Contrary to popular views, it was not just uneducated and socially deviant individuals who were engaged in cannabis farming or trade.
Mexico’s militarized war on drugs – and, often, drug users – has killed at least 150,000 people over the past 15 years.
Jair Cabrera Torres/picture alliance via Getty Images
Mexico would not fully legalize cannabis; its new regulation plan makes recreational use legal. However modest, that would be a symbolic milestone for a country immersed in a long, deadly drug war.
According to Oregon law, possessing a small amount of drugs for personal consumption is now a civil – rather than criminal – offense.
Peter Dazeley via Getty
Possessing heroin, cocaine, meth and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon. The idea is to get people with problem drug use help, not punishment.
Colombia is the world’s second-biggest cut flower exporter.
AP Photo/Fernando Vergara
The conviction of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who evaded justice in Mexico, is a win for US officials. But it’s a pyrrhic victory in the war on drugs.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero state. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance.
Reuters/Edgard Garrido
President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.
An artist’s sketch of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán at a 2018 pretrial hearing in a Brooklyn Federal courthouse.
Elizabeth Williams via AP, File
With its tales of bloody violence, corruption, international trade and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzmán’s trial offers a telenovela-style explainer on Mexican cartels and their American clients.
Kids teething? Back in 1885, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, containing morphine, was close at hand and earned the nickname the “baby killer.” Concerns about the dangers of readily available medications played a big role in how Canada’s drug laws evolved.
The U.S. National Library of Medicine
Canadian drug policy began to take shape well before anti-immigration attacks on Chinese establishments in 1908. Drugs like opium and coke were causing grave public health concerns.
Exactly 234,966 people have died in Mexico’s 11-year drug war. Now the government wants to deploy soldiers to criminal hot spots, a move many fear will just increase violence and weaken the police.
The authorities don’t need a conviction or even for a suspect to be charged with a crime before seizing a car, cash or even a house.
Photographee.eu/Shutterstock
What has the decade-long frontal assault on cartels achieved?
Jennelyn Olaires cradles the body of her partner, who was killed on a street by a vigilante group in a spate of drug-related killings in the Philippines.
Reuters/Czar Dancel