Drug War Chronicle

Move over, Sicilian Mafia. The Calabrian mob, grown rich and powerful off trafficking in black market cocaine, are the new tough guys in Europe.

Colombia's vice-president went to London to attend events related to a new British campaign against cocaine consumption, but while he was there, he suggested maybe legalization should be part of the discussion.

The Chilean government recently reclassified marijuana as a "dangerous drug" like heroin or methamphetamine, but one senator is crying foul.

Faced with high rates of opiate addiction and a rising overdose toll, the Massachusetts Senate is considering funding a pair of "secure treatment centers" for arrested drug users.

Attorneys for Dr. Stephen Schneider, a Kansas physician indicted by the feds as a "pill mill" operator, have now filed a motion seeking dismissal of the indictment and challenging the constitutionality of the Controlled Substances Act.

The DEA agent helped police in a Missouri do some COPS-style raids earlier this year. There was only one problem: He wasn't a DEA agent. Now the people busted are suing.

On opposite sides of the country, crooked cops are headed for long prison sentences, and another Atlanta narc is going to the big house. Meanwhile, a Customs and Border Protection agent in San Diego and a jail guard in the Florida panhandle get busted.

No one ever said it was going to be easy to get medical marijuana bill through state legislatures, and recent events in Minnesota and Rhode Island reinforce the notion that it's a lengthy, arduous process. But it isn't going to happen at all if you don't try, and that's what one Ohio legislator is doing.

Nearly a year after it went into effect, New Mexico's medical marijuana program is registering and providing ID cards to patients, but its innovative provisions for state-licensed, -owned, or -operated marijuana production and distribution are stalled in the regulatory process.