Congress

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) and 25 cosponsors have filed a bill that would lift the 20-year-old federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs.

For the first time in decades, there is a marijuana decriminalization bill before Congress. No one thinks it will pass this year, but you have to start somewhere.

Who profits from drug prohibition? With this article we begin our occasional series on Vested Interests of Prohibition, and we begin with a law enforcement establishment grown fat off drug war bounty.

The Taliban is profiting from prohibition. The Islamic insurgents made $100 million last year taxing poppy farmers, UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa said this week.

In a historic US Congress Joint Economic Committee hearing Thursday, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) opened up discussion on the Hill of the economic costs of US drug policy.

Coca production in the Andes was up last year, the UN reported this week. The biggest percentage increase was in Colombia, where years of US-funded herbicide spraying have failed to stop farmers.

The Merida Initiative anti-drug assistance package for Mexico and Central America passed the House this week, but Mexico is balking at human rights and other conditions in the Senate version of the bill. Will the Senate sacrifice human rights on the altar of the drug war?

People are being killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico at a rate 50% higher than last year. Mexico's attorney general claims that's a sign of success in the drug war.

More than 100 people, including several top federal police commanders, have been killed in surging prohibition-related violence in Mexico in recent days as the so-called drug cartels strike back hard against police, soldiers, and each other.

As the US Congress begins to move toward passing a massive anti-drug aid package aimed mainly at the Mexican military, abuses by soldiers in the drug war there have prompted a serious legal challenge.