News Brief

In a victory for California's medical marijuana law, a state appeals court has rejected a challenge to the law from San Diego County. But it isn't over yet. The county said Tuesday it would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

DEA trainers are in Vietnam this month to show Vietnamese how to have a drug war American-style, but the UN's man on the scene doesn't find that particularly helpful.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society is calling for more research on medical marijuana. While that's only a half-step on the society's part, it's a half-step forward.

Argentina's president last week called for the decriminalization of drug possession, lending her support to a bill introduced last year by her justice minister and giving an implicit nod to a series of recent Argentine court decisions that have rejected punishing drug users.

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) and 25 cosponsors have filed a bill that would lift the 20-year-old federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs.

Although Washington state has a medical marijuana law and the city of Seattle has a lowest law enforcement priority ordinance, Seattle police two weeks ago raided a medical marijuana co-op, seizing patient records and 12 ounces of medicine. The co-op got the records back, but now the DEA has seized the marijuana.

An initiative that would decriminalize possession of up to 35 grams of marijuana in Joplin, Missouri, is in a last-minute push to get the number of valid signatures required to make the November ballot.

The Bolivian government announced late last week that it would fund its own anti-drug units in a bid to reduce foreign (read: US) influence over its coca and cocaine policies.

A leading independent British commission has examined the UK's war on drugs and found it ineffective and misguided.

Prison guards get busted as cocaine traffickers in Louisiana and New Jersey, and a pair of North Carolina cops plea to helping out the local cocaine trade.