Back in the News: US-Canada ecstasy smuggling ring and Lynch's Border Songs

I don't like to post twice about the same book, but this article is just too dead-on to pass up.

Last month I posted about Jim Lynch's Border Songs, a novel all about a border patrol agent who busts drug smugglers along the Canada-Washington state border.

Flash forward to this morning, when the BBC ran the article "US border agents bust US-Canada 'ecstasy smuggling ring':"

Four people are in custody in the US and Canada after a suspected drug smuggler fired on US border agents and fled, sparking a day-long manhunt. 

The incident began on Tuesday morning when border agents encountered two men carrying backpacks five miles (8km) east of Sumas, Washington, in the US. Authorities say agents interrupted an attempt to smuggle a load of MDMA, or ecstasy, from Canada to San Francisco... 

On Tuesday morning, US border agents ordered the two men they encountered near the border to halt, officials said. One of the men dropped his backpack, fired a weapon at the agents, and ran, according to a criminal complaint filed in US federal court in Washington on Wednesday. 

The officers took the other man, identified as Jeffrey Laviolette, into custody immediately. Canadian and US police searched for the fugitive on foot and by helicopter, putting up road blocks. Nathan Hall, a Canadian citizen, was arrested by the Abbotsford Police Department in British Columbia early on Wednesday morning. According to border patrol agents, the backpacks Mr Hall and Mr Laviolette were carrying contained a total of 58lb (26kg) of ecstasy.... 

The wooded area a few miles east of a highway border crossing is a well-known smuggling route for drugs and firearms, and a spokeswoman for the US attorney for the Western District of Washington told the BBC smuggling prosecutions are "a large part of our practice".

Newsworthy Novels: bringing you tomorrow's news today!

E-Cigarettes & Buckley's Thank you for Smoking

I've covered pot and alcohol; now it's time to move on to cigarettes.  Electronic cigarettes, that is.

From the March 23rd editorial in The Economist, "No smoke. Why the fire?:"

Some inventions are so simple, you have to wonder why no one has come up with them before. One such is the electronic cigarette. Smoking tobacco is the most dangerous voluntary activity in the world. More than 5m people die every year of the consequences. That is one death in ten. People smoke because they value the pleasure they get from nicotine in tobacco over the long-term certainty that their health will be damaged. So it seems rational to welcome a device that separates the dangerous part of smoking (the tar, carbon monoxide and smoke released by the process of combustion) from the nicotine. 

And that is what an e-cigarette does. It uses electricity from a small battery to vaporise a nicotine-containing solution, so that the user can breathe it in. E-cigarettes do not just save the lives of smokers: they bring other benefits too. Unlike cigarettes, they do not damage the health of bystanders. They do not even smell that bad, so there is no public nuisance, let alone hazard, and thus no reason to ban their use in public places. Pubs and restaurants should welcome them with open arms.  

No wonder the e-cigarette market is growing. Though still small compared with that for real smokes, it doubled in America last year and is likely to do so again in 2013. 

Who could object? Quite a lot of people, it seems. Instead of embracing e-cigarettes, many health lobbyists are determined to stub them out. Some claim that e-cigarettes may act as “gateways” to the real thing. Others suggest that the flavourings sometimes added to the nicotine-bearing solution make e-cigarettes especially attractive to children...

It seems that the next evolution in the long history of tobacco has arrived.

For a book about cigarettes and the tobacco lobby, try Christopher Buckley's satirical novel Thank You for Smoking:

Nick Naylor likes his job. In the neo-puritanical nineties, it's a challenge to defend the rights of smokers and a privilege to promote their liberty. Sure, it hurts a littIe when you're compared to Nazi war criminals, but Nick says he's just doing what it takes to pay the mortgage and put his son through Washington's elite private school St. Euthanasius. He can handle the pressure from the antismoking zealots, but he is less certain about his new boss, BR, who questions whether Nick is worth $150,000 a year to fight a losing war. Under pressure to produce results, Nick goes on a PR offensive. But his heightened notoriety makes him a target for someone who wants to prove just how hazardous smoking can be. If Nick isn't careful, he's going to be stubbed out.

Las Vegas' Fall/Rise & Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Just like Detroit, Vegas was hit hard by the recession and is looking for urban renewal.

From Sunday's Guardian article "Downtown Las Vegas may have found what it's looking for:"

[B]roken pavements, empty lots, boarded-up facades. This urban wasteland is the real downtown Las Vegas, the product of decades of dysfunction and neglect, home to poverty, unemployment and foreclosures, a dystopian hangover to the strip's excesses in a town hit harder than most by the recession. Ocean's Eleven feels far away. 

Yet it is here an enigmatic tycoon is spending $350m (£230m) in a unique experiment at urban regeneration and, as he puts it, human happiness. Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) is luring poets, artists, inventors, investors, geeks, a motley band of British entrepreneurs and 1,500 ferociously cheerful employees known as Zapponians into an attempt to turn downtown Las Vegas into a hub of culture and innovation. 

Hsieh, 39, a Silicon Valley wunderkind with a Midas touch, has become an improbable aristocrat of Sin City. In the past year he has bought swathes of real estate, including the former city hall, as part of an ambitious plan to jumble together business, arts and architecture in a way that fosters "serendipity", connections between people that fuel creativity and fulfilment... 

He has been inspired by Edward Glaeser's book Triumph of the City (subtitle: how our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier) and its idea of cafes, parks or squares anchoring communities.

What is the "Great Las Vegas novel?"  I think the leading contender has to be Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which, along with The The White Tiger and Straight Man, is one of my top twenty favorite novels of all time).  I don't know if it'll teach you much about Vegas, but you'll be enjoying yourself too much to notice:

Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in a souped-up convertible dubbed the "Great Red Shark."... On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream... They never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." 

A half-decent effort that I would avoid is The Delivery Man by Joe McGinniss Jr:

After attending college in New York, Chase returns to Vegas and is drawn into the lucrative but dangerous world of a teenage call-girl service with his childhood friend Michele, a beautiful Salvadoran immigrant with whom he shares a tragic past. Over the course of one extraordinary summer they will confront the violence and emptiness at the heart of the city...

To give you an idea of what I don't like about McGinniss' writing, here's a brief excerpt:

Chase was scared and asked how much money Mom owed (but to whom? and why?) and Carly said she thought it was like maybe two hundred thousand dollars but Carly was only eleven that summer and not very good with numbers so it could have been much less.

Why are you writing run-on sentences and perhaps you are trying to maybe like use the kid's stream of consciousness but that can't be it because I doubt that character would use whom in an inner monologue and I think the war on commas needs to stop.

The Border Patrol, the US-Canadian Border, & Lynch's Border Songs

We've previously touched on the US-Mexico border (with the post about Boyle's Tortilla Curtain and Mexican immigration), but the northern border has been a little neglected. How are things going up there? Not well, it seems:

Sequester means fewer agents along Canadian border

The union representing border patrol agents says it's being unfairly targeted for spending cuts under the sequester, and that there will be less of a law enforcement presence along the North Country's border with Canada. Starting next month, all U.S. border patrol agents will have to take a day's furlough for every pay period... Shawn Moran is the vice-president of the National Border Patrol council, the agents' union. Moran says the cumulative effect will be 5,000 agents out of the field at any given time. And that means, he says, less secure borders. "We're going to see more people successfully crossing the border. When agents call for backup, there's going to be a longer response time to get backup, there'll be fewer people out there. On top of that, the agency is trying to save money in terms or vehicles and gas. That's also going to slash the amount of area we can effectively cover."

Looks like the sequester will also have a major economic impact on the US-Canada border, as reported last month by Canada's Globe & Mail in its article "Massive spending cuts could have Canada-U.S. border plan shelved:"

Lengthy lineups at the Canada-U.S. border. Long flight delays. A loss of lucrative American business contracts. The much-heralded Beyond the Border initiatives placed on the back burner indefinitely. Canada will feel the sting if U.S. Congress fails this week to avert what’s known as sequestration, an array of massive, mandated spending cuts to a host of federal departments and agencies aimed at slashing America’s $16-trillion national debt... For Canadians, that means quick shopping trips to nearby border communities will almost immediately become a hassle as they’re confronted with waits of several hours at busier entry points. They’ll also feel the long hand of sequestration when they fly given there will be a ripple effect across North America as U.S. officials cancel flights and shutter some control towers and airports.

For a novel centered around the US-Canadian border and the US border patrol, try Jim Lynch's Border Songs:

Six foot eight and severely dyslexic, Brandon Vanderkool has always had an unusual perspective—which comes in handy once his father pushes him off their dairy farm and into the Border Patrol. He used to jump over the ditch into British Columbia but now is responsible for policing a thirty-mile stretch of this largely invisible boundary. Uncomfortable in this uniformed role, he indulges his passion for bird-watching and often finds not only an astonishing variety of species but also a great many smugglers hauling pot into Washington State, as well as potentially more dangerous illegals. What a decade before was a sleepy rural hinterland is now the front line of an escalating war on both drugs and terrorism.

Marijuana in the US & Boyle’s Budding Prospects

 Earlier this month we touched on the War on Drugs and its impact on Mexico.  Now it's time for a look on how it is playing out in the US.  Here's today’s Politico story “Bill unveiled to legalize medical pot:”

Flanked by more than 150 advocates from around the country, Oregon Democrat [Representative] Earl Blumenauer on Monday put forward his legislation allowing states to legalize medical marijuana in an effort to end the confusion surrounding federal pot policy. Blumeanuer’s legislation, which has 13 co-sponsors — including GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California — would create a framework for the FDA to eventually legalize medicinal marijuana. It would also block the feds from interfering in any of the 19 states where medical marijuana is legal.

For a novel about growing pot in the US, try T.C. Boyle’s Budding Prospects:

All Felix Nasmyth and friends have to do is harvest a crop of Cannabis Sativa...and half a million tax-free dollars will be theirs. But they haven't reckoned on nosy Northern California-style neighbors, torrential rain, demands of the flesh, and Felix's improbable new love, a wayward sculptress on whose behalf he undertakes a one-man vendetta against a drug-busting state trooper named Jerpbak. As their deal escalates through crises into nightmare, their dreams of easy money get nipped in the bud.

War on Drugs & Winslow's The Power of the Dog

The New York Times had an fascinating article this week on the War on Drugs and U.S.-Mexico relations: "Hand of U.S. Is Seen in Halting General’s Rise in Mexico." Here's one of the parts I found the most interesting:

“When it comes to Mexico, you have to accept that you’re going to dance with the devil,” said a former senior D.E.A. official, who requested anonymity because he works in the private sector in Mexico. “You can’t just fold your cards and go home because you can’t find people you completely trust. You play with the cards you’re dealt.” A former senior Mexican intelligence official expressed similar misgivings about American officials. “The running complaint on the Mexican side is that the relationship with the United States is unequal and unbalanced,” said the former official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke anonymously to discuss diplomatic and security exchanges. “Mexico is open with its secrets. The United States is not. So there’s a lot of resentment. And there’s always an incentive to try to stick it to the Americans.”

A novel that delves deeply into the War on Drugs and U.S.-Mexico relations is Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog:

An explosive novel of the drug trade, The Power of the Dog, takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. Art Montana is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerful and uncorruptable Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell’s kitchen who grows up to be a merciless hitman. And they are all trapped in the world of the Mexican drug Federación.