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Since September, the U.S. has launched more than two dozen strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Here's how we got here.

Abstract Street-level drug markets have traditionally been understood as operating predominantly at a local level, and there has been an absence of contemporary research that has challenged accepted thinking around their shape and organization. This article aims to outline an important development in the retail drug supply landscape, analysing a fast evolving and expanding drug supply model that involves ‘outreach’ selling from major supply hubs, direct to heroin/crack users in provincial satellite areas. Drawing on a mixed method approach analysing heroin/crack markets in six English locales, we explore how so-called ‘county lines’ drug dealing manifests in these spaces. Findings suggest that distinctive supply practices including ‘commuting’, ‘holidaying’ and ‘cuckooing’ have emerged and that out-of-town dealers regularly exploit vulnerable populations in order to maximize economic gain in these new ‘host’ drug markets.

El objetivo de este trabajo es comparar las novelas latinoamericanas sobre la piratería del siglo XIX con las novelas sobre el narcotráfico del siglo XX para demostrar que los negocios del crimen organizado crean su propia soberanía yuxtapuesta a la soberanía estatal y que tanto los piratas como los narcotraficantes están en la constante renegociación de su relación con el Estado. Las novelas que se tomarán en cuenta son: del siglo XIX, El filibustero (1864), del escritor mexicano Eligio Ancona, y Los piratas en Cartagena (1886), de la escritora colombiana Soledad Acosta de Samper; del siglo XX, Contrabando (1991), del escritor mexicano Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, y La Virgen de los Sicarios (1994), del escritor colombiano Fernando Vallejo. El trabajo se divide en dos apartados; el primer apartado trabaja la relación entre los piratas y narcotraficantes con el Estado. Se discuten las actitudes de los escritores de la época hacia el Estado y las implicaciones de los actores estatales en el negocio ilegal. El segundo apartado discute la existencia de las soberanías yuxtapuestas que se representan a través la creación del imaginario social de la piratería y del narcotráfico. Partiendo de los recursos históricos y políticos sobre la piratería y el narcotráfico, este trabajo pretende crear un ambiente interdisciplinario para discutir el crimen organizado en la literatura y su influencia política en la sociedad. PALABRAS CLAVE: piratería, narcotráfico, soberanía, Estado, ambigüedad, literatura instrumental The aim of this paper is to compare 19th-century Latin American novels about piracy with 20th-century novels about drug trafficking in order to demonstrate that organized crime creates its own sovereignty juxtaposed with state sovereignty and that both pirates and drug traffickers are constantly renegotiating their relationship with the state. The literary corpus from the 19th century includes El filibustero (1864), by Mexican writer Eligio Ancona, and Los piratas en Cartagena (1886), by Colombian writer Soledad Acosta de Samper; from the 20th century, Contrabando (1991), by Mexican writer Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, and La Virgen de los Sicarios (1994), by Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo. This paper is divided into two sections; the first section deals with the relationship between pirates and drug traffickers and the State. It discusses the attitudes of the writers towards the State and the implications of the State actors in the illegal business. The second section discusses the existence of juxtaposed sovereignties represented through the creation of the social imaginary of piracy and drug trafficking. Drawing on historical and political resources on piracy and drug trafficking, this paper aims to create an interdisciplinary environment to discuss organized crime in literature and its political influence on society. KEYWORDS: piracy, drug trafficking, sovereignty, State, ambiguity, instrumental literature

KP46 (tris(hydroxyquinolinato)gallium(III)) is an experimental, orally administered anticancer drug. Its absorption, delivery to tumours, and mode of action are poorly understood. We aimed to gain insight into these issues using gallium-67 and gallium-68 as radiotracers with SPECT and PET imaging in mice. [[sup.67]Ga]KP46 and [[sup.68]Ga]KP46, compared with [[sup.68]Ga]gallium acetate, were used for logP measurements, in vitro cell uptake studies in A375 melanoma cells, and in vivo imaging in mice bearing A375 tumour xenografts up to 48 h after intravenous (tracer level) and oral (tracer and bulk) administration. [sup.68]Ga was more efficiently accumulated in A375 cells in vitro when presented as [[sup.68]Ga]KP46 than as [[sup.68]Ga]gallium acetate, but the reverse was observed when intravenously administered in vivo. After oral administration of [[sup.68/67]Ga]KP46, absorption of [sup.68]Ga and [sup.67]Ga from the GI tract and delivery to tumours were poor, with the majority excreted in faeces. By 48 h, low but measurable amounts were accumulated in tumours. The distribution in tissues of absorbed radiogallium and octanol extraction of tissues suggested trafficking as free gallium rather than as KP46. We conclude that KP46 likely acts as a slow releaser of gallium ions which are inefficiently absorbed from the GI tract and trafficked to tissues, including tumour and bone.

The opioid crisis in the United States is exacerbated by both the ubiquity and potency of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Fentanyl is commonly mixed surreptitiously with other illicit drugs-such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine-and thus is often taken unknowingly, which has driven an increase in opioid overdoses in recent years. The CDC estimates that there were about 110,000 drug overdose deaths in 2022, and of those, roughly 75% were due to fentanyl or other synthetic opioids.

Social media use is now ubiquitous, but the growth in social media communications has also made it a convenient digital platform for drug dealers selling controlled substances, opioids, and other illicit drugs. Previous studies and news investigations have reported the use of popular social media platforms as conduits for opioid sales. This study uses deep learning to detect illicit drug dealing on the image and video sharing platform Instagram. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a machine learning approach to detect Instagram posts related to illegal internet drug dealing. In this paper, we describe an approach to detect drug dealers by using a deep learning model on Instagram. We collected Instagram posts using a Web scraper between July 2018 and October 2018 and then compared our deep learning model against 3 different machine learning models (eg, random forest, decision tree, and support vector machine) to assess the performance and accuracy of the model. For our deep learning model, we used the long short-term memory unit in the recurrent neural network to learn the pattern of the text of drug dealing posts. We also manually annotated all posts collected to evaluate our model performance and to characterize drug selling conversations. From the 12,857 posts we collected, we detected 1228 drug dealer posts comprising 267 unique users. We used cross-validation to evaluate the 4 models, with our deep learning model reaching 95% on F1 score and performing better than the other 3 models. We also found that by removing the hashtags in the text, the model had better performance. Detected posts contained hashtags related to several drugs, including the controlled substance Xanax (1078/1228, 87.78%), oxycodone/OxyContin (321/1228, 26.14%), and illicit drugs lysergic acid diethylamide (213/1228, 17.34%) and 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (94/1228, 7.65%). We also observed the use of communication applications for suspected drug trading through user comments. Our approach using a combination of Web scraping and deep learning was able to detect illegal online drug sellers on Instagram, with high accuracy. Despite increased scrutiny by regulators and policymakers, the Instagram platform continues to host posts from drug dealers, in violation of federal law. Further action needs to be taken to ensure the safety of social media communities and help put an end to this illicit digital channel of sourcing.

Background In January 2023, British Columbia implemented a three-year exemption to Controlled Drugs and Substances Act , as granted by the federal government of Canada, to decriminalize the personal possession of small amounts of certain illegal drugs. This decriminalization policy, the first in Canada, was announced in response to the overdose emergency in British Columbia as a public health intervention that could help curb overdose deaths by reducing the impact of criminalization and increasing access to health and social services through stigma reduction. Methods The current multi-method study examines people who use drugs’ awareness and knowledge of British Columbia’s decriminalization model through cross-sectional quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews among people who use drugs from September–November 2022, immediately prior to the implementation of decriminalization. Results Quantitative findings show that two-thirds (63%) of people who use drugs were aware of the policy, but substantial knowledge gaps existed about the legal protections afforded (threshold amount, substances included, drug trafficking, confiscation). The qualitative findings suggest that people who use drugs misunderstood the details of the provincial decriminalization model and often conflated it with regulation. Results suggest that information sharing about decriminalization were minimal pre-implementation, highlighting areas for knowledge dissemination about people who use drugs' rights under this policy. Conclusions Given that decriminalization in British Columbia is a new and landmark reform, and that the success of decriminalization and its benefits may be undermined by poor awareness and knowledge of it, efforts to share information, increase understanding, and empower the community, may be required to promote its implementation and benefits for the community.