News Brief

Belgians, Frenchmen, Germans, and other "drug tourists" looking to score on the Dutch border have won a temporary reprieve, as officials in Limburg have delayed plans to make cannabis cafes members only.

Sheriffs gone wild, narcs gone greedy, a jail guard gone horny, and a couple of jail guards gone dumb.

A Colorado judge has delivered a shot across the bow to towns and cities moving to ban medical marijuana dispensaries on the grounds they violate federal law.

A California judge can order a medical marijuana patient to hand in his ID card and give up his medicine if he wants to go on probation instead of to prison, an appeals court has ruled in a 2-1 decision. The ruling provoked a harsh dissent.

The death toll has risen every year since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006. More than 2,000 in 2007, more than 5,000 in 2008, and last year's toll was 7,724. And there are 137 more already this year.

Will the fourth time be the charm? Organizers of a new "tax and regulate" marijuana initiative in Nevada hope so as they roll out a campaign aimed at the November 2012 election.

In a political maneuver to silence critics while Canada hosts the Winter Olympics, Prime Minister Steven Harper has shut down parliament until a new session begins in March. The move kills a harsh bill that was one vote from passage and would have imposed mandatory minimum prison sentences on people growing as a little as a single marijuana plant.

The State Department's "drugs and thugs" people in charge of Afghan counternarcotics policy aren't doing a very good job, an Inspector General's report has found. Of course, it's tough when you're tasked with Mission Impossible.

Bolivian President Evo Morales wants to amend his country's drug law to legalize coca farmers' small holdings and to bring allowed national cultivation limits in line with Bolivian reality. This won't go over well in Washington or with the UN anti-drug bureaucrats.

North Dakota farmers want to grow hemp. North Dakota has licensed them to grow hemp. But are they growing any hemp? No, and a new court decision means its likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.