Ethan Nadelmann

A forthcoming biography on President Obama is making headlines, with new details about the president smoking marijuana with his teenage friends in Hawaii.

David Maraniss' book, Barack Obama: The Story, describes Obama as a marijuana enthusiast: "When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way...

Daniel Chong, UC-San Diego student, said he was forced to drink his own urine after he was left in a Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell for nearly five days. Chong was smoking marijuana at a friend's house celebrating 4/20, when the DEA raided the house. The DEA agents brought him...

Something incredible is happening right now in Latin America.

After decades of being brutalized by the U.S. government's failed prohibitionist drug policies, Latin American leaders, including not just distinguished former presidents but also current presidents, are saying "enough is enough." They're demanding that the range of policy...

Some anniversaries provide an occasion for celebration, others a time for reflection, still others a time for action. This June will mark forty years since President Nixon declared a "war on drugs," identifying drug abuse as "public enemy No. 1." As far as I know, no celebrations are planned. What's...

California's marijuana legalization initiative, Proposition 19, didn't win a majority of votes yesterday but it already represents an extraordinary victory for the broader movement to legalize marijuana.

What's most important is the way its mere presence on the ballot, combined with a well run campaign, has transformed public dialogue...

Today, Governor David Paterson signed legislation to limit the NYPD practice of storing personal information on innocent New Yorkers who are stopped-and-frisked but not charged with any crime.

The number of stop-and-frisks by NYPD have exploded over the past decade, increasing from less than 100,000 in 2002...

I've often felt in years past that our struggle to end the drug war is relentlessly uphill. But that's changing now, sometimes more quickly than even I can believe. The principal reason is us, by which I mean every person who grasps the lunacy of drug policies in this country...

The struggle to end America's disastrous war on drugs is a struggle for common sense, for human rights, and of course for racial justice. How could it not be, given the extraordinary and disproportionate extent to which people of color - and especially black people - are arrested, prosecuted and...

The White House's 2010 National Drug Control Strategy, released this morning by President Obama and drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, is both encouraging and discouraging. There's no question that it points in a different direction and embraces specific policy options counter to those of the past thirty years. But...

The U.S. House Domestic Policy Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), held a hearing today on the White House's drug war budget and forthcoming 2010 National Drug Control Strategy. The Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (also known as the drug czar), Gil Kerlikowske,...

According to the Washington Post President Obama is set to nominate Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as Drug Czar today. The Post also reports that the Obama administration will remove the position's Cabinet-level status -- overturning an elevation of the office under President George W. Bush. The Post says...

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the independent and quasi-judicial control organ monitoring the implementation of the United Nations drug control conventions, released its Annual Report 2008 today.

With the release of the report, the International Narcotics Control Board boldly reaffirmed its shameful commitment to politics...

Michael Phelps' public apology for getting photographed smoking marijuana wasn't enough for the food company, Kellogg's, which announced yesterday that it would not renew its contract with the swimming champion when it expires at the end of the month.

I for one am sick and tired of the public spectacle...

President Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon could reach an agreement as early as Monday that would put American taxpayers on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in counter-narcotics aid to Mexico. It is a familiar game.

U.S. leaders blame another country for our failure to reduce drug...

There are now 2.24 million people behind bars in the United States. According to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, released today, the number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails jumped by more than 60,000 in the year ending June 30, 2006. That jump represents the largest...

New Mexico is on the verge of becoming the twelfth state to approve doctor-recommended medical marijuana for the sick and dying, and only the fourth state legislature to enact such a measure. Following intense debate, the New Mexico House passed the measure after including an amendment to prevent distribution...

Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, seems to be doing all the right things in cracking down on Mexico's drug traffickers. He's appointed new people to key military and criminal justice positions, deployed troops to quell drug violence, reasserted federal police power, extradited a few major traffickers to the United States,...

The U.S. drug czar, John Walters, went to Ottawa yesterday, trying his best to put a positive spin on one of the greatest disasters in U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Part of his agenda is to persuade Canada to follow in U.S. footsteps, which can only happen if Canadians ignore...

A record 7 million Americans - 1 in 32 adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to a report released today by the Justice Department.

Drug law violations play a disproportionate role. From 1995 to 2003, inmates in...

Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman passed away on November 16 at the age of 94. One of the world's foremost public intellectuals, Friedman was a longstanding drug war dissident and longtime supporter of Drug Policy Alliance.

Friedman didn't view America's drug war as an economic problem. For him, the...