News Feature

It's Reefer Madness time in Britain in the run-up to a widely anticipated reclassification of marijuana as a more serious drug. Segments of the British press are playing a particularly pernicious role.

Drug reformers interested in candidates who will vow to actually end the drug war will have to look beyond the Democratic and Republican presidential contenders. This week, we look at the Libertarians, and the perennial debate over pragmatism vs. purism.

A Michigan medical marijuana initiative is now before the legislature, which will not act on it, clearing the way for a popular vote in November. The poll numbers are good.

An initiative that would decriminalize marijuana possession in Massachusetts has passed a number of hurdles and appears to be headed for the November ballot, where the prospects are good.

Using YouTube videos of young people under the influence of salvia divinorum as exhibit number one, legislators across the country are stepping up efforts to ban the intense, fast-acting hallucinogen.

For more than 30 years, Alaska's courts have held that the state constitution's privacy provisions protect citizens who want to smoke and possess small amounts of marijuana in their homes. Last week, the Alaska Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the state's latest effort to undo the status quo.

While the nation worries about baseball players on steroids and teenagers smoking pot, an epidemic of drug overdoses is sweeping the country. There are methods of reducing the toll, but there are many obstacles, too, not the least of which is public and official indifference.

Current approaches to methamphetamine use in the US have largely failed and should be replaced by a "Four Pillars" approach embracing prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and law enforcement, according to a report issued Tuesday. Some states have already moved that direction.

Efforts to legalize medical marijuana via the legislative process are underway in several states. We take a look at where those efforts stand and where they're likely headed.

As the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs met this week in Vienna, it and its brother UN anti-drug agencies came under fierce attack for sacrificing human rights on the altar of the drug war.