“By any standard, the horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations works year-round to identify, dismantle, and disrupt the transnational criminal networks that smuggle people into and throughout the United States. These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle, as today’s case demonstrates. I personally worked on a tragic tractor trailer case in Victoria, Texas in 2003 in which 19 people were killed as a result of the smugglers’ total indifference to the safety of those smuggled and to the law.
“The men and women of ICE are proud to stand alongside our law enforcement partners, including locally and at the U.S. Department of Justice, to combat these smuggling networks and protect the public and those who would fall victim to their dangerous practices that focus solely on their illicit profits. So long as I lead ICE, there will be an unwavering commitment to use law enforcement assets to put an end to these practices.”
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Texas Public Radio
FNC: A suspect arrested in connection with the deaths of at least 10 people packed into a sweltering tractor-trailer is due in court Monday over his alleged role in the immigrant-smuggling attempt gone wrong.
Federal prosecutors said they planned to bring charges against James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60, of Clearwater, Florida, who is due to appear in federal court at 11 a.m. local time.
U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin Jr. did not say whether Bradley was the driver of the truck, although investigators said earlier that the driver was in custody.
Authorities initially discovered eight bodies Sunday inside the crowded 18-wheeler parked outside a Walmart in the summer heat. Two additional victims later died at the hospital.
Officials feared the death toll could still rise, because nearly 20 others rescued from the truck were in dire condition, many suffering from extreme dehydration and heatstroke, officials told the Associated Press.
Based on initial interviews with survivors of the San Antonio tragedy, more than 100 people may have been packed into the back of the 18-wheeler at one point in its journey, ICE acting Director Thomas Homan said. Officials said 39 people were inside when rescuers arrived, and the rest were believed to have escaped or hitched rides to their next destination.
Four of the survivors appeared to be between 10 and 17 years old, Homan said. Investigators gave no details on where the rig began its journey or where it was headed.
Mexican nationals were among both the survivors and the dead, Mexican Consul General in San Antonio Reyna Torres said, without giving a specific number. Torres said the consulate has been in contact with relatives both in Mexico and in the U.S.
Guatemala’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, said at least two Guatemalans were on the abandoned rig. The two male survivors told Guatemalan consulate officials that they crossed the border by foot at Laredo and boarded the tractor-trailer, according to Tekandi Paniagua, communications director for the foreign ministry. The pair told officials their final destination was Houston, Paniagua added. More here.
Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes
Kushner Overlooked 77 Assets, But it Gets Worse
In part from Examiner: White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on Friday released a revised version of his personal financial disclosure that reveals his initial filing did not include 77 assets, according to a report Friday.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the new disclosure says 77 assets were “inadvertently omitted” from Kushner’s original form, released in March, and were added during the “ordinary review” process with the government ethics office.
In addition to information on Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, the new disclosure includes details of Ivanka Trump’s finances.
Ivanka Trump is the president’s daughter, a senior White House aide and Kushner’s wife.
The new financial forms show Kushner and Ivanka Trump collectively have between $206 million and $760 million in assets, the Journal said. Kushner’s initial disclosure valued their assets at between $240 million and $740 million. More here.
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IN 2014, Prevezon Holdings Limited, was controlled by the son of a Russian political figure. The company had many interests in real estate, including an investment in a venture with a Soviet-born diamond and property magnate named Lev Leviev—who also happened to be one of the developers of 20 Pine.
Starting in late 2009, Prevezon began purchasing units in 20 Pine, acquiring five in total. The company later added three Manhattan commercial spaces to create a $24 million portfolio, which prosecutors sued to seize last year. “While New York is a world financial capital,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release announcing the action, “it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot.” The lawsuit is here.
Jared Kushner sealed Manhattan real estate deal with oligarch’s firm cited in money-laundering case
Guardian: Donald Trump’s son-in-law bought part of old New York Times building from Soviet-born tycoon, Guardian investigation into Russian money in NYC property market finds
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, who acts as his senior White House adviser, secured a multimillion-dollar Manhattan real estate deal with a Soviet-born oligarch whose company was cited in a major New York money laundering case now being probed by members of Congress.
A Guardian investigation has established a series of overlapping ties and relationships involving alleged Russian money laundering, New York real estate deals and members of Trump’s inner circle. They include a 2015 sale of part of the old New York Times building in Manhattan involving Kushner and a billionaire real estate tycoon and diamond mogul, Lev Leviev.
The ties between Trump family real estate deals and Russian money interests are attracting growing interest from the justice department’s special counsel, Robert Mueller, as he seeks to determine whether the Trump campaign collaborated with Russia to distort the outcome of the 2016 race. Mueller has reportedly expanded his inquiry to look at real estate deals involving the Trump Organization, as well as Kushner’s financing.
Kushner will go before the US Senate intelligence committee on Monday in a closed session of the panel’s inquiry into Russian interference in the election in what could be a pivotal hearing into the affair.
Leviev, a global tycoon known as the “king of diamonds”, was a business partner of the Russian-owned company Prevezon Holdings that was at the center of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit launched in New York. Under the leadership of US attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump in March, prosecutors pursued Prevezon for allegedly attempting to use Manhattan real estate deals to launder money stolen from the Russian treasury.
The scam had been uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant who died in 2009 in a Moscow jail in suspicious circumstances. US sanctions against Russia imposed after Magnitsky’s death were a central topic of conversation at the notorious Trump Tower meeting last June between Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.
Don Jr and Manafort have been called to testify before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, at which they are certain to face questions about the Trump Tower encounter.
Two days before it was due to open in court in May, the Prevezon case was settled for $6m with no admission of guilt on the part of the defendants. But since details of the Trump Tower meeting emerged, the abrupt settlement of the Prevezon case has come under renewed scrutiny from congressional investigators.
Four Russians attended the meeting, led by Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with known Kremlin connections who acted as legal counsel for Prevezon in the money laundering case and who called the $6m settlement so slight that “it seemed almost an apology from the government”. Sixteen Democratic members of the House judiciary committee have now written to the justice department in light of the Trump Tower meeting demanding to know whether there was any interference behind the decision to avoid trial.
Constitutional experts are also demanding an official inquiry. “We need a full accounting by Trump’s justice department of the unexplained and frankly outrageous settlement that is likely to be just the tip of a vast financial iceberg,” said Laurence Tribe, Harvard University professor of constitutional law.
Separately, the focus of investigators on Trump family finances stem from the vast flow of Russian wealth that has been poured into New York real estate in recent years. As Donald Trump Jr put it in 2008, referring to the Trump Organization: “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Among the overlapping connections is the 2015 deal in which Kushner paid $295m to acquire several floors of the old New York Times building at 43rd street in Manhattan from the US branch of Leviev’s company, Africa Israel Investments (AFI), and its partner Five Mile Capital. The sale has been identified as of possible interest to the Mueller investigation as Kushner later went on to borrow $285m in refinancing from Deutsche Bank, the German financial house that itself has been embroiled in Russian money laundering scandals and whose loans to Trump are coming under intensifying scrutiny.
Court documents and company records show that AFI was cited in the Prevezon case as a business partner of the defendants. In 2008, Prevezon entered a partnership with AFI in which Prevezon bought for €3m, a 30% stake in four AFI subsidiaries in the Netherlands. Five years later, AFI tried to return the money to the Russian-owned company, but it was intercepted and frozen by Dutch authorities at the request of the US government as part of the Prevezon money-laundering probe.
In Manhattan, Leviev’s firm also sold condominiums to Prevezon Holdings from one of its landmark developments at 20 Pine Street, just a few blocks from Wall Street.
Real estate brochures describe the lavish interior decor of the condominiums, replete with bathrooms bedecked in stone and exotic woods, and boasting “the ultimate in pampering; a sybaritic recessed rain shower”. The 20 Pine Street apartments that Leviev sold to Prevezon were later frozen by US prosecutors seeking to block the flow of what they alleged to be money stolen from the Russian treasury and laundered through New York real estate.
Prevezon’s 20 Pine Street apartments and €3m in assets were all released as part of the settlement in May.
The Guardian contacted both Kushner and Leviev for comment, but they did not immediately respond.
The pursuit of Prevezon Holdings for alleged money laundering took on enormous political significance as it unfolded. For the prosecutors, it was a test case over suspicious Russian money flows designed to show the US was serious about going after money launderers. For the Russians, it was an opportunity to push back against stringent US sanctions that had long infuriated the Kremlin.
In court documents, US prosecutors accused Prevezon and its sole shareholder, Denis Katsyv, of participating in the laundering of proceeds of the vast tax fraud that stole $230m from the Russian treasury and moved it out of the country in chunks. Prevezon was alleged to have received some of the fraudulent spoils through a network of shell companies, hiding the money by investing in Manhattan real estate including the Leviev condominiums in 20 Pine Street.
Prevezon and Katsyv have consistently denied any involvement in money laundering and have dismissed the lawsuit as “ill-conceived”. In a statement released at the time of the settlement, they said they had “no involvement in or knowledge of any fraudulent activities”.
Magnitsky discovered the massive tax fraud, said to be one of the largest in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in 2007. After he blew the whistle on the scam, he was arrested by the same officials whom he had accused of covering up the racket and imprisoned, dying in jail having been denied medical treatment.
Magnitsky’s death led to a political backlash in the US that in turn spawned tough sanctions on Russia, known as the Magnitsky Act. Russian individuals associated with the lawyer’s demise and other human rights abuses were banned entry to the US.
Veselnitskaya not only acted as Prevezon’s Russian counsel in the money-laundering case, she also was a leading lobbyist against the Magnitsky sanctions. She raised the subject prominently at the meeting in Trump Tower with Don Jr and Kushner, though according to Veselnitskaya the president’s son-in-law left after 10 minutes.
By the time of the Trump Tower meeting, Veselnitskaya was already personally acquainted with Russia’s powerful prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, and her lobbying against the Magnitsky sanctions had drawn significant attention in government circles.
“Natalia’s main role was coordinating, including regular coordination with Chaika, whom she knew personally,” said a source acquainted with the Prevezon case.
Veselnitskaya told the Guardian: “My meeting with Trump’s son was a private meeting; nobody in the government had anything to do with it.” She declined to answer a follow-up question about whether and how she knew Chaika.
Jamison Firestone, the founder of the Russian law firm that employed Magnitsky at the time that he exposed the fraud, said that Veselnitskaya clearly intended to use the Trump Tower meeting to lobby against the Magnitsky sanctions. “They really made it a state priority to get rid of these sanctions,” he said.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Smashed Hard Drives and the FBI
EXCLUSIVE: FBI Seized Smashed Hard Drives From Wasserman Schultz IT Aide’s Home
FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, according to an individual who was interviewed by Bureau investigators in the case and a high level congressional source.
Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, the individual told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
The congressional source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into “serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network” by Imran and three of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.
Related reading on the same case: Democrats Version of Vetting, Ethics Violations and Terror
Capitol Police have also seized computer equipment tied to the Florida lawmaker.
Awan’s younger brothers, Abid and Jamal, his wife, Hina Alvi, and Rao Abbas, Imran’s best friend, are also under investigation. There have been no arrests in the case.
There is also evidence of financial schemes that extend beyond the Capitol Police’s purview and may expand to Pakistan, where Imran spends significant portions of the year.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said in March that the Capitol Police are “getting the kind of technical assistance they need to do that. This is under an active criminal investigation, their capabilities are pretty strong but, they’re also able to go and get the kind of help they need from other sources.”
The brothers’ stepmother independently filed court documents in Virginia accusing the brothers of wiretapping and extorting her.
Soon after Imran began working for Wasserman Schultz in 2005, his two brothers and two of their wives — plus Abbas and another friend — began appearing as IT staffers on the payrolls of other House Democrats. Collectively, the Awan group has been paid $4 million since 2009.
Fellow IT staffers interviewed by TheDCNF said the Awans were often absent from weekly meetings and email exchanges. One of the fellow staffers said some of the computers the Awans managed were being used to transfer data to an off-site server.
Shortly after the criminal probe was revealed in February, Imran abruptly moved out of his longtime home on Hawkshead Drive in Lorton, Va., and listed it for rent on a website that connects landlords with military families.
One of new tenants — a Marine Corps veteran married to a female Navy Officer — said he found “wireless routers, hard drives that look like they tried to destroy, laptops, [and] a lot of brand new expensive toner.”
The tenants called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and not long after, FBI agents arrived together with the Capitol Police to interview them and confiscate the equipment. The Marine spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns for his wife’s naval career, saying she doesn’t want to be associated with a national security incident.
“It was in the garage. They recycled cabinets and lined them along the walls. They left in a huge hurry,” the Marine said. “It looks like government-issued equipment. We turned that stuff over.”
Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chief in July 2016 after the committee’s IT system was hacked. She has since refused to fire Imran despite learning that he is a target of a criminal investigation.
The Marine said Imran wanted the hard drives back so desperately that he threatened to sue the renter for stealing them.
“It was unbelievable. I don’t know where they get off thinking they’re going to sue us for items we have no obligation to hold onto,” he said.
Imran came to the house for the items “three to four times,” but the Marine wouldn’t let him enter.
“Their lawyer contacted us today via email and said we owed $350 in late charges and the items he left in the house,” the Marine said.
The Marine heard about the House investigation on the radio, and by that time, he had noticed other bizarre signs of desperation from his landlord.
“When we first moved in, a mailman came with certified mail from the House of Representatives. We were trying to be nice and signed for it. They lost their shit, saying ‘why did you sign for it, this is illegal!’ It was certified from the [Chief Administrative Officer of the House],” he said.
“The postman came a second time with a certified letter and I called Imran on the spot, asking ‘what do you want me to do.’” He said ‘just send him away, I’m homeless.’ They refused to forward their mail.”
Imran’s brother Abid has also been evasive about his location, failing to provide an accurate address for delivery of court materials in a lawsuit in which he is accused of defrauding the brothers’ stepmother. Imran’s wife, Hina, has traveled to Pakistan since the probe was revealed, according to neighbors.
Wasserman Schultz has demanded return of a laptop seized by the Capitol Police because it was purportedly used by Imran and was found hidden in a vacant office. The Florida Democrat used a Capitol Police budget hearing to threaten “consequences” for them if the laptop wasn’t returned.
On Thursday it was reported that police have not examined its contents because of the invocation of the Constitution’s “Speech and Debate clause,” and after months of refusal, her lawyer is now “negotiating” access to the data on yet-to-be-determined terms.
Members have been unusually mum about the apparent cybersecurity breach, especially given the pattern of cyberattacks on other government and political institutions.
The Marine expressed disgust with the muted reaction, saying “I served in the Marine Corps for 14 years; if I downloaded files to an offsite server, I’m going to prison for a lot of years.”
He implied he’s a Democrat but said when it comes to national security “political ideology doesn’t matter.”
He believes “there’s no way they could get this far without help” from some of the Democratic members of Congress for whom the brothers worked. Other Democrats have ignored a major security breach because it could look like a “black eye” in that they failed to vet the Pakistanis, he said.
“He’s dangerous. This is a crime syndicate that has successfully indicated Congress,” he said.
“If Donald Trump and the Republicans had hired foreign nationals to be their top IT guys and somehow their congressional files had been compromised, this would have been all over the news,” he continued.
A Bureau spokesman said the “FBI does not have anything to provide on this and I will still have to refer you to [Capitol Police] for any public comment.”
Hezbollah Terror Cells in Lebanon and Latin America
Kuwait expels Iranian diplomats over ‘terror’ cell: United Nations (United States) (AFP) – US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday accused Lebanon’s Hezbollah of amassing weapons and said the world must turn its attention to the actions of the powerful paramilitary organization.
Anyone ever ask or investigate the Hezbollah weapons inventory in Latin America?
No Latin American Country Has Branded Hezbollah a Terror Group Despite Ties to Major Attacks
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Latin American countries have failed to register Iranian proxy Hezbollah as a terrorist organization despite the threat it poses to the region, a Peruvian official revealed during a discussion on Capitol Hill.
The Shiite group is involved in various illicit activities in Latin America to generate money that some experts believe is used to fund terrorist activities in the Middle East.
During a discussion Wednesday on Capitol Hill hosted by the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), Moises Vega de la Cruz, a public prosecutor for the Peruvian government specializing in terrorism cases, revealed that “in Latin America, Hezbollah is not recognized as a terrorist organization.”
“I think Hezbollah is a threat to Latin America. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that is advancing not only in Peru but in other Latin American countries as well,” he told Breitbart News.
Joseph Humire, an expert on Iranian activity in the Western Hemisphere and executive director of SFS, noted that no Latin American country has registered Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
The United States and the European Union have deemed Lebanon’s Shiite group Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
In the United States, Hezbollah’s main supporter Iran has been officially labeled a state sponsor of terror.
Peru recently adjudicated a case involving an alleged Hezbollah operative accused of explosives-related crimes in 2014. The individual avoided prosecution, but De La Cruz has appealed the decision.
“Most Latin Americans don’t view Islamist terrorism as a significant threat in their region and little public pressure has been placed on the establishment, reform, or improvement of weak or non-existent anti-terrorism laws across the region,” SFS pointed out in a statement. “Consequently, the Islamic State [ISIS/ISIL], Hezbollah, and other Jihadist networks and sympathizers are spreading throughout South America with impunity.”
The U.S. government has acknowledged the presence of both Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni ISIS in Latin America.
De la Cruz noted that Hezbollah maintains a presence in Peru, where it is reportedly converting people and trying to get involved politically.
The Peruvian Latina news agency reported last year that the Shiite group has registered as an official political party in Peru’s Abancay province, home to the largest concentration the country’s small Muslim community.
Hezbollah has established itself as an official political party in its main base of Lebanon.
Argentinian authorities have linked Hezbollah to fatal attacks against the South American country’s Jewish community, including the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA)—the deadliest terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere before September 11, 2001.
The U.S. military and the Department of State have expressed concern about the group’s presence in Latin America.
According to the U.S. State Department, Venezuela has provided a “permissive environment” that has allowed Hezbollah to thrive in the region.
Last year Michael Braun, a former DEA operations chief, told American lawmakers that Hezbollah is generating hundreds of millions from a “cocaine money laundering scheme” in Latin America that “provides a never-ending source of funding” for its terrorist operations in Syria and elsewhere.
Hezbollah is fighting on behalf of Iran on the side of the Russian-backed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
In an annual report to Congress issued earlier this year, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) noted that “Hezbollah members, facilitators, and supporters engage in licit and illicit activities in support of the organization, moving weapons, cash, and other contraband to raise funds and build Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the region.”
SOUTHCOM is charged with overseeing American military activity in most of Latin America.
The group is believed to be operating throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Iran ‘foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2016’: US state department
The department’s annual report on global terrorism accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force — which is responsible for operations outside the country — along with Iranian partners, allies, and proxies, of ‘playing a destabilising role in military conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen’
Iran was the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2016”, the US state department said on Wednesday in its annual report on terrorism worldwide.
The 2016 Country Reports on Terrorism — the first released by the state department since US president Donald Trump assumed office — also highlighted Hizbollah’s increasing reach in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and an increase in “its long-term attack capabilities”.
Although the report said there had been a 9 per cent drop in global terror attacks last year from 2015, as well as a 13 per cent drop in terror-related fatalities, it stressed that “the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) remained the most potent terrorist threat to global security” in 2016.
Al Qaeda and its regional affiliates also “remained a threat to the US homeland and our interests abroad despite counter-terrorism pressure by US partners”, the report said.
On Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, the report accused the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force — which is responsible for operations outside the country — along with Iranian partners, allies, and proxies, of “playing a destabilising role in military conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen”. It also said “Iran continued to recruit fighters from across the region to join Iranian-affiliated Shia militia forces engaged in conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and has even offered a path to citizenship for those who heed this call”.
The 2016 report put more emphasis on the threat from Hizbollah than in previous years. It described the Lebanese political party and militia as “playing a major role in supporting the Syria government’s efforts to maintain control and territory, and providing training and a range of other support for Iranian-aligned fighters” in these conflict zones.
The state department said “there are reportedly about 7,000 Hizbollah fighters in Syria”, though it also highlighted that the group had lost “several senior military commanders and hundreds of fighters” in fighting there last year.
The report also highlighted Hizbollah’s continued efforts to “develop its long-term attack capabilities and infrastructure around the world”.
Justin Siberell, the state department’s acting coordinator for counter-terrorism, told The National on Wednesday that “Hizbollah maintains a sophisticated operation with [a] broad network group around the world”.
Mr Siberllel said it was unclear, however, if the Syrian conflict had boosted Hizbollah’s standing. On the one hand, the group had gained military expertise in Syria, he said, while on the other, it had suffered large number of casualties.
“It’s a mixed picture,” he said.
On Bahrain, the report said that “during 2016 the Bahraini government continued to make gains in detecting, neutralising, and containing terrorist threats from violent Shia militants and ISIS sympathisers”. It also referenced improved counter-terror co-operation with the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
The report voiced concerns over Al Qaeda exploiting the ongoing war in Yemen to make gains. It said that “despite leadership losses, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remained a significant threat to Yemen, the region, and the United States, as ongoing conflict in Yemen hindered US efforts to counter the group”. It was a similar situation with Al Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria, the report said.
“Al Nusra Front continued to exploit ongoing armed conflict to maintain a territorial safe haven in select parts of northwestern Syria,” the report said, referring to the group that now calls itself Jabhat Fatah Al Sham.
When it came to the Emirates, the report said that in 2016 “the UAE government maintained a robust counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) partnership with the United States through its collaboration with US law enforcement; support of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS; and counter‑messaging initiatives, such as the Sawab and Hedayah Centers.”
The report made reference to the UAE’s deployment of forces to Yemen “to counter the spread of AQAP and ISIS” there, highlighting that, “along with its Yemeni partners, the UAE military successfully ejected AQAP from the port city of Mukalla in April — depriving AQAP from millions [of dollars] in monthly income — and from the coastal towns of Balhaf and Bir Ali in December”.
The report also highlighted wins for UAE border security.
“UAE government security apparatus continued monitoring suspected terrorists in the UAE, and successfully foiled terrorist attacks within its borders,” it said, adding: “UAE customs, police, and other security agencies improved border security and worked together with financial authorities to counter terrorist finance.”
Opioid Crisis Then and Now
The Opioid Crisis Is Dire. Why We Need a National Conversation About It Separate From Obamacare.
Let’s be honest—the opioid crisis in America is huge, it is severe, and it is devastating. But this partisan-fought legislation just isn’t the place to put that funding. And it would likely do little to help stem and reverse the opioid crisis.
First, it’s not as though funding for opioid treatment and recovery has been absent from the federal budget. As recently as last month, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was touting signed legislation that spent more than $1 billion to fund recovery programs.
This money was authorized separately from the debate over Obamacare in two pieces of legislation known as the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act and the 21st Century Cures Act.
We know that prevention programs have worked in the past, whether they pertain to forest fires or drunk driving or, for that matter, the massive reduction in drug use we witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Such a prevention program for the opioid crisis must start with leadership from the White House in leading these conversations and highlighting the devastation of substance abuse initiation.
It requires detailing what is driving the opioid epidemic—namely, illegal fentanyl, heroin, and other illegal drug use and diversion. It requires more law enforcement—from border and customs policies and cracking down on cartels to international initiatives. And it requires messaging to our youth. More here.
This Isn’t the First U.S. Opiate-Addiction Crisis
Doctors overprescribed painkillers in the 19th century. Eventually, they stopped.
Problem and solution. Source: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago/Getty Images
Bloomberg: The U.S. is in the throes of an “unprecedented opioid epidemic,” reports the Centers for Disease Control. The crisis has spurred calls for action to halt the rising death toll, which has devastated many rural communities.
It’s true that there’s an opioid epidemic, a public health disaster. It’s not true that it’s unprecedented. A remarkably similar epidemic beset the U.S. some 150 years ago. The story of that earlier catastrophe offers some sobering lessons as to how to address the problem.
Opioids are a broad class of drugs that relieve pain by acting directly on the central nervous system. They include substances such as morphine and its close cousin, heroin, both derived from the opium poppy. There are also synthetic versions, such as fentanyl, and medications that are derived from a mix of natural and synthetic sources, such as oxycodone.
Opioid addiction can take many forms, but the current crisis began with the use and abuse of legal painkillers in the 1990s, and has since metastasized into a larger epidemic, with heroin playing an especially outsized role.
All of this is depressingly familiar. The first great U.S. opiate-addiction epidemic began much the same way, with medications handed out by well-meaning doctors who embraced a wondrous new class of drugs as the answer to a wide range of aches and pains.
The pharmacologist Nathaniel Chapman, writing in 1817, held up opium as the most useful drug in the physician’s arsenal, arguing that there was “scarcely one morbid affection or disordered condition” that would fail to respond to its wonder-working powers. That same year, chemists devised a process for isolating a key alkaloid compound from raw opium: morphine.
Though there’s some evidence that opiate dependency had become a problem as early as the 1840s, it wasn’t until the 1860s and 1870s that addiction became a widespread phenomenon. The key, according to historian David Courtwright, was the widespread adoption of the hypodermic needle in the 1870s.
Prior to this innovation, physicians administered opiates orally. During the Civil War, for example, doctors on the Union side administered 10 million opium pills and nearly three million ounces of opium powders and tinctures. Though some soldiers undoubtedly became junkies in the process, oral administration had all manner of unpleasant gastric side effects, limiting the appeal to potential addicts.
Hypodermic needles by contrast, delivered morphine directly into a patient’s veins with no side effects, yielding immediate results. As Courtwright notes: “For the first time in the entire history of medicine near-instantaneous, symptomatic relief for a wide range of diseases was possible. A syringe of morphine was, in a very real sense, a magic wand.”
An enthusiastic medical profession began injecting morphine on a vast scale for all manner of aches and pains, much the way that a more recent generation of doctors began prescribing Oxycontin and other legal drugs in a reaction against widespread undertreatment of pain. Wounded veterans became addicts, but so, too, did people suffering from arthritis. Women also became addicts en masse, thanks to the practice of treating menstrual cramps – or for that matter, any female complaint of pain – with injections of morphine.
Skeptics in the medical profession warned about the dangers of administering too much morphine. Yet these warnings generally fell on deaf ears. Some of the problem lay with the doctors themselves. One well-regarded doctor put it this way: “Opium is often the lazy physician’s remedy.”
But distance played a role, too. Doctors traveling dirt roads on horseback couldn’t always follow up with patients in pain, and so they left their charges with vials of morphine. Well-meaning doctors who might otherwise resist administering morphine also faced pressure from patients and families to do so. If they refused, it was easy to find a doctor who would comply.
In the end, though, the medical profession largely solved the problem on its own. As awareness of physicians’ role in fostering addiction spread, medical schools taught aspiring doctors to avoid prescribing morphine except under carefully controlled circumstances. The growing availability of milder analgesics – salicylates like aspirin – made the job easier, offering a less powerful, but far safer, alternative to morphine.
While the younger generation of doctors stigmatized morphine, the problem was increasingly linked to older, poorly trained doctors who had come of age in an era when the hypodermic needle was touted as a cure-all. A study in 1919, for example, found that 90 percent of opiate prescriptions in Pennsylvania came from only a third of the state’s doctors, most of whom were over 50 years old.
As the medical profession started to police its ranks, shaming those who enabled addiction, the epidemic began to burn itself out. “Old addicts died off faster than new ones were created,” writes Courtwright. The smaller group of addicts who became the face of opiate addition tended to be poorer “pleasure users” who picked up the habit in the criminal underworld.
Today’s opioid epidemic is similar to the one that came and went over a century ago. While there is plenty of room for government assistance in funding treatment for addicts, never mind regulation of drugs, history suggests that the medical profession will ultimately play the most important role.
There are some promising signs. The number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors has dropped by small amounts over the past few years, though some of the evidence suggests that the decline has more to do with patients anxious about the potential for addiction.
Still, it took decades during the 19th century for doctors to shy away from injecting patients with morphine for the slightest complaint. It may take just as long before doctors kick the habit of prescribing powerful pain pills.