News Feature

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.

The British government unveiled its new 10-year national drug strategy last week. For critics, it looks like more of the same old failed policies, with a step forward on treatment and prevention and a few steps back on policing.

President Bush and ONDCP head John Walters released the 2008 National Drug Control Strategy over the weekend. They are claiming some important victories, but some critics say not so fast.

With pressure mounting on Congress to do something about the disparities in sentencing for federal crack and powder cocaine offenses, a House committee held a hearing Tuesday, and activists took to the Hill to lobby for change.

The Bush administration's proposed 2009 budget includes some significant cuts in drug treatment, prevention, and recovery spending. A chorus of critics, including some former federal drug fighters, say there has to be a better way.

California's prison system is the nation's second largest, behind only the federal prison system. Now, an initiative that would dramatically expand Proposition 36-style "treatment not jail" programs, as well as other systemic reforms, is headed for the November ballot.