State
- Cries of protest have begun in the wake of the governor's budget proposal, which includes painful cuts across the board. Among the many sore points are cuts to Medicaid, prisons, schools, and aid to New York City.
- Now leading in the State Senate, Republicans are revisiting the debate over how incarcerated people are counted with regard to district lines. Passed last year, the Census Adjustment Act requires that they be counted where they live, not where they are serving their sentences, but some senators' districts would be eliminated under that rule.
- In one of the highest-profile cases since the Rockefeller Drug Laws were reformed in 2009, drug charges against Columbia University students arrested in December are being seen as a test of the controversial new laws.
National
- Adding to a movement happening across the country, The St. Petersburg Times editorial board called for the Florida Legislature to use diversion programs, drug treatment and flexible sentencing reforms to help cut costs and move the state toward better criminal justice policies.
- The U.S. Senate voted down a Republican-led effort to repeal the national healthcare overhaul this week. But the battle over the law continued in court, as a federal judge in Florida ruled the measure unconstitutional, and the Virginia attorney general said he would try to bypass the appellate courts and ask the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the matter.
- In an online interview this week, President Obama stressed the importance of treating the nation's drug problem as a the health issue it is. The director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske, followed up with a column detailing the office's "shift in how we address drug control, by restoring balance in our efforts and treating drug addiction as a brain disease rather than a moral failing."
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