HM Revenue & Customs has issued a press release detailing the UK government’s plans to fine tobacco companies who don’t do enough to ensure that cigarettes and hand rolling tobacco are not smuggled into the country, depriving authorities of tax money.

Tobacco companies will, amongst other things, be expected to know “their markets”, only supply them “in quantities that reflect legitimate demand”, “know their customers” and only supply “those who are legitimate and law-abiding”. I wonder if they will be issued with cool tax collector badges as well, not to mention expert lectures on how the market works.

A recent article on drugs in Punjab province of India looks into the question of why addiction is widespread seemingly regardless of social class or economic situation. It’s an interesting article from a local perspective.

With a little further research though, you start to realise just how big the issue of the drug trade is for the people of Punjab.

Punjab has a growing heroin problem and trafficking profits have attracted international profiteers from as far away as the UK.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article up about that ambush by a Colombian army unit of an elite police anti-drug squad in Colombia that occured back in May, which led to all nine members being killed, with allegations of corruption and infiltration of the military by a powerful drug cartel following soon after.

Most of it is a backgrounder on Plan Colombia, the U.S. government’s $4.7 billion aid effort to fight cocaine production, drug cartels and the FARC, with only a little more detail on the Jamundi massacre itself being included. It is then followed by another article with the Drug Czar, John Walters, claiming that the war is being won, despite coca production actually having increased of late.

The libertarian Reason Foundation has come out with a report that “finds drinking can help your wallet”.

According to a study that was published in the latest edition of the Journal of Labor Research, a survey of self-reported drinkers versus abstainers found a correlation between social drinking and increased earnings. For example, “men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers.”

And according to economists Bethany Peters and Edward Stringham, the causation can be put down to increased “social capital”, with the theory being that “[s]ocial drinkers are networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their Blackberries that result in bigger paychecks”.

A study in Australia has found that there is a major problem with the amount of prisoners testing positive for illegal drugs in the West Australian prison system.

The report found that about 900 prisoners had tested positive for drugs in the last year - mainly amphetamines and cannibis.

This represented a 22% increase over the same period last year.

A bored population of criminals (many with a history of drug use) in combination with an underpaid  (read: potentially corruptible) guard staff and there’s a drug problem?

Jamey Kirby of Las Vegas-based company Redux Beverages, the inventor of an energy drink called “Cocaine” that is being billed as “the legal alternative”, says he came up with the name during a brainstorming session at one in the morning.

Its provocative and instantly recognisable name, coupled with the claim that it is “350 percent stronger than Red Bull”, brought a flurry of visitors to the official website - it got over six and a half million web hits in an eight day period ending yesterday and crashed for a while - and is also garnering worldwide interest from the likes of England, Australia, Italy and Latin America; it is currently only available from bars and convenience stores in the metropolitan areas of New York and Los Angeles.

It was bound to happen. The office of the Drug Czar is going Youtube and putting up some anti-drug videos on the great video-sharing site.

The pluses for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy are that it is free - not that spending huge amounts of money is an impediment for the White House - and Youtube is a popular site.

The big question is will the campaign be any improvement on its previously disastrous television campaigns - the Youtube videos were originally made for television - and whether a whole bunch of anti-anti-drug videos will appear on the same medium mocking these originals, as was suggested by this Associated Press article about the Drug Czar’s plan.

The Associated Press has put out an article about how Kenya has recently been cited by officials from the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Nations as increasingly becoming a cocaine distribution hub, after formerly being more known as a “backwater producer of marijuana and hashish”. The U.S. State Department’s 2006 drug control strategy report was quoted as saying that “[i]nternational drug trafficking rings have made inroads in Kenya and may benefit from a climate of official corruption, which allows them to operate with near impunity”.

An absolutely stunning statistic has emerged from Afghanistan this week with the revelation that in the past year, the country has convicted a grand total of 35 drug smugglers.

This paltry sum comes despite the fact that the British alone have contributed over 47 million pounds to the Afghan anti narcotics effort and despite the fact that the country is once again, the prime opium producer in the world.

In fact the crop accounts for over half of the nation’s GDP.

As mentioned here several times, the reputation of certain Ghana’s law enforcement agencies has been taking a bit of a hit internationally and locally after the scandal of an alleged 77 parcels of cocaine having gone missing from the MV Benjamin that was raided off Ghana’s coast a few months ago.

Five policemen have now been arrested in the past week, after purportedly going to the beach after news of the bust was made and returning without making any arrests, according to police sources who spoke to the Ghanaian Chronicle, with the implication that the cops were corrupt. Corruption allegations have gone far up the police ladder after a conversation between alleged drug dealers - who have been arrested - about the disappearance of the drugs having been recorded in the house of the Assistant Commissioner of Police Kofi Boakye.