Drug War Chronicle #791 - July 11, 2013

Louisiana has sentenced hundreds of people to life without parole as habitual offenders, even if the triggering offense was a minor drug offense. Jody Butler is one of them. He'd like to go home someday.

The Pennsylvania NAACP stepped up its support for a marijuana legalization bill with a 4th of July press conference calling for its passage.

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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.

We review two books on marijuana -- an academic treatise on marijuana policy in England, and a not-so-academic account of hanging out with pot outlaws in the California hills. Both have their virtues.

A federal medical marijuana banking bill was introduced, an Oregon bill that would allow and regulate dispensaries heads to the governor's desk, Berkeley and Oakland fight the feds.

Is decriminalization coming to the nation's capital? A bill to do that was introduced Wednesday, and there is strong public support for it.

Oklahoma's welfare drug testing program has come a cropper in terms of saving money for the state, with only 2.2% of applicants being denied for failing drug tests or refusing to take them.

Britain is about to become the latest European country (as well as Canada and the US) to ban khat, criminalizing the mild stimulant used by tens of thousands of African emigrants there. And it is ignoring its own drug advisors to do so.

In the fifth drug war killing in the past two weeks, members of a Massachusetts SWAT team shot and killed an apartment dweller after he allegedly confronted them with a weapon during a pre-dawn drug raid.

More trouble for Philly and its rogue narcs, an Alabama jail guard goes down, so does a Mississippi narc, and a Calfornia narc cops a plea to stealing dope for resale.

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