Drug policy reform is in the media spotlight with a cover article in the latest issue of Foreign Policy, a prestigious international magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas, as well as a slew of other media coverage.

DPA executive director Ethan Nadelmann takes on a range of drug policy ideas in the piece, challenging the notion that the global war on drugs can be won and asserting that legalization may be the best approach.

The high-profile article will be provocative discussion fodder among Foreign Policy's audience of influential business and government leaders in the U.S. and around the world. It has already inspired a thoughtful television piece featuring Nadelmann on The Fox Report, a FOX News program. 

The recent announcement of a new anti-drug aid package for Mexico has also prompted discussion of reform in the media. The Los Angeles Times ran a piece by Ethan Nadelmann in which he offered a reality check on the likelihood of Mexico turning a corner in its fight against the drug trade. He suggested an alternative approach in which Mexico focuses on all violence--drug-related or otherwise, while the U.S. commits to such measures as increased treatment access on its own soil, rather than focusing so heavily on international drug control. He also encouraged a discussion at high levels of government on the failures of drug prohibition. Nadelmann can be heard speaking on this issue on a recent edition of To the Point, a nationally syndicated radio show.

Arnold Trebach, one of the co-founders of the original Drug Policy Foundation in 1987, took on the related issue of the connection between Mexican drug cartels and terrorists, with an op-ed in the Washington Times. He pointed to the war on drugs as a misuse of resources and to legalization as a way to make the drug trade less lucrative.

TIME, the weekly news magazine, recently looked at the injustice of New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws, describing the work of Real Reform New York to get these draconian sentencing laws changed. The Rockefeller Drug Laws also came up in the Albany Times-Union, which ran an op-ed by DPA's Gabriel Sayegh advocating Rockefeller reform.

A drug policy reform angle has been popping up on other issues as well. The Des Moines Register recently ran an op-ed by DPA staffers Tony Newman and Bill Piper in response to the news that the FBI has relaxed its hiring criteria so that more people with a history of drug use are eligible for employment. The op-ed asserted that people should not be discriminated against for what they put in their bodies when they are not at work. A letter to the editor by Bill Piper on the same issue also appeared in the Washington Post.

With all of this media attention on drug policy, discussion of the issues is becoming increasingly widespread, both in homes at the dinner table and in government offices.