Politics Outside US

No mas. That's what the police force in the Mexican town of Purepero said when all 45 of it members resigned en masse. Purepero isn't the first town to experience a mass resignation of officials afraid to continue their role in the nation's prohibitionist war on drug traffickers.

Mexico became a manufacturing mecca thanks, in part, to its inexpensive labor and proximity to the massive U.S. market. But there is a new reality on the ground in that country these days: a surge in violence tied to the prohibition-based war on drug traffickers that Mexico's President Felipe Calderon mounted after his election in 2006. The result has been a wave of kidnappings, extortion and murder that is threatening the country's economic health and causing multinationals to examine closely how they operate and invest in Mexico.

Mexico is celebrating its 200th anniversary as an independent nation and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution. But some of the celebrations are being scaled back as the country is being swept by a wave of drug prohibition violence.

Sydney, Australia's safe injecting site at Kings Cross will become a permanent fixture after operating on a trial basis since 2001. Legislation lifting the center's trial status will also confirm it will remain the only safe injecting center of its kind in New South Wales.

According to Britain's leading expert on the drug, Professor Roger Pertwee of Aberdeen University, cannabis should be available for recreational use in shops under restrictions similar to those used to control the sale of alcohol and tobacco.

When GW Pharmaceuticals was given the green light to prescribe their cannabis based medicine Sativex, MS sufferers across the UK breathed a collective sigh of relief. But, a number of Primary Health Care Trusts, the organizations that run the UK's hospitals, apparently passed a memo around explaining they wouldn't be funding any Sativex prescriptions. So while the medicine is now legal, only those that can afford it can have it.

Soldiers opened fire on a family car at a checkpoint in northern Mexico, killing a 15-year-old boy and another person. It is at least the second time this year that a family has been caught up in a shooting involving Mexico's military, which has come under intense criticism for human rights abuses as soldiers fight drug traffickers.