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NORWALK, Ohio — A northern Ohio woman who encouraged Norwalk school board members to start drug testing students has been indicted on charges of heroin trafficking.

Police in Norwalk say Stephanie Broz admitted to them that her advocacy of drug testing was to take attention away from her. Norwalk Detective Todd Temple says she told police it was a scam.

Broz also faces a charge of possession of heroin.

Police arrested her in early June during a traffic stop. Officers say they found her with a large amount of heroin. [Columbus Dispatch]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Twelve-year-old Alexia Belen Moreno was afraid living in her father's house in Ciudad Juarez, where drug cartels are fighting a bloody war. She begged to move in with her mother just across the border in El Paso, Texas. Her parents agreed — but asked her to stay a few more weeks to finish school.

Three days later, Alexia was shot in the head blocks from her home in broad daylight. Authorities believe she was caught in the crossfire when gunmen killed two men riding with her in a car.

Alexia's death is part of an alarming trend of children dying in Mexico's drug wars.

Mexican officials say they don't track the number of child deaths from drug-gang violence. But newspaper tallies find nearly 50 kids have been killed this year — and a code of ethics in which hit men took care to avoid harming children appears to be evaporating. [Associated Press]

First, the intrigue. Throughout the first day, I kept noticing this one person who harrumphed, guffawed, and muttered every time someone spoke in ways critical of the drug policy status quo. By accent, she seemed to be from the United States. And she had a yellow badge, where everyone else had a red badge. Who was she? Why did she keep shuffling over to the U.S. groups like Drug Free America and other cheerleaders for U.S. hardline policy? She settled in right behind me, and gave instructions to her allies — tactics for blocking inclusion of harm reduction. She said "one of you needs to interject to stop the hand clapping in favor of their proposals." More and more, she seemed like some sort of puppet master. As the day concluded, she rushed up to the podium, accosted the chair, and, in the most agitated way, began lambasting the chair for various procedural points.

I had to find out about the American woman with the yellow badge. At a social gathering later that evening, I described my observations to some of the NGO delegates who regularly attend these U.N. events. Turns out that the yellow-badge woman is June Sivilli, an employee of the U.S. drug czar’s office and a regular fixture at Vienna drug meetings. Until now, she has been able to speak as an official voice of the U.S. government — and the U.S. is always the most important voice on U.N. drug policy issues. Now that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are bringing the voices of ordinary people to the table for the first time ever, she was actively subverting the process, throwing every possible obstacle in the way of this quite benign process.

I’d always heard that the U.S. government played a bully role in international drug policy. But it’s really ugly to see it in practice.