Connecting the dots

I did my drug war blogging at Newshoggers today so those of you who come here for the news will have to click over and there was a lot of it today so I'm still not getting to the posts I've been promising. But good stuff today.

The ACLU filed suit on behalf of a trucker whose money was seized even though he wasn't charged with anything, nor was he in possession of anything illegal. The cops took his money because they found that much cash to be suspicious. The guy didn't like banks so he carried his savings around. The DEA is holding $24,000 bucks without having proved any crime. Legalized highway robbery is title of choice on that one in Blogtopia and it received a good amount of attention.

This story got much less, and more's the pity because it's good news. California is poised to legalize industrial hemp. It's crazy that we don't allow the cultivation of this crop here when nearly every other country in the world does and profits from it.

And then this wonky piece came across the radar. It's the first in a three part series on the drug situation in Afghanistan and our lame response to it. Part one made a good case for how the idiotic drug war tactics are actually helping the terrorists.

This is blog post, but it's a blog read by foreign policy wonks. It's good to get that crowd thinking about how the war on some drugs relates to and works against the war on terror. It's another sign of progress for drug policy reformers.