NORML's open letter to Sen. Norm Coleman

Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman acknowledges on his website that he was a "campus organzizer in the '60s" when he attended Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. His Wikipedia entry states: "He ran for student senate and opined in the school newspaper that his fellow students should vote for him because he knew that 'these conservative kids don't fučk or get high like we do... Everyone watch out, the 1950s' bobby-sox generation is about to take over.'" Several photos (reproduced here) show the then longhaired Coleman speaking through a bullhorn and unfurling an anti-war banner with other students.

Since that time, the Brooklyn, NY-born politician graduated from the University of Iowa Law School and stayed in the Midwest, where he worked as a prosecutor in Minnesota for 17 years before his two terms as mayor of St. Paul. In 1996, he switched parties - from Democrat to Republican - and in 1998 he lost the Minnesota governor's race to Jesse Ventura. In 2002, Coleman was elected senator by a 2% margin. He benefitted from the sudden death of the state's incumbant Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash 11 days before the election.

NORML board member Norm Kent, who is a lawyer as well, went to Hofstra with Coleman. Kent recently received a form letter from Coleman regarding his current anti-marijuana positiion. It reads, in part: "I oppose the legalization of marijuana because, as noted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, marijuana can have serious adverse health affects on individuals. The health problems that may occur from this highly addictive drug include short-term memory loss, anxiety, respiratory illness and a risk of lung cancer that far exceeds that of tobacco products. It would also make our transportation, schools and workplaces, just as examples, more dangerous."

Offended by Coleman's comments, Kent fired of a letter to his former smoking buddy.

NORM KENT'S LETTER TO SEN. NORM COLEMAN
Dear Mr. Coleman,

My friend Norman.

Years ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of marijuana. Years ago, in our dorm rooms at Hofstra University, you, me, Billy, your future brother-in-law, Ivan, Jonathan, Peter, Janet, Nancy and a wealth of other students smoked dope.

Sure, we had to tape the doors shut, burn incense and open the windows, but we got high, and yet we grew up okay, without the help of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's advice.

We grew up to become lawyers. Our other friends, as you go down the list, are doctors, professors, parents, political consultants and professionals. No one ever got cancer from smoking pot or diabetes from using a joint. And the days of our youth we look back fondly upon as years where we stood up, were counted and made a difference, from Earth Day in 1970 to helping bring down a president and end a war in Southeast Asia a few years later.
We smoked pot when we took over Weller Hall to protest administrative abuses of students' rights. You smoked pot as you stood on the roof of the University Senate protesting faculty exclusivity. As the President of the Student Senate in 1969, you condemned the raid by Nassau County police on our dormitories, busting scores of students for pot possession.

You never said then that pot was dangerous. What was scary then, and is as frightening now, is when national leaders become voices of hypocrisy, harbingers of the status quo, and protect their own position instead of the public good. Welcome to the crowd of those who have become a likeness of which they despised. Welcome to the mindless myriad of legislators who gather in cocktail lounges to manhandle their martinis while passing laws against drunk driving.

We have seen more people die last year from spinach then pot. We have endured generations of drug addicts overdosing on a multitude of drugs, from heroin to crystal methamphetamine. In your public life, as an attorney general, mayor and United States senator, you have been in the forefront of speaking out against abuses which are harmful. You have been a noble and honorable public servant. How about not being such a dope on dope?

How about admitting that if the Rockefeller drug laws were applied to Norman Bruce Coleman on Long Island in 1968, or to me, or to our friends, and fellow students, you, I and others we knew and loved might just be getting out of jail now? How about recognizing that for too long too many have been wrongly arrested, unjustly prosecuted and illegally incarcerated for unconscionable periods of time?

How about recognizing that you have peers who have smoked pot for 25 years or more and they are successful record producers, businessmen and parents?

How about standing up and saying you have heard and witnessed countless stories of persons who have used pot medicinally, as I have, to endure the effects of chemotherapy?

You who have travelled to Africa and seen the face of AIDS so up close and personal would deny medicinal marijuana relief to those souls wasting away from malnutrition, nausea and no access to fundamental medicines?

How about not adopting the sad and sorry archaic path of our office of drug control, which this week suggested pot smokers are more likely to become gang members than others?
How about standing up and saying: "I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969." That "I am not a gang member, a drug addict or a criminal."

How about saying: "I was able to responsibly integrate my prior pot use into my life, and still succeed on my own merits."

How about standing up not only for who you are, but who you were?

How about it, Norm?

I will always love, admire and cherish what you have achieved and accomplished and the goals you have met. I will always fondly look at the remarkable success of your present.

How about you looking back at your past and saying: "What I did was not so wrong and not so bad and not so hurtful that generations of Americans should still, decades later, be going to jail for smoking pot - nearly one million arrests for possession last year."

Can't Norm Coleman come out of the closet in 2007 and say "These arrests are wrong - that there is a better way, and we need to find it."

You might find more integrity and honor in that then adopting the sad and sorry policy of our Office of National Drug Control Policy.

You might find the person you were.

Norm Kent

OSNABROCK, N.D. — David C. Monson seems an improbable soul to find at the leading edge of a national movement to legalize growing hemp, a plant that shares a species name, a genus type and, in many circles, a reputation, with marijuana.

David C. Monson, a farmer, high school principal and Republican state legislator in North Dakota, calls his effort to grow industrial hemp to be used in items like clothing and lotions “practical agriculture.”

As Mr. Monson rolls past his wheat, barley and shimmering yellow fields of canola, he listens to Rush Limbaugh in his tractor. When he is not farming, he is the high school principal in nearby Edinburg, population 252. When he is not teaching, he is a Republican representative in Bismarck, the state capital, where his party dominates both houses of the legislature and the governor is a Republican.

“Look at me — do I look shady?” Mr. Monson, 56, asked, as he stood in work boots and a ball cap in the rocky, black dirt that spans mile after mile of North Dakota’s nearly empty northern edge. “This is not any subversive thing like trying to legalize marijuana or whatever. This is just practical agriculture. We’re desperate for something that can make us some money.”

Watching the media cover marijuana is fascinating, offering deep insight into conventional wisdom, bias and failure to properly place science in context. The coverage of a new study claiming that marijuana increases the risk of later psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia by 40% displays many of these flaws.

What are the key questions reporters writing about such a study needs to ask? First, can the research prove causality? Most of the reporting here, to its credit, establishes at some point that it cannot,though you have to read pretty far down in some of it to understand this.

Second – and this is where virtually all of the coverage falls flat –, if marijuana produces what seems like such a large jump in risk for schizophrenia, have schizophrenia rates increased in line with marijuana use rates? A quick search of Medline shows that this is not the case-- in fact, as I noted here earlier, some experts think they may actually have fallen. Around the world, roughly 1% of the population has schizophrenia (and another 2% or so have other psychotic disorders), and this proportion doesn’t seem to change much. It is not correlated with population use rates of marijuana. By contrast, one study found that alcohol has been found to increase the risk of psychosis by 800% for men and 300% for women. Although this study was not a meta-analysis (which looks at multiple studies, as the marijuana research did), it certainly is worth citing to help readers get a sense of the magnitude of the risk in comparison with other drugs linked to psychosis.

Of course, if journalists wanted to do that, they would also cite researchers who disagree with the notion that marijuana poses a large risk of inducing psychosis at all, such as Oxford’s Leslie Iversen, author of one of the key texts on psychopharmacology, who told the Times of London that

“Despite a thorough review the authors admit that there is no conclusive evidence that cannabis use causes psychotic illness. Their prediction that 14 per cent of psychotic outcomes in young adults in the UK may be due to cannabis use is not supported by the fact that the incidence of schizophrenia has not shown any significant change in the past 30 years.”

Such comments don’t help the media stir up reefer madness, which they’ve been doing, quite successfully, for the last few decades. Perhaps covering the marijuana beat makes you crazy.

Judge Armando Rodriguez awarded Matthews, a medical marijuana user, $1,700 for pain and suffering stemming from an October 2006 incident when he was cited by Merced police for possessing $300 in marijuana.

Despite the decision, Matthews still faces more days ahead in court. A judge is scheduled to decide this Friday about whether to return Matthews' confiscated marijuana. Schecther said his marijuana has not been destroyed. Even though Matthews said his seized marijuana has probably lost much of its potency during the past 10 months it's been stored in a police locker, he said it would be a "double whammy" if the court returned it to him.

And he definitely wants his pot back: "I'll probably use it to cook or make some brownies."

Some may wonder why devote an entire issue to pot, why pull resources from our weekly exposure of Sacramento's baddies, and why run an entire issue now on a played-out topic that peaked with platform shoes and fros on white guys? Fair enough. Let's answer each: We are devoting an entire issue to pot because everyone on staff is stoned ... immaculate. As today's News, Opinion, Feature Stories, Scene&Heard and other sections reveal, the local baddies when it comes to cannabis are the feds, the schools, the governor, bad musicians and you—yes, you!—the voters who overwhelmingly passed our medical-marijuana law but have not demanded teeth be put into it. This issue did not die out when we tossed that old straw cowboy hat with the feathered roach clip attached to the band—it's still around big time, thus The Pot Issue.

Sacramento searches for “marijuana” on the Web at an amazing rate. The most recent findings ranked Sacramento third in the world for “marijuana” searches—behind Honolulu (No. 2) and Portland. (No. 1). In the four years that Google’s been keeping stats, Sacramento has never been outside the top five.
Source: Google Trends

There are more than 200 nicknames for marijuana. Don’t just stick to pot, herb, grass, weed, Mary Jane and reefer. There’s always Aunt Mary, skunk, boom, gangster, kief, funk, bomb, chillums, tea or ganja. Then there are the “brand” names: sinsimilla, Kona, Texas tea, Indiana hay, Maui wowie, chiba chiba, Acapulco Gold and Panama Red. And don’t forget the tools and byproducts: Toklas (brownies made with pot or hash oil, named for Alice B. Toklas, lover of Gertrude Stein and chocolate-y goodness), hubbly bubbly or bong (water pipe), roach clips, pipes and stones. And everybody hates parkers and bogarts, don’t they?
Source: Office of National Drug Policy

Marijuana is the most frequently used drug in America. Almost half (47 percent) of adult Americans have smoked at least once, but only 5 percent are current users. Use is highest among teens and young adults; those aged 16 to 28 make up 60 percent of users.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

While African-Americans make up only 13.6 percent of marijuana users, 26 percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession are black.
Source: U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency

Once again, the Golden State is tops in agriculture. The major source of American-grown marijuana, California provides one-third of the domestic dope and account for two-thirds of the pot crop that’s eradicated from national forests.
Source: U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency

The older you are, the harder it is to get: One-third of those between the ages of 13 and 17 reported that pot was difficult to find or buy, while 52 percent of users over 50 years old had a hard time finding or buying the stuff.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Most marijuana sales are made within a small group of acquaintances. Of 4.5 million pot sales in 2002, almost a quarter of them were made by users under the age of 17. The 24- to 34-year-old age group sold almost—but not quite—as much pot.
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Yeah, it really is more potent: A comparative survey of the strength of seized marijuana over the past two decades found that the amount of THC present in pot has more than doubled. The average amount of THC in marijuana seized in 1973 was 1.73 percent; in 2004, it was 5.8 percent. The highest THC content ever seized was from an indoor hydroponic pot farm in Oregon in 1997: 33.12 percent. A tincture of cannabis (marijuana oil) can have a THC content as high as 40 percent. Such tinctures legally were sold over-the-counter in American drugstores until the 1930s.
Source: University of Mississippi Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project

Hemp seed is nutritious—it contains proteins and essential fatty acids. In some places, porridge similar in consistency to oatmeal is made of hemp seed. The seeds themselves do not include the psychoactive ingredient found in the leaves and buds, so a hearty breakfast of hemp-seed porridge won’t get you high. But it might work wonders for your cognitive abilities.
Source: National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

Marijuana contains more than 400 chemicals, 66 of which are cannaboids (found in plants in the cannabis family). Marijuana contains no nicotine. It will not help you quit smoking cigarettes. But it will make you not care if you have a cigarette or not.
Source: National Academy of Science

According to weed lore, there are 800 strains of marijuana. With names like Skunk Passion, Afghanica, and Celtic Cross, varieties can be purchased from seed companies via the Internet, typically from companies located outside the U.S. Some strains grow better indoors than outdoors and vice versa, though outdoor growing carries a greater risk (interdiction, anyone?). Plus, growers need to be smart enough to weed out the male plants—if they pollinate the female plants, you get seeds instead of the happy-making leaves and buds.
Source: National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

While it’s true that many police departments use “codes” in radio communications, “420” is not a police code referring to marijuana use. Neither is it a penal code related to marijuana—in California, penal code 420 deals with hindering access to property. April 20 (abbreviated 4/20) is Hitler’s birthday and the anniversary of the Columbine school shooting, but neither of those has anything to do with marijuana. However, for some strange reason, 420—both the number and the date—has become associated with smoking marijuana. Whether 4:20 is the perfect time to get high or not, April 20 has become a significant date in cannabis culture—so significant that it’s no longer secret.
Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy

Varieties of cannabis have been used since ancient times for medicinal, spiritual and recreational purposes. In this country, the first regulation of marijuana began in the early 1930s, and the first federal regulation was the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. This law required the payment of a tax for the production, sale or use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. It did not make marijuana illegal, but did successfully make it expensive and inconvenient. In the early 1940s, marijuana was removed from the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, the official authority for standards for all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, probably as a result of publicity that claimed marijuana was addictive and caused psychosis. With the passage in 1970 of the Controlled Substances Act, which classified marijuana as a Class I Controlled Substance, marijuana legally was lumped with heroin and LSD as a drug with a high possibility of abuse and no legitimate medical use. And there it sits.
Source: National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

Studies in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles found that the No. 1 reason cited for the use of medical marijuana was to treat complications arising from HIV/AIDS. The second most-frequent use of medical marijuana was chronic pain. All HIV/AIDS users reported that marijuana use reduced nausea and vomiting. Roughly two-thirds of those surveyed who were using medical marijuana where men in their 40s. Most of those who were using marijuana medically had used it recreationally on prior occasions.
Source: National Academy of Science

Scientists have identified a withdrawal syndrome associated with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana—but it is described as “mild and subtle” compared to other withdrawal syndromes and it occurred only in long-term, heavy daily users. Still, the presence of a withdrawal syndrome, as well as the evidence that marijuana users develop tolerance to the effects of THC, means that it is addictive. Not as addictive as heroin or alcohol. Not even as addictive as cigarettes or coffee. But addictive, nonetheless.
Source: National Academy of Science

A 1999 review of the available research by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science found that there was evidence to support clinical studies in the use of marijuana to treat complications from HIV/AIDS (including wasting syndrome); as an analgesic and anti-vomiting treatment for cancer and other severe chronic-pain patients; and to treat some muscular and neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis. The review, published as Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base, also noted that the anti-anxiety and mood-elevating characteristics of marijuana could be beneficial for patients with these diseases. The report did not recommend use of marijuana for treatment of glaucoma because the relief of internal eye pressure was quite temporary and would require extremely high doses. In 2001, the American Medical Association also recommended “well-controlled studies of marijuana and related cannabinoids” as treatment for certain medical conditions and diseases. None of these suggested studies have been done.
Source: National Academy of Science

According to a 2005 economic study by Jeffrey A. Miron, a visiting professor at Harvard University, legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government-enforcement costs. It also would provide tax revenue of $6.2 billion per year if it were taxed at rates similar to alcohol and tobacco. Yep, that’s billions. In California, we’d save $22.1 million in law-enforcement expenses and gain $105 million in tax revenue (if the pot taxes were, like alcohol and tobacco taxes, distributed based on consumption).
Source: National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

Ummm, you know all those people in prison for pot? Well, there aren’t that many of them. People incarcerated in state prisons for marijuana offenses only (which means for sale or transportation for sale, since possession isn’t usually a felony) account for .07 percent of the prison population. Those other marijuana offenders? They had other charges in addition to the weed charges.
Source: U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency

Law enforcement is seizing more marijuana than people are using! In 2000, law enforcement seizures totaled 2.7 million pounds o’ pot; estimated consumption of marijuana by U.S. users was 2.3 million pounds. In spite of these seizures, the average price of marijuana continues to decline from its all-time high in 1991. Prices for marijuana in 2002 were roughly the same (adjusted for inflation) as prices in 1983. Talk about a bargain!
Source: Office of National Drug Policy

Richard Paey is a chronic pain patient in year three of a 25-year mandatory-minimum sentence for trafficking in drugs -- his own pain medication.

But his freedom is just hours away.

"We aim to right a wrong and exercise compassion and to do it with grace," the governor said. "Congratulations ... and I state he should be released today."

Our ballots have carried more initiatives than any other state: 341 through last year, according to the Initiative and Referendum Institute.

And more than 1 in 8 Oregonians uses marijuana yearly, the federal government estimates, well above the 10.5 percent national average. Oregon ranks fifth in yearly marijuana use, third in use by adults older than 25. We also have one of the highest rates of people trying pot for the first time and lowest rates of residents who call monthly pot smoking very risky, the federal figures show.

Of a half-dozen or so cannabis clubs in Washington, most are in Seattle because of that city's philosophy of tolerance, as expressed by Initiative 75, a measure approved by voters in 2003 that makes arresting and prosecuting individuals with less than 40 grams of marijuana the "lowest law enforcement priority."

One club in Seattle is Emerald Cross, managed by Sue Watson of Port Orchard. Watson said she wanted to locate the club in Kitsap County, but the county prosecutor's office told her the operation violated the one patient-one caregiver rule and therefore would not be welcome.

"In a co-op arrangement, where more than one patient is supplied, or a patient shares his or her 60-day supply, they are in violation of the statute," Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge confirmed in an interview.

Emerald Cross occupies the second floor of a nondescript office building in an industrial zone in the shadow of Interstate 5. About 900 people belong to the club, Watson said, all patients with doctor's notes. Staffers are patients who volunteer their time in return for medicine. The other members pay for their medicine by donation, Watson said, because selling medical marijuana is illegal.

More than half of Denver voters appeared to favor an initiative making marijuana the city's lowest law enforcement priority, according to early ballot returns. If the result holds, the mayor must now appoint a panel to monitor how marijuana cases are handled by the police and city prosecutors and issue a report. With most of the ballots counted Tuesday evening, 55 percent of the mail-in ballots supported the initiative and 45 percent were opposed.

Ferguson stepped out to get change for the bus. On her way back to work, by her account, she was stopped on Clarendon Road by three cops in plainclothes who jumped out of an unmarked car and accused her of smoking marijuana.

Ferguson said they must be mistaken. The officers - now joined by a number of others who responded to the scene - said otherwise. They searched her pockets. They even checked under her flip-flops.

Nothing.

Ferguson was let go. She went back to work, but 15 minutes later, police were banging on the door. Next they were searching her pocketbook.

Then, despite finding nothing of import, they were arresting her. Ferguson was processed at the 67th Precinct, spent the night in custody and was arraigned the next night on a charge of criminal possession of marijuana.

The United States is a nation governed by law at the federal, state and local levels. Sometimes these laws differ with each other. That's where the great principle of federalism comes in. Federalism permits state laws to be in conflict with each other, and even with the federal government. But that's OK. The sometimes messy business of federalism permits different locales to try different solutions to vexing problems, allowing the states to act as the "test tubes of democracy."

We see federalism in action most vividly today surrounding the controversy over medical marijuana. Ten states have either legalized cannabis for medicinal use or permit a medical purpose defense against prosecution. Their actions do not force other states to go along.

But federalism also means that the federal government can't be compelled to accede to the state's laws, either, and indeed, when federal and state laws conflict - as currently it does in states that have legalized medical marijuana - both federal and state laws may operate at the same time. Thus, the Supreme Court of the United States has twice ruled that the federal government is entitled to enforce its total ban against all marijuana possession and consumption where such use is statutorily authorized.

And that's exactly what the Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Justice have done under Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush. People using and distributing marijuana for medicinal use have been prosecuted and convicted - even in states like California, where it is legal. The upset caused by federal law enforcement actions has made medical marijuana an issue in the current presidential campaign, with candidates increasingly being asked by reporters and medical marijuana activists whether they will promise to call off the DEA raids.

According to Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana ( www.granitestaters.com), most of the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, have promised to call off the dogs. The leading Republican candidates, including Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, have refused to so pledge, worrying, as John McCain put it in also rejecting the request, that marijuana is a "gateway drug." (Fred Thompson did not answer the question.)

For the past month, 28 judges -- all medical marijuana cardholders -- have been sampling entries from Verstoppen and 12 other licensed Oregon growers. Judges rate each strain of marijuana, on a scale of 1 to 10, in six categories: appearance, aroma, smoothness, taste, potency and "medicinal effect," or how well it soothes what ails them.

(1) A patient must register a marijuana grow site with the Department. The Department will register only one grow site per patient, and will only register grow sites in Oregon.

(2) To register a marijuana grow site, an applicant or patient must submit to the Department an application, prescribed by the Department, that includes:

(a) The name of the person responsible for the marijuana grow site;

(b) The date of birth of the person responsible for the marijuana grow site;

(c) The physical address of the marijuana grow site where marijuana is to be produced;

(d) The mailing address of the person responsible for the marijuana grow site;

(e) The registry identification card number of the registry identification cardholder, if known, for whom the marijuana is being produced; and

(f) Any other information the Department deems necessary.

(3) The Department will conduct a criminal background check on the person identified as being responsible for the grow site.

(a) If a patient is convicted of a violation of ORS 475.992(1)(a) or (b) that occurred on or after January 1, 2006, the patient is prohibited, for a period of five (5) years from the date of conviction, from producing marijuana at a location where the patient is present. The patient will be informed by registered mail if he or she is disqualified from being the person responsible for a grow site and the patient will be given the opportunity to identify another person responsible for the grow site.

(b) If a designated primary caregiver or a third party identified as the person responsible for the grow site is convicted of a violation of ORS 475.992(1)(a) or (b) that occurred on or after January 1, 2006, that person is prohibited, for a period of five (5) years from the date of conviction, from being a person responsible for a grow site. The patient will be informed by registered mail if the designated primary caregiver or third party identified as the person responsible for a grow site is disqualified from being the person responsible for a grow site and the patient will be given the opportunity to identify another person responsible for the grow site.

(c) If a designated primary caregiver or a third party identified as the person responsible for the grow site is convicted more than once of a violation of ORS 475.992(1)(a) or (b) that occurred on or after January 1, 2006, the patient will be informed by registered mail that the person is permanently prohibited from being a person responsible for a grow site and cannot be issued a marijuana grow site registration card. The patient will be given the opportunity to identify another person responsible for the grow site.

(4) The Department will issue a marijuana grow site registration card to a patient who has met the requirements of subsection (2) of this rule, unless the person responsible for a grow site is disqualified under subsection (3) of this rule.

(5) A person responsible for a marijuana grow site must display a marijuana grow site registration card for each patient for which marijuana is being produced, at the marijuana grow site at all times.

(6) All usable marijuana, plants, seedlings and seeds, associated with the production of marijuana for a registry identification cardholder by a person responsible for a marijuana grow site, are the property of the registry identification cardholder and must be provided to the registry identification cardholder upon request.

(7) All marijuana produced for a patient must be provided to the patient or primary designated caregiver when the person responsible for a marijuana grow site ceases producing marijuana for the patient.

(8) A person responsible for a marijuana grow site must return the grow site registration card to the patient to whom the card was issued when requested to do so by the patient or when the person responsible for a marijuana grow site ceases producing marijuana for the patient.

(9) A patient or the designated primary caregiver of the patient may reimburse the person responsible for a marijuana grow site for the costs of supplies and utilities associated with production of marijuana for the registry identification cardholder. No other costs associated with the production of marijuana for the patient, including the cost of labor, may be reimbursed.

(10) If marijuana used by a patient is to be produced at a grow site where the patient or designated caregiver is not present, the person responsible for the grow site may only produce marijuana for up to four (4) patients or designated primary caregivers at any time. A patient or designated caregiver will be considered to be "present" at a grow site if the patient or designated caregiver has their primary residence at the grow site. For purposes of this section, a "primary residence" is the physical location where a person lives, during any 12-month period, more than he or she lives elsewhere during that period.

Police in Amsterdam are complaining over new rules banning them from smoking cannabis while off duty. Dutch police union chairman Hans van Duijn said: "Many of our members are opposed to this. They are not paid for 24-hours a day. What they do in their free time is up to them."

On Monday it was announced Mr. Emery had struck a deal with U.S. prosecutors. To avoid extradition, he will serve a five-year sentence for selling marijuana seeds by mail. He will do his time here, rather than stateside, but will be ineligible for the early release to which all other Canadian criminals generally are entitled. He will have to do his full time behind bars, no parole, no halfway houses, no statutory release.

The national ACLU has decided to fund a pilot effort. Beginning on Valentine's Day, television viewers in the Seattle media market will begin seeing a slick, 30-minute pot-reform infomercial.

Hosted by television travel guru Rick Steves, Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation will initially be available on Comcast On Demand cable, says Alison Holcomb, director of the ACLU of Washington's Marijuana Education Project, which produced the show. Holcomb says the ACLU plans to spend at least $20,000 per week airing the program around the state. Three local network affiliates (KOMO, KING, and KIRO) have already received and approved copies of the script, she says. By the end of 2008, she expects the program to begin airing in more conservative regions, including Pierce County, Clark County, and greater Spokane.

On Tuesday, January 29 -- three days prior to the publication of a forthcoming study assessing marijuana use and cancer -- Reuters News Wire published a story under the headline: "Cannabis Bigger Cancer Risk Than Cigarettes." Mainstream media outlets across the globe immediately followed suit. "Smoking One Joint is Equivalent to 20 Cigarettes, Study Says," Fox News declared, while Australia's ABC broadcast network pronounced, "Experts Warn of Cannabis Cancer 'Epidemic.'"

If those headlines weren't attention-grabbing enough, one only had to scan the stories' inflammatory copy -- much of which was lifted directly from press statements provided by the study's lead author in advance of its publication.

"While our study covers a relatively small group, it shows clearly that long-term cannabis smoking increases lung-cancer risk," chief investigator Richard Beasley declared. Beasley went on to speculate that pot "could already be responsible for one in 20 lung cancers diagnosed in New Zealand" before warning: "In the near future we may see an 'epidemic' of lung cancers connected with this new carcinogen."

The mainstream press, always on the look out for a good pot scare story, ran blindly with Beasley's remarks. Apparently not a scribe among them felt any need to confirm whether Beasley's study -- which remained embargoed at the same time it was making worldwide headlines -- actually said what was claimed.

It didn't.

For those who actually bothered to read the study's full text, which appeared in the European Respiratory Journal days after the global feeding frenzy had ended, they would have learned the following. Among the 79 lung cancer subjects who participated in the trial, 70 of them smoked tobacco. These individuals, not surprisingly, experienced a seven-times greater risk of being diagnosed with lung cancer compared to tobacco-free controls. As for the subjects in the study who reported having used cannabis, they -- on average -- experienced no statistically significant increased cancer risk compared to non-using controls.

In short, had the mainstream media even taken the time to consult their own prior marijuana coverage, they would have immediately begun asking the sort of probing questions that the public normally expects them to. Of course, such hard and steadfast rules governing professional journalism seldom apply to the media' coverage of pot -- where political ideology typically trumps accuracy and where slipshod reporting hardly ever even warrants a public retraction. Writing in the journal Science nearly 40 years ago, New York state university sociologist Erich Goode aptly observed: "[T]ests and experiments purporting to demonstrate the ravages of marijuana consumption receive enormous attention from the media, and their findings become accepted as fact by the public. But when careful refutations of such research are published, or when latter findings contradict the original pathological findings, they tend to be ignored or dismissed."

A College student loses his financial aid because of a youthful indiscretion. A woman coping with the ravages of ovarian cancer lives in fear of being arrested for using what best eases her suffering. Across town, a front door bursts open and police rush in to handcuff a man relaxing in his living room. These events have one thing in common: marijuana. Whether it is being kicked out of college for a youthful mistake, being denied relief from pain as a cancer patient, or getting arrested for personal use in one's home, marijuana laws have far-reaching consequences. And these consequences are often totally disproportionate to whatever societal risk or danger marijuana use may pose.

So, can we talk?

I think we should. As a nation, we spend at least $7.5 billion annually enforcing our marijuana laws. In 2006, the latest year for which we have numbers, a record 830,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana — 89 percent of them simply for possessing it.

A tentative deal between Marc Emery and the U.S. government over money laundering and drug charges has been nixed by Ottawa, the marijuana crusader said Thursday. Mr. Emery says the federal Conservatives have refused to go along with a proposal that would have seen him spend five years behind bars for selling marijuana seeds through the mail. Under the defunct pact, Mr. Emery was to plead guilty on both sides of the border and accept a sentence of 10 years imprisonment on the understanding he would serve half, mostly in Canada.

The report found that 40 per cent of those surveyed in 2005 who reported smoking pot in the previous year were between 30 and 49. In 1977, that number was just 15.4 per cent. Nearly one-third of those who used marijuana in the previous year had completed at least some post-secondary education, and 32 per cent earned more than $50,000 a year, the report said. A United Nations world drug report released last year showed that 16.8 per cent of Canadians between 15 and 64 had smoked pot in the previous year, one of the highest levels in the world.

Michigan, with its scheduled Nov. 4 vote, is at the forefront of the national debate that has percolated since 1996, when California voters approved medical marijuana. If voters approve it, Michigan would become the 13th state to legalize medical marijuana for the treatment of a host of health problems such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, hepatitis C and Alzheimer's disease. Sponsors say as many as 50,000 Michigan residents, would qualify for the medical pot. A poll of 600 voters in mid-March, conducted by Lansing-based Marketing Resource Group, found that two-thirds favored it.

Shortly after Keva Landrum-Johnson took over as district attorney following Eddie Jordan’s resignation Oct. 30, hundreds of new felony cases flooded the public defenders office, overwhelming the 29 defense attorneys. After New Orleans regained its title as the nation’s murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office. The flood of new felony charges didn’t target murderers, rapists or armed robbers — they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.

A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.

Two North Dakota farmers on Wednesday took their battle to grow industrial hemp to the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Paul, where their attorney argued that hemp is so distinct from marijuana that it should not be subject to federal regulation. At stake, say hemp sellers and would-be farmers, is a potentially booming commodity that would help U.S. growers and consumers alike.

Following an overwhelming victory for Nov. 4's "Ballot Question 2," some district attorneys, law enforcement officers and editorial writers have questioned the people's wisdom.In doing so, they reveal their own failure since 2000 to participate in the normal legislative process. They should have seen the tidal wave approaching and worked with advocates and the Legislature in passing reform sooner, saving thousands from criminal charges we now know the people do not want to impose upon the marijuana users among us.

What is truly criminal is that the current law provides those willing to engage in the risk of cultivating and distributing a price support that farmers of other commodities can only envy. This is why efforts to further reform marijuana laws, by those who know marijuana to be safer than alcoholic beverages and a safe and effective medicine, will not cease until production and distribution by adults and possession and use by adults is legal, regulated and taxed.

The purpose of the Constitution - being the securing of liberty and justice for all - compel it.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama's campaign promises to stop the raids. The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers. “The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Weed, the Breakfast of Champions. I've been waiting a long time - 11 years to be exact - for the sports world to seize on that concept, but no one's had the guts. Now, far later than I expected, we've entered pot's perfect storm. Just as the economy has tanked, strangling sponsorships all over the athletic map, a Super Bowl MVP and the most decorated Olympian of all time have emerged as partakers. Advocates for drug reform have long said that legalizing marijuana would increase tax revenue, not to mention reduce violence in the dealer population.

Three recent polls show that Americans are more sympathetic to the idea of legalizing marijuana than ever before. That all three polls show support for legalization passing through the 40 percent barrier may be significant. I compiled a database of every past poll I could find on this subject, including a series of Gallup polls and results from the General Social Survey, and could never before find more than 36 percent of the population (Gallup in October, 2005) stating a position in favor of legalization. The pro-legalization position may have some generational momentum as well. According to an AARP poll conducted several years ago, while just 8 percent of Americans aged 70 or older had ever tried pot, lifetime usage rates grow to 58 percent among 45-49 year olds.

Days before President Bush left office in January, his administration fired a parting shot at Professor Lyle Craker's eight-year quest to cultivate marijuana for medical research by abruptly denying him a federal license despite a nearly two-year old Drug Enforcement Administration law judge's recommendation that he receive one.

But the new administration led by President Obama, who has publicly backed the use of marijuana for medical purposes to stave off pain, might reverse the decision and keep Craker's license application from going up in smoke.

A source familiar with the case said the White House will likely demand that the decision be reviewed.

"Basically they want to do an autopsy of what occurred and have it go through a proper review," the source said.

Craker, who is based at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is cautiously optimistic Obama will do to the denial of the marijuana license what he has done to other Bush administration decisions on such hot-button cultural issues as embryonic stem-cell research and the abortion "gag rule" affecting overseas family planning groups.

Abstract

Adolescence is a unique period in neurodevelopment. Alcohol and marijuana use are common. Recent research has indicated that adolescent substance users show abnormalities on measures of brain functioning, which is linked to changes in neurocognition over time. Abnormalities have been seen in brain structure volume, white matter quality, and activation to cognitive tasks, even in youth with as little as 1-2 years of heavy drinking and consumption levels of 20 drinks per month, especially if >4-5 drinks are consumed on a single occasion. Heavy marijuana users show some subtle anomalies too, but generally not the same degree of divergence from demographically similar non-using adolescents. This article reviews the extant literature on neurocognition, brain structure, and brain function in adolescent substance users with an emphasis on the most commonly used substances, and in the context of ongoing neuromaturational processes. Methodological and treatment implications are provided.

Widespread marijuana use by the public has not been followed by a proportional rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia or psychosis, according to the findings of a forthcoming study to be published in the scientific journal Schizophrenia Research.

Backers of the successful drive to legalize the sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes have now won Senate support for a study of what, if anything, is being accomplished by criminalizing use of the plant for any other purpose? During the General Assembly's aborted rush to adjournment Friday, the Senate approved a resolution - introduced earlier the same day - to create a nine-member special commission to study a swath of issues surrounding marijuana. Among them: "The experience of individuals and families sentenced for violating marijuana laws...The experience of states and European countries, such as California, Massachusetts and the Netherlands, which have decriminalized the sale and use of marijuana.''

[The two of us], a Democratic state senator and former Republican state representative, support state Senate Bill 5615. This bill would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime carrying a mandatory day in jail to a civil infraction imposing a $100 penalty payable by mail. The bill was voted out of committee with a bipartisan "do pass" recommendation and will be considered by legislators in 2010.

The bill makes a lot of sense, especially in this time of severely strapped budgets. Our state Office of Financial Management reported annual savings of $16 million and $1 million in new revenue if SB 5615 passes.

Stiff competition from thousands of America's mom-and-pop marijuana farmers threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law-enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico. Almost all marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. As much as half now is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.

After two decades as Canada's Prince of Pot, Marc Emery will surrender himself today in B.C. Supreme Court and become the country's first Marijuana Martyr. Emery will begin serving what could be as long as five years behind bars as Uncle Sam's prisoner for a crime that in Canada would have earned him at most a month in the local hoosegow. It is a legal tragedy that in my opinion marks the capitulation of our sovereignty and underscores the hypocrisy around cannabis.

The number of valid signatures reported by Los Angeles County, submitted minutes before Wednesday's 5 p.m. deadline, put the measure well beyond the 433,971 it needed to be certified. Supporters turned in 694,248 signatures, collecting them in every county except Alpine. County election officials estimated that 523,531 were valid. The measure's main advocate, Richard Lee, an Oakland marijuana entrepreneur, savored the chance to press his case with voters that the state's decades-old ban on marijuana is a failed policy. "We're one step closer to ending cannabis prohibition and the unjust laws that lock people up for cannabis while alcohol is not only sold openly but advertised on television to kids every day," he said. Lee, tapping $1.3 million from his businesses, has put together a highly organized campaign that he emphasized Wednesday would be led by a team of experienced political consultants, including Chris Lehane, a veteran operative who has worked in the White House and on presidential campaigns.

But the strategy offers a fairly impressive list of innovations to set off against those disappointments. Of course the ones that matter most to me testing-and-sanctions programs for drug-involved offenders (which the “formidable” Bennett and McCaffrey never dared to endorse) and David Kennedy’s Drug Market Intervention program designed to eliminate problematic drug markets without mass arrests. Together, those two programs alone would radically reduce the links between drugs and crime, and yet because they’re neither “supply” or “demand” programs and have no visceral appeal to either side of the culture wars, they’ve struggled to get attention.

Rather than just promising to pump more money into the existing drug-treatment machinery, the strategy focuses on on the contribution the mainstream health-care effort could make toward dealing with substance abuse, in particular screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT). The money potentially available for his purpose under the health care bill, and in particular through the community clinic system, dwarfs the formal treatment system. The strategy aims to make sure that potential gets used; if it does, the effective balance between “supply” and “demand” spending would shift radically in fact, though it wouldn’t change on paper.

Some of the innovations don’t leap off the page, but require a little bit of reading between the lines; they’re important nonetheless.

So far, I don’t know the entire chain of leakage, but the path clearly runs through John Walters, the Bill Bennett sidekick who served as ONDCP director (“drug czar”) under Bush II. Walters’s tenure marked a low point in the non-entirely-glorious history of ONDCP. Walters and his staff behaved as if they were playing the English version of Charades and had been told to act out “epistemic closure.”

Walters seems not to have noticed that when he made a formatting change in the document on his computer that edit would be recorded in “Track Changes.” But p. 9 of the .pdf version of the document Isikoff posted has a box showing a change by “John Walters 4/29/10 3:02 PM.”

That timestamp, just one day before Isikoff’s story went up, strongly suggests that Walters was the direct source, though it’s barely possible that Walters gave it to some third party who in turn gave it to Isikoff.

A phone call to ONDCP confirms that Walters was not among the very small group of people outside the agency who had access to the document. No one I know had it, and I asked to see it and was told that I would get the executive summary only, 24 hours before the release time, under strict embargo. But it was available to everyone inside the agency on the ONDCP intranet.

So who inside ONDCP would have given the document to Walters? (The leak might have come from somewhere else in the White House – OMB, DPC, NSC – but Walters doesn’t have many friends in those places now.) The obvious suspect is David Murray, who was appointed by Walters to the job of Chief Scientist and acted as his ideological enforcer. Murray’s performance so outraged Capitol Hill that the appropriations committees made several increasingly vehement demands for his replacement, and – when Walters resisted – slashed what had been an eight-figure research budget almost to zero.

“Everybody smokes dope after work,” said Anthony Bourdain, the author and chef who made his name chronicling drugs and debauchery in professional kitchens. “People you would never imagine.”

So while it should not come as a surprise that some chefs get high, it’s less often noted that drug use in the kitchen can change the experience in the dining room.

Prop. 19 (Marijuana Legalization)
Voter sentiment on Prop. 19 is closely divided, with more voters now opposing it (48%) than in favor (44%). Prop. 19 would allow people 21 years or older to possess, cultivate or transport marijuana for personal use and permit local governments to regulate and tax its commercial production and sales.
The three-fourths majority of voters who had some awareness of the measure prior to being surveyed are narrowly favoring its passage – 48% to 44%. However, Prop. 19 is opposed nearly two-to-one among the 23% of voters who had no prior awareness of the initiative.
There are large partisan differences in voting preferences on Prop. 19. While Democrats are backing it 53% to 38%, a two-to-one majority of Republicans (63% to 31%) are opposed. Non-partisans are evenly divided 46% to 46%.
There is majority support for Prop. 19’s passage (53% Yes vs. 38% No) among voters in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. Los Angeles County voters are about evenly divided (46% Yes vs. 47% No). However, in all other regions of the state sentiment is running against Prop. 19 by margins ranging from six to eighteen percentage points.
Men are split on the measure (48% Yes vs. 47% No), while women are on the No side 50% to 41%.
A small plurality of white non-Hispanics (48% to 43%) favors Prop. 19’s passage. However, each of the racial/ethnic subgroups measured in the survey – Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans – are opposed to Prop. 19 by double-digit margins.
Voters age 18 – 29 age are supporting the marijuana initiative 52% to 39%. However, the survey finds that there are significant preference differences between younger voters who are white non-Hispanic and ethnic voters. While younger white non-Hispanic voters favor the initiative 53% to 35, younger ethnic voters oppose it five to four (52% to 45%).
Voters between ages 30-64 are generally divided in their preferences. However, voters age 65 and older are opposing the initiative by a big margin (57% to 33%).

Let's think this through. If Proposition 19 passes, two important balls roll into the feds' court. The first is that the sole responsibility and expense of enforcing marijuana prohibition will be shifted to them. After Nov. 2, marijuana "offenders" could be arrested only by federal agents, prosecuted only under federal law, and sentenced only to federal detention.

If the feds undertook this, cases involving simple possession cases and small-time marijuana businesspeople, usually relegated to state courts, would flood federal courthouses. But even with a drastic increase in funding for federal enforcement, such activity would barely put a dent in California's marijuana trade, and would fail to stifle California's policy change, as the federal government has failed to do since the first medical marijuana laws were passed 14 years ago. Moreover, justifying the invasion into a state's province to undermine the will of the voters at such great expense to taxpayers would be highly questionable, especially in the current economic climate, not to mention a political climate that is at best lukewarm on prohibitionist policies.

The second ball is even more significant. Voter approval of Proposition 19 would shift to the feds the responsibility and burden of justifying marijuana prohibition in the first place. Now, the Washingtonians who have never questioned decades of anti-pot propaganda can explain to the people of California why we cannot be trusted to determine our state's marijuana policies. Let them endorse the prohibition laws' usefulness as a tool of oppressing minorities. Let them celebrate how minor marijuana violations cost people their jobs, their housing, custody of their kids, and entrap them permanently in vast criminal justice databases. Let them justify the utter hypocrisy of the legal treatment of alcohol and tobacco, as compared with the illegal treatment of marijuana. Let them tell us how many more people will have to be prosecuted and punished before marijuana is eradicated, how much that will cost, and where the money will come from.

These Are the Worst of Times

If you thought pot legalization in Seattle had already arrived—think again. Despite voters making pot possession the lowest law-enforcement priority in 2003, Seattle police are arresting more people on low-level marijuana charges this year than any year in the last decade.

Between January 1 and June 30, Seattle police have arrested 172 people for marijuana possession, according to records obtained from the Seattle City Attorney's Office. While that's not a lot compared to, say, New York City, that's far more than double the rate of arrests at the midpoint of last year, when cops had arrested 62 people (there were 120 arrests all year in 2009). And that's more than triple the rate in 2004, the year after Initiative 75 passed, when police had arrested 47 people for pot possession by this point in the year.

These Are the Best of Times

All those pot cases from this year that you just read about? None of them will be prosecuted.

City Attorney Pete Holmes, who took office in January, refuses to slap a misdemeanor conviction on any of those people. It was a campaign promise—a promise that helped him win the election with 64 percent of the vote—that he refuses to budge on. And he's no wild card at City Hall: The mayor wants to legalize marijuana outright.

Oral sex is illegal in 18 states, (including Arizona lol). Should cops arrest everyone who engages in it? Of course not. Common sense.

Back in 2006, "Jane Roe" interviewed for a job at TeleTech, a Colorado-based firm with an office in Bremerton that offers customer service work for telecommunications companies. For years, Roe had suffered from crippling migraine headaches. Her lawyer, Michael Subit says that his client had tried every kind of prescription drug. They either they didn't work at all or the side effects were so bad that "the cure was worse than the disease." Eventually, however, Roe found something that kept the pain at bay: marijuana. During her interview, Roe told TeleTech that she smoked. She told them she would fail a drug test if she was forced to take one. Still, TeleTech hired her and gave her the test anyway. Subit says Roe worked for two weeks answering phones without incident. Then, one day, she was called into her boss's office and told she'd failed the drug test, just like she said she would. Roe was fired, told that TeleTech couldn't have an employee working at its offices who smoked marijuana at home. Her wrongful termination suit was dismissed by a Kitsap County trial judge, a decision which was then upheld by the Court of Appeals. The Washington Supreme Court has accepted the case and will hear arguments during its winter session.

Only one case nationally other than Roe's has made it to such a high court. California's Supreme Court decided that because the use of marijuana remains a crime under federal law, an employer there was justified in firing a person who, like Roe, had used the drug for medicinal purposes.

“I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people,” Robertson said. “Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

It's... an announcement that Seattle's last bastion of drug-war defense has fallen. (All the elected officials representing Seattle who could be reached by press time, from city council members to state legislators, said they supported legalizing marijuana.) In other words, negative political ramifications for wanting to legalize pot—a radical position only 13 years ago—are now nonexistent here. At every social and political stratum, wanting legal pot is Seattle's new status quo. And the final proof is that the Seattle Times, the voice of the status quo, is publicly acknowledging this fact.

Alison Holcomb, director of the ACLU of Washington's drug policy project, sees the newspaper's shift like this: "We've moved beyond the point of all of us agreeing that prohibition is a failure to insisting that our legislatures actually craft a new solution."

But not everyone is doing triumphant bong hits. Immediately after the first pot editorial came off the press, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy director Gil Kerlikowske (also the former Seattle police chief) contacted Ryan Blethen. Kerlikowske wanted to sit down personally with the paper's full editorial board. "I drew the obvious conclusion," said Bruce Ramsey, the Seattle Times editorial writer who wrote the first unbylined piece. "He didn't like our editorial."

As it turned out, he was cordial and almost laid-back. At one point he steered the conversation to prescription drug abuse, which had nothing to do with our editorial. When we asked him about legal marijuana he did disagree with us, but so gently that some of the attendees wondered why he had come at all.

The initiative would regulate the recreational use of marijuana in a way similar to how the state regulates alcohol. It would legalize marijuana for people older than 21, authorize the state Liquor Control Board to regulate and tax marijuana for sale in "stand-alone stores" and extend drunken-driving laws to marijuana, with blood tests to determine how much of the substance's active ingredient is present in a driver's blood. Taxing sales would bring the state $215 million a year, conservatively estimated, Holmes said. McKay, who spent five years enforcing federal drug laws as the U.S. attorney in Seattle before he was fired by the Bush administration in early 2007, said he hopes the initiative will help "shame Congress" into ending pot prohibition.

The federal government is moving to shut down the nation’s largest and highest-profile medical marijuana dispensary operation, filing papers to seize properties in Oakland and San Jose where Harborside Health Center does business.

Copies of the federal Complaint for Forfeiture were taped to the front doors of the two dispensaries Tuesday, alleging that they were "operating in violation of federal law."

Medical marijuana advocates, as well as some state and local officials, decried the action, saying it hurts patients in legitimate need of the drug and breaks repeated promises by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department that it was targeting only operations near schools and parks or otherwise in violation of the state’s laws. Harborside was co-founded by outspoken marijuana activist Steve DeAngelo in 2006 and was the subject of a reality show, "Weed Wars," on the Discovery Channel last year. While other dispensary operators have sought a low profile since California’s four U.S. attorneys began cracking down on the industry in October, DeAngelo has consistently railed against the federal intervention, advocated for better state regulations and become a leader in the movement.

An initiative to legalize and tax marijuana was buoyed this weekend by $1.25 million in new donations, allowing the campaign to place a big TV ad buy for August.

Initiative 502, the first marijuana-legalization initiative to make the state ballot, raised the money from just four donors, including $450,000 donations from Progressive Insurance founder Peter Lewis and an arm of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance.

The donations will pay for a $1 million TV-ad blitz in August, before other campaigns saturate the airwaves, said I-502 campaign manager Alison Holcomb. Holcomb said the new contributions, which will be officially reported by the campaign early next week, included $250,000 from Edmonds travel guru Rick Steves, who previously donated $100,000; and $100,000 from the ACLU of Washington.

A new statewide poll, paid for by KING 5, finds 55 percent support for I-502 versus 32 percent opposition.

OAKLAND — Hundreds of medical marijuana patients and advocates rallied here Monday in advance of an evening fundraiser by President Obama, calling on him to freeze federal crackdowns on cannabis dispensaries until he clarifies his administration's policies on operations that are following state and local laws.

The rally came two weeks after a federal forfeiture action against the Oakland-based Harborside Health Center, the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary and one that has won acclaim as a model for the industry. In April, federal agents raided several Oakland businesses operated by prominent marijuana activist Richard Lee, forcing his dispensary — which, like Harborside, was permitted, taxed and backed by local officials — to close.

Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder have separately said they would not interfere with dispensaries that are complying with state and local laws. But Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, has nevertheless cracked down on such operations.

I've recently returned to MPP's headquarters in the District of Columbia after attending the Seattle Hempfest in the other Washington. If you didn't already know, Hempfest is the largest marijuana-policy-reform event in the world, not to mention the second-largest event of any kind in Washington state. More than 150,000 people attended this year's event, which was spread out over three days.

Unlike the 20 annual Hempfests that preceded this one, this year's event included a real debate, which was whether marijuana users should vote for Initiative 502 -- the marijuana-legalization initiative that will appear on the November 6 statewide ballot.

If this seems odd to you, it should. This is the first time that Washington voters will have the chance to end marijuana prohibition, and yet some marijuana users -- although thankfully a small minority -- are screaming that voters should defeat the initiative and maintain prohibition, because the initiative isn't perfect enough.

The question for voters is not whether marijuana is good. It is whether prohibition is good. It is whether the people who use marijuana shall be subject to arrest, and whether the people who supply them shall be sent to prison. The question is whether the war on marijuana is worth what it costs.

Initiative 502 says no.

Even California's infamous pot measure, Prop 19, which failed in 2010, petered out of cash with a total haul of about $4.5 million. On the other hand, Washington State is one-seventh the size and has fewer media markets, yet these donations may put I-502 on track for a $5 million or $6 million budget.

Why the big donor support? The latest windfall of cash follows a successful trial ad campaign in August, Holcomb says. Polling research last month found that the August TV commercial—depicting a mom endorsing marijuana legalization even though "I don't like it personally"—was persuasive with an essential female bloc. Holcomb explains, "We specifically wanted to talk to women about marijuana legalization. That there are donors willing to fund a fall campaign speaks to the fact that the ads were successful." She wouldn't divulge details of the polling.

Last week, New Approach Washington received donations, according to Holcomb, from former Progressive Insurance CEO Peter Lewis ($670,000), local philanthropists James and Cody Swift ($300,000), and Washington resident Carrie Rhodes ($30,000). The campaign reserved $688,000 worth of television time for the week running up to the election, Holcomb says, adding "I would love" to run four weeks of ads around the state.

Support among likely voters rose from 47 to 55 percent and opposition dropped from 40 to 38 percent, with the number of undecided voters shrinking. Another poll, commissioned by KING 5, reported nearly identical results: 55 to 37 in favor, with 7 percent undecided.

Much ink has been spilt in describing the precise nature of the soul-searching the GOP is undergoing in the wake of getting totally shellacked last Tuesday. There are a plethora of suggestions — of varying degrees of helpfulness — as to how the Republican party can re-brand and re-orient itself; ranging from capitulating on taxes to deciding that gay marriage isn’t a hill to die on. But there’s one easy ideological maneuver that Republicans could make that would simultaneously burnish their stance as the party of freedom and expand their base while alienating the president from his. It is a move that might also make one swing state a little easier to win in 2016. Congressional Republicans and conservative leaders could get on the weed bandwagon.

Call it the Marijuana domino effect. Less than two weeks after Washington and Colorado voted to legalize and regulate cannabis, lawmakers in five other states say they are considering similar bills. In Latin American, Mexican President Felipe Calderon says Uncle Sam now has lost the “moral authority” to ask other nations to maintain the cannabis prohibition and combat trafficking. What didn’t seem remotely possible a fortnight ago suddenly seems inevitable.

Few would have predicted the pot prohibition could fall almost overnight like the Iron Curtain, nevertheless the two-state triumph for has set off a series of tremors that suggest the people’s will has shifted. America appears to have reached a tipping point in terms of attitudes toward cannabis and, if the weight of public opinion truly has passed the fulcrum, change could be rapid. Legalization campaigns are no longer smoky affairs financed by dime bags peddled by Cheech-and-Chong aficionados and Big Lebowski-Dude wannabes. They’re well-funded, well-organized and cross partisan lines: In swing state Colorado, pot outpolled President Barack Obama.

President Obama may be willing to go with flow. The U.S. federal government so far has refused to denounce — or accept — what has happened, even after the state governors asked this week for clarification. Obama faces 18 states that have legalized medical marijuana with a spectrum of regulatory models that range from supplying anyone with so much as a broken heart, to meting it out to only the seriously debilitated and dying. As a candidate in 2008, and again as president in 2009, Obama promised restraint when it came to enforcing federal laws against med-pot.

His record is questionable — he has been tough on states with liberal access and less aggressive with those maintaining more rigorous regimes. Regardless, many of his donors and advisers urge him to use his second term as a chance to pursue authentic drug-policy reform. He could watch as more and more states vote on legalization, or he could lead. Regardless, the dominoes have begun to topple: and Canada will follow.

The bill introduced Thursday in the lower house of Congress would allow citizens to grow up to six marijuana plants and to buy 1.4 ounces of marijuana every month. It would also allow for the licensing of marijuana clubs with up to 15 members, 90 plants and an annual production limit of nearly 16 pounds.

Public opinion about marijuana has moved sharply over the past few years; about half now support legalization. Tuesday voters in Washington State and Colorado took the leap of approving commercial production and sale for non-medical use, under more or less the same rules that apply to alcohol.

Ideologues on both sides are claim to know with certainty what the results of legalization would be; all good in the view of the legalization advocates, all bad in the view of those who support the current laws.

But those of us who try to study the issue scientifically find ourselves in a world of doubt. How much lower would legal prices be than current illegal prices? If there were heavy taxes, how much evasion would there be? Would buyers in a legal market favor possibly more dangerous high-potency varieties, or would lower-strength products dominate the marijuana market as beer dominates the alcohol market? Would legalization greatly increase problem marijuana use? Use among teenagers? (That might depend on the price.) Would there be an increase in auto accidents due to stoned driving? Would problem drinking decrease – or increase – as result?

All of those questions matter. None of them can be answered by abstract reasoning, or by studying small variations in marijuana policy such as decriminalization of possession for personal use. The only way to find out how legalization would work in practice is to actually try it.

Ideologues on both sides are claim to know with certainty what the results of legalization would be; all good in the view of the legalization advocates, all bad in the view of those who support the current laws.

But those of us who try to study the issue scientifically find ourselves in a world of doubt. How much lower would legal prices be than current illegal prices? If there were heavy taxes, how much evasion would there be? Would buyers in a legal market favor possibly more dangerous high-potency varieties, or would lower-strength products dominate the marijuana market as beer dominates the alcohol market? Would legalization greatly increase problem marijuana use? Use among teenagers? (That might depend on the price.) Would there be an increase in auto accidents due to stoned driving? Would problem drinking decrease – or increase – as result?

All of those questions matter. None of them can be answered by abstract reasoning, or by studying small variations in marijuana policy such as decriminalization of possession for personal use. The only way to find out how legalization would work in practice is to actually try it.

But actually trying it on a national basis carries heavy risks. If it goes badly – if, for example, heavy use and use among teenagers quadrupled – it would be very hard to put the genie back in the bottle. All those new users would become potential customers for an expanded illicit market if the drug were re-prohibited.

So the obvious way to learn something about marijuana legalization would be to try it out one state at a time: relying on what Justice Brandeis called “the laboratories of democracy.”

...

"We've got bigger fish to fry," Obama said of pot users in Colorado and Washington during an exclusive interview with ABC News' Barbara Walters.

"It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal," he said, invoking the same approach taken toward users of medicinal marijuana in 18 states where it's legal.

Recently, a federal Drug War official recently admitted what some growers and activists have been saying for years: if it really is the Mexican drug cartels operating in the forests, there is scant evidence.

The official in question is Tommy Lanier, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Marijuana Initiative. Buried in a Los Angeles Times story that ran over the holidays are Lanier's doubts about the reality of Sinaloas, Zetas, and other narcotrafficos in Mendocino and Humboldt counties.

"Based on our intelligence, which includes thousands of cellphone numbers and wiretaps, we haven't been able to connect anyone to a major cartel," he said.

Lanier said authorities have long mislabeled marijuana grown on public land as "cartel grows" because Mexican nationals are arrested in the majority of cases, and the narrative of fighting drug cartels helps them secure federal funding.

Sporting a mix of flannel, ponytails and suits, dozens of those angling for the job turned out Wednesday for a forum in Tacoma, several of them from out of state. The Liquor Control Board, the agency charged with developing rules for the marijuana industry, reserved a convention center hall for a state bidding expert to take questions about the position and the hiring process. Washington and Colorado this fall became the first states to pass laws legalizing the recreational use of marijuana and setting up systems of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores where adults over 21 can walk in and buy up to an ounce of heavily taxed cannabis.

Both states are working to develop rules for the emerging pot industry. Up in the air is everything from how many growers and stores there should be, to how the marijuana should be tested to ensure people don't get sick.