News Brief

A medical marijuana bill in New Hampshire is one Senate floor vote away from passage after it was approved by a Senate committee Thursday. The state House has already passed it.

By refusing to hear a government appeal of two lower court decisions, Canada's Supreme Court has ended the government monopoly on the medical marijuana supply and opened the way for multi-patient grows.

Voters in Maine will have a chance to approve a medical marijuana bill that provides for dispensaries, among other things, this November. The legislature had its chance, but punted.

Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers are hiring middle men to process coca paste into refined cocaine in Bolivia.

More crooked prison guards, more crooked cops, and -- in a first for this newsletter -- a crooked Fish and Wildlife officer.

The cops can't search your car after they arrest you unless they have a warrant or probable cause, the Supreme Court has ruled.

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.