State & Local Legislatures

Medical marijuana is moving again in Minnesota. A bill this week passed a Senate committee, despite crazed testimony from LaRouchites and Christian conservatives.

California has been addicted to mass incarceration for the past quarter-century. Now, it looks like some federal judges are going to make the state go cold turkey. Tens of thousands of prisoners could be set free because California can't or won't pay to treat them as the Constitution requires.

With a budget crisis and a change in New York leadership, a politically perfect storm for reform of the state's draconian drug laws seems to be brewing. With the Rockefeller drug laws finally be repealed, after 35 years?

The South Dakota legislature has killed a medical marijuana bill, while the House has passed a bill to ban salvia divinorum.

Marijuana decriminalization will be on the Vermont legislature's agenda this session. A bill was filed Tuesday.

The New Hampshire legislature will once again decide on marijuana decriminalization. Last year, it passed in the House, but died in the Senate.

As governors and legislators ponder deflated budgets at statehouses around the country, opportunities are emerging to move forward on long-stalled prison, sentencing, and drug reform issues.

A Nebraska man prosecuted for selling salvia -- even though it isn't illegal there -- has been acquitted, but moves to ban the psychedelic member of the mint family are ongoing across the land.

With the number of medical marijuana states growing at the rate of one a year, and with Michigan last November becoming the first state in the Midwest to embrace therapeutic cannabis, two Upper Midwest state legislatures are about to grapple with the issue -- again.

Massachusetts voters approved a decriminalization initiative by a two-to-one margin in November. Now, decrim foes are fighting back with local ordinances banning public consumption, but they are finding that once again they have a battle on their hands.