It's incredibly bloody -- and incredibly misunderstood. What has come to be known as the Mexican drug war, but would be better viewed as the US-Mexico drug trade, has claimed 40,000 lives since 2006, including those of many journalists. Mexico-based writer John Gibler talks about the politics and economics of an industry that involves enormous sums of money, territorial violence, mega-profits, and the collusion of governments and banks.

Four men who would have a profound impact on U.S. culture converged at Harvard in the early 1960s. In The Harvard Psychedelic Club, Don Lattin tells the story of what Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, and Huston Smith did, how they interacted, and how they influenced the psychedelic and countercultural and spiritual and holistic-health movements of the 1960s and '70s and way beyond.

For more than ten years, Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg became part of the daily lives of two dozen homeless heroin injectors in San Francisco. Their book is an account of those individuals' experiences and relationships; a photo-ethnography of drugs, poverty, race and social exclusion; and a revealing look at the larger structural forces that operate on vulnerable populations.

In the 1980s, heroin rapidly swept through poor communities in Dublin. As large numbers of kids turned into addicts, local women and men organized themselves to force out the heroin dealers in their neighborhoods. James Davis, director of "Meeting Room," talks about the rise of Concerned Parents Against Drugs, how the Provisional Irish Republican Army backed their efforts, and how the authorities eventually squashed a movement they couldn't control.

For more than ten years, Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg became part of the daily lives of two dozen homeless heroin injectors in San Francisco. Their book is an account of those individuals' experiences and relationships; a photo-ethnography of drugs, poverty, race and social exclusion; and a revealing look at the larger structural forces that operate on vulnerable populations.

When ideology does battle with science in the arena of drug policy and HIV prevention, which wins -- and who loses? Daniel Wolfe argues that punitive and moralistic approaches violate the human rights of drug users. Mark Townsend describes the history and operation of Insite, North America's first and only legal supervised injection site.