Editorial

Lawyers understand medicine better than doctors, and drug dogs have extra-sensory perception, some judges today seem to think. Judges should know better, and with people's health and freedom on the line have no excuse for not doing better.

In Hawaii County (the "Big Island") this week, city councilmembers respect their constituents so much that they approved a marijuana reform initiative for the ballot despite insufficient signatures. In Denver, police continue to flout not one but two similar laws that that city's voters passed. Why hasn't the police chief been fired for it?

A recent article in Time made important points about the difference between the coca plant and its legal uses, vs. the international cocaine trade and efforts to fight it in Bolivia. Unfortunately, the article stopped there and didn't ask the next logical -- and desperately needed -- question.

County police near Washington brought marijuana to a local mayor's home, then sent a SWAT team in because of the marijuana. Now the family's two dogs are dead. Another day in the drug war.

A former State Department official who fought the Afghan drug war has taken to the New York Times to tell why the failure of the program is everybody else's fault not his.

Another major study has shown that drug policy doesn't affect drug use rates, and we already know the drug war doesn't affect sales. But we know the harm that prohibition does. So what's the point?

US federal drug prohibition began with the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914 -- close to a century ago. And yet the Taliban last year could earn a hundred million dollars from the opium trade, and there's not a single drug free high school in our country. When will the failed and not very noble experiment be ended, so we can start to clean up the mess it's left for us?

Once upon a time, a jury's acquittal was the final word for a defendant facing punishment. Thanks to the "war on drugs," that is no longer the case, and defendants can be punished for crimes of which they were never convicted or even acquitted. Sometimes the charges don't even need to go to court at all.

Three police agencies in Philadelphia teamed up to nab the largest stash of cocaine ever found there. But all impact on the market from the bust is bound to be gone in a matter or weeks if not less. Should we be excited?

How many more lives will be ruined by the drug laws before our leaders are willing to talk sense about them? Too many, here and everywhere.