Drug War Chronicle #783 - May 9, 2013

The California Supreme Court has ruled that cities and counties can indeed ban medical marijuana dispensaries. That means your access to medical marijuana depends on where you live in the state. A fix could be coming from the legislature, but it's not here yet.

Three Idaho medical marijuana activists are now caught up in a child endangerment battle after authorities seized their kids when a schoolmate got sick from what is alleged to have been marijuana that allegedly came from one of their homes.

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Remember when we used to say "You don't have to make a federal case out of it?" Well, we did. Now, we have more than 4,500 federal criminal laws, and some members of Congress are ready to do something about it.

A bill that would give California prosecutors the option of charging hard drug possession as a misdemeanor instead of a felony has passed the state Senate and now heads to the Assembly.

It went down to the wire, but on the last day of the session, the Colorado legislature passed bills to regulate the state's looming legal marijuana market.

Separate overdose prevention and syringe exchange bills were approved by the Colorado legislature this week. They now go to the governor's desk.

Marijuana rescheduling is headed for the US Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court upheld local dispensary bans, the feds strike again in Berkeley and Washington state, and there is action in state legislatures, too.

The next state to decriminalize marijuana won't be New Hampshire, at least not this year.

A drug search turned fatal for a Louisiana man last Thursday night, with police saying he died after swallowing crack cocaine. He's number 11 for the year.

Something is still rotten along Utah's Wasatch Front, a DC cop gets popped for money-laundering, a Detroit-area cop pleads to running protection for traffickers, and a South Texas cop heads for prison for shipping guns to Mexico.