Source: Wayne Spychka, AADAC training consultant.

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"Epidemic Of Drug-Related Murders Plagues Tijuana"

Violence: Traffickers settle scores or target crusading police and prosecutors. City is likened to 1930s Chicago.

TIJUANA - At first, Rafael Lopez Cruz appeared to be just another grotesquely tortured, nameless corpse, dumped in an isolated stretch of Playas de Tijuana by thugs who meticulously broke most of his bones.

Had Lopez Cruz not been a state judicial police agent who had complained of narcotics corruption in the ranks, his murder a few weeks ago might have escaped notice entirely, as simply one more name on a long list of underworld killings here.

Tijuana has made headlines as the site of gangland-style killings of top officials since the assassination of the Mexican presidential heir apparent, Luis Donaldo Colosio, here in March 1994.

Behind the high-profile crimes, however, is a bloody string of drug- and corruption-related murders that has prompted one U.S. prosecutor to compare Tijuana to Chicago in the 1930s.

The violent score-settling between drug lords - and between traffickers and police or anyone else who gets in their way - has left behind a trail of corpses, often with signs of torture, sometimes blindfolded or with their hands tied behind their backs, all bearing the signature coup de grace shots to the head.

Others have been gunned down publicly, in broad daylight, by bold thugs who don't bother to hide their faces. Many victims are anonymous young strangers from impoverished rural Mexico. Others are from socially prominent local families.

"In Tijuana, these kinds of killings have become so frequent that it's almost a normal occurrence," said Teodoro Gonzalez Luna, the spokesman for the Baja California state attorney general's office in Mexicali.

Just last week , a young woman whose family had received threats from reputed narcotics traffickers was mowed down in a public market, along with a police officer who was on the scene, police said.

State Atty. Gen. Jose Luis Anaya Bautista said drug-related violence accounts for 40% of the 35 homicides that occur each month, on average, in Baja California.

While deaths from drug violence have decreased statewide this year, they have surged in Tijuana, Gonzalez Luna said. "There are the score-settling executions at the high levels, and power struggles between neighborhood distributors."

Tijuana coroner Gustavo Salazar said he believes that there is an increase partly because of a growth in local drug sales and consumption.

"There are well-known public officials who are assassinated for doing their jobs: fighting narcotics traffickers," Salazar said. "Other men are killed because they want easy money and turn to drug trafficking. This is definitely on the rise in Tijuana."

Human rights leaders who monitor drug violence say the trademark execution-style murders of one to three men appear in local newspapers each week. Others, they say, pass without notice.

The drug murders have become an extremely sensitive image issue in Tijuana, making even the homicide statistics themselves a virtual state secret. Buck-passing has become the modus operandi.

Bernardo Cisneros, the spokesman for the state judicial police in Tijuana, said homicide statistics were "top-secret, confidential figures." Baldomero Juvera, the force's homicide chief, said his murder figures were for internal use only. The federal attorney general's delegate, Luis Antonio Ibanez Cornejo, said homicides were the responsibility of the state judicial police. Tijuana state judicial police Cmdr. Antonio Torres Miranda said it was difficult to separate drug violence from other crimes.

"Quantifying this in Tijuana is a headache," Gonzalez Luna said. "We know that drugs are behind the majority of violent deaths in Tijuana. Of that there is no doubt."

Said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, Tijuana-based vice president of the Mexican Human Rights Academy: "They are afraid of statistics. Statistics say things politicians do not want to hear."

Most observers see no easy solutions. Still, without acknowledging that any rise in drug violence is occurring, Jesus Velasco, spokesman for the federal attorney general's delegation in Tijuana, said 55 new Baja California federal police agents arrived in the city two weeks ago and more have been requested. "With more personnel and resources, we will combat narcotics traffic, illegal immigrant smuggling and other federal crimes," he said.

The carnage has shaken residents in Playas de Tijuana, a picturesque beach community on the city's outskirts. "This has struck like a lightning bolt," said Marta Rocha de Diaz, the head of the Housewives of Playas de Tijuana.

Indeed, some of the recent scenes are reminiscent of "Scarface," the film about drug violence in Miami.

In February, a gang of armed men dressed in federal judicial police uniforms kicked down the doors of a home and sprayed everyone there with automatic weapons fire, said Juan Meza, the subcommander of the local municipal police substation. Two brothers, 13 and 25, were killed, Meza said. A third person was left for dead, he said.

The killers stole nothing from the family, whose deceased father had been the director of a prestigious private school. One family member, however, had stepped on the toes of narcotics traffickers, according to police and those familiar with the case.

"They came to kill. They didn't steal anything," Rocha de Diaz said. "If the sister hadn't just walked out the door with her baby, I think they would have killed them too. The world of narcotics is ferocious."

A few weeks later, gunmen mowed down the 26-year-old son of a Tijuana radio announcer and a friend as they walked out of a local disco. "It was an execution," Meza said.

Like others in communities where traffickers are entrenched, Rocha de Diaz suspects that the traffickers have police protectors. What other explanation is there for the apparent inviolability of the walled compounds where strange armed men come and go at night in vehicles with blackened windows, she said. "If you took all the corrupt police and threw them in jail, you wouldn't be able to shut the gate," she said.

Sightings - whether real or imagined - of the Arellano Felix brothers are a staple of local gossip, though the reputed leaders of the so-called Tijuana drug cartel have so lowered their profiles that one ballad portrays them as invisible but potent "phantoms."

For years they have managed to escape capture, in spite of a $1-million reward for information leading to their capture for alleged narcotics trafficking and suspected connections to the May 1993 slaying of the cardinal of Guadalajara, said Rene Aboytes, a spokesman for Mexico City's attorney general.

Once flamboyant swashbucklers, the Arellanos - Benjamin, Javier and Ramon - are suspected of working behind the scenes of a powerful crime empire that is now fending off competitors seeking a share of its business.

The stakes are extremely lucrative. Tijuana is one of the prime nerve centers for smuggling operations that funnel the about 70% of all cocaine that reaches the United States through Mexico, experts say, as well as a hefty portion of the heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana that supplies U.S. consumers.

Most citizens of Tijuana are afraid to discuss the violent byproduct the industry generates. They describe the criminal organizations as uncontrollable and destructive forces of nature. To do anything besides get out of their way, they say, could invite the wrath of the unseen forces pulling strings behind the scenes.

One young hotel manager - English-speaking, college-educated, computer-literate, in starched khakis and a crisp white shirt - told of the dilemma that he has faced since the day a few months ago when a Colombian man checked into the hotel with a nervous demeanor and a piece of hand luggage that he insisted on carrying himself.

Soon the Colombian confessed to a hotel custodian: He had a modest load of cocaine he needed to get across the border and would be "deeply appreciative" of any help - such as information on when he would be least likely to be stopped and searched by U.S. Customs authorities.

Eventually, the entire hotel was clued in. They exchanged knowing glances as the Colombian lined up a Mexican woman to pose as his girlfriend. When zero hour arrived, they watched the "couple" drive away, the Colombian sweating under the bags of cocaine strapped to his torso under a baggy linen suit, like a character from a "Miami Vice" rerun, the manager said.

The Colombian made it across, he said. Since then, he has noticed the presence of other "pequenos narcos" - small-time smugglers pushing for a share of local cross-border traffic, he said.

The young manager said he has never once seriously considered calling the police. What if the police he contacted turned out to be allies of narcotics traffickers? Even if they weren't, he doubts their ability to protect hotel staff from the so-called sicarios - professional assassins - of the drug traffickers. Better, he said, to simply stay out of it - and hope members of the so-called Tijuana cartel never arrive to "protect" their territory, leaving one of the ubiquitous corpses.

"Confidence in security forces is very low," said Antonio Garcia Sanchez, the Baja state's human rights ombudsman. "It is commonly known that there are criminals within the police forces. There is little faith that police can provide security. And they have solved almost none of the crimes committed here."

In the past two years, there has been a string of assassinations of officials who took on narcotics corruption, including a former municipal police chief, a prison warden and several senior prosecutors.

The latest cautionary tale is the story of ill-starred Rafael Lopez Cruz.

Earlier this year, he had given prosecutors, journalists and a human rights leader details on what he said were ties between judicial police, including several ranking officers, and the Arellanos, human rights and judicial sources said.

Several of Lopez Cruz's police colleagues say the men who tailed and threatened him for the last few weeks of his life - and who, they believe, eventually killed him - were state judicial police agents with close ties to narcotics traffickers.

Just the sight of Lopez Cruz's body was a shock. "They massacred him," said Juan Meza, of the municipal police. "They broke all of his bones." Mexican authorities say the assassination of veteran Tijuana prosecutor Jesus Romero Magana on Aug. 17 might also have been retribution for the firing of 29 Baja California federal agents as part of a nationwide sweep of more than 700 federal police suspected of corruption.

Critics say that theory sidesteps concerns that Romero and up to a dozen others involved with the Colosio investigation have been murdered in the past couple of years. But many of the Tijuana victims they cite - like reform-minded Tijuana Municipal Police Chief Jose Federico Benitez, whose April 1994 killing was officially attributed to drug traffickers - had fallen afoul of myriad corrupt forces.

"Tijuana, unfortunately, has become a dangerous city," Victor Clark, the respected head of the independent Binational Human Rights Center, said. "There are so many killings now people have become jaded. The violence over control of the cartels - of drug traffic, immigrant smugglers, kidnapping rings - has reached unprecedented levels."

Canadian Reform Advocates Cite Major Support

1995 survey shows up to 70 per cent of Canadians would have marijuana at least decriminalized, if not made legal

By Richard Foot, The Telegraph Journal

MONCTON - Tobacco shop proprietor Steve Vasseur, who has a criminal record for marijuana possession: "Let the people vote on it. I'll bet that the result today would be a two-to-one ratio in favour of legalization."

Behind the busy counter at Keatings Tobacco in Moncton, Steve Vasseur deals out the stuff of his daily trade: cigarettes, imported herbal smokes and sometimes even hookah pipes to a steady stream of customers.

But sales at his downtown store would jump 20 per cent, Mr. Vasseur reckons, if he was also allowed to sell marijuana, the dried leaves of the cannabis plant.

So many Canadians already smoke the stuff - five million, he says - that politicians are fools not to legalize the drug and cash in on its growing market.

"I think legalizing marijuana is long overdue," says Mr. Vasseur. "The government could make money on this if they want. Why don't they just grade it, blend it, set it up and reap their taxes?"

Mr. Vasseur says his store raises about $2,000 each month off the provincial sales tax charged on tobacco.

"If we had marijuana, there would be another $1,000 in taxes a month, just in my store."

The most recent surveys show that Canadians want the marijuana laws changed.

A 1995 poll by Health Canada said that as many as 70 per cent of Canadians want marijuana either legalized or decriminalized - which means someone caught smoking it wouldn't get a criminal record, and would only have to pay something resembling a parking fine.

The 1995 poll, titled "Canada's Alcohol and other Drugs Survey," shows that 27 per cent of Canadians over the age of 15 actually want marijuana made legal, to be regulated in the same manner as tobacco or alcohol.

An Ontario survey in 1994 by the Addiction Research Foundation found that among people aged 35 to 54, the bulk of the population, 50 per cent said marijuana should be decriminalized. Another 10 per cent said the drug should be legal. Only 40 per cent favoured keeping marijuana use a criminal offence.

To prove this point, Mr. Vasseur thinks the federal government should hold a national plebiscite on the issue.

"Why don't they ask for a vote?" he says. "A plebiscite. Let people vote on it. I'll bet that the result today would be a two-to-one ratio in favour of legalization."

Mr. Vasseur claims that more than five million Canadians use marijuana today. In fact, the survey shows, the number is closer to two million. The 1995 federal survey shows that 7.4 per cent of Canadians said they are current marijuana users, compared to 27 per cent who said they are active tobacco smokers.

Twenty-three per cent of Canadians said they'd used marijuana some time in their lives, compared to 49 per cent for tobacco.

Cocaine is currently used by 3.8 per cent of the population and heroin and LSD used by 5.9 per cent, the survey shows.

Mr. Vasseur reminds people that another former New Brunswick premier was also a supporter of free marijuana use, even if he never actually admitted it.

"We have Richard Hatfield, who ran the province for 10 years, who not only smoked pot but was once caught with it," he says.

Mr. Hatfield was found not guilty of having marijuana in his suitcase. Mr. Vasseur, on the other hand, already has two criminal convictions for marijuana possession, and faces a charge of trafficking after an undercover drug sting arrested him and 70 other Monctonians last December.

Mr. Vasseur denies ever selling marijuana, but admits to being a weekend smoker.

"I have a casual drink. I also believe in having a casual puff from time to time with friends," he says.

"You can have neo-Nazi meetings in this city," he fumes, "but God forbid if you're caught with pot."

Down the street at the Hempire store, owner Serge Cormier agrees with his neighbour. Mr. Cormier sells shirts, shoes and books made from hemp, the stalk of the cannabis plant, which is rich in long fibres. Mr. Cormier says he isn't interested in selling marijuana, but he'd like to see it legalized, because that would make his life easier.

Growing and selling raw hemp is illegal in Canada, even though it's free of the intoxicating chemical that's present in the marijuana leaves.

One way for politicians to proceed, says Mr. Cormier, is to make hemp legal in Canada, and if no one abuses that law, to later legalize marijuana.

"If you could have some system that sold marijuana in liquor stores, or in legalized cafes like they do in Amsterdam, then they could put an age limit on it. They'd put the drug dealers out of business and the kids couldn't buy drugs."

This way, says Mr. Cormier, the government could collect taxes and spend the money on dealing with harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

"Marijuana should be like tobacco," says Mr. Vasseur. "You should be 19 or 20 and have to make an adult decision, just like you do for liquor.

"Marijuana should be distributed just like under a tobacco licence. Tobacco companies and the government should package it and retail it the same way."

"Currency King George Soros - Rich Ally for Drug Dissidents"

LOS ANGELES - Across the country, the scattered dissidents who denounce the whole idea of a war on drugs have found an unexpected ally: George Soros, the currency-market Croesus who is known for donating hundreds of millions of dollars each year to shore up democracy in the former Soviet bloc.

In his most recent contribution out of the nearly $15 million he has given or pledged to change drug policy, Soros has made major personal donations to two ground-breaking state ballot initiatives that would legalize the medical use of marijuana: $350,000 to one in California and $100,000 to one in Arizona.

Without his backing, say organizers in California, they would not have managed to gather the 433,000 signatures needed to get the initiative on the ballot.

Tuesday, Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's drug policy director, denounced the initiative as "dangerous and wrong."

Three other wealthy contributors helped get California's Proposition 215 off the ground, but the initiative's opponents single out Soros. "All roads seem to lead to Soros," said Stu Mollrich, the campaign consultant for the opposition.

Soros declined to be interviewed, but passages in his interview-style book, "Soros on Soros," set out his deep conviction that U.S. drug policy, with its emphasis on treating drug use as a crime rather than a medical problem of addiction, is so ill-conceived that "the remedy is often worse than the disease."

While he has no prescription of his own, Soros wrote, he could imagine legalizing some of the less harmful drugs and devoting the money saved from the criminal justice system to treatment.

Soros first began to focus on America's drug problem in 1992, said Ethan A. Nadelmann, a prominent critic of the drug war and head of the Lindesmith Center, a New York City think tank founded in 1994 with Soros' money. As the revolution in Eastern Europe began to settle down, he said, Soros turned his philanthropic attention closer to home and decided that U.S. drug policy was deeply flawed and debate on it was being stifled.

He first diverted a rivulet of foundation money - $4 million dollars - toward groups exploring alternative drug policies in 1994, and has kept up that yearly level since, Nadelmann said, financing both groups that support some sort of legalization and groups that propose other plans. One percent of his annual giving is now related to drug policy.

Though that may not be much for Soros, who still donates more than $300 million each year in the former Soviet bloc, it nonetheless makes him the biggest financial heavyweight ever to throw his philanthropic heft behind the camp that denounces the war on drugs.

His entry into the drug policy arena, along with that of several other wealthy contributors, has drug war believers worried.

"These are not your hippies on the street anymore," said Tom Gorman, former president of the California Narcotics Officers Association. "These are businessmen.

In Arizona, it was another businessman, John Sperling, who helped launch the drug initiative, Proposition 200, together with John Norton, a produce millionaire and former deputy secretary of agriculture in the Reagan administration. Along with legalizing medical marijuana, it would toughen the penalties for drug users who commit violent crimes under the influence, while banning prison sentences for most convictions on possession.

But Soros had a critical, if indirect, effect on that campaign as well by financing policy centers that have provided significant technical support for it, organizers said.

In California, campaign finance records show that aside from Soros and Sperling, two other wealthy businessmen have helped bring contributions to Proposition 215 to just over $1 million: Peter Lewis of Ohio, who gave $300,000 and George Zimmer, of California, who made an interest-free loan of $160,000. Under Proposition 215, patients with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other illnesses could legally grow and use marijuana if their doctor advised it.

"Until a couple of years ago there was only one person in the country giving over $100,000 to the movement," Nadelmann said, referring to a Chicago donor named Richard Dennis. "Now there are four, five, six people willing to give $100,000 or more, of which no one is in Soros' league."

Mollrich of Proposition 215's opposition said that financing for the medical marijuana initiative appeared to be "ideologically based" and complained that it was coming from "a very small group of people and they are not Californians."

The "no" side of the initiative has raised only about $30,000 so far. "We haven't found our George Soros yet," Mollrich said.

Nadelmann argued that in fact, the Soros money could not begin to compare to the billions spent on the drug war and the money that groups backing it can - and may - furnish.

Despite initial polling results showing that about 65 percent of Californians support legalizing medical marijuana both sides of the California initiative said they thought that a major injection of money on either side could yet decide its fate.

Those close to Soros said it remained unclear whether he would give more money to the California and Arizona initiatives; Nadelmann said that the financier's interest in drugs and another domestic project, on death and dying, might soon be eclipsed by other American projects he is soon to start, including major work on inner city education.

But backers of Proposition 215 said the Hungarian-born financier had helped them log a notable triumph.

"In many ways, getting it on the ballot may be the victory in and of itself because the issue tests so well," said Dave Fratello, the campaign spokesman.

Longtime marijuana advocates in San Francisco began the California initiative which, along with its counterpart in Arizona, gives voters their first chance to weigh in directly statewide on whether medical marijuana should be legalized.

But when they saw a few weeks before this spring's deadline for signatures that they were not going to make it, "an appeal was made," Nadelmann said circumspectly, and the last-minute money from Soros and others came through.

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