Tag Archives: Drugs

Exclusive: U.S. offers to fund Mexico heroin fight as 2016 output jumps – U.S. official

FILE PHOTO: Policemen keep watch on the perimeter of a scene during a shooting with federal forces in Tepic, in Nayarit state, February 10, 2017. REUTERS/Hugo Cervantes/File Photo

By Gabriel Stargardter

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The United States has offered to help fund Mexico’s efforts to eradicate opium poppies, the U.S. assistant secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) said on Friday, as Mexican heroin output increased again last year.

“We would be prepared to support (opium eradication efforts) should we reach a basic agreement in terms of how they would do more and better eradication in the future,” William Brownfield of INL, part of the State Department, said in an interview.

“That is on the table, but I don’t want you to conclude that it’s a done deal, because we still have to work through the details,” he said, without specifying how much money the United States could provide.

The United States is in the midst of an opiates epidemic that has killed tens of thousands of people, and with much of its heroin coming from the mountains of Mexico, the issue has become a key topic of discussion between the Mexican government and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The U.S. offer to help fund Mexico’s war on poppy cultivation stands in stark contrast to Trump’s threats to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement and force Mexico to pay for a wall along the U.S. border, and reveals the more subtle discussions taking place between the two governments.

Mexico’s president’s office, the Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because the figures are not yet public, a U.S. official said separately that the area of opium poppies under cultivation in Mexico reached 32,000 hectares in 2016, equivalent to about 81 tonnes.

In 2015, Mexico had 28,000 hectares under cultivation, almost triple the area in 2012, according to U.S. data.

Support for eradicating Mexico’s opium crop could come in various forms, Brownfield said. For example, the U.S. government could provide more vehicles, or pay for helicopter flights to access the isolated, mountainous regions where poppy is grown.

“If it’s a matter of having other sorts of equipment, we could talk about support in terms of equipment,” he said.

The INL will not write Mexico a blank check but is willing to help fund specific units involved in eradication, he said.

Mexico is engaged in fraught discussions with the Trump administration over drug trafficking, trade and immigration, and Trump focused on the heroin scourge in his election campaign.

Nonetheless, Brownfield said the two governments were making substantial progress.

“Our cooperation with the Mexican government on the heroin challenge is in fact good, and it is better than it has ever been in the past,” he said.

Brownfield also confirmed a Reuters report that Mexico’s army is allowing the United States and the United Nations to observe eradication efforts.

(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Man’s body, seen tossed from plane, found on roof of Mexican hospital

Police officers stand guard near a crime scene where the body of a man, who witnesses said was tossed from a plane, landed on a hospital roof in Culiacan, in Mexico's northern Sinaloa state April 12, 2017. REUTERS/Jesus Bustamante

By Gabriel Stargardter

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The body of a man, who witnesses said was tossed from a plane, landed on a hospital roof in Mexico’s northern Sinaloa state on Wednesday, according to a public health service official in the region, which is home to notorious drug traffickers.

The body landed on the roof of an IMSS hospital in the town of Eldorado, around 7:30 a.m. local time, said the official, who was not authorized to give his name.

Witnesses standing outside the health center reported a plane flying low over the hospital and a person thrown out, the health official said.

Later on Wednesday, Sinaloa’s Deputy Attorney General Jesus Martin Robles said a body, found on the hospital roof, showed injuries that appeared to be related to a strong impact. He did not confirm that it had been thrown from a plane.

The public health service official said two more bodies were reported to have been found in the town, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Culiacan, the state capital. Local media reported that those two bodies were thrown from the same plane as the body that landed on the hospital.

The official did not know if the man was alive when he was thrown from the plane. Officials from the state prosecutor’s office were at the scene, he said.

“This is an agricultural area and planes are regularly used for fumigation,” the official said, adding that the IMSS hospital was operating normally.

Local media reported that suspected gang members had picked up the two other corpses.

Sinaloa is the home state of Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, who ran the Sinaloa drug cartel until his arrest in 2016. He was extradited to the United States earlier this year.

Ever since Chapo’s arrest, security in the state has deteriorated, as the Sinaloa cartel struggles to adapt to infighting and fresh threats from rival groups.

(Additional Reporting by Noe Torres; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Leslie Adler)

Heroin use, addiction up sharply in the U.S.: study

FILE PHOTO - A man injects himself with heroin using a needle obtained from the People's Harm Reduction Alliance, the nation's largest needle-exchange program, in Seattle, Washington April 30, 2015. REUTERS/David Ryder/File Photo

By Patricia Reaney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Heroin use in the United States has risen five-fold in the past decade and dependence on the drug has more than tripled, with the biggest jumps among whites and men with low incomes and little education, researchers said on Wednesday.

Whites aged 18 to 44 accounted for the biggest rise in heroin addiction, which has been fueled in part by the misuse of opioid prescription drugs.

The findings are troubling because the people most affected have few resources to deal with the problem, said Dr. Silvia Martins, an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and her colleagues.

“We are seeing that heroin use has increased in the past 10 years,” Martins said in a phone interview. “It is more prominent among whites with lower incomes and education and young adults.”

Heroin use, which includes those who have tried the drug but not become dependent on it, and addiction also rose more among unmarried adults. Although a jump was seen among women, it as was not as prominent as for men.

The researchers found no differences in heroin use or addiction among the major regions of the country.

The findings, published online in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, followed a statement from the American College of Physicians calling for drug addiction and substance abuse disorders to be treated as a chronic medical condition like diabetes or hypertension.

It also coincided with the expected appointment of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to head a federal commission to combat the problem. Christie has declared opioid drug abuse a public health crisis.

Martins agreed drug addiction should be treated as an illness.

“By recognizing it is a disease, more people will become aware that they need to seek help, or if they are frequent users, to know that addiction is preventable,” she said.

Martins and her colleagues uncovered the trend by analyzing two studies, one from 2001-2002 and another from 2012-2013, and data from 43,000 long-term heroin users.

In 2001-2002, there were similar rates of heroin use between whites and non-whites, but by 2013 there was a significant race gap, according to the study.

Martins called for expanding treatment programs, overdose prevention and medication-assisted treatment, and for a change in doctors’ prescribing practices for opioids.

“I think some level of regulation is needed,” she said. “At the same time people who truly need that medication should get it but with greater supervision.”

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Patrick Enright and Paul Simao)

Philippines’ Duterte will pay price for drugs killings, detained senator says

Philippine Senator Leila de Lima gestures during a news conference at the Senate headquarters in Pasay city, metro Manila, Philippines September 22, 2016. Picture taken September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco

MANILA (Reuters) – A senator and detained critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has warned he and his “blind followers” will pay for ignoring alleged extrajudicial killings, and should stop trying to fool the world their crackdown was above board.

Leila de Lima, who last year led a Senate probe into alleged summary killings during Duterte’s anti-drugs campaign, was arrested last week and has been remanded in police detention on drug charges.

“In due time, your president and those who blindly enforce his illegal orders to kill, fabricate evidence and concoct lies will be held accountable,” De Lima said in a handwritten note posted on her official Facebook page on Friday.

The senator was responding to rebuttals by the president’s office and the police of a report by Human Rights Watch, which on Thursday challenged official accounts that thousands of killings during police operations were in self-defense.

The New York-based group said Duterte had turned a blind eye to murders by police in a “campaign of extrajudicial execution”. The president’s spokesman said the allegations, without proof, were “hearsay”.

De Lima, who is charged with facilitating drug trades in jails when she was justice minister, said the denial of state-sponsored killings and demands for proof were insults to people’s intelligence.

“Stop fooling our people and the rest of the world,” said the senator, who last week described Duterte as a “sociopathic serial killer”.

Duterte’s chief lawyer, Salvadore Panelo, said De Lima was deluded and should realize an overwhelming number of Filipinos wanted her behind bars.

“She should instead write to herself and tell herself to stop fooling herself and the people,” he posted on social network Twitter.

“She should accept reality and the truth that she created the rut she is now in.”

About 8,000 people have died since the drugs crackdown was launched in June last year, 2,555 in raids and sting operations where police said they had encountered violent resistance.

Many of the other deaths are under investigation and rights groups believe most were summary executions of drugs users, with police complicity. The authorities reject that view and blame vigilantes or inter-gang rivalry.

Duterte told reporters on Friday that his promises to kill were a warning unheeded by drug pushers, who could stop the bloodshed if they quit selling the methamphetamine “shabu”.

“Is it bad to say I will kill people for my country? It’s a warning actually to stop,” he said.

“If you stop taking shabu tonight, tomorrow I can assure no more killings connected with drugs.”

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Enrico Dela Cruz; Editing by Martin Petty and Toby Davis)

Out of the shadows: Manila’s meth dealers back on the streets as cops pull back

A man prepares to use "Shabu", or methamphetamine, inside a drug den in Manila, Philippines February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

By Clare Baldwin and Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs had until three weeks ago driven the trade in crystal methamphetamine underground, according to residents and drug users in some of the slum areas of the nation’s capital city.

As thousands of users and dealers were shot dead by police and vigilantes in the first seven months after Duterte came to power last June, open dealing in the drug, known here by its street name shabu, largely stopped. Instead, deals were done on the quiet between people who knew each other, maybe with a text message first.

But since Duterte ordered the Philippine National Police(PNP) to stand down from the drugs war last month, after declaring the force “rotten to the core”, the drugs trade has come back out of the shadows, more than half a dozen drug users and dealers in some of Manila’s toughest areas said in interviews. Many spoke on condition that only their first names be used in this story.

Beside one of the less-used railroad tracks in Manila – a grassy area scattered with human excrement only a few miles from the gleaming high-rises of the Makati business district – shabu was easily available last week, costing just a few pesos (cents) per hit. Residents said that when they traveled on the illegal trolleys that ferry people for a few pesos along the track when there are no trains in sight, a fellow passenger will often offer them a sachet of the drug.

Eusebio, 52, who pushes a wood and bamboo trolley on the track for a living, said dealers sometimes walk alongside calling out: “How much are you going to buy?”

“Now that the operations have been suspended, drugs have become rampant again,” he said. “Those who were hiding have resurfaced.”Another trolley-pusher, Boyser, 59, told two Reuters journalists: “If you weren’t reporters, they would offer you drugs.”

DRUG DEN

In a dark cinderblock room that serves as a drug den in another part of Manila, there were similar stories from users.

“We have more freedom now,” Jason, a 39-year-old bartender told a visiting reporter as he inhaled shabu smoke.  “All the users are still users, except those who have been killed,” he said, adding that he has used shabu for almost two decades.

More than 8,000 people have been killed since Duterte was sworn in almost eight months ago, about 2,500 of whom were killed in official police anti-narcotics operations. Human rights groups believe many of the others were extra-judicial executions committed as part of the war on drugs, and in cooperation with the police – a claim the Duterte administration has vehemently denied.

The president’s office did not respond to a list of emailed questions about the drugs war and whether dealers were now openly back on the streets.

Duterte has repeatedly said he will hunt down drug lords and other “high value” targets and to date, there have been a handful of large-scale seizures and raids on shabu laboratories. But most of those killed in the war on drugs have been small-time dealers and users in some of the country’s poorest neighborhoods.

The PNP stopped publishing an official tally of drug war killings from police operations on Jan. 31 when Duterte ordered the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to take over the campaign.

FEWER KILLINGS

According to reporters and photographers from Reuters and Philippine news organizations working the crime beat on the night shift, “vigilante-style” killings of drug suspects have continued, but at a much slower pace. Police data shows 398 people were killed nationwide in the first 20 days of February. Details of the killings were not provided and it was unclear how many were drug-related.

Some anti-narcotics experts say they will not be surprised if it turns out that the drugs war has been ineffective. They say that ruthless operations against drugs, like Duterte’s, have failed elsewhere in the world.

Colombia’s former president, César Gaviria, said in a New York Times column earlier this month that his country’s long war on drugs not only failed to eradicate drug production, trafficking and consumption but also pushed drugs and crime into neighboring countries, while “tens of thousands of people were slaughtered.”

Thailand launched a “war on drugs” in 2003 that killed about 2,800 people in three months. But figures show it had no lasting impact on meth supply or demand in Thailand. “The world has lost the war on drugs, not only Thailand,” the country’s then Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya told Reuters last July.

When an aggressive anti-drugs campaign begins, supplies may be tight for a while, street prices may spike, but ultimately drug usage does not drop, say those who have studied the results.

“We don’t know of any examples from around the world where very hardline approaches have worked effectively,” said Jeremy Douglas, the regional representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.  “They can temporarily disrupt street business, but they don’t disrupt demand.”

LOST MOMENTUM

Some police officers told Reuters that they had received reports of increased street-level drug activity since they were ordered to stand down.

Manila Police Commander Olivia Sagaysay, who oversees four precincts in the city, said the war on drugs had lost momentum and morale among her officers had suffered since they were ordered to stand down.

“It’s depressing,” she said. “But who are we not to follow the higher-ups?”

She said she expected the trade to increase but maybe not return to its previous levels because “networks were disrupted” and “pushers were killed.”

In a written response to questions from Reuters about the impact of Duterte’s campaign on the street-level shabu trade, the PDEA said that “based on reports gathered, the supply of illegal drugs in some areas are still considerably abundant.”

The PDEA attributed low street prices for shabu – prices overall have risen only minimally since the war on drugs began and in some areas have fallen – to a “lack of customers” or drug traffickers trying to get rid of their supply “in order to avoid arrest.” It said drugs were being hoarded and that it was difficult for users to transact directly with traffickers. The PDEA did not provide evidence for any of its assessments.

PNP spokesman Dionardo Carlos said drugs would return to the streets because it was “a billion peso business” and “money talks”.

In his view, though, the drug war had not failed. “We hit the target and now it goes back to PDEA.  As far as the PNP is concerned we did our part in the past 7 months. I hope PDEA will be able to do their part.”

The PDEA has just about 1,800 people on its rolls compared with the national police force of 160,000. Of the existing PDEA personnel, only about half are field operatives.

PDEA spokesman Derrick Carreon said his agency will add staff and that the president would soon be issuing an executive order to set up an anti-illegal drugs inter-agency council and task force that would also draw from the military, the National Bureau of Investigation and the PNP. The task force will be charged with pursuing the war on drugs.

“There is a temporary vacuum of warm bodies but it won’t be long,” Carreon said, adding that those involved in the drug trade would be wrong to think they were safe.

“If that’s their perception, it won’t last long,” he said. “They will find out in the hardest way that they are terribly wrong.”

“GO AFTER COOKERS”

Still, Jason, the bartender who is a shabu user, said Duterte’s campaign was not successful because he targeted the wrong people.

If authorities had gone after the “cookers”, the people manufacturing the drugs, instead of users and small dealers, people like him would be unable to buy and would move on. As it is, Jason said, shabu is always in plentiful supply, adding he was addicted and the drug eliminated any fear he may have had of being shot by police or vigilantes.

As he spoke, Jason poured white crystals into a long strip of aluminum foil folded into a trough, tilted it slightly and held a flame below. Almost immediately, it produced a thick white smoke, which he sucked up through a narrow aluminum foil straw.

He then began speaking again, more animatedly. “I buy drugs every day!” he said.

(Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Neil Jerome Morales; Additional reporting by Andrew R.C. Marshall and Erik De Castro; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Martin Howell)

Duterte targets Philippine children in bid to widen drug war

boys undergoing drug rehabilitation in Philippines

By Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall

MANILA (Reuters) – Before Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs had even begun, allies of the Philippines president were quietly preparing for a wider offensive. On June 30, as Duterte was sworn in, they introduced a bill into the Philippine Congress that could allow children as young as nine to be targeted in a crackdown that has since claimed more than 7,600 lives.

The bill proposes to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 9 years old to prevent what it calls “the pampering of youthful offenders who commit crimes knowing they can get away with it.”

“You can ask any policeman or anyone connected with the law enforcement: We produce a generation of criminals,” Duterte said in a speech in Manila on December 12. Young children, he said, were becoming drug runners, thieves and rapists, and must be “taught to understand responsibility.”

The move to target children signals Duterte’s determination to intensify his drug war, which faces outrage abroad and growing unease at home. The president’s allies say his support in Congress will ensure the bill passes the House of Representatives by June.

The House would approve the bill “within six months,” said Fredenil Castro, who co-authored the legislation with the speaker of the House, Pantaleon Alvarez. It might face opposition in the Senate, but would prevail because of Duterte’s allies there, added Castro.

National police chief Ronald Dela Rosa recently announced that he was suspending anti-narcotics operations, which have killed more than 2,500 people, while the force rids itself of corrupt cops. The announcement came after it emerged last month that drug squad officers had killed a South Korean businessman at national police headquarters.

The killing of drug suspects has continued, albeit at a slower pace, with most following the pattern of killings that police have blamed on vigilantes. Human rights monitors believe vigilantes have killed several thousand people and operate in league with the police – a charge the police deny.

Duterte has signaled he intends to continue his drug war. In late January, he said the campaign would run until his presidency ends in 2022.

‘IN CAHOOTS WITH DRUG USERS’

Lowering the age of criminality was justified, Castro told Reuters, because many children were “in cahoots with drug users, with drug pushers, and others who are related to the drug trade.” He said he based his support for the bill on what he saw from his car and at churches – children begging and pickpocketing. “For me, there isn’t any evidence more convincing than what I see in every day of my life,” he said.

A controversial bill to restore the death penalty, another presidential priority, is also expected to pass the House of Representatives by mid-year, according to Duterte allies in Congress.

Supporters of the bill to lower the age of criminality say holding young children liable will discourage drug traffickers from exploiting them. Opponents, including opposition lawmakers and human rights groups, are appalled at a move they say will harm children without evidence it will reduce crime.

There is also resistance inside Duterte’s administration. A member of Duterte’s cabinet who heads the Department of Social Welfare and Development opposes the move. And a branch of the police responsible for protecting women and children disputes the claim that children are heavily involved in the drug trade – a claim not supported by official data.

Opponents warn that lowering the age of criminality would further strain a juvenile justice system that is struggling to cope. At worst, they say, with a drug war raging nationwide, the bill could legitimize the killing of minors.

“What will stop them from targeting children?” said Karina Teh, a local politician and child rights advocate in Manila. “They are using the war on drugs to criminalize children.”

IN THE FIRING LINE

The drug-war death toll includes at least 29 minors who were either shot by unidentified gunmen or accidentally killed during police operations from July to November 2016, according to the Children’s Legal Rights and Development Center (CLRDC) and the Network Against Killings in the Philippines, both Manila-based advocacy groups.

Dela Rosa said the Philippine National Police “fully supports” the new bill. It is “true and supported by data” that minors are used by drug traffickers because they can’t be held criminally liable, the police chief said in a submission to the House of Representatives.

Some police officers working on the streets agree with Dela Rosa. In Manila’s slums, children as young as six act as lookouts for dealers, shouting “The enemy is coming!” when police approach, said Cecilio Tomas, an anti-narcotics officer in the city. By their early teens, some become delivery boys and then dealers and users, said Tomas.

Salvador Panelo, Duterte’s chief legal counsel, said the bill would protect children by stopping criminals from recruiting them. “They will not become targets simply because they will no longer be involved,” he said.

Child rights experts say the legislation could put children in the firing line. They point to the deadly precedent set in the southern city of Davao, where Duterte pioneered his hard-line tactics as mayor. The Coalition Against Summary Execution, a Davao-based rights watchdog, documented 1,424 vigilante-style killings in the city between 1998 and 2015. Of those victims, 132 were 17 or younger.

For all but three years during that period, Duterte was either Davao’s mayor or vice-mayor. He denied any involvement in the killings.

CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE

Althea Barbon was one of the children killed in the current nationwide drug war. The four year old was fatally wounded in August when police in an anti-narcotics operation shot at her father, the two Manila-based advocacy groups said. Unidentified gunmen shot dead Ericka Fernandez, 17, in a Manila alley on October 26, police said. Her bloody Barbie doll was collected as evidence. And on December 28, three boys, aged 15 or 16, were killed in Manila by what police said were motorbike-riding gunmen.

If the bill passes, the Philippines won’t be the only country where the age of criminality is low. In countries including England, Northern Ireland and Switzerland it is 10, according to the website of the Child Rights International Network, a research and advocacy group. In Scotland, children as young as eight can be held criminally responsible, but the government is in the process of raising the age limit to 12.

Critics of the Philippines’ bill say lower age limits are largely found in countries where the legal systems, detention facilities and rehabilitation programs are more developed.

Statistics from the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the government’s top anti-narcotics body, appear to contradict the Duterte camp’s claim that there is a large number of young children deeply involved in the drug trade.

There were 24,000 minors among the 800,000 drug users and dealers who had registered with the authorities by November 30, according to police statistics. But less than two percent of those minors, or about 400 children, were delivering or selling drugs. Only 12 percent, or 2,815, were aged 15 or younger. Most of the 24,000 minors were listed as drug users.

The number of minors involved in the drug trade is “just a small portion,” said Noel Sandoval, deputy head of the Women and Children’s Protection Center (WCPC), the police department that compiled the data.

The WCPC is not pushing to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility, said Sandoval, but if the age is to be lowered, his department recommends a minimum age of 12, not 9.

Between January 2011 and July 2016, 956 children aged six to 17 were “rescued nationwide from illegal drug activity,” according to PDEA. They were mostly involved with marijuana and crystal methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug also known as shabu, and were handed over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). Of these, only 80 were under the age of 15.

MORE DETENTIONS

Asked for evidence that younger children are involved in the drug trade, Duterte’s legal counsel Panelo said the president had data from “all intelligence agencies.” Panelo declined to disclose those numbers.

Among the opponents of the bill is a member of Duterte’s cabinet, Judy Taguiwalo, secretary of the DSWD. The legislation runs counter to scientific knowledge about child development and would result not in lower crime rates but in more children being detained, Taguiwalo wrote in a letter to the House of Representatives in October.

Hidden by a high wall topped with metal spikes, the Valenzuela youth detention center in northern Manila is already operating at twice its capacity. Its 89 boys eat meals in shifts – the canteen can’t hold them all at once – and sleep on mats that spill out of the spartan dorms and into the hallways.

The government-run center, which currently houses boys aged 13 to 17 for up to a year, is considered a model facility in the Philippines. Even so, said Lourdes Gardoce, a social worker at the Valenzuela home, “It’s a big adjustment on our part if we have to cater to kids as young as nine.”

(Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Andrew R.C. Marshall. Edited by David Lague and Peter Hirschberg.)

Sanctioned for drugs, Venezuela vice-president slams U.S. ‘aggression’

Venezuela Vice President

By Andrew Cawthorne and Alexandra Ulmer

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s powerful Vice President Tareck El Aissami on Tuesday called his blacklisting by the United States on drug charges an “imperialist aggression” in the first bilateral flare-up under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We shall not be distracted by these miserable provocations,” he added in a series of tweets. “Truth is invincible and we will see this vile aggression dispelled.”

The U.S. Department of Treasury on Monday sanctioned El Aissami and Samark Lopez, whom it identified as his associate, on accusations of masterminding an international network shipping drugs to Mexico and the United States.

Lopez also said the listings appeared politically motivated.

“Mr. Lopez is not a government official and has not engaged in drug trafficking,” he said in a statement on his website describing himself as a “legitimate businessman.”

President Nicolas Maduro’s government has frequently cast U.S. and opposition accusations of drug-trafficking, corruption and human rights abuses as a false pretext to justify meddling in Venezuela and a push to topple him.

Maduro, 54, narrowly won election in 2013 to replace the late Hugo Chavez, but his popularity has plummeted amid an economic crisis in the nation of 30 million people.

Though he frequently lashed out at former U.S. leader Barack Obama, the Venezuelan president has so far refrained from criticizing Trump.

The sanction on El Aissami will dent Maduro’s hopes Trump might avoid confrontation with Venezuela but could also help him by providing a nationalist card to play, said Tulane University academic and Venezuela expert David Smilde.

“This is a tremendous gift to Maduro as it ensures El Aissami’s loyalty. It essentially increases El Aissami’s exit costs and gives him a personal stake in the continuation of ‘Chavismo’,” he said.

“To be clear, El Aissami and others should be held responsible for their actions. However it should be understood this process has pernicious unintended consequences. I think we are effectively witnessing the creation of a rogue state.”

“CRIMINAL” STATE?

El Aissami, 42, whom local media report is of Syrian and Lebanese extraction, grew up poor in the Andean state of Merida and went on to study law and criminology, according to the ruling Socialist Party. He had been both a lawmaker and a state governor before being named vice president last month.

Venezuelan opposition groups have long accused El Aissami of repressing dissent, participating in drug trafficking rings, and supporting Middle Eastern groups such as Hezbollah.

The head of Venezuela’s Democratic Unity opposition coalition, Jesus Torrealba, said on Tuesday that the El Aissami case demonstrated the rotten and “criminal” nature of the state.

Another opposition leader, Henry Ramos, scoffed that Venezuela would no doubt claim drugs had been planted on officials “just like they plant evidence on Venezuelan opponents to make them rot in the regime’s jails.”

Venezuela is holding more than 100 activists in prison, according to local rights groups. The government denies the existence of political prisoners, saying all politicians in jail are there on legitimate charges.

A senior U.S. official said on Monday that El Aissami controlled drug routes by air and sea. The Treasury Department said he oversaw or partially owned narcotics shipments of more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds)from Venezuela on multiple occasions.

Another U.S. administration official estimated the value of property in Miami linked to El Aissami but now blocked was worth tens of millions of dollars.

The move was a departure from the so-called “soft landing” approach taken by Obama’s White House. At times it had clashed with efforts by the U.S. Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration, which worked with informants in Venezuela to nab influential officials for money laundering and drug trafficking.

Since 2015, the Obama administration had sought to use behind-the-scenes diplomacy to ease acrimony with Caracas and the fallout of a string of U.S. drug indictments against Venezuelan officials, such as Interior Minister Nestor Reverol.

“When the right wing attacks us, it shows we are advancing. Nothing and nobody will stop our victorious march to peace,” Reverol tweeted in defense of El Aissami.

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore in Caracas, Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by W Simon; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Shootouts in Mexico show Trump’s drug cartel fight will be tough

forensic scientists work at crime scene

By Christine Murray and Lizbeth Diaz

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Since Mexico’s top drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was extradited to a U.S. jail, gunfights in broad daylight have rocked his home state of Sinaloa in a power struggle that is a reminder of how hard it is to crush the country’s drug cartels.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the cartels his spokesman called “a clear and present danger.” To succeed, history suggests, Trump will have to go further then capturing or killing gang leaders.

When leaders such as Guzman are taken out, others replace them or the cartels splinter. Either way, the flow of drugs to lucrative U.S. markets is rarely interrupted for long.

As boss of the Sinaloa cartel, Guzman escaped from prison twice before Mexico’s navy arrested him last year after a chase through city sewers. Flown to the United States in January, he is awaiting trial in a New York jail.

In his absence, violence has flared. The Sinaloans, long the world’s largest drug gang with a footprint across most of the United States, appear to be facing both an internal power struggle and challenges from upstart rivals.

Last month, there were 116 homicides in Sinaloa, 50 percent more than the same month in 2016, an official at the state attorney general’s office told Reuters.

Shootouts in the state capital Culiacan resulted in 12 deaths over three days in the last week alone, the office said in a statement. The state education ministry suspended classes in 148 schools on Wednesday, citing security issues.

A video obtained by Reuters from a Federal Police official showed a pick-up truck fitted with a mounted machine gun circling a gas station during a two-minute exchange of gunfire.

The official said the footage was taken in Culiacan. Reuters could not independently verify that. Earlier, a Mexican marine and five other people were killed in clashes with a drug gang’s armed convoy that was roaming the city.

Tomas Guevara, who studies crime at Sinaloa State University, attributed the outburst of violence to the breakdown of an alliance between factions, with Guzman’s sons Alfredo and Ivan Archivaldo on one side and another leader, Damaso “El Licenciado” Lopez, on the other.

Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis at security consultancy Stratfor, said Chapo was out of touch now he was in a U.S. jail.

“That seems to have emboldened ‘El Licenciado’,” Stewart said.

After Guzman was extradited the night before Trump’s inauguration, former and current U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials told Reuters they expected an imminent move on Chapo’s sons by their rivals. A letter this week to a top Mexican journalist claimed they were injured in the latest violence.

U.S. HELP

In a call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto this month, Trump offered help, saying Mexico had not done a good job knocking the cartels out, according to a CNN report.

Trump’s executive order tells federal agencies to increase help for foreign partners on security and on intelligence sharing. The order was vague on details. The U.S. government and Mexico already work closely to tackle cartels.

For example, on Thursday, Mexican marines used a Black Hawk helicopter to kill eight alleged gang members including the head of the Beltran-Leyva gang, a rival of El Chapo. The United States sold Black Hawks to Mexico under the anti-cartel Plan Merida.

Steve Dudley of think-tank Insight Crime said it was impossible to end the flow of drugs, but more could be done on violence. Success would depend on stabilizing the volatile turn in bilateral relations under Trump.

“The overriding concern on the part of law enforcement officials on both sides of the border is that they are now at the whim of a seemingly erratic, chaotic approach,” he said.

Mexico’s national security commission did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Christine Murray and Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and James Dalgleish)

Deep in the jungle, Brazil struggles to battle drug trade

Brazil army soldiers on border with Colombia to combat drug trade

By Alonso Soto

VILA BITTENCOURT, Brazil (Reuters) – In an isolated army outpost deep in the Amazon jungle, Felipe Castro leads 70 soldiers on the frontline of Brazil’s fight against its biggest security threat: the drug trade.

Castro’s platoon patrols a 250 km (155 miles) stretch of the border with the world’s top cocaine producer Colombia in a bid to stem the flow of illegal drugs and arms that is fuelling a war between criminal gangs in Brazil.

“It’s a difficult job but not impossible,” said the gaunt 29-year-old, his face covered in green and black camouflage.

Watching from the bank of the murky Japura river, Castro directs his men as they use a metal speedboat to practise intercepting drug shipments on its fast-moving waters.

The river marks only part of Brazil’s porous border that stretches for nearly 10,000 kms, three times the U.S.-Mexico frontier.

After years of fragile truce, Brazil’s drug gangs have launched a battle for control of lucrative cross-border smuggling routes that has spilled into the country’s gang-controlled jails, sparking the bloodiest prison riots in decades.

More than 130 inmates have been killed so far this year.

In the vast state of Amazonas, the North Family gang has for years dominated the smuggling of cocaine that is shipped to Europe or sold in Brazil’s inner cities in a business believed to be worth $4.5 billion a year.

Brazil is the world’s biggest consumer of cocaine after the United States, according to United Nations data.

Machete-wielding North Family gangs decapitated dozens of inmates of the rival First Capital Command (PCC) in a New Year’s prison massacre that has sparked revenge killings across penitentiaries in northern Brazil.

President Michel Temer’s government is worried the prison violence could spill onto the streets of major cities such as economic hub Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, a major tourist destination.

Temer has vowed to improve military surveillance along the border, but senior commanders acknowledge drugs and arms will continue to flow in.

“Not even the United States has been able to stop drug trafficking along its border with Mexico,” said General Altair Polsin, head of the army’s ground operations command. “You have to tackle consumption to put an end to this.”

The military plans to increase its patrols on the Solimoes River, one of the main smuggling routes, and share intelligence with officials in neighboring Colombia and Peru.

Officers are putting their hopes in a technology upgrade to use infrared sensors and drones for border surveillance.

For this year, Brazil plans to nearly double its budget to about half a billion reais to finance a border technology program known as SISFRON, according to Defense Minister Raul Jungmann.

Updated technology is crucial for the 1,500 soldiers in the 24 garrisons posted along the Amazon border who divide their time searching for drugs with raids on illegal miners, loggers and hunters.

Other Brazilian security agencies fighting drugs and arms trafficking in this isolated swath of the jungle are also stretched.

Amazonas needs an extra 7,000 civil and military police to keep up with the increase in drug activity, according an internal report by the state security secretary.

“We are 30 officers overseeing an area the size of France,” said Marcos Vinicius Menezes, the federal police chief in Tabatinga, a city washed by the Solimoes that borders Colombia and Peru.

“If fighting the drug trade wasn’t enough, we also have to look after the world’s biggest tropical forest.”

(Editing by Daniel Flynn)

U.S. states sue Mylan, Teva, others for fixing drug prices

A person holds pharmaceutical tablets and capsules in this picture illustration taken in Ljubljana

y Diane Bartz and Sarah N. Lynch

(Reuters) – Twenty states filed a lawsuit Thursday against Mylan, Teva Pharmaceuticals and four other generic drug makers, saying they conspired on pricing of two common generic drugs, according to a copy of the complaint.

The civil lawsuit is one piece of a broader generic drug pricing probe that remains under way at the state and federal level, as well as in the U.S. Congress. The inquiries have grown over the past two years to include multiple drugs and companies, some of which have disclosed they are being investigated by the Justice Department.

The drugs involved in Thursday’s lawsuit include the delayed release version of a common antibiotic, doxycycline hyclate; and glyburide, an older drug used to treat diabetes.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, names Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc as a “ring leader” of the price manipulation, and also lists Mayne Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma and Citron Pharma LLC as participants.

Asked for comment on Thursday, a spokesman for Heritage referred to their comment from the previous day, which blamed the former executives for the price-fixing and said that they had been terminated. Heritage is part of Indian company Emcure Pharmaceuticals.

Mylan denied the charge. “To date, we know of no evidence that Mylan participated in price fixing,” Mylan spokeswoman Nina Devlin said by email.

Teva spokeswoman Denise Bradley said by email that the company had just received the complaint and was reviewing it.

The other three companies had no immediate comment.

Teva shares were off 0.4 percent at $36.84 in New York trading. Mylan’s rose 0.9 percent at $38.01. Mylan has also come under fire for hiking the price of the Epipen to $600 for a two-pack, from $100.

The lawsuit alleges that top executives of the drug companies and their sales executives propped up the prices of the two drugs either by setting the prices or allocating markets, the New York attorney general’s office said in the statement.

The states also say in their lawsuit that executives knew that the conduct was illegal and either deleted emails or made efforts to avoid communicating in writing.

“Companies that collude and fix prices for generic drugs in order to pad their profits must be held accountable for the very real harm they inflict on New Yorkers’ ability to pay for life-saving medications,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.

The state attorneys’ investigation into drug price fixing found evidence of broad, well-coordinated schemes on a number of generic drugs and is ongoing, according to the complaint.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit this week against two former Heritage executives alleging that they colluded to fix the prices of doxycycline hyclate, and to split up the market for glyburide.

Generic drug pricing became an issue in 2014, driven in large part by media reports of sharply rising drug prices, and Congress opened an investigation.

The lead state in the probe was Connecticut and the other states involved are Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington.