Politics Outside US

Cannabis coffee shops in the Dutch border province of Limburg will become "members only" next year as local mayors seek to inhibit "drug tourism." There are other restrictions, too.

The Mexican Congress has passed a bill that would decriminalize the possession of "personal use" amounts of illegal drugs. Some of the other provisions in the measure are not so nice.

It's getting harder and harder to get prosecuted for drug possession in Argentina. The Argentine courts' slow drift toward decriminalization continued this week.

Jimmy Carter once let Evo Morales pick some peanuts on his Georgia farm. Now, Morales has invited Carter to pick some coca leaves on his farm in Bolivia's Chapare.

Mexico's Senate has passed a bill decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of all drugs. It still has to pass the Chamber of Deputies, and the clock is ticking.

The latest brainchild of Maastricht, Holland, Mayor Gerd Leers, in his never-ending campaign to clean up problems associated with cannabis cafes on the country's borders with France, Belgium, and Germany, is to make the cafes member-only.

Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers are hiring middle men to process coca paste into refined cocaine in Bolivia.

Is Mexico ready to decriminalize marijuana possession? The Mexican Congress devoted a three-day forum to the notion this week, even as Presidents Obama and Calderón met to plot a better drug war on the border.

Drug possession has been legal in Colombia since 1994. But now, a teetotaling President Uribe wants to go back to the bad old days.

Last August, the Peruvian government embarked on a campaign to regain control of one of the country's key coca-growing areas. It's not working out very well so far.