I just heard that young voter turnout from the universities in San Diego has been so huge that they ran out of ballots. If so, that would definitely be helpful for Prop 19.

Please check out my editorial that ran on Alternet this morning, "

I am heading downtown after finishing this blog post, to join my cohorts in the drug policy contingent at the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" this afternoon.

In the late 1980s, Switzerland saw a significant increase in injection drug use, and the crime and public health harms that are associated with it under our prohibition system.

"Movie Night" tonight, on the widely-read Firedoglake.com blog, will feature Jeff Meyers, producer of the classic and now re-released video about hemp pioneer Jack Herer, and Emperor of Hemp director Jeff Jones. Tune in between 8:00pm and 9:30pm.

Last week we reported on the forces lined up for and against California's Prop 19.

This video more or less speaks for itself. I doubt that marijuana smoking would be allowed in some of the public places where it depicts people doing that, but they were trying to present the arguments being made by both sides. One commenter on the video noted that they presented the stoned driver as going too slowly, not fast and recklessly, an insightful detail.

 As an east coaster it took me a few moments to remember this, but the bear is a symbol for the state of California.

A small but loud group of medical marijuana businesses are in the media claiming that Prop 19, California's "tax and regulate" initiative to legalize marijuana, would make marijuana l

Our friends at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, in honor of Overdose Awareness Day (August 31), have produced a new video, "Take Home Naloxone -- The Right to Survive Overdoses." There are many legal, political and attitudinal barriers that currently stand in the way of getting this life-saving medication to the people who need it, when they need it, and numerous lives have been needlessly lost as a result.

While some California TV stations are censoring pro-legalization-of-marijuana ads, a

[image:1 align:right caption:true]Norm Stamper, former police chief of Seattle, wants all of us to support California's Prop 19 initiative to legalize marijuana this November. He writes about it in The Huffington Post this week.

Kelly Ayotte, former attorney general of New Hampshire and the state's leading Republican contender for Senate, wouldn't tell a disabled Navy veteran Manchester GOP Candidate Fair and Straw

Houston-area journalist Clarence Walker reflects on a trillion drug war dollars spent in:

We are publishing a lot of stuff on our new web site -- read about it here -- but it was a really big week for drug policy reform in Washington, and we want to make sure that the very latest big news does not drive the really really big news too far down on the screen for people to notice. And so, a brief wrap-up of the biggest news of the week:

More big drug policy news from Congress in this last week before the recess: The House has at long last passed legislation, already adopted by the Senate, which will reduce crack cocaine sentences

Big news from Washington today -- Senator Jim Webb's has just passed the US House of Representatives, by unanimous consent -- an important milestone that brings this important reevaluation of o

Three new videos from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, filmed at the Vienna AIDS 2010 conference this month. In one of them, former US President Bill Clinton calls for harm reduction, an approach to substance misuse and other social issues of which the most well-known example is needle exchange programs.

We are told that Richard Paey, the disabled Florida pain patient pardoned by Gov. Charlie Crist in 2007 after prosecutors twisted his attempts to obtain adequate opiate pain medication into drug dealing charges incurring a 25-year mandatory sentence, was interviewed for the upcoming Penn & Teller "Bullshit!" episode, "Criminal Justice." Showtime describes the "Criminal Justice" episode as follows:

Is America's criminal justice system weighed down with bad science, ineffective methods, incompetence and corruption? Penn & Teller set out to reveal that the only thing scarier than crime is America's war on crime.

"Criminal Justice" will start airing this Thursday at 10:00pm. In the meanwhile, you can read more about Richard Paey in our archive, at the Pain Relief Network or in the 2006 Sixty Minutes episode, "Prisoner of Pain."

I'm on Huffington Post again tonight, with a post chastising the UN (and western governments generally) for: 1) continuing the ludicrous coca runaround in South America's Andean region for another year; and 2) turning a blind eye year after year to the indirect support that western funds and cooperation gives to the death penalty for nonviolent drug offenses, mostly in Asia and the Middle East. Check it out here -- comments welcome in either location. If you haven't already, check out our Chronicle articles on these two topics here and here.

The DEA is proud of having helped Ecuadoran authorities capture this "narco-sub":

Silly DEA -- don't they realize what the implications are, of drug traffickers having the wherewithal to operate a submarine? It means they have effectively unlimited resources to devote to the task of finding a way to get their product from point A to point B, and to reducing the cost associated with doing so. If it's not over the border, it's under it. If it's not by air, it's on the sea. If not on the sea, then under the sea -- using narco-subs. Apparently lots of narco-subs:

Oh, and don't forget, if not here, then there. Silly DEA. Random thought on the DEA photograph: Does this remind anyone else of Yoda in the jungle on his planet, using the force to lift the damaged spacecraft, Empire Strikes Back movie?