DEA

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega warned this week of the DEA's "unexpected interests" and "terrible things." Perhaps he's recalling the bad old days...

Nearly six years after the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban is back and opium production is going through the roof. Now, the US government has announced it is ready to let the US military join the Afghan drug war.

DEA agents raided 10 Los Angeles-area medical marijuana dispensaries Wednesday, the same day the LA City Council sent it a letter asking it to butt out. The raids were met by angry protests and civil disobedience.

DEA and ONDCP functionaries got a grilling on medical marijuana issues at a House subcommittee hearing last week.

For the first time in more than a decade, the DEA came under congressional scrutiny last week for its interference in the practice of medicine. Pain patient and doctor advocates got a chance to tell a congressional committee about the crisis in chronic pain and how the DEA gets in the way.

Eleven years ago, no Americans had the protection of a state medical marijuana law. Now, some 50 million do, but that means some 250 million don't. While progress has been made, it has been slow, and there is plenty more to do.

A pair of North Dakota farmers have been granted state permits to grow hemp, but the DEA has refused to act on their federal license applications. Now the farmers are going to federal court to ask that the agency be told to butt out.

With a DEA administrative law judge ruling in favor of a Massachusetts agronomist's request to grow marijuana for research purposes, supporters are turning up the heat on the DEA to heed that ruling.

The death toll from a deadly combination of heroin and fentanyl rose all through last year. Now, the DEA says more than a thousand people died.

Efforts to ban salvia divinorum are spreading across the country. So far, it's illegal in five states and various towns and cities, and seven more states have bills pending this year. The DEA is looking at it, too.