Mandatory Minimums

A majority of Canadians think marijuana should be legalized, according to a new poll. They also approve of harm reduction -- even if the Conservative government doesn't.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved a bill that would reduce -- but not eliminate -- the infamous sentencing disparity between federal crack and powder cocaine offenses. The House Judiciary Committee has already passed a similar measure that would completely eliminate the disparity. Now it is up to the House and Senate leadership to get those bills to a floor vote, and advocates say it is the House bill that should move.

Bryan Epis is once again a medical marijuana martyr. This week, Epis, the first California medical grower convicted by the feds, was returned to federal prison to serve eight more years of a 10-year sentence imposed in 2002. He had been out on appeal, but his appeals have run out.

Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. If enacted, it would provide for the first comprehensive review of criminal justice policies in decades.

The New Jersey legislature has become the first in the nation to pass a bill reforming mandatory minimum school zone laws. Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign it.

In a political maneuver to silence critics while Canada hosts the Winter Olympics, Prime Minister Steven Harper has shut down parliament until a new session begins in March. The move kills a harsh bill that was one vote from passage and would have imposed mandatory minimum prison sentences on people growing as a little as a single marijuana plant.

What a year! A lot happened in 2009 when it comes to drug policy, much of it good. Last issue we reviewed the international developments. This last week of the year, we take a look at what we see as the ten most important domestic drug policy stories the year brought us.

The era of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses has come to an end in Rhode Island. But that's just a start -- you can still get up to 50 years for 10 pounds of pot.

For years, Congress never met a mandatory minimum drug sentence it didn't like. But now, with the Democrats in charge and the federal prison population nearly 10 times as large as it was three decades ago, Congress is having second thoughts. It has ordered the US Sentencing Commission to take a look.

We knew Dubai was tough on drugs; we've seen the horror stories about unwary travelers busted for microscopic amounts of dope and routinely sent off to prison for four years. But this is ridiculous.