Policing

Vancouver police are making it their official policy not to arrest people for quietly using drugs, but to focus instead on those who sell and make them.

A bill introduced in the Maine Senate would lay the groundwork for what could be the nation's first registry of habitual drug offenders.

A former Massachusetts State Police sergeant goes to prison, a former Milwaukee detective cops a plea, a Virginia sheriff's deputy gets busted, and so do a pair of would-be drug-dealing prison guards.

Drug offender registries are a hare-brained idea that is more likely to help young people find drug dealers than prevent them.

US troops and Iraqi police seized and destroyed a bumper crop of marijuana plants last week, according to a report in Stars and Stripes.

Though the US Supreme Court ruled last month that police officers who violate "knock and announce" search warrant rules can use the ill-gotten evidence against defendants, that's not good enough for at least one Vermont judge.

A federal judge Tuesday gave final approval to a landmark settlement in the infamous South Carolina school raid case. Included was a provision to enforce the Fourth amendment.

Just a week after the US House of Representatives voted to continue funding Justice Department raids on medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal, the feds struck again. Five people have been arrested in a series of DEA and local police raids Thursday hitting 13 medical marijuana dispensaries in San Diego County. Some people are being charged under state marijuana distribution laws in the cooperative federal-local effort. More arrests are expected, local law enforcement officials said.

Nigeria's booming marijuana trade is more than the nation's drug enforcement agency can handle, their commander for a region that's a hotspot for the trade told a major newspaper last week.

Despite decades of drug war, Scotland has some of the highest drug use rates in Europe and more than 50,000 heroin addicts. Now Scotland's drug czar has unleashed a week of furious debate -- not the first in recent months -- by declaring that the war on drugs is lost and can never be won.