Global Ganja Report

According to figures released by the Mexican government March 28, drug-related violence claimed 12,903 lives in the country in 2011—down from the record-breaking 15,273 claimed for 2010. In releasing the figures, the administration of President Felipe Calderón attempted to down-play them, asserting that drug-related violence throughout the hemisphere last year claimed 150,000 lives.

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."

Rep. Bob Filner became the first mayoral candidate Feb. 28 to endorse San Diego's Compassionate Use Dispensary Regulation and Taxation initiative, which would tax and regulate medical marijuana in the city. "It just makes sense to regulate medical marijuana, otherwise, as a city, we limit our ability to conduct oversight," Filner said. "If medical marijuana is prohibited, the city misses out on valuable revenue, and patients don't have legal access or the ability to manage pain and enjoy regular activities."

The "Westies"—Manhattan's "Irish Mafia," notorious for running loan-sharking and extortion rackets in the West Side neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen 20 years ago—have suddenly resurfaced with a highly sophisticated scheme using a fleet of private jets to smuggle high-grade cannabis from Northern California to cities across the country, authorities told the New York Post.

An estimated $500,000 worth of cannabis was found floating off the coast of Marina del Rey on Feb. 2. A boater alerted authorities to 30 bales, or 900 pounds, found some six miles west of the Marina del Rey harbor entrance, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

Mexican federal police on Feb. 14 announced the arrest in Culiacán, Sinaloa, of Jaime Herrera Herrera AKA "El Viejito" (Little Old Man), said to be top meth manufacturer and distributor for the Sinaloa Cartel. (NYT, Feb. 14) The bust came ten days after the arrest in León, Guanajuato, of José Antonio Torres Marrufo AKA "El Marrufo"—said to be leader of the Gente Nueva gang, armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel. Prosecutors suspect Marrufo of ordering the 2009 attack on a drug treatment clinic in Ciudad Juárez in which 18 people were killed. The cartel's maximum boss, Joaquín Guzmán AKA "El Chapo" (Shorty), still remains at large. (BBC News, Crónica de Hoy, RTT, Feb. 14; El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, Feb. 6; BBC News, Feb. 4)

Agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worked with an informant and with Mexican enforcement agents in 2007 to launder millions of dollars for Mexico's Beltrán Leyva cartel, according to reports in the New York Times and the Mexican magazine emeequis. The information comes from the Mexican government's response to a US request for the extradition of Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, a Colombian trafficker arrested in Mexico in 2010.

A new survey by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that the value of opium in Afghanistan soared by 133% in 2011 over the previous year, netting farmers $1.4 billion. A blight last year wiped out much of the poppy yield, driving up prices. Yields have now returned to pre-blight levels—a 61% increase, from 3,600 tons in 2010 to 5,800 tons last year. But prices remain high, and UNODC says a simultaneous drop in the price of wheat contributed to the increase in poppy cultivation. Gross income from opium in 2011 was 11 times higher than that earned from wheat—the biggest difference in income since 2003. Afghanistan currently supplies an estimated 90% of the world's opium, with the largest areas of poppy cultivation in the country's restive south. (VOA, Jan. 13)