Arrests

The Obama administration said it wouldn't raid medical marijuana providers who act in accordance with state law, but a bust last week raises a few questions.

Last weekend's Seattle Hempfest is likely to have been the biggest one yet, as multitudes swarmed the waterfront for the two-day bash. But there are critics aiming at it, including a leading drug reformer and a former Hempfest organizer.

Despite tough pot laws and harsh public condemnations of marijuana use in the media, Japan continues to see increasing numbers of marijuana arrests.

It's been another bloody couple of weeks of prohibition-related violence in Mexico. Here's the latest on that and other drug war developments south of the border.

Hardly a day goes by without another body being found in Mexico's prohibition-related violence, and the Mexican government is under increasing fire as the death toll rises. Now, thanks to upcoming journalist Bernd Debusmann Jr., the Chronicle will be watching and summarizing events on a weekly basis.

Albany, New York, sheriff's deputies suspected Tunde Clement was carrying drugs when he got off a bus from New York City in March 2006. They searched his backpack. Nothing. They strip-searched him. Nothing. Then the took him to a hospital, forcibly sedated him, and shoved a camera up his butt. Now, the county and the hospital are paying for their misdeeds.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has already presided over years of drug war directed at his own country, he's busily trying to recriminalize drug possession, and now he wants to throw peasant coca farmers in jail. This is a man out of step with his region.

The Mexican Congress has passed a bill that would decriminalize the possession of "personal use" amounts of illegal drugs. Some of the other provisions in the measure are not so nice.

A significant change in the impact of our drug policies may have occurred in the last few years. The number of African Americans doing time for drug charges is down, both percentage-wise and in raw numbers. Not so for whites.

Drug possession has been legal in Colombia since 1994. But now, a teetotaling President Uribe wants to go back to the bad old days.