22 accused in using puppies to smuggle drugs

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U2Girl1978

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This is horrible. :sad:

The Drug Enforcement Administration arrested 22 Colombian nationals for smuggling heroin into the United States via various methods, including surgically implanting the drug into puppies, officials said Wednesday.

The Colombian organization brought more than 20 kilograms of heroin into the United States, concealing some of it by slitting open purebred puppies, according to John P. Gilbride, the DEA’s New York Field Division special agent-in-charge, in a news release.

At least three puppies died from having liquid heroin packets placed inside them and then being stitched back up, DEA spokesman David Ausiello said.

Human couriers, or “swallowers,” also ingested the heroin packets to transport them overseas. The group also hid drugs in body creams, aerosol cans and along the lining of purses and luggage.

Drug smugglers often rely on couriers to swallow condoms full of drugs and one Colombian woman was once found with cocaine surgically implanted in her buttocks, Reuters reported.

Traffickers put liquid heroin packets into dogs and humans to get past customs, the DEA said.

“The organization’s outrageous and heinous smuggling method of implanting heroin inside puppies is a true indication of the extent that drug dealers go to make their profit,” Gilbride said. “This investigation identified the individuals who were responsible for overseeing and smuggling millions of dollars worth of heroin from Colombia to the East Coast.”

More than $20 million worth of heroin is involved, NBC News reported.

Wednesday’s arrests were the culmination of a two-year investigation that identified a drug trafficking organization based in Medellin, Colombia, whose distribution network reached from Miami to New York City, the DEA said.

In January 2005, police in Colombia had found six puppies with scars on their abdomens at a rural property. Ultrasound scans revealed bags of liquid heroin hidden inside the living animals. Police said traffickers planned to retrieve the drug once the dogs had passed customs abroad.

Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine and the main supplier of heroin to the United States.
 
oh my... :(

unfortunately that doesn't surprise me... the drug problem is so big and it envolves many things: politics, the guerrilla problem, the economy...and it is sad that most of the people who gets caught in the airports doing those terrible things are people who are in need, not drug lords.

I don't think making the drugs legal is a good idea, maybe it would be good for the consumers, but It would mean more violence here, more contamination, more people trying to get in to the business
 
The history of prohibition would tend to suggest that there is less violence when it criminal gangs are removed as the only suppliers.
 
A_Wanderer said:
If there was a legal regulated market then this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

So? People doing heinous things in order to carry out illegal activity is in no way an argument for legalisation of that activity.
 
The quality would be better, dosages would be set to minimise the risk of overdose and the dangers of transmissable diseases from injecting drugs would decrease. When substances are banned criminal gangs will fill the void, just like alcohol under prohibition, decriminalisation and regulating would do a lot more good than the "war on drugs".
 
(^ re: prohibition)

True, though I'm not sure the respective socioeconomic environments here are comparable in terms of business' respect for regulatory laws governing fair competition, protection against monopolies and their effects on upward mobility and workers' rights, etc. The creation of a European market for legalized medical opium has not had the effect of undoing the thug-warlord-as-plantation-master dynamic in Afghanistan, for example.

:hmm: Wonder if there is such a thing as an international black market in purebred puppies...no way you could hide them in your body crevices or stuff them into flour sacks. Sedated in fur pelts, maybe...
 
Worse--no, probably not. But I'm not sure that lesser-of-two-evils thinking is the logic we ought to employ here. Is it really in their long-term best interests to make drug production a central plank of their economic strategy?
 
If it is legalised then what will be stopping it being grown elsewhere, if anything the warlords will be muscled out of the global market.
 
A_Wanderer said:
The quality would be better, dosages would be set to minimise the risk of overdose and the dangers of transmissable diseases from injecting drugs would decrease. When substances are banned criminal gangs will fill the void, just like alcohol under prohibition, decriminalisation and regulating would do a lot more good than the "war on drugs".


Absolutely agree.
 
A_Wanderer said:
The history of prohibition would tend to suggest that there is less violence when it criminal gangs are removed as the only suppliers.

Wanderer, once again you and I are totally on the same page.

I recently saw a documentary on the History channel about Prohibition and they said that it was this law that created organized crime in the U.S.A and that gangsters flourished during this period.

Ever since then I've been thinking about the drug issue. It would be interesting to see if the crime rate would decrease drastically if people didn't have to rob or murder in order to get drugs.

If cigarettes and liquour can be sold freely (albeit with an age limitation), and marijuana is prescribed for medicinal purposes, why don't the legislatures get together and write laws regulating the selling of drugs?

I'm against drugs, and in a perfect world I'd be very happy if people didn't need them to be happy, but I'd rather see it sold at newsstands or drugstores than to have one person murdered or robbed just to have a fix.

After all, people don't kill each other for cigarettes and liquour, right?
 
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