Illegal Drugs | featured news

A team of smokejumpers parachuting into a fire in the mountains of Southern Oregon landed in an illegal marijuana garden being prepared for growing season. The six smokejumpers from a base in Redmond found the site Monday evening, when there was a rash of lightning strikes. Jackson County sheriff's spokeswoman Andrea Carlson says the smokejumpers notified authorities, who hiked into the remote site in the Rogue River-Siskiyou (SIS'-kee-yoo) National Forest. They seized two guns and more than 1,000 little pot plants.

The latest chapter in Justin Bieber's European tour escapade was added Thursday when Swedish police said they had found drugs and a stun gun on the pop singer's bus. Lars Bystrom, spokesman for the Stockholm police, told The Associated Press a small amount of drugs and a stun gun were discovered during a search of the bus, which had been parked under the Globen concert venue in Stockholm, where Bieber was performing Wednesday.

Being a college student at the time, I clearly remember when Nancy Reagan and the conservative wave in national government helped usher in the nation’s War on Drugs in the 1980s. Television news images of drug busts, large and small, along with the wholesale arrests and stiffer sentencing for anyone even suspected of drug involvement sent a clear message that government intended to empty the streets and fill the prisons until drugs were no more.

U.S. customs officials say they helped law enforcement in Panama intercept more than 3,300 pounds of pure cocaine this past weekend.

About 2,000 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $4 million was scattered in bales on a beach near Santa Barbara, Calif., on Sunday after a drug smuggling boat washed ashore.

Australian police say they have made their biggest ever seizure of methamphetamine -- as much as $450 million worth of the destructive drug.

It seems cocaine has been behind a rash of flesh-eating disease outbreaks in Los Angeles and New York. Cocaine cut with the veterinary drug, levamisole has apparently been linked to a number of cases of rotting flesh, according to Good Morning America. While the cases reported thus far have been on the coasts, officials have warned that it could very well be a nationwide problem.

Three British men have claimed they were beaten and electrocuted after being imprisoned in Dubai for possession of a cannabis substitute, the latest in a string of expatriates and holidaymakers to fall foul of the law in the United Arab Emirates.

A conversation with two passengers landed an Orange City, Fla., tow truck driver in jail after his cell phone pocket-dialed 911 and dispatchers listened in, police say.

Methamphetamine lab seizures are on the rise in the nation's cities and suburbs, raising new concerns about a lethal drug that has long been the scourge of rural America.Click to Continue »