Arrests

For Mexico, drug prohibition is the deadly gift that keeps on giving. A thousand people have been killed in the past 40 days, and this year's death toll has now passed 6,000. And it seems to be accelerating.

The hemp industry is growing weary of waiting for the right to grow hemp in this country. It has filed lawsuits, it has a bill in Congress, and it is asking the Obama administration to treat hemp the same way it treats medical marijuana. But nothing is happening, so now, the movement is turning up the heat with civil disobedience.

Whether the Obama administration has ushered in a new era when it comes to the federal government and medical marijuana is arguable. One thing that isn't is that victims of Clinton and Bush era raids remain behind bars or facing prosecution. There are beginning to be moves afoot to right that lingering wrong.

Another week, another grim death toll in Mexico. September was the bloodiest month this year.

Global Marijuana March organizer Dana Beal and two friends are in hot water after being busted while heading east through Nebraska last week.

Libertarian Free Staters are staging daily pot-smoking civil disobedience protests in Keene, New Hampshire, and this week, the protests spread to Manchester.

San Diego may be a gleaming, coastal California city, but when it comes to medical marijuana, it's more like Fresno-by-the-Sea. The latest round of dispensary raids has patients and advocates fuming and looking for ways to extract political revenge and gain a little justice.

The number of marijuana arrests last year declined for the first time since 2002, the FBI said in its Uniform Crime Report this week. The overall number of drug arrests also fell slightly. The down-tick seems to be the result not of enlightened policing, but of law enforcement agencies feeling the budgetary pinch.

This year's Mexican drug wars body count is closing in on 5,000, with more than 200 added to the death toll last week.

Here's the latest on the prohibition-related carnage wracking Mexico.