Arrests

Libertarian Free Staters are staging daily pot-smoking civil disobedience protests in Keene, New Hampshire, and this week, the protests spread to Manchester.

San Diego may be a gleaming, coastal California city, but when it comes to medical marijuana, it's more like Fresno-by-the-Sea. The latest round of dispensary raids has patients and advocates fuming and looking for ways to extract political revenge and gain a little justice.

The number of marijuana arrests last year declined for the first time since 2002, the FBI said in its Uniform Crime Report this week. The overall number of drug arrests also fell slightly. The down-tick seems to be the result not of enlightened policing, but of law enforcement agencies feeling the budgetary pinch.

This year's Mexican drug wars body count is closing in on 5,000, with more than 200 added to the death toll last week.

Here's the latest on the prohibition-related carnage wracking Mexico.

The Obama administration said it wouldn't raid medical marijuana providers who act in accordance with state law, but a bust last week raises a few questions.

Last weekend's Seattle Hempfest is likely to have been the biggest one yet, as multitudes swarmed the waterfront for the two-day bash. But there are critics aiming at it, including a leading drug reformer and a former Hempfest organizer.

Despite tough pot laws and harsh public condemnations of marijuana use in the media, Japan continues to see increasing numbers of marijuana arrests.

It's been another bloody couple of weeks of prohibition-related violence in Mexico. Here's the latest on that and other drug war developments south of the border.

Hardly a day goes by without another body being found in Mexico's prohibition-related violence, and the Mexican government is under increasing fire as the death toll rises. Now, thanks to upcoming journalist Bernd Debusmann Jr., the Chronicle will be watching and summarizing events on a weekly basis.