans Group as a partner to address problems,” Mr Tower wrote in the Mekong Risk Monitor.

Within Sin City, locals hope things will bounce back. They believe they just have to ride out a tough few months – and whispers are circulating of a plan to both reverse the exodus.

“I heard at the end of the year, there will be another investment project … they say they will bring something big,” said a restaurant owner. “The business will be back.”

And it’s true that in Telegram channels seen by the Telegraph, there are a near-constant stream of posts advertising jobs as models, developers, receptionists and “chat support specialists” in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. Some mention “chatting platforms” or “call centres” obliquely – others more explicitly reference “scms”. But for now at least, Sin City is down, if not out.

In its intricately decorated version of “Chinatown”, a distressed monkey paces a small, rusting cage while a Porsche without number plates has stopped outside a gold shop.

We take a seat at a hotpot restaurant for a bite to eat before heading back across the Mekong to Thailand. After taking our food order, the owner offers to procure “girls” should we want them later that night. Prices start at 800 yuan (£85) for a Laotian woman for two hours, rising to 1,400 if we prefer someone Vietnamese. We make our excuses and leave.

Source: www.drugwatch.org     drug-watch-international@googlegroups.com

 

Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Gambling,Latest News,Trafficking,USA :

 

by  Mark S. Gold M.D. – Addiction Outlook – Posted December 26, 2025 

 

The change was made despite lack of evidence of medicinal benefits.

Key points

  • President Trump directed federal agencies to expedite the process of reclassifying cannabis to Schedule III.
  • Now what? Many actions are needed, including new research and protection of adolescents.
  • Placebo-controlled, double-blind trials of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis constituents are needed.

The most consequential shift in cannabis policy in more than 50 years is now happening. A December 2025 executive order from President Trump has directed the federal government to down-schedule cannabis from Schedule I (illegal) to Schedule III (a lawful drug designation with a lower level of harm than Schedules I or II) . This is despite the alarming lack of research evidence for medicinal cannabis.

Rescheduling cannabis will provide significant tax advantages to the industry, allowing billions in previously banned business expense deductions that could hugely boost marketing efforts, research, or both. The executive order (EO) does not explicitly recognize cannabis as medicine. It also does not set national standards for cannabis labeling, dosages, or youth protection, all of which are essential.

Whether you view the EO as long overdue or ill-advised, the key questions now are how this change will be implemented, who will control the downstream effects of cannabis, and whether public health experts or lobbyists seeking to accelerate commercial momentum will define what happens next.

Currently, any cannabis warning labels are inconsistent across states, often minimal, and frequently omit critical risks, such as mental health effects, breastfeeding harms, and other dangers stemming from high-potency cannabis products.

5 Examples of Warning Labels 
5 Examples of Warning Labels – THIS NEEDS A BORDER AND ENLARGEMENT AND ‘PACKAG?? – H
Source: Dr Mark Gold

The executive order simultaneously instructs federal agencies—particularly the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration—to expand, streamline, and lower barriers to cannabis/cannabinoid research.

Indeed, the now-history LSD-like Schedule I status of cannabis imposed hurdles to research. Nevertheless, considerable research has been done, even though a special license was necessary to use the drug in studies. However, rescheduling marijuana doesn’t guarantee adequate research funding, FDA approval for cannabis, THC, or CBD, or high-quality research.

What Drug Experts Say

Among the EO’s most vocal critics is Kevin Sabet, drug policy expert who served both Republican and Democratic administrations and now president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, who sees the order as devoid of public health wisdom. Sabet warns that rescheduling signals medical endorsement despite cannabis’s association with significant health risks, especially for young users. Sabet highlights that the EO moves cannabis from Schedule I (not legal) to Schedule III (controlled but legal), although the medicinal effects of cannabis have never been FDA-proven or approved.

Harvard’s Kevin Hill, M.D., supports rescheduling for improving research facilitation, arguing that current cannabis use lacks clinical guidance. He emphasizes funding as crucial for quality research. Hill ‘s position is pragmatic: Lack of scientific certainty is not a reason to avoid research—it’s the reason research is needed.

Hill also places responsibility for research funding on states and industry. Legal cannabis markets generate billions in revenue, yet only a fraction is reinvested in rigorous research, prevention, or treatment. Ethical stewardship, he argues, demands that those profiting from cannabis bear responsibility for understanding its risks and benefits.

Thirty percent of cannabis users, including adolescents, develop a substance use disorder, according to Mt Sinai School of Medicine’s Dr. Yasmin Hurd. She emphasizes the importance of pairing research expansion with clear regulations to avoid exacerbating risks linked with cannabis.

A crucial area for future research is safe and effective dosing of THC (the intoxicant in cannabis) amid imminently rising sales of high-potency products. Large-scale, longitudinal studies tracking neurodevelopmental outcomes in relation to timing and potency of cannabis exposure are essential.

At the same time, policymakers face a proliferation of unregulated intoxicating cannabinoids sold outside state-licensed cannabis systems. Products such as delta-8 and other synthetic or semi-synthetic cannabinoids are widely available in gas stations and convenience stores, often with minimal oversight. These products disproportionately attract youth, undermining consumer safety. Closing loopholes has become a public-health necessity.

Recognizing the Rising Risks

Some media reports suggest the EO was pushed through despite vociferous objections highlighting the risks of cannabis use among adolescents and young adults. The link between early-age cannabis exposure and increased risk of schizophrenia, mood disorders, and long-term functional impairment is no longer speculative. The disorders carry lifelong healthcare, social, and economic costs. Yet current data are insufficient to guide prevention efforts. Without guidelines, prevention efforts will remain reactive and politically vulnerable. Nowhere are the stakes higher than among adolescents and young adults.

One of the nation’s leading scientists and long-time vocal opponents of legalizing cannabis, Yale’s Deepak D’Souza, M.D., has focused on the increasing amount of cannabis, its increased potency, frequency of use, and duration of effects, causing severe consequences in young people. Cannabis and some of its constituents produce acute impairments in memory, attention, executive function, impulsivity and risk-taking behaviour, and psychomotor coordination, critical for driving a car. Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) has underscored the need for balanced research, acknowledging both benefits and risks of cannabis.

Dose is another urgent research priority, since higher THC concentrations are associated with increased risks of psychosis, cannabis use disorder, cardiovascular events, and cognitive impairment. More isn’t always better. A post-rescheduling agenda should include an investigation into minimum effective doses, upper safety thresholds, and the feasibility of reducing THC concentrations while preserving potential therapeutic effects.

Since rescheduling will be interpreted as an implicit medical endorsement, regardless of official intent, a national, evidence-based prevention strategy is needed, modeled on successful tobacco-control frameworks Such a strategy needs to include school-based education, clinician training, parental guidance, and public-health messaging that’s scientifically grounded rather than moralistic/alarmist.

Federal consumer protection agencies need to become empowered to monitor misleading cannabis advertising.

Finally, the integrity of emerging research depends on maintaining a firewall between scientific inquiry and commercial influence. Industry participation in research isn’t inherently problematic, but it must be governed by transparency, independent oversight, and conflict-of-interest safeguards.

Acceptance Without Complacency

The December 2025 executive order is now a reality. There is likely to be a huge cash infusion without regulation, causing a commercialization boom in cannabis, with the potential to harm our youth more than ever. Industry needs to step up and fund academic research.

Youth protection and guardrails are indispensable. A good start would be warning labels, funding of prevention efforts directed toward teens and young adults, and increasing NIDA’s funding for cannabis/THC/CBD translational research .

If cannabis products remain legal and available, consumers need clear, standardized warnings reflecting the best available evidence on cannabis use disorder and psychosis risk; impaired driving; memory effects; and adolescent brain vulnerability. Public health warnings should not be optional, nor diluted by marketing language implying medical endorsement where none exists.

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/addiction-outlook/202512/marijuana-rescheduling-is-now-real

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Health,Hemp,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction,USA,Youth :

by Ryan Mancini –  The Hill – 12/03/25

A vomiting disorder linked to frequent marijuana use is on the rise, prompting global health officials to allow researchers to track the condition and study it.

Dubbed on social media as “scromiting,” short for screaming and vomiting, cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) cases saw a jump in emergency department visits between 2016 and 2022, according to a November study by the medical journal JAMA Network Open released in November. CHS was first identified in Australia in 2004.

Specifically, researchers found that the jump in visits was isolated to 2020 and 2021, when there were 188 million reported emergency department visits among adults between 18 and 35 years old.

Symptoms of CHS include cyclical nausea and vomiting, with abdominal pain with no organic cause, according to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Library of Medicine. Those with CHS will compulsively bathe in hot water, which long-term marijuana use of more than a year can induce.

“It’s pretty universal for these patients to say they need a really, really hot shower, or a really hot bath, to improve their symptoms,” Dr. Sam Wang, pediatric emergency medicine specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told CNN.

Wang described patients who were “writhing, holding their stomach, complaining of really bad abdominal pain and nausea,” with painful vomiting that lasted for hours before they took “a scalding hot shower before they came to the ER but it didn’t help.”

The hot water side-effect of CHS appears to be a learned behavior, NIH noted. After a short while, the hot water bathing can become a compulsion.

How someone can develop CHS is unclear, as researchers do not yet know how much marijuana use on a daily or weekly basis can cause it. Patients could go through years of suffering from debilitating CHS symptoms and, even with several diagnostic tests, still not have a clear diagnosis or treatment plan, NIH stated.

It can take days, weeks or months for someone with CHS to recover after a “scromiting” incident. This can be fueled by general wellness and normal eating patterns, along with regained weight and a regular bathing routine, NIH stated. If someone continues to use marijuana, CHS symptoms can start all over again.

A study conducted by the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences found that 44 percent of those surveyed were hospitalized once due to CHS symptoms. The study also found that 40 percent of respondents used marijuana over five times a day before CHS symptoms developed. Using marijuana at an early age was also more likely to lead to CHS.

Researchers argue that while there are limitations in understanding CHS, including why patients bathe themselves with scalding water, there is a need for greater clinical awareness.

“Targeted screening for cannabis use and recognition of symptom patterns could improve diagnostic accuracy,” JAMA Network Open wrote, adding that more studies can help prevent a misdiagnosis for someone with CHS symptoms.

Source: drug-watch-international@googlegroups.com

 

 

—
www.drugwatch.org
drug-watch-international@googlegroups.com

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Health,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Prevention and Intervention,USA :

United Nations

Office on Drugs and Crime – Youth Initiative – 23 December 2025

With the year 2025 coming to an end, it is a great pleasure to reflect on this year’s highlights and express our sincere appreciation for the support of all partners and collaborators of the Youth Initiative.

Friends in Focus

From the outset, 2025 has been a fruitful and exciting year for the Youth Initiative, with its reach expanding and its positive impact growing. Following the successful prototype development in 2024, UNODC’s new youth-based, peer-to-peer drug prevention programme, Friends in Focus, began its pre-pilot testing in 2025 with the support of local partners, UNODC field offices, and most importantly the youth participants across various countries. Friends in Focus is an evidence-informed prevention programme that equips youth with practical skills and knowledge in drug use prevention, encouraging them to act as positive peer influencers within their communities

The initial pre-pilot was launched in Serbia in February, marking the programme’s first transition from theory to practice. Building on this launch, the pre-pilot implementation expanded throughout the year to Italy (Trento and Piedmont, respectively) and Montenegro. In addition to these national and local efforts, UNODC also initiated regional trainings of Friends in Focus in Central Asia (involving youth from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and in Central America (with youth from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic). These regional pre-pilots have been particularly valuable in making Friends in Focus available in widely spoken languages such as Russian and Spanish, creating opportunities for further scaling of the programme in these regions.

These pre-pilot implementations stand among the key achievements of 2025, enabling the initiation of the assessment of the programme’s feasibility and applicability globally. Moreover, the wide reach achieved across the globe provides UNODC with a valuable opportunity to hear perspectives from youth in diverse cultural and societal contexts, and to evaluate whether Friends in Focus continues to resonate and remain relevant across different settings

Youth Forum on Drug Use Prevention

As in previous years, the Youth Forum took place on the sidelines of the annual Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in March 2025. With the participation of 32 youth from 25 countries, the Youth Forum provided a safe environment for the youth from diverse cultures to come together, learn, and exchange insights about evidence-based drug use prevention efforts in line with the UNODC/WHO International Standards on Drug Use Prevention. The youth participated in interactive sessions throughout the Forum, and also had the opportunity to get a glimpse of UNODC’s Friends in Focus programme.

Continuing a cherished tradition, the youth drafted and delivered their joint Youth Statement, underscoring the importance of their peers’ active involvement in prevention work. They emphasized that “Prevention efforts must not only be about us, but led by us,” and that “When prevention is a priority, resilience becomes a reality.” Watch the highlight video of the Youth Forum 2025 here.

DAPC Grants

In 2025, the Drug Abuse Prevention Center (DAPC) continued to provide steadfast support to NGOs around the world in implementing youth-focused prevention projects. This year, local implementing partners from Cambodia, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines were recommended and selected to receive the DAPC grants. These new projects will be implemented in their respective communities, promoting health, drug prevention and peer support, through active engagement with local stakeholders and young people. These initiatives highlight UNODC’s commitment to fostering resilient and healthier communities shaped with the meaningful participation of young people.

This year, the Youth Initiative continued to thrive as Youth Alumni advanced their active involvement in prevention work. After her participation in the UNODC Youth Forum 2024, Habiba Raslan collaborated with the National Fund for Drug Control and Treatment of Addiction (FDCTA) in Egypt, delivering impactful prevention messages to children and teenagers. She also remained active in the UNODC MENA Youth Network, and was also involved in the launch of the Egyptian Youth Network, bringing together young people committed to substance use prevention.

In April, 2023 youth alumna Inês Costa Louro delivered a remarkable address at the ECOSOC Youth Forum 2025 on the role of youth in public health policy and the need to address the digital determinants of health, particularly in relation to substance use and mental well-being. In June, at the high-level conference commemorating 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Yeanoh Rukoh Bai-Kamara, a Sierra Leonean participant of this year’s Youth Forum, shared her perspectives as a young woman and highlighted her organisation’s efforts to empower women and support youth. She emphasized the inequalities women face in relation to drugs and the need to better address their specific needs. Later in the summer, Nathan Morris, another participant of the Youth Forum 2025 from Jamaica, contributed his perspectives as a youth advocate during the CND/CCPCJ joint side event at the 2025 High-level Political Forum, “Engaging children and youth in drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice efforts.”

Another key highlight of the year was the 2nd UNODC Youth Forum Alumni Reunion, which welcomed former Youth Forum participants from 20 countries. Notably, the event brought together participants from across the history of the Youth Forum, spanning from its early days in 2014 to the most recent cohort of 2025, marking over a decade of youth leadership. Through youth-led presentations and peer-to-peer discussions, the reunion reinforced the importance of mainstreaming youth perspectives and ensuring meaningful participation, strengthening young leaders’ roles as co-creators rather than merely beneficiaries of prevention efforts.

Looking Ahead

We extend our deep gratitude to all youth participants and alumni, DAPC grantees, local implementing partners of Friends in Focus, and supporters for their meaningful contributions to the Youth Initiative in 2025. This year was particularly significant, as we were able to reach far and wide through the new tools and resources, enabling youth to be more meaningfully engaged in prevention efforts. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with all partners and to the new possibilities that the coming year will bring, as we further strengthen youth engagement in prevention.

Source: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/prevention/youth-initiative/youth-action/2025/December/global-youth-leadership-in-drug-prevention_-key-highlights-from-2025.html

Filed under: All countries,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,Youth :
by Morgan Ebert, Managing Editor – contemporarypediatrics.com. – morgan-petronelliDecember 23, 2025

Teen use of alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine remained stable in 2025, while daily energy drink use rose and heroin and cocaine use showed small increases.

Substance use among adolescents in the United States has remained at historically low levels for the fifth consecutive year, according to new data from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The findings suggest that declines in teen drug use observed during the COVID-19 pandemic have persisted, rather than rebounding to pre-pandemic levels as many experts anticipated.1,2

The MTF study is an annual, nationally representative survey of substance use behaviors and attitudes among eighth, 10th, and 12th graders and has been supported by the National Institutes of Health for more than five decades. The 2025 report reflects responses from 23,726 students enrolled in 270 public and private schools across the United States, with data collected between February and June 2025. Students completed the survey online while in school, and results were statistically weighted to generate national estimates.

Researchers found that the proportion of adolescents abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, and nicotine remained stable at levels first documented in 2021, following a sharp decline in reported substance use between 2020 and 2021. That earlier decline was widely attributed to pandemic-related disruptions, including reduced social interaction, limited access to substances, and increased time spent at home with caregivers.

“One of the main findings from the survey this year is that teen use of the most common drugs has not rebounded after the large decline during the pandemic,” said Richard Miech, PhD, research professor at the Institute for Social Research and team lead of the MTF study. “Many expected teen drug use levels to return to pre-pandemic levels once the social distancing policies were lifted, but this has not happened.”

Abstinence and common substances

In 2025, abstinence from marijuana, alcohol, and nicotine in the past 30 days remained high across all grades. Among eighth graders, 91% reported abstaining, compared with 82% of 10th graders and 66% of 12th graders.

Alcohol use over the past 12 months also remained stable, reported by 11% of eighth graders, 24% of 10th graders, and 41% of 12th graders. Cannabis use showed a similar pattern, with 8% of eighth graders, 16% of 10th graders, and 26% of 12th graders reporting use in the past year.

The survey also assessed use of cannabis products derived from hemp, including intoxicating products such as delta-8-tetrahydrocannabinol. In the past 12 months, 2% of eighth graders, 6% of 10th graders, and 9% of 12th graders reported using these products.

Nicotine vaping remained stable across grades, with past-year use reported by 9% of eighth graders, 14% of 10th graders, and 20% of 12th graders. Use of nicotine pouches was less common but also stable, reported by 1% of eighth graders, 3% of 10th graders, and 7% of 12th graders.

Energy drinks and illicit substances

One notable exception to overall stability was daily consumption of energy drinks or energy shots. Daily use in the past 30 days was reported by 18% of eighth graders, 20% of 10th graders, and 23% of 12th graders. Among 10th graders, this represented a statistically significant increase from 17% in 2024.

Use of heroin and cocaine remained uncommon across all grades but showed statistically significant increases compared with the previous year. Past-year heroin use was reported by 0.5% of eighth graders, 0.5% of 10th graders, and 0.9% of 12th graders, up from 2024 levels. Cocaine use remained stable among 10th graders at 0.7% but increased among eighth graders to 0.6% and among 12th graders to 1.4%.

“The slight but significant increase we see in heroin and cocaine use warrants close monitoring. However, to put these current levels of use in context, they are leagues below what they were decades ago,” Miech said.

Implications for clinicians and prevention

Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, emphasized the importance of continued surveillance and prevention efforts, noting that overall levels of adolescent drug use remain low.

“It is encouraging that adolescent drug use overall remains relatively low and that so many teens choose not to use drugs at all,” Volkow said. “It is critical to continue to monitor these trends closely to understand how we can continue to support teens in making healthy choices and target interventions where and when they are needed.”

For pediatricians and other clinicians caring for adolescents, the findings underscore the value of routine screening, anticipatory guidance, and counseling tailored to emerging trends, including energy drink consumption and evolving cannabis products.

Source: https://www.contemporarypediatrics.com/view/teen-substance-use-remains-historically-low-in-2025-with-stability-across-most-drugs

Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevalence,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA,Youth :
By Jayelah Luckey –
Opioids are often shown in movies, music, and social media as party drugs, symbols of fun, rebellion, or a carefree lifestyle. Instead of highlighting the real dangers of addiction, withdrawal or overdose, entertainment culture turns powerful and deadly substances into aesthetic props. 

This glamorized image shapes how teens and young adults think about opioids, making the risks seem smaller and the consequences less real.

In music videos, party scenes, and viral content, opioids like Percocet or Oxycodone are often linked to the idea of “relaxing,” “forgetting your problems,” or just “vibing.” 

According to researchers at the University of Texas, popular rap songs mentioning opioids increased over 100 percent between 2010 and 2020, and the lyrics usually portray the drugs as recreational or harmless. 

When teens hear their favorite artists talk about pills casually, it can normalize misuse and blur the line between entertainment and real-life danger.

Social media adds another layer. On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, trends involving “party drugs” often show pills as colorful, fun, or part of a night out. Content creators rarely show addiction, emergency room visits, or the long-term mental and physical damage. 

The problem with this portrayal is that it hides the truth. Opioids are not harmless party favors. They are powerful drugs that can alter the brain’s reward system, cause dependence in a short amount of time, and lead to deadly overdoses. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that opioid-involved overdose deaths reached more than 80,000 people in 2023, the highest number ever recorded. 

Nothing about that is glamorous.

The media’s glamorization also contributes to stigma. By focusing on “fun” drug imagery, entertainment prevents people from seeing addiction as a medical condition. 

Instead of understanding opioid use disorder as something that requires treatment, support, and compassion, society often sees it as a “bad decision” gone wrong. This stigma makes it harder for people to seek help and easier for audiences to ignore the suffering behind the real opioid epidemic.

Perception shapes reality. When teens constantly see pills framed as harmless fun, it becomes easier to underestimate the risks. It also becomes harder to recognize warning signs in themselves or friends. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) warns that early exposure to positive portrayals of opioids increases the likelihood of experimentation, especially among younger audiences.

The solution isn’t to ban music or shut down social  media. It’s to shift the conversation. 

Entertainment platforms can show the full reality of drug use, not just the parts that look exciting on screen. Schools and families can teach teens to question what they see online and understand the difference between a fictional party scene and a real overdose. Communities can focus on education, mental health support, and honest conversations about substance misuse.

This article was written as part of a program to educate youth and others about Alameda County’s opioid crisis, prevention and treatment options. The program is funded by the Alameda County Behavioral Health Department and the grant is administered by Three Valleys Community Foundation.

Source: https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/alameda-county/2025/12/22/entertainment-vs-reality-how-media-glamorizes-opioids-and-warps-teens-perception/

 

 

Filed under: Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Opioids,Prevention and Intervention,USA,Youth :
From the French Connection to today’s criminal networks, drug trafficking in France has undergone profound transformations, evolving from centralized, predictable structures to decentralized, technologically advanced organizations. This article examines these changes and highlights the need for a comprehensive approach that combines targeted law enforcement, social prevention programs, financial monitoring, and international cooperation. By reflecting on historical experience, policymakers and law enforcement agencies can better understand modern trafficking methods, anticipate the adaptability of criminal networks, and enhance the overall effectiveness of strategies aimed at reducing the social, economic, and security impacts of drug-related crime

Introduction

Over the past decade, the illicit drug market in France has undergone unprecedented expansion, underscoring the magnitude of a phenomenon long underestimated by public authorities. A research note published in December 2025 by Christian Ben Lakhdar and Sophie Massin, professors at the University of Lille, estimates that the economic value of this market nearly tripled between 2010 and 2023, reaching approximately 7.9 billion U.S. dollars annually. This growth reflects not merely rising consumption levels but a profound restructuring of procurement dynamics: while cannabis remains dominant in terms of volume, cocaine has emerged as the most profitable substance, and synthetic drugs have experienced particularly rapid expansion. These trends point to the consolidation of criminal networks capable of optimizing pricing, purity, and distribution channels on an international scale. As a result, drug trafficking has become a major security and public health concern, extending well beyond the boundaries of conventional criminal activity. Understanding this contemporary landscape, however, requires a historical perspective, as today’s challenges are embedded in a longer continuum of State efforts to confront highly structured and adaptive criminal organizations in France.

The war on drugs in France has unfolded through multiple historical phases, each revealing shifts in criminal structures and governmental responses. During the 1960s and 1970s, a criminal network based in Marseille controlled the flow of heroin to the United States. This network, popularized globally by William Friedkin’s film The French Connection(1971), consisted of Corsican mobsters and Marseille traffickers operating clandestine laboratories where heroin was refined before being shipped by sea to New York and Boston . French authorities, cooperating closely with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), relied on traditional intelligence methods: physical surveillance, infiltration, and monitoring of laboratories and transport routes. These operations identified key leaders, disrupted the trafficking network, and enabled the seizure of large heroin shipments. A notable example is the arrest of French TV presenter Jacques Angelvin in New York in 1962, resulting from a Franco-American joint investigation, which demonstrates how international collaboration facilitated the progressive dismantling of the French Connection while highlighting the interplay between domestic policing and transatlantic intelligence coordination.

Today, drug trafficking in France has become a pressing public health and security challenge, far more complex than in the 1960s. According to the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, roughly 1.1 million people used cocaine at least once in 2023, while cannabis remained the most widely consumed illicit drug, with 5 million adults reporting use during the same year. Other substances, including heroin and synthetic drugs, circulate through ports, airports, and dense urban networks. Modern traffickers rely on encrypted communications and opaque financial flows to evade detection. Law enforcement agencies must sift through extensive data—from wiretaps and financial transfers to social media activity—to track the movement of drugs and identify key actors. Violence associated with trafficking is escalating, marked by targeted shootings, score-settling, and even acts of torture, underscoring the urgent need for multidimensional strategies to curb traffickers’ influence across France. The scale and sophistication of contemporary operations demand a response that combines physical, digital, and social interventions, illustrating that historical methods alone are insufficient for addressing modern organized crime.

A comparison between historical and contemporary criminal networks illuminates how organized crime has evolved and identifies levers for modern enforcement. The French Connection was dismantled due to its centralized structure and high visibility, but today’s networks require more sophisticated, adaptive approaches. Effective action now combines digital and field intelligence, targeted arrests, disruption of supply chains, financial tracking, and social initiatives to reduce traffickers’ appeal among vulnerable populations. International coordination is equally essential: France collaborates with Europol, Interpol, and other agencies to monitor drug and money flows across borders. Historical lessons provide a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of cooperation, infiltration, and criminal flow management, while also highlighting the necessity of adapting policing and judicial methods to technological innovation. By reconciling enforcement, prevention, and social protection, France aims to address current and future challenges in the war on drugs, reflecting the dynamic and multifaceted nature of modern trafficking networks.

France’s Narco Challenge

Over the past decade, France has faced a worrying surge in drug-related violence, affecting both the suburbs of major cities and medium-sized towns. According to the Ministry of the Interior, more than 110 tons of narcotics were seized in 2024, including 53 tons of cocaine—more than double the previous year’s haul (). Cannabis seizures exceeded 50 tons, alongside the destruction of nearly 700,000 plants. Meanwhile, 110 drug-related deaths and several hundred injuries were reported. Cities historically less affected, such as Clermont-Ferrand (150,000 inhabitants) and Avignon (92,000 inhabitants), were designated “reinforced security zones” following fatal shootings, while metropolitan hubs like Nantes saw over 1,100 drug-dealing hotspots dismantled between September 2022 and September 2023. Marseille, long a hub for drug trafficking, continues to experience deadly incidents, including the November 2025 murder of 20-year-old Mehdi Kessaci, apparently intended to intimidate his brother, an anti-drug activist. This event sparked widespread local protests, highlighting the persistence and territorial reach of criminal networks despite sustained law enforcement efforts. The scale and visibility of these operations underscore the pressing challenge posed by modern trafficking, both in terms of public safety and operational complexity.

The social and economic consequences of rising drug-related violence are profound. In neighborhoods of Marseille, Lyon, and Nantes, fear shapes daily life: residents restrict movement, shops close earlier or intermittently, and families hesitate to let children travel alone. Police presence, though increased through patrols and identity checks, is often seen as inadequate, fostering feelings of abandonment and vulnerability. In areas sometimes described as “no-go zones,” minors as young as 14 are recruited by traffickers for final distribution, surveillance, or territorial security, perpetuating cycles of violence and criminality. Public demonstrations, such as those following Mehdi Kessaci’s assassination, reflect dual social demands: for a more visible and efficient justice system capable of deterrence and for community support programs that reduce trafficking’s appeal among vulnerable youth. Authorities themselves acknowledge the limits of their power in these contexts. These dynamics illustrate that modern drug violence is not merely a law enforcement problem, but a deeply rooted social and economic issue, requiring coordinated interventions that address both criminal operations and the broader community environment.

Despite intensified policing, repression alone proves insufficient against criminal networks, whose sophistication surpasses the French Connection. Traffickers rely on undetectable smartphones, encrypted messaging, and cryptocurrencies to obscure financial flows, complicating investigations and prolonging operational timelines. “XXL clean-up” operations in spring 2024 resulted in thousands of arrests and the seizure of weapons, narcotics, and criminal assets, demonstrating short-term effectiveness but failing to curb trafficking long-term. Experts advocate a multidimensional strategy that combines targeted enforcement, digital surveillance, financial control, prevention measures, and social reintegration programs. This holistic approach draws lessons from historical dismantling but must adapt to modern realities: criminal networks are flexible, decentralized, and technologically sophisticated, making AI-driven analysis of big data critical. The contrast with the French Connection underscores both continuity and evolution: the principles of disruption remain valid, but operational methods must now account for mobility, cryptography, and the fluidity of modern criminal ecosystems.

Inside the French Connection

The French Connection, active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, represents a historical model of organized crime built around a highly centralized supply chain. Groups based in Marseille controlled the production, refining, and export of heroin to the United States by importing morphine base from Turkey and the Middle East. Clandestine laboratories in the Marseille countryside transformed diacetylmorphine into highly pure heroin for U.S markets. The most notorious of these laboratories, the “Césari Lab,” linked to chemist Joseph Césari, was dismantled in March 1972 with nearly 100 kg of heroin seized. Cell leaders managed security, coordination, and transport, often relying on predictable routes: overland transfer to Marseille, concealment in shipments of fruit, textiles, or machinery, followed by maritime dispatch to the East Coast. While this organization enabled industrial efficiency, it also created vulnerability: fixed routes and concentrated production points made surveillance and interceptions easier, ultimately contributing to the network’s downfall. This paradox highlights the balance between operational efficiency and exposure in centralized criminal systems.

Authorities dismantled the French Connection through a three-pronged strategy. First, international cooperation with the U.S. DEA was significantly strengthened, ensuring continuous intelligence sharing on routes, laboratories, couriers, and financiers. This collaboration produced high-profile joint operations, including the January 1973 arrests of Jean-Baptiste Croce and Joseph Mari, key figures in Marseille’s heroin export to the United States. Second, French services applied classic intelligence techniques: surveillance, wiretapping, supply chain mapping, and meticulous monitoring of regional hubs. The investigations identified clandestine laboratories and intermediary networks. Third, targeted operations seized shipments, arrested chemists, and systematically dismantled production units, gradually weakening the network. These successive strikes revealed that what made the operation efficient also made it exploitable, demonstrating the inherent vulnerability of tightly centralized criminal structures.

These combined efforts exposed the internal weaknesses of a system the media depicted as sprawling. Dependence on fixed routes, the concentration of laboratories, and the public visibility of influential figures—including Marcel Francisci, a businessman and politician—facilitated intelligence work. By late 1973, these operations led President Richard Nixon to declare that Marseille heroin had effectively vanished from the American market. The French Connection provides a valuable framework for understanding contemporary criminal networks can be neutralized when flows, actors, and infrastructure are clearly identified, even without modern technology. Yet, comparing past and present highlights change: centralized, predictable structures have given way to fragmented and mobile networks using encrypted communications, digital services, and dispersed logistics. The enduring lesson is that law enforcement effectiveness depends on a combination of patient intelligence, international cooperation, and strategic adaptability—principles that remain essential for understanding today’s sophisticated criminal networks.

Modern Challenges in Narcotics Enforcement

Drug trafficking in France today relies on far more fragmented structures than those of the French Connection. Contemporary criminal networks operate through autonomous, interchangeable cells capable of functioning independently and dissolving rapidly under intense police pressure. This flexible design allows traffickers to simultaneously exploit multiple supply chains: cocaine is imported by container in Le Havre, cannabis resin transits via the Iberian Peninsula, heroin arrives from the Belgian Dutch border region, and synthetic drugs circulate within party circuits. Clandestine apartments, storage units, and logistical hubs outside city centers are used to split shipments into smaller loads, reducing the risk of interception. The mobility of these networks complicates the identification of operational bases: a single network may coordinate transactions from Paris, store merchandise in Brittany, and redistribute it in Lille neighborhoods. Furthermore, the systematic use of encrypted phones, VPNs, and ephemeral messaging services makes surveillance increasingly difficult. This operational fluidity creates a decentralized criminal environment without visible ringleaders, compelling investigators to combine traditional physical observation with digital intelligence and financial tracking to monitor complex networks efficiently.

The sophistication of modern trafficking is not unique to France. Criminal organizations worldwide are increasingly adopting advanced technologies to secure supply chains, reducing the role of human couriers. In July 2025, the Colombian Navy intercepted the first unmanned narco-submersible near Santa Marta, remotely controlled via satellite and capable of carrying up to 1.5 tons of cocaine. Still in testing, the vessel sailed several hundred kilometers offshore, demonstrating the integration of civilian technologies, including satellite connectivity for real-time navigation. Coordinated tracking between patrol vessels and aerial drones allowed authorities to monitor its trajectory before interception. This operation highlights a new form of trafficking in which removing the human factor—a criminal network’s primary vulnerability—creates a “black hole” for intelligence services. France, confronting mobile and interconnected traffickers, must combine physical surveillance, digital monitoring, and technological anticipation to maintain operational effectiveness, demonstrating the growing need for multidimensional approaches to narcotics enforcement.

France’s response centers on the Office Anti-Stupéfiants (OFAST), the French Anti-Narcotics Office created in 2020. OFAST coordinates police, gendarmerie, customs, and international counterparts, enabling rapid intelligence sharing on ports, transit routes, and financial flows. Between 2023 and 2024, OFAST conducted nearly 4,000 operations, including long-term infiltrations, high-risk container tracking, and analysis of encrypted smartphones seized during arrests. Local units focus on mapping criminal networks, tracing financial flows via cryptocurrencies, and identifying clandestine warehouses. Asset seizures totaled more than US$140 million in 2024, reflecting a strategy targeting the economic core of criminal organizations. By integrating human, digital, and financial expertise, France has developed a comprehensive approach to decentralized and mobile trafficking, illustrating that effective law enforcement now requires coordination across multiple domains rather than isolated interventions.

Long-term strategies aim not only to arrest traffickers but also to disrupt the structural and logistical foundations of criminal ecosystems. Operations target transit points, warehouses, money-laundering networks, and suppliers of encrypted equipment, while monitoring digital communications. Legal measures reinforce enforcement: the 2025 anti-drug trafficking law allows authorities to seize crypto assets, freeze assets linked to money laundering, and temporarily close premises. Complementary social programs aim to prevent recruitment in vulnerable neighborhoods, providing community mediation, educational support, and personalized guidance for at-risk youth. This holistic strategy demonstrates that combating modern trafficking requires simultaneous action across economic, digital, logistical, and social dimensions, limiting traffickers’ adaptability while restoring state control over affected territories.

By contrast, the United States focuses primarily on securing entry points and intercepting shipments before they reach national territory. In August 2025, Operation Pacific Viper, led by the U.S. Coast Guard, seized 34 tons of drugs, including cocaine and marijuana. The operation relied on intensive maritime patrols, surveillance of suspicious vessels, and coordination with the U.S. DEA and other federal agencies. Under the Donald Trump administration, the strategy prioritized upstream disruption, aiming to stop drug flows at the source rather than intervening in urban areas. This contrasts with the French approach, which combines intelligence gathering, field operations, financial tracking, and social interventions. The comparison highlights a central point: the effectiveness of anti-drug operations depends on adapting methods to the mobility, fragmentation, and technological sophistication of trafficking networks. Revisiting lessons from the French Connection demonstrates how precise identification of key players and routes allows disruption of centralized criminal networks, providing a valuable framework for contemporary enforcement strategies.

Continuity and Change in Narcotics Operations

Comparing the French Connection with today’s criminal networks reveals both enduring lessons and major structural shifts. Historically, the French Connection relied on a centralized, hierarchical organization with identifiable leaders and relatively fixed routes connecting laboratories, ports, and international markets. This visibility allowed targeted physical infiltrations and direct seizure of shipments, while communication remained limited to trusted messengers. Key principles—tracking flows, monitoring logistical hubs, and making targeted arrests—enabled authorities to disrupt the network for extended periods, demonstrating the importance of interagency coordination and precise intelligence. However, applying these methods directly to contemporary trafficking would be insufficient: the mobility, encryption, and decentralization of modern cells render the old model largely obsolete. Nevertheless, studying historical criminal networks remains invaluable for identifying the levers of action and disruption logic while cautioning against mechanically reproducing outdated practices in a vastly transformed technological and structural environment.

Modern trafficking operates through decentralized, autonomous networks functioning across multiple routes and territories. Leaders are no longer visible, cells can dissolve quickly, and financial flows move through shell companies or electronic wallets, evading conventional oversight. As Pamela F. Izaguirre noted regarding Mexico, the high-profile arrest of a cartel leader did not change the overall dynamics of criminal organizations, which continued to adapt and reconfigure themselves. Today’s criminal networks display even greater plasticity, forcing law enforcement to integrate traditional methods with advanced tools: physical surveillance and targeted interventions remain essential but must be complemented by cyber-surveillance, big data analytics, and financial tracing. The contrast with the French Connection is striking: predictability and centralization no longer simplify police operations. Contemporary strategies demand a combination of field operations, digital intelligence, and real-time international coordination to counter constantly evolving criminal structures.

Nevertheless, some principles persist: accurate intelligence, interagency cooperation, and sustained effort remain the foundation of effective enforcement. For instance, a 2025 joint operation between France and Spain, involving surveillance, electronic monitoring, searches, interceptions, and real-time intelligence sharing, led to the arrest of 24 network members, including leaders, and the seizure of more than 150 kg of drugs. This demonstrates that classic investigative methods—carefully adapted—retain relevance, while international coordination ensures rapid information exchange, harmonization of procedures, and mobilization of specialized teams. The evolution of trafficking also highlights the need to link coercive and social strategies. Unlike the export-focused, relatively invisible French Connection, today’s criminal networks operate within cities and suburbs, spreading violence and insecurity. A balanced approach combining law enforcement, technological innovation, and social intervention is therefore essential to restore territorial control and reduce traffickers’ adaptive capacity.

Conclusion

Almost every week, French media report drug-related violence, from gang shootouts and score-settling accompanied by torture to tense neighborhoods. In early December 2025, north of Paris, a fight between two gangs of traffickers erupted in a kindergarten playground, terrifying three-year-olds. The war on drugs has become a pressing reality at the heart of national debate, as President Emmanuel Macron concludes his term amid public confusion and limited popular support for his policies. Contemporary trafficking networks—decentralized, mobile, and technologically sophisticated—no longer follow the traditional models of the French Connection, rendering targeted arrests insufficient. French authorities now rely on advanced investigations, international cooperation, and digital monitoring. Europol, Interpol, and cross-border agencies enable near-instantaneous sharing of information on drug flows, financial transactions, and encrypted communications. Specialized units analyze this intelligence to trace supply chains, identify key players, and map trafficking hotspots. Revisiting historical practices demonstrates that lessons from the French Connection remain relevant, emphasizing the enduring value of combining patient intelligence, strategic coordination, and technological adaptation to combat modern, adaptive criminal networks effectively.

The social, legislative, and technological dimensions are equally critical for a sustained response, requiring strategies that go beyond immediate enforcement. Neighborhoods plagued by violence demand comprehensive prevention, educational support, community engagement, and targeted programs to limit the pool of potential recruits for dealers and lookouts—efforts supported by social organizations, local authorities, and political actors across the spectrum. Concurrently, French authorities are leveraging AI, predictive analytics, and financial tracking tools while reinforcing legislation on cryptocurrencies and money laundering to disrupt fluid and technologically sophisticated criminal networks. Logistical monitoring, mapping of hotspots, and coordinated international cooperation further strengthen these efforts. Beyond law enforcement, these measures aim to restore state authority, rebuild public trust, and address the structural vulnerabilities exploited by traffickers. Rising public demand for harsher repression risks polarizing society, yet solidarity and strategic foresight remain essential, particularly as Europe faces mounting geopolitical pressures, including the imperial ambitions of Vladimir Putin, demonstrating the inextricable link between domestic security and international stability.

Source: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/24/frances-war-on-drugs/

Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Europe,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction :

THIS ARTICLE IS A COLLATION OF THE SUBMISSION BY DAVID EVANS OF A JAMA RESEARCH BY MICHAEL HSU ET AL, PLUS COMMENTS BY JOHN COLEMAN AND BERTHA MADRAS

Comment by John Coleman, – john.coleman.phd@gmail.com- 14 December 2025 

Subject: Re: FROM DAVID EVANS MOST RECENT META ANALYSIS OF THERAPUETIC USE OF CANNABIS

Bertha,

You raise an interesting point, i.e., could someone argue (and who would it be?) that because cannabis was a medicine prior to the 1938 Amendments to the Food and Drug Act, is pre-market approval required, or can it be considered “grandfathered-in”? My copy of the 1936 National Formulary lists the only cannabis medicine as a tincture and gives the formula for the medicinal composition (see below). The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act prohibited prescribing and dispensing marihuana without a federal registration and payment of a special tax. That, in effect, dissuaded its use as a medicine, and by 1941, it was removed from the U.S. Pharmacopeia.

In 1968, Harvard Professor Timothy Leary brought his case to the Supreme Court. Leary and his daughter had been arrested entering Texas from Mexico with a kilo of marijuana. In deciding for Leary, the Court invalidated much of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, under which Leary had been convicted in lower courts. This problem was addressed by Congress in 1970 with the enactment of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act, Title II of which is the Controlled Substances Act. This ended the uncertainty and placed cannabis (marihuana and THCs) in Schedule I, confirming that it was not approved for use in treatment in the U.S.

The 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act grandfathered all drugs on the market at the time the bill was enacted. They did not require additional safety and effectiveness testing required for all new drugs. But this came with a caveat requiring grandfathered drugs to retain the same formulation and chemical composition as before the 1938 Act. This means that the Tincture described in the attachment would have to be replicated today, assuming such an argument might prevail. Personally, I think the CSA of 1970 mooted this issue forever, and anyone making such an argument today would likely be laughed at … (But it is an interesting hypothesis!)

John Coleman

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Comment by Bertha Madras,  <bertha_madras@hms.harvard.edu> Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2025 

Subject: Re: FROM DAVID EVANS MOST RECENT META ANALYSIS OF THERAPUETIC USE OF CANNABIS

Let us not forget that FDA approval is highly desirable for a drug to be included in S2-S5, but it is not essential. A number of drugs were “grandfathered in”.  I am unaware of any recent drug that landed in a “medical” S2-S5 schedule  without FDA approval. Perhaps Philip Drum is aware of them.  That’s how HHS shaped their argument, on the basis of 8-factor analysis and not FDA approval.

The best rebuttal for how S1 prevents research is to use CBD as an example. It was S1 (and generic CBD remains there) but GW decided to invest in it, did the clinical trials, generated Phase 3 data sufficiently adequate for the FDA to approve. Then Epidiolex eventually was removed from CSA (de-scheduled) because of any evidence it has abuse liability.

Bertha K Madras

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Submission by DAVID EVANS – December 14, 2025 

MOST RECENT META ANALYSIS OF THERAPEUTIC USE OF CANNABIS – 11.26.2025

Approximately 27% of adults in the US and Canada report having ever used cannabis for medical purposes. An estimated 10.5% of the US population reports using cannabidiol (CBD), a chemical compound extracted from cannabis that does not have psychoactive effects, for therapeutic purposes.

Observations  Conditions for which cannabinoids have approval from the US Food and Drug Administration include HIV/AIDS–related anorexia, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and certain pediatric seizure disorders. A meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials reported a small but significant reduction in nausea and vomiting from various causes (eg, chemotherapy, cancer) when comparing prescribed cannabinoids (eg, dronabinol, nabilone) with placebo or active comparators (eg, alizapride, chlorpromazine; standardized mean difference [SMD], −0.29 [95% CI, −0.39 to −0.18]). A meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials among patients with HIV/AIDS reported that cannabinoids had a moderate effect on increasing body weight compared with placebo (SMD, 0.57 [95% CI, 0.22 to 0.92]). Evidence-based guidelines do not recommend the use of inhaled or high-potency cannabis (≥10% or 10 mg Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol [Δ9-THC]) for medical purposes. High-potency cannabis compared with low-potency cannabis use is associated with increased risk of psychotic symptoms (12.4% vs 7.1%) and generalized anxiety disorder (19.1% vs 11.6%). A meta-analysis of observational studies reported that 29% of individuals who used cannabis for medical purposes met criteria for cannabis use disorder. Daily inhaled cannabis use compared with nondaily use was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (2.0% vs 0.9%), myocardial infarction (1.7% vs 1.3%), and stroke (2.6% vs 1.0%). Evidence from randomized clinical trials does not support the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for most conditions for which it is promoted, such as acute pain and insomnia. Before considering cannabis or cannabinoids for medical use, clinicians should consult applicable institutional, state, and national regulations; evaluate for drug-drug interactions; and assess for contraindications (eg, pregnancy) or conditions in which risks likely outweigh benefits (eg, schizophrenia or ischemic heart disease). For patients using cannabis or cannabinoids for treatment of medical conditions, clinicians should discuss harm reduction strategies, including avoiding concurrent use with alcohol or other central nervous system depressants such as benzodiazepines, using the lowest effective dose, and avoiding use when driving or operating machinery.

Conclusions and Relevance  Evidence is insufficient for the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for most medical indications. Clear guidance from clinicians is essential to support safe, evidence-based decision-making. Clinicians should weigh benefits against risks when engaging patients in informed discussions about cannabis or cannabinoid use.

Therapeutic Use of Cannabis and Cannabinoids –

A Review

Published in JAMA Online: November 26, 2025
ABSTRACT:

Importance  Approximately 27% of adults in the US and Canada report having ever used cannabis for medical purposes. An estimated 10.5% of the US population reports using cannabidiol (CBD), a chemical compound extracted from cannabis that does not have psychoactive effects, for therapeutic purposes.

Observations  Conditions for which cannabinoids have approval from the US Food and Drug Administration include HIV/AIDS–related anorexia, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and certain pediatric seizure disorders. A meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials reported a small but significant reduction in nausea and vomiting from various causes (eg, chemotherapy, cancer) when comparing prescribed cannabinoids (eg, dronabinol, nabilone) with placebo or active comparators (eg, alizapride, chlorpromazine; standardized mean difference [SMD], −0.29 [95% CI, −0.39 to −0.18]). A meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials among patients with HIV/AIDS reported that cannabinoids had a moderate effect on increasing body weight compared with placebo (SMD, 0.57 [95% CI, 0.22 to 0.92]). Evidence-based guidelines do not recommend the use of inhaled or high-potency cannabis (≥10% or 10 mg Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol [Δ9-THC]) for medical purposes. High-potency cannabis compared with low-potency cannabis use is associated with increased risk of psychotic symptoms (12.4% vs 7.1%) and generalized anxiety disorder (19.1% vs 11.6%). A meta-analysis of observational studies reported that 29% of individuals who used cannabis for medical purposes met criteria for cannabis use disorder. Daily inhaled cannabis use compared with nondaily use was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (2.0% vs 0.9%), myocardial infarction (1.7% vs 1.3%), and stroke (2.6% vs 1.0%). Evidence from randomized clinical trials does not support the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for most conditions for which it is promoted, such as acute pain and insomnia. Before considering cannabis or cannabinoids for medical use, clinicians should consult applicable institutional, state, and national regulations; evaluate for drug-drug interactions; and assess for contraindications (eg, pregnancy) or conditions in which risks likely outweigh benefits (eg, schizophrenia or ischemic heart disease). For patients using cannabis or cannabinoids for treatment of medical conditions, clinicians should discuss harm reduction strategies, including avoiding concurrent use with alcohol or other central nervous system depressants such as benzodiazepines, using the lowest effective dose, and avoiding use when driving or operating machinery.

Conclusions and Relevance  Evidence is insufficient for the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for most medical indications. Clear guidance from clinicians is essential to support safe, evidence-based decision-making. Clinicians should weigh benefits against risks when engaging patients in informed discussions about cannabis or cannabinoid use

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,USA :

Forwarded by Maggie Petito, DWI – 03 December 2025

A variety of news reports* are out concurrently regarding the massive drugs transit schemes to move cocaine, etc. on horrifyingly diseased cattle, etc. illegally flagged tankers. Other tankers ferried sheep and cocaine via the al Kuwait relying on Croatian rackets.

  * Drug cartels are using ships packed with disease-ridden cattle to smuggle huge quantities of cocaine to Europe.

Police do not seize the vessels because it is a “logistical nightmare” to deal with the thousands of cows, intelligence sources have told The Telegraph.

The festering and foul-smelling conditions on board, with many of the animals dead or having spent months wallowing in faeces, put officers off searching the ships.

In the gang-controlled ports of Santos and Belem in Brazil, and in Colombia’s Cartagena, up to 10,000 cows at a time are loaded on to the decrepit 200m long ships, according to sources at the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre, Narcotics (MAOC-N).”

Every single part of these reports indicates criminal – racketeering- actions where no justice prevails. Source ports in Colombia and Brazil pack for the uninspected ocean carriers. Near-failed state Lebanon and Egypt, previously linked with Latin America’s Hezbollah cartels, receive the tankers of diseased cattle. No reports on the health of the tanker crew.

Moreover: “The 50-year-old carriers set sail around the Caribbean or South America to collect cocaine packages from smaller ships, typically picking up four to 10 tons, worth up to around £450m. The crew conceal the packages in the ship’s giant grain silos and other hiding places, the sources said. The vessels will fly flags of convenience – where the ship is registered in a country different to its ownership, often in those with less stringent maritime regulations, such as Panama and Tanzania.

The vessels are officially bound for the ports of Beirut in Lebanon or Damietta in Egypt, where sanitation regulations for livestock are less stringent than in Europe. However, the ship’s most lucrative cargo is destined for the major seaports of Antwerp or Rotterdam, Europe’s gateways for cocaine. At some point across the Atlantic, the crew tie the packages of cocaine to inflatables, attach GPS devices, and jettison them overboard where they are then picked up by “go-fast boats” and smuggled to Belgium and the Netherlands.

The method is so effective that in the past 18 years, European police have seized only one livestock vessel carrying cocaine. At least one suspicious livestock ship departs every week from South America towards Europe, The Telegraph understands.

The law enforcement group is made up of 10 member countries, including the UK, and works closely with the National Crime Agency, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI.”

One must ask: If 10,000 diseased cattle are shipped to Africa or Europe or the Middle East weekly, in three months this is over 100,000 diseased cows entering such zones. What becomes of these animals?

Hats off to Australia: “Meanwhile, last week Australian police disclosed that a livestock ship carrying sheep had been used to try to smuggle £84m of cocaine into the country.

Fishermen found the cocaine tied to a floating drum off the western coast of Lancelin, about 75 miles north of Perth, on Nov 6.

The Western Australia Joint Organised Crime Taskforce alleged the drugs were dropped into the ocean from a livestock carrier, the Al Kuwait, on its way to Fremantle Harbour.”

So-called shadow fleets and rickety tankers moving god-knows-what, under fake flags and no transponders, are the tools of criminal rackets.

Recently Spain suffered an outbreak of swine flu derived from Spain’s large holiday ham sales. Fearing swine flu transmittal, unsafe ham is being banned.

Unsafe, filthy practices permit the spread of the food of addictions and attendant deadly diseases.

It has been penny wise, so some think, yet pound foolish to curtail USDA staff.

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Cocaine cows: How cartels use livestock to smuggle drugs to Europe

Gangs pack narcotics into carriers with dead and dying cattle to deter police from searching on board

Telegraph     Max Stephens International Crime Correspondent      02 December 2025

Drug cartels are using ships packed with disease-ridden cattle to smuggle huge quantities of cocaine to Europe.

Police do not seize the vessels because it is a “logistical nightmare” to deal with the thousands of cows, intelligence sources have told The Telegraph.

The festering and foul-smelling conditions on board, with many of the animals dead or having spent months wallowing in faeces, put officers off searching the ships.

In the gang-controlled ports of Santos and Belem in Brazil, and in Colombia’s Cartagena, up to 10,000 cows at a time are loaded on to the decrepit 200m long ships, according to sources at the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre, Narcotics (MAOC-N).

MAOC-N is an EU law enforcement group based in Lisbon that combats drug-trafficking by sea.

The Orion V was intercepted in the Canary Islands carrying 4,500 kilos of cocaine in Jan 2023 Credit: Policia Nacional

The 50-year-old carriers set sail around the Caribbean or South America to collect cocaine packages from smaller ships, typically picking up four to 10 tons, worth up to around £450m. The crew conceal the packages in the ship’s giant grain silos and other hiding places, the sources said.

The vessels will fly flags of convenience – where the ship is registered in a country different to its ownership, often in those with less stringent maritime regulations, such as Panama and Tanzania.

The vessels are officially bound for the ports of Beirut in Lebanon or Damietta in Egypt, where sanitation regulations for livestock are less stringent than in Europe.

However, the ship’s most lucrative cargo is destined for the major seaports of Antwerp or Rotterdam, Europe’s gateways for cocaine.

At some point across the Atlantic, the crew tie the packages of cocaine to inflatables, attach GPS devices, and jettison them overboard where they are then picked up by “go-fast boats” and smuggled to Belgium and the Netherlands.

The method is so effective that in the past 18 years, European police have seized only one livestock vessel carrying cocaine. At least one suspicious livestock ship departs every week from South America towards Europe, The Telegraph understands.

The law enforcement group is made up of 10 member countries, including the UK, and works closely with the National Crime Agency, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI.

An intelligence analyst for the MAOC-N told The Telegraph: “You would not want to spend more than one minute on one of these vessels, you can only imagine the smell. The authorities don’t want to have these vessels at their ports.

“Logistically, the countries don’t like to do inspections on board these vessels. The bad guys, they know this and that’s why they are using it.”

When police and customs officers reached the Orion V they faced the terrible stench of dead and dying cows Credit: Policia Nacional

Sniffer dogs are near useless at detecting drugs because they are so put off by the cows and their stench, they added.

The source described the scale of the problem as a “black hole”. Without intelligence detailing exactly where the drugs were onboard, it was almost impossible to meet the threshold for convincing national police authorities to do a seizure.

They said: “You can imagine the cost of such an operation, to get to a port, take all the cattle out, get all the authorities in to do an inspection on a vessel that is very big, a lot of concealment [for drugs]. They [the gangs] are very professional and they know exactly what they can take advantage of.”

On January 24 2023, Spanish police made the first ever seizure of a cattle ship trafficking cocaine in European waters. Armed police intercepted the 100m long Orion V 62 nautical miles south-west of the Canary Islands during its voyage from Colombia to Lebanon.

Officers discovered 4,500kg of cocaine, with a value of around £82m, hidden in packages in cattle food silos. Footage from body-worn police cameras showed officers wading through dung and urine from the 1,750 cows on board.

Packages of drugs, alleged by Australian police to have been carried on a ship full of sheep Credit: Western Australia Police

The vessel, flying a Togolese flag, was towed to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and its 28 crew members, of nine different nationalities, were arrested. Locals in the port city reportedly complained of the rotting smell emanating from the vessel.

Meanwhile, last week Australian police disclosed that a livestock ship carrying sheep had been used to try to smuggle £84m of cocaine into the country.

Fishermen found the cocaine tied to a floating drum off the western coast of Lancelin, about 75 miles north of Perth, on Nov 6.

The Western Australia Joint Organised Crime Taskforce alleged the drugs were dropped into the ocean from a livestock carrier, the Al Kuwait, on its way to Fremantle Harbour.

Police said the drugs were dropped into the ocean from a livestock carrier Credit: Western Australia Police

The day after the drugs were found, police charged the vessel’s chief officer, a 46-year-old Croatian national, with attempting to import a commercial quantity of cocaine. Investigators searched his ship and found a blue drum and ropes similar to those allegedly found with the drugs.

Two men from Sydney, aged 19 and 36, and a 52-year-old Perth man were all allegedly part of the shore party, and responsible for collecting the cocaine and bringing it to shore.

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Trump’s Pardon for Cocaine Juan

A jury found Honduras’s former President guilty. Why set him free?

Wall Street Journal   The Editorial Board     Dec. 2, 2025

President Trump, like other politicians, sometimes does something unpopular to please his base. But what is the audience for Mr. Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández?

He was sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison, after a federal jury in New York found him guilty of participating in a conspiracy to traffic 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.

“The jury heard the testimony of Juan Orlando Hernández, and saw right through his polished demeanor,” Judge P. Kevin Castel told the court during last year’s sentencing. “They saw him for what he was, a two-faced politician, hungry for power, who presented himself as a champion against gangs, murder, crime, and drug trafficking, but secretly protected a select group of drug traffickers.”

Those 400 tons of cocaine, trans-shipped via Honduras, were worth $10 billion in the U.S. “In 2013, El Chapo Guzman, head of the Sinaloa Cartel, paid a $1 million bribe to Hernández and his campaign, delivered directly to Hernández’s brother,” the judge said. While the former Honduran leader wasn’t accused of a direct role in the conspiracy’s killings, “he knew and understood the violence that accompanies drug trafficking, and in facilitating trafficking, he knowingly facilitated the violence.”

That’s the voice of the federal judge who presided over the trial, saw the evidence, and supervised the jury. So why did Mr. Trump decide to set Mr. Hernández free?

“I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden set up,” Mr. Trump told a reporter Sunday on Air Force One. “They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the President of the country. And they said it was a Biden Administration set up, and I looked at the facts, and I agreed with them.”

Would Mr. Trump care to elaborate for a perplexed public, including Republicans on Capitol Hill? The Trump Administration is saying that illegal drugs are a threat serious enough to justify U.S. military strikes on alleged trafficking boats in the Caribbean, and it’s also trying to push out Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. “Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States?” Sen. Bill Cassidy wrote on social media. “Lock up every drug runner! Don’t understand why he is being pardoned.”

Mr. Hernández pleaded for clemency in a sycophantic letter to Mr. Trump that is dated Oct. 28. “I have found strength from you, Sir, your resilience to get back in that great office notwithstanding the persecution and prosecution you faced, all for what, because you wished to make your country Great Again,” the Honduran wrote. “Like you, I was recklessly attacked by radical leftist forces.”

The White House denied that Mr. Trump saw this fawning message before he announced the pardon late last week, but the letter was reportedly passed along to him by Roger Stone, the Beltway gadfly whom Mr. Trump pardoned in the first term after a conviction for lying to Congress.

Meantime, the results of Sunday’s presidential election in Honduras remain too close to call. Mr. Stone had argued on his blog that a “well-timed pardon” for Mr. Hernández could help to prod the election in a direction favorable to American interests.

What a strange turn of events. Perhaps Mr. Trump thinks he’s playing geopolitical chess, but he has a long record of high susceptibility to flattery, and his pardon without explanation undermines the rule of law and the prosecutors who put Mr. Hernández away. Which convicted criminals will be the next to discover that praising Donald Trump’s magnificence is a get-out-of-jail-free card?

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: All countries,Cocaine,Crime/Violence/Prison,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,USA :

Opening Statement by NDPA:

This essay by Gillis-Smith is published here not through any support of its content, but as an example of the published works in this area of the drugs policy/practice field at large. Readers must draw their own conclusions as to its validity and value.

by Paul Gillis-Smith – program lead on psychedelics and spirituality,  Harvard Law School – November 30, 2025

“psychedelics golden age” of access, research, and culture. A significant reason is their assumption that psychedelics were easy to get because few laws criminalized their possession or sale prior to the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. But that story leaves out the legal predecessors to the Controlled Substances Act, specifically the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) of 1938. 

This essay corrects the false notion of a legal psychedelic “free-for-all” through the story of Lisa Bieberman, an LSD enthusiast and Harvard Square denizen of the 1960s. I draw upon archival research at the Peter Stafford Papers at Columbia University for Bieberman’s bimonthly publication, the Psychedelic Information Center Bulletin, and the Cambridge Public Library Archives for Bieberman’s never-published memoir manuscript, To Mark A Spot: A Psychedelic Pilgrimage. Bieberman was prosecuted under the FDCA, which gave the FDA authority to regulate food, drugs, medical devices, and cosmetics. According to a story in the Harvard Crimson, she was the first person in New England prosecuted for an LSD violation under the FDCA, for illegally shipping LSD through the mail. 

Bieberman was a Radcliffe graduate (’63) who encountered psychedelics through Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, two faculty in Harvard’s Department of Social Relations, just as their time at Harvard screeched to a halt. Upon her graduation, she worked for Leary and Alpert’s para-academic organization, the International Federation for Internal Freedom, which Bieberman describes in her memoir as continuing Leary and Alpert’s research, starting a pharmaceutical lab, and launching a combination clinic-utopian colony (71-72). She kept their Cambridge headquarters afloat while Leary, Alpert, and company flew off to Mexico, the Caribbean, and eventually upstate New York. 

Bieberman started the Psychedelic Information Center (PIC) in Harvard Square in 1965, releasing a bimonthly bulletin where she reported on changing drug laws, sold mushroom grow guides, publicized new psychedelic churches, and attempted to correct myths, like whether smoked banana peels are a psychedelic (they aren’t).

IMAGE: Psychedelic Information Center Bulletin 3; December 1965; Peter G. Stafford papers; Box 29 Folder “Psychedelic Information Center Bulletin (Cambridge, Mass.)”; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library

In 1965, in the third installment of her PIC Bulletin, Bieberman provided an open offer for LSD for Christmas: “Santa Claus has a batch of LSD, but the law won’t let him carry it across state lines in his little red sleigh.” Based on the offer, it is clear she was aware of her limitations per the FDCA. Nevertheless, based on information in her memoir, she mailed LSD to a handful of out-of-state requests (242). Bieberman reports that on March 18, 1966, she received a letter from the FDA that threatened prosecution for shipments of LSD across state lines to Kansas, Missouri, and California with improper labeling (under FDCA, (502)(e)(1)(A)(i), per the FDA Papers, 35). She had sent sugar cubes to a student in Kansas who had apparently publicized his acquisition a bit too loudly; and Bieberman alleged that the FDA caught wind of him (242-243). She was arraigned in the summer of 1966 and pleaded not guilty. The day after her arraignment, Bieberman left Boston for UC Berkeley’s LSD Conference. 

In mid-November of 1966, Bieberman at last had her day in court — three days, in fact. According to her memoir, she found her lawyer inept —Bieberman felt she had done far more research on her case than her lawyer could ever be convinced of doing (295-297). The judge found her guilty of violating the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act: four counts of mailing LSD without proper labeling. She was sentenced to a year of probation. 

While the state’s sentence was light, the extralegal consequences were worse. After her sentencing, Bieberman reported that she was urged by her department at Brandeis University, where she had just begun a PhD in Psychology, to resign (299). Because of her drug conviction, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles refused to renew her driver’s license.

Bieberman’s run-in with the law did not dissuade her from psychedelic advocacy. Two months after her sentencing, she published Session Games People Play: A Manual for the Use of LSD. In her Bulletin in April 1967, she devoted several paragraphs to the confused state of the law regarding psychedelic research and how researchers can obtain and manufacture their own LSD. She implores her readers to pick up the Drug Abuse and Control Amendments (1965) for themselves, as “too few people read the law books, and (contrary to popular belief) they are really not hard to read.” 

Bieberman’s case demonstrates that the FDA would prosecute cases involving psychedelics in the ’60s, counter to the common conception that all activities involving psychedelics were legally unrestricted until the Controlled Substances Act. In fact, this was a known risk, as Bieberman notes in her Christmas coupon, and in her frequent admonitions against secrecy and paranoia among psychedelic enthusiasts. 

In an essay for The Boston Globe Magazine in 1968, Bieberman insisted that paranoia and underground activities cannot be the winning strategy – nor were religious arguments likely to be compelling if they were disingenuous: “Most psychedelic groups up till now have kept their activities nine-tenths submerged; when they get in trouble they scream religious persecution. But I do not think our courts will ultimately choose to persecute religion, where it proves itself genuine and conscientious.” While Bieberman did not take up a legal defense on the grounds of religion for her use and advocacy of LSD, she did become a devout Quaker. In an essay titled “Phanerothyme: A Western Approach to the Religious Use of Psychochemicals,” Bieberman offered a model of using psychedelics in a Quaker style. Rather than offering legal protection, Bieberman’s religious approach to LSD was intended to support the lessons that a psychedelic experience “has to teach, to support one’s companions in their search, and to put the insights gained into practice in living.”  

This post is part of a digital symposium titled The PULSE of Psychedelics, Law, and Spirituality. 

About the author – Paul Gillis-Smith

  • Paul Gillis-Smith is a program lead on psychedelics and spirituality, as part of the Transcendence and Transformation Initiative at the Center for the Study of World Religions. He is an alum of Harvard Divinity School (M.Div ’24), where he focused on the history of psychiatry as it relates to psychedelic medicine and chaplaincy.

Source: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2025/11/30/lsd-gospel-christmas-tidings-and-the-fda-during-the-psychedelic-sixties/

Filed under: Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Psychedelics,Strategy and Policy,Synthetics,USA :

Opening statement by NDPA:

NDPA has mixed feelings about Harm Reduction – in one form, aiming to minimise harm in users while they consider cessation of drug use, it is something which NDPA supports, but in another form it is a ‘closet legalisation ploy’ – promoting the notion that drug use is valid and one should only seek to reduce the harm users experience – and NDPA clearly does not support this form. With this caveat, this article is included as an opinion piece for reading.

by Ricardo Fuertes, EATG member and representative at the EU Civil Society Forum on Drugs – December 17, 2025

Earlier this month, Mr Fuertes participated in the Civil Society Forum on Drugs as a representative of EATG. The discussions offered important insights into the current direction of EU drug policy and the conditions under which civil society organisations are operating.

The New EU Drugs Strategy: An Unbalanced Approach and the Downgrading of Harm Reduction

The European Commission presented the new EU Drugs Strategy. From the perspective of many civil society organisations, the Strategy is notably unbalanced. While prevention, treatment, and social integration are clearly highlighted and structured as core pillars, harm reduction is treated differently. Rather than being recognised as a distinct and essential pillar, it is dispersed across the document, diluted in its language, and separated from the other approaches.

At the same time, the Strategy is highly detailed when it comes to security-related themes, threats, and supply reduction. Considerable attention is given to law enforcement and control measures, while approaches grounded in public health and human rights receive comparatively less emphasis. Decriminalisation and the legal regulation of drugs are entirely absent from the framework. In addition, the Strategy lacks a defined timeframe or end date, raising concerns about accountability and evaluation. It is also not accompanied by a dedicated budget or a comprehensive action plan beyond an Action Plan against drug trafficking.

These concerns have been explicited in a joint letter coordinated by the International Drug Policy Consortium and signed by a wide number of organisations, including EATG, as a tool to encourage negotiation with Member States.

Systemic Barriers and Excluded Populations

Discussions throughout the Forum highlighted the need to better address systemic barriers affecting vulnerable populations. While HIV and viral hepatitis are mentioned within the EU Drugs Strategy, this is done in broad terms, without clearly identifying who is being left behind and why.

From EATG’s perspective, undocumented migrants must be explicitly included in prevention and treatment efforts. Legal precarity, fear of detection, and administrative barriers continue to exclude many undocumented migrants from access to drug services, HIV prevention, and care for viral hepatitis. A generic commitment to identifying systemic barriers is not sufficient; concrete measures are needed to ensure that prevention and treatment are accessible to all, regardless of migration status.

Civil Society Participation Under Pressure

A noticeable decline in participation at this year’s Forum was also observed. This reflects the increasingly difficult conditions under which many civil society organisations are operating across Europe. Participants reported funding cuts, staff reductions and layoffs, as well as decisions to limit participation in international meetings. These pressures are forcing organisations to reduce activities and service provision, with harm reduction particularly affected.

Across the Forum, there was a shared sense that civil society space is narrowing and that critical voices are at risk of being marginalised.

As debates around the EU Drugs Strategy continue, EATG will continue to underline the importance of protecting civil society space, restoring harm reduction as a central pillar of drug policy, and ensuring that prevention and treatment genuinely reach the most marginalised, including undocumented migrants. A balanced, public health- and rights-based approach is not an abstract principle; it requires concrete actions, political commitment, and sustained investment.

           Photo: Delegates at the Civil Society Forum on Drugs – December 17, 2025

Source:  https://www.eatg.org/blogs/the-new-eu-drugs-strategy-an-unbalanced-approach-and-the-downgrading-of-harm-reduction/

Filed under: Culture,Drug use-various effects,Europe,Harm Reduction,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction :

by Wall Street Journal   The Editorial Board        Dec. 19, 2025

Forwarded by Maggie Petito, DWI – 20 Dec 2025

Rescheduling pot sends the wrong message to vulnerable young brains.

Joe Biden sought to wave away student debt to attract young people. Now President Trump is making a play for the bro vote by relaxing federal regulations on marijuana. Can’t afford to buy a home? Don’t worry, dude. Puff away your economic anxieties in mom and dad’s basement.

Mr. Trump’s move on Thursday to reschedule marijuana runs counter to his Administration’s goals on public health, the economy and culture. Mr. Trump said his order “doesn’t legalize marijuana in any way, shape, or form, and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug.”

Yes, and no. Reclassifying marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act doesn’t legalize the drug under federal law. But it does let marijuana sellers deduct expenses from their taxes like other companies. It also sends the signal to young people that marijuana isn’t all that harmful, despite mounting evidence that it is. ***

Marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug, meaning it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” Mr. Trump aims to change it to Schedule III—akin to anabolic steroids—indicating that it has some legitimate medical uses and “a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.”

Yet a recent review of 15 years of research found the evidence of marijuana’s medical benefits to be weak or inconclusive. “The evidence does not support the use of cannabis or cannabinoids at this point for most of the indications that folks are using it for,” said the study’s lead author Michael Hsu.

Far stronger evidence points to its potential harm. Mr. Trump may not realize that weed today is four to five times more potent than in the 1990s. The drug’s dangers and risks of dependency increase with potency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about three in 10 people who use marijuana will develop an addiction.

A study this year found that 40% of car drivers who died in accidents in an Ohio county tested positive for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Marijuana advocates claim weed is no worse than alcohol. They ignore that cannabis has longer-term impact than alcohol, especially among the young.

As the CDC says, “cannabis use directly affects the parts of the brain responsible for memory, learning, attention, decision-making, coordination, emotion, and reaction time.” Medical imaging of adolescent brains shows structural changes in areas involved in impulse control and decision-making.

It can cause psychotic symptoms, especially at higher potency. A bag of cannabis gummies can cause a bad trip for some users. The CDC this summer reported that at least 85 people who frequented a Wisconsin restaurant that had mistakenly used THC-infused oil in pizza dough experienced symptoms of cannabis intoxication. Nearly half of those who got sick suffered paranoia and a quarter hallucinated. The number of cannabis-related incidents reported to poison-control centers has surged 23-fold since 2009, mostly among teens and children.

As we reported last week, young pot users are showing up with rising frequency at emergency rooms with uncontrolled vomiting and psychotic symptoms. One study this year found young users had a sixfold higher risk of heart attacks and fourfold greater of strokes. Yet the same Administration that targets Tylenol—which has proven benefits and minimal risks—now says marijuana is fine.

The cannabis lobby claims rescheduling will allow more research on the drug, but the industry can run trials on marijuana now. It simply has no incentive to do so because it can sell its products in most states without Food and Drug Administration approval. ***

So why ease regulation on pot? Occam’s razor says Mr. Trump wants to shore up support among young voters. On Thursday he volunteered that rescheduling polls well.

Is he sure? Ballot measures to legalize the drug for recreational use failed in South and North Dakota, Arkansas and Florida in recent years. Voters in Maine and Massachusetts have launched referenda campaigns to repeal legalization. Pot smoking is a leading reason employers reject job applicants after drug tests.

We’re not for punishing casual pot smokers. But sending a message to teens and 20-year-olds that marijuana is harmless is a recipe for more damaged brains and human tragedy.

COMMENTARY FOLLOWS ON THE ABOVE WSJ ARTICLE, PUBLISHED IN A VIDEO, FEATURING TWO COMMENTATORS – MS FINLEY AND MS STRASSEL

The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, in today’s edition, astutely notates the contra-indicators of lives under the cloud of marijuana.

“Now President Trump is making a play for the bro vote by relaxing federal regulations on marijuana. Can’t afford to buy a home? Don’t worry, dude. Puff away your economic anxieties in mom and dad’s basement.

Mr. Trump’s move on Thursday to reschedule marijuana runs counter to his Administration’s goals on public health, the economy and culture. Mr. Trump said his order “doesn’t legalize marijuana in any way, shape, or form, and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug.”

Yes, and no. Reclassifying marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act doesn’t legalize the drug under federal law. But it does let marijuana sellers deduct expenses from their taxes like other companies. It also sends the signal to young people that marijuana isn’t all that harmful, despite mounting evidence that it is… Mr. Trump may not realize that weed today is four to five times more potent than in the 1990s… So why ease regulation on pot? Occam’s razor says Mr. Trump wants to shore up support among young voters. On Thursday he volunteered that rescheduling polls well. Is he sure? Ballot measures to legalize the drug for recreational use failed in South and North Dakota, Arkansas and Florida in recent years. Voters in Maine and Massachusetts have launched referenda campaigns to repeal legalization. Pot smoking is a leading reason employers reject job applicants after drug tests. We’re not for punishing casual pot smokers. But sending a message to teens and 20-year-olds that marijuana is harmless is a recipe for more damaged brains and human tragedy.”

Ms. Finley states that the new EO benefits the marijuana conglomerates/rackets to be treated as if a bona fide “legitimate” pharmaceutical company….at @ 2:40

She says the EO’s position, as claimed, needs the change to ease research….which she claims as “hooey.”

The “high risk for abuse” and addiction/dependency is a fact of marijuana.

Ms. Strassel notes that Marijuana’s potency is 4 to 5 xx more potent. The psychoactive ingredient of marijuana “soaks into the brain” impacting coordination, memory, reduces impulse control, causes psychotic behaviors…and so on.

Over 17 million Americans use marijuana daily.

The arguments deliver more than enough factors to reconsider the benefits of the new EO on reclassifying marijuana, much of which ignores medical and psychiatric crises as well as public safety.

Ms. Finley claims that marijuana regulation is quite faulty, mostly a `trust but verify’ non-regulatory structure passing off marijuana as an experiment.

I believe this Executive Order was issued based on flawed justifications which could benefit the marijuana and attendant other rackets but not human health. Personally, I do not hold that America’s Veterans are furthered with marijuana addiction.

Ms. Strassel, whose professional track record indicates her preference for President Trump’s on-the-job behaviors, cites Trump’s Oval Office comments as if he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

Strassel states that the EO does not alter the standing but “directs.” She claims that many lawsuits will soon follow. Marijuana is a non-FDA approved drug.

MAHA = Make America High Again is now a slogan by some. Strassel notes that the claimed 82% public approval for re-classifying is suspicious with untested public health consequences.

Ms. Strassel claims “sending a message” is underway with recreational drugs exploding. Getting the warnings before the public is missing as public approval for de-classifying proceeds.

SOURCE: www.drugwatch.org

Virus-free.www.avast.com

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Culture,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Political Sector,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,USA :

by Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press – Wall Street Journal      The Editorial Board           Dec. 9, 2025

Forwarded by Maggie Petito, DWI –  10 December 2025

Two new studies show that the ill effects of THC are increasing.

Here’s some surprising political news: A referendum campaign is gaining support in Massachusetts, of all places, to reverse the state’s 2016 legalization of recreational marijuana. Not coincidentally, two new studies report a surge in young pot users showing up at hospital emergency rooms.

Doctors at Mass General Brigham hospital found that the share of adolescents with psychiatric emergencies who tested positive for THC—the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana—jumped nearly four-fold after the drug was legalized for recreational sale and consumption in the state. The prevalence of other cannabis-related disorders among adolescents increased by a similar amount.

“Young people with mental health challenges are more vulnerable to the negative effects of cannabis use, which can catalyze or worsen psychiatric symptoms,” author Cheryl Yunn Shee Foo writes. She adds that legalization of the drug can lead to “greater accessibility, social acceptability, and advertising” that increases use among young people.

This last point is common sense. Legalization removes a stigma from marijuana use, as well as increasing its availability.

Meantime, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds a surge in young adults nationwide showing up at hospital emergency rooms with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS). This is cyclical vomiting, often with nausea or stomach pain, that is far more severe than what someone might experience after a night of binge drinking. It is caused by heavy marijuana use, especially at high potencies.

ER visits for the disorder increased nearly eight-fold in the spring of 2020 as Covid lockdowns took hold. Visits dropped some in 2022, but remained about five times higher than before the pandemic. The U.S. Northeast and West experienced the biggest spikes, perhaps not surprising since most states in those regions have legalized marijuana and they also imposed strict lockdowns.

California, New York and other progressive states allowed pot dispensaries to stay open during the lockdowns by deeming them “essential businesses.” Instead of working, young people got high at home.

The study notes that better awareness among physicians of the disorder may contribute to the increase in ER diagnoses. An earlier study found that patients with the syndrome visited the ER on average 18 times before getting diagnosed, costing on average $76,920 per patient. Maybe someone can investigate how much Medicaid is spending on treating pothead maladies.

An accompanying commentary in JAMA says that stopping marijuana use is the “cornerstone” of preventing the syndrome, but “abrupt discontinuation may lead to withdrawal and high rates of relapse.” Legalization proponents downplay marijuana’s negative effects and addictive potential, but daily marijuana use is more common than daily alcohol use, according to a Carnegie Mellon University analysis last year of national survey data.

A group in Massachusetts last week submitted more than 74,000 signatures for a ballot referendum next November to reverse the state’s legalization experiment. These days this is a counterculture cause, but it’s one that may gain momentum as the ills of pothead culture and especially from pot use among the young become more widespread.

Source: www.drugwatch.org

Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA,Youth :
Opening Statement by DEA Administrator Terrance Cole – December 15, 2025:

“Fentanyl Designated a Weapon of Mass Destruction

Today, I stood in the Oval Office as the President signed the Executive Order designating illicit fentanyl and core precursors as Weapons of Mass Destruction—because this is a mass-casualty threat, not a routine narcotics case. Being in the room underscored, in unmistakable terms, the urgency of this fight and the weight of what this Order enables across the federal government. DEA will use every lawful tool to dismantle the networks that manufacture, move, and profit from this poison. If you traffic fentanyl, you are dealing in death—and we will treat you accordingly.”

                                                                                                                                     DEA Administrator Terrance Cole                                                 

DESIGNATING FENTANYL AS A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Executive Orders

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose and Policy.  Illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.  Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, constitutes a lethal dose.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses.

The manufacture and distribution of fentanyl, primarily performed by organized criminal networks, threatens our national security and fuels lawlessness in our hemisphere and at our borders.  The production and sale of fentanyl by Foreign Terrorist Organizations and cartels fund these entities’ operations — which include assassinations, terrorist acts, and insurgencies around the world — and allow these entities to erode our domestic security and the well-being of our Nation.  The two cartels that are predominantly responsible for the distribution of fentanyl in the United States engage in armed conflict over territory and to protect their operations, resulting in large-scale violence and death that go beyond the immediate threat of fentanyl itself.  Further, the potential for fentanyl to be weaponized for concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries is a serious threat to the United States.  

As President of the United States, my highest duty is the defense of the country and its citizens.  Accordingly, I hereby designate illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Sec. 2.  Implementation.  The heads of relevant executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall take appropriate action to implement this order and eliminate the threat of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals to the United States.  This includes the following actions:

(a)  the Attorney General shall immediately pursue investigations and prosecutions into fentanyl trafficking, including through criminal charges as appropriate, sentencing enhancements, and sentencing variances;

(b)  the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury shall pursue appropriate actions against relevant assets and financial institutions in accordance with applicable law for those involved in or supporting the manufacture, distribution, and sale of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals;

(c)  the Secretary of War and the Attorney General shall determine whether the threats posed by illicit fentanyl and its impact on the United States warrant the provision of resources from the Department of War to the Department of Justice to aid in the enforcement of title 18 of the United States Code, as consistent with 10 U.S.C. 282;

(d)  the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall update all directives regarding the Armed Forces’ response to chemical incidents in the homeland to include the threat of illicit fentanyl; and

(e)  to ensure the United States uses the full array of appropriate counter-fentanyl tools, the Secretary of Homeland Security, as consistent with applicable law and in coordination with the heads of relevant agencies, as appropriate, shall identify threat networks related to fentanyl smuggling using WMD- and nonproliferation-related threat intelligence to support the full spectrum of counter-fentanyl operations.

Sec. 3.  Definitions.  (a)  “Illicit fentanyl” means fentanyl that is manufactured, distributed, or dispensed, or possessed with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense in violation of section 401 and 406 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 841, 846). 

(b)  “Core precursor chemicals” means the core chemicals that create illicit fentanyl and its analogues, such as Piperidone or other Piperidone-based substances.

Sec. 4.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d)  The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Justice.

                              DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,

    December 15, 2025.

Source: https://www.dea.gov/documents/2025/2025-12/2025-12-15/fentanyl-designated-weapon-mass-destruction

Filed under: Fentanyl,Latest News,Political Sector,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

El Dorado News Times logo 

Published December 15, 2025

A new and growing drug threat is quietly reaching communities across the country, including rural areas like ours. It’s being called “fentanyl-plus,” and it’s different from what many people think of when they hear the word fentanyl.

This danger is not limited to people seeking opioids. In many cases, individuals never intend to use fentanyl at all.

What is “Fentanyl-Plus”?

“Fentanyl-plus” refers to fentanyl mixed with other substances, such as:

  • Methamphetamine
  • Cocaine
  • Xanax or other anti-anxiety pills
  • Unknown chemicals like xylazine or powerful sedatives

Sometimes the mixing is intentional. Other times, it happens without the user knowing, especially when pills or powders are bought on the street or shared by friends.

National drug surveillance systems report that this type of drug mixing has become more common in the later stages of the opioid crisis, increasing the risk of overdose and death.

Why this matters in rural communities

Rural areas face unique risks when it comes to fentanyl-plus:

  • Slower emergency response times
  • Limited access to treatment and detox services
  • Greater reliance on shared or non-prescribed medications
  • Higher exposure to methamphetamine and counterfeit pills

In Arkansas, youth prevention data already shows early experimentation with alcohol, vaping, marijuana, and prescription drugs. These substances can unintentionally expose young people and adults to fentanyl through contaminated or counterfeit products.

The hidden pill problem

One of the most alarming trends involves counterfeit pills. Fake Xanax and pain pills are being manufactured to look nearly identical to real prescriptions but often contain fentanyl or other dangerous drugs.

Someone may believe they are taking a pill to relax, sleep, or ease anxiety — but instead are exposed to a substance that can slow or stop breathing within minutes.

Parents, grandparents, and caregivers should know:

Not all pills are what they appear to be.

Naloxone helps — but it’s not enough

Naloxone (Narcan) saves lives and should always be used in an overdose emergency. However, some substances now found mixed with fentanyl do not fully respond to naloxone, especially when sedatives like benzodiazepines or xylazine are involved.

This makes prevention, awareness, and early education more important than ever.

What families and communities can do

Prevention begins with awareness and conversation. Health experts recommend:

  • Talking openly with youth about mixed drugs and fake pills
  • Never sharing prescription medications
  • Locking up medications at home
  • Learning the signs of overdose
  • Calling 911 immediately in any overdose situation
  • Keeping naloxone available, even if opioids are not used in the home

A community responsibility

Churches, schools, civic groups, and families all play a vital role by creating safe spaces for education without stigma or shame.

This issue is not about blame. It is about protecting lives.

Fentanyl-plus is appearing in places many never expected — including small towns, farming communities, and close-knit neighborhoods. Awareness today can prevent tragedy tomorrow.

For more information about local prevention programs, parent education, or community trainings, contact Bridging The Gaps of Arkansas at 1.888.978.8441 or www.BTGArkansas.org

Sources & Data

This article is based on national and state public health data, including:

  • National Drug Early Warning System (NDEWS)
  • U.S. Special Report on EMS encounters for nonfatal fentanyl-plus overdoses (2024–2025) — Reports over 31,000 nonfatal overdoses involving fentanyl mixed with stimulants or other substances, with 29% occurring in Southern states.
  • Ciccarone, D. (2025). “Fentanyl-Plus”
  • Donovan Memorial Fund Lecture; NDEWS Scientific Advisory Group — Documents the rise of intentional and unintentional drug mixing involving fentanyl, stimulants, benzodiazepines, and adulterants.
  • Peer-Reviewed Research
  • Nature Neuropsychopharmacology (2025): Research on fentanyl mixed with other psychoactive substances and increased overdose risk.
  • Journal of Prevention Science / Springer (2025): Studies highlighting polysubstance use and fatal overdose patterns.
  • Arkansas Prevention Needs Assessment (APNA), 2024
  • Arkansas Department of Human Services / UA Little Rock MidSOUTH Center — Regional data showing early substance initiation and prescription drug misuse among youth in Southwest Arkansas.

________________________________________

About Bridging The Gaps of Arkansas

Bridging The Gaps of Arkansas provides community-based substance misuse prevention, youth leadership development, and family education services across Southwest Arkansas, working with schools, churches, and local partners to build healthier, safer communities.

Source: https://www.eldoradonews.com/news/2025/dec/15/a-new-drug-danger-is-emerging-and-its-not-what/

Filed under: Fentanyl,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Synthetics,Treatment and Addiction,USA,Youth :

Kevin Sabet’s message is getting through. Credit: Getty
by Sohrab Ahmari – US editor of UnHerd  – 29 Nov 2025 
In June 2014, Maureen Dowd published a column that has since acquired legendary status in drug-policy circles. In it, the New York Times writer recounted her experience trying a marijuana candy bar on a visit to Denver not long after Colorado legalized pot. After a calm first hour, the drug plunged her into a personal hell: panting, shudders, confusion, deep paranoia. Eventually: “I became convinced that I had died, and no one was telling me.”
Social media gently mocked Dowd when her column first appeared: silly Boomer, she didn’t dose it right — couldn’t handle the ride. Momentum for legalization was gathering back then, driven by the anti-antidrug Left, the free-market Right, and lobbyists and entrepreneurs who could just hear the cha-ching sounding from the next big vice industry. Twenty-three states plus the District of Columbia would follow in Colorado’s footsteps in the decade that followed.
The picture of weed shared by many older Americans, drawn from their own college years, helped ease the path of legalization. Weed, the mellow drug. The Cheech-and-Chong drug. The Grateful-Dead-road-trip drug. The munchies drug. The drug that, if anything, makes you overly cautious behind the wheel. Dowd thought of marijuana along similar lines — that is, until she tried the legalized stuff for herself and nearly lost her ever-loving mind. 
Since then, weed potency has only intensified, with some concentrates reaching near-pure levels of THC, the plant’s primary psychoactive compound. Only now are policy makers and opinion elites reckoning with what Big Weed has wrought: “turning a drug that used to be 5% THC, and made people pass out for a few hours and eat Cheetos, into one that triggers psycho killers,” as Kevin Sabet, a former drug adviser in successive Democratic and GOP administrations, tells me.
Sabet admits that such talk can make him sound like Reefer Madness, the classic anti-weed propaganda film from 1936. “But if you look at almost every single mass shooting in this country, there are many common denominators, and one of them is a substance. And it’s not alcohol, and it’s not meth, and it’s not fentanyl. So you can guess what it is. It’s marijuana.”  
Take Robert Westman, the 23-year-old who murdered two children and wounded 30 people in a gun rampage at a Minnesota Catholic school in August. In his diaries, Westman, who both used weed and worked at a dispensary, blamed the drug for his violent tendencies. “Gender and weed fucked up my head,” he wrote. “I wish I never tried experimenting with either. Don’t let your kids smoke weed or change gender until they are, like, 17.” 
A 2025 study, published in the East Asian Archives of Psychiatry, found a definite and growing link between US mass-shooting perpetrators and the use, possession, and distribution of cannabis. Moreover, the researchers found that younger mass killers are more likely to be involved with marijuana. They concluded that the drug is particularly harmful to “subgroups of individuals” prone to such violent eruptions.
Even if they don’t go full Columbine, young people who regularly use today’s high-potency varieties are at elevated risk for psychosis, per a 2019 study published in Lancet Psychiatry. King’s College London, home to the lead author, sums up the grim finding: “In cities where high-potency cannabis is widely available, such as London and Amsterdam, . . . a significant proportion of new cases of psychosis are associated with daily cannabis use.”
Things have gotten so bad that The Guardian, which once pooh-poohed concerns about weed, now regularly runs warnings about its adverse effects on health (it doubles the risk of heart death, to mention just one recent finding). Most recently, the paper took readers inside a pioneering London clinic specially dedicated to addressing cannabis psychosis. It’s a crisis that goes far beyond a typical “bad trip,” shattering minds and leading many users to take their own lives.
“We are dealing with a fundamentally different drug,” says Sabet, “that has been genetically modified and bred by a powerful industry that we are now sanctioning and encouraging, and allowing to contribute to inaugurations.. . . The fact that we are allowing this, to me, that’s immoral.” Despite bipartisan opposition from a pro-weed lobby led by the likes of John Boehner, the former Republican House speaker, Sabet’s calls for limits have begun to break through.
Most notably, Sabet has led the campaign urging President Trump not to remove marijuana from Schedule I, the most serious category in the federal government’s scheme for classifying drugs. As he wrote in a widely read UnHerd essay, reclassification wouldn’t mean federal legalization. But it would grant the drug a false federal “imprimatur of being safer,” thus allowing Big Weed to enjoy tax deductions from which they are currently barred. 
So far, Sabet’s campaign seems to have stayed Trump’s hand, even as the president has floated the idea of Medicaid coverage of marijuana products as a stress and pain balm for seniors. “This [reclassification] isn’t a priority for the president,” Sabet tells me. “But on the other hand, there are some lobbyists and maybe friends of his son-in-law and others in the business” who would benefit from rescheduling and its associated tax benefits, meaning Sabet’s work is far from over.
Kevin Sabet came to the drug problem from an unusual personal angle. Born in the Midwest to a Bahai family that left Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he remembers a childhood in which he didn’t know anyone who so much as drank. (The Bahai religion, which is persecuted by Iran’s ruling Islamists, preaches the unity of all faiths — and total abstinence). When he moved to Orange County as a teenager, his perspective was radically different from that of his peers. And what he saw of addiction encouraged him to fight it. 
As an undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley, in the mid-’90s, he says, “I saw the influence of the [drug] culture. I saw marijuana shops before that was even a thing.” Then the rave culture arrived, giving rise to what he describes as a “mini-epidemic” associated with the hallucinogen ecstasy, also known as MDMA. As a student, he’d go to clubs and hand out postcards showing scans of drug-addled brains on one side, and a call-for-help number on the other.
His activism won him some attention in the press — and then a phone call from Barry McCaffrey, the retired US Army general then serving as President Bill Clinton’s drug czar. “I thought the call was fake,” Sabet recalls. But it wasn’t. Gen. McCaffrey was offering him a job as a speechwriter. Sabet accepted and moved to Washington before heading to Oxford to earn a master’s degree in social policy.
“Weed potency has only intensified, with some concentrates reaching near-pure levels of THC.” 
After 9/11, many of Sabet’s friends went off to Afghanistan in defense of the homeland, and he felt guilty writing papers at “Oxford, of all places, a comfortable place.” As it happens, the White House called again — this time, the George W. Bush administration with an offer to hire him as a senior speech writer on drug policy. “ ‘We want you to serve your country,’ ” he remembers the caller saying. “ ‘We know you’re not a Republican, but we also know you’re not a Democrat, and that’s fine with us.’ ” (His politics, as far as I can tell, are: whatever will stop this scourge.)
Yet another White House stint came during the Obama administration, which tapped him as senior drug-policy adviser (by then he’d finished his master’s and a doctorate at Oxford). It was around that time, the 2010s, that marijuana legalization went from a pothead’s dream to a serious business and political enterprise. Weed, the legalizers said, is harmless. Sabet disagreed, and he published a book, Reefer Sanity, to push back against the complacent mythology.
The book, in turn, led to his founding of a restrictionist advocacy group, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, or SAM, today the most visible drug-policy organization in Washington (a telling indicator of the growing concern about Big Weed).
But why the focus on marijuana? Why not the likes of fentanyl or heroin? Marijuana, Sabet answers, “is the most dangerous drug in my mind because it’s the most misunderstood.” There was a time when one could “experiment” with pot as part of the transition to adult responsibility and success. “The marijuana of today is doing the opposite,” he says, potentially derailing a person for life. “It’s causing violence, it’s causing erratic people to lose any sense of reality.”
And it’s addictive, a truth that Americans are still reluctant to accept. Sabet recalls speaking to a large group about the addiction angle, only for a member of the audience to tell him during the Q&A portion: “I use it every day, Kevin, and I’m qualified to tell you it’s not addictive.” 
The numbers say otherwise. As the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, regular use of marijuana has now outpaced drinking, with 18 million Americans reporting daily use, up from fewer than 1 million in the 1990s. In tandem, there has been an explosion in diagnoses of cannabis-use disorder — an insatiable craving for the drug that leaves people incapable of fulfilling ordinary responsibilities; 1 in 3 pot users suffers from it, with symptoms classified from mild to severe.
But aren’t alcohol and tobacco just as destructive? Why not call for a new Prohibition and extend it to cigarettes for good measure? 
“The reason I would say that Prohibition wasn’t sustainable as a policy in America is because alcohol has been so ingrained in Western civilization, since before the time of the Old Testament.” Then, too, alcohol is associated with human sociality, and for most people, the substance and its effects leave the body after 24 hours. Not so with weed, which lingers for much longer and at a cellular level. Sabet thus dismisses the argument that we shouldn’t restrict marijuana until alcohol is under control: “That’s like saying my headlights are broken, and just to be consistent, I’m going to break my tail lights, too.”
As for smoking: “Ninety percent of the people who built the Brooklyn Bridge were smokers. They were smoking at the time they built the Brooklyn Bridge. They could function. Maybe it even made them concentrate better,” Sabet says. The cigarette — unlike tobacco itself — “is a relatively new invention.” 
Lung-cancer deaths before the 1920s were almost unheard of. Only with the rise of a cigarette industry did the smoking crisis appear. And that, he says, is also what’s happening with legalized, industrial weed, a product hawked by growers chasing ever higher THC yields — mental health be damned. Moreover, as cigarette smoking rates decline, Big Tobacco is looking to enter the weed market, Sabet says.
So what to do now, beyond restriction (a cause that’s already lost in half of US states)? At the root of the drug crisis, Sabet thinks, is a “moral and spiritual breakdown.” Drugs, he suggests, offer too-easy answers to the search for meaning; or else they palliate the pain associated with modern life. Even so, Western societies can erect guardrails, for example by hindering the spread of weed advertising to ever-younger audiences. 
As for those already trapped, Sabet sees a role for behavioral incentive systems, such as programs that offer cash rewards for addicts who don’t use — or ones in which they face a choice between doing time or going to rehab. 
“I’m calling for a new effort on drugs,” he says, aware of the odium attached to the War on Drugs. “I don’t love the war analogy because wars have defined ends, or they should. And this will never stop. We will never stop having to stop drug use among young generations. . . . I embrace aiming for a drug-free society, even if it’s not possible. We’ve never had a violence-free society, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to aim for that.” 
Source : https://archive.is/DrvMY#selection-480.0-487.55
Filed under: Cannabis/Marijuana,Crime/Violence/Prison,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

Drug Enforcement Administration

by Rosa Valle-Lopez – December 03, 2025

|LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is intensifying its fight against the deadly threat of synthetic opioids with the launch of Fentanyl Free America, a comprehensive enforcement initiative and public awareness campaign aimed at reducing both the supply and demand for fentanyl. This effort underscores DEA’s unwavering commitment to protecting American lives and communities from the devastating impacts of fentanyl, which claimed nearly 50,000 lives last year according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Through intensified enforcement operations and heightened intelligence, DEA is applying unprecedented pressure on the global fentanyl supply chain, forcing narco-terrorists, like the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG Cartel, to change their business practices. This has led to encouraging signs of progress. DEA laboratory testing indicates 29% of fentanyl pills analyzed during fiscal year (FY) 2025 contained a potentially lethal dose, a significant drop from 76% of pills tested just two years prior in FY 2023. Additionally, fentanyl powder purity decreased to 10.3%, down from 19.5% during the same time period. These reductions in potency and purity correlate with a decline in synthetic opioid deaths to levels not seen since April 2020. 

As of December 1, 2025, DEA has seized more than 45 million fentanyl pills, and more than 9,320 pounds of fentanyl powder, removing an estimated 347 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl from our communities. DEA intelligence indicates a shift in cartel operations, with increased trafficking of fentanyl powder and domestic production of fentanyl pills. The seizure of more than two dozen pill press machines in October further highlights this trend.

“Fentanyl Free America represents DEA’s unwavering commitment to save American lives and end the fentanyl crisis, we are making significant progress in this fight, and we must continue to intensify efforts to disrupt the fentanyl supply and reduce demand,” said DEA Administrator Terrance Cole. “DEA is striking harder and evolving faster to dismantle the foreign terrorists fueling this crisis, while empowering all our partners to join the fight to prevent fentanyl-related tragedies. Together, we can achieve a fentanyl free America and create a safer future for generations to come.” 

The DEA Los Angeles Field Division was one of 23 domestic field divisions and seven foreign divisions that initiated Operation Fentanyl Free America in October.  This targeted enforcement effort resulted in the seizure of:

  • 1,027,206 Counterfeit pills
  • 70.97 kilograms of fentanyl powder
  • 978 kilograms methamphetamine
  • 149.32 kilograms of cocaine
  • 3 pill press machines
  • 15 firearms
  • $28,852,441 U.S. currency

Brian Clark, Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Division, said, “Our country will be safer, healthier, and more secure when fentanyl no longer threatens our communities. A fentanyl-free America is within reach thanks to increased enforcement, education, awareness, and prevention. We all play a critical role in the fight against fentanyl. We’ve made substantial progress, but we can’t stop now.”

The threat of poly-drug organizations; cartels that traffic a portfolio of drugs opposed to a single substance became even more apparent during Operation Fentanyl Free America.  Aside from producing less potent fentanyl, the cartels have increasingly diversified their operations in an attempt to minimize their risks and maximize profits, an evolution driven by opportunity and greed.

DEA remains at the forefront of the fight to disrupt trafficking networks and strengthen the government’s response to this epidemic.  Fentanyl Free America represents DEA’s heightened focus on enforcement, education, public awareness, and strategic partnerships. The goal of the campaign is clear: eliminate the fentanyl supply fueling the nation’s deadliest drug crisis. Since 2021, synthetic opioids have claimed nearly 325,000 American lives. 

The Fentanyl Free America campaign also emphasizes the importance of public engagement.  DEA encourages everyone from community leaders, clergy, educators, parents, physicians, pharmacists, and law enforcement to take an active role in raising awareness by protecting others through education; preventing fentanyl poisonings by understanding the dangers; and supporting those impacted.  Free resources including posters, radio advertising, billboards, and social media resources are available at dea.gov/fentanylfree.  

DEA’s efforts are part of a larger whole-of-government strategy to dismantle transnational criminal organizations and protect U.S. communities from fentanyl.  

Source: https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2025/12/03/dea-launches-fentanyl-free-america-initiative-combat-synthetic-drug-2

Filed under: Drug use-various effects,Fentanyl,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Synthetics,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

Published in Deccan Herald  – Deccan, India, 13 December 2025,

Overall, 15.1 per cent of participants reported lifetime use, 10.3 per cent reported past year use, and 7.2 per cent reported use in the past month of any substance, the study found.

New Delhi: School-going children are picking up drug and smoking habits and engaging in consumption of alcohol, with the average age of introduction to such harmful substances found to be around 13 years, suggesting a need for earlier interventions as early as primary school, a multi-city survey by AIIMS-Delhi said.

The findings also showed substance use increased in higher grades, with grade XI/XII students two times more likely to report use of substances when compared with grade VIII students. This emphasised the importance of continued prevention and intervention through middle and high school.
The study led by Dr Anju Dhawan of AIIMS’s National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, published in the National Medical Journal of India this month, looks at adolescent substance use across diverse regions.

The survey included 5,920 students from classes 8, 9, 11 and 12 in urban government, private and rural schools across 10 cities — Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Delhi, Dibrugarh, Hyderabad, Imphal, Jammu, Lucknow, Mumbai, and Ranchi. The data were collected between May 2018 and June 2019.

The average age of initiation for any substance was 12.9 (2.8) years. It was lowest for inhalants (11.3 years) followed by heroin (12.3 years) and opioid pharmaceuticals (without prescription; 12.5 years).

Overall, 15.1 per cent of participants reported lifetime use, 10.3 per cent reported past year use, and 7.2 per cent reported use in the past month of any substance, the study found.

The most common substances used in the past year, after tobacco (4 per cent) and alcohol (3.8 per cent), were opioids (2.8 per cent), followed by cannabis (2 per cent) and inhalants (1.9 per cent). Use of non-prescribed pharmaceutical opioids was most common among opioid users (90.2 per cent).

On being asked, ‘Do you think this substance is easily available for a person of your age’ separately for each substance category, nearly half the students (46.3 per cent) endorsed that tobacco products and more than one-third of the students (36.5 per cent) agreed that a person of their age can easily procure alcohol products.

Similarly, for Bhang (21.9 per cent), ganja/charas (16.1 per cent), inhalants (15.2 per cent), sedatives (13.7 per cent), opium and heroin (10 per cent each), the students endorsed that these can be easily procured.

About 95 per cent of the children, irrespective of their grade, agreed with the statement that ‘drug use is harmful’.

The rates of substance use (any) among boys were significantly higher than those of girls for substance use (ever), use in the past year and use in the past 30 days. Compared to grade VIII students, grade IX students were more likely, and grade XI/XII students were twice as likely to have used any substance (ever).

The likelihood of past-year use of any substance was also higher for grade IX students and for grade XI/XII students as compared to grade VIII students.

About 40 per cent of students mentioned that they had a family member who used tobacco or alcohol each. The use of cannabis (any product) and opioid (any product) by a family member was reported by 8.2 per cent and 3.9 per cent of students, respectively, while the use of other substances, such as inhalants/sedatives by family was 2-3 per cent, the study found.

A relatively smaller percentage of students reported use of tobacco or alcohol among peers as compared to among family members, while a higher percentage reported inhalants, sedatives, cannabis or opioid use among peers.

Children using substances (past year) compared to non-users reported significantly higher any substance use by their family members and peers.

There were 25.7 per cent students who replied ‘yes’ to the question ‘conflicts/fights often occur in your family’. Most students also replied affirmatively to ‘family members are aware of how their time is being spent’ and ‘damily members are aware of with whom they spend their time’.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/india/average-age-of-school-going-children-picking-up-drugs-smoking-habit-in-10-indian-cities-around-13-years-study-3829926
Filed under: Age-related,Culture,Latest News,Others (International News),Prevalence,Prevention and Intervention,Youth :

by Jared Culligan – Program Manager, Safety –

From 2019 to 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recorded more than 4,931 deaths in drunk driving traffic crashes during the month of December. In addition, a study by NHTSA found more than 54% of injured drivers had some amount of alcohol or drugs in their system at the time of the incident.

While this month focuses primarily on reducing impaired driving on the road, it’s also crucial to extend this conversation to safety in the workplace and how drunk and drug impaired driving can impact the construction industry.

What can your organization do to prevent drunk and drug impaired driving incidents?

  • Perform random and post-incident drug testing and have a recovery-ready workplace to engage and support employees in stopping substance misuse whenever possible.
  • Provide education and training materials on the effects of certain substances.

NAHB has several Video Toolbox Talks, available in English and Spanish, that cover drunk and drug impaired driving and its underlying causes. Please be sure to check out our content and help spread awareness as we approach the holidays:

In addition, several government establishments are promoting materials during this time of year. Check out their available resources here:

If you know of anybody that needs immediate help, please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Filed under: Drug Driving,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,USA,Workplace :

In fact, 20% of people over 50 who use cannabis products reported that at least once in the past year, they had driven within two hours of using the drug.

That means they likely got on the road while the THC in cannabis still impaired their reaction times, attention and other abilities that are important to driving safely.

The findings, from a University of Michigan team led by addiction psychologist Erin E. Bonar, Ph.D., are published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The data behind the study come from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, based at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Bonar and the poll team published an initial analysis in late 2024, but the new paper dives deeper into the data.

So much of the effort to reduce ‘driving while high’ through awareness campaigns has focused on young people, but our findings show this is a cross-generational issue. Targeting messages at those middle age and older adults with the highest risk of post-use driving could also include message about the options for addressing the health issues that they may be trying to self-treat with cannabis.”

Erin E. Bonar, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, U-M Medical School

Those most likely to drive after using cannabis

Adults age 50 and over who use cannabis products daily or nearly daily were three times as likely to say they had driven soon after using, compared with those who only use cannabis rarely, the study finds.

Those who use cannabis for mental health reasons were twice as likely to say they’d driven after using it, compared with those who didn’t list mental health among their reasons for choosing to use cannabis.

And men over 50 who use cannabis were 72% more likely to drive after using THC-containing products, compared with women in the same age group who use cannabis.

In all, the poll showed that 21% of people age 50 and up had used a cannabis product at least once in the last year, including 27% of those aged 50 to 64 and 17% of those aged 65 and up.

Of the 729 respondents over 50 who said they had used cannabis in the past year, 27% said they use it daily or almost daily, while 43% had used it only once or twice. The rest were divided between those who use monthly (14%) and weekly (16%).

Beyond the riskiest groups

While the study results suggest some groups of people over 50 who could especially benefit from targeted preventive messaging about the risks of driving after using cannabis, broad-based messaging appears to be needed, Bonar says.

 

There were also no differences in post-use driving by age, race, ethnicity, income, history of loneliness, or caregiver status.

Those who live in states where recreational cannabis has been legalized were no more likely to drive after using the drug than those living in other states.

In addition to mental health, the poll asked about other reasons that adults over 50 might use cannabis, including several related to health. In all, 52% of people over 50 who use cannabis cited a mental health or mood-related motive for using cannabis, and 67% cited a sleep-related motive.

There was no difference in whether participants drove after cannabis use based on using it for pain, other medical reasons or sleep-related reasons, once the researchers adjusted the data. However, there was some signal that those who use it for sleep reasons may be more likely to drive after using.

This suggests a need to help adults age 50 and up understand that there are options for treating these conditions that have much more evidence behind them than cannabis, said Bonar. It also highlights the need for more robust research on which health conditions cannabis might address most effectively.

Age-specific messaging

Bonar and her coauthors also note that driving guidelines for people over age 50 who choose to use cannabis should also consider the effects of aging on cognitive and motor abilities, and the potential for interactions between cannabis and the prescription drugs that these adults are more likely to take.

Helping adults over 50 who choose to use cannabis understand the potential impacts of today’s more potent cannabis, compared with the forms available in their younger years, is also important, says Bonar.

And when advising people over 50 about reducing driving risks related to their cannabis use, she said, health care providers and public health agencies may want to focus on strategies like using cannabis at times when they’re unlikely to need to drive, such as before bedtime, and the importance of planning ahead for safe transportation via a designated driver or ride share service.

Bonar is a member of IHPI and of the U-M Addiction Center, the U-M Injury Prevention Center and the U-M Eisenberg Family Depression Center.

In addition to the new paper on cannabis use and driving among people over 50, the National Poll on Healthy Aging recently issued a report on driving behaviors among people age 65 and over. Find it at https://michmed.org/w4Ayn

Bonar and colleagues also recently published an Injury Prevention Center report on the impact of recreational cannabis legalization in Michigan, including data on motor vehicle crashes and fatalities linked to cannabis.

In addition to Bonar, the study’s authors are Lianlian Lei, Matthias Kirch, Kristen P. Hassett, Erica Solway, Dianne C. Singer, Sydney N. Strunk, J. Scott Roberts, Preeti N. Malani, and NPHA director Jeffrey T. Kullgren.

Source: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251209/Prevention-efforts-for-cannabis-impaired-driving-should-also-focus-on-older-adults.aspx

Filed under: Age-related,Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug Driving,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,USA :
by Erin E. Bonar, Ph.D et al. – News Release Michigan Medicine – University of Michigan

Among people over 50 who use cannabis, those most likely to drive after partaking are men, people who use daily, and those who use THC-containing products for mental health reasons

With cannabis-related vehicle crashes on the rise, a new study suggests that prevention campaigns shouldn’t focus just on young people.

In fact, 20% of people over 50 who use cannabis products reported that at least once in the past year, they had driven within two hours of using the drug.

That means they likely got on the road while the THC in cannabis still impaired their reaction times, attention and other abilities that are important to driving safely.

The findings, from a University of Michigan team led by addiction psychologist Erin E. Bonar, Ph.D., are published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The data behind the study come from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, based at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Bonar and the poll team published an initial analysis in late 2024, but the new paper dives deeper into the data.

“So much of the effort to reduce ‘driving while high’ through awareness campaigns has focused on young people, but our findings show this is a cross-generational issue,” said Bonar, a professor of psychiatry at the U-M Medical School. “Targeting messages at those middle age and older adults with the highest risk of post-use driving could also include message about the options for addressing the health issues that they may be trying to self-treat with cannabis.”

Those most likely to drive after using cannabis

Adults age 50 and over who use cannabis products daily or nearly daily were three times as likely to say they had driven soon after using, compared with those who only use cannabis rarely, the study finds.

Those who use cannabis for mental health reasons were twice as likely to say they’d driven after using it, compared with those who didn’t list mental health among their reasons for choosing to use cannabis.

And men over 50 who use cannabis were 72% more likely to drive after using THC-containing products, compared with women in the same age group who use cannabis.

In all, the poll showed that 21% of people age 50 and up had used a cannabis product at least once in the last year, including 27% of those aged 50 to 64 and 17% of those aged 65 and up.

Of the 729 respondents over 50 who said they had used cannabis in the past year, 27% said they use it daily or almost daily, while 43% had used it only once or twice. The rest were divided between those who use monthly (14%) and weekly (16%).

Beyond the riskiest groups

While the study results suggest some groups of people over 50 who could especially benefit from targeted preventive messaging about the risks of driving after using cannabis, broad-based messaging appears to be needed, Bonar says.

In all, 65% of the people in the survey who said they use cannabis were between the ages of 50 and 64, with the rest over 65. But there was no difference between the age groups in likelihood of post-cannabis-use driving.

There were also no differences in post-use driving by age, race, ethnicity, income, history of loneliness, or caregiver status.

Those who live in states where recreational cannabis has been legalized were no more likely to drive after using the drug than those living in other states.

In addition to mental health, the poll asked about other reasons that adults over 50 might use cannabis, including several related to health. In all, 52% of people over 50 who use cannabis cited a mental health or mood-related motive for using cannabis, and 67% cited a sleep-related motive.

There was no difference in whether participants drove after cannabis use based on using it for pain, other medical reasons or sleep-related reasons, once the researchers adjusted the data. However, there was some signal that those who use it for sleep reasons may be more likely to drive after using.

This suggests a need to help adults age 50 and up understand that there are options for treating these conditions that have much more evidence behind them than cannabis, said Bonar. It also highlights the need for more robust research on which health conditions cannabis might address most effectively.

Age-specific messaging

Bonar and her co-authors also note that driving guidelines for people over age 50 who choose to use cannabis should also consider the effects of aging on cognitive and motor abilities, and the potential for interactions between cannabis and the prescription drugs that these adults are more likely to take.  

Helping adults over 50 who choose to use cannabis understand the potential impacts of today’s more potent cannabis, compared with the forms available in their younger years, is also important, says Bonar.

And when advising people over 50 about reducing driving risks related to their cannabis use, she said, health care providers and public health agencies may want to focus on strategies like using cannabis at times when they’re unlikely to need to drive, such as before bedtime, and the importance of planning ahead for safe transportation via a designated driver or ride share service.

Bonar is a member of IHPI and of the U-M Addiction Center, the U-M Injury Prevention Center and the U-M Eisenberg Family Depression Center.

In addition to the new paper on cannabis use and driving among people over 50, the National Poll on Healthy Aging recently issued a report on driving behaviors among people age 65 and over. Find it at https://michmed.org/w4Ayn

Bonar and colleagues also recently published an Injury Prevention Center report on the impact of recreational cannabis legalization in Michigan, including data on motor vehicle crashes and fatalities linked to cannabis.

In addition to Bonar, the study’s authors are Lianlian Lei, Matthias Kirch, Kristen P. Hassett, Erica Solway, Dianne C. Singer, Sydney N. Strunk, J. Scott Roberts, Preeti N. Malani, and NPHA director Jeffrey T. Kullgren.

Citation: Driving after cannabis consumption among US adults ages 50 years and older: A short communication, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, DOI:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2025.112985, https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1mCG51LiD3LPLZ

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1109142

Filed under: Age-related,Cannabis/Marijuana,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,USA,Youth :
By Ryan McLaughlin & Josh Babcock, College of Veterinary Medicine, Washington State University – December 11, 2025

It isn’t just people — when given the chance rats may also use cannabis to cope with stress, according to a study by researchers at Washington State University.

Published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the study was designed to examine cannabis-seeking behavior and found that rats with higher natural stress levels are far more likely to self-administer the popular recreational drug.

“We ran rats through this extensive battery of behavioral and biological tests, and what we found was that when we look at all of these different factors and all the variables that we measured, stress levels seem to matter the most when it comes to cannabis use,” said Ryan McLaughlin, associate professor in WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Looking at traits ranging from social behaviors to sex, cognition, reward, and arousal, McLaughlin and his team of undergraduate and graduate student researchers created a behavioral profile for each rat. Then, over the course of three weeks, rats were observed for one hour daily as they were given the option to self-administer cannabis by poking their nose in a vapor port to release a three-second dispersal of cannabis vapor in an air-tight chamber.

During that one-hour period, student researchers tracked the number of “nose-pokes” by each rat and found a direct correlation to the number of nose-pokes and baseline stress hormone levels.

By measuring the stress hormone corticosterone in the rodents, the equivalent to the stress hormone cortisol in humans, the team found rats with higher natural stress hormone levels were far more likely to self-administer cannabis.

“If you want to really boil it down, there are baseline levels of stress hormones that can predict rates of cannabis self-administration, and I think that only makes sense given that the most common reason that people habitually use cannabis is to cope with stress,” McLaughlin said.

He said it’s important to note that it was a rat’s resting baseline stress levels that were associated with cannabis self-administration, not stress that fluctuates in real time with exercise or mentally challenging tasks. Stress hormone levels were also calculated after exposure to a stressor and showed no significant link to cannabis-seeking behavior.

There were also significant relationships between rates of cannabis self-administration and measures of “cognitive flexibility”, which is our ability to adapt to changing rules.

“Animals that were less flexible in shifting between rules, when we tested them in a cognitive task, tended to show stronger rates of cannabis-seeking behavior,” he said. “So, animals that rely more heavily on visual cues to guide their decision making, those rats, when we tested their motivation to self-administer cannabis vapor, were also very highly motivated rats.”

The study also identified a link between high morning corticosterone and low endocannabinoid levels to cannabis self-administration, although not as strongly as baseline stress.

‘Our findings highlight potential early or pre-use markers that could one day support screening and prevention strategies’ – Ryan McLaughlin, associate professor, Washington State University

Endocannabinoids are compounds produced on demand to help the body maintain a state of physiological balance, or homeostasis.

“There’s some thought behind why people might be more prone to use cannabis, and that maybe THC serves as a reasonable substitute for endocannabinoids in individuals that have lower endocannabinoid levels,” McLaughlin said. “So, perhaps there’s more of a drive to supplement that with cannabis.”

With more and more states decriminalizing cannabis and legalizing recreational cannabis, McLaughlin said it’s critical to understand the effects of the drug and the grips of drug abuse.

“Our findings highlight potential early or pre-use markers that could one day support screening and prevention strategies,” McLaughlin said. “I could certainly envision a scenario where having an assessment of baseline cortisol might provide some level of insight into whether there’s an increased propensity for you to develop problematic drug use patterns later in life.”

Media Contacts

  • Ryan McLaughlin and Josh  Babcock, WSU Department of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience

Source:https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2025/12/11/rats-may-seek-cannabis-to-cope-with-stress-wsu-research-finds/

Filed under: Brain and Behaviour,Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Mental Health,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

By  CLAIRE RUSH, Associated Press –

November 17, 2025

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ruled there would be no prison time for a former Alaska Airlines pilot who had taken psychedelic mushrooms days before he tried to cut the engines of a passenger flight in 2023 while riding off-duty in the cockpit.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Baggio in Portland, Oregon, sentenced Joseph Emerson to time served and three years’ supervised release, ending a case that drew attention to the need for cockpit safety and more mental health support for pilots.

Federal prosecutors wanted a year in prison, while his attorneys sought probation.

“Pilots are not perfect. They are human,” Baggio said. “They are people and all people need help sometimes.”

Emerson hugged his attorneys and tearfully embraced his wife after he was sentenced.

Emerson was subdued by the flight crew after trying to cut the engines of a Horizon Air flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco on Oct. 22, 2023, while he was riding in an extra seat in the cockpit. The plane was diverted and landed in Portland with more than 80 people.

Emerson told police he was despondent over a friend’s recent death, had taken psychedelic mushrooms about two days earlier, and hadn’t slept in over 40 hours. He has said he believed he was dreaming and was trying to wake up by grabbing two red handles that would have activated the fire suppression system and cut fuel to the engines.

He spent 46 days in jail and was released pending trial in December 2023, with requirements that he undergo mental health services, stay off drugs and alcohol, and keep away from aircraft.

Attorney Ethan Levi described his client’s actions as “a product of untreated alcohol use disorder.” Emerson had been drinking and accepted mushrooms “because of his lower inhibitions,” Levi said.

Emerson went to treatment after jail and has been sober since, he added.

Baggio said the case is a cautionary tale. Before she sentenced him, Emerson said he regretted the harm he caused.

“I’m not a victim. I am here as a direct result of my actions,” he told the court. “I can tell you that this very tragic event has forced me to grow as an individual.”

The judge sentenced Emerson to time served (46 days) and put him on probation for 3 years, with some restrictions. 

Source: Claire Rush – Associated Press

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Addendum by John Coleman Ph D, President, Drug Watch International

From: John J. Coleman. PhD <john.coleman.phd@gmail.com>
Sent: 19 November 2025 13:21
To: ndpa@drugprevent.org.uk
Subject: RE: Question about Psilocybin

It is now known that his employer, Horizon Airlines, terminated him as soon as his arrest was reported. Feelings here are very mixed over this outcome and some thought he should have been given some additional prison time. Had he been drunk on alcohol, things would have been different and he likely would have wound up in prison. In John Coleman’s opinion, being under the influence of psychedelics is even worse because the person can appear normal, as this fellow did, and still pose a serious risk to self and others.

Coleman  wrote the judge a letter and recommended she include several thousand hours of community service in the form of lecturing school children and young adults on the dangers of psychedelics, but she apparently didn’t consider it. 

Here’s what Coleman advised the judge:

November 11, 2025 to The Hon. Amy M. Baggio – United States District Judge – District of Oregon

In re: Sentencing of Joseph David Emerson, defendant in case #3:25-cr-00306, USA v. Emerson

Dear Judge Baggio,

Please forgive me for using an email to send this letter to you. I’m afraid regular mail would be too slow to get from one side of the country to the other.

On Monday, November 17, 2025, I believe you have scheduled a sentencing hearing for the defendant, Joseph David Emerson, who, in 2023, while under the influence of psilocybin, a Schedule I controlled substance, attempted to cause the destruction of an Alaska Airlines flight containing 84 passengers and crew, including himself. Emerson has admitted to the charge, among others, of interfering with a flight and flight crew (Title 49, United States Code, Section 46504). He has signed a plea agreement, and media reports indicate that the federal prosecutor has agreed to recommend a sentence of one year, along with restitution for costs incurred in the emergency landing and the rebooking of stranded passengers.

On a personal note, I served 33 years as a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration and headed several offices, including that of Assistant Administrator for Operations, the top non-appointed position in the agency. During the course of my long career, especially when working as a street agent in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Newark, and Boston, I was often asked what the most dangerous drug a drug abuser could take. My answer, your honor, was always the same: psilocybin. Over the years, I witnessed hundreds of people severely addicted to opiates and stimulants (like amphetamines and cocaine), and after completing treatment, they would bounce back and be productive members of society again. Some today are famous people, even high-level government officials, people I knew when they were hitting the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Many, indeed, most, rebounded in ways that I can only say were inspiring for me and my fellow officers.

The sole exception for which recovery never seemed possible involved those using psilocybin, especially chronic users of the drug. I was told by someone who would know that in street parlance, “psilocybin burns out the brain cells.” Some of the most bizarre crimes I ever encountered – people cutting off their own limbs and the heads of their spouses and children – were more often than not the result of taking psilocybin. Some were just too gruesome for words. My colleagues and I, in such instances, would suspect long before the tox or autopsy reports came in that psilocybin was the causative agent.

In closing, I would ask that, whatever you decide to do with Mr. Emerson as a result of his imprudent use of psilocybin, you consider including several thousand hours of directed community service in which he is accepted by an appropriate state or federal department, on behalf of which he will make presentations to school audiences and others about the dangers of using psychedelic drugs, especially psilocybin. Mr. Emerson was a commercial pilot, someone who even now might draw a considerable amount of attention. His personal experiences, given in a format of educating others, would surely go a long way toward keeping this and other dangerous drugs away from vulnerable people. And it might even go a long way toward helping him to deal with his own mental health issues.

Thank you for considering this suggestion, and thank you for your service to our nation.

Sincerely, – J. Coleman – [signed]

Source: John J. Coleman, PhD. President – Drug Watch International, Inc.

Filed under: Brain and Behaviour,Culture,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Psychedelics,USA :

by Rosa Valle-Lopez – November 19, 2025

The synthetic opioid is 100 times more potent than Fentanyl

LOS ANGELES – An operation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration Los Angeles Field Division in October uncovered 628,000 pills containing carfentanil. According to the DEA, carfentanil is a synthetic opioid approximately 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times more potent than fentanyl. The majority of the pills were seized from one stash location in Los Angeles County. The operation also resulted in the arrest of one suspected drug trafficker.

Brian Clark, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Los Angeles Field Division, said, “This is a massive seizure, 628,000 carfentanil pills taken from a single drug trafficker. Our agents, with vital backing from local partners, mitigated a catastrophic danger. The urgency of this matter cannot be overstated, another stark reminder to those vulnerable to drug misuse. Know what you’re taking, because one pill can kill.”

According to the DEA, carfentanil was originally developed for veterinary use, more specifically to tranquilize large animals such as elephants. The white powdery drug closely resembles other substances like fentanyl or cocaine and can come in several forms. The DEA warns that carfentanil and other fentanyl analogues present a serious risk to public safety, first responder, medical, treatment, and laboratory personnel.

This operation was led by DEA L.A. Field Division Southwest Border Group 1 special agents and task force officers, with key support from the Vernon Police Department, the Baldwin Park Police Department, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Testing of the seized pills was performed by the DEA Southwest Regional Laboratory.

According to DEA L.A. Field Division, local law enforcement and first responders have recently seen an increased presence of carfentanil in the illicit drug market, which has been linked to a number of overdose deaths in various parts of the country. According to the CDC, deaths involving carfentanil increased approximately sevenfold – from 29 deaths from January to June 2023, to 238 deaths from January to June 2024. Carfentanil has now been detected in 37 states.

The L.A. Field Division stands as one of the DEA’s most complex and high-impact divisions, covering Southern California, Nevada, Hawaii, and the U.S. Territories of Guam and Saipan.

For additional safety information, please see the resource below:

https://www.dea.gov/stories/2025/2025-05/2025-05-14/carfentanil-synthetic-opioid-unlike-any-other

Source: https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2025/11/19/dea-operation-nets-628000-carfentanil-pills-la-county

Filed under: Addiction,Carfentanil,Drug use-various effects,Fentanyl,Latest News,Opioids,Prevention and Intervention,Synthetics,Treatment and Addiction,USA :
News Article by US News ReporterDec 01, 2025

There is “insufficient” evidence supporting the use of cannabis or cannabinoids for most medical purposes, a new review has concluded.

“We reviewed the totality of the evidence—over a thousand studies with emphasis on randomized trials, meta-analyses, and systematic reviews,” Dr Kevin Hill, one of the review authors, and director of addiction psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, told Newsweek.

He said that “beyond the FDA-approved indications, the evidence for cannabis and cannabinoids as a medical treatment is limited.”

The review was published online in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Network on November 26.

Why It Matters

There has been increasing use of cannabis and cannabinoids for medical treatment in recent years. It has gained popularity among cancer patients, for managing nausea, pain and reduced appetite, and it is favored among patients with chronic pain for its analgesic properties.

However, its use medically has gathered some concern, as while certain patients may experience benefits, some medical professionals have said that there is not enough research to determine if the positives outweigh any future negatives.

More recently research has also highlighted how cannabis use among cancer patients may reduce the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments, and that its use can impact female egg quality and embryo development.

After the Senate passed its funding package to end the U.S. government shutdown, which included a measure that will lead to the banning of many THC products, the issue of cannabis use has been in the spotlight.

What The Review Found

The review found that 27 percent of adults from the U.S. and Canada have used cannabis for medical purposes, while 10.5 percent of Americans report using cannabidiol (CBD) for therapeutic purposes.

“Cannabis and cannabinoids like CBD have a broad range of effects, so, with so many people suffering from medical problems, it is not hard to see why they might consider cannabis and cannabinoids as treatments,” Hill said.

However, he said that “the evidence is not strong” for their use medically.

While doctors may “consider cannabis and cannabinoids as third-line treatments in various clinical scenarios,” Hill said, “the lack of evidence coupled with significant risks means that, most often, the risks outweigh the benefits.”

The review found that almost a third of adult users of medical cannabis go on to develop a cannabis use disorder—a complex condition that is a type of substance use disorder, where a patient can experience a problematic pattern of cannabis use that causes them distress or impairs their life.

It also found that daily inhaled cannabis use compared to nondaily use was associated with higher risks of coronary heart disease, heart attack, and stroke,

“The adverse effects of cannabis upon one’s physical health are becoming more well-defined,” Hill said.

He said that the purpose of this review was to provide clinicians and patients with “better information with which to have sensible, evidence-based conversations,” conversations about medical treatment which he said should take place between doctors and patients, and “not between budtenders and customers in dispensaries.”

What Other Experts Think

Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not involved in the review, told Newsweek that while there is “high-quality evidence supporting certain very specific medical uses,” most medical use is “predicated on much less evidentiary basis, and below what is expected for FDA approval.”

He said that what is “important” about this review is that it helps “counter the messaging from cannabis treatment advocates, who promote the good news, and the hopes, without balance or caution.”

“The actual situation is nuanced, and more gets written that pushes for an overly optimistic view of cannabis’ medical value,” he said.

Yasmin Hurd, chair of translational neuroscience and the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai, also told Newsweek that the findings are “notable” because it “confirms what has been previously published from other reviews and consensus reports like those from the National Academies, noting that there is insufficient evidence for the use of cannabis to treat most medical conditions.”

While the authors have “done a very comprehensive and in my view very useful review of this topic,” Dr Igor Grant, a professor of psychiatry and director of the HIV Neurobehavioral Research Program and Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, at the University of California, San Diego, told Newsweek, “it is clear from the way the article is written that the authors have significant concerns about the use of medicinal cannabis, and as such have tended to emphasize many of the negatives, including potential side effects.”

He said that this “does not mean that the side effects are not there, nor does it negate the fact that evidence for efficacy of medicinal cannabis is weak in many areas. But there does seem to be a definite slant.”

He also said that while this review highlights cardiovascular risks, other research has also shown there is “actually no statistically reliable evidence to suggest that cannabis users suffer more cardiovascular risk, including no effect on hypertension, myocardial infarction, and presence of coronary atherosclerosis.”

What People Are Saying

Caulkins told Newsweek: “We customarily expect medicinal drugs to be produced in a way that guarantees consistency from dose to dose. Every pill in a bottle of pills that is prescribed by a physician, manufactured by a pharmaceutical company and distributed by a licensed pharmacy should have essentially the exact same dose. With the exception of the FDA-approved and regulated cannabinoids (which account for a tiny share of all consumption that is described or understood to be “medical cannabis”), there is not that same quality control for medical cannabis.”

He added: “Cannabis smoke contains known carcinogens. Sometimes good medical practice exposes patients to carcinogenic risk, notably radiation treatment does. But we do that carefully and knowingly, because the risk of untreated cancer is greater than the risk that radiation therapy will create new cancer. But given that in many cases the upside benefit of medical cannabis is not well established, it is striking how cavalier the system is with respect to known carcinogens present in cannabis smoke. For most categories of consumer products, the presence of known carcinogens is sufficient to have that product taken off the shelves, even if there are not epidemiological studies documenting effects on cancer rates at the population level. For whatever reason or reasons, we collectively seem surprisingly unconcerned about that risk regarding smoked cannabis, medical or non-medical.”

Hurd told Newsweek: “There remain numerous concerns about cannabis for medical use since there is so little known about whether it works, what particular conditions it might be helpful to treat and what dose and dosing regime for clinicians to recommend. In addition, there are also concerns that individuals will use ‘medicinal cannabis’ obtained from sources where the contents are not verified and cannabis with high THC concentration has well known significant side effects. Cannabis should be used with caution in medical settings. As such, like many medicines, especially where there is very limited information available, it is best to start low dose and go slow. Also, cannabis should not be the first line therapy and instead used only for conditions where conventional therapies have failed.”

She added: “It is important that the public also begins to better understand that cannabis is a very complex plant with hundreds of chemicals whereas ‘medicine’ is normally a product that has specific, well studied components. Also, cannabis is different from specific cannabinoids, like cannabidiol (CBD), which has FDA approval for the treatment of certain epilepsy conditions.”

Grant told Newsweek: “While I agree that physicians who are counseling patients about potential use of cannabis for various indications need to both warn patients about lack of evidence in many cases, the possibility of side effects, and certainly evaluate a patient in the event they have major psychiatric or substance use disorder, there are, as they note protocols for doing this, and in some ways, assuring safety. I believe also that the risk of people who use medicinal cannabis, who are often people who are older with various kinds of chronic conditions, is rather low that they will systematically increase their use to the point of developing a cannabis use disorder. Cannabis use disorder is real, and a concern, but very unlikely to be a problem in the clinical setting. The article tends at times to conflate recreational and medicinal use: that’s a bit like using data from opioid addiction to comment on appropriate use of opioids in a clinical setting.”

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/does-cannabis-actually-have-medical-benefits-11118810

Filed under: Brain and Behaviour,Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Health,Latest News,Marijuana and Medicine,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,USA :
Story by Camilla Jessen – Received by DWI: 02 December 2025 
Cannabis users warn of painful syndrome linked to long-term use

A growing number of regular cannabis users in the U.S. are coming forward with accounts of a severe and little-known disorder linked to long-term marijuana use.

The condition, now officially recognized by global health authorities, has led some people to hospital with pain so intense they describe it as unbearable.

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Troubling symptoms

As of 2023, roughly 17% of Americans reported using cannabis, with 24 states legalizing recreational use.

But while the drug is widely used for its therapeutic and recreational effects, doctors are increasingly treating patients who present with repeated vomiting, severe abdominal pain and dehydration.

The pattern has been identified as cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), a disorder seen primarily in people who use cannabis daily or near-daily over long periods.

UW Medicine says symptoms often appear within 24 hours of the most recent use and can persist for days.

The syndrome is sometimes nicknamed “scromiting,” a blend of “screaming” and “vomiting,” due to the intensity of the episodes.

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Users speak out

Many who have experienced CHS have shared their stories online.

One TikTok user described the onset as “the worst physical pain I’ve ever experienced… and I birthed a 9-pound baby.”

Another said she “almost died,” explaining she couldn’t keep food or water down for a week.

Despite the episodes, some users admitted they continued smoking, which only worsened the symptoms. One woman, now six months sober, said quitting was the only way to stop the cycle.

“Smoking nearly killed me,” she said.

Medical uncertainty

Doctors still do not fully understand why the condition occurs.

The Cleveland Clinic says one leading theory is that chronic use overstimulates cannabinoid receptors in the body’s endocannabinoid system, disrupting normal digestive regulation.

The World Health Organization has listed CHS in its International Classification of Diseases, allowing clinicians to formally track cases for the first time.

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Researchers say the new designation will provide more reliable data on cannabis-related health problems.

Calls for more awareness

Beatriz Carlini of the University of Washington School of Medicine said the classification will help quantify a growing issue.

“A new code for cannabis hyperemesis syndrome will supply important hard evidence on cannabis-adverse events,” she noted.

Sources: UW Medicine; Cleveland Clinic; WHO ICD, Unilad

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/other/cannabis-users-warn-of-painful-syndrome-linked-to-long-term-use/ar-AA1Rya8d?

Filed under: Addiction,Brain and Behaviour,Cannabis/Marijuana,Drug use-various effects,Latest News,Mental Health,Prevention and Intervention,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

December 03, 2025

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Houston –The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is intensifying its fight against the deadly threat of synthetic opioids with the launch of Fentanyl Free America, a comprehensive enforcement initiative and public awareness campaign aimed at reducing both the supply and demand for fentanyl. This effort underscores DEA’s unwavering commitment to protecting American lives and communities from the devastating impacts of fentanyl, which claimed nearly 50,000 lives last year according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Through intensified enforcement operations and heightened intelligence, DEA is applying unprecedented pressure on the global fentanyl supply chain, forcing narco-terrorists, like the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG Cartel, to change their business practices. This has led to encouraging signs of progress. DEA laboratory testing indicates 29% of fentanyl pills analyzed during fiscal year (FY) 2025 contained a potentially lethal dose, a significant drop from 76% of pills tested just two years prior in FY 2023. Additionally, fentanyl powder purity decreased to 10.3%, down from 19.5% during the same time period. These reductions in potency and purity correlate with a decline in synthetic opioid deaths to levels not seen since April 2020. 

As of December 1, 2025, DEA has seized more than 45 million fentanyl pills, and more than 9,320 pounds of fentanyl powder, removing an estimated 347 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl from our communities. DEA intelligence indicates a shift in cartel operations, with increased trafficking of fentanyl powder and domestic production of fentanyl pills. The seizure of more than two dozen pill press machines in October further highlights this trend.

The DEA Houston Field Division was one of 23 domestic field divisions and seven foreign divisions that initiated Operation Fentanyl Free America in October. During a period of a month, this targeted enforcement effort resulted in the seizure of:

  • 350 Counterfeit pills 

    • which is equivalent to 103 deadly doses 

  • 149 pounds fentanyl powder

  • 3154 pounds methamphetamine

  • 30 pounds of cocaine

  • 36 firearms

  • $249,285 U.S. currency

“Operation Fentanyl Free America seizures in October highlighted the ongoing threat of fentanyl. Despite the steady decline in overdoses in most of the South Texas,” said Special Agent in Charge of the Houston Field Division Jonathan C. Pullen. Fentanyl is still an imminent threat, and we can’t afford to look the other way. We will continue to get this poison off the streets, ensuring safer communities for generations to come” 

The threat of poly-drug organizations; cartels that traffic a portfolio of drugs opposed to a single substance became even more apparent during Operation Fentanyl Free America.  Aside from producing less potent fentanyl, the cartels have increasingly diversified their operations in an attempt to minimize their risks and maximize profits, an evolution driven by opportunity and greed.

DEA remains at the forefront of the fight to disrupt trafficking networks and strengthen the government’s response to this epidemic.  Fentanyl Free America represents DEA’s heightened focus on enforcement, education, public awareness, and strategic partnerships. The goal of the campaign is clear: eliminate the fentanyl supply fueling the nation’s deadliest drug crisis. Since 2021, synthetic opioids have claimed nearly 325,000 American lives. 

The Fentanyl Free America campaign also emphasizes the importance of public engagement.  DEA encourages everyone from community leaders, clergy, educators, parents, physicians, pharmacists, and law enforcement to take an active role in raising awareness by protecting others through education; preventing fentanyl poisonings by understanding the dangers; and supporting those impacted.  Free resources including posters, radio advertising, billboards, and social media resources are available at dea.gov/fentanylfree.  

DEA’s efforts are part of a larger whole-of-government strategy to dismantle transnational criminal organizations and protect U.S. communities from fentanyl.  

SOURCE: https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2025/12/03/dea-launches-fentanyl-free-america-initiative-combat-synthetic-drug-3

Filed under: Carfentanil,Fentanyl,Latest News,Prevention and Intervention,Strategy and Policy,Synthetics,Treatment and Addiction,USA :

European Commission logo  EUROPEAN COMMISSION

  • News article from Directorate-General for Communication – 4 December 2025

Drug trafficking is a global criminal business that is undermining health and security in Europe. Criminal networks that sell illicit drugs such as cocaine and synthetic drugs drive violence and corruption in our streets. Drug abuse, particularly among the young, poses an increasing problem. The European Commission has responded to this challenge with a new drugs strategy and action plan to stop the traffic of narcotics into the EU.

Drug traffickers change their trafficking routes frequently and increasingly operate online. The strategy will tackle this behaviour by focusing on 5 key areas:

  •  Enhancing preparedness and response to drug related threats
  • Protecting public health, by strengthening prevention, treatment and reintegration measures
  • Strengthening security, with stricter rules against organised crime
  • Measures to prevent drug-related harm focused on protecting young people from recruitment into organised crime
  • Stronger partnerships with non-EU countries

The EU Drugs Agency with its new, stronger mandate, will play a key role in supporting EU countries in these proposed areas of action.

The strategy is complemented by an action plan that will focus on:

  • Adapting to evolving routes and methods used by criminal networks
  • Preventing crime and reduce drug-related violence, particularly among young people
  • Stepping up cooperation of law enforcement, judiciary and customs authorities
  • Addressing the challenge of synthetic drugs and drug precursors (chemicals used to manufacture narcotics)
  • Advancing research and development and innovation  
  • Strengthening international cooperation and further reinforcing partnerships with key countries.

The European Commission has also proposed new rules to make the monitoring and controlling of drug precursors and designer precursors clearer and simpler. Proposed new measures include real-time reporting of significant seizures of drug precursors and a ban on designer precursors.

Source:  https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/new-measures-tackle-drug-trafficking-and-help-protect-europes-health-and-security-2025-12-04_en

Filed under: Crime/Violence/Prison,Europe,Trafficking,Youth :

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