News Brief

Prosecutors in one California county have called a halt to small time drug prosecutions. They just can't afford them, they said.

The nation's first salvia possession case has ended not with a bang, but a whimper. At least no one is going to jail.

The federal prosecutor going after Kansas physician Dr. Steven Schneider and his wife is now aiming at the couple's activist defenders as well. Siobhan Reynolds of the Pain Relief Network has been served a subpoena by a federal grand jury for obstruction of justice in the case, but vows not to cooperate.

Drug possession has been legal in Colombia since 1994. But now, a teetotaling President Uribe wants to go back to the bad old days.

A significant change in the impact of our drug policies may have occurred in the last few years. The number of African Americans doing time for drug charges is down, both percentage-wise and in raw numbers. Not so for whites.

More problems for the Philly narcs, another border guard goes down, so does a Puerto Rican husband and wife team, and a TSA guard gets popped. Just another week of drug-related law enforcement corruption.

A Michigan cop shot college student Derek Copp in the chest during a drug raid last month in which police seized only a small amount of marijuana (at least according to Copp's lawyer; the cops aren't talking). Now they're coming after him with drug possession charges.

Dancing in karaoke clubs would be banned under a Vietnamese government effort to reduce Ecstasy use. "Behavior with less danger to society," such as swaying to the beat, however, would be okay.

Last August, the Peruvian government embarked on a campaign to regain control of one of the country's key coca-growing areas. It's not working out very well so far.

The Obama administration has nominated a well-respected addiction researcher to be the number two man in the drug czar's office. Are we in for a bout of drug treatment now?