1. Editorial: Drug Busts as Taxpayer-Funded Media Lobbying/Electioneering Campaigns

If law enforcers stage a high-profile drug bust with the intention of influencing the outcome of the legislative process, is it lobbying?

2. Feature: Afghanistan Throws Out Group Urging Legal Opium -- Not

Despite press reports to the contrary, a think tank advocating licensing of Afghanistan's opium crop for the licit medical market has not been banned from the country, the group says.

3. Feature: Prominent Drug Reformers Run for Statewide Office in Connecticut, Maryland

Prominent activists are carrying the drug reform message in the Connecticut governor's race and the Maryland US Senate race.

4. DRCNet Video Review: "Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine, and the Law," Produced and Directed by Jed Riffe

Documentary filmmaker Jed Riffe's "Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine, and the Law" very successfully pulls together all the threads of the medical marijuana story in this compelling video.

5. Video Offer: Waiting to Inhale

This important new documentary about the medical marijuana movement is DRCNet's latest membership premium.

6. Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

Busy this week: judges on cocaine, cops dealing cocaine, cops selling ecstasy, Air Force pilots smuggling ecstasy, police chemists pilfering from the evidence pile -- and of course, jail guards smuggling dope into prisons.

7. Drug Raids: Michigan Judge Rules Flint Rave Raid Arrests Unconstitutional

A Michigan circuit court judge has thrown out the arrests of 94 people charged with "frequenting a drug house" after Flint police raided a night club holding a rave.

8. Harm Reduction: New Jersey Needle Exchange, Needle Access Bills Advance

New Jersey is the last state in the nation without either needle exchange programs or access to syringes without a prescription, but with bills moving in committee, that could soon change.

9. Sentencing: Louisiana Supreme Court Hears Case of Heroin Lifers

More than 90 people serving life sentences without parole for selling heroin under an old Louisiana law remain in prison despite reforms that should have freed them. The state Supreme Court heard arguments this week in a pair of cases that could accelerate their release.

10. Europe: Italian Government Gives Approval for Marijuana Derivatives for Pain Control

The Italian cabinet Thursday gave its approval for the use of marijuana derivatives in the relief of pain.

11. Canada: Supreme Court Rejects Random Drug Tests of Probationers

In a case from British Columbia, the Canada's Supreme Court has held that judges cannot impose drug testing as a probation requirement without authorization from Parliament, and an appeals court found they can't impose drug treatment either.

12. Europe: Dutch Appeals Court Rules Medical Marijuana Patient Can Grow His Own

Despite Holland's famously tolerant marijuana policies, growing the stuff has remained a crime. Now, an appeals court decision relating to medical use has caused the first crack in the dike.

13. Weekly: This Week in History

Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past.

14. Announcement: New Format for the Reformer's Calendar

Visit our new web site each day to see a running countdown to the events coming up the soonest, and more.