What should the U.S. do about khat?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18096999/ “Making a federal case out of an obscure leaf Courts to decide if khat is an illicit drug or more like a double espresso” Poll:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18685057/ When federal drug enforcement agents announced last summer that they had arrested scores of suspects in an “international narcotics-trafficking organization” with operations in New York and Seattle, they hailed it as the first major crackdown on khat — a plant grown in the Horn of Africa and chewed like tobacco for its stimulant buzz. But more than nine months later, prosecutors in Seattle have dismissed charges against all but a handful of defendants, and the few expected to go to trial next month are considered to have a good chance of avoiding jail. The New York case, meantime, is teetering on a fine legal argument over whether khat is a powerful illicit stimulant or something more akin to a double espresso. The dual cases have rocked close-knit Somali communities in the United State
