The Justice Department Restarts Incentives for Asset Forfeiture.

THE JUSTICE Department calls it a tool to crack down on terrorists, kleptocrats and fugitives. So why did it result in the seizure of money and other assets from law-abiding people? Welcome to the weird world of civil asset forfeiture, in which the government can take property without charging its owner with a crime. There are some legitimate reasons for the practice, such as cracking down on sophisticated organized-crime rings, that manage to separate criminals from tainted assets. But even after years of criticism and reports of abuse, the federal government still has not reformed its piece of the system enough to keep its application narrow and fair.

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Nadeau: Vote Will 'Tie Our Hands' In Regulating Pot

The D.C. Council voted Tuesday to impose a permanent ban on private marijuana smoking clubs, ending months of political hand-wringing over where to allow residents to consume pot.

In a 7-to-6 vote, the council made permanent a 90-day ban on pot clubs in the nation's capital, where marijuana possession is legal though still a federal offense.

The ban's passage did not come easily: Democratic council members Brianne Nadeau and Vincent Orange both tried to delay the vote, saying a permanent ban would undercut a task force studying how to regulate pot clubs. Set up in February, the task force has 120 days to offer recommendations to lawmakers.

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Howard Marks, a Welsh-born, Oxford-trained drug smuggler who for years ran a globe-spanning marijuana ring, enraging officials and entertaining the public on both sides of the Atlantic as a countercultural scofflaw, died April 10. He was 70.

Mr. Marks revealed last year that he had inoperable bowel cancer, and his death was announced by Pan Macmillan, the publisher of his most recent book, "Mr. Smiley: My Last Pill and Testament "(2015). Other details were not immediately available.

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The inaccuracies and misinformation in the April 6 editorial "Striking the right balance on judicial reform," which discussed criminal-justice reform bills in the Maryland legislature, are inexcusable.

The editorial should have mentioned the data, report or discussions of the Justice Reinvestment Coordinating Council, which served as the basis of the legislation. The House bill, as amended, would save about $100million over the next 10 years, not the $247 million the editorial cited, because it strikes the right balance between criminal-justice reform and public safety. And the House took the time to reach consensus on the bill in an open, collaborative and transparent process.

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A divided D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to ban marijuana clubs, where residents and visitors to the nation's capital might have smoked pot without fear of being arrested.

The 7-to-6 vote marked council members' second about-face on the issue in four months and hinted at their unsure footing as they navigate fast-shifting public sentiment about marijuana use. The issue has become the next marijuana-policy frontier in the District and other places where voters have already legalized possession.

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District Split Over Legality of Drug

In the latest twist in the District's struggles over legal marijuana, the D.C. Council Tuesday moved to permanently ban pot clubs in the city, just two months after the body approved a task force to study the issue.

Whether pot can be consumed legally in private clubs is just one of the thorny issues the District has faced since it legalized cultivation and possession of small amounts of marijuana but continued to keep sales of the drug illegal.

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An Oakland-based company has started delivery cold-pressed juice in the District - with a side of free marijuana.

As a way to skirt the District's law against selling cannabis - while still taking advantage of residents being allowed possess up to two ounces of pot - HighSpeed is offering to sell residents juice and "gift" them some marijuana with their order. The company started in Oakland in 2015 and begin deliveries in the District about two months, having already served about 300 customers, according to HighSpeed.

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Rally Pressures Obama to Deschedule Marijuana

The local activists who helped legalize marijuana possession in the District were on the trail of bigger game Saturday, lighting up in front of the White House to protest the way federal laws classify the drug.

"This is about needless incarceration," Dave Anderson said as he walked along a 51-foot inflatable joint that protesters planned to march from 15th Street NW and Pennsylvania Avenue NW to the gates outside of the north lawn of the White House. "We've got local momentum in D.C., so this is an opportunity for a dialogue."

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Advocates Say Addicts Need Long-Term Care

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and the Democratic-controlled legislature are weighing options for tackling the fast-growing heroin epidemic that has taken root across the state and throughout the country.

Many of the solutions focus on loosening criminal penalties for drug offenses and shifting more money - including the potential prison savings - to treatment and rehabilitation programs.

The efforts have drawn praise from experts, including Joshua Sharfstein, the physician who served as state health director under Hogan's predecessor, Martin O'Malley (D). But they are viewed with skepticism by some advocates, who want the state to immediately and significantly expand long-term residential treatment.

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Activist Daniel Miller Says Psychedelics Can Be Good for You

Taking LSD even one time may fundamentally reshape our lives, making us happier and kinder, more productive at work and more open-minded.

In 1970, Congress dropped psychedelics into the war on drugs. After a decade of Timothy Leary, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and news reports of gruesome murders, the federal government declared that the drugs had no medical use - and high potential for abuse. The chairman of New Jersey's Narcotic Drug Study Commission called LSD "more dangerous than the Vietnam War."

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The mass of protesters gathered outside the White House couldn't quite wait for 4:20 Saturday afternoon, the pre-planned time they had designated to light their marijuana-packed joints and pipes in protest of the federal laws that prohibit the drug's consumption.

Just past 4: 17, plumes of smoke arose from the crowd of more than 100 people, which was surrounded by officers from the U. S. Park Police, Metropolitan Police and the Secret Service. Still, because the activists remained on the street - owned by the District, which has legalized pot possession- and off the sidewalks-owned by the federal government, which has not - no one was arrested. Just two people were given citations and $25 fines for public consumption. A man who knew the pair said they were confronted by police only after a member of their group accidentally blew smoke in an officer's face.

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For a religion in which wine plays such a central role, Christianity may prove surprisingly effective at curbing drug use, according to a study.

Data analyzed by DrugAbuse.com in "Drugs and Devotion: Comparing Substance Abuse by Believers and Nonbelievers" show a correlation between religious belief and a reluctance to experiment with narcotics.

Americans who said they are not religious are more likely to have used a host of recreational drugs, ranging from marijuana and alcohol to Ecstasy and heroin. Nonbelievers in the study, for instance, were 12 times more likely to use LSD and more than four times as likely as than their religious counterparts to try cocaine in the past year.

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Supporters of Legalization Risk Arrest for Lighting Up Outside the White House

Attention senior class-trip chaperones, cherry blossom lovers, and anyone else who may wander by the White House on Saturday: Brace yourself for a cloud of marijuana smoke - and, possibly, mass arrests.

Organizers of the successful ballot measure that legalized pot last year in the District say they have had enough with President Obama's slog toward loosening marijuana laws. To protest, they are planning what they promise will be the first large-scale display of public pot smoking in the nation's capital, with the intention of getting arrested.

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The March 18 editorial "Sobering up about addiction" was flawed. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is wrong on the issue as well. The idea that "loose prescribing norms . . . have fueled the growth of opioid consumption" does not correspond with the National Survey on Drug Use and Health's findings, as reported in the March 6 Outlook essay "Five myths about Heroin," that "75 percent of recreational opioid users in 2013-14 got pills from sources other than doctors, mainly friends and relatives. Even among this group, moving on to heroin is quite rare. Only 4 percent do so within five years; just 0.2 percent of U.S. adults are current heroin users."

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Addiction has long been medicine's unwanted stepchild.

Doctors didn't understand it, didn't know how to treat it and felt helpless in the face of the wreckage it brought to their patients' lives.

As a result, while providers addressed the consequences of addiction - - endocarditis, liver failure, seizures, overdose - they rarely treated the disease itself.

That mysterious task has been left to others: counselors, peers in recovery and 12-step programs.

But this is changing.

There is now a general consensus in medicine that addiction is best understood as a chronic disease that can be treated with pharmacological interventions. Providers now have access to an array of medications that reduce cravings and addictive behaviors. As a result, doctors in increasing numbers are seeking training in addiction management and are willing to assume responsibility for treatment of this complicated disease.

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The House Should Take Up a Bill That Would Mark a Sea Change on Opioids.

SLOWLY BUT surely, like the proverbial aircraft carrier, the U.S. government is changing to a new and better course on the long-neglected issue of opioid abuse and addiction.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took an emphatic stand against the loose prescribing norms that have fueled the growth of opioid consumption for non-cancer pain, with the terrible result that 16,000 people a year die from over doses.

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'Getting High' May Be Fun, but It's Destructive, and Inevitably Everyone Pays

It's called "getting high" for a reason.

Euphoria feels good. But abusing "harmless" drugs like marijuana has consequences that are anything but harmless.

Drug overdose has surpassed traffic accidents as a cause of death in the United States; the numbers of heroin deaths in particular are off the charts.

Congress struggles to craft a national legislative remedy to deal with the scourge of drug abuse, just as several states are undermining the congressional effort by dealing with pot as a good-time treat for fun-seekers. Pot is a gateway drug, and legalizing it sends a mixed message that inevitably produces more misery.

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The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it would not bring federal charges against a New York City Police Department officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man inside his apartment in 2012.

The decision drew swift condemnation from community activists, who questioned why officers pursued Ramarley Graham, kicked down the door to his apartment, and shot him as he retreated into the bathroom after officers erroneously suspected he was carrying a firearm.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, announced Tuesday that there was "insufficient evidence" to bring federal criminal charges against NYPD Officer Richard Haste, who fired the single shot that killed Graham.

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Maia Szalavitz advanced the thoughtful national conversation on addiction by dissolving some of the most widespread misconceptions about the heroin epidemic in her March 6 Five Myths essay [Outlook]. Yet she did not highlight what many of us in the treatment and recovery world see as the most inaccurate and troubling myth. That is, the belief that addiction is a moral failing, a sign of weak or poor character. Rigorous research and neuroscience have proved that substance use disorder is a bona fide disease.

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WASHINGTON - Sallie Taylor was sitting in her apartment in Northeast Washington one evening in January 2015 watching "Bible Talk" when her clock fell off the wall and broke. She turned and looked up. Nine District of Columbia police officers smashed through her door, pointed a shotgun at her face and ordered her to the floor.

"They came in like Rambo," said Taylor, a soft-spoken 63-year-old grandmother who was dressed in a white nightgown and said she has never had even a speeding ticket.

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