Proposed age-adjusted smoking ban in the U.K.

 The BBC has the story, about a proposal to ban smoking for everyone currently under the age of 18. (What could go wrong?)

What is the UK smoking ban, how will it work and when will it start? By Aurelia Foster, BBC News

"Prime Minister Rishi Sunak effectively wants to ban smoking in the UK.

MPs have voted to back the government's plans to create a "smoke-free generation", and reduce the number of smoking-related deaths.

What is the smoking ban?

The restrictions will apply to the sale of cigarettes in the UK rather than the act of smoking itself.

Under the new law, each year the legal age for cigarette sales - currently 18 - will increase by one year.

It means that people born in or after 2009 will never be able to legally buy cigarettes, leading to an effective ban.

The law will not affect those who are allowed to buy cigarettes now.

To crack down on under-age sales, the government says it will introduce £100 on-the-spot fines for shops in England and Wales which sell tobacco and vapes to under-age people.

Local authorities will retain the proceeds to reinvest into enforcement of the law.

This would be on top of £2,500 fines that courts can already impose.

The government says it will spend £30m on enforcement, which will include tackling the availability of cigarettes on the black market.

The new rules will apply in all duty free shops in the UK, but anyone buying cigarettes abroad would be able to bring them back to the UK as long as they were legally acquired elsewhere.

The government aims to have the new system in force by 2027.

Mr Sunak wants to work with the governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to introduce the legislation across the UK."

HT: Oğuzhan Çelebi

#######

Earlier: 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

New Zealand repeals anti-smoking law that would have prevented tobacco sales to anyone born after 2008

Still illegal in Idaho

 Here's a map from The Hill of places where marijuana will be legal to various degrees by the end of this year. Grey states are where marijuana is still entirely illegal.  Despite the best attempts of the previous presidential administration to make America grey again, Idaho is one of only three states that remain grey: they are surrounded by states in which cannabis is legal in some form, and most of Idaho's neighbors have legalized marijuana (even) for recreational purposes (bright green on the map).

But Idaho is holding the line, which seems to be politically popular there.

The NYT has the story:

A Legal Pot Pioneer Was Busted in Idaho With 56 Pounds. He Has a Plan.  By Corey Kilgannon

"In retrospect, the Idaho shortcut might have been a bad idea.

...

"Idaho is surrounded mostly by pot friendly states and is strict about people driving through with the stuff. The authorities are especially vigilant in “corridor counties” along Interstate 84, of which Gooding County — where Mr. Beal encountered the state police — is one.

"Under state law, carrying more than 25 pounds of marijuana is a felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years; the maximum is 15 years, with a maximum fine of $50,000.

“It’s one of the worst places in the country to possess marijuana, definitely,” Michelle Agee, Mr. Beal’s court-appointed lawyer, said. “Idaho is stuck in the 1950s as far as marijuana goes. It’s definitely the wrong place, wrong time for a person to be accused of having marijuana.”

...

"Reached for comment, Idaho’s attorney general, Raúl R. Labrador, a former Republican congressman who helped found the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that legalization in neighboring states had done nothing to deter the strict enforcement of the laws in Idaho.

“We’ve watched how those decisions to legalize drugs have ruined other states, and Idaho demands just a bit better for our citizens and communities,” he said. “If you are trying to transport marijuana across state lines through Idaho, take the long way instead. It’ll save us money on your incarceration.”

New Zealand repeals anti-smoking law that would have prevented tobacco sales to anyone born after 2008

 In an earlier blog post, I wrote about a New Zealand anti-smoking law, saying "And now there's a law that cuts nicotine content of cigarettes, and (get this) "bans the next generation of New Zealanders — anyone born after 2008 or currently 14 years old or younger — from ever buying cigarettes in the country. " (That's going to be a complicated age restriction to administer in, say, 10 years from now...)  

Well, people born in 2008 are turning 16 this year, and New Zealand just repealed that law, for reasons that New Zealand's prime minister Christopher Luxon says include concerns about black markets.

Here's an article from Medpage today, reporting on the change in the law. However the article takes the point of view that black markets are just a smokescreen thrown up by tobacco companies.

Up in Smoke: What Happened to New Zealand's Tobacco Ban Plan?— It appears the new government is making an embarrassing attempt to fend off a budget shortfall. by Eric Trump, March 6, 2024

"As part of the newly elected coalition government's rush to tick 49 "actions"  off its 100-day list by March 8, it has repealed  the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Act of 2022. This act, passed by the previous Labour government, would have banned selling tobacco products to those born on or after January 1, 2009, reduced the nicotine in tobacco products to non-addictive levels, and slashed the number of outlets allowed to sell tobacco by 90%, from 6,000 to 600. Overall tobacco use was predicted to drop from the current 8% to lower than 5% by 2025, and the act was expected to create a tobacco-free generation.

...

"Why would New Zealand's new coalition government, an alliance opens in a new tab or window

of the conservative National Party along with the libertarian ACT and populist New Zealand First parties, repeal data-driven and life- and money-saving legislation? Without a shred of evidence, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his coalition partners have repeatedly claimed restricting tobacco and reducing nicotine levels is experimental (as though that were a bad thing), leading to black marketsopens in a new tab or window and a proliferation of crimeopens in a new tab or window. ACT's health spokesperson Todd Stephenson, for example, said thatopens in a new tab or window the "radical prohibitionism" of creating a smoke-free generation would "push smokers into the arms of gang members."

"This rhetoric uncannily echoes the tobacco lobby. Public health experts at the University of Otago recently released a damning reportopens in a new tab or window showing that the coalition government's arguments in favor of a repeal closely mirror the tobacco industry's own narratives on this subject.

"So suspicious are the similarities between the flimsy remarks of coalition partners and tobacco companies' talking points that the report's authors are calling on all members of parliament to declare any past associations with tobacco companies.

######

 

Here's the story about the Prime Minister's concerns, from Radio New Zealand (RNZ):

Smokefree legislation would have driven cigarette black market - Christopher Luxon

Oregon is re-criminalizing drugs

 The war on drugs is unforgiving, and neither criminalization nor decriminalization seems to be a winning strategy.  The NYT has the latest from Oregon, where there were high hopes for decriminalization and harm reduction, and where there are now second thoughts. 

Oregon Is Recriminalizing Drugs, Dealing Setback to Reform Movement. Oregon removed criminal penalties for possessing street drugs in 2020. But amid soaring overdose deaths, state lawmakers have voted to bring back some restrictions.  By Mike Baker

"Three years ago, when Oregon voters approved a pioneering plan to decriminalize hard drugs, advocates looking to halt the jailing of drug users believed they were on the edge of a revolution that would soon sweep across the country.

"But even as the state’s landmark law took effect in 2021, the scourge of fentanyl was taking hold. Overdoses soared as the state stumbled in its efforts to fund enhanced treatment programs. And while many other downtowns emerged from the dark days of the pandemic, Portland continued to struggle, with scenes of drugs and despair.

"Lately, even some of the liberal politicians who had embraced a new approach to drugs have supported an end to the experiment. On Friday, a bill that will reimpose criminal penalties for possession of some drugs won final passage in the State Legislature and was headed next to Gov. Tina Kotek, who has expressed alarm about open drug use and helped broker a plan to ban such activity.

“It’s clear that we must do something to try and adjust what’s going on out in our communities,” State Senator Chris Gorsek, a Democrat who had supported decriminalization, said in an interview. Soon after, senators took the floor, with some sharing stories of how addictions and overdoses had impacted their own loved ones. They passed the measure by a 21-8 margin."

Prison gangs, in Latin America and in the U.S.

 It's one thing to be able to capture and confine prisoners. When gangs are involved, it's quite another thing to control the prisons, or the ability of prisoners to continue to control gang activity outside of prison.

The NYT has the story, from Latin America:

In Latin America, Guards Don’t Control Prisons, Gangs Do. Intended to fight crime, Latin American prisons have instead become safe havens and recruitment centers for gangs, fueling a surge in violence. By Maria Abi-Habib, Annie Correal and Jack Nicas

"Inside prisons across Latin America, criminal groups exercise unchallenged authority over prisoners, extracting money from them to buy protection or basic necessities, like food.

"The prisons also act as a safe haven of sorts for incarcerated criminal leaders to remotely run their criminal enterprises on the outside, ordering killings, orchestrating the smuggling of drugs to the United States and Europe and directing kidnappings and extortion of local businesses.

"When officials attempt to curtail the power criminal groups exercise from behind bars, their leaders often deploy members on the outside to push back.

“The principal center of gravity, the nexus of control of organized crime, lies within the prison compounds,” said Mario Pazmiño, a retired colonel and former director of intelligence for Ecuador’s Army, and an analyst on security matters.

“That’s where let’s say the management positions are, the command positions,” he added. “It is where they give the orders and dispensations for gangs to terrorize the country.”

##########

I wrote a related post in November (see below) about a Brazilian prison gang, and received an illuminating email from Professor David Skarbek of Brown University, saying

"I enjoyed your blog post about the PPC Brazilian prison gang. I thought that you might be interested to know that the same phenomenon exists in the US as well. I'm attaching a piece I published in the American Political Science Review on the Mexican Mafia in Southern California."

Here's the link to that article:

Skarbek, David. "Governance and prison gangs." American Political Science Review 105, no. 4 (2011): 702-716.

Abstract: How can people who lack access to effective government institutions establish property rights and facilitate exchange? The illegal narcotics trade in Los Angeles has flourished despite its inability to rely on state-based formal institutions of governance. An alternative system of governance has emerged from an unexpected source—behind bars. The Mexican Mafia prison gang can extort drug dealers on the street because they wield substantial control over inmates in the county jail system and because drug dealers anticipate future incarceration. The gang's ability to extract resources creates incentives for them to provide governance institutions that mitigate market failures among Hispanic drug-dealing street gangs, including enforcing deals, protecting property rights, and adjudicating disputes. Evidence collected from federal indictments and other legal documents related to the Mexican Mafia prison gang and numerous street gangs supports this claim.

#########

Earlier

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Balance of violence: prison-based criminal cartels, the case of Brazil's PCC.

Marijuana black market persists in CA (despite the beginning of a legal market)

 The LA Times has the story, about how legalization of marijuana in California so far failed to end the black market, complete with violence in the Southern California desert.

A massacre that killed 6 reveals the treacherous world of illegal pot in SoCal deserts, by SUMMER LIN, SALVADOR HERNANDEZ, KAREN GARCIA

"A Times investigation last year uncovered the proliferation of illegal cannabis in California after the passage of Proposition 64, which legalized the recreational use of marijuana in the state. Although the 2016 legislation promised voters that the legal market would hobble illegal trade and its associated violence, there has been a surge in the black market.

"Growers at illegal sites can avoid the expensive licensing fees and regulatory costs associated with legal farms. Violence is a looming threat at these operations, authorities said, because illicit harvests yield huge quantities of cash to operators who can’t use banks or law enforcement for protection.

...

"In 2019, an audit by the United Cannabis Business Assn. found nearly 3,000 unlicensed dispensaries and delivery services were operating in the state — at least three times more than legal, regulated businesses.

...

"Warrick wouldn’t comment on whether the slayings were cartel-related but said there were “certain things at the scene that show a level of violence that obviously raises some interesting questions for us.”

The war on drugs is a war

The war on drugs doesn't begin at U.S. borders.

Here's a dispatch from Ecuador, in the WSJ:

Ecuador Is at War With Drug Gangs, President Says. Troops patrolled the country’s largest city a day after a series of attacks against the new government  By Kejal Vyas and Ryan Dubé

"Ecuador is at war with drug gangs, President Daniel Noboa said Wednesday, as troops patrolled the country’s largest city, Guayaquil, a day after gunmen took over a TV studio and launched a series of attacks against the Andean nation’s new government.

“We are in a noninternational armed conflict,” Noboa said in a radio interview. “We are in a state of war. We cannot give in to those terrorist groups.”

"The armed forces and national police scrambled to bring order to Guayaquil, and shops and schools were closed after a series of coordinated attacks Tuesday on shopping centers, hospitals and a university left at least 11 people dead.

"Drug-trafficking gangs in recent years have turned Ecuador into one of the world’s most violence-plagued nations as they battled over the cocaine trade.

...

" Once relatively peaceful, Ecuador has seen the homicide rate shoot up from less than six per 100,000 in 2018 to more than 40 in 2023, said police."

###########

And here's one from Belgium, in the Washington Post:

A Belgian port seized tons of cocaine. Criminals tried to take it back.

Belgian customs officers seized three times as much cocaine in the port of Antwerp last year as U.S. customs and border officials seized in all of the United States.  By Gerrit De Vynck

"The head of Belgium’s customs service said in an interview that especially big seizures in the fall appeared to have prompted a violent backlash, along with a new issue: Authorities haven’t always been able to destroy what they’ve confiscated before drug gangs try to steal it back.

“Attacking the police, attacking the customs, this is not something you see in Europe,” said Kristian Vanderwaeren, director general of Belgium’s customs agency. “I was really afraid that my people would be killed if this would continue.”

...

"“The criminal organization was not afraid to come to a facility and capture their cocaine, even if it meant they would kill a customs officer,” Vanderwaeren said.

...

"According to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, Ecuador and its main port of Guayaquil have been the biggest sources of cocaine destined for Europe, reflecting how Mexican and Albanian gangs have infiltrated the country. This month, the president of Ecuador declared a “state of war” against drug gangs, after a series of assassinations, prison breaks and bombings there."

Hitmen are common in film but otherwise scarce

 The NYT considers the prevalence of hitmen in movies, and why it's hard to find one in real life.

Hit Men Are Easy to Find in the Movies. Real Life Is Another Story.  By Jesse McKinley

"experts in law enforcement and international espionage say that murders-for-hire are notoriously difficult to successfully arrange, let alone get away with.

"Take, for example, what prosecutors say was a recent foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist in New York City, which American intelligence officials believe was ordered by the Indian government. Once the plot reached the point where the alleged conspirators needed to employ a killer, things got complicated: The would-be hit man turned out to be an undercover agent working for the U.S. government.

...

"Law enforcement officials and academics who study killers-for-hire put them into several large buckets. There are the civilians engaged in everyday murder plots, which often end in sloppy or tragic fashion.

"There are also hit men for the mob, the enforcers working in-house to illegally police the criminal underworld. These killers, perhaps the source of most urban lore about the illicit profession, have been luridly overexposed in shows like “The Sopranos” and films like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.”

"Employed in a similar fashion are so-called sicarios, whose use by drug cartels has been heinously prolific at times. And of course there are also the professionals employed by government intelligence agencies, who have been suspected in assassinations in London and elsewhere.

...

"Statistics from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services show that in 2022 there were only seven arrests statewide for contract killing, which the state considers first-degree murder. And that was a banner year for arrests for such badness, matching the total for the five previous years combined. Murder for hire is also a federal crime, with penalties ranging from fines and lengthy prison time for failed attempts to life imprisonment or the death penalty “if death results.”

HT: Jlateh Vincent Jappah

########

Earlier:

Thursday, February 3, 2022

The market for hitmen

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Forbidden Transactions and Black Markets

Limitations of harm reduction: will Oregon recriminalize drug use?

 The NYT has the story:

To Revive Portland, Officials Seek to Recriminalize Public Drug Use. State and local leaders are proposing to roll back part of the nation’s pioneering drug decriminalization law and step up police enforcement.  by Mike Baker

"After years of rising overdoses and an exodus of business from central Portland, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said on Monday that state and city officials are proposing to roll back a portion of the nation’s most wide-ranging drug decriminalization law in a bid to revive the troubled city.

"Under the plan brokered by Gov. Kotek, a Democrat, state lawmakers would be asked to consider a ban on public drug use and police would be given greater resources to deter the distribution of drugs. Ms. Kotek said officials hoped to restore a sense of safety for both visitors and workers in the city’s beleaguered urban core, which has seen an exodus of key retail outlets, including REI, an institution in the Pacific Northwest.

“When it comes to open-air drug use, nobody wants to see that,” Ms. Kotek said in an interview. “We need different tools to send the message that that is not acceptable behavior.”

...

"Oregon voters in 2020 approved the nation’s first law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of hard drugs, including fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamines. The ballot measure sought to end the use of jail as a punishment for drug users and instead treat addiction as a health issue. The effort was to be joined with major new investments in drug treatment, but those new systems have been slow to develop.

...

"Last month, Seattle implemented a new law that prohibits possession of drugs and public use.

...

"Ms. Kotek’s task force does not have the power to immediately ban public drug use, but the panel called for the Legislature to take up the issue in the coming session along with changes that could reduce barriers to prosecuting those who deliver drugs. Lawmakers have already been discussing potential changes to the decriminalization law."

Cash for kidneys report in the Telegraph

 The Telegraph has this story, by Samuel Lovett, Nandi Theint,  and Nicola Smith. For some reason I can't copy the headline, but the URL is pretty informative: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/kidney-organ-trafficking-scandal-private-healthcare-india-myanmar/   3 December 2023 • 9:00am

"One of the world’s biggest private hospital groups is embroiled in a ‘cash for kidneys’ racket in which impoverished people from Myanmar are being enticed to sell their organs for profit.

"India’s Apollo Hospitals, a multi-billion dollar company with facilities across Asia, boasts that it conducts more than 1,200 transplants a year, with wealthy patients arriving for operations from all over the world, including the UK.

"Paying for organs is illegal in India, as it is across most of the world, but a Telegraph investigation has revealed that desperate young villagers from Myanmar are being flown to Apollo’s prestigious Delhi hospital and paid to donate their kidneys to rich Burmese patients.

“It’s big business,” one of the racket’s ‘agents’ told an undercover Telegraph reporter. Those involved “work together to get around the obstacles between the two governments,” she added. The hospital “asks the official questions. And on this side they tell the official lies.”

"The scam involves the elaborate forging of identity documents and staging of ‘family’ photographs to present donors as the relatives of would-be patients. Under Indian and Burmese laws, a patient cannot receive an organ donation from a stranger in normal circumstances.

"Apollo Hospitals said it was “completely shocked” by the Telegraph’s findings and would launch an internal investigation. “Any suggestion of our wilful complicity or implicit sanctioning of any illegal activities relating to organ transplants is wholly denied,” it added.

Black market monkeys for medical research

 Monkeys used in medical research are supposed to come from carefully bred laboratory colonies, but the rising price has led to black markets, which is bad for both monkeys and for medical researchers. (And monkeys are useful for medical research because of their relatively close relation to humans, which makes for difficult conversations regardless of their source...)

The Guardian has the story:

$20,000 monkeys: inside the booming illicit trade for lab animals  by Phoebe Weston

"An international shortage of lab monkeys has driven up prices, incentivising a booming illicit trade. The problem risks undermining research, creating new pandemics, and fuelling wildlife trafficking. As the trade expands, a once-thriving species is now on the edge: in 2022, it was added to the IUCN list of endangered species. Some animal rights activists are calling to end the trade altogether.

"Long-tailed macaques are the most heavily traded primate species in the world, according to a paper published in September, and much of this is for laboratory research. The US National Association for Biological Research says non-human primates remain a critical resource for research, with about 70,000 monkeys imported a year to study infectious diseases, the brain and the creation of new drugs. Difficulty getting monkeys is compromising important research, Sacha says. Before the pandemic he was paying between $2,000 (£1,600) and $5,000 for an animal. Now, it’s about $20,000. “For a couple of years during lockdown it was near impossible to get them,” he says.

"He is not alone. Almost two-thirds of researchers struggled to find monkeys in 2021, according to a report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which found that the supply of monkeys for research is at crisis point. According to an article in Science, the report is the “strongest government statement yet on the precarious state of monkey research”. A similar picture is coming from Europe, where a shortage of monkeys has resulted in some research being abandoned.

"Long-tailed macaques (the monkey most commonly used in medical research) are protected under international trade law and special permits are required to import the animals into the US.

"Laboratories need pathogen-free primates that are in good condition and so do not want monkeys that have been wild-caught. With prices so high, however, traffickers are incentivised to catch them in the wild and launder them in via established breeding colonies.

"For decades, China was the largest supplier, but it banned the wild animal trade in 2020 in light of the Covid pandemic. Demand for monkeys increased significantly in the following years, but supply did not. Cambodia has since significantly increased exports to plug the gap and tap into this increasingly lucrative market.

...

"Animal rights campaigners want the US government to end the “cruel trade”, saying it poses a significant threat to public health. The National Academies report says investing in non-animal “organ on a chip” technology could reduce overall demand.

"It also recommended that the US expand its domestic breeding facilities – which it can then regulate. Sacha says: “We shouldn’t be reliant on external countries for these animals that are really critical to our ability to test new therapeutics and vaccines and medicines.”

"Professional blood donors" in India (where paying blood donors is illegal)

 India allows only unpaid blood donation, from altruistic donors or from "replacement donors" who are friends or relations of particular patients in need of blood (who must procure it before receiving it). There is a severe blood shortage, some of which is filled by black market "professional" blood donors, who are paid to pretend to be unpaid replacement donors.

Here's a story from the Indian news service Quint:

Out for Blood: Why Are Many Indians Forced To Seek 'Professional Blood Donors'? Although it is illegal, why is there a thriving market for paid blood donors in India?  by ANOUSHKA RAJESH and MAAZ HASAN

"Donating blood in exchange for money was banned in India in 1996. However, paying 'professional blood donors' to meet this requirement is still fairly common.

...

"To see how easy it would be to 'arrange' a paid blood donor, FIT went to one of the busiest government hospitals in Delhi.

...

"All leads – from vendors to patient families and bootleg pharmacists – point us to Ashok (name changed). He sits, surrounded by 4-5 men, and is guarded when we make inquiries.

"He begins with the following line of questioning: 'Where is our patient admitted?  What surgery do they need?  Why couldn't we just get friends and relatives to donate?

"Posing as a patient's friend, the FIT reporter gives him preplanned answers. In the emergency ward.  He had an accident and needs surgery on his leg.  I donated blood a month ago. He has no family here, and everyone else we reached out to has refused.

"Only when he's satisfied with the answers, he says he would be able to 'arrange boys' by the next day, and that it would cost between Rs 3,500 to Rs 4,000.

...

"According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India's annual requirement for blood is around 1.5 crore units per year, while in reality, only around 1 crore units are available.

"This gap in supply and demand of blood poses a major public health crisis in the country. For example, around 70 percent of postpartum hemorrhage (PPH)-related deaths in India are due to lack of immediate availability of blood.

...

"The paid donors are generally young boys, between the ages of 20 and 25, from very poor backgrounds," says Dr Dubey. ""This will no doubt be detrimental to their health," he adds. Moreover, if caught, they face the risk of jail time.

"The protocol is to ask every donor a set of questions before we take their blood. "If they seem suspicious, we ask them questions like, 'how are you related to the patient?', 'what is the patient's name?', and 'what surgery are they having?', to sus them out. If we get enough proof, we either defer them, or hand them over to the cops," Dr Priyansha Gupta, PG resident, Public Health, who has worked in Delhi's AIIMS blood bank in the past.

"What, then, happens to the families who desperately need blood when their donors are deferred?

"Dr Dubey says they are referred to the social workers attached to the hospital to get them help.

...

"But you have to understand, blood is a scarce commodity, and there's only so much we have."

##########

Here's a story from the Hindustan Times (in 2022), which begins with some relevant background (before debunking myths that lead to a shortage of voluntary donors):

Common myths on blood shortage in India  "The article is authored by Dr Parth Sharma, researcher, Ranita De, researcher in Lancet Citizen's Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System and Dr Vaikunth Ramesh."

"The shortage of blood products has been a major public health problem in India. It is estimated that nearly 12,000 people lose their lives every single day due to the lack of blood products. Supporting a population of 1.4 billion, the present blood transfusion service is fragmented with a little over 3,700 blood centres of which about 70% are located in eight states only. As of 2020, 63 districts in India do not have a blood centre. Space crunch and a burgeoning population have led to the establishment of health care facilities without blood centres on their premises, which in turn depend on nearby blood or storage centres for access to safe blood.

"Unfortunately, India has one of the largest shortages of blood supplies globally, while several diseases requiring blood transfusions are on the rise.

"A recent study by Joy Mammen, et. al. estimated the shortage to be around 2.5 donations per 1,000 eligible donors which equals a shortage of 1 million units. Blood products are required not only for surgeries but also for patients suffering from various medical conditions causing severe anaemia. At present, the source of donated blood is a combination of voluntary donors and replacement donors. Although professional donors are forbidden by law, they still continue to persist in our system under the guise of replacement donors. Voluntary non-remunerated donors, who donate based on altruism and a sense of doing greater good for the community, unfortunately, account for only 80% of the donors in India.

#######

HT: I was directed to the above links from the Indian posting

India Policy Watch #2: Regulating SoHO  by Pranay Kotasthane, which was in part about the recent move in the EU to further restrict payment for Substances of Human Origin (SoHO), as discussed in

Saturday, November 4, 2023

The EU proposes strengthening bans on compensating donors of Substances of Human Origin (SoHOs)--op-ed in VoxEU by Ockenfels and Roth

Balance of violence: prison-based criminal cartels, the case of Brazil's PCC.

The vexed relationship between banned markets and black markets is perhaps nowhere clearer than when prison based gangs of convicted drug dealers are able to extend their empires outside of prisons. While national authorities are able to capture, convict and imprison gang leaders, those gangs retain the ability to organize violence not only inside prisons but outside of them, and hence operate national and international black markets as well.

The Guardian has the story:

How a Brazilian prison gang became an international criminal leviathan  by Tom Phillips

"The PCC – First Capital Command – arose in the country’s notoriously brutal penitentiaries 30 years ago but now controls a billion-dollar drug trade supplying much of Europe’s cocaine,

...

"For much of its 30-year existence the PCC has been considered a jailhouse fraternity, which recruited incarcerated “brothers” such as the Venezuelan by offering them protection within Brazil’s violent, overcrowded prisons. Created in August 1993, it grew into Brazil’s most feared criminal faction, conquering drug markets, smuggling routes, shantytowns and prisons across Brazil, including in far-flung corners of the Amazon. It also became a major player in other South American countries such as neighbouring Paraguay where the group has been blamed for multimillion-dollar armed robberies and bombings and targeted assassinations.

But over the past five years, investigators say the PCC – which the US now calls one of the world’s most powerful organized crime groups – has morphed into an even more formidable force after forging lucrative alliances with partners ranging from Bolivian cocaine producers to Italian mafiosi. Today, the group boasts tens of thousands of members and has a growing portfolio of interests, including illegal goldmines in the Amazon. It controls one of South America’s most important trafficking routes – linking Bolivia and Brazil to Europe and Africa – and is partly responsible for a tsunami of cocaine that has brought car bombings, assassinations and gunfights to parts of Europe.

...

"During the 1990s, the PCC tightened its grip on São Paulo’s prison system but largely flew under the radar until thousands of guards and visitors were captured during a massive 2001 uprising. Five years later the group again made headlines, bringing São Paulo to a virtual standstill with a wave of coordinated attacks on police that caused hundreds of deaths.

...

"Having dominated much of Brazil’s domestic drug market – and established a monopoly over São Paulo’s crime scene – Gakiya said the PCC began looking overseas in late 2016. Deals were struck with Italy’s most powerful mafia group, the ’Ndrangheta, as well as Serbian and Albanian mafias, and the PCC began shipping tonnes of cocaine from Brazilian ports to Europe.

...

"Marcola, 55, who is serving a 342-year prison sentence for murder, robbery and drug trafficking, is also not a man to be crossed. In late 2018, Gakiya decided to transfer him to a high-security federal prison after the discovery of an audacious multimillion-dollar plot to free him with the help of foreign mercenaries, helicopters and anti-aircraft guns. “I knew it might change my life but I also realized it needed doing,” the prosecutor said, admitting he did not consult his family first.

Gakiya was no stranger to death threats, but moving Marcola turned his life upside down. PCC leaders issued a “decree” calling for the prosecutor’s assassination, condemning Gakiya to a reclusive existence he compared to the life of Giovanni Falcone, the anti-mafia crusader assassinated in 1992. “I hope, of course, not to share the same fate as Falcone,” added Gakiya..."

Fentanyl

 The NY Times has the story:

Some Key Facts About Fentanyl. It’s lowering American life expectancy and influencing the nation’s politics. By Josh Katz, Margot Sanger-Katz and Eileen Sullivan

"Overdose deaths have been increasing in the United States for decades, but the introduction of fentanyls has led to a staggering rise, accounting for the vast majority of overdose deaths in recent years.

"Around 77,000 Americans died from overdoses involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl in the 12-month period ending in April of this year, according to provisional estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2022, the most recent year with complete data, this number was around 74,000. Those three wars  [Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan] killed a little over 65,000 Americans combined.

"For comparison, around 55,000 Americans died in 1972 from car crashes, the year with the most such deaths. Around 49,000 died from guns in 2021 (including suicide), the year with the most such deaths.

"Fentanyl alone has become a leading cause of U.S. deaths. It was responsible for a third of deaths among Americans 25 to 34 in 2022, according to a New York Times analysis of C.D.C. mortality data.

...

"Most of the fentanyl sold in the United States is coming from Mexico, where drug cartels synthesize the drugs from precursor chemicals believed to come from factories in China. Some fentanyls are also shipped directly from China into the United States."

Nicotine in New Zealand, banned for the future generation.

 In New Zealand, the incidence of smoking is down, but not so much among the Maori. And now there's a law that cuts nicotine content of cigarettes, and (get this) "bans the next generation of New Zealanders — anyone born after 2008 or currently 14 years old or younger — from ever buying cigarettes in the country. " (That's going to be a complicated age restriction to administer in, say, 10 years from now...)

NPR has the story:

It's one of the world's toughest anti-smoking laws. The Māori see a major flaw  by Simar Bajaj

"In 2011, New Zealand set one of the most audacious public health targets in the world: to slash its cigarette smoking rate to 5% by 2025.

"The rate was 18% at the time. Fast forwarding over a decade later, the country seems on track to reach this goal ahead of the 2025 target — but only for its European and Asian populations. Māori, on the other hand, had the country's highest smoking rate at 20% in 2021, and they are expected to reach the 5% goal only 40 years later in 2061 per government modeling.

...

"Every year, 4,000 Māori die in New Zealand, and cigarettes are responsible for nearly a quarter of these deaths, according to an estimate in The New Zealand Medical Journal. The study also found that smoking explains a third of the seven-year life expectancy gap between Māori and other New Zealanders.

...

"Last December, in an all-hands-on-deck effort to get Māori across the 2025 finish line, New Zealand passed one of the strongest anti-tobacco laws in global history.

"Specifically, the legislation limits the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels and reduces the number of retailers allowed to sell cigarettes from 600 currently to 60 by July 2024.

"Most remarkably, the law bans the next generation of New Zealanders — anyone born after 2008 or currently 14 years old or younger — from ever buying cigarettes in the country. "The denicotinization and retail reduction are important for us to get to the lower than 5% smoking rate," says New Zealand's Health Minister Ayesha Verrall, "and then the smoke-free generation policy is to keep us there."

...

"Fears that the crackdown on smoking will backfire

"Tobacco regulation is like a game of whack-a-mole: Knock a product out of one market, and it'll usually pop up in another possibly illegal transaction. In 2019, illicit tobacco represented almost 12% of New Zealand's consumption, and this new legislation may further relegate tobacco to the black market, according to Māori physician and Parliament member Shane Reti, who has tribal affiliations to Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Hine and Ngāti Kura. What he's particularly concerned about is that, given high rates of tobacco addiction in his community, this expanded black market will disproportionately impact Māori via more dangerous cigarettes and police crackdowns.

...

"The risk of such smuggled tobacco, Reti points out, is that it would exist wholly outside New Zealand's safety regulations. As such, he posits that these cigarettes would be more addictive and toxic for Māori who continue to smoke, with higher levels of nicotine and heavy metals like lead. (It is presently illegal to import tobacco into New Zealand without a permit.)

"On the supplier side, organized crime syndicates, which are responsible for large-scale cigarette smuggling, may also surge. "We have some of the highest cost of living and the highest inflation we've had in decades in New Zealand," Reti says, "and what we know is that vulnerable groups who are desperate turn to crime." Given New Zealand's incarceration rates — over half of prisoners are Māori despite representing only 17% of the country — Reti worries that an invigorated black market will lead to a disproportionate crackdown in his community and an even higher percentage of Māori prisoners.

...

"Reti is also concerned about the economic impact on New Zealand's dairies because the anti-tobacco legislation reduces the number allowed to sell cigarettes by 90%. (Dairy is the term New Zealanders use for neighborhood convenience stores.) That might be problematic because tobacco makes up a substantial proportion of dairies' revenue, with estimates ranging from 14% to 47%. If dairies can't find other ways to increase sales, this policy "will almost decimate the small retailers, those small corner dairies," says Reti.

...

"But just as he isn't concerned about the black market, Waa thinks these economic arguments are similarly overblown. "This is my conspiracy hat on, but we suspect that a lot of these arguments are put up by the tobacco industry" to keep their product in stores. Waa points to how dairy owners submitted some 1,000 complaints to the government, all of them following a single template. In any case, Waa has little sympathy for retailers insisting on selling tobacco "because they're making money out of my people dying."

#######

Related earlier post:

Friday, March 24, 2023

Alcohol and race in Australia

Pakistan police bust organ trafficking ring --transplants were carried out in private homes

 Outlawing compensation for donors doesn't end black markets for kidneys from living donors, but may succeed in driving them out of hospitals, and making them increasingly dangerous and black.

The BBC has the story:

Pakistan police bust organ trafficking ring that took kidneys from hundreds By Rachel Russell

"Eight members of an organ trafficking ring in north-east Pakistan have been arrested, police say.

"The ring's alleged leader, Fawad Mukhtar, is accused of extracting the kidneys of more than 300 people and transplanting them into rich clients.

...

"At least three people died from having their organs harvested in this way, authorities said.

...

"The transplants were carried out in private homes - often without the patient knowing, the chief minister of Punjab province Mohsin Naqvi said.

"A car mechanic is said to have worked as Mr Mukhtar's surgical assistant and helped lure vulnerable patients from hospitals.

"The kidneys were then sold for up to 10 million rupees (£99,000; $120,000) each, Mr Naqvi added.

...

"The commercial trade of human organs was made illegal in Pakistan in 2010.

"The punishment for those caught includes a decade-long jail term and huge fines in the hope that this will stop sales to overseas clients by exploitative doctors, middlemen, recipients and donors.

"However, there has been a rise in organ trafficking in the country as people struggle with low wages and a poor enforcement of the law."

HT: Jlateh Vincent Jappah

Immigration, immigration law, and illegal immigrants in legal limbo. Should we have a statute of limitations after which immigrants become legal?

We're seeing so much illegal immigration, maybe we should change some of our laws, at least to regularize the status of immigrants who have successfully built productive lives here.  One suggestion is to have a statute of limitation on the crime of illegal immigration, That could work like common law marriage, after a long enough time, the status quo becomes legal.

The NY Times has the story:

Why Can’t We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works. Our broken immigration system is still the best option for many migrants — and U.S. employers. By Marcela Valdes

"The three most recent presidents have tried and failed to fix the problem of mass unauthorized migration into the United States. President Obama tried to balance empathy with enforcement, deferring the deportation of those who arrived as minors and instructing immigration officers to prioritize the arrest of serious criminals, even as he connected every jail in the nation to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). President Trump emphasized enforcement at all costs: revoking deferred action for minors, declaring the arrest of every undocumented person a priority, separating migrant families and trying to terminate temporary protected status for about 400,000 people — though Trump also extended deferred action to about 200,000 Venezuelans during his last full day in office.

"So far, President Biden has revived the empathy-and-enforcement strategy: resuming deferred action for minors and helping Venezuelans while also making it more difficult to qualify for asylum.

"But these variations in policy have had almost no effect on the number of migrants trying to enter the United States through the Southern border. Obama and Trump chose mostly opposing strategies, but each prioritized the arrest of unauthorized migrants in the Rio Grande Valley. Yet in 2019, before the pandemic gave Trump legal standing to force asylum seekers back into Mexico, Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) arrested about 82,000 more migrants there than they had at the peak of migrations in the Obama years.

...

"Until the 1920s, America received migrants with an almost open border. Our policies emphasized regulation, not restriction. A few general categories were barred from entry — polygamists and convicted criminals, for example — but almost everyone else was permitted to enter the United States and reside indefinitely. The move toward restriction began in 1882 with laws that targeted the Chinese then evolved to exclude almost every other national group as well.

"Legal immigration today is close to impossible for most people. David J. Bier of the Cato Institute recently estimated that around 3 percent of the people who tried to move permanently to the United States were able to do so legally. “Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: It happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case,” he wrote in a comprehensive review of the current regulations. He concludes that “trying the legal immigration system as an alternative to immigrating illegally is like playing Powerball as an alternative to saving for retirement.”

"In other words, illegal immigration is the natural consequence of the conflict between America’s thirst for foreign labor and its strict immigration laws. The world’s increasing connectedness and fluidity have just supercharged this dynamic. There are now more than 11 million undocumented immigrants inside the United States, three times the number that lived here in 1990. And during the last fiscal year, the number of C.B.P. arrests in the Rio Grande Valley hit a record: more than half a million.

...

"Among academics, another idea keeps resurfacing: a deadline for deportations. Most crimes in America have a statute of limitations, Mae Ngai, a professor of history at Columbia University, noted in an opinion column for The Washington Post.  The statute of limitations for noncapital terrorism offenses, for example, is eight years. Before the 1924 Immigration Act, Ngai wrote in her book about the history of immigration policy, the statute of limitations for deportations was at most five years. Returning to this general principle, at least for migrants who have no significant criminal record, would allow ICE officers and immigration judges to focus on the recent influx of unauthorized migrants. A deadline could also improve labor conditions for all Americans because, as Ngai wrote, “it would go a long way toward stemming the accretion of a caste population that is easily exploitable and lives forever outside the polity.”