News Brief

An initiative to tax and regulate marijuana in Washington state is pulling in some big names and big bucks, but it hasn't completely unified the state's marijuana community behind it. That may not matter.

Voters in Tacoma, Washington, approved a lowest law enforcement priority marijuana initiative Tuesday.

An effort to put marijuana legalization on the November 2012 ballot has passed a first hurdle in Missouri.

Bolivia has restored diplomatic relations with the US after throwing out the DEA and the US ambassador three years ago, but the DEA is not welcome back.

Coffee shops in Holland's south will soon be closing their doors to foreigners, and the rest of the country is set to follow in another year.

The US drug arrest rate has been declining slightly for the last four years, but is still more than double the rate at the beginning of Reagan's war on drugs in 1980, an analysis of FBI crime data has found.

The ugliness continues unabated in Mexico, and another blogger has joined the ranks of the murdered.

Sleazy, sleazy. That's what a Missouri drug court monitor is accused of being, plus we have a crooked Puerto Rican cop and a sticky-fingered Louisiana narc.

Kalamazoo has become the first Michigan city to pass an initiative making small time marijuana use or possession by adults the lowest law enforcement priority.

A trucker carrying a load of weed north through Texas apparently shot himself rather than face arrest after being pulled over with more than 600 pounds. That's drug war fatality number 42 for the year.