Today, when people across America think of Seattle, it is marred by the image of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and a lengthy year’s worth of rioting only overshadowed by the likes of Portland. They think of sidewalks obstructed by tents, trash, needles, and random violent assaults.

These negative associations with Seattle have been largely limited to downtown Seattle, on the south side of the Ship Canal Bridge; the other shore of Lake Union.

The north end of Seattle is a suburb of its downtown counterpart and has seen few of the problems downtown has, of which activity tends to be isolated along Highway 99. Yet, it is governed by the same Mayor and City Council as downtown Seattle, and those problems are now surfacing in communities who thought they had adequate distance from these problems.

The Bitter Lake Community of Seattle is on the most northern edge of North Seattle, only a handful of traffic lights shy of exiting city limits entirely. It’s a much more quiet single family home community, nestled in side streets between the main drags of Greenwood and Aurora avenues.

During the pandemic when students shifted to remote learning at home, a homeless encampment formed on school property at Broadview-Thompson Elementary School in the Bitter Lake Community. Parents were apathetic at first, adopting an ‘out of sight out of mind’ position, and assumed that the situation would be handled by the time students returned to the classroom on school grounds. 

The encampment started in July of 2020, and the city promised it would be removed that September. Yet the encampment has not been removed, and has only grown larger.

As time drew closer to the beginning of in-school learning, the Seattle School Board asked the city not to remove these camps, including the one at Bitter Lake, barely within the city’s grasp. Parents began to worry about their children’s safety returning to school.

As children returned to school to finish the remaining school year, the encampment continues to grow. Weapons have been found in the encampment on school property, and the school was placed into lockdown over a pellet gun spotted in the camp.

Now, King County has brought their needle exchange program to the elementary school, handing out needles and syringes to members of the encampment right in front of children on school grounds.

From local Seattle ABC affiliate KOMO:

“‘To see them (public health) disperse the needles right on your frontage in plain sight for everybody to see was an outrageous moment,’ said Paul Riemann whose home looks directly into the encampment.

Neighbors said the criminal activity is mounting.

In the last two weeks, police have been called to the camp several times, a large sword was seen outside a tent and last Tuesday the school had to ‘shelter in place’ when a camper was seen with a pellet gun.”

The school district runs a unique model where they are only accountable to public opinion (where they’re currently catering to the Wokes) rather than being accountable to the students whom they teach, and the parents of the students. They don’t actually have an incentive to do right by whom they should be accountable to. 

Perhaps voting for School Board Members should be a privatized vote reserved for people who actually have school aged children in the district, rather than everyone who is eligible to vote who have no skin in the game. But this is pie in the sky, as it makes way too much sense to actually come to fruition. 

Not everyone can afford private school, especially if they have several school aged children. With two income households, not everyone can find time to homeschool; though with all children learning from home and having to make time to accommodate this, I hope many can give this a second thought. Do it if you can.

What can really make a difference however, is School Choice. This is a system where the student is funded rather than the school, and can choose which public school they want to attend. This would force schools and districts which have become comfortable with zoning and not having to act in the best interest of their students, to immediately be forced to do so. The alternative is that students leave, and therefore funding also leaves. If a school consciously continues to underperform or not provide a safe environment, the conclusion will finally, for once, be as it should. The school will rightfully close, and not look good on a future resumé.

This would make a world of difference for students in the Bitter Lake Community, who are currently zoned into Seattle Public Schools without a choice, to be given the option to attend Shoreline Public Schools just a few traffic lights away. 

Also, if you are a parent who believes schools should serve students and not the mob, consider running for School Board.

The post School Choice Needed as Seattle Allows Homeless Camp, Drugs on School Property appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

John McAfee is the founder of McAfee Antivirus.

Read the interview below.

TLR: If the Coronavirus were a computer virus, how would it affect your computer?

MCAFEE: Oh Jesus… it’s hard to give a comedic answer to that because this whole thing is so overblown. I would have to say the Boot Sector Virus. It was the third computer virus to ever go around. I’d say that’s it, because it looks far worse than it is. It didn’t do any damage and it didn’t destroy anything. It just annoyed the shit out of people.

TLR: The Coronavirus has largely hurt the sex worker industry, especially with social distancing. If there were to be a Crypto-currency with the express purpose of paying sex workers, what would John McAfee call that Crypto-currency?

MCAFEE: The Booty Token. Or pink? Hundreds of good names there. Depending on your sexual orientation, you may not want The Booty Token. Maybe you’re into Thai ladyboys or something. But yeah, The Booty Token. I’m sticking with that.

TLR: You actually have history with Joe Exotic from the Netflix series The Tiger King. You both ran for President with the Libertarian Party in 2016. Joe Exotic did not poll high enough to make the debates. He’s probably got some unfinished business with you. In the spirit of such, would you be willing to fight Joe Exotic in a steel cage match on Pay-Per-View?

MCAFEE: Yes, provided he will fight one of my tigers beforehand. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I don’t remember Joe Exotic. I made the national debates. I actually came in third for the nomination. Isn’t that the weirdest thing for someone who has never been in politics before? In any case, Joe Exotic, yeah I’d fight him. I watched a little bit of that documentary; it’s way too damn long. He seems…. I could take him. Easy. Without a tiger. Easy.

TLR: With the Coronavirus, people are doing what they can to protect themselves and taking preventative measures. So to protect ourselves from the Coronavirus, how much cocaine should we be doing everyday?

MCAFEE: Well here’s something. Why don’t you guys look up smoking cigarettes and incidences of Coronavirus infections? It turns out according to one study that a non-Chinese person did, based on the Chinese profiles of those who got the virus, that cigarette smokers were 5x less likely to get infected than non smokers. So, I don’t know about cocaine, but if you throw some cigarettes in with it I’d say absolutely, cigarettes/cocaine as a method of protection work pretty damn well.

[As it turns out, there was a study conducted by New York University and the University of West Attica that found this] 

TLR: With protecting our homes during these times; if John McAfee were to enter the home security sector and make McAfee Home Security, what kind of weapons options would be available with your package?

 MCAFEE: Well, it depends on your home. Anyone who is as serious about protection as I am, and my wife Janice and my security team… Well, how wide are the doorways? What room are we in and how large is that room? In a room of decent size, 30ft by 25ft, give me a Benelli semi-auto shotgun, 12 gauge loaded with buckshot. If we’re in a hallway or something, give me 2 pistols; one for each hand. Make them both 9mm and or FN 5.7, and with the FN 5.7 I’d like the armor piercing bullets please. If I’m in my bedroom, give me a double barrelled sawed off shotgun. If I’m outside give me an AR-15 with a binary trigger. If you’ve never shot a gun with a binary trigger, good God is that fun. If you don’t know what that is, when you pull the trigger it fires. When you let the trigger go, it fires. You can rip some rounds with that sucker. I had in the Dominican Republic, after they let Janice and I out of jail several months ago, they confiscated the only AR-15 that I had with a binary trigger. Those pricks. I hope they shoot themselves accidentally with it. Give me the conditions and I’ll tell you which weapons. But you need an AR-15, you need a couple types of shotguns. You need a bunch of pistols. Everybody should have pistols of different calibers, and maybe even a revolver. I think that’s it. What else am I missing?

TLR: The only thing that we’re missing are Claymore mines on Roombas.

MCAFEE: You know what? Those are illegal in… most states. And most countries. But if you can get away with it, do so. But try to stay within the bounds of the law. For example, a binary trigger is in the bounds of the law in almost every country that allows long firearms. 

TLR: The last question I have, and I previously brought this up in a previous interview when I rudely called you while you were at dinner; Antivirus the movie starring John McAfee as himself with Bruce Campbell. Fighting an army of Android robots with Artificial Intelligence that have been infected by a computer virus and have turned against the human race. Would you star as yourself alongside Bruce Campbell?

MCAFEE: Yeah, provided Bruce would let me have that awesome leather strap-on for the shotgun that went over his back. Where you reach over with one hand and pull that fucker out! I want that. If he’d let me have that, absolutely.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Coronavirus Interview With Virus Expert John McAfee appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

No party offers a silver bullet to address every problem. But on this very important one, The Libertarian Party doesn’t even have their guns loaded.

On January 19th, Podcaster Tyler Bluntman (Tyler Breen) posted a video to his Facebook page stating the consumption and proliferation of child pornography should not be a crime, so long as you were not the original content creator. Breen stated that watching a video does not create a victim.

While Breen labels himself as a Constitutional Conservative, he is largely followed by Libertarians. This video resulted in a debate exclusively within Libertarian circles.

Joe Burnes, of the Texas Libertarian State Committee, wrote in defense of this assessment:

“Off the cuff, possession of ANY video is a victimless crime.  The crime happened when the producer created the video. Forest for the trees.  This is like going after everybody that smokes pot but leaving alone the distributors.  Sure, it’s disgusting that anyone would own child porn, but jailing them for it won’t stop a damn thing.  Up the penalties for creating child porn and there won’t be any around to be able to be owned.”

There are several things this particular viewpoint completely ignores.

First, the pornographic media content was the intentional final product. The consumer creates the demand. It was produced specifically for distribution and consumption amongst pedophiles. It absolutely has a victim, and continued consumption and distribution continues to perpetuate that child’s victimhood.

Second, this is erroneously likened to marijuana consumption in Burnes’ statement. It’s not a valid comparison because throughout that entire transaction of purchasing marijuana, there is no victim.

And this is where relying on the Free Market to fix every ailment in the world falls horribly flat.

“Prohibition leads to Black Markets. That doesn’t solve anything!”

This line works great for actual Victimless Crimes, such as the failure of the alcohol prohibition, personal drug use, and voluntary sex work. Removing prohibition from these activities is to make them tolerable or acceptable to society, as they don’t cause harm to other parties. The Libertarian Party is, and always has been ahead of their time on that front.

This is not, and should not ever be the case where a real victim is being exploited. Especially a child who does not have the ability to consent. That’s where Libertarians are far behind the curve, and have yet to leave for the boat that they’ve already missed.

The Libertarian Party appears to have a difficult enough time as it is holding members accountable to their NAP Pledge, let alone entrusting that experiment to an entire society who never bought in to begin with.

As laws are punitive, they have effectively and will continue to punish people who engage in this activity. Libertarianism doesn’t have an answer to match this.

Imagine if you will, that you took your child to some daycare, or a dentist, and that person you trusted took pornographic photos of your 5 year old.

The person who did this goes to jail. Great.

But the photos they took are fair game. They get passed around the dark web, and now on the regular internet; now that distributing child porn is no longer a crime as long as you were not the individual who took the pictures.

Imagine that following your child around for the rest of their lives. Imagine people recognizing your child in the grocery store, now that the possession of child porn is acceptable, so long as a few select virtue signaling Libertarians get to hide behind “BuT i DiDnT sAy i CoNdOnE iT!”

This isn’t simply an appeal to emotion. This is actually the future some Libertarians want.

But even the ones who don’t proactively want this future still appear to settle for it. Because while Libertarianism is great on the Victimless Crime front, they are not equipped to handle crimes that involve a victim. Not just child exploitation, but any crime with a victim.

Libertarianism is an ideology reliant on compliance, but is absent a means of enforcement. An absence of enforcement makes consequences optional. I’ve never seen a realistic blueprint for Libertarian enforcement where victims are concerned. I’ve never met someone who would pay an optional fine, or do optional jail time.

Personally I believe a number of bad actors flock to Libertarianism not because they’re Pro Liberty, but rather because they’re Anti-Consequence. A number of people in the Libertarian Party would be the first to become pirates under a Libertarian society. They see the party’s sole reliance on good faith as a way out.

“But the free market would find a way” is not an answer. It’s not a plan. It’s not a way of addressing the allure of action without consequence. It does nothing in regards to normalizing the perpetuation of a crime with a victim. That’s a problem.

If decriminalization worked not only with victimless crimes, but also with crimes involving victims, then I’m sorry to say we fought a bloody Civil War over absolutely nothing. The North simply could have legalized slavery like the South did, and everything would have magically worked out. The South wouldn’t have needed to attempt Secession. The union could have been unified in their goal of normalizing slavery to somehow end it. 

If that sounds stupid, that’s because it is.

The post Libertarianism Is Not Equipped To Address Child Exploitation appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Chuck Ross 

Democratic mega-donor and activist Ed Buck was arrested and charged Tuesday with operating a drug den out of his home in West Hollywood, and administering methamphetamine to a man who nearly died from an overdose last week.

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office accused Buck of injecting a 37-year-old man with methamphetamine at his home on Sept. 4 and Sept. 11, nearly causing him to overdose both times.

Buck, 65, is charged with three counts: battery with serious bodily injury, the sale and transportation of a controlled substance, and maintaining a place for the sale or use of a controlled substance.

While Buck’s latest alleged victim survived, at least two other men who’ve crossed paths with him have not been so lucky.

A man named Gemmel Moore died from an overdose at Buck’s home in July 2017. Timothy Dean died there in January 2019.

Buck was not charged in either of those deaths, but Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a court filing Tuesday that the three cases show that Buck is a “violent, dangerous sexual predator.”

“He mainly preys on men made vulnerable by addiction and homelessness. Using the bait of narcotics, money, and shelter, the defendant lures these vulnerable victims to his home. From his home, in a position of power, Buck manipulates his victims into participating in his sexual fetishes,” said Lacey, who asked that Buck be held on $4 million bail.

Lacey alleged that Buck supplies and “personally” administers heavy doses of drugs to his alleged victims. The prosecutor also alleged that Buck’s “aggressive and malevolent behavior” led to the deaths of Moore and Dean.

“Not deterred by the senseless deaths of Moore and Dean, the defendant nearly killed a third victim last week.”

“The defendant’s predatory acts and conscious disregard for human life must be stopped.”

The complaint alleges the latest victim, identified only as “John Doe,” sought medical attention on Sept. 4 after Buck injected him with methamphetamine. The man returned to Buck’s home a week later, on Sept. 11, and Buck again allegedly injected him with “two dangerously large doses” of drugs.

Buck allegedly refused to provide aid to the man, and thwarted his efforts to get medical attention. The man eventually left Buck’s home and called 911 from a gas station.

The complaint also says that police found hundreds of photographs in Buck’s home of men in “compromising positions.”

Buck has donated heavily to congressional Democrats, and to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Some of his biggest congressional benefactors have been Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and California Reps. Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff.  All have donated contributions to charities in the wake of the allegations against Buck, CBS Los Angeles has reported.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Image: video screenshot [source]

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Politicians from both sides of the aisle are extremely concerned about the rising number of opioid-related deaths—and for good reason. Approximately 130 Americans die from an opioid-related overdose every day. In 2017, the number of opioid-related overdoses was six times higher than it was in 1999. The question is no longer whether we have an opioid epidemic; it is how we address it.

Safe Injection Sites

In order to try to combat this issue, people are considering opening up safe injection sites. These are places where individuals can come to test the quality of their drugs, obtain sterile injection equipment, and inject their drugs under medical supervision.

While these sites are new to the US, they have become common practice in many other countries around the world. Canada has the oldest safe injection site in North America, Insite, which has been in operation since 2003.

Insite and efforts like it have seen fairly remarkable success. Research shows that they significantly decrease overdoses without increasing the amount of drug use. Insite has not experienced one overdose in the entire 15-year period they have been in operation.

Efforts like these are just now gaining traction in the United States. Cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia have recently made efforts to establish safe injection facilities. So why haven’t they started operating yet? The answer is fairly simple: there is a strong possibility that they are currently illegal.

United States Code Title 21, Section 865, makes it unlawful to

knowingly open, lease, rent, use, or maintain any place, whether permanently or temporarily, for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance.

This is a fairly obscure section of the Controlled Substances Act that was added at the height of the crack epidemic and is commonly known as the “Crack House” statute. It was intended to discourage people from allowing their homes to be used for drug-related purposes.

Do They Harm Society?

So why are safe injection sites so afraid that they are violating a statute that was clearly passed for an entirely different purpose? The answer lies with the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In 2018, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, published an op-ed in The New York Times titled “Fight Drug Abuse, Don’t Subsidize It.” In this article, Mr. Rosenstein made an argument for why he thinks safe injection sites are harmful to society. However, he did not stop with advocacy. Mr. Rosenstein specifically said that “cities and counties should expect the Department of Justice to meet the opening of any injection site with swift and aggressive action.” He made it clear that anyone hoping to open and operate a safe injection site would face strong opposition from the DOJ. And he was not bluffing.

On February 5, 2019, United States Attorney William M. McSwain filed a complaint with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania seeking a declaratory judgment against Safehouse, a safe injection site set to open in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as against Jeanette Bowles, its executive director. The complaint asks the court to declare safe injection sites illegal under the Controlled Substances Act. The federal government is sending a clear signal: if you try to open up a safe injection site, they will prosecute you.

So why is the federal government so against the establishment of safe injection sites? If you ask Mr. Rosenstein, it’s because these sites “create serious public safety risks” and “destroy the surrounding community.” However, as we have seen, the evidence leans strongly against the conclusion that safe injections sites pose more public safety risks than they alleviate or that they destroy the communities that surround them. The more likely reason for this strong opposition is that safe injection sites undermine the DOJ’s position that drug use should be treated as a crime rather than a public health issue.

Safe injection sites are built on the premise that our goal should be to reduce the harm caused by drugs—not to punish those who use them. This stands in stark contrast to the DOJ’s position that it is not the harm caused by drugs but drug use itself that we should work to combat. If they allow safe injection sites to open and they achieve the same success they have in the past, this would serve as a huge blow to the DOJ’s current position. People may begin to think that it is the harm caused by drugs—and not drug use in and of itself—that is actually the issue.

Regardless of the true intent behind these actions, it is clear that the DOJ plans to fight safe injection sites tooth and nail. This will serve as a major hindrance for people who are trying to find evidence-based, practical solutions for combating the opioid crisis. It remains to be seen how the court will rule on safe injection sites and whether or not they violate federal law, but the DOJ’s aggressive actions send a definite signal to those hoping to open up one of these facilities: expect fierce opposition.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The post Safe Injection Sites Save Lives, so Why Does the DOJ Want to Ban Them? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

By Steve Birr

The health care bill unveiled by Republicans in the U.S. Senate Thursday guts funding for drug and addiction treatment while mentioning the opioid crisis only once.

The legislation allocates only $2 billion to fight drug addiction across the U.S. in fiscal year 2018, much less than some Republicans from states ravaged by drug abuse expected the package to include. Republican Sens. Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia and Rob Portman from Ohio proposed adding $45 billion in funding for addiction treatment services over 10 years to the Senate bill to make up for expected cuts to Medicaid, reports The Tennessean.

The opioid epidemic receives only one acknowledgement in the 142 page Senate health care bill.

“More than four times as many people are dying of overdoses now than did 30 years ago,” Portman said in an opinion column June 22. “If this isn’t an emergency, then I don’t know what is. That’s why I believe Congress has an obligation to address this issue in an urgent manner.”

The New York Times recently culled through data from state health departments and county medical examiners and coroners, predicting there were between 59,000 and 65,000 drug deaths in 2016, the largest number ever recorded. That is roughly the same number of lives lost to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam combined.

More than two million Americans have some sort of physical dependence on opioids, and nearly 100 million Americans have a prescription for the drugs.

“There’s no question that there’s an epidemic and that this is a national public health emergency,” Dr. Leana Wen, the commissioner of public health in Baltimore, told The New York Times. “The number of people overdosing is skyrocketing, and we have no indication that we’ve reached the peak.”

Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under 50 and contributed to the first drop in U.S. life expectancy since 1993 in 2015.

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By Grace Carr

Inmates increasingly use drones to smuggle anything from cell phones to weapons into jails across the country, according to Department of Justice (DOJ) documents released in mid-June.

The documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal more than a dozen attempts to transport mobile phones, drugs, and porn into federal prisons over the past five years, according to USA Today.

Experts say current anti-drone technologies fail to protect jails against drones transporting dangerous items, including firearms. Smuggling contraband into prison through any method is illegal, but no law currently bars drones from flying near correctional facilities.

“Civilian drones are becoming more inexpensive, easy to operate and powerful. A growing number of criminals seem to be recognizing their potential value as tools for bad deeds,” Troy Rule, a drone legislation advocate and Arizona State University law professor, told USA Today.

According to the Justice Department report, an inmate at the high-security federal prison in Victorville, Calif., smuggled two cell phones in March 2015 via drone, and jail officials didn’t discover the drone drop for five months.

In 2014, a drone crashed while attempting to deliver marijuana to a prison in South Carolina, and a drone-delivered drug package sparked a fight in an Ohio facility in 2015, according to The Verge. An inmate and two accomplices were convicted of smuggling drugs and porn into Maryland’s Western Correctional Institution via drone in 2016. There is a pattern of the cases over years, and 2017 is seeing increasing drone drops.

Jail management consultant Donald Leach says smugglers could be discouraged by introducing anti-drone jammers. The jammers disable the signals on drones and block their entry by hacking into the operating system. Leach, who worked as a jail administrator for 25 years, said drones pose a greater threat than any other methods of smuggling illegal goods.

“Traditionally some inmates would bribe the staff or visitors to bring drugs and other small items into jail illegally by hiding them in body cavities … but drones have opened up the possibility of transporting much bigger and much more lethal items like guns into the facilities,” Leach said.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has requested technology that could be used to stop drones near facilities. A pending Senate bill called the Drone Federalism Act would also encourage local legislation if passed.

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By Jonah Bennett

Mexico now ranks second in the world for most deadly conflict zone, surpassing both Iraq and Afghanistan and trailing just behind Syria.

Fatalities resulting from the escalating conflict between criminal cartel organizations in Mexico reached 23,000 in 2016 compared to 17,000 in Afghanistan and 16,000 in Iraq, according to a new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which defines a deadly conflict zone in terms of the number of fatalities generated from conflicts, Bloomberg reports.

Only in Syria were conflict fatalities higher in 2016.

The findings are somewhat surprising because Mexico by all measures lacks the markers of a conventional battlefield conflict. There are no missile strikes, artillery, tanks and fighter jets involved the conflict.

Rather, small arms fire is responsible for almost all recorded deaths, which is why Jacob Parakilas, assistant head of the US and the Americas Programme at London-based think tank Chatham House, told CNN that the conflict is largely neglected in the news media. There are no air strikes or mesmerizing videos of anti-tank missiles.

In 22 out of 32 Mexican states, the number of homicides markedly rose, particularly so in states where competition between cartels was fiercest, due to a lack of control.

“It is noteworthy that the largest rises in fatalities were registered in states that were key battlegrounds for control between competing, increasingly fragmented cartels,” Anastasia Voronkova, editor of the survey, stated.

“The violence grew worse as the cartels expanded the territorial reach of their campaigns, seeking to ‘cleanse’ areas of rivals in their efforts to secure a monopoly on drug-trafficking routes and other criminal assets,” Voronkova added.

Part of the reason the fights between drug cartels are so bloody is because the stakes remain high. Drug sales in the U.S. from these cartels account for between $19 and $29 billion in revenue every year.

The report noted that Mexico and Central America account for 21 percent of fatalities around the world, due to entrenched conflicts, though global fatalities as a whole dropped from 167,000 to 157,000 last year.

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By Dries Van Thielen

On Sunday, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly made a guest appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press.

When host Chuck Todd asked  Kelly what he thinks the biggest challenge will be during his installment, Kelly answered: “Securing the Southern borders. Protecting the nation from national criminal organizations that have tentacles outside the country [and terrorist threats]”. Thus, following President’s Trumps Executive Order on Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking.

Surprisingly, Kelly stated that marijuana is “not a factor” in the ongoing war on drugs. Instead, border patrol faces three more challenges: methamphetamines, heroin, and cocaine. According to Kelly, these drugs led to 52,000 deaths last year. Their common denominator? All of these drugs are overwhelmingly produced in Mexico. Only cocaine is coming from “further South”, Kelly addressed.

As we have shown earlier on The Libertarian Republic, these regulations are downward inefficient. Even if border patrol intercepts all the illegal substances coming from outside the US, the demand for narcotics will be fulfilled by replacement drugs like Crack Cocaine or other designer drugs.

Marijuana: “It is a potential dangerous gateway drug”

However, it seemed as if Kelly was corrected later by the president. During a similar conference on Tuesday at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Kelly laid out his strategy for his term once again.

Once more, Kelly added his stance on marijuana during his speech. His idea of marijuana shifted notably throughout the days. From “not a factor” on Sunday, Kelly stated in Washington that marijuana “is potentially a dangerous gateway drug”. He was back in line with the White House policies and defending federal laws concerning marijuana.

Reversing the Obama’s administration stance on illegal immigrants and marijuana, Kelly ensured that immigrants working with marijuana will be deported.

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By Steve Birr

A U.S. Coast Guard vessel returned from a drug interdiction mission with a massive haul Sunday, seizing a total of 4,000 pounds of Colombian cocaine.

The Coast Guard cutter Stratton, which was on a nearly 100-day mission patrolling the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America, returned to the Port of Alameda Sunday in California with the massive drug haul. The crew of the Stratton made multiple interdictions, employing the use of an eight-foot ScanEagle surveillance drone to catch smugglers by surprise, reports CBS San Francisco.

Officials estimated the 4,000 pounds of seized cocaine carries a street value of more than $55 million.

“The intent is for the Coast Guard to push our borders offshore, get down south where the cocaine comes out of Colombia…out of the jungle…so it never has a chance to get close to the border,” Capt. Nate Moore, the Stratton’s commanding officer, told CBS San Francisco.

Crew of the Stratton noted drug smugglers are constantly shifting their tactics in an effort to outsmart U.S. military technology. They credit the diligence of those aboard for the success of the mission. Officials said the ScanEagle drone is particularly effective and nearly impossible for smugglers to detect.

“We’re working in an area about the size of the United States of America, trying to find small 30 foot long speedboats that are trying to not be found,” Commander Matt Waldron, executive officer, told CBS San Francisco.

The seizure is the latest bust by U.S. authorities of smugglers trafficking narcotics on the seas. The Coast Guard seized nearly half a billion dollars of cocaine during a series of drug busts in the Pacific Ocean targeting smuggling routes over a 26-day period, returning to port March 28.

Officials with the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter James interdicted 17 drug smuggling vessels traveling in the eastern Pacific along the coasts of Central and South America, seizing roughly 16 tons of cocaine. Five of the searches were conducted by the Coast Guard’s helicopter interdiction squad, which alone seized 5.19 tons of the total load.

“With this ship, we’re capable of owning the night,” James’ Captain Mark Fedor told CBS Miami. “They’re just not carrying cocaine. They’re delivering violence, corruption, and instability to a part of the world – the Western Hemisphere – that just can’t afford it.”

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