Budgets/Taxes/Economics

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy has spent years trudging through the poppy fields of Asia on his way to becoming one of the world's leading experts on the opium trade. With the publication of "Opium: Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy," the fruits of his labors are now available in English, and we should be thankful for that.

The drug czar was in the hot seat at a Wednesday congressional hearing, and activists and academics got a chance to weigh in on the flaws of US drug policy as well.

It's official!! The California Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 initiative has qualified for the November ballot. Californians will be voting on legalizing weed this year!

The number of people doing time in state prison declined last year for the first time since bell-bottom jeans were in fashion, although just barely. Could we be seeing the first rumblings of a seismic shift in prison population trends?

Republican House members in Missouri convinced their colleagues to pass a bill mandating drug testing for welfare recipients and applicants, but Democrats are filibustering the bill in the Senate.

In 1913, the El Paso city council became the first in the country to outlaw marijuana. Now, faced with the horrendous prohibition-related violence across the river in Ciudad Juarez, it has passed a resolution condemning current drug policies, but only after dropping language calling for marijuana regulation. It's got three years left until the century mark to get it completely right.

President Obama has vowed to slash discretionary federal spending, but it isn't going be done on the back of the drug war. Federal drug control spending is up 3.5% in his Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Mostly it's the same old, same old drug war, but there are some interesting surprises.

A Missouri Senate committee with more moralistic wrath toward the poor than common sense has passed a bill that would require welfare applicants and recipients to be drug tested under "reasonable suspicion" and thrown off the rolls for three years if they test positive -- even though the legislature's own analysts say the bill would cost far more than it would save.

The South Pacific breezes could grow balmier, the mai-tais yummier, and tourists' dispositions sunnier, if a leading Tahiti political figure gets his way.

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.