Global Ganja Report

Authorities in Honduras on Jan. 7 announced the seizure of a gold-plated, jewel-encrusted AK-47 assault rifle, complete with two silver magazines. The rifle, estimated to be worth more than $50,000, turned up in a raid along with other military equipment at a ranch in Choloma, some 300 kilometers from Tegucigalpa, where two security guards were detained. Authorities said the gold-plated rifle had an engraving associated with the Malverde drug gang, which is allegedly in league with Mexico's notorious Zetas. "It's an exclusive design and a fine carving," said National Police chief Leo­nel Sau­ce­da.

The most enlightened cannabis connoisseurs—those who still have a link back to the values that defined the hippie culture—tend to be conscious consumers when it comes to food or computers or whatnot. They may buy organic tomatoes, boycott Taco Bell to support exploited farm workers in Florida, and petition Apple about the brutal conditions in their Chinese assembly plants. But do they pay as much attention to the source of their preferred smoking herb? 

Is there blood on your ganja?

Honduran authorities seized 15 tons of illegal drugs buried beneath a clandestine laboratory in the northern department of Yoro, officials said Nov. 29. "According to what the experts say, the drugs found would amount to some 15 tons of cocaine paste or synthetic drugs," Elvin Guzmán, spokesman for the prosecutor's office in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, told reporters. (This is an ambiguous statement, as the proportion of paste to finished cocaine is approximately 2 to 1, according to a DEA analysis.) The drug lab was found in a village lying between the towns of Santa Rita and El Negrito. National Police and army troops are scouring the area for more labs.

Residents of the villages of Ahuas and Patuca, in the remote Miskito Coast of northeast Honduras, took to the streets May 11 to protest a deadly DEA raid, demanding the US agency leave their territory—and burning down four government offices to make their point. In the incident in the pre-dawn hours that morning on the Río Patuca, four were killed—including two pregnant women—and another four wounded when DEA agents and Honduran National Police agents in a US State Department-contracted helicopter piloted by Guatemalan military men fired on a boat they apparently believed was filled with drug traffickers. Local residents—backed up by the mayor of Ahuas municipality (Gracias a Dios department), Lucio Baquedano—say they were humble villagers who were fishing on the river, and had nothing to do with drug trafficking.

On April 18, the US Coast Guard announced the interception of its 30th semi-submersible cocaine-smuggling vessel in less than six years, pointing to the widespread use of "narco-submarines" by traffickrs making their way up the Central American coast from Colombia. The Coast Guard said that two of its cutters, the Decisive and Pea Island, chased down the sub on March 30 in the western Caribbean, crediting collaboration with the Honduran navy. The Coast Guard released a photo of the sub's bow painted with shark's teeth as it disappeared beneath the waves. The crew scuttled the craft before they were taken into custody, sending their load to the bottom of the sea.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on Feb. 28 defended the US-backed war on the drug cartels, despite the growing violence in Mexico and Central America. On a five-day tour of the region, Napolitano insisted in a joint press conference with Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poire that the US and Mexico would maintain "a continuing effort to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs.... It's a different type of crime and it's a different type of plague, but that's also why it is so important that we act not only bi-nationally, but in a regional way, to go after the supply of illegal narcotics."

Cannabis could soon be decriminalized in Belize following comments by Minister of Police and Public Safety Doug Singh that his ministry is preparing a paper exploring the idea to be presented to the Cabinet. Singh said that he is looking at removing criminal penalties for quantities under somewhere between five to seven grams. He emphasized that under the proposal, those caught with such personal quantities would still face a ticket and fine, and that legalization is not under consideration.

Honduran police officials gave contradictory responses on Nov. 1 to a report published the day before about the disappearance of some 300 light automatic rifles (FAL, from the initials in Spanish) and 300,000 5.56-caliber bullets from a police unit. The weapons, which were in the control of the Cobras special operations police group, were taken from a Tegucigalpa warehouse in August or September; the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo broke the story on Oct. 31.