The good news is that least one sitting judge is demanding sensible drug policy reforms with regard to illegal drug sales near schools. And columnist George Will continues his persistent yet oblique critique of the war on drugs by focusing on the U.S. drug czar.

The citizens of Breckenridge, CO voted to decriminalize possession of small amounts of cannabis and paraphernalia last week and, according to the police chief, those who wish to avoid a ticket and fine can get a medicinal cannabis card "without much difficulty."

The world is taking notice of the winds of change blowing around cannabis attitudes and policy in the United States, and a writer at slate.com optimistically predicts progress in other areas of personal liberty, thanks in part to the internet.

A storm of criticism was unleashed on the UK Government last week following the firing of Professor David Nutt as "Drugs Tsar", which in turn followed Nutt's comments concerning the relative harms of drugs. Why? Such advice was, apparently, not the type of advice government wanted when it appointed Nutt to the Advisory panel. Children might be confused, said the Prime Minister.

"Politicians hate it when experts shine the light of truth on supposedly unimpeachable government ideology," noted Mindelle Jacobs in the Calgary Sun. "Drug policy experts don't go around promoting drug use. The braver ones, however, do point out the absurdity of the world's drug laws."

On the other hand, Jon Ferry (columnist writing on the former UK Tsar in this week's The Province newspaper in British Columbia, Canada) argues scientists should be seen and not heard -- especially if they might be helpful to those "drug-legalization advocates". And we all know, explains Ferry, that "peer review" stuff is "often little more than an ideological rubber stamp."

While much was made in the media last week over The UK Drug Tsar's firing, we leave you hear with a bit of media awareness straight from Professor Nutt, the former UK Drugs Tsar himself. David Nutt:

"The following data illustrates a remarkable finding. It derives from the PhD of a Scottish graduate, Alasdair JM Forsyth, who looked at every single newspaper report of drug deaths in Scotland from 1990 to 1999 and compared them with the coroners' data.

"Over the decade, there were 2,255 drug deaths, of which the Scottish newspapers reported 546. For aspirin, only one in every 265 deaths were reported... They were more interested in heroin, where one in five deaths were reported, and methadone, where one in 16 deaths were reported.

"They were also more interested in stimulants. With amphetamines, deaths are relatively rare at 36, but one in three were reported; for cocaine it was one in eight. Amazingly, almost every single ecstasy death - that is, 26 out of 28 of those where ecstasy was named as a possible contributory factor - was reported. So there's a peculiar imbalance in terms of reporting that is clearly inappropriate in relation to the relative harms of ecstasy compared with other drugs. The reporting gives the impression that ecstasy is a much more dangerous drug than it is. This is one of the reasons I wrote the article about horse riding that caused such extreme media reactions earlier this year."