News Brief

The DEA will pay $4.1 million to a San Diego college student whom agents locked in a holding cell and forgot about for five days.

A "for cause" welfare drug testing bill has passed the North Carolina legislature and now awaits the governor's signature.

The Western Mexican state of Michoacan is becoming the latest hotspot in Mexico's drug wars, and now, a high-ranking Mexican Navy officer has been killed.

The leader of Canada's Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau, has reenergized the drug policy debate north of the border by calling for marijuana legalization.

A suburban Phoenix photographer was shot and killed by police on a drug raid Wednesday afternoon. His friends are skeptical of the official version of events.

The overall US prison population continues an achingly slow decline even as the federal prison population continues to expand, but there are still more than 330,000 drug war prisoners in America, and that's not even counting the jails.

A dispensary is now open for business in the nation's capital, several dozen are coming to Arizona, dispensary and cultivation battles continue in California, Massachusetts advocates prepare to protest restrictive regulations, and the DEA hits a Michigan dispensary.

The English speaking Central American nation of Belize has undertaken a review of whether to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Four of the seven law enforcement personnel making our hall of shame this week were women. You've come a long way, ladies!

New Hampshire becomes the 19th medical marijuana state, some folks in Kentucky would like it to become one, too; and the local tussling continues in California. And in late news, the DEA strikes in Washington State.