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...

Would you support a federal law making cigarettes illegal in the next five to ten years?

According to a recent nationwide survey of registered voters by Zogby International, 45% of Americans said yes. Among 18-29 year olds, 57% were in favor.

Maybe it's time to ask: what...

A new video shows how one young man's life was turned upside down because of drug-free zone laws. Seventeen-year-old Mitchell Lawrence was sentenced to two years in jail for the crime of selling one joint's worth of marijuana to an undercover agent.

What would happen if there was open and honest debate about drug use and drug policy in the U.S.? What if people just started talking candidly, truthfully and without fear of judgment or recrimination?

Change starts at home. And family holiday gatherings can be the perfect place to bring up...

ABC's 20/20 Co-anchor John Stossel, Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann, Dr. Mathilde Krim, Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America," and Ira Glasser, board president of the Drug Policy Alliance and former executive director of the ACLU, were among the more than 60 leading activists and philanthropists...

Antoinette Samson is a mother of three whose New Orleans home was flooded by Hurricane Katrina. Though her family's possessions have been wiped out and they cannot go back home, they are among the many hurricane victims who cannot receive housing assistance or food stamps. It's not because Antoinette's family...

Sometimes one has to give credit where credit is due. That's how I feel about the proposals by President Bush and some House conservatives to cut ineffective drug war programs to pay for hurricane relief efforts. I personally disagree with many of their other proposed cuts, but they are...

Forget Iraq. A powerful Republican Congressman wants a draft to boost America's longest running war, the war on drugs. If he gets his way every American may soon be forced to become a government spy. As chair of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is in a...

Why care about drug policy reform in times like these? Over-incarceration represents the antithesis of a free and open society. The United States ranks #1 among all nations in per capita incarceration. The number of people behind bars has increased from roughly 500,000 in 1980 to over 2 million today....