The death toll from anthrax-tainted heroin in Europe has risen to 10 as

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European heroin users are on high alert as the death toll rises from heroin tainted with anthrax.

Harm reduction in New York City came under attack last weekend when the tabloid New York Post ran an article titled

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In the Chronicle's review of the top international drug policy stories of the year last w

The US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan, a key element in Western efforts to defeat the Taliban, is short on long-term strategy, clear objectives, and a plan to hand over responsibility to A

The Czech cabinet Monday approved a Justice Ministry proposal that sets personal use quantity limits for illicit drugs under a penal code revision that decriminalizes drug possession in the Czech Republic. The law and its quantity limits will take effect on January 1.

The Czech government had approved the decriminalization law late last year, but failed to set precise quantities covered by it, instead leaving it to police and prosecutors to determine what constituted a “larger than small” amount of drugs. The resulting confusion--and the prosecution of some small-scale marijuana growers as drug traffickers--led the government to adopt more precise criteria.

Under the new law, possession of less than the following amounts of illicit drugs will not be a criminal offense:

Marijuana 15 grams (or five plants)
Hashish 5 grams
Magic mushrooms 40 pieces
Peyote 5 plants
LSD 5 tablets
Ecstasy 4 tablets
Amphetamine 2 grams
Methamphetamine 2 grams
Heroin 1.5 grams
Coca 5 plants
Cocaine 1 gram

Possession of “larger than a small amount” of marijuana can result in a jail sentence of up to one year. For other illicit drugs, the sentence is two years. Trafficking offenses carry stiffer sentences.

Justice Minister Daniela Kovarova said that the ministry had originally proposed decriminalizing the possession of up to two grams of hard drugs, but decided that limits being imposed by courts this year were appropriate. "The government finally decided that it would stick to the current court practice and drafted a table based on these limits," Kovarova said.

The Czech Republic now joins Portugal as a European country that has decriminalized drug possession.

Fresh on the success of NAOMI, the North American Opiate Maintenance Initiative, in which hardcore heroin addicts in Vancouver were given eithe

Fresh on the success of NAOMI, the North American Opiate Maintenance Initiative, in which hard-core heroin addicts in Vancouver were given either methadone, heroin, or Dilaudid in maintenance doses, Canadian researchers announced earlier this year plans to broaden and deeper their research with SALOME, the Study to Assess Long-term Opiate Maintenance Effectiveness. SALOME was supposed to begin this fall in Vancouver and Montreal, but Quebec provincial authorities have thrown a wrench in the works.

The Toronto Star reported this week that Quebec has balked on paying its share of the project, stopping the Montreal portion of SALOME in its tracks. The Vancouver portion, supported by the British Columbia provincial government, is set to move forth.

Quebec's refusal to pay its share—the Canadian Institutes of Health Research are kicking in $1 million for the three-year project—led Montreal's SALOME head researcher to charge the government with discrimination. The decision will have "disastrous consequences for people addicted to heroin and (who) don't respond to standard treatment," said Dr. Suzanne Brissette, chief of addiction medicine at Saint-Luc hospital. "There is no other treatment for these people."

NAOMI showed that heroin maintenance worked for people for whom methadone and other forms of treatment had not, she said. Had researchers found a treatment for cancer or diabetes, Quebec would not hesitate to help fund it, she added. "It's a clear case of discrimination," she said. "We have a treatment that works and they're saying, `Sorry folks, you won't get it.'"

NAOMI researchers estimate that Canada has between 60,000 and 90,000 heroin addicts. The NAOMI trials found that addicts on maintenance heroin used less illicit heroin, committed fewer crimes, and adapted healthier life-styles.

In a Wednesday interview with the Associated Press, Russia's anti-drug chief sai

In the last eight days, the decriminalization of drug possession has gone into effect for 150 million Latin Americans. Last Thursday, as part of a broader bill, Mexico (pop.

Another video from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, this time in partnership with the Swedish Drug Users Union. Sweden's government is one of the world's most prohibitionist, but nevertheless has moved toward harm reduction in recent years by expanding needle exchange into a national policy. Previously needle exchange was happening only in two cities in the nation's south.

Well, there's still no needle exchange in Stockholm, according to HCLU, it's even hard to get into a methadone maintenance program, and those who do often face negative attitudes from the program's staff. Check out the video below, or here.

In a report that was actually completed last October but not published until this week in the New England Jo

A bill that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use in Mexico is now the law of the land, although it will not go into effect for one year to give states time to ad

A congressional study released Tuesday reveals that US military forces occupying Afghanistan have placed 50 drug traffickers on a "capture or kill" list.

The Obama administration has shifted gears in Afghanistan, rejecting the Bush administration's emphasis on opium poppy eradication in favor of attacking Taliban-linked drug trafficking networks as

US and NATO casualties in Afghanistan jumped sharply this week as some 4,000 US Marines and 650 Afghan army troops poured into Helmand province, Afghanistan's largest producer, which supplies more

Gretchen Peters certainly has a sense of timing.

Thousands of US Marines poured into Afghanistan's southern Helmand province this week to take the battle against the Taliban to the foe's stronghold.

As summer arrives in Afghanistan, it's not just the temperature that is heating up.

From the 1970s until 2000, anyone caught possessing, distributing, or producing heroin in Louisiana was eligible for a prison sentence of life without parole.