News Feature

Saturday saw the planet's cannabis nation hit the streets for part one of this year's bifurcated Global Marijuana Marches. Here's a report, with more to come next week.

Over the weekend, Newsweek published a leaked draft of the 2010 National Drug Control Strategy. No one is sure why it was leaked, or by whom. A pair of leading observers of federal drug policy dissect it for us.

Reed College in Portland, Oregon, has a decades-old reputation for rigorous academics and counterculture values. Now, after two Reed students died of heroin overdoses in two years, state and federal prosecutors are lowering the boom, starting with this weekends' annual end of school-year party.

San Francisco has become only the second city in America to host a drug user union, after New York City. But the movement is spreading internationally.

It wasn't just the scent of pot smoke that hung in the air over 4/20 events around the country this week, it was the sense of imminent change. And even drug reform leaders who had been leery of such Cannabis Nation celebrations are coming to grips with their grassroots.

The drug czar was in the hot seat at a Wednesday congressional hearing, and activists and academics got a chance to weigh in on the flaws of US drug policy as well.

Efforts to further reform the Higher Education Act's anti-drug provision came frustratingly close before becoming an accidental casualty of the last minute negotiations over the health care budget reconciliation bill. But it isn't dead yet -- advocates will continue to try to get it passed during this session of Congress.

Both a medical marijuana dispensary initiative and a hemp/marijuana legalization initiative are trying to make the November ballot in Oregon. The dispensary initiative is currently better positioned to do so, but the legalization initiative has about 90 days to join it.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy held its 11th annual national convention in San Francisco last weekend. It was the biggest one yet, and they couldn't have picked a more inviting locale.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved a bill that would reduce -- but not eliminate -- the infamous sentencing disparity between federal crack and powder cocaine offenses. The House Judiciary Committee has already passed a similar measure that would completely eliminate the disparity. Now it is up to the House and Senate leadership to get those bills to a floor vote, and advocates say it is the House bill that should move.