Joey Burger was 14 when his naturalist parents moved from Santa Cruz to settle in the coastal forest of Humboldt County.

Local hippies and homesteaders welcomed the new kid in the woods. They schooled him in the regional art – growing marijuana.

"It was never looked upon as a bad thing," Burger said.

Except before the fall harvests, when helicopters full of narcotics officers whipped through the sky. Neighbors rushed "to call their friends to make sure they were OK," he said.

sacbee.com

This was as predictable as the sunrise — Michigan voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure to legalize medical marijuana, and two years later, no one can seem to decide who's a patient and who's a pothead.

More than 60,000 residents have applied for medical marijuana certificates, the ticket to being able to use pot legally, and even grow small amounts at home; roughly half have received them. Wow, that's a lot of suffering in our state.

detnews.com

With authorities closing in to seize 2,400 marijuana plants on John Robert Boone's farm two years ago, the legendary Kentucky outlaw vanished like a puff of smoke. The prolific grower has been dodging the law ever since, his folk-hero status growing with every sale of a "Run, Johnny, Run" T-shirt and click on his Facebook fan page.

Tracking down the fugitive who resembles a tattooed Santa Claus has proven as hard as "trying to catch a ghost" for the federal authorities canvassing tightlipped residents among the small farms in a rural area southeast of Louisville. Boone, who's trying to avoid the life sentence he would get if convicted a third time of growing pot, has plenty of sympathizers in an area where many farmers down on their luck have planted marijuana.

mercurynews.com
theindychannel.com
washingtonpost.com
„America’s Most Wanted“

Frei nach dem Motto "zu viele Vitamine sind auch nicht gesund" gingen ein paar Drogenschmuggler vor. In einem Supermarktlager in Sachsen-Anhalt fielen den Angestellten acht Päckchen mit Kokain entgegen - aus einer Bananenkiste. Die Ware wurde nicht verkauft.

Koks statt Obst: Acht Päckchen Kokain sind beim Umpacken einer Bananenkiste in einem Supermarktlager in Sachsen-Anhalt aufgetaucht. Nach Angaben des Landeskriminalamts in Magdeburg stammten die Bananen aus Kolumbien und sollten von dem Lager aus in mehrere Bundesländer versandt werden. Das Rauschgift sei bereits am Dienstag entdeckt worden, berichtete das LKA am Freitag.

tagesspiegel.de
giessener-allgemeine.de

Mehr als 600 Meter lang ist ein Tunnel, den Drogenschmuggler von Mexiko bis in die USA gegraben haben. Jetzt hat die Polizei den Gang entdeckt - und dabei mehr als 20 Tonnen Marihuana sichergestellt.

Die Drogen wurden auf Schienen unter der amerikanisch-mexikanischen Grenze hindurchgefahren: Die Behörden in San Diego in Kalifornien haben zum zweiten Mal in diesem Monat einen Tunnel zum Schmuggel von Drogen entdeckt. Der Tunnel ist 670 Meter lang und führt von einer Küche in einem Haus in Tijuana in Mexiko zu einem Lagerhaus im Industriegebiet Otay Mesa in San Diego, wie Mike Unzueta, Leiter der Ermittlungen bei der US-Einwanderungs- und Zollbehörde in San Diego, mitteilte.

spiegel.de
ngz-online.de
tagesschau.sf.tv

Authorities seized more than 20 tons of marijuana in connection with a cross-border tunnel equipped with a rail car, fluorescent lighting and a ventilation system -- the second discovery of a major underground drug passage in San Diego this month, authorities said Friday.

The tunnel found Thursday is 2,200 feet long -- more than seven football fields -- and runs from the kitchen of a home in Tijuana, Mexico, to two warehouses in San Diego's Otay Mesa industrial district, said Mike Unzueta, head of investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego.

theledger.com
latimes.com
foxnews.com
usatoday.com
pe.com
wsj.com
bbc.co.uk
reuters.com
Video

A convicted drug smuggler in South Africa has been acquitted of the murder of a mining tycoon.

Glenn Agliotti was charged with planning Brett Kebble's murder in 2005.

At the time Agliotti was a close friend of ex-police chief Jackie Selebi, who he testified against in a corruption trial. Selebi, also a former Interpol president, was jailed for 15 years.

bbc.co.uk

In der Schweiz sind diese Woche in Bananenschachteln drei fehlgeleitete Kokainsendungen mit einem Gesamtgewicht von 100 Kilogramm entdeckt worden. Sichergestellt wurden das weisse Pulver in den Kantonen Bern, Graubünden und Thurgau.

tagesschau.sf.tv
20min.ch