Crack/Powder Cocaine Disparity

Fewer people are getting arrested for marijuana possession in Washington state after legalization -- imagine that! -- Kansas legislators want to drug test teachers, a New Jersey heroin and opiates panel has recommendations, Russell Brand goes to Vienna, and more.

Historic sentencing reform legislation has advanced in the Senate, as the Judiciary Committee today approved the Smarter Sentencing Act. Companion legislation is also pending in the House.

In a major policy speech to the American Bar Association Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced sentencing reform measures he is ordering the Justice Department to undertake, especially backing away from the use of mandatory minimum sentencing for low-level nonviolent drug offenders.

Marc Mauer is back with a new edition of the grounbreaking "Race to Incarcerate," this time with an updated graphic novel version designed to take his important message to a younger and broader audience.

A panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has held that the Fair Sentencing Act's reduction in sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses should be extended to all federal crack prisoners, regardless of when their offense took place.

A slew of celebrities, including some not-so-usual suspects (the Kardashians!?), as well as faith, academic, and media figures, have signed on to a letter to President Obama urging him to press forward on drug and sentencing reform.

Drug reformers won't find the Democratic platform's positions on drug policy very inspiring.

The Justice Department is signaling it wants a smaller federal prison population because we can't afford our mass incarceration binge anymore, but it doesn't want to talk about the drug war.

With state budgets pinched all across the land, some states this year have adopted sentencing reforms.

The Supreme Court has held that people "in the pipeline" -- convicted but not yet sentenced when Fair Sentencing Act reforms took effect -- on federal crack cocaine charges are entitled to be sentenced under the lesser penalties created by the act. Thousands could get sentence cuts.