Drug War Chronicle

More bad apples in the Big Apple, a major drug corruption scandal brews in Tulsa, the city of Oakland pays big for bad cops, a Georgia deputy cops a plea, and a South Carolina state trooper goes down.

Drug reformers have been grumbling about the Obama administration's decision to nominate acting DEA head Michele Leonhart to be permanent DEA administrator since it was announced. Now, a drug reform coalition is calling on Obama to withdraw her nomination, citing recent DEA raids on medical marijuana providers. But there's more than that.

The city of Oakland is about to take medical marijuana production to a new level. It just passed an ordinance that will allow for four city-permitted industrial-scale cultivation operations. Small- and medium-scale growers have not been included in the scheme yet, and while council members have said they will address that, the community is concerned and speaking out about it.

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Hawaii-based Roger Christie and his THC Ministry have been proselytizing for pot for years. Now, the feds have indicted him, and they've managed to persuade a federal judge that he's "too dangerous" to be allowed out on bail. Welcome back to Bizarro World.

The same folks who brought us the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act now want to add dispensaries to the mix, and their initiative has qualified for the November ballot.

A car bomb attack in Ciudad Juarez Thursday that killed two police and a paramedic marked an ominous tactical turn in Mexico's prohibition-related violence this week. Meanwhile, the Mexican government put the death toll since President Calderon took office at 24,826.

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

Here we look at a journalistic account of the "secret life" of the border, an academic treatise on Mexico and its drug cartels, and a polemic against Mexico's drug war by one of its leading political figures.

Unions are beginning to jump on the California pot initiative bandwagon. This week, a biggie signed on: The United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council.