State & Local Legislatures

Washington is now the second state to adopt a "911 Good Samaritan" laws in a bid to prevent drug overdose fatalities. It's a smart harm reduction move.

Fire bombs. Graffiti attacks. Anonymous anti-medical marijuana flyers handed out to school children. Whether medical marijuana has gone too far is a hot issue in Billings, Montana, and it's simmering all over Big Sky Country as "ganja-preneurs" push the envelope.

There has been a dramatic increase in methadone overdose deaths in Pennsylvania and the nation in recent years. Keystone State legislators are misguidedly aiming at the state's methadone maintenance treatment clinics.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to help balance the budget by cutting out almost all Medi-Cal funding for more than 35,000 methadone maintenance patients. The nicest thing opponents can say about that idea is that it's penny wise but pound foolish, and the legislature seems to agree. But the Governator can still wield the line-item veto, so the fight isn't over yet.

Arizona voters have already approved medical marijuana twice, only to have it taken away by the legislature in 1996 and shot down by bad drafting language in 1998. Now, they have a third shot at it, and organizers say they've gotten everything right.

You know times are tough when even GOP-dominated legislatures in the Deep South are passing sentencing reform bills. It's not so much bleeding hearts as bleeding wallets.

In a bid to save money and be smarter on crime, Colorado has enacted a package of bills that, among other things, will reduce some drug use and possession sentences, allow greater judicial flexibility in sentencing, and keep some technical parole violators from being sent back to prison. But the package also increases some drug sales and manufacturing sentences.

Marching boldly backward into the last century, the Louisiana Senate this week approved a bill that toughens the state's already harsh penalties for second-time marijuana possession offenders. Don't these guys have a budget deficit and an environmental disaster to keep them busy?

It must be silly season already in Baton Rouge. A House committee there has deliberated on and passed a bill that would allow legislators and state officials to take voluntary drug tests and mental health evaluations and post the results on the Internet.

The nation's capital will soon join the ranks of jurisdictions allowing medical marijuana use after the DC City Council approved regulations this week. But according to advocates, the measure is lacking.