News Feature

The smart money is saying hold off on a California marijuana legalization initiative until 2016, but some will pay the price for waiting.

A federal magistrate in Massachusetts has slapped down a federal government effort to seize a motel because of limite drug activity there. That's a blow against asset forfeiture abuse.

The effort to get the executive branch to reschedule marijuana has been blocked by a federal appeals court. While appeals will continue, efforts will now turn to forcing change in Congress and with the Obama administration.

Although it hasn't made reformers' top target list, Washington, DC, could be ripe for a marijuana reform initiative, whether legalization, expanding medical marijuana, or decrim. Local activists are meeting and national organizations are watching.

Acting on a tip, DEA agents went on rural property without a warrant, set up surveillance cameras, and used the evidence obtained to get a search warrant and convict the property owners for growing marijuana. And a US district court judge said that was okay. Is it?

Project SAM has emerged as a "third way" effort to blunt progress toward marijuana legalization by emphasizing public health and treatment. Its leaders include a conservative columnist, an addiction-plagued ex-congressman, and a professional neo-prohibitionist.

For two years Drug War Chronicle has tracked cases in the US of drug war carnage related to drug law enforcement. Here is a preliminary look at last year's.

In some ways, 2012 has been a year of dramatic, exciting change in drug policy, as the edifice of global drug prohibition appears to crumble before our eyes. In other ways it's still business as usual in the drug war. Here, we look at the biggest drug policy stories of the year.

And then there were two. It is now legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana or grow six plants in Colorado. The Rocky Mountain State now joins Washington state, where it went legal last week.

It's a historic day. Marijuana possession is now legal in Washington state, and will be in Colorado, too, within a few weeks.