Executive Branch

Americans can rest secure in the knowledge that our country maintains its role as the world's leading jailer. According to a new Bureau of Justice Statistics report, we have an all-time record 2.3 million people behind bars, and that includes more than half a million drug offenders.

Campus drug reform activists from around the country -- and beyond -- gathered last weekend in College Park, Maryland, for SSDP's 10th annual international conference. They lobbied, they listened, they learned, and now they're heading back home well-energized to apply the lessons they learned.

As his term comes to a close, President George Bush has begun to exercise his pardon power, and a handful of drug offenders have benefited.

The drug war records of some key Obama picks -- Biden, Emanuel, Holder -- are prompting wailing and gnashing of teeth among some drug reformers, but others suggest it's better to keep working quietly on progress than obsess on the past.

After eight years of Republican rule and the Bush presidency, drug policy and related reformers are ready for change. They have some concrete ideas, too. Here's a look at them and the prospects for change in Washington.

A pair of would-be North Dakota hemp farmers were in a federal appeals court Wednesday as they resumed their bid to get the federal government out of their way.

The US has spent $6 billion on Plan Colombia since 1999. The goal was to reduce coca and cocaine production by half. They didn't even come close, a new GAO report reveals.

Already chilly relations between Bolivia and the US grew even chillier this weekend, as Bolivia's President Morales told the DEA to take a hike.

Washington and Bogotá have both been talking up improvements in Colombia's human rights situation. But there is still plenty to be deeply concerned about, Amnesty International said in a report this week.

Will federally-mandated drug testing come to the coal fields? The Mine Health and Safety Administration wants it to, but workers' unions say it is unnecessary and unconstitutional.