California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill "realigning" corrections in the state, but that's just the tiniest of baby steps toward fixing an out of control prison system. How about some real sentencing reform?

We review a book on Colombia and US drug policy seen through a lens focused on American contractors and Colombian politicians kidnapped by the FARC.

It may be up to Democratic Gov. Bryan Schweitzer to save medical marijuana in Montana. Only a procedural vote is left before the legislature repeals the voter-approved law.

Delaware has just moved a giant step closer toward becoming the next medical marijuana state.

The Illinois House has turned back a bid to permit farmers there to apply to grow hemp. Opponents cited the federal ban on hemp production and law enforcement's inability to tell the difference between hemp and weed.

A move to legalize weed through the legislative process has died in Olympia, but some are acting to put a legalization initiative on the November ballot.

Bills that would have decriminalized up to five ounces of weed or six pot plants were killed in a Maine legislative committee last week.

ProCon.org is a series of in-depth web sites presenting information and views on controversial issues, several of which relate to drug policy. The Chronicle is running a six-part series of info items from ProCon.org, and we encourage you to check it out.

More bloody days in Ciudad Juarez, and violence flares in Veracruz as well.

Missing drug money, meth-dealing sheriffs, cocaine-snorting crooked cops, cops turned robbers -- it's just another week on the corrupt cops beat.

A Florida group formed to protest the governor's order that state employees be subjected to random drug testing has come up with an apt, if smelly, form of protest.

New Zealand is responding to fake pot with regulation, not prohibition.

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