News Brief

A car bomb attack in Ciudad Juarez Thursday that killed two police and a paramedic marked an ominous tactical turn in Mexico's prohibition-related violence this week. Meanwhile, the Mexican government put the death toll since President Calderon took office at 24,826.

Unions are beginning to jump on the California pot initiative bandwagon. This week, a biggie signed on: The United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council.

California's Central Valley city of Stockton has been a poster child for the Great Recession, and now, with layoffs hitting the police department for the second time in two years, the cops have announced they don't have enough manpower to staff their dope squad.

Making highly motivated high school students urinate in a cup to play football or join the glee club isn't very effective, the Department of Education has found in a new study.

Here is yet another poll showing broad support for medical marijuana, this time in New York state. The surprise is no longer that people support medical marijuana, but that the New York legislature can't get around to passing it.

The authors of the Vienna Declaration are seeking to throw out the old prohibitionist drug policy paradigm in favor of one based on science and evidence. This week, the declaration picked up significant political support -- three former Latin American presidents.

Is the California tax and regulate marijuana legalization initiative winning or losing? Right now, it looks like it depends on which pollster you ask. In any case, this is looking like a very tight race.

$38 an ounce for kind bud?!?!? That's what RAND says could happen if California legalizes it. Tax revenue estimates are all over the place, depending on multiple factors. And consumption could go up dramatically, but it might not. Bottom line: Nobody knows for sure what's going to happen.

The Russians want more appointments to high positions in the UN, and it looks like a Russian diplomat will replace outgoing UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa. Given Russia's retrograde positions on drug policy issues, alarm bells are going off.

2010 is on the way to being the bloodiest year yet in Mexico's ever-escalating prohibition-fueled violence. In 2008, 5,000 were killed; last year, the toll was 8,000. This year, we're only at the half-way point, and the toll so far is closing in on 6,000.