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No border divides the pain caused by drugs from the pain brought about in Latin America by the drug business and the narcotraficantes.  It’s one big continent of pain–and in the last several years the narcos have begun selling drugs in earnest in their own countries, creating new cultures of addiction and misery.  

We’ve had movements to get people to stop buying clothes and shoes made in sweatshops, grapes picked by exploited farmworkers, fish species that are endangered, but no one’s thought to start a similar movement to get people to stop consuming the drugs that cause so much destruction abroad.

Many talk about legalizing drugs, and there’s something to be said for changing the economic arrangements. But what about reducing their use by developing and promoting more interesting and productive ways of dealing with suffering? Or even getting directly at the causes of that suffering?

We give you money and guns, lots and lots of money. You give us drugs. The guns destroy. The money destroys. The drugs destroy. The pain migrates, a phantom presence crossing the border the other way from the crossings we hear so much about.The drugs are supposed to numb people out, but that momentary numbing effect causes so much pain elsewhere. There’s a pain economy, a suffering economy, a fear economy, and drugs fuel all of them rather than making them go away.

I have been trying to imagine the export economy of pain. What does it look like? I think it might look like air-conditioning. This is how an air conditioner works: it sucks the heat out of the room and pumps it into the air outside. You could say that air-conditioners don’t really cool things down so much as they relocate the heat. The way the transnational drug economy works is a little like that: people in the U.S. are not reducing the amount of pain in the world; they’re exporting it to Mexico and the rest of Latin America as surely as those places are exporting drugs to us.

Here in the United States, there’s no room for sadness, but there are plenty of drugs for it, and now when people feel sad, even many doctors think they should take drugs. We undergo losses and ordeals and live in circumstances that would make any sane person sad, and then we say: the fault was yours and if you feel sad, you’re crazy or sick and should be medicated. Of course, now ever more Americans are addicted to prescription drugs, and there’s always the old anesthetic of choice, alcohol, but there is one difference: the economics of those substances are not causing mass decapitations in Mexico.

Mexico, I am sorry.  I want to see it all change, for your sake and ours. I want to call pain by name and numbness by name and fear by name. I want people to connect the dots from the junk in their brain to the bullet holes in others’ heads. I want people to find better strategies for responding to pain and sadness. I want them to rebel against those parts of their unhappiness that are political, not metaphysical, and not run in fear from the metaphysical parts either.

A hundred years ago, your dictatorial president Porfiro Díaz supposedly remarked, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States,” which nowadays could be revised to, “Painful Mexico, so far from peace and so close to the numbness of the United States.”

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ON MAY 9th American customs and border-protection officials launched an aerostat—a fat, tethered balloon—above the coast of Puerto Rico. Its job is to use radar to detect low-flying aircraft, ships and smaller vessels carrying drugs across the seas to the south.

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Planes fly a dogleg path—first north, then west—to avoid Colombian airspace; the drugs then move by land or other means via Central America and Mexico.

Drug flights to Central America dropped by a third and traffickers were pushed east to the Caribbean islands.

Traffickers often work with small packages, moving them in several jumps (see map). Some embark directly from the Venezuelan coast; others go overland through sparsely populated rainforest in Guyana and Suriname, where borders are virtually uncontrolled and small aircraft can land on remote roads or interior airstrips.

There are also well-established trails up the eastern Caribbean island chain and westward via Jamaica.

On the surface, it seems like the Nicaraguan government is doing quite a bit to fight the drug war and that Bluefields is a place of perdition. But reality is more complicated. Cocaine Trafficking Routes Through Nicaragua Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: "Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean" (September 2012) Credit: Alyson Hurt / NPR 'Cocaine Republics' Cocaine's Influence on Nicaragua's Miskito Coast Nicaragua — the largest country in Central America — has a lengthy coastline on the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. With its remote location, Bluefields is well placed to serve as a pit stop along the corridor where drugs travel from the South American producers to U.S. consumers. What's more, the cocaine moving through Nicaragua's territory represents a higher share of GDP than any other Central American country, which in the words of the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime, should give traffickers greater leverage to both sow more corruption and foment violence.

In 2011, The Global Commission on Drugs, a high-profile panel of world leaders – including former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — declared that the "global war on drugs has failed." And this September, the commission followed up with a report recommending policies that work, including some legalization and encouraging countries to try regulating instead of prohibiting some aspects of the drug trade.

rafficking in Class A drugs such as cocaine continues to offer the criminal the highest profit margin

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Financial Intelligence & AML/CFT Compliance Financial Intelligence & Compliance Most serious organised crime is about money. Therefore, tackling money laundering is an essential part of combating the threat of drug trafficking, organised crime, fraud and the financing of terrorism. Financial Intelligence Unit AML / CFT Compliance Policy on Drugs Determined to address the problem of illicit drug use

Most serious organised crime is about money.

tackling money laundering is an essential part of combating the threat of drug trafficking, organised crime

$1,066,000 and 5.6 kilos of cocaine, which was valued at $197,288.

$1,263,288.

charged with possession of cannabis, possession of cannabis with intent to supply, being concerned in the supply of cannabis and drug trafficking. They were slapped with additional charges of possession of cocaine, and being concerned in the supply of cocaine and drug trafficking

drug bust are ongoing

over 10 years in prison if they are indicted on all the charges

Class A drug and cannabis, which is a Class B drug, under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

pay more than $500,000 to the court for possessing cocaine

The Coast Guard conducts drug interdiction operations but, according to the US State Department, lacks the capacity to fully carry these out.

Antigua and Barbuda is a part of the Regional Security System (RSS) which seeks to promote cooperation between its members[9] in the Eastern Caribbean in drug interdiction efforts and maritime policing, among other areas.

The police are also engaged in the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) programme which was launched in 2011 and provides educational talks to school students on avoiding gangs, violence and drugs.

The court, however, has the authority to also fine the person convicted of drug possession where the quantity of drug exceeds two kilograms (4.4 pounds).

In addition to being jailed for three years, Bertrand has to pay the $300,000 fine within a year or be jailed for a further 12 months at Her Majesty’s Prison.

The woman’s lawyer, Steadroy “Cutie” Benjamin, begged the court to show mercy to his client who is a first time offender, still a youth, having celebrated her 33rd birthday last week, and the mother of two young daughters, ages 10 and eight.

Benjamin said the woman is of a strong Christian background, but was forced to take a chance with the drug because she did not want her children to suffer.

Only a few blocks up the hill and the shops and banks give way to more dishevelled buildings, run-down stores selling only a handful of items, homes with crumbling front steps. There is no shortage of opportunity to find drugs, as twenty-something men make their friendly approach to tourists.

Antigua's police appear hopelessly out of their depth. The police station on the high street in St John's is crumbling. The new commissioner, brought in from Canada with other former Mounties, has put his energies into solving the lack of funds and infrastructure within the organisation.

Over the years the ONDCP has worked closely along with the Customs and Excise division, sharing useful Information and Intelligence in order to clamp down on Money Laundering, Cross border movement of cash and Illegal Drugs which could be linked to terrorism.

he declared that the war on drugs had failed and that the international community needed to end the "taboo" of debating decriminalisation

Pérez Molina is unequivocal about the need to search for an alternative to the current paradigm,

For Colombia, drugs are a matter of national security; for other countries it is mainly a health and crime issue."

The cartels have grown in strength, the flow of arms towards Central America from the north has grown and the deaths in our country have grown. This has forced us to search for a more appropriate response."

The situation in Guatemala has become more serious as Mexican cartels – taking refuge from an attempt to militarily defeat them – have inserted themselves into Guatemala and sought to control the trafficking routes through that country

with the cartels come other nightmares: kidnapping, extortion, contract killers and people trafficking.

Pérez Molina concedes: "Drug traffickers have been able to penetrate the institutions in this country by employing the resources and money they have.

western countries fail to understand the reality that countries such as Guatemala and those of Central America have to live in," said Pérez Molina

due to a lack of understanding on the part of western countries.

arguing explicitly for the introduction of a regulated market for drugs. Not full legalisation, but a controlled, regulated market for the production, distribution and sale of narcotics.

the Guatemalans have been consulting with the Beckley Foundation, probably the leading global advocate of deploying science and empirical evidence to drive the debate about the war on drugs

"I believe they should reflect on this, to avoid these deaths that are occurring in transit countries. We don't produce and we don't consume, but we are countries that suffer deaths and place our institutions and our democracy at risk.

The report provides statistics about the patterns of drug use among local secondary school students as well as access to drugs and the perception of harm from drugs.

marijuana are the choice drugs among the 851 secondary school students

increases for each category were relatively small.

Fifty-eight per cent of the males reported using marijuana.

Just over half of all the students surveyed, considered marijuana to be quite easy to get and just under a third said they got the illegal substance from a friend.

A sweeping new plan for Honduras, focused more on judicial reform and institution-building, is now being jointly developed by Honduras and the United States. But State Department officials must first reassure Congress that the deaths have been investigated and that new safeguards, like limits on the role of American forces, will be put in place.

the new plan, according to a recent draft shown to The New York Times, is more aspirational than anything aimed at combating drugs and impunity in Mexico, or Colombia before that. It includes not just boats and helicopters, but also broad restructuring: several new investigative entities, an expanded vetting program for the police, more power for prosecutors, and a network of safe houses for witnesses.

The country’s homicide rate is among the highest in the world, and corruption has chewed through government from top to bottom.

The foreign minister, Mr. Corrales, a hulk of a man with a loud laugh and a degree in engineering, said he visited Washington in early 2011 with a request for help in four areas: investigation, impunity, organized crime and corruption.

Members of the Honduran police teams told government investigators that they took their orders from the D.E.A. Americans officials said that the FAST teams, deploying tactics honed in Afghanistan, did not feel confident in the Hondurans’ abilities to take the lead.

there were no detailed rules governing American participation in law enforcement operations. Honduran officials also described cases in which the rules of engagement for the D.E.A. and the police were vague and ad hoc.

the killing — along with the soaring homicide rate and the increased trafficking — sounded alarms in Washington: “It raised for us the specter of Honduras becoming another northern Mexico.”

Representative Howard L. Berman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to Mrs. Clinton, “Unfortunately, this is not the first time the United States has come perilously close to an overmilitarized strategy toward a country too small and institutionally weak for its citizens to challenge the policy.”

Mr. Brownfield, the assistant secretary, said it was impossible to “offer a zero risk program for interdicting drugs in Central America.” He noted that the shootings during interdiction raids happened in the middle of the night, in remote locations that were hard for investigators to reach. Despite these challenges, he said that investigations were conducted and that he was “basically satisfied” that he knew what had happened.

From the moment the Honduran pilot departed in his aging Tucano turboprop, just before midnight, he was in radio contact with Colombian authorities, who regularly receive radar intelligence from the American military’s Southern Command.

Mr. Corrales, the foreign minister, and some American officials have concluded that the downed planes amounted to misapplied military justice, urged on by societal anger and the broader weaknesses of Honduras’s institutions.

Creating a stronger system is at the core of what some officials are now calling Anvil II. A draft of the plan provided by Mr. Corrales shows a major shift toward shoring up judicial institutions with new entities focused on organized and financial crime.

The D.E.A.’s role will also probably change. A

“It’s a tragedy; there is no confidence in the state,” she said, wearing black in her university office. The old game of cocaine cat-and-mouse tends to look like a quicker fix, she said, with its obvious targets and clear victories measured in tons seized.

“This moment presents us with an opportunity for institutional reform,” Dr. Castellanos said. But that will depend on whether the new effort goes after more than just drugs and uproots the criminal networks that have already burrowed into Honduran society.

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possession, possession with intent to supply, and transfer of the illegal substance.

Two firearms with matching ammunition, and large sums of Eastern Caribbean and United States currency were sized in the operation.

motor van and a speedboat believed to be involved in the incident.

laundering charges,

The police in their quest to stem the flow of illegal drugs in and out of the country, as well as to rid the country of illegal firearms and ammunition, have to date seized millions of dollars’

2,500 cannabis plants,

Guatemala produces opium poppy and synthetic drugs for export

ombating drug trafficking one of his administration’s top priorities.

President Otto Perez Molina

government’s extensive anti-drug efforts and established a mobile land interdiction unit charged with targeting DTOs operating in remote areas

Guatemala’s pressing issues include high levels of violence fueled by the drug trade, money laundering, and other organized criminal activities; corruption within the police; and an overburdened and inefficient judicial system

Guatemala confronts continuing fiscal challenges in seeking to fund its counternarcotics initiatives. The country has the lowest tax collection rate in Central America and one of the lowest in Latin America.

Guatemala had the eighth-highest murder rate in the world

Guatemala worked with the United States to arrest high-profile traffickers in 2012

Guatemala is a party to the Central American Commission for the Eradication of Production, Traffic, Consumption and Illicit Use of Psychotropic Drugs and Substances

Inter-American Convention against Corruption

A maritime counternarcotics agreement with the United States is fully implemented

Guatemala is one of six countries (along with Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, France, Belize and the United States) that ratified the Caribbean Regional Agreement on Maritime Counter Narcotics, which is now in force.

590 hectares of opium poppy on these missions

air interdiction efforts, supported by six U.S.-titled helicopters, have significantly deterred drug flights from entering the country.

Guatemala seized 4.7 metric tons (MT) of cocaine in 2012,

eight kilograms of heroin

$5.6 million in drug-related assets

United States intends to work with Guatemala to build capacity for proper storage and/or destruction.

uatemala lacks current information

underfunded with an annual budget of $450,000, of which approximately 80 percent was used to cover salaries

SECCATID developed a school-based drug prevention program, “My First Steps,

United States continues to work with the Guatemalan Police Reform Commission to address police reform.

Guatemala cooperated with the United States and regional partners on several important counternarcotics initiatives in 2012

Guatemala and the United States continued to collaborate on a range of ongoing citizen security, counternarcotics, law enforcement, and rule-of-law initiatives in 2012, including the Central America Regional Security Initiative. U.S. assistan

United States provided support to an inter-agency anti-gang unit that brought together the PNC, Attorney General’s office (MP), and analysts from the PNC’s criminal analysis unit (CRADIC) to investigate and dismantle local gang organizations.

.S. support for rule-of-law activities, Guatemala increased its capacity to prosecute narcotics traffickers, organized crime leaders, money launderers and corrupt officials.

productive relations with Guatemala and will continue to support the government’s efforts to improve its technical and organizational capacity in the security and justice sectors.

better equipped to combat narcotics-related crimes in the country by fully implementing the Organized Crime Law

The United States encourages the Government of Guatemala to continue implementation of the Asset Seizure Law; quickly implement an anti-corruption law enacted by the Congress in October; approve legislation to regulate the gaming industry; and reform its law governing injunctions, which is often used to delay processes and trials

Concrete and substantial police reform, with appropriate budgetary support, is necessary for sustained progress in Guatemala.