Budgets/Taxes/Economics

With California facing a $14 billion budget deficit, the governor's budget cutters have come up with a proposal to release more than 22,000 nonviolent offenders before their sentences are up.

The 2008 federal budget is a done deal now. The drug czar's youth anti-drug media campaign takes a well-deserved hit and DC wins the right to spend its own money on needle exchanges. But the drug war juggernaut just keeps rolling on along as law enforcement wins big bucks.

Marijuana prohibition costs governments in the US more than $10 billion a year in law enforcement and more than $30 billion a year in lost revenues, a new study finds.

The US Conference of Mayors last month adopted a resolution calling the war on drugs a failure and urging "a new bottom line" on drug policy.

Prosecutors in Dane County (Madison), Wisconsin, will no longer bother to charge people with less than 25 grams of marijuana under state law. Now, at worst, offenders will face a fine. It's a matter of budgets and priorities, prosecutors say.

The Bush administration released its 2008 federal budget Monday, and when it comes to drug policy, it looks a lot like more of the same.

The California medical marijuana market could be a substantial source of tax revenues for the state, according to a new study, but it isn't happening yet.