Crime & Violence

Bermuda has long taken a hard-line on marijuana possession, but now members of the ruling party are suggesting it's time for a change.

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy has spent years trudging through the poppy fields of Asia on his way to becoming one of the world's leading experts on the opium trade. With the publication of "Opium: Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy," the fruits of his labors are now available in English, and we should be thankful for that.

The drug czar was in the hot seat at a Wednesday congressional hearing, and activists and academics got a chance to weigh in on the flaws of US drug policy as well.

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.

The illegal drug supply is increasing, and Mexican narcos are public enemy #1, according to the Justice Department's primary drug intelligence unit. There's no end in sight, the unit concludes.

It was just a meeting about reducing drug demand, but both the Mexican and the US governments felt compelled to speak out against drug legalization. First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you...

Mexican President Felipe Calderon caught serious flak this week from two different directions: Angry residents of Ciudad Juárez, tired of the killing and the soldiers, and the Mexican Catholic Church, which issued a report critical of human rights abuses in the military and crooked law enforcement.

Thirty people were killed Wednesday in Mexico's prohibition-related violence. That's not even close to the daily record.

In 1913, the El Paso city council became the first in the country to outlaw marijuana. Now, faced with the horrendous prohibition-related violence across the river in Ciudad Juarez, it has passed a resolution condemning current drug policies, but only after dropping language calling for marijuana regulation. It's got three years left until the century mark to get it completely right.

Nearly a thousand people were killed in Mexico's unrelenting plague of prohibition-related violence last month alone. At this rate, another 10,000 will die by year's end.