The drug-related violence in Mexico is harrowing and depressing. It poses a growing danger to Mexican civil society, the Mexican economy and the U.S. We are Mexico's largest trading partner, and only part of that business is drugs. The simple equation has always been one of supply and demand: America's insatiable demand drives the drug business in Mexico. But the huge increase in violence and lawlessness in Mexico over the past five years vastly outstrips the rise in drug use ...

Flogging someone with a cane causes intense pain and permanent bodily damage. An Australian who was flogged for drug trafficking in Malaysia in the 1970s recalled that the cane "chewed hungrily through layers of" his "skin and soft tissue" and "left furrows" on him that were "bloody pulp." It's tough stuff and generally considered a barbaric punishment that the 21st century Western world would and should never consider. That makes it a bit startling to find a new ...

Mexico's newest drug cartel, and certainly the most bizarre, is La Familia Michoacana, a violent but Christian fundamentalist narco-gang based in the torrid Tierra Caliente region of western Michoacan state. The group is infamous for methamphetamine smuggling, lopping off enemies' heads and limbs, and massacring police and soldiers. Yet La Familia's leader, Nazario Moreno — aka El Mas Loco, or The Craziest One — has written his own bible, and his 1,500 minions hold prayer meetings before doing their ...

We've come a long way from Freud's couch. The big breakthrough arrived in the late 1980s with the advent of safer and more widely effective drugs, like Prozac. According to Dr. Bruce Cohen of Harvard's McLean Hospital, we're on the cusp of a new era in treatment as the search for a single magic pill for depression gives way to a broad spectrum of therapies. DRUGS TODAY'S TREATMENTS Most antidepressants work by tweaking levels of various neurotransmitters, the chemicals that ...

The death toll from the battle between Jamaican security forces and supporters of alleged drug lord Christopher Coke that erupted over the weekend reached 30 on Tuesday with no end yet in sight. But whether or not Jamaican authorities succeed in apprehending Coke, who faces extradition to the U.S., the mayhem threatens to bring down Prime Minister Bruce Golding — a shake-up that would be welcomed by many crime-weary Jamaicans. As a front-page editorial Tuesday in the daily ...

How easy is it to buy illegal drugs on the Internet? Pretty darn easy, according to a new study by the United Nation's International Narcotics Control Board. The report, issued Wednesday, warns that drug traffickers are finding myriad ways to conduct their illegal transactions in cyberspace — leaving law enforcement officers struggling to keep up. The INCB study details the ways traffickers communicate with each other and with their clients, often commandeering unrelated chat rooms to set up deals, ...

Stepping up the attackSometimes it seems that success fathers its own problems. In its campaign to hook smuggled drugs, the Reagan Administration has claimed some impressive catches: since establishing a regional interdiction center in South Florida in March 1982, it says that cocaine and marijuana seizures there are up 54% and 23% respectively, drug arrests have risen by 27%, and the street value of intercepted dope amounts to around $5 billion. Smugglers, however, have risen to the challenge by trafficking in smaller, harder-to-detect loads and by moving ...

It is lunchtime in New York City's Chelsea district, and Barry, a young drug dealer, is out on the streets hawking his wares. Business is good. "You want a splash?" he asks a customer, referring to a slim fold of waxed paper containing $20 worth of cocaine. Although he was arrested twice last winter, Barry was sprung both times within 24 hours. The first bust cost him a $400 fine, the second was dismissed on a technicality. "When the crack ...

There was a time when Wendy and her husband had sex three times a week. But for the past six years, the purple negligee that Wendy used to entice her husband has been stuffed in the back of a drawer. And now, instead of getting hot and bothered by her husband's advances, Wendy is simply bothered. "All of a sudden I didn't have any desire. There's just nothing there anymore," says Wendy, who requested that her last ...