The *cough cough* War on Drugs

CONFIRMED: The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico's Most Notorious Drug Cartel

REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar

"El Vicentillo" being presented to the media in Mexico City on March 19, 2009.

An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels. Sinaloa, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.
There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be "the world’s most powerful drug trafficker," coordinates with American authorities.
But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official.
The written statements were made to the U.S. District Court in Chicago in relation to the arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the son of Sinaloa leader Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and allegedly the Sinaloa cartel’s "logistics coordinator."
Here's what DEA agent Manuel Castanon told the Chicago court:
"On March 17, 2009, I met for approximately 30 minutes in a hotel room in Mexico City with Vincente Zambada-Niebla and two other individuals — DEA agent David Herrod and a cooperating source [Sinaloa lawyer Loya Castro] with whom I had worked since 2005. ... I did all of the talking on behalf of [the] DEA."
A few hours later, Mexican Marines arrested Zambada-Niebla (a.k.a. "El Vicentillo") on charges of trafficking more than a billion dollars in cocaine and heroin. Castanon and three other agents then visited Zambada-Niebla in prison, where the Sinaloa officer "reiterated his desire to cooperate," according to Castanon.
El Universal, citing court documents, reports that DEA agents met with high-level Sinaloa officials such as Castro more than 50 times since 2000.
Then-Justice Department prosecutor Patrick Hearn told the Chicago court that, according to DEA special agent Steve Fraga, Castro "provided information leading to a 23-ton cocaine seizure, other seizures related to" various drug trafficking organizations, and that "El Mayo" Zambada wanted his son to cooperate with the U.S.

El Universal

A screenshot from the documents published by El Universal.

"The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the U.S.," reports El Universal, which also interviewed more than one hundred active and retired police officers as well as prisoners and experts.
Zambada-Niebla's lawyer claimed to the court that in the late 1990s, Castro struck a deal with U.S. agents in which Sinaloa would provide information about rival drug trafficking organizations while the U.S. would dismiss its case against the Sinaloa lawyer and refrain from interfering with Sinaloa drug trafficking activities or actively prosecuting Sinaloa leadership.
"The agents stated that this arrangement had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors," Zambada-Niebla lawyer wrote.
After being extradited to Chicago in February 2010, Zambada-Niebla argued that he was also "immune from arrest or prosecution" because he actively provided information to U.S. federal agents.
Zambada-Niebla also alleged that Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information used to take down its rivals. (If true, that re-raises the issue regarding what Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the gun-running arrangements.)
A Mexican foreign service officer told Stratfor in April 2010 that the U.S. seemed to have sided with the Sinaloa cartel in an attempt to limit the violence in Mexico.
El Universal reported that the coordination between the U.S. and Sinaloa, as well as other cartels, peaked between 2006 and 2012, which is when drug traffickers consolidated their grip on Mexico. The paper concluded by saying that it is unclear whether the arrangements continue.
The DEA and other U.S. agencies declined to comment to El Universal.
[UPDATE 1/14] This post has caused many to interpret that the U.S. government is actively supporting Sinaloa. That has not been established, despite claims by Zambada-Niebla's lawyer and Stratfor's source. What El Universal's investigation and the newly published court documents reveal is that there was a strong correlation from 2005 and 2009 between the rise of the Sinaloa cartel and the DEA's relatively regular contact with a top Sinaloa lawyer.

SEE ALSO:  How Drug Cartels Conquered Mexico [MAPS]
And:  Here's One Reason To Doubt The New Fast & Furious Report That Exonerates Eric Holder

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-and-the-sinaloa-cartel-2014-1#ixzz2qPFSVtKM

The Drugging Of America Summarized In 19 Mind-Altering Facts

"There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. " Aldous Huxley

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/15/2014 22:47 -0500

 

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog,
The American people are the most drugged people in the history of the planet.  Illegal drugs get most of the headlines, but the truth is that the number of Americans that are addicted to legal drugs is far greater than the number of Americans that are addicted to illegal drugs.  As you will see below, close to 70 percent of all Americans are currently on at least one prescription drug.  In addition, there are 60 million Americans that “abuse alcohol” and 22 million Americans that use illegal drugs.  What that means is that almost everyone that you meet is going to be on something.  That sounds absolutely crazy but it is true.
We are literally being drugged out of our minds.  In fact, as you will read about below, there are 70 million Americans that are taking “mind-altering drugs” right now.  If it seems like most people cannot think clearly these days, it is because they can’t.  We love our legal drugs and it is getting worse with each passing year.  And considering the fact that big corporations are making tens of billions of dollars peddling their drugs to the rest of us, don’t expect things to change any time soon.  The following are 19 statistics about the drugging of America that are almost too crazy to believe…
#1 An astounding 70 million Americans are taking legal mind-altering drugs right now.
#2 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors wrote more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants during 2010.
#3 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug.  An astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#4 Americans spent more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs during 2013.
#5 According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years old say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.
#6 There are 60 million Americans that “abuse alcohol”.
#7 According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 22 million Americans use illegal drugs.
#8 Incredibly, more than 11 percent of all Americans that are 12 years of age or older admit that they have driven home under the influence of alcohol at least once during the past year.
#9 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is an unintentional drug overdose death in the United States every 19 minutes.
#10 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
#11 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#12 According to Alternet, “11 of the 12 new-to-market drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration were priced above $100,000 per-patient per-year” in 2012.
#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#14 Many of these antidepressants contain warnings that “suicidal thoughts” are one of the side effects that should be expected.  The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 rose by close to 30 percent between 1999 and 2010.  The number of Americans that are killed by suicide now exceeds the number of Americans that die as a result of car accidents every year.
#15 In 2010, the average teen in the United States was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs.  Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.
#16 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.
#17 A shocking Government Accountability Office report discovered that approximately one-third of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug.
#18 A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than 15 percent of all U.S. high school seniors abuse prescription drugs.
#19 It turns out that dealing drugs is extremely profitable.  The 11 largest pharmaceutical companies combined to rake in approximately $85,000,000,000 in profits in 2012.
In America today, doctors are trained that there are just two potential solutions to any problem.  Either you prescribe a pill or you cut someone open.  Surgery and drugs are pretty much the only alternatives they offer us.
And an endless barrage of television commercials have trained all of us to think that there is a “pill for every problem”.
Are you in pain?
Just take a pill.
Are you feeling blue?
Just take a pill.
Do you need a spark in your marriage?
Just take a pill.
And most Americans assume that all of these pills are perfectly safe.
After all, the government would never approve something that wasn’t safe, right?
Sadly, what most Americans don’t realize is that there is a revolving door between big pharmaceutical corporations and the government agencies that supposedly “regulate” them.  Many of those that are now in charge of our “safety” have spent their entire careers peddling legal drugs to all of us.
We have become a nation of drugged out zombies, and it is all perfectly legal.  The funny thing is that many of these “legal drugs” have just slightly different formulations from their “illegal” counterparts.
If more Americans understood what they were actually taking, would that cause them to stop?
Perhaps some would, but for the most part Americans are totally in love with their drugs and giving them up would not be easy.
Just ask anyone that has tried.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-15/drugging-america-summarized-19-mind-altering-facts#comment-4440153

Warning: There are Drugs in Your Drinking Water

You may have noticed, I’m a bit of a freak about real food and holistic health. We get pastured meat direct from our farmer; I avoid additives and mystery ingredients like the plague; I even make my own body product when I can ‘t find ones that are ‘clean’ enough. It’s my thing. So you can imagine that I was not thrilled to learn that there may be prescription drugs in drinking water that my family and I consume every single day.

In one of the largest studies of its kind to date, the Environmental Protection Agency tested municipal water for over 50 kinds of pharmaceutical substances including prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The results showed that that over half the public water had higher concentrations of drugs than experts had previously anticipated with high blood pressure medication at the top of the readings. And surprise, surprise, there are no federal regulations limiting the amounts of these substances that companies can release in our water. (source)

If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t have a medicine cabinet full of prescription drugs. But the average American trusts that when they take their medication as prescribed, they are not likely to cause harm to themselves or others.
Wherever you may fall on the conventional to alternative spectrum, no one wants to have traces of pharmaceutic hormones, anti-depressants, or other drugs swirling around in their water glass.

How do drugs end up in our water?

It’s simple when you think about it. The main reason drugs get into the water supply is through the toilet.
Prescription drugs are excreted through urine because the human body doesn’t completely absorb the chemicals. Plus, many health care facilities have been flushing expired drugs for decades without considering the long-term environmental effects it may have on water supplies. Add to this that fact that left-over and expired drugs get tossed by consumers in the toilet or trash, and it’s easy to see how drugs are making their way into the groundwater and water supply.
Even more disturbing in my opinion – factory farming is largely to blame with “two trillion pounds of animal waste generated by large-scale poultry and livestock operations in this country, laced with hormones and antibiotics fed to animals to make them grow faster and to keep them from getting sick. Inevitably, some of those hormones and antibiotics leach into groundwater and get into waterways.” (source) One more reason to get to know your farmer.

Are the drugs in drinking water enough to harm us?

The federal government will not bother to investigate unless there is reason to believe that the concentration of any substance can reach a substantial level. Since there no ‘evidence’ to prove the negative effects, health officials therefore conclude that ingesting low levels of chemical in drinking water pose no serious health risks for humans.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this particularly reassuring.
Freaky things are happening to fish and frogs where concentrated amounts of pharmaceutical compounds are being found in their water. In areas where estrogen is polluting their habitat, scientists have found larger populations of only female fish, the appearance of intersex fish that are both male and female, and male fish actually developing eggs. (source) Low levels of common anti-depressants are causing development problems in fish and metamorphosis delays in frogs. (source)

When a pharmaceutical company applies for new drug approval, it has to submit an estimate of how much that drug will end up in the environment. They use a model based on how many people they estimate will take the drug, how it will pass through the body, and how it degrades in water. If the estimate is over 1 part per billion (ppb) the FDA can ask for a more thorough evaluation of how that drug will affect aquatic life.
On July 7, 2010, two environmental groups—the National Resources Defense Council and the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center—filed a citizen’s petition asking the FDA to ask for a more thorough evaluation for all new drug applications, no matter what the estimate.
The FDA denied the petition… though eight of the drugs in the EPA study came in at maximum levels above that 1 ppb “brightline,” FDA officials said it would be a challenge to go back and ask the pharmaceutical companies to re-evaluate. (source)

Hey, FDA, thanks so much for having our backs.
If the planet’s aquatic life is being negatively impacted, is it really safe to assume that there will be no long term effects of drugs in drinking water on human health? Personally, I’d rather be safe than sorry.

How to get rid of drugs in drinking water

To reduce your contribution to this problem, don’t just toss leftover prescription medications. Be sure to make use of drug take-back programs to dispose of them properly, because even if you throw them in the trash, they will eventually end up in the groundwater.
After water has been treated at a waste plant, some drug concentration levels are significantly reduced but others are not. These facilities are not currently designed to remove pharmaceuticals from water, and even if they wanted to, removing drugs from the water supply is prohibitively expensive to implement on a large scale.
Since it’s not likely that the government or water treatment facilities are going to go to the trouble of protecting our environment or us humans from drugs in drinking water, here’s the question you and I need an answer to:
How can I make sure my water is safe for myself and my family?
While water delivery is an option, it is costly and not as pure as you might hope. The water industry is not required to filter out pharmaceuticals from their products, so a reverse osmosis filter or buying distilled water are your best bets. But keep in mind that these methods of filtration will leave your water lacking in essential minerals, so I’d recommend supplementing with trace mineral drops like this one.
Filtering the water yourself is probably the most practical solution, with decent options for every budget and living situation, if you know what to look for.

The best home water filters

The fact is that no home water purification system can take away 100% of contaminants. Boo. That said, there are a few filtration options that I think are better than others when it comes to protecting your family from fluoride and other contaminants like drugs in drinking water:
Reverse osmosis with minerals: This is the reverse osmosis filter that my family uses. It stashes under the sink and adds beneficial minerals back into the filtered water.
Countertop gravity filtration: If you live in a rental or just want a more cost effective solution, this amazing countertop filter is a great option. Bonus: In case of the zombie apocalypse or other disasters you can filter just about any water in this filter without power or a municipal running water source.
Water distiller: Alternative medicine guru Andrew Weil believes that distilling water is the safest and most affordable solution for clean water. While he has a good point, he overlooks the essential minerals that get lost in the distillation process. (source)
To make up for this, you can supplement with trace mineral drops like this one. I like this distiller that has only glass and stainless steel in contact with the water, because if you’re going to all this trouble, you don’t need plastic leaching into your water too.
You can read more about my research into water filters here and find even more recommendations in my shopping guide.
Before I leave you to contemplate the state of your drinking water, I’d like to take a second to acknowledge that this post is definitely about a first-world problem. There are people on our very small planet that would kill for our clean water laced with trace levels of drugs. I don’t take this lightly. I also don’t take lightly that my Los Angeles water is shuttled in from far, far away and I should probably take shorter showers because of it.
Consciousness comes at many levels. I am grateful for the relatively clean water running out of my taps. And I don’t want it drugs in it. The end.

Are you worried about drugs and other chemicals in your drinking water?

What are you doing to make sure your water is safe?

Read more: http://holisticsquid.com/drugs-in-drinking-water/#ixzz2ruXdKYq4