Iran hangs two more drug prisoners, Italy moves toward banning hemp flower products, and more.

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Foreign Policy

Trump Border Czar Pick Vows to Wipe Cartels "Off the Face of the Earth". Tom Homan, the man chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as his "border czar," gave an inkling of how the administration intends to proceed in handling Mexican drug trafficking organizations -- the so-called cartels -- during an appearance on Fox News on Monday.

Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump's first administration, is infamous for creating -- along with Stephen Miller -- the family separation policy at the border, which saw thousands of children torn from their parents' arms. Some of those families have yet to be reunited.

He was equally pugnacious in his approach to the cartels.

"These cartels are animals and that's why President Trump is going to take them off the face of the Earth," Homan said. "They have killed more Americans than every terrorist organization in the world and Trump is committed to calling them terrorist organizations and using the full might of the United States Special Operations to take them out," Homan said.

But if Homan is arguing for the US military to act inside Mexico, the Mexican government might have something to say about that.

International

Iran Executes Two People, Including One Woman, for Drug Offenses. Continuing its return to the use of the death penalty for some drug offenses, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed two people on drug charges at Tabriz Central Prison on Sunday. They were Mahrokh Khani, 35, and Kazem Babaei, 45, both Iranian Turks.

Khani had already spent four years in prison, while Babaei had been jailed for two years and seven months, according to reports from the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights.

Iran had long been one of the world's leading executioners, until a revision of its drug laws in 2017 treduced those numbers. But in recent years, the number of executions has been on the rise, with Amnesty International reporting 853 last year, 481 for drug offenses. The number of drug executions represents an 89 percent jump over 2022, when 255 were executed, and a 264 percent increase over 2021 when 132 people were hung on drug charges.

Italy Moves to Restrict "Cannabis Light" Industry. While, like most of Europe, the country allows for hemp production and the sale of hemp products, the rightist government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wants to change that. Her government wants to ban any product derived from hemp flowers.

The Meloni government is pushing a bill that would do just that, eight years after parliament legalized hemp production and sales. The bill is part of a broad range of measures designed to burnish her arch-conservative government's credentials as a defender of public morality.

But critics say the plan is irrational and will cost thousands of jobs.

"It's absurd that a state which put Italian businesses to work by starting a legitimate supply chain now wants to shut it all down," said Alessio Amicone, who founded a company that grows and sells cannabis products called Canapando. "They are waging a war on a substance that is not a drug."

Italian hemp companies are producing products containing high concentrations of CBD and low levels of THC, but the Meloni government considers those products to be the same as recreational drugs. It's anti-drug agency warns that they "could pose risks to public safety or road safety" and has decided to ban their sale.

The proposed ban on hemp flower products is part of a broader bill that includes a clampdown on demonstrations, squats, and sit-ins, as well as tough new measures aimed at prison protests.