This is off-topic, but interesting. NPR did a story on Portugal's experiment with decriminalization. You can listen to it here.

Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized drugs - all of them - from marijuana to cocaine. The decision followed troubling increases in drug addiction and violence. As much as one percent of the country's population was addicted to heroin, and addicts shot up in the streets of the slums of Lisbon. The decriminalization came paired with rehabilitation, and the Portuguese government declared the program a success. Others note that drug use there is actually up now, and that when the government removed the legal risk, drugs became more appealing.

(You can also read Keith O'Brien's original article here.)
HighPopalorum Reviewed by HighPopalorum on . DEA: We Have Not Relaxed Our Policy on Medical Marijuana The US Drug Enforcement Administration's "Position on Marijuana 2010" is a hot document. Dated to July, it didn't really start circulating until this January when activist Ed Rosenthal found his name in it. Since then, the DEA link to the paper is gone, but a Google site search yields the file. Yesterday, the Marijuana Policy Project told supporters that the DEA's position paper labels the drug law reform group Enemy #1. But that's just a little bit of the 54-page collection of anecdotal Reefer Rating: 5