The latest addition to the ever-growing debate over British drug policy came this week as the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee studying current policy released its long-awaited report, "The Government's Drugs Policy: Is It Working?"
Philadelphia is now into its second week of Operation Safe Streets, a massive police crackdown on some 300 identified open-air drug markets in the City of Brotherly Love.
Raphael Perl, an international terrorism and narcotics specialist, recently spoke about the correlation between drug use, crime rates and decriminalization. His remarks indicate that serious drug analysts are beginning to understand the trade-off between prohibition and crime.
Former British cabinet minister Mo Mowlam, who ran Prime Minister Tony Blair's drug policy until less than a year ago, has called for the legalization of all drugs.
At its national convention in Seattle last weekend, the US branch of Amnesty International, the world's largest human rights organization, voted to have the organization investigate the links between US drug policy and human rights abuses at home and abroad.
Officials at Colorado State University in Fort Collins announced recently that CSU has become the first college in the nation to operate a drug court for students accused of campus drug and alcohol violations.
A flurry of newspaper headlines in the Scottish press over the weekend announced a pending drug policy shift in Scotland, but there may be less to the move than meets the eye.
The editor of DRCNet's Week Online interviews Sasha Abramsky, author of a new book on our prison system, focusing on the non-violent and petty criminals that fill America's prisons and the drug war connection.
Philip Smith of the Drug Reform Coordination Network interviewed San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters about his new book on drug law reform and corruption in the Colorado police force.
Reinstating the ban on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is music to the ears of dealers in Kandahar, one of whom gleefully reacted by telling the press, "We'll be rich!"
The Bush Administration is attempting to repeal a ruling which maintains the right not to consent to a suspicionless drug search on public transportation. Is it anti-terrorist or unconstitutional?
As the Americans and their local allies in Bogota apply pressure on the Colombian cocaine and heroin business, the red flag of Maoist insurrection waves once more in Peru.
American music listeners are familiar enough with the drug-laced lyrics and spaciness of stoner rock and the gritty drug war milieu of gangster rap, but most non-Spanish-speaking gringos remain totally oblivious to the narcocorrido, a musical genre drenched in the Mexico-US drug trade whose leading stars sell millions of albums on both sides of the border.
Deaths and other human rights abuses by Bolivian security
forces have mounted in recent weeks as they confront angry
coca-growing peasants determined to protect their crops and
their economic well-being.
The coca fields of Colombia are a long way from Philadelphia's gritty Kensington neighborhood, but a local anti-poverty group is making the connections with an innovative and interesting new tactic.
A bill which would allow the D.C. Child and Family Services
Agency to test children at birth for signs of drug exposure
and take custody of those children is full of flaws and would
serve to target the poor, ignoring the underlying issues
of addiction.
The "D.A.R.E. Generation" works to change drug policies on campuses. The Students for Sensible Drug Policy met this month to talk about ways to bring drug policy awareness to campuses across the country
and, according to DRCNet, they are not alone in their effort.
Drug treatment is big business, and the drug treatment industry is turning to Madison Avenue techniques and grand coalitions to ensure that it gets even bigger.
Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri has moved
away from a logical drug policy, creating stricter laws and
mandatory-minimum sentencing and implementing the
death penalty for drug producers and dealers.
In the days following the Sept. 11 attacks, law enforcement and industry sources reported drug seizures were down dramatically. Now it's back to business as usual for the black market.
Even as Congress grows increasingly queasy about U.S. drug war investments in Central America -- slashing the Andean counter-drug budget by 22 percent last week -- Bush administration officials and congressional drug war diehards are turning up the "terrorist" rhetoric in an effort to strengthen their cause.
In the latest move in a quixotic crusade against cannabis in any form, the DEA has published a ban on the consumption of food products containing hemp.
No longer targeting only producers of illegal drugs, some politicians have moved on to implicitly blaming domestic drug consumers for the 9/11 attacks.
Even before the dust had settled around the site of the World Trade Center, drug war hawks were trying to link the drug war to terrorism to further their own political goals.
The United States government may be shunning the UN conference on racism but the U.S. drug reform movement will be present, condemning racism in the drug war.
Colombian legislators recently introduced bills calling for an end to fumigation, the normalization of small drug crops and the outright legalization of the Colombian drug trade under a state monopoly.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled it is unconstitutional for judges to add more years to drug traffickers' sentences based on post-conviction hearings. This may mean that mandatory minimum sentencing will be repealed.
Despite rising opposition to Plan Colombia, U.S. holds a hard line, pressuring President Pastrana to continue aerial spraying of coca fields -- or else.
