News Feature

An estimated 150,000 people attended Seattle's two-day Hempfest last weekend. Billed as the world's largest drug reform rally, Hempfest is also a celebration of the Cannabis Nation.

A Republican former Kansas attorney general spoke out for medical marijuana last Friday as a push to get a bill passed there gets underway.

Nearly six years after the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban is back and opium production is going through the roof. Now, the US government has announced it is ready to let the US military join the Afghan drug war.

A series of recent articles in the San Francisco Chronicle highlighted the problem of dirty needles in Golden Gate Park, but seemed to blame needle exchanges for the problem. Experts beg to differ.

A bill that defines addiction as a brain disease is moving in Congress. Treatment professionals and recovery advocates laud it. There are skeptics too.

When Atlanta narcotics officers shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston last November after falsely telling a magistrate an informant had named her address as a drug hot-spot, they opened a window on a very shady part of the American criminal justice system. Now, Congress has taken a look and some key members are ready to rein in the snitch system.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has announced that his government will deemphasize aerial spraying of coca crops and emphasize manual eradication. The move comes as Congress ponders ways to cut funding for the drug war in Colombia.

DEA agents raided 10 Los Angeles-area medical marijuana dispensaries Wednesday, the same day the LA City Council sent it a letter asking it to butt out. The raids were met by angry protests and civil disobedience.

The House of Representatives Wednesday defeated the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, which would have barred the use of federal funds to arrest and prosecute medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal. Supporters gained only two votes over last year, sparking discussion about what comes next.

For the first time in more than a decade, the DEA came under congressional scrutiny last week for its interference in the practice of medicine. Pain patient and doctor advocates got a chance to tell a congressional committee about the crisis in chronic pain and how the DEA gets in the way.