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In the last few weeks, more than a dozen taxi drivers and passengers have been murdered in the resort city of Acapulco. A 2008 survey reported that 120 of the 200 taxi drivers in the city of Chetumal, Mexcio, reported to have been threatened with violence against their families if they refused to deliver drugs on behalf of the local drug trafficking organization.

For nearly two hours, dozens of patients and their advocates — some through tears, others at the top of their lungs — vented their frustrations over the state's proposed rules for New Jersey's yet-to-launch medical marijuana program. The hearing, though required before the state can adopt new rules, might be for naught. The Democrat-controlled Legislature are two votes away from overturning the health department's regulations and ordering them to start over or write the rules itself.

Thousands of people have vanished without a trace – some caught up in prohibition violence, others for no reason anyone can fathom. Relatives remain in agonized limbo. The disappearances are a disturbing echo of a tactic employed by dictatorships in the so-called dirty wars that plagued parts of Latin America in the last half of the 20th century.

Neill Franklin, who performed narcotics enforcement with the Maryland State Police and the Baltimore Police Department over a 34-year career, opines that we desperately need to end the "war on drugs" which has done so little to prevent people from using drugs but which has done so much to enrich organized criminals who do not hesitate to use violence to protect their black market profits. Franklin asks: How many more hardworking and brave law enforcers do we have to see killed in the line of duty before our elected officials will change this policy?

The northeast has historically been a hotbed for marijuana use — with five of the six New England states self-reporting some of the highest percentages of marijuana consumption in the nation. But recently New England has also become a regional leader in marijuana law reform. Lawmakers in every New England state are now debating marijuana law reform legislation. Paul Armentano of NORML offers a closer look at what is happening.

The arrest of Bolivia's top counternarcotics cop, Rene Sanabria, has not changed President Morales' stance on allowing the DEA into the country. Morales insisted he has no intention of inviting the DEA back. He alleged "interests of a geopolitical nature" were behind the Sanabria case. "They are using police to try to implicate the government," he said. Vice minister of social defense, Felipe Caceres, suggested that Sanabria's arrest was the DEA's revenge for being expelled. The president also hinted at U.S. hypocrisy, recalling reports that American agents ran guns to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s with the proceeds of cocaine sales in the United States.

Hitmen are killing human rights workers across Ciudad Juárez -- the city in Mexico most affected by drug prohibition violence -- in brazen attacks that activists say authorities are unable and unwilling to halt.

The Oregon Supreme Court heard an hour of arguments in the case of Sheriff Mike Winters v. Cynthia Willis. In 2008, Willis was denied a concealed handgun license because she is a medical marijuana cardholder.

Police have tied the October beheading of a man in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler to a Mexican drug trafficking organization. "They stabbed him, we believe to death, and then severed his head. There was a lot of blood," Chandler police Sgt. Joe Favazzo said.

Residents have closed more than 2,000 streets in Ciudad Juarez, the city in Mexico most affected by drug prohibition violence. About 200 families have been wiped out in 10 zones heavily affected by the drug prohibition war.

Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, opines that public officials and drug lords are the biggest beneficiaries of the drug war. He says what police don’t realize (or maybe some of them do) is that the only way to shut down the drug lords, immediately, is to end the drug war by legalizing drugs. Continuing to wage the drug war only ensures that the drug lords will continue supplying drugs and that the cops will continue making busts, and that both groups will continue making beaucoup bucks off the war, which is really what the drug war is all about.

Washington senators moved forward with establishing more regulation on the state's medical marijuana system, approving a bill with changes that would give patients greater protection from arrest and bring the supply chain out of a legal gray area. After lengthy debate, senators approved the bill on a 29-20 vote. The measure now moves to the House.