News Brief

It's been another bloody couple of weeks of prohibition-related violence in Mexico. Here's the latest on that and other drug war developments south of the border.

Oregon has become the latest state to pass legislation enabling the farming of industrial hemp and, like North Dakota, they don't need no stinking federal licenses. But the DEA tends to disagree about that.

Talk of marijuana legalization is definitely in the air in California, but none of the announced major party gubernatorial candidates want to add to it. Yet.

California's Proposition 36 "treatment not jail" law is likely to lead to neither treatment nor jail as its funding gets slashed by 83% because of the state's budget crisis.

Somebody opened fire on Colombian soldiers and coca eradicators Monday, leaving of a toll of dead, wounded, and missing. There are plenty of suspects.

Hardly a day goes by without another body being found in Mexico's prohibition-related violence, and the Mexican government is under increasing fire as the death toll rises. Now, thanks to upcoming journalist Bernd Debusmann Jr., the Chronicle will be watching and summarizing events on a weekly basis.

As a state senator concerned with racial profiling, President Obama championed a bill requiring Illinois law enforcement agencies to report on traffic stops. The latest annual report is out and it's pretty much the same old story: Blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be asked to consent to searches, but cops are much more likely to actually find contraband if the driver is white.

Maine marijuana activist Don Christen is getting ready to do eight months behind bars after the state Supreme Court rejected his appeal in a marijuana cultivation case where he argued he was growing for patients.

With Cook County (greater Chicago) Board President Todd Stroger saying he will not veto last Tuesday's passage of a marijuana decriminalization ordinance, it looks like decrim is a done deal -- at least in unincorporated areas of the county. The move also gives towns and cities in the county the option to adopt decrim as well.

In 2005, voters in Denver approved the legalization of possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, though local authorities have since ignored that vote. Now, voters in the Colorado ski town of Breckenridge will get the same opportunity. A local initiative is headed for this November's ballot -- unless the town council just goes ahead and approves it first.