Trump War on Drugs

75 charged in massive drug cartel bust
https://www.conservativeinstitute.org/crime-criminal-justice/crime-stories/breaking-75-arrested-trump.htm
March 10, 2018
Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com
When law enforcement take drugs off of the streets in American towns and cities, their success may be measured in lives saved. With more than 100 Americans deaths occurring every day as a result of the country’s devastating opioid epidemic, every gram of heroin seized, every laundered dollar interdicted, and every Mexican cartel henchman arrested saves countless American lives.
 
Federal prosecutors in San Diego announced Thursday that they have indicted 75 people nationwide in a massive drug bust and money laundering sting, taking guns, drugs and cash off of the streets after concluding a multi-year operation that will save an untold number of lives. Members of the FBI’s Cross Border Violence Task Force conducting a three-year probe confiscated $6 million in cash, 200,000 pounds of methamphetamine, 138 pounds of heroin, 22 pounds of fentanyl, 200 pounds of cocaine, 554 pounds of marijuana, and 20 firearms.
 
Show me the money
Representing the Southern District of California with years of experience pursuing international drug cartels, U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman will prosecute many of the indicted suspects. At a press conference in downtown San Diego, Braverman described how agents let the drug money lead them to the drugs to slow the tide of deadly substances destined for Americans towns and cities:
 
By following the money, we have discovered large quantities of fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine that are no longer destined for the streets of America. That’s a one-two punch that takes these organizations completely out of the ring and makes our communities safer.
 
The defendants were responsible for laundering tens of millions of dollars on behalf of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, the prosecuting attorney revealed. Once led by the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the Sinaloa Cartel has been called one of the most dangerous criminal enterprises in the Western Hemisphere, and its members are known for waging bloody drug wars, beheading their enemies and bribing Mexican authorities to look the other way.
 
The investigation centered on the border city of San Diego, where 40 of the indictments were issued by a grand jury. Twenty-one individuals named in a series of four indictments are already in custody, while another 20 remain at large as fugitives of Justice.
 
In addition, the San Diego operation netted 35 additional indictments in federal courts across the country, including in Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas and Washington. All but ten of these suspects were in custody as of Thursday morning.
 
Authorities allege that “money movers” were used to collect and transfer huge amounts of cash around the country. The suspects hid money in hidden compartments of vehicles, duffel bags, luggage and even shoe boxes.
 
Money movers
Undercover agents watched as the movers picked up bags of cash in parking lots, hotels and restaurants in cities such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Dayton, Ohio and Lexington, Kentucky. The proceeds of these operations were said to be destined for Mexico.
 
Using “funnel accounts” in banks across the country, suspects deposited cash in amounts smaller than $10,000 to avoid detection from federal regulators. The money would subsequently be transferred to shell companies in Mexico where the Sinaloa gang could collect on their drug operations in America.
 
Thanks to the efforts of dozens of federal agents, the Mexican cartel has been dealt a serious blow to their international operations. Braverman explained:
 
We have siphoned the cash and life out of a San Diego-based international money laundering organization with ties to the Sinaloa cartel.
 
Thanks to the money laundering sting, dangerous drugs are now off of the streets for good. The FBI office in San Diego quantified their bust in a Twitter post on Thursday, providing pictures of the illegal substances and weapons confiscated in the sting:
 
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
 
FBI San Diego
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@FBISanDiego
Law enforcement seized more than $6 million dollars, 95 kilograms of meth, 63 kg of heroin, 10 kg of #fentanyl, 92 kg of cocaine, 252 kg of marijuana, and 20 #firearms, including #semiautomatic #assaultrifles and #handguns.  http://ow.ly/XDUE30iQdAq   #FBI
 
10:41 PM - Mar 8, 2018
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The seizure of 22 pounds of fentanyl is particularly noteworthy. Mexican cartels began trafficking the highly toxic synthetic opioid in recent years in mixing it with heroin to shore up their profits.
 
However, the National Institute on Drug Abuse credits the sharp increase in drug overdoses with the illicit use of fentanyl. While there was an unacceptable 64,000 overdose deaths estimate in the U.S. in 2016, 20,000 of these were reported to be from fentanyl and fentanyl analogs manufactured by Mexican chemists.
 
New War on Drugs
U.S. President Donald Trump has prioritized the war against Mexican cartels since assuming office. Trump said that he offered Mexican President Enrique Pe a Nieto “help on knocking out the drug cartels” less than a month after his inauguration.
 
“Don’t forget these cartels are operating in our country and they’re poisoning the youth of our country,” the president said in a February 2017 interview on Fox News. “And, by the way, countries all over the world, just so you understand – this is a cartel all over the world, the cartels. But I certainly would help him if he needed help.”
 
Without an invitation from Mexican authorities, federal law enforcement officials are reduced to fighting the cartels within America’s borders. This week’s indictments represent a major blow against a criminal enterprise that has operating with impunity inside the U.S. for far too long.


BREAKING: Trump Issuing Death Penalty To Them ALL Under New Policy
https://www.usapoliticstoday.org/trump-issuing-penalty-new-policy/
By Gary Maher - March 11, 2018037

Inan unprecedented move this week President Trump suggested using capital punishment for drug dealers in order to crack down on America’s opioid epidemic.

The President’s comments came just a few days after it was reported that he had been praising Singapore’s mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking offenses behind closed doors.

Trump’s senior aid, Kellyanne Conway, who runs anti-drug initiatives at the White House, was quoted as saying that Trump’s position isn’t one-size-fits-all kind of initiative. She went on to make it clear that the president isn’t talking about your local marijuana dealer who sells a few dollars, but instead, he wants to go after the high-level dealers and kingpins who’s sales of millions of dollars of Fentanol translate to hundreds of casualties per week.
Trump has also praised the Philippine President Roderigo Duterte, who has led a massive extrajudicial crackdown on drugs in his country that has left thousands of high-level drug dealers dead. Last year, Trump even went as far as to contacting Duterte and told him he has done an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.”
If this new way of combating the U.S. Drug crisis goes into effect this would be the first time drug dealing would be classified as a capital offense. Currently, the only drug dealers who qualify for the death penalty have been the ones which have been involved in the murder or death of a law enforcement officer.

The president also made it clear he doesn’t see a lenient approach to drug-related crimes as being something that should be tolerated. And isn’t against the idea of implementing a campaign unlike Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign of the 1980’s where children were taught the dangers of drug abuse, along with teaching the fact that they will die if they abuse drugs.

Via History.com:
“The “Just Say No” movement was one part of the U.S. government’s effort to revisit and expand the War on Drugs. As with most anti-drug initiatives, Just Say No—which became an American catch phrase in the 1980s—evoked both support and criticism from the public.
THE 80S CRACK EPIDEMIC

In the early 80s, a cheap, highly addictive form of cocaine known as “crack” was first developed.

The popularity of crack led to an increase in the number of Americans who became addicted to cocaine. In 1985, the number of people who said they used cocaine on a routine basis increased from 4.2 million to 5.8 million. By 1987, crack was reportedly available in all but four states.

Emergency room visits for cocaine-related incidents increased four-fold between 1984 and 1987.

The crack epidemic particularly devastated African American communities—crime and incarceration rates among this population soared during the 1980s.

REAGAN AND THE WAR ON DRUGS

When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he vowed to crack down on substance abuse and reprioritize the War on Drugs, which was originally initiated by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s.

In 1986, Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. This law allotted $1.7 billion to continue fighting the War on Drugs, and established mandatory minimum prison sentences for specific drug offenses.

During the Reagan years, prison penalties for drug crimes skyrocketed, and this trend continued for many years. In fact, the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to more than 400,000 by 1997.

SAY NO TO DRUGS

President Reagan’s wife, Nancy Reagan, launched the “Just Say No” campaign, which encouraged children to reject experimenting with or using drugs by simply saying the word “no.”

The movement started in the early 1980s and continued for more than a decade.

Nancy Reagan traveled the country to endorse the campaign, appearing on television news programs, talk shows and public service announcements. The first lady also visited drug rehabilitation centers to promote Just Say No.

Surveys suggest the campaign may have led to a spike in public concern over the country’s drug problem. In 1985, the proportion of Americans who saw drug abuse as the nation’s “number one problem,” was between 2 percent and 6 percent. In 1989, that number jumped to 64 percent.

D.A.R.E. PROGRAM

In 1983, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Daryl Gates, and the Los Angeles Unified School District started the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program.

The program, which still exists today, pairs students with local police officers in an effort to reduce drug use, gang membership and violence. Students learn about the dangers of substance abuse and are required to take a pledge to stay away from drugs and gangs.

D.A.R.E. has been implemented in about 75 percent of U.S. school districts.

Despite the program’s popularity, several studies have shown participating in D.A.R.E has little impact on future drug use.

A study funded by the Department of Justice, which was released in 1994, revealed that partaking in D.A.R.E led to only short-term reductions in the use of tobacco but had no impact on alcohol or marijuana use.

In 2001, the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. David Satcher, put D.A.R.E in the category of “ineffective primary prevention programs.”

Proponents of D.A.R.E have called some of the studies flawed and say surveys and personal accounts reveal that the program does in fact have a positive effect on future drug use.

In recent years, D.A.R.E has adopted a new “hands-on” curriculum, which advocates believe is showing better results than more outdated approaches to curbing drug abuse.

SUPPORT AND CRITICISM FOR THE ANTI-DRUG WAR
Determining whether the War on Drugs movement was a success or failure depends on whom you ask.

Supporters of the strict drug initiatives say the measures reduced crime, increased public awareness and lowered rates of substance abuse.

Some research does, in fact, suggest that some aspects of the tough policies may have worked. A study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services revealed that in 1999, 14.8 million Americans used illicit drugs. In 1979, there were 25 million users.

However, critics say the 1980s version of the War on Drugs put too much emphasis on deterrence tactics and not enough focus on drug treatment and substance abuse programs.

Another common criticism is that the laws led to mass incarceration for nonviolent crimes. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, more than 2.3 million people are currently being held in the American criminal justice system. Nearly half a million people are locked up because of a drug offense.

Many people also felt the Reagan-era policies unfairly targeted minorities. Part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act included a heftier penalty, known as the “100-to-1 sentencing ratio,” for the same amount of crack cocaine (typically used by blacks) as powdered cocaine (typically used by whites). For example, a minimum penalty of five years was given for 5 grams of crack cocaine or 500 grams of powdered cocaine.

Minority communities were more heavily policed and targeted, leading to a disproportionate rate of criminalization. But the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which was passed by Congress in 2010, reduced the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100:1 to 18:1.

There is perhaps one thing both supporters and critics of the 1980s drug war can agree on: The policies and laws put into place during the Just Say No era created a drug-focused political agenda that still impacts many Americans today.””