Politics Outside US

The opium economy is the leading employer in Afghanistan, despite limited eradication efforts funded by the west.

The Belgian and German governments are complaining about Dutch border city coffee shops that cater to their citizens, but a Dutch mayor suggests they just open their own.

With bloody drug prohibition-related violence unabated despite the latest round of government military offensives, leading members of Mexico's main opposition party are calling for drug legalization as way out.

As Britain's 10-year drug strategy comes up for renewal or replacement next year, the latest in a long line of reports assailing it has come out.

The British Medical Association Junior Members Forum has called for cannabis-based medicines to be prescribed by the National Health Service.

Tensions are rising in Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley coca fields, as government eradicators come under attack, growers go on strike, and the García government vows to take a hard line.

Sometimes being a dictatorship has its advantages, at least if you work for the police. China has created a data bank of drug users with more than three-quarters of a million names.

The war on drugs is one part of a web of international crime control regimes that have developed over centuries. But past definitions of crime and today's are not all the same.

The Bolivian government is moving to "rationalize" coca production in the Yungas region.

A decade ago, the leading British newspaper the Independent on Sunday called for the decriminalization of marijuana. This week, citing the dangers of skunk weed and alleged links to mental illness, the paper reversed course.