Drug War Chronicle

A bill that would make New York the next medical marijuana state has won an Assembly committee vote.

Acting from firmly prohibitionist principles, the Russian government saw potential new drug threats on the horizon and promptly criminalized them.

It's been a wild week for weed in Washington. Hearings and initiatives and polls, oh, my!

In a political maneuver to silence critics while Canada hosts the Winter Olympics, Prime Minister Steven Harper has shut down parliament until a new session begins in March. The move kills a harsh bill that was one vote from passage and would have imposed mandatory minimum prison sentences on people growing as a little as a single marijuana plant.

Sheriffs gone wild, narcs gone greedy, a jail guard gone horny, and a couple of jail guards gone dumb.

A Colorado judge has delivered a shot across the bow to towns and cities moving to ban medical marijuana dispensaries on the grounds they violate federal law.

A California judge can order a medical marijuana patient to hand in his ID card and give up his medicine if he wants to go on probation instead of to prison, an appeals court has ruled in a 2-1 decision. The ruling provoked a harsh dissent.

The death toll has risen every year since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006. More than 2,000 in 2007, more than 5,000 in 2008, and last year's toll was 7,724. And there are 137 more already this year.

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

The New Jersey legislature has become the first in the nation to pass a bill reforming mandatory minimum school zone laws. Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign it.