Politics Outside US

Scottish authorities have approved the use of buprenorphine for heroin addicts who don't respond to or can't tolerate methadone.

A group of 40 British Members of Parliament is calling on the Blair government to support a trial program that would divert Afghan opium from the black market to the licit medicinal market.

The Peruvian government's US-backed forced coca eradication campaign is running into serious problems in the Upper Huallaga Valley. Clashes with police, roadblocks, and a general strike have all broken out in the past few days.

With state elections just 10 days away in Australia's New South Wales, the Green Party's call to decriminalize drug possession is causing a stir.

The UN is warning that increases are happening in areas characterized by insurgency.

An expert panel in Britain has concluded a two-year study of drug policy there and is now calling for a radical rethinking and a complete overhaul of the drug laws.

Peru is currently the world's second largest producer of coca and cocaine, and the coca growers' movement there is gaining steam, but it still faces many hurdles, some internal, some external.

A Scottish Labor Party politician is taking his party to task for turning away from harm reduction policies in favor of a hard-line approach, and he says marijuana ought to be decriminalized, and maybe heroin and cocaine, too.

Two Dutch Left Green politicians have opened a pro-marijuana web site. It is in part a guide to Dutch coffee shops, in part a parody of a ruling party anti-marijuana web site.

The governor of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has called for a debate over drug legalization both within Brazil and internationally. He argues that it would reduce crime in his violence-plagued city and state.