Drug Czar

Sure, we all worry about the meth tweekers stealing cable off bridges, the coke fiends committing petty crimes, the heroin junkies trespassing and loitering, and the alcoholics crashing their cars and getting into fights, but does anybody really think smoking weed is leading people to harm others?

At its core, the domestic cultivation of industrial hemp is a simple matter of agriculture and economics that has nothing to do with drug policy at all, and shouldn't even be tied to the otherwise raging debate about marijuana laws in America.

The Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America will welcome more than 2,500 delegates from across the country for the 22nd Annual National Leadership Forum in National Harbor, MD, just outside Washington. And they have a lot to show for their more than two-decades of work.

The following list comprises the 10 most significant, positive developments relating to marijuana policy reform in the U.S. in 2011.

Despite our disappointment with the substance of Obama's policy on controlled substances, we can and should applaud the president for at least understanding that the thoughtless tough-on-drugs pandering of the 80s and 90s has no place in modern American politics.

It is simply Orwellian for the drug czar to focus on the disproportionate impact of our nation's drug problem on African-American communities without acknowledging the disproportionate racial impact of drug law enforcement.

Back in June, representatives of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition 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.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice issued medical marijuana guidelines to U.S. attorneys that are at best confusing and at worst a flip-flop on administration policy.

WASHINGTON -- Forty years after President Richard Nixon first declared a war on drugs, the officers who fought in it are calling for a truce. Forme...

When it comes to marijuana, democratic principles take a back seat to fear, ignorance, and political expediency.

For Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske and his mindless rhetoric, never forget the words of novelist Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

It will happen. Marijuana will be legalized in California. In the interests of public health and safety, human rights, personal liberties, and sound fiscal policy it makes far more sense that it happen next Tuesday, not the next election.

If we can agree on an initiative that's drafted to appeal to swing voters (meaning it can't be too radical) and it's placed on the November 2012 ballot, I predict that marijuana will be made legal in Washington state in just 26 months.

More than 850,000 people were arrested for marijuana violations in 2009 -- the second biggest haul in American history, according to the annual Unifor...

British health regulators have approved the sale and marketing of Sativex, an oral spray consisting of natural cannabis extracts as a treatment for symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

Since President Obama's election, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has been making noises about a shift in approach and priorities towards addressing drugs and drug problems.

The predominant role that criminalization and the criminal justice system play in dealing with particular drugs and drug use in this country is unsustainable in both fiscal and human terms.

One of the thematic threads holding together the 53rd Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (the CND is the UN's global drug policy body) was th...

The Associated Press has taken the entire U.S. drug war strategy and raked it over the coals. It's about damn time!