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From the Los Angeles Times

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Bombs from Yemen were made to blow up in flight, U.S. officials say

They seem to be the work of Saudi fugitive Ibrahim Hassan Asiri, thought to have built devices for two previous attempted attacks.

By David S. Cloud and Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau

November 1, 2010

Reporting from Washington

Two powerful bombs sent from Yemen appear to have been designed to blow up aircraft on their way to the United States, and the devices bore the hallmarks of a fugitive Saudi bomb maker who has repeatedly targeted America and its allies, senior U.S. officials said Sunday.

A team of U.S. and British investigators was expected to arrive in Yemen's capital, Sana, early this week to assist Yemeni authorities in investigating the attempted bombings, which were disrupted last week after authorities in Britain and the United Arab Emirates, acting on tips from Saudi Arabian and U.S. intelligence, intercepted the packages.

Though initial reports indicated they were shipped aboard cargo jets, Qatar Airways said in a statement Sunday that the package intercepted in the UAE was transported aboard a passenger jet that went from the Yemeni capital to Doha, the Qatari capital, and then on to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

John O. Brennan, the White House's senior counter-terrorism advisor, said the packages were addressed to fictitious people in Chicago "associated with synagogues." But he indicated that investigators were more confident after investigating the devices over the weekend that the bombs were designed to go off before being delivered.

"We're looking at the potential that they would have been detonated en route to those synagogues aboard the aircraft as well as at the destinations," Brennan said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation." "But at this point, I think, we would agree with the British that they were designed to be detonated in flight."

He was referring to statements by senior British officials Saturday that one of the devices, intercepted at the East Midlands airport in central England, could have been triggered to go off while in the air and that it was powerful enough to bring down an airliner.

On Sunday, authorities in Yemen released Hanan Samawi, 23, an engineering student who had been arrested after her name was discovered on one or both of the packages sent from Sana. A Yemeni official said Sunday she was released because authorities concluded she had not sent the packages.

As investigation of the plot intensified, U.S. officials said their initial findings provided more evidence that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of the original group created by Osama bin Laden, is probing for weaknesses in U.S. counter-terrorism defenses and that it had evolved into one of the most active terrorist organizations from its stronghold in remote and lawless parts of Yemen.

Forensic analysis of the two U.S.-bound bombs hidden inside computer printers indicated they were constructed by Ibrahim Hassan Asiri, a member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who is also believed to have built the devices used in two previous attempted attacks, including a failed effort to blow up a U.S. airliner in December, Brennan said.

How the Obama administration will react to the latest threat from Yemen remains unclear. A senior Pentagon official said Sunday that there had been no decisions on changing the current U.S. approach, which relies on U.S. Special Forces to train Yemeni security forces so they can better deal with the growing militant presence.

The U.S. has also carried out a series of secret strikes, with the approval of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, against Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen. Even so, the threat from the country has grown, making it second only to Pakistan as a hiding place for militants, the Pentagon official said.

"We have watched Al Qaeda move into Yemen for much of the last year, and the threat from AQAP continues to grow," the official said. Another official said the incident is likely to lead to greater pressure from the U.S. on Saleh to step up covert activities targeting Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The U.S. has halted all cargo and mail shipments from Yemen, and security officials in multiple countries were searching shipments Sunday for other bombs, officials said. Asked whether there could be any more packages containing explosives en route, Brennan said all packages coming from Yemen would be checked.

"We can't presume that there are none other that are out there, so what we're trying to do right now is to work very closely with our partners overseas to identify all packages that left Yemen recently," Brennan told ABC News' "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."

The intercepted packages were removed from airplanes late Friday in Britain and the United Arab Emirates after Saudi security officials discovered the plot and tipped off U.S. counterparts.

Both devices contained the high explosive PETN — pentaerythritol tetranitrate — an indicator of Asiri's work.

"He is a very dangerous individual, clearly somebody who has a fair amount of training and experience," Brennan said on ABC's "This Week."

The official Qatar News Agency quoted a statement from Qatar Airways saying that the cargo should have been subjected to X-ray inspection in Yemen. But the state-owned airline also noted that the explosives discovered were so sophisticated that standard screening procedures might not have detected them.

Officials in Dubai said in a statement to reporters that the bomb was hidden inside a printer cartridge in a desktop printer and that it contained an electronic circuit and a cellphone chip, but U.S. officials declined to describe the trigger mechanism in either device.

The construction could indicate that Asiri is growing more sophisticated in his bomb designs, two of which have performed poorly before.

Asiri is also believed to have built the bomb hidden in the underwear of a young Nigerian who tried and failed to blow up a US Airways flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in December, and a similar device used in a suicide bombing targeting the Saudi deputy interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayif, in August 2009. The device failed to kill the prince, though his bodyguard was slain.

The Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to detonate the device in his underwear using a syringe that injected another chemical, though the attack was thwarted by another passenger.

The latest devices appear to have relied on electronic triggering mechanisms rather than on chemical reactions. The bombs "didn't require any additional components or didn't require anybody to go in and sort of manually press a syringe or something else," Brennan said on "Fox News Sunday."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-yemen-bombs-20101101,0,7821796,print.story

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Jet ski killing rattles rustic Texas border town

Hardened locals in Zapata say little has changed, but the sheriff sees drug cartel trouble. The body still hasn't been found.

By Paul Meyer, Los Angeles Times

October 31, 2010

Reporting from Zapata, Texas

Most days, Zapata appears a town unchanged as the four lanes of U.S. Highway 83 tick past the Lone Star Western Store, Robert's Fish N' Tackle and Tacos Tio Beto before running into the south Texas scrub where fishing camps emerge at the end of dirt and gravel roads.

It is a place where men are divided between Stetsons and sweat-stained ball caps.

Where old tales of border banditry are told alongside those of roughnecks drawn here for the natural-gas boom on ranchland studded with mesquite and Mexican olive trees.

Where big news used to consist of the occasional marijuana bust or record haul of largemouth bass on Falcon Lake.

But today, weeks since the suspected drug cartel killing of a vacationing jet skier, Zapata has become the latest flashpoint of violence, fear and politics on the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Across the country, it also poses the question of what David Hartley's death says about the threat of violence from northern Mexico and how deep it will resonate in calls for additional federal resources. For the 6,000 residents here — a number that swells with weekend fishing tournaments and the arrival of winter Texans in RVs — a more immediate concern looms:

Has the area forever lost its peace?

"If we don't do something now, there will be total infiltration of the border by Mexican drug trafficking organizations," said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr.

Others in Zapata, the county seat on the northern end of the 25-mile-long lake, bristle at the suggestion that theirs is a town under siege from pirates and the Zetas drug cartel. They point out that violence has largely been contained to the Mexican side of the lake, where Hartley was killed.

"It's ridiculous," said Norma Amaya, who owns Robert's Fish N' Tackle with her husband. "They're making us look like we're dodging bullets on a daily basis, and we're not. We're a peaceful town."

Down the road at a parking lot taco stand, Rosa Maria Melgoza recalls how she once crossed routinely into Mexico to visit relatives 30 miles south at the Falcon Lake dam, built in the 1950s on the Rio Grande for shared electricity and water.

But last spring, Melgoza stopped crossing the border to see her 76-year-old mother. She has a nephew who is missing in Mexico.

"You can't go look for him because then you'll disappear too," she said.

Gonzalez, 54, said he started to see drug smuggling increase a few years ago.

The lake, however, remained peaceful until April, when Mexican pirates armed with AK-47 and AR-15 rifles began robbing boaters who ventured across the border in search of bigger fish. The sheriff said at the time that he feared a fisherman would be shot, and that he would be unable to recover the body.

Five months later, 30-year-old David Hartley was killed. It is a story told again and again by his wife, Tiffany, that began Sept. 30 when the couple ventured into the Mexican side to take pictures of an old church and ended with her unable to hoist his limp body onto her jet ski.

"We've been telling people, telling our government, for the last five years that these things are happening, and they're going to get worse, and they don't believe us until this thing happens," Gonzalez said.

Since the killing, a Mexican investigator on the case has been beheaded, though officials say there may have been other motivations for his death. Politicians and journalists, meanwhile, have come in droves.

"There are two important parts of this. One is that we have a heated gubernatorial campaign in Texas where both sides are raising the rhetorical level on border security," said Josiah Heyman, a border expert and chairman of the sociology and anthropology department at the University of Texas at El Paso.

"The second part of it is there's this sheriff in Zapata County … who likes to have big scary things happen to the border because he thinks he can get grant money."

Gonzalez knows the criticism well.

"America doesn't believe me," he said in his office while looking at pictures of a weapons cache Mexican authorities confiscated from cartels across the border.

The sheriff's office, like Zapata, retains a small-town Texas sense of security even amid fears of growing violence from Mexico. Gonzalez, who is known as Sigi, lists his home phone number on his business card. His captain's cellphone rings with the song "A Little More Country Than That."

A recent Thursday patrol is a journey through the county's two faces. In the late afternoon, near the start of his shift, Sgt. Israel Alaniz gathers with Border Patrol agents and game wardens on a dusty ranch north of Zapata to look at a corpse on the U.S. side of the lake. It is badly decomposed, mostly just bones, they report. They make plans to pick it up the next day.

Back on Highway 83, he gets a report of shots fired and two armed men outside a house on the other side of town. Alaniz speeds through Zapata to an isolated, dimly lit street, but there is no sign of the men when he pulls up in his SUV.

"This guy here — he's wanted by the Zetas," the sergeant said, pointing at the house while his flashlight scours the area for shell casings or bullet holes in the walls.

He doesn't find much.

Half an hour later in Zapata, a girl has locked her keys in her mom's car at the high school. Alaniz heads over so she will not have to pay a locksmith. While he is in the parking lot, the sheriff calls. He has received a tip that a 700-pound marijuana load is about to take off from a ranch to the north. The sergeant puts a team together and waits alongside the highway for more than two hours for the shipment to move. Nothing comes.

"Some people don't want to realize what's going on," Alaniz said. "We don't know what kind of people we have living in town now."

The next morning at the public boat ramp, where concrete border markers are visible in the distance, Tom Haralson of Laredo hauls his boat out of the water after a morning of fishing. He is not overly concerned.

"It seems they try to keep things on their side," Haralson said, adding that he would still go to the Mexican side to fish if he were with a group.

Many, however, have already been scared off by the violence, their absence evident at empty motel parking lots that should be full of bass boats this time of year. Some fishing tournaments have been canceled, a serious deal in these parts.

Others look back into history for perspective.

At the Frontier Ranch Store and Museum, with souvenirs up front and live rattlesnakes out back, Dave Mertens dispenses his brand of border wisdom. The 63-year-old, boasting a big gray beard and broad banana leaf cowboy hat, said he felt safe in a town where episodes of lawlessness were a part of the land, such as the bandit raids on U.S. government troops in 1916 and the smuggling of mescal during Prohibition. A devout Catholic, he also thinks of the violence in spiritual terms.

"If you believe in a heaven and a hell, in the good Lord and the devil, you know damned well the devil is behind it all," he said.

As for the Zapata's latest encounter with lawlessness, authorities still haven't recovered Hartley's body. The sheriff believes they never will.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-jet-ski-killing-20101101,0,7081420,print.story

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Both sides of Prop. 19 battle deploy law enforcement officials

Joseph D. McNamara, a retired San Jose police chief, is the face of the 'yes' campaign. But most local, state and federal crime fighters oppose it.

By John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times

November 1, 2010

When he signed the ballot argument for Proposition 19, Joseph D. McNamara, a retired San Jose police chief, didn't really know what he was getting himself into. Now, as the campaign hurtles toward election day, McNamara has become the public face of the initiative that would legalize marijuana.

"Let's be honest," the unsmiling ex-cop, wearing a neatly knotted tie, a dark suit coat and an American flag lapel pin, intones in a television ad. "The war against marijuana has failed."

McNamara, whose stern visage also appears in newspaper ads, urges voters to join him and many others in law enforcement. The opposition campaign, however, has lined up every California sheriff except San Francisco's, more than three dozen police chiefs, most district attorneys and every state law enforcement organization that took a position. Proposition 19 has endorsements from 28 law enforcement veterans in California.

On television, in news conferences, at forums and in phone calls, both sides have turned to law enforcement to pitch their arguments to undecided voters who, skeptical of the war on drugs, wonder if the initiative might be a better way.

The opposition campaign has deployed police officers and prosecutors to warn that the initiative would mean more children trying pot and more stoned drivers. Kim Raney, Covina's police chief for the last 10 years, became one of the most prominent opponents by default. When the issue went before the state's police chiefs, he joked, "Everybody took a giant step backwards."

Some of the former officers who support the initiative began to question drug laws while on duty but have become outspoken only in retirement. "It's not a particular campaign that I really wanted to get involved with," McNamara said. "I like cops, and I have been around them all my life."

Proposition 19 would eliminate penalties for adults 21 and older who possess up to an ounce of pot or who grow the plants in plots of up to 25 square feet for personal use. The initiative also takes a step toward legalization, allowing cities and counties to authorize commercial cultivation and retail sales.

McNamara's doubts came early, as a young New York City police officer in Harlem. "We arrested everyone in sight, and it was evident pretty soon that we weren't doing any good," he said.

Stephen Downing, a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, was monitoring a sting operation in 1973 when a cocaine dealer shot and killed an undercover officer. "You say to yourself, 'What is this about?' " he said. "That stirred in my gut for quite a long time."

The two former officers are among the most active of a hardcore group helping the Proposition 19 campaign. Downing drove from Palm Desert to attend an opposition news conference in Glendale on Friday, where Raney warned, "Don't be swayed by the small group of former police officials, some who have been retired more than 20 years and are no longer responsible for public safety in their communities."

On Raney's side are the U.S. drug czar, five former czars, nine former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration reaching back to the Nixon administration, and the nation's top lawman, U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, who threatened to enforce federal drug laws whatever happens in the election.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is the co-chairman of the No on 19 campaign. He has vowed not to enforce the initiative, calling it "dead on arrival."

Baca has been in the Middle East for the last week. In his absence, his department invited the media Friday to view medical marijuana edibles that resemble candy and urged parents to check their children's Halloween treats. Steve Whitmore, a department spokesman, acknowledged that the warning just four days before the election created what he called a "perception challenge," but said, "That's just happenstance."

That many law enforcement officials oppose the measure does not surprise McNamara or Downing. These officers, they say, are invested in the drug war, which brings in money from the federal government and from assets seized from drug criminals. And, they say, no sworn officer could risk speaking out.

"If I stood up as an individual in the time I was at LAPD, I would have been rendered completely ineffective," Downing said.

They also say law enforcement is defending the status quo when voters are increasingly telling pollsters they support legalization. Raney said, "I think it's the best we have right now." He said the issue should be addressed nationally, not by turning California into a "social science lab."

Most of the state's police chiefs, including Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department, have not taken a position. Beck said he would discuss the initiative but would not tell Californians how to vote.

McNamara and Downing say the initiative would free up police to focus on serious crimes. "Who the hell am I protecting by booking a guy for a half-smoked marijuana butt in the ashtray?" Downing said.

Beck and Raney say no resources are spent just to hunt down recreational pot smokers. "It's not a drain at all," Raney said. When officers find marijuana, though, they file charges to uphold the law.

This approach has led to racial disparities, with blacks and Latinos much more likely to be arrested for possession than whites. Proponents of Proposition 19 have highlighted this to appeal to minorities, winning endorsements from associations representing black and Latino officers.

Law enforcement officials say few Californians are in prison for marijuana crimes, but McNamara said incarceration is "brutal and it's vicious, and it can destroy your kid's chance to have a decent life."

McNamara believes that ending prohibition could eliminate the underground market. "Not only does the black market create a lot of violence," he said, "but it also creates a drug culture and a crime culture in a lot of neighborhoods."

Beck said he's not convinced that the price would drop enough to wipe out the black market, noting that medical marijuana, easily available in Los Angeles, sells at higher prices than street weed.

Raney warned that the initiative would lead to more drugged drivers on the road. But McNamara said anyone who wants to smoke pot in California is probably already smoking it.

Although Beck sees many downsides to the initiative, he also finds flaws in arguments made by law enforcement. He dismissed complaints that the measure fails to include a standard for drugged driving. He noted that there is no such standard now but that police officers enforce the law. "There's other ways to do it," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marijuana-prop19-20101101,0,1938570,print.story

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OPINION

Drug business as usual

Legalizing marijuana in California probably wouldn't have much effect on the illegal drug business in the U.S. and Mexico.

By Mitchell Koss

November 1, 2010

As Californians get ready to vote on Proposition 19, which would legalize the individual possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, one area of debate is what effect passage would have on the illegal drug business here and in violence-torn Mexico.

I can't predict the future, but I can say a little about narco-trafficking, having covered it off and on over four continents since the early 1990s.

Traditionally, the bulk of the United States' marijuana has come from Mexico; even today, despite a recent increase in the amount of pot grown in California, researchers at Rand Corp. put the figure at 40% to 67%.

As a percentage of gross cartel revenues, marijuana might not stack up against hard drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. But Colombian traffickers have to be paid for their cocaine, and meth is made from precursors such as pseudoephedrine that get ever more expensive. In contrast, farmers in Mexico sell pot for as low as $40 a pound. Once it reaches a parking lot in San Ysidro, Calif., a few hundred yards from the border, it's worth $600 to $800 a pound wholesale. And that means the net profits on marijuana are huge.

Narco pop culture supports the importance of pot to the cartels. Go on YouTube and type in "corridos Sinaloa marijuana" — corridos being a type of traditional Mexican ballad that these days often chronicles outlaws — and you will find videos featuring bouncy, accordion-laced songs played over images of SUVs, assault weapons, corpses, cash, pictures of Joaquin Guzman, aka El Chapo, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, and marijuana, lots of marijuana.

In December 2008, I was in the northeastern part of Sinaloa, at the edge of what is called the Golden Triangle — marijuana-growing country. The leaders of many of Mexico's cartels come from the Golden Triangle because the cartels were in the marijuana business long before they began transporting cocaine for the Colombians and making meth. Here it is safer for locals to say on camera that they feel loyal to El Chapo than to say they support the Mexican government. People in the area complained bitterly to us about the eradication forays made by the Mexican army to destroy a crop that supported most people in the region.

But even with all the marijuana farming infrastructure in Mexico, the percentage of the marijuana supply produced in the United States has increased steadily to its current level of somewhere in the vicinity of 50%. Based on nationwide plant seizures, two-thirds or more of U.S.-grown pot seems to be coming from California, according to federal officials. And the bulk of California marijuana these days is grown on public lands by what law enforcement officials call "Mexican national trafficking organizations," with roots in places such as Sinaloa. With the increase in local cultivation has come an increase in violence. This year in California there have been at least seven shootouts with law enforcement at sites where marijuana was being grown. Five growers were killed.

Over the past decade, as these groups began growing marijuana in California, local and state law enforcement agencies began discovering bigger and bigger cultivation sites in the state's forests. In 2000, 2004 and 2005, I went on raids in the Sierra Nevada with a task force called CAMP, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, and I always saw the same things: thousands of plants, miles of plastic irrigation pipes, abandoned campsites and small homemade shrines to Jesus Malverde, the informal patron saint of narco-trafficking. What I didn't see in the past were any people in custody, because the growers usually fled at the sound of law enforcement helicopters.

But in the last few years, backed with federal funding, three special task forces have been created in California to penetrate these organizations.

This past year, my colleague Adam Yamaguchi led a Current TV team following one California task force through an entire growing cycle. They covertly observed workers planting marijuana patches in the mountains, resupplying the growers camped out at the sites and harvesting the plants. The dozens of people they saw arrested at the end of the season included not only low-level field workers but also those who ran the operations.

Drug officials posit that the California trafficking organizations run by Mexican nationals may be related to the cartels in Mexico in the way that the Italian Mafia in the United States was related to the mafia in Sicily — they came from the same towns and villages. It's not clear that Mexican cartel leaders like El Chapo are directing the California trafficking organizations. That is, it's not clear if they sprung up in the way that, say, Honda and Toyota decided to begin making cars for the American market in the U.S., or if, in the spirit of other entrepreneurs entering the U.S., the Mexican nationals growing pot here simply identified an opportunity and took it.

If mass production of marijuana across the United States suddenly became legal, it would have a huge impact on the traffickers producing the drug illegally. But Proposition 19 would of course only cover marijuana sold in California, so it's not clear that it would have much of an effect on illegal trafficking organizations based in the state.

Whatever might happen to the price of marijuana in California if Proposition 19 passes — and regulations allowing mass production of the drug would have to be enacted in order for the price to really drop — the traffickers are likely to keep growing pot here for export out of state. The supply lines are already well established. Drug officials say that California has become, like Mexico, a "source country." Trafficking across state lines won't become legal even if some of our revenue-hungry cities and counties authorize the production and sale of marijuana in order to tax it.

As for how the law would affect drug violence in Mexico, the common explanation for that country's recent drug war isn't Californians smoking illegal Mexican pot, which long predates the fighting. Instead, actions by Mexico's last two presidents have threatened the established relations between Mexico's cartels, which are now fighting each other to establish a new balance of power.

You may tell yourself that making pot legal in California would help end Mexico's violence. But you'd have to be high to really believe it.

Mitchell Koss is an executive producer at Current TV, where the documentary "Marijuana Wars" will air Nov. 22 and 29.   

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-marijuana-20101101,0,2031747,print.story

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OPINION

Good intentions, bad law

A California law making it illegal to sell or rent 'violent' video games to minors should be struck down on 1st Amendment grounds.

November 1, 2010

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about the constitutionality of a California law making it illegal to sell or rent "violent" video games to minors. A ruling for the video-game industry would be consistent with the court's past holdings in 1st Amendment cases; a victory for the state would jeopardize free speech in settings far removed from a video store or a teenager's bedroom.

The law requires that a label reading "18" be affixed to games that allow a player to engage in "killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being" and that, in the eyes of a reasonable person, appeal to the "deviant or morbid interest of minors." To merit the label, the videos also must be patently offensive and devoid of "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors." Anyone who sold or rented such a game to a minor could be fined as much as $1,000.

This page believes that the law is neither wise nor necessary, and that it's the responsibility of parents, aided by a voluntary ratings system, to protect their children from entertainment they consider inappropriate.

But the issue for the court isn't whether the law is good policy but whether it violates the 1st Amendment, as the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded.

In resolving that issue, the justices are likely to address at least three questions: Do video games qualify as "speech" protected by the 1st Amendment? Should the court treat video violence the same way it would treat obscenity? Finally, has California proved that this constitutes a real problem and, if so, that the ban on video sales to minors is the only solution? The wrong answers to these questions from the court could make free speech less robust.

• The first question is the easiest to answer. Like films, television programs and comic books (which were the target of self-proclaimed children's advocates in the 1950s), video games tell a story, albeit one in which the player becomes involved.

No one would confuse "Grand Theft Auto" with "Hamlet," but that's irrelevant. A 1948 Supreme Court decision striking down a New York law that banned the sale of lurid crime magazines made it clear that such publications "are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature." The same is true of video games.

• In asking the court to show deference to the California Legislature's decision-making, the state cites a 1968 decision upholding a New York law against the sale of sexually explicit material to minors. In that case, the court held that material could be judged obscene as to minors even if it wouldn't be considered obscene for an adult. California urges that the court adopt a similar two-tier approach to violence, because "just like sexual material, violent material can be harmful to the well-being of minors."

The problem with this argument is that it would require the court to conclude that fictional violence in general is outside the protection of the 1st Amendment, just as it has concluded in the past that obscenity is. Earlier this year, in striking down a ban on the sale of videos that showed violence against animals — real animals, not images on a computer screen — the Supreme Court declined to declare a new exception to the First Amendment for such depictions. Nor should it carve out a new exception for fictional or virtual violence.

•The state believes it can prevail by arguing that protecting children from violent video games is a compelling interest and that there is no alternative approach that would be less restrictive of free speech. The linchpin of the argument is the claim that violent video games are harmful to children.

The state cites several organizations for the proposition that "entertainment violence has negative impacts on children" and refers to studies that it says "conclusively establish a connection between playing violent video games and increases in aggressive behavior in children." For example, in one study, college students were asked, "Wheel of Fortune" style, to fill in blank spaces with letters to form either aggressive or nonaggressive words ("explode" rather than "explore"). Students who played violent video games were more likely to choose the aggressive word.

The 9th Circuit concluded, however, that none of the research "establishes or suggests a causal link between minors playing violent video games and actual psychological or neurological harm, and inferences to that effect would not be reasonable." The state argues that it shouldn't have to prove a "direct causal link." In a free-speech case, that is exactly what the court should demand. Otherwise all sorts of speech would be at the mercy of the latest social science study.

Finally, even if protecting children from violent video games were a compelling state interest, the appeals court said the state could pursue that goal in ways that didn't restrict speech — for example, by publicizing the video-game industry's voluntary ratings system or encouraging the use of technology that allows parents to screen out videos they find offensive.

In short, a well-intended law aimed at what seems like a narrow issue could undermine free speech in ways the authors didn't intend. The court shouldn't allow that to happen.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-video-20101101,0,1911072,print.story

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OPINION

Change we can live with

Most Californians have put their immigrant-bashing ways behind them; we're moving on.

Gregory Rodriguez

November 1, 2010

Here's the conventional wisdom: Americans scapegoat immigrants during bad economic times. They fear for their own well-being and turn on those they think are competing with them unfairly for jobs, for help, for a place at the table. But last week's L.A. Times/USC poll of likely California voters puts a giant dent in that political trope: 48% said they thought immigrants were a benefit to the state, and 59% were in favor of allowing illegal immigrants who have lived or worked in the United States for at least two years to remain here.

If bad economic times were the main thing driving attitudes toward immigrants, those results would be pretty much impossible. Let's face it, the times in California can't get much worse. Unemployment is at 12.4%. In September, the nation lost a net 95,000 payroll jobs, and California accounted for 63,600 of them.

Given these dismal numbers, why aren't Californians heaping blame on immigrants in general and illegal immigrants in particular? After all, in the recession of the early 1990s, California voters were perfectly willing to blame illegal immigrants for virtually all the state's woes. According to a Texas Tech University study, Californians back then favored more restrictive immigration policies than did other Americans.

What explains the difference between then and now?

First, the flow of illegal immigrants entering California has declined significantly (from 2000 to 2006, the illegal immigrant population here grew at less than one-third the rate of the rest of the nation). And the immigrants who are here tend to be more established; they've become locals. The electorate is also more heavily Latino now, and probably less reflexively negative about immigrants from Latin America.

But the most important explanation is that what mostly fueled anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1990s is what fuels it now: not economic fear but another deep-seated fear, that of newcomers and the long-term cultural change they may bring. That unease was rampant — and stoked by exaggerated immigrant-bashing — in the 1990s in California, but in 2010, hard times or not, it has died down.

In 1994, when the state was debating Proposition 187 (the law targeting illegal immigrants that the courts overturned), newspapers routinely published stories about the state's impending demographic shift: Whites were headed toward minority status. The debate was about culture as much as illegal immigration, and the not-so-subtle implication was that everything about life here would change.

But over time, we learned everything didn't change. Californians survived the much-hyped demographic shift, and we're beginning to get used to our new reality. In other words, whites got to know their new neighbors. And, despite real tensions caused by illegal immigration, familiarity didn't breed contempt.

How close have we become? As far back as 2000, according to census data, California Anglos had a 35.7% chance of "exposure" to minorities, compared to only 17.4% for Anglos nationwide. Similarly, racial and ethnic intermarriage rates here have long been among the nation's highest, and in 2006, California ranked third in the level of diversity of its classrooms.

This is not to suggest that diversity teaches us to love our neighbors, let alone illegal immigration. But it makes sense that familiarity with newcomers will affect the political response toward them, whether they enter the U.S. legally or illegally.

Anti-immigrant activists argue that race has nothing to do with their view of immigrants. They say the issue is crime, or taxpayer costs — anything but a visceral dislike of newcomers and new paradigms. But California's recent history doesn't support that contention. In the 1990s, California's anti-immigrant frenzy was fueled mostly by anxiety over a changing racial/ethnic landscape. It's not unlikely that the anti-immigrant backlash in other parts of the nation is driven by the same thing.

The Times/USC poll shows that when it comes to immigrant-bashing, we've been there, done that. And now, even in hard times, we're not blaming immigrants for the problems we face. For all our political and economic woes, it's good to know we're still ahead of the curve on a positive social trend. How long before the rest of the country catches on?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rodriguez-fear-20101101,0,4119698,print.column

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From the New York Times

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Bomb Plot Shows Key Role Played by Intelligence

In the middle of last week, a woman who claimed her name was Hanan al-Samawi, a 22-year-old engineering student, walked into the U.P.S. office in the upscale Hadda neighborhood of Sana, Yemen's sprawling capital city. She displayed a photocopied identification card, and dropped off a bomb hidden inside a printer cartridge with a Chicago address listed as the package's destination. A few blocks away, another package concealing a homemade bomb was dropped off at a FedEx office, also seemingly headed to Chicago.

Within days, the two packages had advanced through four countries in at least four different airplanes — two of them carrying passengers — before they were identified in Britain and Dubai after an 11th-hour tip from Saudi Arabia's intelligence service set off an international terrorism alert and a frantic hunt.

The foiling of the package plot was a significant success in an era of well-publicized intelligence breakdowns and miscommunications.

It was also a sobering reminder to officials around the world that quick response to timely intelligence rules the day. Despite the billions of dollars governments have spent on elaborate airport technology to guard against terrorism threats, the packages would probably have been loaded onto planes bound for the United States, but for the Saudi tip.

But the plot also points up holes in the system, particularly the security of cargo flights, that have already caused criticism abroad and are likely to rekindle new debates in the United States.

In Qatar, officials acknowledged Sunday that one of the packages had been carried on two Qatar Airways passenger planes, apparently having eluded the airline's cargo screening system. In Britain, officials were embarrassed about how long it took the authorities to identify one of the packages as a carefully concealed bomb.

American and Yemeni officials still have little hard evidence about who was involved in the thwarted attack. On Sunday officials in Yemen discovered that Ms. Samawi's identity had apparently been stolen, and that she was not the same woman who dropped off the packages. Ms. Samawi was released on bail on Sunday, and the authorities in Yemen have thus far arrested no other suspects.

It was one more piece of a carefully designed and cleverly disguised plot that investigators believe was conceived by Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen, the group that American officials say might pose the most immediate threat to American soil.

In television appearances on Sunday, John O. Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, said that American and British authorities were leaning toward the conclusion that the packages were meant to detonate in midair, en route to their destinations in Chicago. If that turns out to be the case, it would be a rare attack aimed at the air cargo system — one of the foundations of the global economy — rather than the passenger system, which has received the most attention from governments working to avoid a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

For the most part, governments around the world had bet that it was less likely that the cargo system would be the target of attacks, given that its flights carry few passengers.

“It is time for the shipping industry and the business community to accept the reality that more needs to be done to secure cargo planes so that they cannot be turned into a delivery systems for bombs targeting our country,” Representative Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement.

Congress in 2007, in legislation proposed by Mr. Markey, mandated that all air cargo be inspected before it is loaded onto passenger planes, setting an August 2010 deadline for the requirement. But as of the deadline, only about 65 percent of the cargo headed to the United States on passenger planes from abroad is inspected — and a far smaller proportion coming to the United States on all-cargo flights is physically checked, as these planes are not subject to the mandate.

Even when the cargo is checked, air carriers in certain countries use equipment like X-ray detection devices or a visual check by an airport worker that often cannot identify packages with bombs, because the small amount of explosive material can be carefully hidden inside a routine electronic device, like a computer printer.

Interviews in Washington, London and the Middle East reveal how the two bombs made their way through several countries before the tip from Saudi intelligence officials caused them to be pulled from airplanes.

The bomb dropped at the U.P.S. office in Sana ended up in East Midlands Airport, near Nottingham, England, by way of Cologne, Germany. A terrorism alert from Washington provoked a search for the package, which was found and kept from being shipped to the United States. But British authorities took more than 20 hours to determine that it contained hidden explosives.

Theresa May, the British home secretary, told the BBC that the government would review its security arrangements for handling air cargo entering or passing through Britain in the wake of the printer-bomb plot, but declined to give any details.

In Britain, cargo operators are vetted and named “trusted carriers.” Cargo itself is not screened, which some experts said made British airports vulnerable to terrorist exploitation. Ms. May said that any changes would have to take into account economic concerns. “We're well aware of the economic aspects of air freight transport,” she said.

The second package — a bomb hidden inside a Hewlett-Packard desktop printer — was sent out Thursday on a Qatar Airways passenger flight to Doha, the Qatari capital. There it sat for a day, and was then flown 235 miles east to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where it arrived Friday in the local FedEx distribution warehouse.

By that time Emirati authorities had received a warning call from Britain about a suspicious package there, and they identified the printer almost immediately, according to an official familiar with the investigation. Investigators removed and dismantled the explosive, which had been placed into the toner cartridge printer so carefully that all the printer's components appeared to be in place and it might well have passed unnoticed.

A cellphone was concealed in the bottom of the printer, and the printer head was designed to detonate the explosives.

On Sunday, officials in Qatar said in a statement that “the explosives discovered were of a sophisticated nature whereby they could not be detected by X-ray screening or trained sniffer dogs.”

As for who was behind the plot, evidence remains elusive, though officials believe the bombs bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in Yemen's top bomb maker. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a cable saying that the packages might have been linked to two schools in Yemen. If true, that would suggest that foreign students might have been involved in the plot, as in the attempted bombing of a commercial jetliner in Detroit last Dec. 25 by a Nigerian trained in Yemen.

But American and Yemeni investigators are trying to determine whether the schools — listed as the Yemen-American Institute for Language-Computer Management and the American Center for Training and Development — even exist. There is a school in Sana called the Yemen American Language Institute, but it is sponsored by the United States State Department. Its director, Aziz al-Hadi, said in a telephone interview that the school “has never used FedEx or U.P.S.” and did not help foreigners obtain visas. The school does not have a reputation for attracting religiously conservative students, unlike some other language schools in Yemen. There is an American Center for Training and Development in Egypt, but not in Yemen.

Ms. Samawi was released partly because the shipping agent for the courier company was brought into her interrogation and told investigators that she was not the person who had signed the shipping manifest, said a Yemeni official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Yemeni authorities have concluded that the plotters deliberately used Ms. Samawi's name, address and telephone number to make the shipment look legitimate. Ms. Samawi's mother was detained Saturday as well, but family friends said that was only because she insisted on accompanying her daughter.

“She is a very open-minded person; we cannot believe these accusations at all,” said Siham Ahmad Haza, 24, who described herself as a close friend of Ms. Samawi's, and a fellow student of computer engineering at Sana University. “She listens to music a lot, especially Western music. She loves foreigners, she's a balanced person.”

Ms. Samawi has two younger sisters, and her father works as an engineer in the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, according to family friends. The family lives in Shamlaan, on the outskirts of Sana.

About 100 students protested at Sana University on Sunday, chanting “Freedom, freedom for Hanan!”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/world/01terror.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Police Block March to the Vatican by Abuse Victims

ROME — Italian paramilitary police blocked a boulevard Sunday to prevent a march by victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clerics from reaching St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.

When the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, came to speak with organizers Sunday evening, a protester shouted “Shame, shame” in Italian. Father Lombardi later said by telephone that he had come to greet the organizers but when he saw “it wasn't going to be easy” he left, escorted by the police.

He said that if organizers wanted to see him he would “gladly” receive them inside his office. Shortly after that, one of the organizers, Gary Bergeron, did meet briefly with him, and the two agreed to have another meeting later.

The Vatican routinely prohibits activities it does not sponsor from using St. Peter's Square.

The event, which aimed to show victims worldwide that they are not alone, was organized by Mr. Bergeron and Bernie McDaid, who are both from Boston and who as children were both abused by the same priest several years apart. Mr. Bergeron said he told Father Lombardi that the abuse survivors have been “waiting a lifetime to be able to stand up and speak out.”

Participants, who reported having been raped or otherwise molested by Catholic clerics as children, flocked to Rome for the candlelit march. They came from a dozen countries and held signs with slogans including “Hands off children.”

Wearing T-shirts that read “Enough!” in English, Italian and German, the organizers demanded that the United Nations recognize the systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.

At a briefing before the march, participants stood up one by one to tell how their lives had been destroyed by the abuse they suffered as children. Many recounted years of drug and alcohol addiction, eating disorders and other psychological and emotional problems.

“For 50 years I thought I was the only person in the entire world that had been abused by a Catholic priest,” said Sue Cox, 63, from Warwickshire, England.

She then clarified. “Raped by a Catholic priest, not abused, because what he did was rape me, and rape is different,” she said. “It's taken 50 years for me to find my voice. But now I've found it, I want to continue to speak on behalf of people who maybe aren't able to speak or have not yet been able to face the fear and the guilt and shame that survivors feel.”

About 50 former students of a Catholic institute for the deaf in Verona, Italy, also joined the protest.

Two Vatican officials met privately with Mr. Bergeron and Mr. McDaid in Rome in 2003, and five years later Mr. McDaid became the first victim of abuse to meet with Pope Benedict XVI during the pope's trip to the United States.

Eight years after the U.S. scandal erupted in Boston, however, Mr. McDaid and Mr. Bergeron say the Vatican has not taken sufficient responsibility, has not reached out to victims or put in place universal prevention programs to ensure children are protected.

They formed the group Survivor's Voice as a way to bring together victims from around the world — a campaign that kicked into gear this year after the abuse scandal exploded anew on a global scale with revelations of thousands of victims in Europe and beyond, of bishops who covered up for pedophile priests and of Vatican officials who turned a blind eye to the crimes.

Ms. Cox said she was raped in her bedroom when she was 13 by a priest who had been filling in for her parish priest and had been staying at her parents' home. Her mother discovered what had happened immediately but did nothing, and told Ms. Cox to pray for the priest.

“I felt sacrificial,” she said. “I wanted to die.”

By 15 she was an alcoholic, by 17 she had entered into a violent marriage. By 30 she was recovering from alcoholism, and now at 63 is in what she calls the final stage of her recovery — “the hardest bit” — speaking out about abuse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/world/europe/01iht-vatican.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

Sorry State of Gun Control

As a new Congress looms, we suggest lawmakers travel to Washington by way of West Virginia and an obscure federal building called the National Tracing Center. There they can see workers laboring through unmanageably high backlogs of handwritten paper records submitted by the nation's gun dealers. This is Congress's handiwork — at the behest of the gun lobby and to the detriment of public safety.

Each year the center receives 300,000 inquiries from police officers' trying to track weapons from tens of thousands of gun deaths. But it is prohibited, by law, from collecting gun ownership records through a modern computerized database. Instead, paper prevails in assorted scraps. Workers huddle over desks with tape and magnifying glass, while crime marches on.

The center's plight was described in a Washington Post report detailing the insidious roadblocks and lethal damage wrought by bipartisan pandering to the gun lobby. Congress's failure is also clear in the underfinancing and short staffing at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Beleaguered enforcement agents must monitor 115,000 firearms dealers with 600 agents — the same number as three decades ago.

Gun dealers can go as long as eight years between visits from inspectors. Meanwhile, the criminal minority of dealers who repeatedly claim “lost” and “stolen” inventory — less than 2 percent of retailers — are rarely shut down since lawbreakers are allowed to “sell” their businesses to family members.

The A.T.F. bureau has also been denied a permanent director as the Senate cowers before the gun lobby. Congress's budgetary directives for the F.B.I. and D.E.A. total less than a score each. The A.T.F. gets 87.

Congress's obstructionism doesn't end there. Until seven years ago, police were able to consult the A.T.F. archives of gun traces from dealer to owner. No more. Congress has also effectively barred cities and individuals from suing the firearms industry for damages. A wad of fresh obstructions awaits the next Congress, devilishly titled “A.T.F. Reform and Firearms Modernization Act.” This would provide violators with bullet-proof protection — requiring not just evidence, but state-of-mind proof of a crooked dealer's premeditation to break the law. Lawmakers need to ask: Is this really why I was elected?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/opinion/01mon2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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White House weighs response to mail bomb plot

November 1, 2010

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- Teams of U.S. anti-terrorism and security experts are headed to Yemen to help search for suspects in the mail bomb plot and to train cargo screeners at the San'a airport.

The White House's top counterterrorism official, deputy national security adviser John Brennan, told Yemen's president on Sunday that his country has the lead in responding to the terrorists, according to a top Yemeni official.

The brief phone conversation between Brennan and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh came as Brennan led a team of national security and intelligence officials in a second day of meetings assessing the best options in striking back at the al-Qaida offshoot suspected of trying to mail explosive-laden cargo to the U.S. Officials say the powerful bombs containing industrial grade explosives may have been aimed at bringing down the planes.

The Yemeni official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss high-level conversations between the U.S. and Yemen that have taken place since the bombs, hidden in packed computer printers, were found Friday on planes.

The Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has been linked to the bomb plot because of the use of the explosive PETN, which was used by the group in last Christmas Day's bombing attempt of a Detroit-bound airliner. U.S. authorities also had intelligence that Yemeni al-Qaida was planning this operation, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

While the close calls with the package bombs expose another weakness in international security that could endanger the U.S., the incident also presents an opportunity for the White House to persuade Yemen to widen its war on terror by allowing the Americans a more active role.

The head of the Transportation Security Administration, John Pistole, said Monday on CBS's "Early Show" that his agency had dispatched security experts to Yemen to provide training, equipment and to assist with screening cargo leaving that country.

Yemen's government has worked closely with U.S. counterterrorist advisers from military special operations units, and Yemen's president acknowledged Saturday that his government is working with the CIA, according to a translation of his remarks by Yemen's embassy in Washington.

But Saleh has been reluctant to allow expanded use of armed drones or regular raids by U.S. special operations units on Yemeni soil, for fear of being accused of being labeled an American stooge, by the militants or his own people.

The mail bomb plot could pressure him to reconsider, according to Chris Boucek, a Yemen expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"The next attack, if something actually blows up, the U.S. won't be able to be so restrained," he said.

The danger, Boucek added, is that the U.S. might overreact and push Yemen to accept participation so overt that it undercuts Yemen's perceived legitimacy.

The Obama administration launched a clandestine war against Yemen's al-Qaida branch just months after President Barack Obama took office, and stepped up the tempo in the aftermath of the Christmas attack and AQAP's growing role in other plots against the U.S. That war has been waged mostly in secret, at the demand of Saleh's government.

Yemeni government ministers did, however, acknowledge publicly that the U.S. carried out cruise missile strikes last December against al-Qaida targets.

And while Yemeni officials have complained bitterly about collateral damage from some of the attacks, U.S. administration officials insist the Yemeni government signs off on those missions at the highest level, as part of combined counterterrorist operations.

Those operations are coordinated from an intelligence command center the U.S. runs with the Yemenis, where it shares intelligence gathered by satellite, manned aircraft and unmanned drones -- some of which were observed last week, as reported in the Yemeni press.

Building on that, the White House could push for more unilateral clandestine missions on Yemeni soil as well as an increased operational tempo against the militants -- as the U.S. has done against Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The administration could also ask to fly Predator and Reaper drones from inside Yemen, something Yemeni officials say they have already requested. Currently, drones and other observation platforms must be based off U.S. ships or fly from other U.S. air bases in the region, limiting the amount of fuel they have left by the time they reach a target or observation point.

Boucek said the hard part will be finding targets to hit. Over the past several months, Yemeni forces swept through many of the areas where al-Qaida holds sway, but Boucek said the operations netted only a few viable suspects.

The U.S. will provide some $300 million in military, humanitarian and development aid to Yemen this year, according to State Department counterterrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin. About half of that is for military equipment and training, including some 50 special-operations trainers for Yemeni counterterror teams.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2853302,mail-bomb-white-house-response-110110.article

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Plot foiled, but what else is out there?

Jewish Community Center in Chicago tells members it was not target

November 1, 2010

BY ADAM GOLDMAN AND ADAM SCHRECK

WASHINGTON -- The mail bomb plot stretching from Yemen to Chicago may have been aimed at blowing up planes in flight and was only narrowly averted, officials said Sunday, acknowledging that one device almost slipped through Britain and another seized in Dubai was unwittingly flown on two passenger jets.

Senior U.S. officials met to develop a U.S. response to the al-Qaida faction linked to the powerful explosives addressed to synagogues in Chicago.

Investigators were still piecing together the potency and construction of two bombs they believed were designed by the top explosives expert working for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based militant faction thought to be behind the plot.

Meanwhile, Yemeni authorities released a female computer engineering student arrested Saturday, saying someone else had posed as her in signing the shipping documents.

"We're trying to get a better handle on what else may be out there," deputy national security adviser John Brennan told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

He told CNN's "State of the Union" that "it would be very imprudent . . . to presume that there are no others [packages] out there."

Brennan said authorities are "looking at the potential that they would have been detonated en route to those synagogues aboard the aircraft as well as at the destinations. But at this point we, I think, would agree with the British that it looks as though they were designed to be detonated in flight." He made those remarks on CBS' "Face the Nation."

British Prime Minister David Cameron had raised the possibility the bombs were aimed at blowing up the planes carrying them.

One of the explosive devices found inside a shipped printer cartridge in Dubai had flown on two airlines before it was seized, first on a Qatar Airways Airbus A320 jet to Doha and then on an as-yet-undisclosed flight from Doha to Dubai.

Meanwhile, a federal source had told the Sun-Times on Friday that a Jewish Community Center in Chicago was a target. On Sunday, the JCC said in an e-mail to members it was not.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2852874,CST-NWS-bomb01.article

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Study: Alcohol is worst drug for society

ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 1, 2010

LONDON — Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study.

British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.

Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.

Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.

The study was paid for by Britain's Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online Monday in the medical journal, Lancet.

Experts said alcohol scored so high because it is so widely used and has devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them.

"Just think about what happens (with alcohol) at every football game," said Wim van den Brink, a professor of psychiatry and addiction at the University of Amsterdam. He was not linked to the study and co-authored a commentary in the Lancet.

When drunk in excess, alcohol damages nearly all organ systems. It is also connected to higher death rates and is involved in a greater percentage of crime than most other drugs, including heroin.

But experts said it would be impractical and incorrect to outlaw alcohol.

"We cannot return to the days of prohibition," said Leslie King, an adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and one of the study's authors. "Alcohol is too embedded in our culture and it won't go away."

King said countries should target problem drinkers, not the vast majority of people who indulge in a drink or two. He said governments should consider more education programs and raising the price of alcohol so it isn't as widely available.

Experts said the study should prompt countries to reconsider how they classify drugs. For example, last year in Britain, the government increased its penalties for the possession of marijuana. One of its senior advisers, David Nutt — the lead author on the Lancet study — was fired after he criticized the British decision.

"What governments decide is illegal is not always based on science," said van den Brink. He said considerations about revenue and taxation, like those garnered from the alcohol and tobacco industries, may influence decisions about which substances to regulate or outlaw.

"Drugs that are legal cause at least as much damage, if not more, than drugs that are illicit," he said.

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/2852588,CST-NWS-drug01.article

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