Mandatory Minimums

A reform rollback in New Zealand, a hearing on DC decrim in Congress tomorrow, a medical marijuana trial becomes a travesty, the DEA makes another change-nothing drug bust, and more.

Asset forfeiture gone wild is in the news, so is a Delaware drug lab scandal, there's a major report on imprisonment from the National Academy of Sciences, Silk Road is back, and more.

DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart was resolutely 20th Century as she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Mandatory minimums good, marijuana legalization bad, she argued.

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has become the first justice ever to endorse marijuana legalization.

President Obama commutes a marijuana offender's sentence, organized opposition to a legalization initiative emerges in Alaska, draconian heroin bills are moving in Louisiana, and more.

The US Sentencing Commission voted yesterday to reduce most federal drug trafficking sentences. The move will cut nearly a year off the average sentence and should result in 6,500 fewer prisoners within five years, the commission said.

A DC marijuana legalization initiative is about to start signature-gathering, we have a trio of state pot polls, the US Sentencing Commission moves to cut drug sentences, German criminal law professors call for marijuana legalization, and more.

The federal Smarter Sentencing Act picked up four new Republican House consponsors in one day this month.

British celebrity chef Nigella Lawson is banned from the US for admitting using coke, decrim dies for the year in Maryland, CBD medical marijuana bill continue to move, the resort to the overdose drug naloxone is spreading rapidly, Guatemala's president wants to legalize pot and poppies, and more.

A new Pew poll has majority support for marijuana legalization, treatment instead of jail for hard drug users, and getting rid of mandatory minimums. Now, how do we translate that into policy?