"More and more people are realizing that it makes sense to choose licensed, regulated, and taxed marijuana businesses over the drug cartels," said Mike Elliott, head of the Colorado-based Marijuana Industry Group.
CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – The mystery over the fate of 43 Mexican students missing since an attack by gang-linked police deepened Tuesday after authorities said none were among 28 bodies found in a mass grave.
MEXICO CITY – Mexican soldiers have captured Héctor Beltrán Leyva, one of the country's most-wanted men and a suspected drug-cartel kingpin who had a bounty of more than $7 million on his head, prosecutors said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A 2013 survey in the New England Journal of Medicine found that nearly 8-in-10 doctors approved the use of medical marijuana. Now, a wide-ranging survey in the U.S. state of California finds that medical marijuana patients agree: 92 percent said that medical marijuana alleviated symptoms of their serious medical conditions, including chronic pain, arthritis, migraine and cancer.
A hero in the financial world for the reforms he has enacted to open up Mexico's economy, President Enrique Peña Nieto took time out from his appearances at the United Nations and the Economic Club of New York this past week to talk about the U.S. border, crime and security, and how, in almost two years in office, he has sought to change his country.
In a wide-ranging speech Tuesday at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza said the 35 OAS member nations no longer see the drug problem as a public safety matter but rather as a public health issue. Authorities also want alternatives to jailing drug addicts, he said.
Details of the operation are still emerging, but initial reports from Costa Rica's National Police indicate that cops on Sunday seized an SUV loaded with 400 kilograms of cocaine in the Pacific coastal province of Puntarenas. Two suspects fled and no arrests have yet been made.
"Anti-drug policies in Central America have not had their desired effect,” Public Security Minister Celso Gamboa said. "I can say that after 20 years experience fighting drug trafficking, ... the cases where white collar criminals are caught, those who never touch the drugs, these cases are scarce.”
It is a job that has previously been held by law enforcement officials, a military general and physicians. But for now, it is occupied by a recovering addict.
