Major Illicit Drug Producing and Transit Countries

President Obama has issued the annual Presidential memorandum where countries are chastised for failing to win our failed war on drugs.

Pursuant to section 706(1) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 (Public Law 107-228)(FRAA), I hereby identify the following countries as major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. […]

Pursuant to section 706(2)(A) of the FRAA, I hereby designate Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as countries that have failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to make substantial efforts to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements and take the measures set forth in section 489(a)(1) of the FAA. […]

I have also determined, in accordance with provisions of section 706(3)(A) of the FRAA, that support for programs to aid Bolivia and Venezuela are vital to the national interests of the United States.

Seems to me that there’s one major drug producing and transit country that isn’t on the list. Big country, perched right on top of Latin America, consumes more illegal drugs than the rest of the world. Wonder how it got left off the list?

[h/t Transform Drug Policy Foundation]
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8 Responses to Major Illicit Drug Producing and Transit Countries

  1. Duncan20903 says:

    .
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    Pete, wouldn’t it be kind of hard to financially penalize ourselves? Christ, we’ve already borrowed more money than is within the realm of human comprehension and borrowing the money needed to keep the debt current. I don’t think it possible to screw up our finances any more

    How much do we pay other countries to go along with our national insanity every year anyway? Somehow I missed that part until a few months ago when I learned that cannabis/hashish had been legal in Nepal until 1973 when we finally offered to pony up enough money to bribe them into criminalizing it.

    You know, I wouldn’t be shocked if the total sum of bribes doesn’t dwarf the trillion with a T dollars since Nixon “declared” the war on (some) drugs. All of it borrowed for crying out loud. Gosh, now we can’t even stop bribing them when they don’t do what they were paid to do or otherwise they might really do stuff we don’t like.
    ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———-

    So here’s the new piece of hysterical rhetoric with significant resonance:

    Latest battlefield in Mexico’s drug war: Social media

    By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
    September 15, 2011 11:33 p.m. EDT

    /snip/
    This week attackers left ominous threats mentioning two websites on signs beside mutilated bodies in northern Mexico. The message was clear: Post something we don’t like online, and you’re next. “I am about to get you,” one sign said.

    More than two days later, it was unclear who the two brutally slain victims left dangling from a bridge were, or whether they had any connection to social media.
    /snip/

    But no worries about little things like facts. The international MSM is having a field day reporting that it was a couple who were disemboweled and executed for being twittering twits.

    My bullshit detector wasn’t built for such abuse. I’m afraid it has to go into the shop.

    “Local police in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, didn’t answer the phone.”

    Too busy twittering, no doubt.

  2. darkcycle says:

    Yeah, we’d have to send a sternly worded letter to ourselves, then decry our own behavior to the U.N. If we didn’t shape up fast, we’d have to hit ourselves with trade sanctions. That might be tough, since it takes two parties to conduct trade. Or we could demand that other U.N. members not trade with us… start an embargo of ourselves…. wow, that would be weird and awkward, wouldn’t we be red-faced…

  3. kant says:

    well in the wise words of Trey Parker and Matt Stone

    Blame Canada! Shame on Canada for…
    The smut we must cut
    The trash we must bash
    The laughter and fun must all be undone
    We must blame them and cause a fuss
    Before somebody thinks of blaming us!

  4. claygooding says:

    According to the drug czar,,,drug use has been reduced substantially.

    I guess keeping marijuana from being used by 100% of the
    people is pretty substantial.

  5. DdC says:

    I hereby designate Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia and Venezuela victims of the U.S. drug war and Imperialism…

    The Other Lawbreaker – Al Gore
    Gore’s Oil Money: What’s Good For Occidental Is Bad For Colombia’s U’was
    Published on Friday, May 5, 2000 in The Nation

    One of the world’s hottest battles between indigenous groups and multinational oil companies is heating up in Colombia, where Occidental Petroleum is seeking to drill on land claimed by the 5,000-member U’wa tribe. Early this year, the Colombian government deployed several hundred soldiers to guard workers building a road to the multibillion-dollar project. That led to a clash in February when security forces used tear gas to break up an anti-Occidental demonstration of several hundred Indians. Three children reportedly drowned when they fell into a river as they fled from government troops. The U’was won at least a temporary victory on March 31, when a Colombian court ordered the government to stop Occidental from drilling on tribal land.

    Obama Tilts Toward Iran Contra Gates
    Finding North…And the Rest of Those Dillweeds

    Donald Rumsfeld’s replacement, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, served as deputy CIA director while the illegal Iran-Contra operations were taking place. “I was trying to learn the ropes while all this was going on,”

    John Negroponte A 1997 CIA inspector general’s report concluded that Negroponte covered up reports on human rights abuses committed by the U.S.-backed Honduran military that was linked to “death-squad activities.”

    Otto Reich “Under Reagan, Otto Reich headed the Office of Public Diplomacy. “The purpose of his office was none other than to get the American people to side with war over peace, using propaganda methods determined to be ‘improper,”

    “During Iran-Contra, Elliott Abrams pleaded guilty on two counts of unlawfully withholding information, but was later pardoned by the outgoing President George H.W. Bush.

    Ollie North is on Fox News! Yay!

    Restored Dark Alliance website
    Backers of CIA-led Nicaraguan rebels brought cocaine to poor L.A. neighborhoods in early ’80s to help finance war — and a plague was born.

    Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” Returns to the Internet

    When First We Practice To Deceive

    Kill the Messenger: The Tragic Life of Gary Webb
    My personal belief is that the CIA didn’t need to kill Gary; they’d already set his demise in motion by employing “unnamed sources” to discredit him in the nation’s major print media. To the very end, Gary complained that no one had ever disproved a single fact in his series. The fact that so many respected newspapers so eagerly took this bait, and that one of our nation’s last true investigative reporters had been driven to such desperation, is something I could not reconcile then or now.

    The Robert Gates File

    Will the Coca Leaf (From Which Cocaine is Made) Return to Coca Cola?
    In Bolivia It Will as Evo Morales Tells Coke to Take a Hike

    The Andean nation’s indigenous people have long resented the U.S. beverage company for usurping the name of their sacred coca leaf. Now, they are aiming to take back their heritage. Recently, the government of Evo Morales announced that it would support a plan to produce a coca-based soft drink which would rival its fizzy American counterpart.

    Chavez Uses Petro-Dollars to Help the Poor – in America
    by Sheldon Alberts December 7, 2006 by Canada.com

    CARACAS, Venezuela – Hugo Chavez coasted to another six-year term as Venezuela’s president on the strength of petro-dollars and promises to spread more of his country’s oil wealth to the poor.

    But as Chavez struggles to alleviate poverty for eight million of his own citizens, the 52-year-old leftist leader is using his oil riches in an unlikely way – by paying the winter heating bills for hundreds of thousands of underprivileged Americans.

    Even as Chavez demonized the United States as an evil imperialist empire during campaign events leading to his re-election Sunday, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company renewed a deal to provide 40 per cent discounts on furnace oil to 400,000 people in 15 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

    The act of generosity is dismissed by Chavez’s critics as pure propaganda – an attempt to embarrass the Bush administration – and it is drawing mixed reaction among Venezuelans.

  6. JDV says:

    What a joke these high-handed pronouncements are.

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