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Busts & Seizures

Will It Make a Difference in the Drug Supply in the End?

Hopefully Phil will pardon me for cross-posting into his Chronicle blog. :) This is another example of a news story that is too run of the mill to make our newsletter most of the time, but provides a good example of the limitation of short-term memory that so often plagues mainstream reporting on this issue. An operation that Pennsylvania's Attorney General characterizes as the major methamphetamine supplier in the Philadelphia region has been taken down, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update

This may have been the bloodiest week yet in the prohibition-related violence that has wracked Mexico since Felipe Calderon called out the army in December 2006. And the death toll this year just passed 5,000, putting 2010 on pace to be the deadliest year yet south of the border.

Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update

Things that make you go hmmm... In one incident in Mexico this week, gunmen attacked a convoy carrying two prisoners. In the aftermath, the two prisoners were turned over to the Mexican Marines. Next thing you know, one of them turns up dead on the side of a road and the other has gone missing. Hmmm.

Law Enforcement: Utah "Meth Cops" Lose Out on Health Claims

Police in Utah who cleaned up meth labs in the 1980s and 1990s have filed dozens of workers compensation claims asserting exposure to the caustic chemicals caused a variety of physical ailments. Now, those claims are being dismissed for lack of evidence.

Drug War Chronicle Book Review: "Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches from the Streets of El Paso and Juarez," by Howard Campbell (2009, University of Texas Press, 310 pp., $24.95 PB)

If you're interested in the border or Mexico's drug war or drug culture or drug economy, or in drug law enforcement, we've got a book you need to read. University of Texas-El Paso sociologist and anthropologist Howard Campbell provides a vivid, rich, and nuanced portrayal of drugs and the drug war in El Paso-Juarez that couldn't be more timely.