My investigation in US magazine Truthout (and my photos from Honduras are here): Members of Indigenous group COPINH protesting in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, July 2016. (Photo: Antony Loewenstein) Armed men wearing ski masks suddenly appeared in the distance. On a dirt road in northern Honduras, between the city of Tocoa and the small village…
Showing all posts tagged war on drugs
Why we should listen to Guinea-Bissau
I visited Guinea-Bissau in 2015 to investigate its role as a key drug smuggling hub.… My following essay appears in the… African Arguments… website: Despite being as poorly… governed… as Zimbabwe and Angola, and having some of the lowest social development indicators on the continent, Guinea-Bissau is one of Africa’s forgotten states. With a population of under two million…
How drugs have always perverted human wars
My Guardian book review appears this weekend: In October 2015 a Saudi prince was arrested at Beirut international airport accused of trying to smuggle… nearly two tonnes… of the… amphetamine drug Captagon… through the country. Two months later, Lebanese officials claimed to have confiscated 12 million Captagon pills heading to the Gulf. The synthetic drug, invented in 1961, has…
Drug cartel wars between Mexico and the US
My essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books: Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, known as “El Chapo,” was recaptured by Mexican marines in January. It was the latest in a long history of farcical escapes and imprisonments that have dominated the life of the world’s most infamous drug boss. His legacy is clear. Unmarked graves…
The “war on drugs” in Guinea-Bissau translated into French
Late last year I visited Guinea-Bissau in West Africa to investigate the country’s role as a key drug smuggling hub between South America and Europe. I published a number of stories about it including in… Foreign Policy. Leading French website… Ulyces… is committed to translating investigative stories from across the world and bringing back the tradition of financially…
The war on drugs has failed, end it now
My column in the Guardian: It takes a brave politician to advocate for the legalisation of all drugs in the current political climate. In Australia, Greens leader Richard Di Natale is… pushing… for the decriminalisation of illicit substances, arguing that drug-taking is a health issue rather than a criminal offence. Selling and distributing drugs would still be…
How South American drug cartels embraced Guinea-Bissau
My investigation in the Guardian: Guinea-Bissau’s Bijagós islands look like a tourists’ paradise – the 88 mostly uninhabited islets are filled with palm trees and white, sandy beaches. But the archipelago has been best known as a smugglers’ paradise. Described by the… UN as a narco state, Guinea-Bissau has long been a drug trafficking hub for…
How Guinea-Bissau became a cocaine smuggling hub
My investigation in Foreign Policy: BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau — The headquarters of the Judicial Police, the government agency charged with prosecuting Guinea-Bissau’s war on drugs, sits on a dusty street in the middle of this deceptively quiet West African capital city. Inside is the country’s only drug-testing laboratory, a recent addition thanks to a surge in…
How and why the "war on drugs" kills millions
My following book review appeared in the Weekend Australian on 28 February: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs By Johann Hari Bloomsbury, 390pp, $29.99 The numbers are staggering. More than two million American citizens are in prison, about 25 per cent of the world’s incarcerated population. Many are…