The U.S. has given birth to the killing fields of Mexico. Does that even matter, at all, to those in this country who are in a position do something about it?

American drug policy, and our gutless, unreasoned refusal to change it, has caused the epic violence south of...

Jane's aged dog is splayed out in the back seat, groaning softly. The animal is blind, incontinent, no longer able to navigate the stairs. Jane is taking her old friend to the vet's, to be euthanized. But she finds herself stuck in a long line of cars. She peers up...

In the forty years since Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs," Americans' perceptions of that war are finally beginning to shift.

Receding support for Prohibition is happening in large part because of virally circulated news accounts and videos of law enforcement's disturbingly harsh tactics in the drug war. My...

Ken Burns' new documentary on alcohol prohibition, premiering on PBS this week, reportedly begins with a Mark Twain quote: "It is the prohibition that makes anything precious."

As a retired police officer who worked to enforce today's prohibition -- the "war on drugs" -- I think it's a lesson we...

There is one rarely heard argument against the death penalty that deserves a place in the debate: Executions are the coward's way out.

We know that capital cases are exorbitantly expensive, a single case often costing taxpayers millions. Trials, motions, appeals, retrials can take decades, thus delaying or denying...

It was inevitable. In the aftermath of 9/11, the federal government started distributing dollars -- 40 billion of them, to date -- to local jurisdictions for the purpose of combating terrorism. Yet it was apparent from the beginning that most local police agencies had little or no use...

Back in June, representatives of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a 40,000-member organization led by Executive Director Neill Franklin, marched from the National Press Club to the Office of National Drug Control Policy headquarters. Our mission: to hand-deliver a copy of our new report, "Ending the Drug...

Unless you live on a small, green island off Washington State, or haven't read his books or participated in his workshops, you've probably not heard of Michael Sky. He is a dear friend, and he is dying.

I met Michael about eight years ago. One of the best go-to guys...

From Rice to Rove, former Bush administration officials were all over the airways this past weekend, touting their regime's choice of war -- strategically, tactically, semantically -- as a means of avenging the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans and foreign nationals in the 9/11 attacks. And, incredibly, as a method...

There is always a gap between what a political system stands for and the reality of everyday life under that system. Ours is government that ostensibly stands for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A government of, by, and for the people. Yet, when it comes to marijuana, democratic...

Not to be a downer during this week of Super Bowl countdown revelry, but it is an opportune time to cast an even brighter spotlight on the open secret of the NFL's feeder system: those in the ranks of certain high school and college football players who double as sex...

Too late, Jared Loughner Despite your 5:00 a.m. MySpace plea yesterday, millions are mad at you, outraged by your bloodbath in a Tucson suburb.

They're mad at your parents -- they raised you, after all. They're mad at the community college that suspended you; the police who reviewed the...

The troops have spoken. 70 percent of service personnel surveyed in DoD's recently released study either approve of openly gay men and women serving in the military, or they couldn't care less. But what of the 30 percent (more if one counts only the Marines and only those...

For several months California's Proposition 19 appeared headed for victory. That it lost yesterday is a tribute not only to youth-voter impassivity but to the power of ignorance and coercion. And, yes, to the political pull of a disparate handful of fear-mongering prohibitionists.

In the weeks ahead, analysts will...

The nation's drug war warriors (led by current and past DEA chiefs and drug czars) along with sideline apologists (timid politicians, blinkered editorialists), are resorting to a last-minute campaign of hair-afire hysterics in the effort to dissuade California's voters from voting Yes on Proposition 19. The initiative would, finally, sensibly,...

A few short months ago, California's Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, seemed likely to fade away in a puff of smoke. After more than three decades on the front lines of the disastrous "war on drugs," I feared this best-hope-to-date chapter in...

Imagine it. Grownup Californians making a choice that should never have been denied them in the first place.

Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 would allow adults in that state to possess up to an ounce of marijuana for personal consumption; to use marijuana...

From uniformed beat cops to homicide dicks, SWAT officers to chiefs and sheriffs, more and more of the nation's police officers are coming to realize that our 40-year drug war is an unmitigated failure, that it has ruined countless lives, squandered billions of taxpayer dollars, guaranteed a handsome lifestyle for...

Alice Huffman's explanation of the California NAACP's endorsement of Proposition 19, the state initiative calling for the regulated legalization and taxation of marijuana, was well reasoned and smartly put. But she was promptly pounced upon, smeared by a collection of out-of-touch, fear-mongering detractors, including "more than 20 African...

Karl Rove's June 21 column in Newsweek attacks President Obama's concerns about Arizona's recently passed immigration law. The president, writes Rove, "willingly mischaracterizes the Arizona law because doing so benefits his party and himself." He sneers at Obama's assertion that the law will turn "Latinos into subjects of suspicion and...