According to Ron Hyman of the Colorado Department of Health, there is a backlog of 60,000 to 70,000 applications for state-issued medical marijuana licenses waiting for approval. The delay is costly -- there is more than $5 million in application fees waiting to be processed.

Facebook may think it's "inappropriate" to run ads depicting marijuana leaves, but apparently Google doesn't.

Drug policy has focused on a policing approach of prohibition and incarceration, which has contributed to spreading HIV within the injection-drug community. Comprehensive drug reform policies are showing better results. Despite massive investments in drug law enforcement in the past three decades, with much of the international interdiction effort paid for by the U.S. government through assistance to national military and police forces, there is "a general pattern of falling drug prices and increasing drug purity" throughout the world, according to the Vienna Declaration.

Mexican marines have found 72 corpses at a ranch after a shoot-out with drug traffickers that left one soldier and three gunmen dead near the town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas. It appears to be the largest dumping ground for the victims of drug prohibition violence found in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon began a stunningly unsuccessful offensive against traffickers in late 2006.

Representatives from the Latino Voters League (LVL) and the National Black Police Association have given formal endorsements of Proposition 19, The Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Initiative of 2010. If passed, the measure would legalize the private adult possession and cultivation of marijuana, and allow local government the option to regulate the plant’s commercial production and sale.