Drug War Chronicle

Kenneth How rolled up to a Massachusetts sobriety checkpoint sitting in the passenger seat and smoking a joint. Shortly later, he was dead. The medical examiner has called his death a homicide. Now, his family has filed a federal lawsuit alleging police beat him to death.

It's a marijuana news trifecta in Rhode Island this week: A decrim bill is introduced, the Senate Commission on Marijuana Prohibition holds its final hearing, and the Health Department holds what is likely its final hearing on regulating for the state's embryonic "compassion center" program for pot patients.

Although Scottish authorities have yet to find any dirty dope, they have found another heroin user dead of anthrax.

Nearly a thousand people were killed in Mexico's unrelenting plague of prohibition-related violence last month alone. At this rate, another 10,000 will die by year's end.

Millions of innocent Americans suffering from colds may soon be paying for the sins of meth cooks, for whom that medicine that relieves your symptoms is the key ingredient in the recipe.

A Missouri Senate committee with more moralistic wrath toward the poor than common sense has passed a bill that would require welfare applicants and recipients to be drug tested under "reasonable suspicion" and thrown off the rolls for three years if they test positive -- even though the legislature's own analysts say the bill would cost far more than it would save.

"Obama's Drug War Budget Destroys the Myth of Change," "Obama, YouTube, and Marijuana Legalization," "Legalize Willie Nelson's Tour Bus," "Obama Avoids Questions About Legalizing Marijuana (Again)."

Nearly nine years after the fact, the CIA has completed its internal investigation of the shooting down of a civilian aircraft over Peru that left an American missionary and her infant daughter dead. The agency found little wrong with its behavior, but not everyone agrees.

The Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Inc. (FROST'D) seeks a full-time Harm Reduction Counselor/Outreach Worker/Driver to work with their Integrated Harm Reduction Program.

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