FOLLOW-UP TO OUR 12/17 "Important Message and Alert About the Boat Strikes" EMAIL

Dear Drug Policy Reformer,

Thank you to those of you who responded to our December 17th action alert supporting H.Con.Res.61, federal legislation sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Members Gregory Meeks (D-NY) to stop the Trump administration's murderous strikes on alleged "drug boats". Unfortunately, members of the House of Representatives largely voted along partisan lines, and the bill narrowly failed to pass.

Two Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), voted for the Meeks resolution. Conversely, two Democrats, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), voted against it. We think that murder is murder, and that every member of Congress should have voted in favor of the resolution.

The news since that time has not been good, as US military from the 17th through the 29th (yesterday) have carried out five more deadly strikes, bringing the total reported death toll to 107. It's important to note that the latest string of strikes have been in the eastern Pacific, not the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela as previously. It may be the administration wants to be able to claim more credibly (if only slightly so) that it is targeting drugs that theoretically could be destined for the US.

Even in the Pacific, though, boats aren't carrying the fentanyl payloads President Trump and others have claimed. And some of them aren't even carrying the cocaine we thought might actually be getting targeted. It was reported this week (NYT behind paywall and New Republic) that the wreckage from two boats destroyed on November 6th washed up on the shore of an indigenous-governed part of Colombia. Evidence of the drug being trafficked was found in one of them. And that drug was... marijuana. Marijuana trafficking has burgeoned in Latin America in recent years, according to Insight Crime, but it's not going to United States, where our licit and licit production is copious. Like the cocaine the destroyed boats may have been carrying in the Caribbean, these boats were only trafficking within the region.

ALSO, in an apparent escalation that could presage the war Trump has been threatening, it's been reported that earlier this month the CIA carried out a drone strike on a Venezuelan port facility, e.g. an attack on land. At least there's been no report so far on loss of life in that strike.

We will publish a larger update about this in Drug War Chronicle next week. In the meanwhile, you can hear some of my thoughts as to why these extrajudicial drug war killings by the Trump administration are parallel to the tens of thousands done by former President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines that are now the subject of an ICC trial; and why they threaten drug policy reform, global human rights, and ultimately US and global democracy; in presentations I gave recently for the Human Rights Council and the American Bar Association. You can also find our prior reporting about the boat strikes, by our longtime writer Phillip Smith, in the Chronicle by scrolling down.

Our jobs right now are the ones that our Filipino allies fighting Duterte had during the height of his drug war: stopping the killings; explaining what good drug policy is; reminding people that murder is wrong – even if the murderer claims to be fighting drugs; and gathering the evidence needed for future prosecutions.

More on this matter soon. In the meanwhile, thanks for reading and thanks for being here.

We could really use your help at this time for our work on extrajudicial drug war killings, to fully restart our newsletter, for our work on marijuana policy, for evidence-gathering to help future boat strikes trials, and more. You can help by making a tax-deductible grant or donation to our 501(c)(3) nonprofit, DRCNet Foundation; or a non-deductible donation to our 501(c)(4) public welfare nonprofit, Drug Reform Coordination Network, tonight or tomorrow before the end of 2025.

Note that our online donation system, along with accepting one-time donations (via credit card, PayPal or bank ACH), has a range of recurring donation options. People mainly use those for monthly or annual gifts, but the system can accommodate weekly, biweekly, every four weeks, quarterly, and twice a year too. (Click here if you'd like info on contributing by mail or making a gift of stock.)

- Dave

Sincerely,

David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org
P.O. Box 9853, Washington, DC 20016
https://stopthedrugwar.org