Drug war cables: 'Burn poppies, burn'

[bloomington-lib]

Titles from some of the latest WikiLeaks cables on the "war on drugs" read like cheeky tabloid headlines rather than polished prose from international diplomats.

"Coke, tokes and inept folks: Can Sierra Leone stay tough on drugs?" reads a secret 2008 cable from the US embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital.

Diplomats in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau wrote: "No confidence in government, high confidence in drugs."

The cables portray a different “war on drugs” than what the US State Department describes to the public in its annual reports. "These cables reveal what is actually happening apart from the political line," says Sanho Tree, drug policy project coordinator at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former diplomatic historian. "They give you some interesting and hilarious data sets."

Much more at http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/interactive/2011/09/201194123837377104.html