News Brief

The Higher Education Act's infamous "Aid Elimination Penalty," or anti-drug provision, the brainchild of Indiana Republican Rep. Mark Souder, just got slimmed down as a House committee Tuesday voted to restrict its application only to students convicted of selling drugs, not those convicted simply of drug possession.

The US war on opium poppy production in Afghanistan turned literal Tuesday when US war planes attacked and destroyed a giant pile of poppy seeds in Helmand province. That'll show those seeds!

Spoken like a true drug czar -- Gil Kerlikowske does his best John Walters impression and succeeds pretty well.

What a difference control of Congress makes! For years, pressure has been building to redress the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. Now, finally, a bill that would do that is moving in the House, and while it's a Democratic bill it's getting strong bipartisan support. Things are looking good in the Senate too.

Albany, New York, sheriff's deputies suspected Tunde Clement was carrying drugs when he got off a bus from New York City in March 2006. They searched his backpack. Nothing. They strip-searched him. Nothing. Then the took him to a hospital, forcibly sedated him, and shoved a camera up his butt. Now, the county and the hospital are paying for their misdeeds.

Could decriminalization be coming to Chicagoland? The Cook County Board has approved it, but the Board president is making noises like he may veto it.

You've heard of medical marijuana vending machines in Los Angeles, right? Well, the UK one-ups LA with methadone vending machines in its prisons.

Oakland's medical marijuana dispensaries asked the voters to tax them, and the voters said "Okay." A measure creating a first-of-its-kind special business tax on medical marijuana sellers passed by a lopsided margin in pot-friendly Oakland.

Ryan Grim has produced an entertaining, enlightening, and absorbing social history of drug use in America. We have checked it out, and we think you should too.

As part of the Merida Initiative to provide Mexico with more than a billion dollars in anti-drug aid, Congress imposed human rights conditions on Mexico. Now, Human Rights Watch is urging the Obama administration to withhold some of that aid until Mexico deals with human rights abuses by its military.