Global Ganja Report

Mexico's prosecutor general of Military Justice, José Luis Chávez, announced May 1 that following a joint investigation with civilian prosecutors, it was determined that drug cartel gunmen, not soldiers, were responsible for the deaths of two children during a confrontation in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

Unidentified assailants threw an explosive over the fence of the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on April 11. The blast caused some damage but no injuries. Authorities are investigating the explosion and have temporarily closed the consulate, as well as another in nearby Piedras Negras.

2009 saw both a significant advance and retreat for a humane drug policy in Washington's two closest Drug War allies in Latin America. First in August—in a move that made few stateside headlines, and registered not a peep of protest from the Obama administration—Mexico's conservative President Felipe Calderón signed into law a bill decriminalizing "personal quantities" of all drugs.

As of March 26 sources in the Mexican military had admitted that it was probably soldiers who killed two graduate students the early morning of March 20 in front of the prestigious Institute of Technology and Higher Education's Monterrey campus (ITESM) in the northern state of Nuevo León.

Wachovia Corp. on March 18 agreed to pay $160 million to settle federal charges that it failed to establish an adequate anti-money laundering program. The case stems from investigations into transactions with Mexican exchange houses—or casas de cambio (CDCs)—between 2004 and 2007.

Nearly 90 people, including many members of the security forces, were sentenced in Morocco to prison terms for cannabis trafficking on March 5. The court in Casablanca handed down sentences of between three months and 10 years to most of the 87 defendants, who included 55 members of the navy, police, army and auxiliary forces. Four of the defendants were acquitted. The network, which was dismantled in a series of busts in January 2009, operated in the northern Nador region and exported more than 30 tons of hashish to Europe over several years. (Middle East  Online, March 5)

At the 53rd meeting of the UN Committee on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, which ended March 12, Russia blasted the US and NATO for their failure to halt drug trafficking from Afghanistan. Moscow's drug czar Victor Ivanov said at least 30,000 people died in Russia every year from heroin, 90% of it from Afghanistan. He blamed the Obama administration for ending a military drive to destroy opium poppy crops in Afghan fields.

Uzbekistan's special police force seized more than 46 kilograms (over 100 pounds) of opium and heroin in a raid on a a residential home near the border with Tajikistan, the Uzbek National Security Service announced March 20. One local resident was detained. The former Soviet Central Asian states are considered a major trafficking route for drugs from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe. An estimated 90% of heroin consumed in Russia is trafficked from Afghanistan via Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. (RIA Novosti, March 20)