Drug War Chronicle #640 - July 16, 2010

Ten years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed off on the first $1.3 billion installment of Plan Colombia. A decade later, how is that working out? We ask the experts.

Here we look at a journalistic account of the "secret life" of the border, an academic treatise on Mexico and its drug cartels, and a polemic against Mexico's drug war by one of its leading political figures.

Unions are beginning to jump on the California pot initiative bandwagon. This week, a biggie signed on: The United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council.

Is the California tax and regulate marijuana legalization initiative winning or losing? Right now, it looks like it depends on which pollster you ask. In any case, this is looking like a very tight race.

The authors of the Vienna Declaration are seeking to throw out the old prohibitionist drug policy paradigm in favor of one based on science and evidence. This week, the declaration picked up significant political support -- three former Latin American presidents.

A car bomb attack in Ciudad Juarez Thursday that killed two police and a paramedic marked an ominous tactical turn in Mexico's prohibition-related violence this week. Meanwhile, the Mexican government put the death toll since President Calderon took office at 24,826.

Bad cop! Bad parole officer! Bad probation officer! Bad trooper! What? No bad jail guards? Well, it happens sometimes...

California's Central Valley city of Stockton has been a poster child for the Great Recession, and now, with layoffs hitting the police department for the second time in two years, the cops have announced they don't have enough manpower to staff their dope squad.

Making highly motivated high school students urinate in a cup to play football or join the glee club isn't very effective, the Department of Education has found in a new study.

Here is yet another poll showing broad support for medical marijuana, this time in New York state. The surprise is no longer that people support medical marijuana, but that the New York legislature can't get around to passing it.

Events and quotes of note from this week's drug policy events of years past.

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