Budgets/Taxes/Economics

With a budget crisis and a change in New York leadership, a politically perfect storm for reform of the state's draconian drug laws seems to be brewing. With the Rockefeller drug laws finally be repealed, after 35 years?

The House passed the economic stimulus bill Wednesday, including $3 billion for Byrne grants and $1 billion for COPS. But as the bill heads to the Senate, more than a dozen national organizations are calling for the funding to be cut -- and replaced by programs that will actually do some good.

As governors and legislators ponder deflated budgets at statehouses around the country, opportunities are emerging to move forward on long-stalled prison, sentencing, and drug reform issues.

Let's hear it for the global drug trade! It's been propping up the international financial system, said Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and crime.

In one of the few actions that won it kudos from drug reformers and civil rights groups, the Bush administration tried for years to zero out the Byrne grant program, which funds multi-jurisdictional anti-drug task forces. Now, as part of the economic stimulus bill, Congress wants to give it more money than ever.

The incoming Obama administration has made its agenda available online. When it comes to drug policy, there's some good, some bad, and some things missing.

A trio of Democratic Party state legislators filed a Washington state marijuana decriminalization bill Wednesday.

Will 2009 be a happy New Year for positive drug policy changes? Here, we take a look at what could -- or couldn't -- be coming down the pike, as well as some festering issues that aren't going to go away.

California's "treatment not jail" Proposition 5 is defeated and so is one "tough on crime" initiative, but another one won favor with Golden State voters. Meanwhile, dueling "tough on crime" initiatives also passed in Oregon.

With election day less than two weeks away, the drug czar and California's prison guard union are trying to defeat California's groundbreaking treatment-not-jail Nonviolent Offender Rehabiliation Act (NORA) initiative.