Coca

The future of medical marijuana under Washington state's legalization scheme remains a hot topic, the DEA is banning more new synthetics, there are contradictory signals from Holland, and more news, too.

Repress it in one place, it pops up in another. Peru has regained its place as the world's leading coca producer as a decade of eradication and fumigation takes its toll on the Colombian crop.

In its annual exercise in arrogance, the US government last Friday released its report on who is and isn't complying with our drug war demands. Bolivia and Venezuela were singled out, and they're not happy.

A Peruvian government push into a remote area to eradicate coca production there is being met by calls for armed resistance.

Colombia's FARC guerrillas have called on the Colombian government to consider legalizing coca cultivation for medicinal and therapeutic ends and for cultural reasons.

Bolivia has successfully rejoined the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs with the reservation that the treaty's ban on coca leaf will not apply there.

Bolivia's bid to rejoin the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs without accepting the treaty's proscription against coca leaf chewing appears to be set to happen, despite the objections of a handful of Western countries.

Coca production is up in Peru for the sixth year in a row, responding to thriving demand from Brazil and Europe. Colombia is barely holding on to first place now.

Is the world's longest-running insurgency coming to an end? The Colombian government and the leftist guerrillas of the FARC have announced their first peace talks in a decade, but that's just the first step.

We review "Drugs, Insecurity, and Failed States: The Problems of Prohibition," a new book from the very establishment International Institute for Strategic Studies.