Thread: 23 indicted in $36 million Mexican drug cartel smuggling CO

23 indicted in $36 million Mexican drug cartel smuggling

Keith Coffman
Reuters
July 12, 2011

DENVER (Reuters) - A Colorado grand jury has indicted 23 people allegedly linked to the Los Zetas drug cartel in connection with a ring that prosecutors said on Monday smuggled $36 million worth of marijuana from Mexico in bogus tour buses.

The traffickers hid compressed marijuana in compartments affixed to the underside of the buses, the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office said in a news release.

"One of the most violent and feared Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas, is believed to be the source of this marijuana distribution operation," the release said.

The 96-count indictment accuses the ring of smuggling 45,000 pounds of marijuana bricks from Durango, Mexico through El Paso, Texas, to a Colorado warehouse for street sale between April of 2010 and May of this year.

The alleged ringleaders, Conrado Arellano-Casas, 32, and Jose Jimenez-Chacon, 30, were among the suspects named in the indictment.

Jimenez-Chacon was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement agents in El Paso, Texas.

Arellano-Casas was apprehended in Colorado, where investigators also seized a loaded AK-47 rifle and $30,000 in cash from his home.

The defendants face an array of criminal charges, ranging from racketeering, conspiracy, distribution of a controlled substance, criminal impersonation, and illegal possession of firearms.

Eighteen of the indicted suspects are in custody, and five are believed to be in Mexico, but their exact whereabouts are unknown.

Ten of the suspects are believed to be in the country illegally and are under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds.

The smuggling operation was uncovered when a motorist stopped by police in Colorado had narcotics in his possession and told detectives who his illegal drug source was.

A Colorado judge then approved telephone wiretaps of the suspected drug dealer, triggering a year-long investigation by federal and state law enforcement that ultimately led to the grand jury indictments.

The indictments were handed up last month, but remained sealed until as many arrests as possible could be made.

In addition to the marijuana seized in the probe, authorities confiscated 14 vehicles, seven firearms, two kilograms of cocaine valued at $64,000, 53 grams of methamphetamine, and $134,000 in cash.

http://www.kfor.com/sns-rt-us-drugs-smu ... 1839.story

The amount of drugs and money that has been confiscated in a short time throughout our country is breathtaking. How much has not been confiscated?

Who are all these people who can afford to buy all these drugs? Do they work and where?

There are only 300 million people here, a great deal of them are elderly or children. How many are left, still employed and are willing to use this filth?

Originally Posted by GaPatriot

The amount of drugs and money that has been confiscated in a short time throughout our country is breathtaking. How much has not been confiscated?

Who are all these people who can afford to buy all these drugs? Do they work and where?

There are only 300 million people here, a great deal of them are elderly or children. How many are left, still employed and are willing to use this filth?

Remember that the retiring baby boomers were kids, teens and yound adults in the 60 for the Sex and Drugs and Rock in Roll times and many retirees have money and use illegal drugs and abuse legal drugs too.
Teens and even pre-teens use drugs these days too.
Homeless people use drugs and alcohol.
Some military personel use drugs.
Etc.

Baby Boomer Drug Use Goes Sky High…No Pun Intended | Mark Houston ...
www.markhoustonrecovery.com/blog/?p=573

Are you a Baby Boomer? If you answered yes to that question, I have another for you: What do you and your children most likely have in common? If you.
Illicit drug use among baby boomers is on the rise, as are long ...
www.boston.com/.../illicit_drug_use_amo ... _the_ris...

Feb 8, 2010 – Roughly 8 percent of Americans ages 50 to 59 had used an illicit drug in the past year, according to a recent survey by the federal ...

Drug Abuse on the Rise in Baby Boomers
www.webmd.com/healthy.../drug-abuse-on- ... by-boome...

Jun 17, 2010 – Drug abuse among Americans 50 and older has risen sharply in recent years, with admissions for treatment nearly doubling between 1992 and ...

Baby Boomers and Drug Abuse, Hear From the Experts
helloboomers.com/lifestyle/baby-boomers-drug-abuse-hear-experts/ - Cached

Aug 7, 2009 – The % of the baby boomers population ages 50-59 years old admitted that they used prohibited drugs as been reported by the united states ...
Drug use up for boomers, down for teens
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1697118/posts

Drug use by baby boomers increased from 2.7 percent in 2002 to 4.4 percent last year. Marijuana was by far their drug of choice, ...

Surprising, interesting article....aging baby boomer drug use ...
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
www.soberrecovery.com/...abusers/137245 ... sting-ar... -

Nov 18, 2007 – http://susiebright.blogs.com/MalesDrugs.pdf "Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is white, middle-aged Americans.

Fun Prescription Drugs | Skipping the street - Los Angeles Times
articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/15/health/he-drugs15

Sep 15, 2008 – But as they contend with the aches and pains of aging, boomer drug users are adding prescription drug use to their mix of vices, ...

Hey, Boomer Drug Use is Up - 3rd year in a row! - Democratic ...
www.democraticunderground.com › Discuss

Sep 7, 2006 – Hey, Boomer Drug Use is Up - 3rd year in a row! ... Detroit Free Press says that boomer drug use was up 2.7% in 2004, and 4.4% in 2005. ...

Presidents have used drugs and I'd bet many many politicians of every type.

I wonder what else the Main Stream Media can accuse the Baby Boomers of?


After all, they are already wrecking Social Security and Medicare, which they have probably paid more into than any other group, especially the "refugees" that receive and have never paid a dime to. Boomers still have the largest portfolios of 401k's in the country and the government, AKA Democrats, have been licking their chops to get to confiscate the monies since Obama was elected.

Now they are the biggest drug users?

What a pile of horse hockey.

Why don't they look at the drug use in the illegal immigrant community where CASH flows and the living expenses are paid by the government?

This Is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad

New York Times
Jan 3, 2007
By Mike Males

Mike Males is a senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

WHEN releasing last week's Monitoring the Future survey on drug use, John P.
Walters, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, boasted that
''broad'' declines in teenage drug use promise ''enormous beneficial consequences
not only for our children now, but for the rest of their lives.'' Actually, anybody who
has looked carefully at the report and other recent federal studies would see a
dramatically different picture: skyrocketing illicit drug abuse and related deaths
among teenagers and adults alike.

While Monitoring the Future, an annual study that depends on teenagers to selfreport
on their behavior, showed that drug use dropped sharply in the last decade,
the National Center for Health Statistics has reported that teenage deaths from illicit
drug abuse have tripled over the same period. This reverses 25 years of declining
overdose fatalities among youths, suggesting that teenagers are now joining
older generations in increased drug use.

What the Monitoring the Future report does have right is that teenagers remain the
least part of America's burgeoning drug abuse crisis. Today, after 20 years, hundreds
of billions of dollars, and millions of arrests and imprisonments in the war on
drugs, America's rate of drug-related deaths, hospital emergencies, crime and social
ills stand at record highs.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of
Americans dying from the abuse of illegal drugs has leaped by 400 percent in the
last two decades, reaching a record 28,000 in 2004. The F.B.I. reported that drug
arrests reached an all-time high of 1.8 million in 2005. The Drug Abuse Warning
Network, a federal agency that compiles statistics on hospital emergency cases
caused by illicit drug abuse, says that number rose to 940,000 in 2004 -- a huge
increase over the last quarter century.

Why are so few Americans aware of these troubling trends? One reason is that today's
drug abusers are simply the ''wrong'' group. As David Musto, a psychiatry
professor at Yale and historian of drug abuse, points out, wars on drugs have traditionally
depended on ''linkage between a drug and a feared or rejected group
within society.'' Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is
white, middle-aged Americans.

This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and
unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news
media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.
Among Americans in their 40s and 50s, deaths from illicit-drug overdoses have
risen by 800 percent since 1980, including 300 percent in the last decade.

In 2004,
American hospital emergency rooms treated 400,000 patients between the ages
35 and 64 for abusing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, hallucinogens
and ''club drugs'' like ecstasy.

Equally surprising, graying baby boomers have become America's fastest-growing
crime scourge. The F.B.I. reports that last year the number of Americans over the
age of 40 arrested for violent and property felonies rose to 420,000, up from
170,000 in 1980. Arrests for drug offenses among those over 40 rose to 360,000
last year, up from 22,000 in 1980. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that
440,000 Americans ages 40 and older were incarcerated in 2005, triple the number
in 1990.

Yet drug officials seem fixated on paper-and-pencil surveys of drug use by teens.

In releasing its survey last week, the Office of Drug Control Policy trumpeted that
''America's balanced strategy to reduce drug use is working.'' Representative Mark
Souder, an Indiana Republican who has been a top supporter of federal antidrug
efforts, says ''the Bush administration is doing very well'' on this front because
''drug use, particularly among young people, is down.''

But, some may say, don't teenage drug use rates predict future drug problems? To
the contrary: 30 years of experience shows that fluctuations in the percentage of
youths who report using drugs on surveys has almost nothing to do with the harm
that drug abuse causes (addiction, disease, injury, death, crime, family and community
distress), either in adolescence or later in life.

I compared teenage drug use trends reported annually by Monitoring the Future
since the 1970s with trends for other behaviors and with federal crime, health and
education statistics. In years in which a higher percentage of high school seniors
told the survey takers they used illicit drugs, teenagers consistently reported and
experienced lower rates of crime, murder, drug-related hospital emergencies and
deaths, suicides, H.I.V. infection, school dropouts, delinquency, pregnancy, violence,
theft in and outside of school, and fights with parents, employers and
teachers.

The data also contradict Mr. Walters's claim that generations reporting lower rates
of drug use enjoy ''less addiction, less suffering, less crime, lower health costs and
higher achievement.'' For example, baby boomers rarely used illegal drugs as
youths.

In 1972, the University of Michigan researchers who carry out Monitoring the Future
found that just 22 percent of high school seniors had ever used illegal drugs,
compared to 48 percent of the class of 2005. Yet as that generation has aged, it
has been afflicted by drug abuse and its related ills -- overdoses, hospitalizations,
drug-related crime -- at far higher rates than those experienced by later generations
at the same ages.

It's time to end the obsession with hyping teenage drug use. The meaningless
surveys that policy makers now rely on should be replaced with a comprehensive
''drug abuse index'' that pulls together largely ignored data on drug-related deaths,
hospital emergencies, crime, diseases and similar practical measures.

A good model is the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs' fledgling
drug abuse index, which I helped compile and which aims to pinpoint which
populations and areas are most harmed by drugs, both legal and illicit.

Few experts would have suspected that the biggest contributors to California's
drug abuse, death and injury toll are educated, middle-aged women living in the
Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest-declining, lowest-risk populations
are urban black and Latino teenagers. Yet the index found exactly that.

These are
the sorts of trends we need to understand if we are to design effective policies.

The United States' drug abuse crisis has exploded out of control. Scientifically designed
strategies are urgently needed to target the manifest drug-caused damage
that current policies are failing miserably to address

http://susiebright.blogs.com/MalesDrugs.pdf

What a pile of horse hockey. JMO