Politics Outside US

A breeched oil pipeline caused a massive blast in the Mexican town of San Martin Texmelucan. Rivers of fire coursed through the streets, killing at least 27 people and damaging 115 houses.

More than 12,000 people have died this year as a result of Mexico's drug prohibition war, although officials said the number could be higher. Through November 30, 12,456 people were killed, making 2010 the deadliest year since Mexican President Felipe Calderon began a government crackdown against traffickers in 2006. In a recent survey, 59 percent of respondents said organized crime groups are winning the drug prohibition war against federal forces; a different poll said 80 of the respondents believe there is more violence in Mexico than a year ago.

UK Labour MP and former minister Bob Ainsworth has come out out strongly against drug prohibition. He proposed an “Impact Assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act”, an “independent, evidence-based review, exploring all policy options” which was welcomed by Lib Dem MP Tom Brake. Adam Corlett, acting vice-chair of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, explores the matter.

Mexico's Congress has voted to strip a lawmaker of his immunity, allowing for the prosecution of a sitting congressman with alleged ties to the country's powerful drug trafficking organizations for the first time ever in the country. Lawmakers voted 382-2 to let federal prosecutors move forward with a criminal case against Julio Cesar Godoy, a representative from the state of Michoacan accused of laundering money for the notorious La Familia.

In the middle of this year, the Costa Rican Parliament authorized the arrival of 7,000 soldiers, 46 war ships, more than 200 helicopters, 10 Harrier planes and two submarines. The permission provoked the rejection of various parties and social sectors, regarding it as anti-constitutional and violating national sovereignty. "We are quite much worried with such an excessive military force to fight drug trafficking," said Victor Emilio Granados, from Partido Accesibilidad sin Exclusion (PASE) - Accessibility without Exclusion Party. Other parties such as Frente Amplio and Accion Cuidadana also rejected the US military presence.

After overseeing a comprehensive review of drug policy in Portugal, where possession of everything from marijuana to heroin has been decriminalized since 2001, Alex Stevens, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Kent in Britain, has a blunt rebuttal to the classic "Think of the children" line of thinking. "Criminalization of drugs is not protecting our children," he says. "In fact, it's harming our children." By any conceivable empirical metric, Portugal’s vastly liberalized drug policy has succeeded. And as Stevens argues, the most potent lesson to be learned is that the "decriminalization of drugs does not necessarily lead to increases in drug use."

Exemplifying the failure of prohibition, New Zealand has seen a dramatic increase in cocaine smuggling in recent months, Customs says, and it looks like an attempt by figures in South America to establish a syndicate there.

A £1m taxpayer-funded anti-trafficking campaign to stem the flow of cocaine into the UK through Ghana's busiest airport is beset by corruption, with drugs police sabotaging expensive British-bought scanning equipment and tipping off smugglers, leaked US embassy cables reveal. Ghana president John Atta Mills even worried that his own entourage could be smuggling drugs through his presidential lounge at Accra's Kotoka airport and asked a senior UK customs official last November for help to screen them "in the privacy of his suite to avoid any surprises if they are caught carrying drugs", according to the US embassy in Accra (cable 234015).