News Brief

Two Dutch Left Green politicians have opened a pro-marijuana web site. It is in part a guide to Dutch coffee shops, in part a parody of a ruling party anti-marijuana web site.

Prosecutors in Dane County (Madison), Wisconsin, will no longer bother to charge people with less than 25 grams of marijuana under state law. Now, at worst, offenders will face a fine. It's a matter of budgets and priorities, prosecutors say.

A Scottish Labor Party politician is taking his party to task for turning away from harm reduction policies in favor of a hard-line approach, and he says marijuana ought to be decriminalized, and maybe heroin and cocaine, too.

Three Salvadoran politicians were brutally murdered by Guatemalan anti-drug police outside Guatemala City 10 days ago. Now, the police killers have themselves been killed in a brazen assassination while being held inside a nasty Guatemalan prison. Many questions are being raised, but dead men tell no tales.

The court that not so long ago heard a case brought by Anna Nicole Smith will soon rule on whether students using the phrase "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" are entitled to 1st Amendment protection. The stakes are a lot more serious than the bizarre title may suggest.

A hush-hush Home Office briefing paper says Britain should begin prescribing heroin to hard-core users, a major London newspaper reports. It could happen as soon as next fall.

The mayor of Barre, Vermont, is fed up with drugs and drug policy, and his frustration is showing as he calls for both the legalization of marijuana and the death penalty for heroin and crack cocaine dealers.

Long-time Irish talk show Gay Byrne is famous for tackling taboo subjects in Ireland. Now he's retired, but that hasn't stopped him from speaking out in favor of one of the remaining taboo subjects: drug legalization.

City councilmen in Lafayette, Colorado, have backed away from an ordinance that would have increased penalties for marijuana possession after a judge resigned in protest and a strong grassroots efforts by Colorado activists scorched them.

After enduring two years of stonewalling by the FDA and its mother agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, medical marijuana supporters are taking the agencies to federal court over their continuing claims that marijuana has no medicinal benefits.