News Brief

The Associated Press has just declared the war on drugs a failure. When will the politicians admit the same?

Calderon's war on drugs is closing in on the 20,000 dead figure, according to a running tally by the Mexico City newspaper El Universal. And the prohibition-related killing continues unabated.

It must be silly season already in Baton Rouge. A House committee there has deliberated on and passed a bill that would allow legislators and state officials to take voluntary drug tests and mental health evaluations and post the results on the Internet.

Another SWAT raid over pot, another dead dog, another traumatized family. But this one was caught on videotape, and now the outrage is spreading across the land.

Bent on flexing their "tough on crime" muscles and impervious to polls showing a majority of Canadians want to legalize pot, Canada's Conservatives have reintroduced a bill creating mandatory minimum prison sentences for growing as few as 6 pot plants or making any amount of hash. That's so last century, Ottawa!

The nation's capital will soon join the ranks of jurisdictions allowing medical marijuana use after the DC City Council approved regulations this week. But according to advocates, the measure is lacking.

Organizers of an initiative that would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of pot have handed in far more than the required number of signatures required to make the November ballot in Detroit.

A South Carolina sheriff gets busted for cocaine trafficking, and so does a Texas border town cop. And, as always, we have a couple of misbehaving jail guards, too.

Can the Dutch ban foreigners from going to their famous cannabis cafes? The city of Maastricht tried it, and now the European Court of Justice will decide whether the move conflicts with the European Union's laws regarding free trade.

Hard-line former Philadelphia DA Lynne Abraham is taking pot shots her successor, DA Seth Williams, over his policy of treating marijuana possession offenders more leniently. Williams and his crew are hitting back.