REFORML.org

The tense relations between the Bush administration and Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez grew even more strained this week as Washington and Caracas traded charges and counter-charges over Venezuela’s fight against cocaine trafficking. While it seems indisputable that cocaine trafficking through Venezuela has increased in recent years, the two governments are trading barbs over the extent [...]

According to Polish Radio, a campaign to loosen the marijuana laws is underway in Poland. A petition to the Ministry of Justice requesting the legalization of marijuana for personal use has already been signed by hundreds of people, including drug rehab specialists and members of Monar, a nonprofit group that works with addicts, the HIV/AIDS [...]

According to Mexican press reports this week, Mexico’s Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD – Democratic Revolution Party) is preparing to consider legalization of the drug trade as a response to the wave of narco-violence that has swept the country in the last year and a half. Around 5,000 people have been killed in prohibition-related [...]

Indonesia’s harsh drug laws have not succeeded in stopping illicit drug use in the Southeast Asian archipelago, and now some of the people those laws are aimed at are speaking out. On Monday [August 4, 2008], denizens of some of Jakarta’s most notorious drug dealing spots were witness to an usual demonstration as two dozen [...]

The Bolivian government will fund an anti-drug unit for the first time next year in a bid to reduce foreign involvement in its fight against the cocaine trade. The primary foreign country involved in Bolivian anti-drug matters is the United States, although it currently gets some added from the European Union, too. Bolivia is the [...]

Traditional drug war law enforcement tactics have not worked in Britain, according to research released Wednesday by the UK Drug Policy Commission. The commission is a non-governmental body that lists among its objectives providing “independent and objective analysis of UK drug policy.” In the study, Tackling drug markets and distribution networks in the UK: a [...]