Congress

The DEA's efforts to subvert administration policy favoring state medical marijuana laws is not winning it any friends, and is gaining it some powerful new opponents.

President Obama has vowed to slash discretionary federal spending, but it isn't going be done on the back of the drug war. Federal drug control spending is up 3.5% in his Fiscal Year 2011 budget. Mostly it's the same old, same old drug war, but there are some interesting surprises.

Nearly nine years after the fact, the CIA has completed its internal investigation of the shooting down of a civilian aircraft over Peru that left an American missionary and her infant daughter dead. The agency found little wrong with its behavior, but not everyone agrees.

The Obama administration has nominated the acting DEA administrator to be permanent DEA administrator. But this veteran DEA agent carries some baggage with her, and drug reformers are looking for ways to challenge the nomination.

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.

What a year! A lot happened in 2009 when it comes to drug policy, much of it good. Last issue we reviewed the international developments. This last week of the year, we take a look at what we see as the ten most important domestic drug policy stories the year brought us.

And then there were 14! The last congressional obstacle to the District of Columbia actually being able to implement its medical marijuana law has fallen. Now, DC bureaucrats and would-be medical marijuana entrepreneurs are scrambling.

A rare window of opportunity has opened for addressing one of the drug war's most glaring injustices.

Congressional budget negotiators have approved a conference committee bill that ends the ban on federal funding of needle exchange programs, ends the ban on the District of Columbia funding of needle exchange programs, and ends the ban on the District enacting a medical marijuana law approved by voters a decade ago. Oh, and it also slashes funding for the drug czar's ineffective youth anti-drug media campaign.

A rare window of opportunity has opened for addressing one of the drug war's most glaring injustices.