Thread: 45 Tons of Weed Seized in Tijuana

With 45 Tons of Weed Seized in Tijuana, It Looks Like Pot Is Still a Cash Crop for Cartels

By Tess Owen
June 15, 2015 | 2:35 pm

Mexican authorities seized more than 45 tons of marijuana last week in Tijuana, a huge bust that suggests pot is still a cash crop for the country's drug cartels despite an increasing number of US states legalizing the drug for recreational and medicinal use.

On June 10, members of the Mexican military and state police acted on an anonymous tip and stopped Francisco Pineda Villanueva and Blanca Estela Robles Garcia as they drove through the Baja California border town in a Honda CR-V, according to local news site AFN Tijuana. A search of the vehicle reportedly turned up 54 kilos of weed, and the couple allegedly admitted under questioning that they worked as guards at a warehouse where a much larger stash could be found.

On June 12, after obtaining a search warrant, military personnel surrounded a warehouse in Granjas Familiares, a sparsely populated area southwest of Tijuana. The soldiers reportedly found 5,271 packages of high quality pot wrapped in brown tape hidden in an underground room. The haul tipped the scales at a whopping 41.6 metric tons (more than 91,700 pounds, or 45.8 tons), the biggest seizure in Baja California since authorities confiscated a record load of 134 metric tons in 2010.

The packages were reportedly marked with 15 different logos and signs, including the Looney Tunes character Road Runner, which could help authorities figure out where the marijuana came from and where it was going. According to unofficial information gathered from local Tijuana news outlets, Sinaloa cartel kingpin Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada is the suspected owner of the warehouse.

Related: The City of Guadalajara Is the Money Laundering Capital of Mexico

Several reports have suggested that marijuana legalization in the US, where 23 states and Washington, DC now have laws that allow some form of legal weed, has been bad for business for Mexican cartels. According to the United Nations, a third of marijuana consumed in the US is now grown domestically — up from just a sixth in years past. US pot is typically far more potent than the Mexican product, which is usually grown outdoors and packaged in tight bundles that users derisively refer to as "brick weed."

But while American demand for Mexican mota is supposedly plummeting, raids on large-scale marijuana operations still remain common in Tijuana, which is a major transit point for drugs due to its proximity to San Diego and the US border. Around this time last year, Mexican officials seized another 44-ton shipment in the Granjas Familiares neighborhood.

Again, the packages were marked with around 15 different symbols and logos.

And not everyone is convinced that the dip in cross-border demand for marijuana could significantly harm the cartels. Adam Isacson, senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, a policy group, told Bloomberg that some Mexican farmers are replacing their crops with poppies in order to cultivate heroin. According to a 2013 DEA report, half of the heroin used in the US now comes from Mexico, almost quadruple the amount reported in 2008.

Related: 'Only Two Cartels Are Left in Mexico,' Government Official Claims

Mexican authorities have arrested multiple high-profile drug lords in recent years, including Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman last year and Knights Templar leader Servando "La Tuta" Gomez a few months ago. At an anti-drug trafficking conference in Colombia last week, Tomas Zeron, Mexico's chief criminal investigator, told the Mexican news magazine Proceso that authorities have identified only two cartels still in operation: Zambada's Sinaloa cartel, and the upstart Jalisco New Generation cartel. Zeron also noted that "hundreds" of independent cartel cells are still active.

Zeron's assertion about two remaining cartels contradicted information released a month ago by Mexico's attorney general's office, which claimed that nine cartels are in fact "active threats in Mexico."

https://news.vice.com/article/with-4...op-for-cartels

Several reports have suggested that marijuana legalization in the US, where 23 states and Washington, DC now have laws that allow some form of legal weed, has been bad for business for Mexican cartels. According to the United Nations, a third of marijuana consumed in the US is now grown domestically — up from just a sixth in years past. US pot is typically far more potent than the Mexican product, which is usually grown outdoors and packaged in tight bundles that users derisively refer to as "brick weed."

End the War on Drugs. Legalize, regulate, educate and tax it under the FairTax, then use a portion of the taxes only drug users pay to better educate the public on the real risks and consequences of using drugs and provide free rehab on demand without stigma for anyone who wants or needs it. Make it a domestic-only business, no imports or exports to avoid international implications/complications, and require that all owners and operators of the business be US-Citizens-Only. Then stop worrying about it, because at this point, society and the government have done the best we can and should do within the limits of a free nation of free people.

For more information, go here to the website for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP):

http://www.leap.cc/

With legalization in the manner described above, you shut down the foreign drug cartels and with it, one of the most powerful forces behind illegal immigration.

Two Birds - One Stone

Just Do It.

Here's an example of your War on Drugs:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...uana-off-duty/

Colorado court rules workers can be fired for using marijuana off duty

Published June 16, 2015Associated Press





June 15, 2015: Brandon Coats prepares to take questions from members of the media after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled against him, at his attorney's offices in Centennial, Colo. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)




DENVER – Pot may be legal in Colorado, but you can still be fired for using it.


The state Supreme Court ruled 6-0 Monday that a medical marijuana patient who was fired after failing a drug test cannot get his job back. The case was being watched closely by employers and pot smokers in states that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana.
Colorado became at least the fourth state in which courts have ruled against medical marijuana patients fired for pot use. Supreme courts in California, Montana and Washington state have made similar rulings, and federal courts in Colorado and Michigan also have rejected such claims.


The Colorado worker, Brandon Coats, is a quadriplegic who was fired by Dish Network after failing a 2010 drug test. The company agreed that Coats wasn't high on the job but said it has a zero-tolerance drug policy.


Coats argued that his pot smoking was allowed under a state law intended to protect employees from being fired for legal activities off the clock. Coats didn't use marijuana at work, but pot's intoxicating chemical, THC, can stay in the system for weeks.


The Colorado justices ruled that because marijuana is illegal under federal law, Coats' use of the drug couldn't be considered legal off-duty activity.


"There is no exception for marijuana use for medicinal purposes, or for marijuana use conducted in accordance with state law," the court wrote.


Coats and his lawyers said the decision at least clarified the matter for workers.


"Although I'm very disappointed today, I hope that my case has brought the issue of use of medical marijuana and employment to light," Coats said in a statement.


Dish Network and other business groups applauded the ruling.


"As a national employer, Dish remains committed to a drug-free workplace and compliance with federal law," company spokesman John Hall said in a statement.


Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., allow people to use medical marijuana. Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana.


The Colorado Constitution specifically states that employers don't have to amend their policies to accommodate employees' marijuana use.


Coats was paralyzed in a car crash as a teenager and has been a medical marijuana patient since 2009, when he discovered that pot helped calm violent muscle spasms. He was a telephone operator with Dish for three years before he failed a random drug test in 2010 and was fired. He said he told his supervisors in advance that he probably would fail the test.

Everyone with a Dish Network subscription should cancel it and totally bankrupt a company that would use federal drug laws to treat employees this way does not deserve to be in business.

Long-term studies prove beyond any doubt at all to the surprise of those conducting them, that companies who drug-test have no better safety record in their work place than companies who do not. It doesn't matter how long the "THC" stays in someone's system, it is not responsible for accidents or problems with worker safety to any greater degree than anything else you suck into your body that for some may not be good for them, you know like Alleve and other pain medications, anti-psychotics or anti-depressants, and on and on and on and on.

A family member of mine has these muscle spasms from a catastrophic stroke which left the left side with some paralysis, and while she takes nothing for them now, she was prescribed anti-seizure medicine that had all types of horrible side effects and didn't work. I figured out that they were not seizures but spasms and through a brief massage can stop them rapidly. But that requires 24 hour round the clock care, something I'm sure Mr. Coats and millions of other Americans don't have available to them.

So for the Pro-War on Drugs Crowd, all I can say is sleep well, you've now used your personal view to entrap a quadraplegic trying to support himself and I'm sure doing a great job for his employer into the horrors of unemployment putting his entire survival and well-being at risk if not in the hopper completely.

Good for Fox News for reporting this story and shining the light on the victims of the War on Drugs.

And SHAME ON YOU, Colorado Court! You prove once again how little value you hold in our society when you can't stand up and protect even the personal medical rights of US citizens. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME ON YOU! 6-0? Oh my God, Big Pharma at work on you. Pathetic.

Drug offenses help get aliens deported by the thousands.
(Any reason is a good reason to deport.)

http://www.alipac.us/f12/260-000-cri...fences-320399/

1.5 tons of marijuana found in trailer in Juárez

By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times / POSTED: 06/15/2015 07:54:44 PM MDT


(Courtesy Chihuahua attorney general's office)


Chihuahua state police seized 1.5 tons of marijuana in Juárez inside a trailer that was supposed to go to the United States, officials said Monday.

Police found the drug load after learning that the trailer had sat for several days in a truck yard in the 10300 block of Panamericana street, the Chihuahua attorney general's office said.

During an investigation, police secretly watched to see if anyone went to pick up the trailer, but no one arrived, officials said.

After obtaining a search warrant, a drug-sniffing dog lead investigators to 636 marijuana packages hidden under the trailer's floor.

There were no arrests. An investigation continues.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_2...trailer-juarez

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Drug offenses help get aliens deported by the thousands.
(Any reason is a good reason to deport.)

http://www.alipac.us/f12/260-000-cri...fences-320399/

Oh HELLO! They're illegal aliens, that's the ONLY REASON you need to deport their butts out of here. You don't need a failed, futile War on Drugs that actually encourages illegal immigration that is sponsored by the foreign drug cartels to deport illegal aliens. You deport illegal aliens because they're illegal aliens. 260,000 over FIVE YEARS for drug offenses? Oh puleeze. We have 20 million illegal aliens in the country, what's your plan on the other 19,740,000?

Get Caught with Pot, Face Deportation

As states loosen marijuana laws, the consequences for noncitizens remain as strict as ever.

By CHRISTIE THOMPSON

When George Kidan was a student at the University of Toledo, he helped buy $30 worth of marijuana for a friend — who, it turned out, was working with an undercover narcotics officer. Police arrested Kidan at his on-campus job. He was convicted in 1987 of “trafficking in illicit drugs,” got two years’ probation, and paid $1,070 in fines and restitution.

“I didn’t think much of it,” he said of his conviction. “I figured since I paid my fine and did my probation, I’m good.”

But Kidan is not a U.S. citizen, having arrived in 1981 on a student visa from Kuwait. That meant that years after he completed his probation and moved on, his marijuana conviction could come back to haunt him. And in 1999, it did. He was arrested by Immigration Enforcement Officers from his home in Western New York, locked in detention for months, barred from traveling, and remains in legal limbo — even after the governor of Ohio granted him a full pardon in 2006 for his initial crime.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Kidan said. “We have two systems here.”

States and cities have loosened their laws on marijuana in the last several years, either legalizing it entirely (as in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) or reducing the penalty for possession to a violation that’s treated like a traffic ticket. But the federal law on how drug convictions affect immigration status remains largely unchanged, and crimes like marijuana possession or sale can still land immigrants in deportation proceedings and federal detention facilities. Lawyers say that as the punishment for pot lessens, many non-citizens are unaware of the sizeable consequences they may face in immigration court.

A report released today by Human Rights Watch found that between fiscal years 2007 and 2012, 34,337 people whose most serious conviction was marijuana possession were deported. An additional 18,151 were deported with a conviction for selling marijuana.

“A lot of people assume...we are just getting rid of drug cartel traffickers,” said the report’s author Grace Meng, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch’s U.S. program. “They’re not imagining permanent residents [or] undocumented immigrants who have been here for 20 years.”

A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Under ICE policy released in 2014, those convicted of marijuana possession would not be an “enforcement priority” for deportation. Those convicted of any felony or crimes involving “drug distribution” are higher on the list. The policy “requires [Department of Homeland Security] personnel to exercise discretion based on individual circumstances.”

Caroline Solis, an immigration lawyer with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, is representing a refugee from Sierra Leone who is at risk of deportation because of a single marijuana-possession violation from 2006. He has legally lived in the country since 1999, but may lose his green card and was placed in deportation proceedings last March, when he re-entered the country after a family trip. At the time of his conviction, “He just went in to court and took the plea. Whoever represented him didn’t tell him that he shouldn’t be traveling based on his marijuana conviction,” Solis said, a common problem among her clients.

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Padilla v. Kentucky that immigrants could claim ineffective counsel if their defense lawyers did not inform them of the consequences of low-level conviction.

The decision has made it easier for immigrants to seek deportation relief and raised awareness about how criminal cases should be handled for noncitizens. But the High Court ruled in 2013 that the decision does not apply to convictions before 2010. And in many marijuana possession cases, experts said defendants often do not have a lawyer. Some waive their right to one, thinking the case is as minor as a traffic ticket. Indigent defendants facing misdemeanor charges in many jurisdictions are also not automatically provided a lawyer.

Violeta Chapin, a law professor at the University of Colorado, represented a 19-year-old who had entered the U.S. from Mexico as a child, and was placed in deportation proceedings after police found marijuana in his pocket. Like many others, he did not have a lawyer and simply pleaded guilty. During his detention at a federal center in Colorado, President Obama announced a new program that would shield some undocumented immigrants from deportation if they entered the country before the age of 16. He would have been eligible for the program, despite his single marijuana conviction. But the program did require him to be enrolled in school, which he could not do while detained. He was deported to Mexico.

“If there’s no lawyer, on whose shoulders does it fall on? A lot courts are wrestling with that,” Chapin said. “The judges are very uncomfortable with providing advice from the bench, and they’re equally uncomfortable with people that are undocumented pleading guilty to crimes for which there are immigration consequences.”

Once someone is placed in deportation proceedings, any drug-related conviction can also keep them in immigration detention while their case is decided. Under federal law, anyone convicted of a controlled-substance offense may be subject to “mandatory detention.” Because of the severe backlog in immigration courts, those convicted of drug crimes might spend months or years in immigration detention for crimes that may be punished with far shorter sentences (if any) in jail.

Sunil Soodoo was held in immigration detention for five and a half years as he fought deportation because of a 2005 marijuana-possession conviction. He was ultimately released in February 2013, but his case is pending. His next court date is in 2019. “They took me to Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, New Jersey. They took me everywhere,” said Soodoo, who currently lives in New York. “You think you’ll never come out.”

Some prosecutors are trying to mitigate the effect of the drug laws on immigrants by charging them in ways that are less likely to trigger deportation.

David Angel, an assistant district attorney in Santa Clara County, Calif., said War-On-Drugs-era legislation left immigration judges unable “to weigh the difference between a major drug trafficker and a kid who sold a little pot while smoking a little pot.” When deciding how to prosecute a case, Angel said his office asks, “how can we do it in a way so that what the legislature did not intend to be a life-shattering punishment doesn’t become one?...The fact that the immigration law is pretty baroque and inflexible does have an unfortunate distorting effect.”

Drug crimes can cause problems for immigrants years after the initial conviction. Over a decade after his conviction, Kidan’s life was falling into place. He had a steady job as the manager of a Kinko’s in Buffalo, N.Y. He had just bought his first house and a car. He was engaged. “I thought I was on easy street, things were so good,” he said. Then one day, Kidan left for work to find ICE agents filling his driveway. They took him to an immigration detention center in nearby Batavia. He spent the next 94 days there fighting deportation, before ICE released him because he could not return to his home country of Kuwait. He had previously applied for asylum, but was denied because of his conviction for selling marijuana.

Though released from detention, Kidan remains in limbo. His wife is a U.S. citizen, but he is ineligible for legal permanent status. In 2006, the governor of Ohio issued Kidan a full pardon. But for controlled substance crimes, “the government's position, which courts have upheld, is that the pardon basically has no effect on your deportability,” said law professor Jason Cade of the University of Georgia, who has studied the issue. “As long as you admit to guilt or there’s a judgment by a court and some kind of punishment is imposed, that counts as a conviction for the purpose of immigration.”

Kidan is still under an order of supervision, and must regularly check-in with an immigration officer. Without legal status, Kidan said he has struggled to keep a job in his field, engineering, and was unable to travel to Jordan for his mother’s funeral. “I have no documents, no nothing,” he said. “How long do I have to pay for my crime?”

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2...ce-deportation