Politics Outside US

Dancing in karaoke clubs would be banned under a Vietnamese government effort to reduce Ecstasy use. "Behavior with less danger to society," such as swaying to the beat, however, would be okay.

The British government contends that drug legalization could not possibly have enough benefits to justify switching from prohibition, but it has never provided the evidence. Now, a new study that actually has done a comparative analysis finds the UK could be saving billions a year by legalizing.

Mexico's drug war took a strange turn last week as authorities took the battle to a pair of folk saints. Shrines to Santa Muerte and San Malverde were destroyed in Tijuana and on the highway south from Texas to Monterrey.

If a lonely shepherd wants to get high while out with his flock, that's no skin off the state's nose, the Italian Supreme Court has ruled.

In a memo to judges, Indonesia's Supreme Court has ordered them to send small-time drug users and possessors to treatment instead of prison.

Tired of the same old coca products? Now you can try coca beer! Coming soon to a bar near you... but only if you live in Peru, China, South Africa, Argentina, or Venezuela.

The influx to Dutch border towns with cannabis coffee shops of tens of thousands of Europeans each week from countries with more repressive cannabis policies has led to myriad problems in those border towns. Now, mayors of two of them say they will simply shut them down.

Some 7,500 Mexican soldiers are flooding into Ciudad Juárez in a bid to blunt prohibition-related violence that has left about 2,000 people dead there since January 2008. Meanwhile, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff is headed to Mexico for talks on increased cooperation between the two neighbors.

India's health minister wants to ban a dangerous drug... alcohol.

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy issued a report Wednesday calling for harm reduction, treating drug use as a public health issue, and decriminalizing marijuana. The report was an intervention aimed as much at Washington as at Vienna, where the UN meets next month to plot global drug strategy.