News Brief

We have a Southern trifecta this week, with missing evidence in Alabama, a rogue task force in Mississippi, and a drug-dealing jail guard in Louisiana.

A poll done by one of Brazil's leading newspapers suggests that marijuana legalization has a long way to go.

Local initiatives that would make adult marijuana offenses the lowest law enforcement priority have made the ballot in Missoula, Montana, and three California cities.

The federal case against medical marijuana refugee Renee Boje has ended not with a bang but with a whimper as, after eight years, the feds let her cop to a plea for possession of a 1/2 gram of pot.

A bill that would allow legal hemp production in California has passed both houses and now awaits the governor's signature.

The Chinese government this week began discussing what would be that country's first law aimed specifically at controlling drug abuse.

Got cash in your car? A federal appeals court just made it easier for the police to seize it as drug money even if there are no drugs around.

Federal law enforcement officials risked serious injury from all the back-patting going on at their Thursday press conference celebrating the capture of drug lord Javier Arellano-Felix. But they also acknowledged his arrest would ultimately amount to little.

With governments slow to adopt harm reduction measures to fight the spread of injection drug use-related HIV and some UN agencies acting more as obstacles than as assets, 19 international and regional harm reduction and other groups issued a joint declaration this week seeking to incite some movement.

Preliminary reports suggest the Afghan opium crop will be at record levels and 40% larger than last year, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to suppress it.