Posts belonging to Category border

The number of cannabis plants eradicated by law enforcement has dropped over the past years from a record high of over 10 million plants in 2009 and 2010 to under 4 million in 2012, according to newly released statistics. DEA figures put the 2012 total at 3,933,950. DEA officials attribute the decline in part to the budget cutbacks in California, which resulted in "the decreased availability of local law enforcement personnel to assist in eradication efforts."

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POT TV - Cable news giant CNN reports on a cannon found by police that was used to launch cans of marijuana over the US-Mexico border.

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Police in the border city of Mexicali on Feb. 27 announced the discovery of a powerful improvised cannon used to hurl packets of marijuana across the border fence into California. Police told Mexico's Televisa network the device consisted of a plastic pipe and a metal tank that used compressed air from the engine of an old car. The apparatus fired cannabis-packed cylinders weighing up to 13 kilos, police said. It was confiscated after US officers informed Mexican police that they had found a large number of drug packages that appeared to have been fired over the border. (AP, Feb. 27)

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CANNABIS CULTURE - Victoria resident Myles Wilkinson thought he was heading for the experience of a lifetime after he won an all-expense paid trip to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, by coming out victorious in a contest sponsored by Bud Light Canada.

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CANNABIS CULTURE - Victoria resident Myles Wilkinson thought he was heading for the experience of a lifetime after he won an all-expense paid trip to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, by coming out victorious in a contest sponsored by Bud Light Canada.

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Parents in the small West Texas town of Van Horn are concerned that narco-traffickers are using school buses after nearly 500 pounds of compacted cannabis was found on a bus carrying junior varsity basketball players back home from an out-of-town game. The bus driver found the drugs when the  bus emblazoned with the Van Horn Eagles name on the side stopped at a convenience store in Marfa so the players could get snacks. He found the marijuana stuffed in four large, black duffel bags stashed in the bottom storage area. The bus had already passed through a road checkpoint. (KHOU, Houston, Nov. 21)

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The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international agencies "don't fight drug traffickers," a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico was quoted by Al Jazeera TV, saying that instead "they try to manage the drug trade." Charges from activists and academics about official complicity in the drug traffic are nothing new—but this was the first time a sitting official from a Mexican state government made such accusations. "It's like pest control companies, they only control," spokesman Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva reportedly told Al Jazeera last month at his office in Ciudad Juárez. "If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs."

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Three Mexican suspects were arrested April 24 after an ocean pursuit off the coast of Malibu. Los Angeles County lifeguards notified the sheriff's Malibu/Lost Hills Station of a suspicious boat about 50 feet off Latigo Beach. Deputies confirmed it was a panga boat and called the US Department of Homeland Security, which deployed an air and marine unit. Homeland Security's bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said the Mexican nationals were arrested following a chase that ended about 11 nautical miles southwest of Point Dume. Shortly before the pursuit ensued, the panga's occupants began tossing bales of compacted cannabis overboard. The US Coast Guard has recovered more than 80 bales.

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An estimated $500,000 worth of cannabis was found floating off the coast of Marina del Rey on Feb. 2. A boater alerted authorities to 30 bales, or 900 pounds, found some six miles west of the Marina del Rey harbor entrance, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

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U.S. border patrol agents are using drones, the same type in fact being used to fight the Afghanistan war, to locate illegal shipments of marijuana being smuggled across the Southwest border.

But based on the government’s own statistics, it remains to be seen if the expense of unmanned aircraft can be justified to halt the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S.

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