Worldcrunch
Cheap cocaine is flooding the European drug market, escalating conflicts in open drug scenes, everywhere except the historically drug-tolerant Zurich. A visit to this Swiss city — known as an open-air hotspot for crack and heroin in the 1990s — with a different approach for taking on drug addiction.
The crisis of gang violence in Ecuador is being driven by international drug trafficking, a major illicit economy that exists because of the ban on drugs. It and other Latin American countries are paying a high price for this unjust ban, and must unite to call for its end.
The Biden administration and Colombia’s new government seem to agree on the need for a new approach to drugs policy. But will they be able to find support in their countries to forge a new strategy?
The three victims, 14 and younger, were contacted while playing the online game Free Fire, and promised paid work.
MEXICO CITY — The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, has long controlled the drug trade in nine states in Mexico’s south and west. But in recent months, the cartel has edged out Mexican and Colombian rivals to conquer the narcotics market in the U.S. Writing for Mexico City daily El Universal, investigative journalist Laura […]
TEGUCIGALPA — The Central American countries of the “Northern Triangle” (Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala) have long battled gang wars and drug-related crime that have left the region’s cities among the world’s most dangerous. Individual attempts in the past to defuse the crisis, including local gang truces and national crackdowns on drugs, have been largely […]
VIZCATÁN DEL ENE — Deep in the Peruvian Andes, a valley dominated by the drug trade now finds itself at the heart of a resurgent Marxist insurgency. The valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, known as the Vraem, was the scene of an April 11 attack by the Shining Path that left eight […]
CASABLANCA — With one proposal to criminalize tobacco and another to legalize marijuana, Moroccan politics these days is smoking. Casablanca-based daily Aujourd’hui Le Maroc reports that the governing Justice and Development Party (PJD) is proposing a law that would prohibit the sale and consumption of tobacco from hookah water pipes across the country. The moderate […]
MEXICO CITY — Who’s killing Mexico’s journalists? Reporters and editors have increasingly been targeted for murder during the ongoing war against Mexican drug cartels. But a recent investigation by Mexico City-based newspaper El Universal shows that a majority of the journalists killed were not investigating narcotics trafficking, but local police news and national politics. Some […]
MORELIA — The violence-plagued state of Michoacán on Mexico’s central Pacific coast has risen to become the center of narcotics production in the country, according to an investigative report by leading Mexican newspaper El Universal. Mexico is the world’s leading supplier of methamphetamines, as identified in a 2014 UN report . And Michoacán, where some […]