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Chicago Tribune, 21 May 2013 - Ex-Chicago cop given 18 years in prison for helping kidnap, rob drug dealers With prosecutors seeking a 30-year prison term for him, former veteran Chicago narcotics cop Glenn Lewellen closed his eyes tightly and held his palms together in prayer Monday as the judge was about to announce his sentence on federal drug conspiracy charges.

Sunshine Coast Daily, 21 May 2013 - COCAINE in toys and meth in curry paste are among the alarming discoveries Australian authorities are making as they battle record numbers of drug traffickers, a government crime report has revealed. In 2011-2012, more than 76,000 busts and 93,000 arrests took drug-related crime to its highest level in more than a decade.

Chicago Tribune, 21 May 2013 - With prosecutors seeking a 30-year prison term for him, former veteran Chicago narcotics cop Glenn Lewellen closed his eyes tightly and held his palms together in prayer Monday as the judge was about to announce his sentence on federal drug conspiracy charges. A smile cracked his lips as Lewellen heard his sentence: 18 years in federal prison. Moments later, as he was led away by deputy marshals, he turned and gave a thumbs-up to family members who had packed the courtroom.

The Trentonian, 20 May 2013 - Legal marijuana's sensational evolution is helping crack open a previously closed door: money to start and grow cannabis businesses. Marijuana entrepreneurs routinely are turned down for bank loans or deposit accounts and have struggled to attract financing from private investors.

Wall Street Journal, 20 May 2013 - Amid Relaxed Laws, Officials Wrestle With How to Determine Who Is Impaired As some states relax laws on pot possession, lawmakers are struggling to create rules for how police officers should identify motorists who are driving under the influence of marijuana.

On Friday, 17 May, in Bogotá, Colombia, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza will present Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos with the groundbreaking outcomes of a high level drug policy review. Mandated by 34 heads of state – including the US – at the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, [...]

Spokesman-Review, 18 May 2013 - The Washington Liquor Control Board left no would-be stoner unturned, developing comprehensive rules for marijuana sellers and growers. The 47-page draft released Thursday encompasses every step in the newly legalized retail sale of marijuana from seed to seller and, really, beyond, because even the waste has to be accounted for.

Southern Illinoisan, 18 May 2013 - SPRINGFIELD -- A proposal to legalize limited medical use of marijuana for certain chronically ill patients now is headed to Illi-nois Gov. Pat Quinn. By a 35-21 vote, the Illinois Senate on Friday approved a four-year pilot project to legalize medicinal use of marijuana under a regulatory framework the sponsors called the "tightest, most controlled" in the nation.

New York Times, 18 May 2013 - MEXICO CITY - A comprehensive report on drug policy in the Americas released Friday by a consortium of nations suggests that the legalization of marijuana, but not other illicit drugs, be considered among a range of ideas to reassess how the drug war is carried out. The report, released by the Organization of American States walked a careful line in not recommending any single approach to the drug problem and encouraging "flexibility."

The Times-Tribune, 18 May 2013 - Attorney General Calls Marijuana a "Gateway Drug." HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane told a gathering of newspaper editors Friday that she opposes legislation to legalize marijuana because users often move on to harder drugs.

The Australian, 18 May 2013 - The Benefits Are Clear; a Ban on Marijuana for Medicinal Purposes Cannot Be Supported MEDICINAL use of cannabis should be permitted in Australia. In 2013, we should not still be merely discussing this possibility. On Wednesday, a NSW parliamentary committee, chaired by Nationals MP Sarah Mitchell, unanimously recommended that medicinal cannabis be permitted for some people with certain terminal conditions.

Seattle Times, 18 May 2013 - War on Drugs Organization of American States Urges New Strategy BOGOTA, Colombia - The Organization of American States (OAS) said Friday that countries should consider decriminalizing drug use, a shift backed by several current and former Latin American leaders but opposed by the United States.

Chicago Sun-Times, 18 May 2013 - No Hint by Quinn After 35-21 Vote SPRINGFIELD - The idea of Illinoisans turning to pot to treat severe illnesses moved closer to reality Friday after the Illinois Senate approved the medicinal use of marijuana over GOP objections it would encourage more serious drug use.

The Organization of American States (OAS) Friday released a ground-breaking report on hemispheric drug control that includes not only an assessment of the current state of affairs, but also looks at a number of alternate scenarios for future directions in drug policy, including explicit analysis of possible regulation and legalization regimes.

[image:1 align:left caption:true]The report comes even as the US military is expanding its drug war in Latin America.The military is deploying assets to Central and South America, and US military assistance in Latin America has quadrupled in the last decade -- even as the region faces no external and diminishing internal threats.

The report, The Drug Problem in the Americas, was commissioned at last year's Cartagena Summit of the Americas, where a number of Latin American leaders led by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos criticized existing drug policies and called for a discussion of alternatives. On Friday, OAS head Jose Miguel Insulza hand-delivered the report to Santos in Bogota.

Prepared by researcher and analysts at the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) under the supervision of the OAS, the report is divided into two discrete sections, an analytical report and a scenarios report. It is the scenarios report that addresses possible directions in drug policy, including the formal consideration of legalization and regulation regimes.

The scenarios report envisions four possible (and not necessarily mutually exclusive) policy directions and how each scenario "understands" the drug problem, what the attempted response would be under that scenario, and the opportunities and challenges involved in acting on those scenarios.

Two scenarios, "Together" and "Resilience," represent largely traditional responses to drug use and the drug trade, with calls for the strengthening of weak states and their judicial institutions or addressing underlying social problems and strengthening communities to fight violence and addiction, respectively.

It is the other two scenarios, "Pathways" and "Disruption," that represent innovations in thinking at the policy-making level. In the "Disruption" scenario, the violence and instability created by the drug trade under prohibition is so severe that authorities "cut a deal" with traffickers in a bid to achieve social peace. This might, more or less fairly, be called "the Mexican scenario," given that previous Mexican PRI governments are almost universally assumed to have made such bargains with trafficking organizations, and given widespread speculation these days that the current PRI government may be considering something similar.

[image:2 align:right caption:true]In the "Pathways" scenario, CICAD "understands" the problem as "the current regime for controlling drugs through criminal sanctions (especially arrests and incarceration of users and low-level dealers) is causing too much harm." The response is "trying out and learning from alternative legal and regulatory regimes, starting with cannabis."

The opportunities presented under the "Pathways" scenario include "development of better drug policies through experimentation, reallocation of resources from controlling drugs and drug users to preventing and treating problematic use, and shrinkage of some criminal markets and profits through regulation," while potential problems include "managing the risks of experimentation, especially with transitioning from criminal to regulated markets (including possible increases in problematic use), dealing with contraband, and new inter-governmental tensions that result from differences in regimes between jurisdictions."

The report is being welcomed as marking a true advance in the drug policy dialog at the hemispheric and international levels.

"The review explores what can be done in a post-drug war world," said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program. "This report envisions a number of possibilities that will broaden the current debate on drug policy reform."

"As part of the scenarios team, we worked to make it clear that another reality is indeed possible, that our countries can move orderly toward regulated drugs markets, and that there are possibilities to achieve better results," said Lisa Sanchez, coordinator of drug policies at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation and Mexico Unido Contra la Delinquencia, who worked on the report. "It is clear that the state should no longer ignore its responsibility to guarantee the health and security of all its citizens, and to do this, it needs to regain control over the drug markets which are currently illegal."

"While leaders have talked about moving from 'criminalization' to 'public health' in drug policy, punitive, abstinence-only approaches have still predominated, even in the health sphere," said Daniel Wolfe, director of the Open Society International Harm Reduction Program. "These scenarios offer a chance for leaders to replace indiscriminate detention and rights abuses with approaches that distinguish between users and traffickers and offer the community-based health services that work best for those in need."

[image:3 align:left caption:true] "This is the beginning of an international conversation on a new approach to drugs," said David Holiday, senior regional advocacy officer for the Open Society Latin America Program. "We can hope this will move policies from those currently based in repression to strategies rooted in public health and human rights."

That international conversation on drug policy will get going next week, when the OAS report will be presented and discussed at the bi-annual CICAD meeting in Washington, DC. Two weeks after that, the report and discussions over drug policy in the Americas will be the main agenda item -- "Toward a comprehensive anti-drug policy in the Americas" -- at  the annual session of the OAS General Assembly, which is attended by foreign ministers in the region. Advocates are hoping that these regional discussions will also be taken up at the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs.

"Never before has a multilateral organization engaged in such an inclusive and intellectually legitimate analysis of drug policy options," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Indeed, it would have been inconceivable just two years ago that the OAS -- or any multilateral organization -- would publish a document that considers legalization, decriminalization and other alternatives to prohibitionist policies on an equal footing with status quo policies. Political pressures by the US and other governments would have made that impossible."

But much has changed in just the past few years, Nadelmann noted. In 2009, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), César Gaviria (Colombia) and Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico) joined with other members of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy in saying the time had come to "break the taboo" on exploring alternatives to the failed war on drugs.

In 2011, those presidents joined with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker, former Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss and other members of the  Global Commission on Drug Policy in calling for fundamental reforms to national and global drug policies.  Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Ricardo Lagos (Chile), Vicente Fox (Mexico) and Aleksander Kwasniewski (Poland) were among those who seconded their recommendations.

Late that year, sitting presidents began to join the calls of their predecessors.  These included President Santos in Colombia, Otto Perez Molina in Guatemala, José Mujica in Uruguay and then-President Felipe Calderonof Mexico. Simultaneously, the victorious marijuana legalization ballot initiatives in Washington State and Colorado transformed a previously hypothetical debate into real political reform.  Other states will almost certainly follow their lead in coming years.

"The OAS scenarios report thus represents the important next step in elevating and legitimizing a discussion that until a few years ago was effectively banned from official government circles," Nadelmann said. "It is sure to have legs in a way that few reports by multilateral institutions ever do."

Daily Herald, 17 May 2013 - SPRINGFIELD -- Illinoisans with particular serious diseases would be allowed to legally use medical marijuana under a plan approved by the state Senate today. If Gov. Pat Quinn signs off, Illinois doctors could start writing prescriptions for medical marijuana at the start of next year.

Cranbrook Daily Townsman, 17 May 2013 - Teenagers in the East Kootenay are using drugs less often in 2013 than they were eight years ago, according to a survey just released. The East Kootenay Addictions Services Society surveyed 3,500 students in Grades 7 through 12 in schools from Cranbrook to Golden and from Creston to Elkford.

Seattle Times, 17 May 2013 - Getting Ready State Officials Give a Taste of What's To Come by Releasing a Preliminary Draft of the Legal-Marijuana Plan, but Refinements Are Expected Washington residents and out-of-staters could buy an ounce of tested, labeled marijuana, seven days a week, up to 20 hours a day, in state-regulated stores under draft rules for a new legal-pot system released Thursday by the Liquor Control Board.

A Federal Legislative Guide This comprehensive report contains 75 broad and incremental recommendations for federal legislative reforms related to civil rights, deficit reduction, law enforcement, foreign policy, sentencing and reentry, effective drug treatment, public health, and drug prevention education.