Drug War Chronicle

With US and NATO policies for dealing with the Afghan poppy group undergoing quite radical shifts -- giving up on eradication, treating traffickers as terrorists -- Gretchen Peters' exposé of the links between the traffic in prohibited drugs and the Taliban and Al Qaeda couldn't be more timely or more informative.

It's been a relatively quiet week on the corrupt cops front, with just two stories, but one of them is a real doozy.

Relations between Bolivia and the US just got a little rockier as the Obama administration declined to restore trade preferences, citing Bolivia's "encouragement" of coca cultivation, and Bolivian President Morales responded with hard words.

Here comes the National Guard! The Obama administration is planning to send 1,500 National Guard troops to the Mexican border to support drug war law enforcement there.

Voters in Oakland will decide whether to impose a whopping 1500% tax increase on dispensaries, and it's not an attack on them. In fact, it was the dispensaries' own idea. Talk about your good citizens.

Thanks to last minute action by the state Senate, Rhode Island will create a commission to explore all aspects of marijuana prohibition, decriminalization, and legalization. It will issue a report seven months from now. And Gov. Carcieri can't veto it.

Portugal has been getting good press over its decriminalization approach to drug use, including from unexpected places like the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Now, some Portuguese lawmakers are ready to take the next step. A bill to legalize the possession, cultivation, and sale of marijuana is being prepared.

Faced with a growing Taliban insurgency fueled by opium and heroin profits and inflamed by the destruction of farmers' fields, the US last weekend announced a dramatic shift in its Afghan anti-drug strategy. The US will abandon what has been a pillar of its anti-drug strategy worldwide: eradication.

Cops who confiscate legally permitted marijuana or plants from patients and growers in California could pay out the nose for their violations of the constitution, a California appeals court has ruled in the first decision of its kind. That just might rein in some of those renegade, recalcitrant departments who want to ignore a law they don't like.

“FOX News dice que la marihuana come el alma de uno”, “Los federales se otorgan nuevas facultades antidrogas”, “¡¡¡Tiburones llenos de cocaína!!!”, “¿Cuántos inocentes están en prisión por cargos de delitos de drogas?”, “Los dispensarios de marihuana medicinal llegan a Rhode Island”, “La política ‘dura con la droga’ simplemente ya no es popular”, “Una entrevista embarazosa con el secretario antidroga”, “Vídeo: Milton Friedman sobre la legalización de la marihuana”, “Vídeo: Se entrega petición de reforma en condenas para delitos por piedra de cocaína a Congreso de EE. UU. - Ex presos, familiares y militantes se pronuncian” y “Vídeo sobre abusos contra el medio ambiente – y la gente – en lucha contra la droga de Colombia, de Witness for Peace”.