Drug War Chronicle

Another year, another all-time high in US prisoners, and the drug war continues to make a major contribution. This is getting really old.

Busy, busy. Border guards going down, prison guards going down, more cops in trouble, and more investigations of a perjury-condoning prosecutor in Detroit.

What may have been the largest drug bust ever took place in Afghanistan this week. But while NATO claimed it dealt a hard blow to the Taliban, profits from the lost hash are miniscule compared to what the group rakes in from the opium trade.

The Argentine government is working on a rewrite of its drug laws, but courts there aren't waiting for the politicians. In April, two federal tribunals in Buenos Aires declared the drug possession laws unconstitutional, and now more courts have followed suit.

The Oregon Court of Appeals has rejected an employer's firing of a medical marijuana patient who did not use on the job, saying it violates state anti-discrimination laws.

Veteran activist Dana Beal of Global Marijuana March fame spent more than a week behind bars in Illinois, arrested on money-laundering charges after police found $150,000 in cash. But he bailed out Thursday after the original charge vanished, to be replaced by an obstruction of justice charge. The cash is still in custody.

For the past three years, a select group of heroin addicts in Vancouver and Montreal have received pharmaceutical grade heroin as part of a pilot heroin maintenance program. Now, the NAOMI program is winding down, the researchers are assembling their reports, and the addicts are back on the streets.