News Brief

Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she may be open to making changes in federal law surrounding medical marijuana. That's her strongest statement yet on the issue.

Oregon's OCTA marijuana legalization initiative has handed in a final 57,000 signatures. It needs 32,000 of them to be valid to make the November ballot. But election officials invalidated almost half of earlier signatures, so it's still nail-biting time for proponents.

Arkansas proponents for a medical marijuana initiative met a critical deadline last week, but still have thousands of signatures to gather if they're going to make the November ballot.

The police in Ocean City, Maryland, are on a mission to maximize marijuana arrests, and they're doing quite well at it. Factor that in to your vacation plans.

In Corpus Christi, police have been arresting a thousand people a year on drug charges. That's the single largest reason people make it to felony court in Nueces County.

The criminal justice system in Volusia County, Florida, is running largely on the drug war if last Friday's jail bookings are any indication.

Federal prosecutors have targeted Harborside Health Center, California's iconic largest dispensary, with an asset forfeiture action. But Harborside isn't just going to roll over and play dead.

Last week's middle of the week holiday made things fairly quiet on the medical marijuana front, but it looks like Massachusetts voters will have a chance to join the ranks of the medical marijuana states in November, and other efforts are underway in some surprising places.

A former Missouri sheriff heads to federal prison, a former Kansas City cop is headed there, too, and a former South Carolina deputy is looking at drug charges.

Hard-line Singapore has announced it is modifying its mandatory death sentence for drug traffickers. It's just a small change, but it may save a few lives, and serve as a signal for other drug death penalty states.