Policing

The Associated Press has just declared the war on drugs a failure. When will the politicians admit the same?

If you want to reduce "drug-related" violence, sending in more cops and cracking down harder is exactly the wrong thing to do, a review of 20 years worth of studies has concluded.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy held its 11th annual national convention in San Francisco last weekend. It was the biggest one yet, and they couldn't have picked a more inviting locale.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon caught serious flak this week from two different directions: Angry residents of Ciudad Juárez, tired of the killing and the soldiers, and the Mexican Catholic Church, which issued a report critical of human rights abuses in the military and crooked law enforcement.

Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. If enacted, it would provide for the first comprehensive review of criminal justice policies in decades.

A pair of sociologists get inside a San Diego area network of campus drug sellers and users to ask and answer the question of why privileged youth on the path to success would risk everything to peddle pot or pills. The short answer? They're not really very much at risk -- they're rich and white.

Amnesty International accuses the Mexican military of human rights violations in the drug war -- a problem for US funding. Meanwhile, this year's south of the border prohibition-related death toll passed 7,000 this week.

Testilying -- the practice of police perjuring themselves to get an arrest or win a case -- is so prevalent in the NYPD that something has to be done, a federal judge complained this week.

If you're interested in the border or Mexico's drug war or drug culture or drug economy, or in drug law enforcement, we've got a book you need to read. University of Texas-El Paso sociologist and anthropologist Howard Campbell provides a vivid, rich, and nuanced portrayal of drugs and the drug war in El Paso-Juarez that couldn't be more timely.

Faced with high levels of methamphetamine use, the New Zealand government is moving to require prescriptions for cold and flu medications containing pseudoephedrine, and just in time for the swine flu. It's got some other anti-meth measures coming, too.