Drug News

Drug cartel activity along the Mexican border presents serious security threats to the area’s water supply system, particularly on federally-owned lands in southern Texas, a U.S. lawmaker says. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/21/drug-cartel-activity-threatens-texas-water-supplies-lawmaker-says/?test=latestnews

Beyond the warring gangs and struggle for drug-trafficking routes, here are five things about Mexico’s drug war that may surprise you. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/mexico/100617/drug-war-twitter-immigration

KABUL, Afghanistan — The last several years of poverty, conflict and widely available opium are taking a toll on the Afghan population, with roughly 800,000 Afghan adults now using opium, heroin and other illicit drugs, a jump from five years ago, according to a study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22afghan.html?src=mv

About 3,500 acres of southern Arizona have been closed off to U.S. citizens due to increased violence at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials have warned visitors in Arizona to beware of heavily armed drug smugglers and human traffickers. http://www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/arizona/buenosaires/PDFs/Closure.pdf

Traffickers in Mexico and Canada increasingly are using Indian reservations along the borders as conduits for bringing marijuana, Ecstasy and other illicit drugs into the U.S. The drug gangs take advantage of weak and underfunded tribal police forces and the remoteness of tribal lands, and they find that high unemployment rates and resentment of federal…

The White House kicked off a new anti-drug program aimed at getting teens to stay above the influence. http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12665501

MEXICO CITY — An explosion of drug violence in Mexico has killed hundreds of people in the past five days and prompted the country’s president to issue a 5,000-word manifesto warning that the fight against organized crime must continue “or we will always live in fear.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/06/16/VI2010061601595.html?sid=ST2010061600270#

America’s drug abusers are going gray. The proportion of people admitted to treatment for drug abuse who are aged 50 or over nearly doubled between 1992 and 2008, a new government study says. http://www.courierpress.com/news/2010/jun/15/drug-abuse-admissions-among-people-50-and-over/

Push to test employees in safety-sensitive positions still making its way through Canadian system. Dan Scott, of Seveny Scott Lawyers in Edmonton, who has acted for labour unions, says he believes big oil companies will continue to bring in new testing policies, even if they could face sanctions from human-rights tribunals. The reason, he suggests,…

Mexico’s drug cartels are becoming increasingly skilled at ambushing police and soldiers, luring them into traps, cutting off escape routes with flaming vehicles and overwhelming their targets in commando-style raids.The attacks have driven the death toll of police and soldiers to record levels this year and fueled fears that government forces, often outgunned by the…