Peru is currently the world's second largest producer of coca and cocaine, and the coca growers' movement there is gaining steam, but it still faces many hurdles, some internal, some external.
A Scottish Labor Party politician is taking his party to task for turning away from harm reduction policies in favor of a hard-line approach, and he says marijuana ought to be decriminalized, and maybe heroin and cocaine, too.
Prosecutors in Dane County (Madison), Wisconsin, will no longer bother to charge people with less than 25 grams of marijuana under state law. Now, at worst, offenders will face a fine. It's a matter of budgets and priorities, prosecutors say.
Two Dutch Left Green politicians have opened a pro-marijuana web site. It is in part a guide to Dutch coffee shops, in part a parody of a ruling party anti-marijuana web site.
The governor of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has called for a debate over drug legalization both within Brazil and internationally. He argues that it would reduce crime in his violence-plagued city and state.
A stolidly mainstream Canadian defense and foreign affairs think tank has called for the creation of a marketing board to buy and sell Afghan opium. It's part of a report on Canada in Afghanistan that calls for innovative thinking to avoid failure in NATO's mission there.
The "This Week's Corrupt Cops" feature may have been on hiatus while your editor was down South America way, but it's been pretty much business as usual. We're back now, and here's this week's edition with the usual cast of crooked cops and greedy guards.
Casting a wistful eye on Afghanistan's opium bounty, a Kyrgyz lawmaker made a (presumably tongue in cheek) suggestion that his country also allow poppy production. It would help pay off the foreign debt, and it would lead to an increase in foreign aid, he suggested.