Bolivia seizes 333 tonnes of marijuana

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia seizes 333 tonnes of marijuana
19 February 2010 | 02:55 | FOCUS News Agency

La Paz. Bolvia has seized 333 tonnes of marijuana, most of it bound for Chile and Brazil, as well as 2.8 tonnes of cocaine since the start of the year, drug czar Felipe Caceres said Thursday, AFP reported.

"Nearly 75% of the marijuana was on the road to Chile and Brazil," the deputy interior minister told reporters, adding that local drug markets were also being supplied.

Caceres, who also heads the government's anti-drug trafficking efforts, said there was concern over the "growing use" of marijuana by university students and adults in Bolivia.He said Bolivian police also seized 2.8 tonnes of cocaine since the start of the year.

Leftist President Evo Morales suspended all anti-drug cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in November 2008 and kicked all DEA agents out of the country, accusing them of encouraging political unrest.

The US government rejected the accusations as "absurd," and warned that an end to US-Bolivian cooperation would only result in increased violence and drug trafficking.

http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n210599

[Vidar]

1. Naturally, things work better without the US involved.

[Bacchus39]

3. that drug use is increasing? pot should be legal anyway

either way, I don't see this as "working better".

[Peace Patriot]

2. I feel conflicted about this. Of course, wherever the DEA goes, drug traffic increases and

furthermore becomes violent. So it is no surprise at all that, with the DEA kicked out of Bolivia, that Bolivia would start succeeding at massive drug trade interdiction, and would do so without a lot of militarized fuss and bother--a "war".

On the other hand, though, I thought Bolivia was heading in the direction of legalizing beneficial plants, like coca and marijuana. They HAVE done so, on the coca leaf, which is now enshrined in the Bolivian Constitution as an Indigenous medicine (distinct, of course, from cocaine--a highly processed product, with serious health impacts). The coca leaf has been chewed or brewed as tea for thousands of years, is highly nutritional and is essential for survival in the icy, high altitude reaches of the Andes. But marijuana is also a nutritious leaf and a medicine. So I'm rather dismayed to read that the Bolivian police are targeting marijuana. If it's criminal networks that they are targeting, that's one thing. But the criminal networks develop because the leaf is illegal, not because the leaf is inherently bad. And, frankly, I'd rather see students smoking marijuana than drinking alcohol (or worse, using cocaine, heroine or other dangers/addictive drugs).

Marijuana should be legalized--in Bolivia, here and everywhere else. I frankly think that all currently banned drugs should be legalized. That would end the criminal networks immediately, and experience shows that drug use goes down--especially among the young--when it is legalized. It ceases to have the 'romantic' allure of doing something bad, and--critically important--it removes the profit incentive, which is so alluring to poor children (and adults). But AT THE VERY LEAST, beneficial plants, whose use requires little or no processing, should be legalized. A plant is a plant. Grows almost anywhere. Anybody can grow it. It is ridiculous to ban a plant that can grow almost anywhere, because people cut off the leaves and chew them, or smoke them, or make tea or brownies with them.

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It will be interesting to see if this big bust shows up in the corpo-fascist press, which is so invested in every kind of U.S. "war"--whether slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq to steal their oil, or "pacifying" Afghanistan for "the pipeline" (and the heroine?), or the military/police/prison boondoggle of the U.S. "war on drugs." They don't like it when their war profiteer friends get kicked out of places. And they for sure don't want U.S. taxpayers to know what the DEA has really been up to.

[Bacchus39]

4. the article says that drug use is increasing

so I would disagree with you that the kicking out of the DEA has resulted in less drug flow.

but I agree with you on marijuana. ridiculous that it is a banned substance. Coca leaves as well. however, processing for cocaine is another story and that is where the drug money is. I don't think I want cocaine legalized.