Congress

With movement to reduce or end the sentencing disparity between federal crack and powder cocaine offenses growing, the Obama administration has come down firmly in favor of eliminating the disparity altogether.

One congressman marches resolutely backwards into the last century with a bill proposing 25-year sentences for people peddling kind bud. The "kush super-marijuana" turns good citizens into "zombie-like" creatures and must be stopped, suburban Chicago US Rep. Mark Kirk warns.

Rep. Barney Frank has reintroduced a bill to protect medical marijuana patients and providers and move pot from Schedule I to Schedule II. Will it get any further in a Democratic Congress than it did in Republican ones?

Drug overdoses -- both licit and illicit -- are the second leading cause of accidental death for adults in the US. Now, a member of Congress wants to do something about it, and the Drug Policy Alliance has some ideas.

At the request of Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), the House Appropriations Committee has added language to the Justice Department appropriations bill asking the Obama administration to clarify its stance on DEA raids on medical marijuana providers in states where it is legal.

As the Senate debated the FDA tobacco regulation bill it approved yesterday, one Republican senator called his colleagues hypocrites and urged them to support an outright ban. Was it just posturing?

Marijuana legalization seems to have entered the mainstream in the first part of 2009. Drug War Chronicle asks some reform movement players just what's going on -- and what isn't.

After more than two decades of the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity and all its racially pernicious effects, pressure is mounting to eliminate it. And now, for the first time, it is the position of the US Justice Department that that should be the case.

Sen Jim Webb (D-VA) has become a hero for drug reformers in the short time he's been in the Senate. Now, his latest effort is sure to earn him more kudos.

Congress wants the Obama administration to "do something" about the prohibition-related violence ravaging Mexico. But that "something" just looks like more drug war.