Colombia President Alvaro Uribe publicly called on the United States to give longer sentences for drug traffickers who are extradited from his country. 
From BBC News:
He said that negotiating short jail terms with traffickers in exchange for information often ended up making a mockery of anti-drug efforts.
Mr Uribe was speaking at an anti-drugs summit of Latin [...]

The Deputy Attorney General in Mexico in charge of organized crime has resigned amid an escalating drug ware between the drug cartels and federal troops.
From the LA Times:
A shake-up in the attorney general’s office had been rumored since an alleged high-ranking operative for the Juarez cartel briefly escaped from the agency’s custody in June. Pedro [...]

In recent weeks, the drug cartels in Mexico are increasingly killing innocent bystanders in the ongoing battle against each other and state officials.
From the Washington Post:
In the past, cartels have killed their rivals, as well as police and public officials. Occasionally even family members have been slain. Yet in recent weeks, an increasing number of [...]

The United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs is reporting that Afghan drug lords are recruiting foreign chemists to assist in their drug production.
From the Financial Times:
Drug lords in Afghanistan, where poppy growing has soared in spite of the billions that western powers have spent in trying to stamp it out, have started to recruit [...]

Although the Colombian government has had a string of recent successes against the FARC, the war against the guerrilla army is far from over.
From the International Herald Tribune:
Soaring coca cultivation, forced disappearances, assassinations, the displacement of families and the planting of land mines stubbornly persist, the hallmarks of a backlands conflict that threatens to drag [...]

As previously reported, the US Coast Guard is in a 6 week trial run of using a blimp to monitor the coast of Florida. 
The blimp, which only burns 10 gallons of fuel an hour, is an attempt by authorities to find cheaper ways of monitoring the coast for drug and human smugglers.
From AFP (via Google [...]

The New Yorker has a cover story of the medical marijuana industry in the state of California and the difficulties of operating in a gray area industry.
From the New Yorker:
In the past five years, an unwritten set of rules has emerged to govern Californians participating in the medical-marijuana trade. Federal authorities do not generally bother arresting [...]

In a early release of the Sunday New York Times Magazine, former Bush Administration Official Thomas Schweich writes that the highest levels of the Afghan Government is allowing the drug trade to flourish.
From the BBC News article on the report:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is obstructing efforts to tackle his country’s drugs problem, says a former [...]

Methadone, a common treatment for heroin, is all but banned in Russia as a treatment option.
From the New York Times:
The conference seemed innocuous enough: a Moscow hotel, slide shows and several dozen doctors and specialists gathered to discuss how to treat heroin addiction. But then members of a Kremlin youth group called the Young Guard [...]

The New York Times has a report on the availability of a suicide drug in the Mexican border town of Tijuana.
From the NY Times:
“Cocaine?” a hustler working Tijuana’s seedy Avenida Revolución called out on a recent night, his voice not the least bit muted.
“How about girls?”
When neither offering elicited the desired response, he tried another: [...]