As the crackdown on narcotics in Central America becomes increasingly messy, the best hope for success may lie in pushing drug traffic elsewhere
drugs
Obstacles Ahead in Burma’s Opium War
Despite recent democratic reforms, questions remain whether Burma’s government can rein in its wild hinterland and tackle the burgeoning opium trade
Must-Reads from Around the World
A rights group says migrant workers at the Sochi Olympic construction sites are exploited, the U.K. is the world’s top land-grabber and Iran releases footage of a missing U.S. drone
Why Europe’s Healthiest Economy Has Its Worst Drug Problem
Estonia is an economic powerhouse — with more than 8% growth in 2011 — but it has a dreadful statistic has well: the highest number of per capita drug deaths in Europe
Must-Reads from Around the World
Angola may be rich in oil, but it is also full of unexploded land mines
Illegal Drug Use Around the World — 5 Things You Need to Know
Global illegal drug use is expected to rise by 25% over the next few decades as rapid urbanization, industrialization, and population growth in developing countries fuel the demand for illegal substances, the UN’s anti-drug …
Must-Reads from Around the World, June 11, 2012
Must reads for June 11: What will Spain’s bailout really achieve? Who killed Li Wangyang? And will any of Mexico’s presidential hopefuls solve the country’s bloody narco crisis?
U.S. Insists Its Anti-Drug Agents Did Not Fire on Innocent Hondurans
Thanks to sensational atrocities like the 49 headless corpses dumped on a highway last weekend, Mexico tends to grab most of the world’s drug-war attention. But as we’ve reported, the western hemisphere’s most violent …
Must-Reads From Around the World: April 23, 2012
Withdrawal Symptoms – In a pact reached after a year of negotiations between the U.S. and Afghanistan, Washington promised military and financial support for a decade after its formal troop withdrawal from the country in 2014, …
Colombia’s President Talks with TIME About Castro, Capitalism and His Country’s Comeback
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos will host the sixth Summit of the Americas this weekend, April 14 to 15, in the Caribbean city of Cartagena. The hemispheric gathering marks a comeback for Colombia, which is emerging from …
U.S. Drug Czar Responds to Global Spin: Legalization Is No “Silver Bullet”
In my Aug. 30 post, I posed two questions about the speech Mexican President Felipe Calderon gave on Aug. 26, a day after the massacre of 52 innocent people in a Monterrey casino set afire by drug-cartel gangsters. The first question: was Calderon, fed up with America’s “insatiable” demand for drugs, in effect telling the U.S. to …
Four Decades Later, It’s Time to Scrap the Dead-End Drug War
I recently returned from the desert city of Durango, Mexico, where forensic officials are still trying to identify some 240 corpses discovered this year in mass graves. More than 200 other bodies have been found in similar fosas across northern Mexico. All were victims, many of them innocent victims, of the drug-trafficking …
Report: The Global War on Drugs Has Failed. Is It Time to Legalize?
The global war against drugs is fought seemingly every day in the jungles of Colombia and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the inner cities of the U.S. and the trafficking corridors of Central America. But, according to a new report, it’s an abject disaster.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy, an organization launched by former …