The United Nations General Assembly met recently in New York to hold a day-long set of debates and discussions regarding global drug policy. The UN Press Office reported on May 7:

"Insufficient progress in combating the illegal drug trade called for a new global approach that moved beyond a heavy focus on prohibition and addressed consumption from a holistic public health perspective that placed individual human rights and well-being at its core, speakers said today in a General Assembly high-level debate devoted to the issue."

The nation of Indonesia is one of a handful of countries around the world that still use the death penalty for some drug offenses. Indonesia has been in the spotlight recently because of the planned execution of a group of people, known in the media as the Bali Nine, who were convicted on drug charges.

The news source Malaysian Insider reported on April 28th, 2015, that:

"Indonesia will execute nine drug convicts, including eight foreigners, after midnight on Tuesday (1am Wednesday Malaysian time), the country's attorney-general has confirmed.

Dane Schiller with @HoustonChron reports that a local trucking company's vehicle "was used and damaged in a drug sting against one of Mexico’s most violent cartels without his permission and that [the owner's] family lived in extreme fear they would face retaliation from the cartel, even though they had no idea what the government was doing."

Read the rest here.

A new report published by the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that an increasing number of infants suffering with neonatal abstinence syndrome are being admitted to neonatal intensive care units in the US.

According to the study's authors, neonatal abstinence syndrome is "a drug-withdrawal syndrome that most commonly occurs after in utero exposure to opioids."

The researchers found that:

The New York Times has recently published editorials calling for an end to cannabis prohibition and for the legalization of marijuana. The Sunday, July 27th, 2014 editorial titled "Repeal Prohibition, Again" was part of a series titled "High Time: An Editorial Series on Marijuana Legalization." The first of the editorials and links to the rest of the series can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-….