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Making marijuana legal is harder than it might look. Radden Keefe goes inside Washington State’s legalization efforts, and what the new laws mean for growers, sellers, consumers and police: Officials in Washington had been expecting a peace dividend, yet Kleiman was calling for a crackdown. It was the kind of logical argument that nobody wants […]

Homeland Security agent Jovana Deas was a rising star at her agency, “an exemplary example to her peers,” according to supervisors. She was also doing favors for family members with ties to the Sinaloa drug cartel: “Agents are allowed to search for people in the government database only when it’s relevant to an assignment. They’re […]

A look at what led up to the passing of Amendment 64 in Colorado, which legalized recreational marijuana use in the state: “While the medical marijuana industry was evolving, activists continued to push for recreational use of marijuana. In 2005, Mason Tvert’s newly founded Safer Alternatives to Recreational Enjoyment pushed — and passed — resolutions […]

A look at the future of drugs in America—from pot farms in California to drug policing in Baltimore: “What we have begun to contemplate across the vast expense of the drug war is how that line might be redrawn, and the terms under which the cystic pockets of violence that have developed out beyond our […]

A look back at how filmmakers handled the Vietnam War, and how they worked with the military—or ignored their recommendations—to get them made: “In coming to the Pentagon with his plans in May, 1975, Coppola told Public Affairs officials that his initial script would need considerable work, especially the end, which he considered ‘surrealistic.’ While […]

Following the massive success of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling has written a novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy: “Rowling told me, ‘Very recently, I met a girl in a shop. She was in her early twenties, and she came up to me and said, “May I hug you?” And I said yes, and we hugged. […]

Rethinking schizophrenia as a brain disorder that requires medication, and recognizing that part of the cure is looking at the social factors that cause mental breakdowns: “By the time I met her, Susan was a success story. She was a student at the local community college. She had her own apartment, and she kept it […]

How Lisette Lee, a privileged young woman with ties to the Samsung fortune, turned to drug trafficking: “Lee would go on to tell federal authorities a lot of things about herself: that she was a famous Korean pop star as well as the heiress to the Samsung electronics fortune; she was so emphatic on this […]