Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. A state Supreme Court has decided that, if a rape victim got herself drunk, her rape might not matter in a court of law. It’s a decision that even the justices seemed reluctant to make—but state law tied their hands. On Wednesday,
MARACAIBO, Venezuela — Poly wanders through Maracaibo, an industrial city in northwest Venezuela. She is on the hunt for some crack or some bazuco, a type of smokable coca paste used by the poorest in the country. At 10 hits to the dollar, it’s the cheapest of drugs in a country suffering from runaway hyperinflation,
Japan has some of the strictest drug laws in the world. Here, weed possession can land you up to five years in jail, the same prison sentence you’d get if you were guilty of intermediating child prostitution. Celebrities have had to “retire” from show business on accounts of possession: in September, popular actor Yusuke Iseya
The Australian government will fund a series of clinical trials into the potential use of psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine and other drugs as treatments for debilitating mental illnesses. The $15 million Innovative Therapies for Mental Illness Grant Opportunity, announced on Wednesday under the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), aims to bolster Australian-led research into drug and
Last week, just days before Honduras’ presidential primaries, a drug trafficker in a U.S. court alleged he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to outgoing Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. But if Honduras thought that a new president may bring an end to a litany of allegations of government collusion with drug traffickers,
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Early one morning in May 2019, a man stumbled naked through a middle-class neighborhood in central Guadalajara before collapsing on a street corner. He bore obvious signs of torture: His body was covered with cuts and blood. When police raided the nondescript house he’d escaped from, they found a horrific scene: nine
MEXICO CITY—Mexico just took one step closer to becoming the world’s largest legal weed market. With the passage Wednesday of a landmark weed legalization bill through Mexico’s Lower House of Congress, the country stands on the precipice of full legalization, provided the Senate clears changes to the bill and it passes before a Supreme Court
The following is an adapted excerpt from Ioan Grillo’s latest book, Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — It wasn’t a tough choice money-wise. Working as a laborer in his hometown in Chihuahua, Mexico, Jorge earned three hundred dollars a month. Buying guns from Texas and selling them south
Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. A criminal trial just kicked off in New York that could implicate Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández in a massive conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. During opening statements in the trial of accused Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes on Tuesday,
Umaire, a writer and aspiring filmmaker based in the western Indian city of Mumbai, had a cocaine addiction. In Sept. 2017, he confided in his parents and decided to seek professional guidance after rapidly losing weight and cognitive abilities. But as he toured the available options in Mumbai, he felt unsettled. “There were people in