Politics Outside US

Australia's Attorney General has proposed to extend the list of prohibited plants to include varieties of acacia and cacti, commonly found in gardens. "This law would make it criminal offence for our staff to supply these plants and our customers to buy them," said Doron Francis of CERES Permaculture & Bushfood Nursery. National and Environmental technical policy manager Dr. Anthony Kachenko said nurseries, horticulturalists and other businesses would be wiped out by the government's "blanket approach" to tackling the drug trade.

Daniel Akst, a columnist for Newsday, opines on the success of Portugal's comprehensive drug policy reforms. He concludes the American war on drugs is a costly failure on a larger scale than was Prohibition, with ramifications far beyond U.S. borders. He says we'll never eliminate drugs for the simple reason that too many people like them. But it's time to figure out a way to decriminalize narcotics, at the very least, even while firmly discouraging their use.

Thousands of people have vanished without a trace – some caught up in prohibition violence, others for no reason anyone can fathom. Relatives remain in agonized limbo. The disappearances are a disturbing echo of a tactic employed by dictatorships in the so-called dirty wars that plagued parts of Latin America in the last half of the 20th century.

The arrest of Bolivia's top counternarcotics cop, Rene Sanabria, has not changed President Morales' stance on allowing the DEA into the country. Morales insisted he has no intention of inviting the DEA back. He alleged "interests of a geopolitical nature" were behind the Sanabria case. "They are using police to try to implicate the government," he said. Vice minister of social defense, Felipe Caceres, suggested that Sanabria's arrest was the DEA's revenge for being expelled. The president also hinted at U.S. hypocrisy, recalling reports that American agents ran guns to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s with the proceeds of cocaine sales in the United States.

Hitmen are killing human rights workers across Ciudad Juárez -- the city in Mexico most affected by drug prohibition violence -- in brazen attacks that activists say authorities are unable and unwilling to halt.

Residents have closed more than 2,000 streets in Ciudad Juarez, the city in Mexico most affected by drug prohibition violence. About 200 families have been wiped out in 10 zones heavily affected by the drug prohibition war.

Benny Avni opines that Felipe Calderon's war on the drug trafficking organizations created by prohibition is costing a lot in American money and Mexican blood -- and he's losing. Avni says the ultimate solution is legalization, which would lower profits and take violence out of the drug trade -- just as the end of Prohibition reduced America's gang problem. But, instead, Washington muddles on with an expensive and extremely deadly conceit -- pretending that all we need to do is pour some money on the problem, and Mexico's federal government will somehow eventually prevail.

The Mexican political world was sent reeling after a former PRI politician admitted his party had exercised strong control over Mexico's drug trafficking routes. Former Nuevo Leon governor Socrates Rizzo said that previous PRI presidents had formalized agreements with drug trafficking organization leaders to coordinate and protect Mexico's lucrative drug trade. Rizzo argued that presidential control over smuggling prevented the widespread violence that has been commonplace since 2000.