Drug Historian Challenges Trump’s War on Fentanyl | Amanpour & Company

Nov 25, 2025 | While America pursues a drug war with Venezuela marked by lethal strikes on boats accused of carrying so-called "narco terrorists" (a move which has faced much criticism over its legality), at home the country continues to face a fentanyl issue which is killing thousands of people every year. Drug historian David Herzberg joins the show to speak on the mechanisms behind the crisis and the administration's actions towards Venezuela. | Originally aired on November 25, 2025

The Cocaine Market Is Bigger Than Ever

Production of cocaine has more than tripled since 2014.
It’s high time that our dullard politicians got with the story and did something about this huge problem. Our politicians faff around, worrying about whether people enjoy smoking a cigarette and banning their consumption in all public places, thereby creating a crisis of loneliness in the population, yet they do almost nothing to curtail the proliferation in the consumption of these very dangerous, hard drugs! Why are we paying these people so much when they do so little and are so ineffective? And lest we/they forget… The more politicians curtail people’s pleasures and means of enjoyment, the more they will seek out pleasures and enjoyment in other, illicit ways. — © Mark Alexander

Poland’s Fentanyl Crisis | DW Documentary

Nov 25, 2025 | Fentanyl is estimated to be fifty times as potent as heroin and is extremely addictive. The number of people in Poland abusing this powerful painkiller is growing. There have been dozens of fatalities.

Michal lives in a small town south of Gdansk. Because of the stigma surrounding people with addiction, he prefers to remain anonymous. Every two weeks, he travels to Święciec to take methadone, a substitute drug, at the addiction clinic of the psychiatric hospital.

After using various drugs, he started taking fentanyl, the strongest of all opiates. Fentanyl is used to treat people with severe pain and as an anesthetic. Addicts remove the gel from pain patches and inject it directly into their bloodstream. There have been dozens of fatal overdoses in Poland.

Michal has also lost one of his close friends. Corrupt pharmacists are believed to have sold large quantities of fentanyl patches to dealers. The authorities have since put a stop to this.

In Żuromin, Jadwiga Karpinska lost her son Pawel to a fatal overdose. Their town, a two-hour drive from the capital Warsaw, was known as the country’s unofficial fentanyl capital in 2024. That changed when police detained a well-known local dealer.

The drug continues to be available there, but in smaller quantities. Elementary school teacher Adam Ejnik believes in prevention. He wants to keep his students away from the drug by raising awareness about its dangers.

Artur from Łódź has managed to get off fentanyl. A few years ago, he was so addicted, he had lost the will to live. Today, his girlfriend Agnieszka helps him stay clean. His goal: he hopes to finish his psychology degree and work as a therapist to help other addicts get off the extremely powerful drug.

Europe Sees a Rise of Narcotics Shipments from Latin America | DW News

Nov 8, 2025 | The US military has killed dozens of people in recent airstrikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Atlantic and Pacific. The Trump administration has labelled it a war against narco-terrorists to curtail the flow of drugs into the US. The attacks will be among the issues discussed by leaders of the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. They are also expected to talk about what authorities call the "cocaine crisis" in Europe during a two-day meeting, which begins on Sunday in Colombia.

Cocaine Is the Fastest-Growing Illegal Drug Worldwide. Here’s Why.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: A United Nations report found a rise in users, confiscation and deaths as cocaine trafficking expands into Africa and Asia, and violence spreads into Europe.

More people around the world are using illicit drugs than ever — more than 316 million in 2023.

Marijuana is the most used drug, followed by opioids and amphetamines. But it is the cocaine market that continues to break records year after year.

Global production reached a new high in 2023, racing to meet record demand and fueling new highs in cocaine-related deaths in many countries in recent years, according to a United Nations report released on Thursday.

An estimated 25 million people used cocaine worldwide in 2023 — up from 17 million a decade earlier. Production jumped by 34 percent from 2022.

Tracking the production and consumption of illicit drugs, including cocaine, is complex and time-consuming. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s annual World Drug Report, which this year includes data through 2023, is one of the few sources of global data on the illegal drug trade. » | Genevieve Glatsky | Genevieve Glatsky reported from Bogotá, Colombia. | Friday, June 27, 2025

Leer en español:

La cocaína es la droga ilegal que más crece en el mundo. Esta es la razón: Un informe de las Naciones Unidas revela un aumento de los consumidores, las confiscaciones y las muertes a medida que el tráfico de cocaína se expande por África y Asia, y la violencia se extiende por Europa. »

Fools worry about people enjoying a cigarette with all this going on! It is high time that health ministers in the West used their brains. Smoking a few cigarettes are the least of society’s problems; drug-use is the problem, not tobacco. What does it help a society to stub out cigarette smoking when the nation is high on drugs? How STUPID politicians are! – © Mark Alexander

Nazis on Drugs | Secret Weapon of WW2 | Forgotten History

Mar 12, 2025

Revealed: The True Scale of Britain’s Illegal Drug Use

THE TELEGRAPH: National Crime Agency exposes increasing ketamine use in England amid surge in ‘drug cocktails’

Ketamine usage more than doubled in England last year amid the rising popularity of designer “drug cocktails”, The Telegraph can reveal.

The largest and most accurate study of its kind, conducted on behalf of the National Crime Agency (NCA), has exposed a dramatic rise in the popularity of the drug.

Almost 25 tonnes of ketamine were consumed in England last year, up from 10.6 tonnes in 2023.

The drug is now more popular than heroin, with the worst hotspots in Norwich, Liverpool, and Wakefield.

The findings are revealed in Home Office data, seen by The Telegraph, which will form part of the NCA’s annual threat assessment next week. The agency, dubbed Britain’s FBI, will warn of a rise in the use of several recreational drugs in Britain, including a 10 per cent increase in cocaine. » | Tony Diver, Associate Political Editor | Friday, February 21, 2025

It is astonishing indeed that our politicians worry about people enjoying a cigarette when all this is going on! How much sense does it make for Starmer and his clique to introduce a generational smoking ban when so many in the country are as high as kites on drugs? – © Mark Alexander

Is Trump Right about the Canadian Border? | About That

Dec 5, 2024 | U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and his incoming border czar claim their country's northern border with Canada is a threat to national security. Andrew Chang breaks down the basis of the claims about drugs and illegal migrants streaming into the country from Canada, and to what extent they're true.

How ‘Pink Cocaine’ Is Spreading across the World’s Party Scene – with Potentially Fatal Consequences

THE TELEGRAPH: The drug was reportedly found in Liam Payne’s system and, while unclear if it factored into his death, experts say it’s highly unpredictable

The brightly coloured drug, which originated in Colombia, is described as ‘addictive’ | Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP via Getty Images
On the Ibiza party scene, many revellers are hardly strangers to recreational drug use. But this summer, they were warned to take heed: a dangerous new party drug was emerging, the use of which was compared to playing Russian roulette.

Has “pink cocaine”, as it is known, now claimed its first high-profile victim? A post-mortem examination has reportedly found that Liam Payne, the former One Direction star, had it in his system when he fell to his death from his hotel room balcony in Buenos Aires on Oct 16. It is too soon to know if the fatal incident was attributable to the drug, but its potentially grave effects are already known.

In fact, pink cocaine is not one drug but a powdery cocktail, or pill, often including MDMA, ketamine and methamphetamine. Samples have also been found to include cocaine and opioids. Despite its name, cocaine is not necessarily part of the mix. It can be present, however, as can caffeine, hallucinogens such as mescaline or LSD, and stimulants known as bath salts. » | Rosa Silverman | Tuesday, October 22, 2024

THE GUARDIAN: What is pink cocaine? The party drug reportedly taken by Liam Payne: The drug cocktail that can contain ketamine, ecstasy, meth and crack has grown in popularity in recent years »

How much sense does it make for our weak and ineffectual politicians to worry about increasingly few young people taking up the cigarette-smoking habit with all this sh** going on? My advice: Don't sweat the little things! Concentrate on the really dangerous stuff! – © Mark Alexander

Klicken Sie hier, um eine entsprechende Dokumentation anzuzeigen. – Mark Alexander

Elon Musk Uses LSD, Cocaine, Ecstasy, Mushrooms: WSJ

Jan 8, 2024 | Elon Musk’s drug use has worried executives and board members at businesses he runs, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the billionaire and the companies. Musk has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties, the Journal said, citing unnamed witnesses and others with knowledge of the matter.

How a Peaceful Country Became a Gold Rush State for Drug Cartels

Men detained during a police raid in suburb of Guayaquil.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: In Ecuador, an intelligence official said: “People consume abroad, but they don’t understand the consequences that take place here.”

A total of 210 tons of drugs seized in a single year, a record. At least 4,500 killings last year, also a record. Children recruited by gangs. Prisons as hubs for crime. Neighborhoods consumed by criminal feuds. And all this chaos financed by powerful outsiders with deep pockets and lots of experience in the global drug business.

Ecuador, on South America’s western edge, has in just a few years become the drug trade’s gold rush state, with major cartels from as far as Mexico and Albania joining forces with prison and street gangs, unleashing a wave of violence unlike anything in the country’s recent history.

Fueling this turmoil is the world’s growing demand for cocaine. While many policymakers have been focused on an epidemic of opioids, like fentanyl, that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, cocaine production has soared to record levels, a phenomenon that is now ravaging Ecuador society, turning a once peaceful nation into a battleground.

“People consume abroad,” said Maj. Edison Núñez, an intelligence official with the Ecuadorean national police, “but they don’t understand the consequences that take place here.”

It’s not that Ecuador is new to the drug business. Squeezed between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, it has long served as an exit point for illicit products bound for North America and Europe. » | Julie Turkewitz | Photographs by Victor Moriyama | Reporting from Guayaquil, Ecuador | Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Afghanistan: Inside the Taliban's War on Drugs - BBC News

Jun 6, 2023 | Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders have been more successful in cracking down on opium than anyone ever has, a BBC investigation has found. The BBC has travelled to major poppy growing areas and had exclusive access to remote provinces where our journalists have seen that farmers have either not grown opium poppy complying with the Taliban’s ban, or they’ve had their poppy crops destroyed if they defied the order. This is backed by research from UK based experts who have analysed satellite images and said the drop in opium cultivation is likely to be as much as 80%. The crackdown has big global ramifications, with most of the world’s opium coming from Afghanistan.

Inside the Port Flooding Europe with Cocaine - BBC News

Dec 17, 2022 | The port of Antwerp in Belgium is largely seen as the capital of cocaine trafficking in Europe. Corruption and violence are now on the rise and the drug is widely available on the streets. Europe correspondent Nick Beake visited the city to find out how the problem has developed.

The Drug Fueling Conflict in Syria

Sep 21, 2015 • Syria's War Drug: A look inside production of Captagon, the powerful amphetamine being used by soldiers in Syria.
This Journeyman Pictures documentary is age-restricted, so it is available only on YouTube. It cannot be embedded on external websites. Here is a link to it. Be warned: It is not for the faint-hearted. It is also rather seedy. But it does open one’s eyes to a different and unsavoury side of life. – Mark
Un article lié à ce documentaire.

Spain Becomes Cannabis Hub as Criminals Fill Tourism Void

THE OBSERVER: With high profit margins and low risk of long jail time, Catalonia is now the marijuana capital of Europe, police warn

The decor is nightclub chic meets Turkish opium den. The lighting, soft pink and electric blue. And, were it not for the sweet waft of marijuana, it could be the lobby of a Las Vegas boutique hotel. In fact, it’s one of Barcelona’s 156 cannabis clubs, known as asociaciónes.

The idea was a quiet place where you could buy and smoke marijuana, often grown by members, and only on the premises, but many are now businesses and, police say, fronts for drug mafias. With the collapse of tourism, the cannabis business is one of very few thriving in Catalonia, but beyond the low lights and chilled vibe of the associations, darker forces are in play. An internal report by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police, claims “Catalonia is the epicentre of Europe’s illegal marijuana market” and has become a net exporter of cannabis to other European countries. » | Stephen Burgen in Barcelona | Sunday, October 11, 2020

Saudi Playboy Caught Drug Driving McLaren Supercar through Hyde Park

Mohammad Al-Sharif, 22, confessed to smoking the drug

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Court hears Mohammad Al-Sharif, 22, was unsteady on his feet and had slurred speech when questioned by officers after taking cannabis

A rich Saudi playboy was caught by police driving his father's £168,500 McLaren supercar while high on cannabis through Hyde Park.

Mohammad Al-Sharif, 22, confessed to smoking the drug at 7.30am that morning and was unsteady on his feet with slurred speech when questioned by officers.

He pleaded guilty to driving a McLaren MP4-12c 3.8 litre twin-turbo V8 Velocita Wind Edition in West Carriage Drive on December 11 last year while unfit to drive through drugs.

Student Al-Sharif, who lives off a family allowance, was fined £400, with £85 costs and was ordered to pay an £85 victim surcharge. He was disqualified for twelve months.

The supercar, which goes from 0mph to 60mph in 2.8 seconds, has a makeover by German specialists DMC, which increases its brake horsepower to 650bhp and makes the car more powerful and luxurious. » | Agency | Wednesday, March 11, 2015

A Law for the Rich, A Law for the Poor: Nigella Legacy: Drugs Amnesty for Middle Class?

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Britain's most senior police officer says Scotland Yard will not investigate Nigella Lawson's confession to taking cocaine, despite previous tough talk on drugs

Britain's most senior policeman risked accusations of giving his approval to middle-class cocaine use after Scotland Yard said it would not investigate Nigella Lawson’s confession to taking class A drugs.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, allowed his force to put out a bizarrely-worded statement describing Miss Lawson’s admission under oath as an “allegation” which would not be investigated “at this stage”.

Anti-drug campaigners were baffled by Scotland Yard’s lack of action, which came as two former aides to Miss Lawson were cleared of fraudulently spending £685,000 on company credit cards. Sir Bernard has previously condemned the use of drugs by the middle classes.

The trial of Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo was overshadowed by disclosures of the television cook’s cocaine and cannabis use. » | Gordon Raynor | Friday, Decemebr 20, 2013

British Men Get Four Years for Possession of Drugs in Dubai
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Three British men sentenced to four years for possession of drugs in Dubai claim they were tortured by police.

Grant Cameron and Suneet Jeerh, both 25, and Karl Williams, 26, were jailed for possessing synthetic cannabis, known as “spice”.

The men, who are all from London, claim they were tortured by police following their arrest. Williams claims he had electric shocks to his testicles and all three said after they were arrested they had guns held to their heads by police.

Human Rights charity Reprieve said all three men signed documents in Arabic, a language none of them understands, while being threatened.

In a draft witness statement given to Reprieve lawyer Marc Calcutt, Williams describes having a towel put on his face by police and having electric shocks on his testicles.

He said: "They took off the towel and I could see that there was a gun pointed at my head. All I could think was that the gun in my face could go off if the policeman slipped, and it would kill me. I started to believe that I was going to die in that room." » | Claire Carter | Monday, April 29, 2013

German Quits 'Unhygienic, Drug-using' Taliban
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A German who volunteered to fight for the Taliban quit after becoming disheartened by the violence and annoyed with the group's macho and drug-taking world.

The former fighter also complained of the unhygienic conditions in the war-torn lands of Pakistan's Waziristan province and Afghanistan that left him infected with hepatitis, and which were, in his opinion, "incompatible with the teachings of the Koran".

The unflattering portrayal of life in the Taliban came in a statement made by Thomas U. during his trial in Berlin for involvement in a foreign terrorist group.

The 27-year-old had travelled to Waziristan with his wife in the autumn of 2009 with the intention of freeing the area from the "infidel occupiers" after the couple had converted to Islam. » | Matthew Day | Friday, November 02, 2012

HSBC 'Sorry' for Aiding Mexican Drugs Lords, Rogue States and Terrorists
THE GUARDIAN: Executive quits in front of US Senate as bank faces massive fines for 'horrific' lapses that resulted in laundering money for drugs cartels and pariah states


Executives with Europe's biggest bank, HSBC, were subjected to a humiliating onslaught from US senators on Tuesday over revelations that staff at its global subsidiaries laundered billions of dollars for drug cartels, terrorists and pariah states.

Lawmakers hammered the British-based bank over the scandal, demanding to know how and why its affiliates had exposed it to the proceeds of drug trafficking and terrorist financing in a "pervasively polluted" culture that persisted for years.

A report compiled for the committee detailed how HSBC's subsidiaries transported billions of dollars of cash in armoured vehicles, cleared suspicious travellers' cheques worth billions, and allowed Mexican drug lords buy to [to buy] planes with money laundered through Cayman Islands accounts.

Other subsidiaries moved money from Iran, Syria and other countries on US sanctions lists, and helped a Saudi bank linked to al-Qaida to shift money to the US. » | Dominic Rushe in New York | Tuesday, July 17, 2012