Arrests

It was a relatively quiet week in Mexico's drug wars this week. Only about 15 people a day were killed.

Will 2010 be the year the first state legalizes marijuana? If California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and Washington Representative Roger Goodman have their way, two states will do so.

A Worcester, Massachusetts, resident tried to snuff out an ill-timed joint and fasten his seat belt as the vehicle he was in rolled up to a police sobriety checkpoint last week. He was dead within minutes, and his family's attorney claims he was beaten by police. Police have a different version of events.

The carnage continues. This week an American citizen is among the casualties, but it looks like she was the victim of a soldier's inadvertent discharge.

For years, federal prosecutors on the US-Mexican border have been so swamped with smuggling cases that they refuse to prosecute busts under 500 pounds. Local prosecutors can't handle the overflow, either, so now, the US is sending busted Mexican pot smugglers back home to be prosecuted.

No break in Mexico's prohibition-related violence as the death toll since December 2006, when President Calderon called in the army, has now topped 15,000. The latest victims include a US soldier gunned down in a Ciudad Juárez strip club with five other people.

If you're interested in the border or Mexico's drug war or drug culture or drug economy, or in drug law enforcement, we've got a book you need to read. University of Texas-El Paso sociologist and anthropologist Howard Campbell provides a vivid, rich, and nuanced portrayal of drugs and the drug war in El Paso-Juarez that couldn't be more timely.

For the first time in nearly a century, the California legislature took up marijuana legalization on this week. A Wednesday hearing on a legalization bill previewed the battle lines and arguments that lie ahead.

Mexico's wave of prohibition-related violence grinds on, and Ciudad Juárez remains the epicenter.

Modesto, California, is a sleepy, dusty, economically struggling small city in California's Central Valley. With high levels of methamphetamine and other injection drug use, it is a locale crying out for needle exchange programs. But local officials disagree, and when activists did it anyway, they got busted. Now, they're fighting back.