News Brief

The allure of cocaine proves too much for a California highway patrolman and a pair of Brooklyn narcs, and a pair of New Jersey cops pay for peddling pills.

The Chinese National People's Congress is set to pass that country's first drug law, after subsuming drugs within the general criminal code for half a century. Designated addicts may actually get gentler treatment in the new framework than they receive now.

In November, voters in Hailey, Idaho, approved initiatives legalizing medical marijuana and industrial hemp and instructing the town to make marijuana offenses the lowest law enforcement priority. Now, the Idaho attorney general's office has found those initiatives to be "invalid" and the city is balking at implementing them.

Critics of the widespread use of informants in the drug war have long argued the system is subject to abuse. Three cases of informants gone bad popped up in the past week.

With California facing a $14 billion budget deficit, the governor's budget cutters have come up with a proposal to release more than 22,000 nonviolent offenders before their sentences are up.

Possession of salvia divinorum is a felony in Illinois beginning next week.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, the son of a man once imprisoned on drug charges in the US, has called for pardons for low-level drug mules serving long sentences in his country's prisons.

Busy, busy this week, with miscreants in blue popping up all over the place. A New York City drug squad is under scrutiny, while a New Mexico drug squad gets back to work, a Boston cop goes to prison, and cops from Florida, Ohio, and Minnesota get busted for their shenanigans, as do a pair of Texas jailers.

After one patient successfully challenged an agency's stance that Finnish law absolutely forbids it, the Finnish government is moving to craft guidelines to allow for medical marijuana use.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has released its latest annual report on drugs and drug trafficking in Canada. It's sobering reading for anyone who thinks countries can enforce their way out of a drug problem.