Fools and Kings Decide

LTE in Burlington Times-News

2012-01-28T12:03:00.002-05:00

ACLU's mission misrepresented in letter

January 27, 2012 11:38 PM

A recent letter (“ACLU once more serving the wrong interests,” Jan. 24) fundamentally misrepresented the American Civil Liberties Union’s ongoing work to ensure that local governments are inclusive of all members of the public whom our elected officials are supposed to serve.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees every American — regardless of who they are — the right to personal religious freedom and a government that does not pick sides in matters of religion. The ACLU proudly defends those rights. If the majority can use the government to advance a particular religion, as the letter’s author would support, our Constitution’s protections of individual religious liberty would be meaningless.

The ACLU of North Carolina’s recent legal victory in Forsyth County, which was affirmed by three separate courts, made clear that governments cannot endorse one particular religion over others by hosting sectarian prayer at public meetings. As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, any prayer at public meetings “should send a signal of welcome rather than exclusion. It should not reject the tenets of other faiths in favor of just one.”

Private citizens have an indisputable right to pray however they want, and the ACLU has fervently defended that right on countless occasions. But our Constitution also requires the government to stay neutral on matters of belief, so that all members of the community, and not just a preferred religious group, feel welcome and part of their government.

For more than 90 years, the ACLU has been proud to defend the civil liberties of all Americans, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, creed, national origin, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation. We will continue to stand up for religious and other minorities any time their rights are being trampled by the government.

MIKE MENO
Raleigh

Mike Meno is communications manager, ACLU of North Carolina.

Chillin' in the back

2012-01-19T10:32:00.001-05:00

(Pictured with coalition allies -- I'm the white dude with glasses peaking out from the back)

From the Raleigh News & Observer:

Marriage ban battle heats up
RALEIGH -- Both sides of the proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage have begun ramping up their campaigns in what is expected to be an expensive and bitter fight from now until the May 8 referendum.

On Wednesday, the Coalition to Protect All N.C. Families - a newly renamed group of more than 80 gay, business, clergy, domestic violence, disability and civil rights advocates - held a news conference with about two dozen representatives to kick off statewide events.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/01/19/1788434/marriage-ban-battle-heats-up.html#storylink=cpy

Charlotte Observer

2011-11-25T12:53:00.003-05:00

"Charlotte Rules Limit Use of Pepper Spray," Nov. 25, 2011

Along with all the delegates and protesters in town for the convention, there will be up to 15,000 representatives of the news media, who could quickly turn any local police misconduct into an international story with a Charlotte dateline.

Also keeping an eye on police treatment of protesters next year will be the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We're going to be watching very closely to make sure the First Amendment rights of protesters are protected," said Mike Meno, spokesman for ACLU in North Carolina.

Quoted in National Journal (print only)

2011-05-24T10:14:00.002-04:00

NATIONAL JOURNAL: This Meeting Did Not Open With a Prayer
By Christopher Snow Hopkins
May 24, 2011

Last Friday morning, 70 godless Americans besieged Capitol Hill. It was Day Two of a three-day summit sponsored by the Secular Coalition for America, which lobbies on behalf of atheists, nontheists, humanists, secular Jews, and other nonbelievers. In all, the petitioners met with 42 lawmakers that morning—13 Republicans and 29 Democrats.

“Many [members of Congress] had never heard of our community before, but nobody turned us away at the door,” Amanda Knief, a lobbyist for SCA, said later on Friday at the Hyatt Regency, where the petitioners had reassembled for a dinner and reception moderated by Sean Faircloth, the group’s executive director.

“We’re one of the largest minorities in the country,” Knief said. “We should be included; we shouldn’t be hidden away. We’re not scary. The point of today was to show them that we’re just average people.”

Knief pointed to the sedate and genial crowd seated before a projector screen, nursing cocktails. “It’s about introducing yourself to someone. Just like 10 years ago, when gay, lesbian, transsexual, and bisexual people decided to come out of the closet—we’re engaged in the same thing now.”

When Faircloth loped to the dais, Knief excused herself to join SCA’s other staff members—fewer than five in all.

Perhaps more than any other minority, racial, or religious group, atheists are underrepresented in Washington. Only one member of Congress, 20-term Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., admits to being an atheist, and even he eschews that label: He describes himself as a “Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being.” Despite this, the community of nonbelievers is estimated to be roughly the size of the black population—13 percent of the American public.

“Secular Americans are a sleeping giant, a huge demographic!” Faircloth roared before the crowd. “Secular Americans have been known for opposing a manger in a town square. Now let us also be known for stopping fundamentalists from denying condoms [to the] poverty-stricken people in Uganda!”

Faircloth was mostly gracious when referring to the coalition’s many bogeymen—who include fundamentalists and the Christian Right—but some jokes were barbed.

“And then you have [Sen. David Vitter, R-La.],” said Faircloth, as he enumerated the opponents to SCA’s political agenda. “He’s the one who will lecture you about your sex life while he’s having sex with prostitutes at the Mayflower Hotel, around the corner from my office. To each his own—I’m libertarian on this sort of thing. But it was a little much for me.”

As they cheered Faircloth’s assault on Vitter, it was evident that some in the crowd felt marginalized—if not outright persecuted—because of beliefs that were de rigueur among Enlightenment thinkers, some of whom played a part in the nation’s founding. In “Rise of the Godless,” Paul Starobin’s cover story in the March 7, 2009, issue of National Journal, the author quotes Thomas Paine, who said, “The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race, have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.”

“There shouldn’t be a stigma,” declared Mike Meno, the coalition’s communications manager. “If somebody runs for office as a Catholic or as a Jew, [voters] accept you for that and say, ‘Let’s talk about the issues.’ Not so for nontheists.”

Indeed, according to a 2007 Gallup Poll, only 45 percent of Americans said they would vote for an atheist running for president even if that person were “generally well qualified” and had been nominated by the respondent’s political party.

“You see a lot of people tonight wearing a scarlet A,” he added. The purpose of declaring your atheism in this way, Meno said, is “to let people know we’re here, we exist, and you probably know atheists.” (Proceeds from the sale of the scarlet lapel pins go toward supporting a foundation run by Richard Dawkins, a former professor at Oxford University and perhaps the world’s foremost living atheist; Dawkins sits on SCA’s advisory board, along with writers Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens.)

Toward the end of the evening, as the crowd dispersed, Todd Stiefel lingered. The philanthropist and self-described “free-thought activist” donated $500,000 to SCA last year. He recalled the moment a few years ago when he decided to devote his energy and resources to the fledgling secularist movement.

“I was at a wedding dinner making small talk,” Stiefel said. “The gentleman next to me started probing about [religious matters], and when he learned about my lack of religion, he started getting really concerned. He said, ‘You said you have children, right? How are you going to raise them? How can you possibly teach them morals when you believe in nothing?’ ”

The widespread notion that atheists are nihilists—rather than intuitive moralists—prevents many atheists from acknowledging their views in public. Atheists are neglected not just in government but also “in the day-to-day opinion of this country,” Stiefel said. “We’re not a group that’s normally asked, we’re not usually part of the discussion. And yet the Secular Coalition for America is really changing that—we have a voice in Washington now.”

The Art Department LIVE in Charlotte (VIDEO)

2011-01-24T12:15:00.002-05:00

Quoted on KHAS-TV in Nebraska

2011-01-16T12:18:00.000-05:00

The Issue of Marijuana Regulation

By Rachel Lake

In the past week, Nebraska State Patrol seized about 125 pounds of marijuana on I80 during two separate traffic stops near Lincoln.
Law enforcement consider this a small win in the war on drugs.
But others would call it a waste of resources. Marijuana use is up among teens in the tri–city area, while alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking is down. So is regulation the way to go? We talk to both sides of the debate.
If there's one thing that hasn't changed in pop culture over the years, it's the attitude toward marijuana. "The general trend in belief is that marijuana is perhaps safer than perhaps it truly is," said Lieutenant Dennis Leonard with Nebraska State Patrol. Adding to that belief says Lieutenant Dennis Leonard is the push for marijuana regulation.
15 states including Colorado allow marijuana use for medicinal purposes–which Lieutenant Leonard questions.
"But the thing we find in almost all those cases is that the people who possess the marijuana and the script are not people suffering from any debilitating injury, these are people in their 20's or 30's that are smoking marijuana for the intoxicating affect of it not for the medicinal affect," said Lt. Leonard.
"My response to the patrolman would be so what? If somebody is an adult if they're of legal age if they're a responsible adult and they're not harming anyone else why should they be punished for using marijuana?" said Mike Meno with the Marijuana Policy Project out of Washington DC.
The Marijuana Policy Project supports the regulation of marijuana.
Members say current laws aren't working to keep kids off pot anyway and they may have a point. A recent study by the University of Michigan shows that more than 6% of high school seniors smoke pot on a daily basis. That's up from a little over two percent ten years ago.
"Keeping marijuana illegal is not keeping it away from our young people in fact we argue that it's making it more available because drug dealers don't check ids," said Meno.
In the 1920's, the alcohol prohibition fueled bootlegger activity.
Speakeasies cropped up everywhere, giving people a place to have a good time. And while times are different, Meno says the same thing is essentially happening with marijuana. "What they do is they allow criminal enterprises to make billions of dollars off this industry much like alcohol regulators allowed bootleggers to thrive in the last century," Meno said.
Lieutenant Leonard says he doesn't know if regulation would take drug dealers off the streets. But worries about what would happen on the roads. "The more prevalent it is the more easy it is to acquire the more people that will be doing things while intoxicated the most dangerous of which I think in this society is driving," said Lt. Leonard.
The Marijuana Policy Project reports that 800,000 Americans are arrested each year for marijuana possession.
That accounts for half of drug arrests in the US each year. In Nebraska, it's illegal to use or possess marijuana. This year, Senator Charlie Janssen of Fremont introduced a bill that would've allowed the state to test recipients of cash assistance for marijuana. But the bill failed.

Quoted in New Bedford Standard Times

2010-12-17T11:04:00.001-05:00

Synthetic marijuana cause for growing concern in New Bedford

By Brian Fraga

bfraga@s-t.com

December 17, 2010 12:00 AM

NEW BEDFORD — A synthetic marijuana that is legally sold as an herbal incense at convenience stores is drawing fire from health professionals and public officials concerned that more teens are becoming violently ill after smoking the substances.

The various mixtures of herbs, plants and chemical compounds — popularly known as K2, K4, or K9 and sold in foil packets or vials — are about to be banned for one year while federal regulators determine whether the products should be classified as controlled substances.

While that temporary ban will not take effect until Christmas, Ward 4 City Councilor Bruce Duarte has proposed an ordinance that would outright prohibit K2 and similar products in New Bedford.

"I want to send a message out because there are people not aware of this. This stuff is no good," said Duarte, who presented a motion at Thursday night's City Council meeting calling on state and federal lawmakers to pass legislation banning the compounds.

He also proposed the city establish regulations that would ban the sale or possession of such substances in New Bedford. His proposal passed unanimously and now the city's Committee on Ordinances will consider establishing such a ban.

"It's upsetting that this council has to come up with a ban," Councilor Steven Martins said. "These substances should have never made the shelves to begin with."

Duarte also suggested the City Council write to the city's Statehouse and Capitol Hill delegations and surrounding towns' boards of selectmen encouraging them to also ban sales of K2, which contains synthetic cannabinoids, chemicals that imitate the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana.

"This stuff is as real as it gets and it needs to be banned," said Duarte at the meeting, holding up a small vial of K4 he had purchased at a local shop.

The issue arose Wednesday during Mayor Scott W. Lang's weekly meeting with reporters. Lang said he supported Duarte's proposal and added that he hoped the City Council would take "swift action."

"It's the kind of thing we don't want our kids doing at all," Lang said. "We want to keep them away from substances that alter their mind, behavior, slow down their reflexes. It's not an appropriate thing."

K2 — and other brands such as Demon, Genie and Spice — have already been banned in 13 states following widespread reports of teenagers and young adults becoming violently ill after smoking the material.

"Kids are able to get it; that's our main concern," Councilor David Alves said.

Some of the most common reported symptoms include elevated heart rates, increased blood pressure, disorientation, anxiety, hallucinations and vomiting.

Dr. Sam Shen, associate director of emergency services for St. Luke's Hospital, said it was difficult to tell whether patients recently admitted with those symptoms had smoked synthetic marijuana because it is undetectable in toxicology screens.

Shen said smoking synthetic pot can carry higher health risks because its chemical concentrations are usually more potent than natural marijuana.

"Given that these substances, which are unregulated, are sometimes marketed as being herbal and sold over the Internet as such, it seems there is a false sense of security among people who buy these products," Shen said.

"People may think it is past all the various legal regulations when, in fact, these products can vary in their potency."

The incenses are available online and in convenience stores and tobacco shops. They usually carry a "not for consumption" disclaimer. Customers must be over 18 to legally purchase the products, which sell for $15 to $25.

Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C, said banning fake marijuana would prove as ineffective as the ban on the real thing.

"The prevalence of these substances is simply another unintended consequence of the government's irrational prohibition on natural, whole-plant marijuana, which comes with none of the side effects attributed to these chemical knock-offs," Meno said.

K2 was being sold Thursday in multiple flavors — orange, pineapple and blueberry — at the BP gas station located at the corner of Route 18 and Potomska Street. It was stocked next to another herbal incense brand called "Black Magic Smoke."

The K2 packet label advertises itself as an "exotic herbal smoking blend" that contains "a combination of rare plants, herbal extracts and botanical concentrates."

At Petromart on Coggeshall Street, store manager Michael Khalife sold Demon, which lists its active ingredients.

"I stepped away from K2 because it got a lot of bad publicity. I didn't want to mess with it," said Khalife, who on Christmas will replace the current Demon product with a version that lacks five chemicals that will be banned for one year by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Khalife said demand for Demon has been steady since he began selling it two months ago.

"It's supposed to be an aroma that fills up the room and makes you feel better. You're not supposed to smoke it," he said. "But with some people, you don't know."

Quoted in Seattle AP/Bloomberg/Business Week

2010-12-15T16:16:00.000-05:00

Washington state tries to collect pot sales tax

Dec 15, 2010 8:32 AM ET

By The Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — The Washington Department of Revenue has launched a statewide effort to collect sales tax from medical marijuana dispensaries — even as some prosecutors and the Health Department maintain such dispensaries are illegal.

Spokesman Mike Gowrylow said Tuesday the Revenue Department mailed letters to 90 dispensaries and related organizations, insisting that medical marijuana is not exempt from state sales tax and that dispensaries must collect that money and turn it over to the state.

The letters, sent Friday, said dispensaries must also pay the state business and occupation tax.

"We were contacted by a medical marijuana dispensary who was collecting sales tax and said many competitors weren't," Gowrylow said. "We went on the Web and tried to come up with all the names and addresses of medical marijuana dispensaries to inform them they're required to charge sales tax."

Medical marijuana activists were upset by the news, first reported by The Associated Press.

"My first reaction was, did they legalize it?" said Laura Healy, who helps run the Green Hope Patient Network in Shoreline. "How do you tax something that we're technically not allowed to sell? You can't have it both ways."

Voters approved medical marijuana in Washington in 1998, but the law does not allow for marijuana sales. Instead, patients must grow marijuana themselves or designate a caregiver to grow it for them.

Because growing marijuana can be expensive and difficult, many patients have formed collectives to grow pot together, contributing dues to help cover costs. In the Seattle area, some collectives have dispensaries that serve thousands of members.

The law is silent on such collectives, and prosecutors around the state have taken differing views on whether they're permissible. The state Health Department maintains they're not.

Gowrylow said Tuesday the Revenue Department is "not involved in determining whether selling medical marijuana is illegal."

"Our job is to administer state tax codes," he said. "If you're selling medical marijuana, it's a retail sale."

The department's letter said medical marijuana isn't exempt from the sales tax — as prescription medications are — because it can't be prescribed under state and federal law. Washington's law instead requires an "authorization" from a medical professional.

But medical marijuana advocates say such authorizations are functionally equivalent to prescriptions and should therefore be exempt from the tax.

"My (multiple sclerosis) patients, myself and my AIDS patients, we don't have to pay sales tax on any of our other medications," said Dale Rogers, director of The Compassion Program, a nonprofit patient collective in Seattle. "The fiscal responsibility is falling on the most poor and the sickest, and that is not fair."

Seattle medical marijuana attorney Douglas Hiatt noted that authorities in some counties continue to raid dispensaries and prosecute their operators, while those in some other counties — including King County, the state's largest — have allowed them to stay in business.

Requiring dispensaries to register with the state and pay sales tax could expose those involved to criminal prosecution, in violation of their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, Hiatt said.

Hiatt also said members of medical marijuana collectives volunteer or pay donations to offset costs. Such donations aren't sales and shouldn't be taxed, he said.

Washington isn't the only state to address the marijuana taxation issue. Colorado and some California cities tax medical marijuana sold from dispensaries, said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. Maine and Washington, D.C., plan to collect such taxes once their dispensary laws are up and running.

Quoted in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

2010-12-15T16:14:00.000-05:00

Survey: Smoking teens pick marijuana over tobacco

By Amy Crawford
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Teenage marijuana use has risen for the third year in a row, according to results of a nationwide survey released Tuesday.

For the first time in the annual survey, titled "Monitoring the Future," more high schoolers reported smoking marijuana than tobacco — a twist that points to changing attitudes toward the country's most popular illegal drug.

"The information is particularly disturbing regarding youth use, particularly among eighth-graders," U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said during a news conference in Washington to announce the survey results.

Among eighth-graders, more than 17 percent reported that they had used marijuana. A third of 10th-graders and 44 percent of high school seniors said they had used the drug.

The survey, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and conducted by the University of Michigan among more than 46,000 students nationwide, has found upticks of one or more percentage points for the past three years after a downward trend beginning in the mid-1990s. Most other illegal drug use has held steady, near record lows.

"I'm not really surprised," said Jerry Roman, principal for ninth- and 12th-graders at Bethel Park High School. "We hear, from talking to our students, just from the pulse of the school, that marijuana use may be up."

Buzz Yakshe, resource officer for the Franklin Regional School District, said only one student there has been arrested for marijuana this year. While underage drinking is still his biggest concern, he said marijuana poses its own challenges for law enforcement.

"Marijuana is a lot easier to get," Yakshe said. "If you're going to get alcohol, an adult has to buy it. Marijuana — these kids know the dealers. It's a lot easier to conceal."

Nicole Kurash, clinical manager of youth programs at Gateway Rehabilitation Center, which treats up to 500 teens across Southwest Pennsylvania each year, said she had noticed changing attitudes toward marijuana, especially among parents.

"I would definitely say the attitude is much more relaxed than a decade ago," she said. "We see a number of kids whose parents smoke marijuana. We see parents who say, 'I don't mind if they smoke it, but I don't want them to do anything else.' "

While teens seem well aware that tobacco causes cancer, Kurash said, they appear not to realize that marijuana use also has been linked to cancer.

"We hear kids saying, 'It's natural. It comes from the ground. It can't be bad,' " she said.

The attitude shift that Kurash noticed was reflected in the survey, which showed a decrease in teens who saw marijuana as carrying "great risk" or who disapproved of using it regularly.

Patrick Nightingale, a criminal defense attorney and director of Pittsburgh's chapter of The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, attributed the shift to a backlash against the United States' decades-long war on drugs.

"I think that more and more people who may once have been anti-cannabis are saying, 'Wait a minute. What benefit are we actually getting from spending these tremendous amounts of money?' " said Nightingale, who supports the legalization and regulation of marijuana.

Noting that alcohol is legal and widely advertised despite its psychoactive properties, he said, "there has never been a fight on (Pittsburgh's) South Side as a result of someone smoking too much pot."

Nightingale is not the only advocate to draw parallels between marijuana and alcohol.

Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, said the results of the teen survey show that marijuana should be legalized.

"We think that marijuana should be regulated like alcohol," he said. Right now, Meno explained, "marijuana is sold in an illicit market by drug dealers who are not required to check ID."

More and more Americans agree with him. An October Gallup Poll showed support for legalization of marijuana at 46 percent, an all-time high. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia recently passed medical marijuana laws. While some, including the nation's drug czar, have said this sends the wrong message to teens, a Marijuana Policy Project study found that marijuana use among teens decreased in each state after the drug was legalized.

Still, the legalization of marijuana remains controversial, especially among those who work with substance-abusing teens.

"I think marijuana is a much more harmful drug than people give it credit for," said Russell Carlino, administrator of juvenile probation in Allegheny County. "We see performance in school go down. We see recidivism, a whole host of issues. It's a harmful product."

Quoted in Washington Times

2010-12-14T16:10:00.000-05:00

Pot survey fires up debate over messages to youths

By Cheryl Wetzstein

The Washington Times

8:22 p.m., Tuesday, December 14, 2010

In 2010, American teens' past-month use of marijuana rose high enough to eclipse their use of cigarettes, according to a national report on teen substance abuse — a finding that the White House and public-health officials blamed in part on drug-legalization efforts.

The growing popularity of marijuana — possibly fueled by the idea that "marijuana is medicine" — alarms national leaders who point to the drug's side effects and its role as a "gateway drug."

Not only does marijuana use adversely affect learning, judgment and motor skills in developing minds, "but research tells us that about one in six people who start using it as adolescents become addicted," said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

NIDA funds the Monitoring the Future survey, which was released Tuesday.

"No young person in today's competitive world is going to be helped by using marijuana" or other illicit drugs, said R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"Mixed messages about drug legalization, particularly marijuana, may be to blame" for increases in drug use, the White House's "drug czar" said.

According to the survey, which is based on interviews with more than 46,000 students, 21.4 percent of 12th-graders, 16.7 percent of 10th-graders and 8.0 percent of eighth-graders said they had used marijuana or hashish in the previous 30 days. These figures surpass past-month cigarette use, which was 19.2 percent of 12th-graders, 13.6 percent of 10th-graders and 7.1 percent of eighth-graders.

Anti-smoking campaigns, reduction of cigarette advertising to youths and rising cigarette prices helped reduce youthful use of smoking, said Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator of Monitoring the Future.

However, the messages about marijuana have been anything but clear.

In November, California came close to legalizing marijuana for adults when more than 46 percent of the electorate voted in favor of Proposition 19. Backers of the measure were elated with their near-success and have promised to try again in 2012.

Numerous cities and states, meanwhile, have legalized the medical uses of marijuana, and the pro-legalization position, whether for medical use or for any purpose, is an increasingly mainstream part of political discourse.

In the meantime, marijuana use increased in 2010 over 2009 by every yardstick — daily, in the past 30 days, in the past year or ever — and at all three measured grade levels.

The news about rising youth use of marijuana reinforces the idea that it's time for a national conversation about marijuana legalization, said Mike Meno, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project.

"Nobody wants young people using marijuana; that's a common goal," he said.

Although federal policy makes reducing youth use of marijuana a priority, Tuesday's numbers and those in previous years show that the policy "failed absolutely" to do that, Mr. Meno said.

If marijuana were legal, it could be taxed and regulated to bar its sale to youths, as happens with alcohol and tobacco, he added. "Drug dealers don't check ID."

The Obama administration is aggressively addressing the threat of drug use and needs parents to talk with their children about the risks and harms of illegal drug use, Mr. Kerlikowske said.

An official at NIDA added that her agency is offering a wealth of Web-based materials for teens, including the "Sara Bellum" blog about drugs and "chat sessions" with scientists who answer teens' questions about drugs.

Marijuana has been the most widely used illicit drug in the 35-year history of the Monitoring the Future survey, though it remains dwarfed by the use of alcohol. Tobacco is still more popular among teens by some of the survey's numerous yardsticks.

Annual marijuana use reached its historical peak among 12th-graders in 1979, when 51 percent of high school seniors said they had smoked pot at least once within the previous year. It bottomed out in 1992, with 21.9 percent annual use, and has been in the 30s for more than 15 years. Unlike marijuana, the use of alcohol and tobacco have declined nearly continuously since the 1990s.

Because marijuana is more prevalent than any other illicit drug, trends in its use tend to drive the index of any illicit drug use, the survey said.

Other highlights of the report:

• Compared with 2009, rates fell regarding teen abuse of the prescription drug Vicodin, cocaine, binge drinking and use of "flavored alcoholic beverages."

• The usage rate of the "club drug" Ecstasy rose in all three grades. This suggests that the dangerous drug is experiencing a resurgence, especially among younger teens.

• Rates of many illicit drugs, such as methamphetamine, crack cocaine and heroin stayed at low levels. Mr. Johnston said the use of inhalants has not risen as feared, and the abuse of cough and cold medicines also has stalled.

Thus the most worrisome aspects of the 2010 data were the upticks in marijuana use and weakening attitudes about the harmfulness or disapproval of pot.

"We should examine the extent to which the debate over medical marijuana and marijuana for adults is affecting teens' perceptions of risk," Dr. Volkow said. Teens need to know that "marijuana use can harm their short-term performance, as well as their long-term potential."

Bmore CP Ranks Art Dept No. 9 for the Year!

2010-12-13T14:58:00.001-05:00

The Year in Local Music

9The Art Department Paperwork/Birdwork (Gen Pop)

The Art Department, an oddball Jonathan Ehrens lo-fi project among many that came to life as a gigging live trio, released its second album on vinyl at 45 RPM. That makes sense given that the Art Department often feels like a sped-up and compressed version of a more normal band you might hear at 33 1/3. The Paperwork side, recorded in Georgia, expands that sound with clarinet, tuba, and zither, while the Birdwork side, recorded at Beat Babies studio in Maryland, finds the core trio as tight and weird as ever. (AS)

Quoted in Arizona Republic

2010-12-01T14:46:00.003-05:00

Arizona medical-marijuana law likely to test workplace regulations

by Jahna Berry - Dec. 1, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Zero tolerance of drug use is the workplace norm in Arizona, but the medical-marijuana law that takes effect next year will cloud what had been a clear-cut issue for workers and employers.

If a supervisor suspects that using marijuana for medical reasons affects the quality of an employee's work, how should the supervisor respond?

If employees who were prescribed medical marijuana are injured in an accident on the job, are they eligible for workers' compensation?

What happens if a legal user of marijuana fails a company's drug test when applying for a job?

The new law bars employers from discriminating against medical-marijuana users; but, employment attorneys say, it does allow employers to terminate or take action against employees who use medical marijuana on the job or whose work is impaired by the drug.

The issue is likely to be tested in Arizona's workplaces. The law specifies that medical marijuana is for grave illnesses - such as cancer, HIV and glaucoma - but it's increasingly common for employees with serious illnesses to continue to work long after their diagnosis.

Because there is no standard for being under the influence of marijuana, defining what it means to be impaired by the drug on the job is more difficult. In general, employment law allows termination for poor work performance.

Issues not directly related to job performance also are expected to crop up for employers. Because a medical-marijuana user could fail a drug test even if he or she is not under the influence, patients who use the drug legally could still run afoul of their employers' drug-testing policies.

The result is widespread uncertainty among employers. In the months before the program launches, companies and their attorneys will be scrambling to review their drug-testing policies and scrutinize employee rules to comply with the new law.

Many states with existing medical-marijuana laws are still struggling with many of the same issues. Many may have to be resolved in court.

However, because states have separate statutes and judicial systems, decisions in one state may not carry weight in another.

Workplace issues have arisen frequently, said Mike Meno, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. His organization backed the successful November ballot initiative that made medical-marijuana use legal in Arizona.

Although there are 15 states that allow patients to use marijuana for medical purposes, Arizona is one of a handful of states that spell out protections for employees who use medical marijuana.

"States like Maine, Rhode Island and Michigan have employee protections in their laws, but it might be fair to say that Arizona is more explicit in how it's spelled out employee protections," Meno said.

Employer worries

State officials have 120 days from Nov. 29, when election results were made official, to set up a system to oversee buyers and sellers of medical marijuana.

While regulations are still being drafted, Arizona's statute explicitly prohibits employers from discriminating against workers who are medical-marijuana cardholders. That group includes people who lawfully use medical marijuana, people who work or volunteer in dispensaries, and designated caregivers who assist patients who use medical marijuana.

The discrimination rule also has an exception. Because marijuana is illegal under federal law, this gives companies with federal contracts an "out," allowing them to avoid employing medical-marijuana users so they don't risk losing contracts or funding.

Doug Stegemoller, president of a Phoenix construction company, worries how the new law will impact worker safety.

"And if one (employee) would have a medical-marijuana prescription but is still able to work in the workforce, how would that affect the safety of our employees and the quality of our work?" said Stegemoller, president of E&K of Phoenix Inc.

Because of safety concerns, E&K requires that job candidates take drug tests. The company also uses random drug testing, and workers are tested for drugs after workplace accidents. Workers disclose what kind of prescriptions they use, he added.

Although the law would still allow Stegemoller to fire an employee for impaired performance, the drug testing raises new questions. Someone who legally used medical marijuana while away from work might fail a test after an accident, and the company would have a hard time knowing if the drug use was a factor.

Stegemoller said he "sentimentally" voted for the medical-marijuana law but was unaware that some caregivers may be eligible to get medical-marijuana cards. Now, he wonders how that will impact his company's drug policy.

"Without question, we could have one of our employees taking care of their parents with a grave illness, who also have a card," he said.

Lawyers' advice

The state expects a fully functioning medical-marijuana program by late summer.

In the meantime, companies should consult with a lawyer, review their drug-testing policies and scrutinize their employee rules, said John Lomax Jr., an attorney at Phoenix law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP who specializes in workplace issues.

Companies should consider revising internal policies to include information about the state's new medical-marijuana law, Lomax added.

Since marijuana can stay in people's systems weeks after they use it, companies must be prepared to deal with workers who test positive for the drug, said John Kerkorian, a lawyer at Ballard Spahr LLP who advises employers.

And although a company may take action if a medical-marijuana user is under the influence while working, impairment may be difficult to prove, Kerkorian said.

Unlike with alcohol, there isn't an accepted standard for marijuana intoxication, such as a blood-alcohol level, he added.

"That is going to be the rub," the lawyer said. "A positive (drug) test doesn't mean that someone is impaired."

Ultimately, many of these issues will end up in the courts, legal experts say.

Quoted in Michigan Messenger

2010-11-17T14:04:00.000-05:00

MSU to arrest medical marijuana patients on campus

By Todd A. Heywood | 11.17.10 | 8:24 am

EAST LANSING — A policy which prevents registered medical marijuana patients from using or possessing their medicine while at Michigan State University is coming under fire.

In a web briefing called “Frequently Asked Questions” on the MSU website, the policy is outlined:

3. Does the Act change University policy regarding drug use or possession on campus?

No, University policies have not changed. Students and employees may not use or possess marihuana on campus. This is true whether the marihuana is smoked or ingested through other means. Michigan State University is subject to the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 and the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendment of 1989. Consistent with those laws, the MSU Drug and Alcohol Policy prohibits the unlawful manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, or use of controlled substances, illicit drugs, and alcohol on any property governed by the Board of Trustees and at any site where work is performed by individuals on behalf of the University. The Alcohol and Controlled Substances Policy also applies to employees performing safety-sensitive functions and whose position responsibilities require they obtain a commercial driver’s license.

Employees and students who violate University policy prohibiting the use or possession of illegal drugs on campus are subject to disciplinary action through the appropriate disciplinary process.

The website was updated on Sept. 23, 2010 according to the site.

The problem with the policy, advocates say, is that it violates Michigan’s medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 2008. That law specifically prohibits anyone from denying the same rights and privileges as any other citizen based on the fact that one is a registered medical marijuana user.

“MSU is subject to the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 and the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendment of 1989. In addition, the MSU Drug and Alcohol Policy prohibits the unlawful manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, or use of controlled substances, illicit drugs and alcohol on property governed by the Board of Trustees and at any site where university work is performed,” said Kent Cassella, spokesman for the University. “Employees and students who violate university policy prohibiting the use or possession of illegal drugs on campus are subject to disciplinary action.”

Mike Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington D.C., disagrees with how Cassella and the university are reading the laws.

“The Obama administration has been very clear in its policy of respecting state medical marijuana laws, so there is no reason to believe MSU would be reprimanded simply for following state law,” says Meno. “More to the point, the federal government has almost no interest in charging a college student who is legally allowed to use medical marijuana. Furthermore, a state court in Michigan would be unable to charge someone for violating federal marijuana laws. So the only people interested in arresting and charging public university students who legally use medical marijuana are MSU officials, judging by this statement.”

Cassella says that the university has developed policies for those registered medical marijuana patients who attend MSU. Under those policies, the requirement that freshman live on campus can be waived. He also said as part of the “certain accommodations” the university would make of patients it would allow patients “to end their housing contract and move off campus without penalty.”

“Anyone who is on MSU’s campus and is suspected of committing a crime or violating university policy is subject to disciplinary action,” Cassella said when asked if the university would seek prosecution of students or faculty who had possession of marijuana, as allowed by the act.

“For qualified patients under Michigan’s law, marijuana is a legal medicine, just like any other,” says Meno, from the Marijuana Policy Project. “It would be contemptible for the university to arrest students simply for possessing a potentially life-saving medicine on school grounds. MSU officials have no more reason to discriminate against a student who legally possesses marijuana than they do a student who has a legal prescription for Adderall or anti-depressants.”

Contemptible or not, officials at the Michigan Department of Civil Rights say there may not be a violation of civil rights in a case where the university decides to pursue a student who is a registered patient.

“That is not an area we have a commission statement on,” said spokesman Harold Core.

Core says the cases the department has not had any complaints about housing issues, but it has had several dealing with employment scenarios. He said in that case, the department is reviewing cases in relation to laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability and requiring employers to make ‘reasonable accommodations.’

Just such a case is playing out in federal court in West Michigan. There, a Battle Creek resident who was employed by Walmart is suing the company for firing him for testing positive for marijuana in a test following an at work accident. The company has a zero tolerance policy for drugs. The plaintiff, Joseph Casias, has a terminal brain tumor and the marijuana was prescribed by his physician to help alleviate the pain of the cancer.

But the issue has not made its way into state policy making circles fully, says Core.

“When you have a new law, something like this, you have a period of uncertainties,” says Core.

The legal issues are not in the gray zone for Meno.

“This policy is an affront to the dignity of students or employees who use marijuana legally to ease chronic and often painful conditions,” says Meno. “It is cruel, unjust, unnecessary, and — under Michigan law — illegal.”

(mis)Quoted in Boston Herald

2010-11-15T14:50:00.000-05:00

New pot law blamed as violence escalates

By Laurel J. Sweet and O’Ryan Johnson | Monday, November 15,

Since recreational marijuana use was decriminalized in Massachusetts last year, pot-related trafficking and violence have escalated across the state, frustrated law enforcement officials tell the Herald.

Smoking weed is not a victimless crime, they say.

“We knew it was going to be a nightmare for public safety and law enforcement. An ounce of marijuana can make a thousand joints,” Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said. “Question 2 perpetuated a feeling that marijuana is somehow safer than other drugs. It’s another mind-altering substance. What are we doing in this country? Can’t anyone get through the day without a drink or a drug?”

In November 2008, by nearly 2 to 1, Bay Staters voted to snuff out the threat of jail time for possession of an ounce or less of cannabis in favor of a $100 civil fine, proceeds from which are intended to puff up city and town coffers. The law, however, provides no enforcement mechanism for police to collect the money. Stiffer penalties for buying or selling the drug, or possessing more than an ounce, remain in place.

“Marijuana trafficking is no different from the wholesale distribution of any illicit substance. It’s accompanied by guns and violence in the short term and it floods communities with illegal drugs in the long term. It threatens public safety and public health,” said Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley. He said his open trafficking cases — dealing in 50 pounds of pot or more — have hit a historic high since the passage of Question 2 by doubling from roughly two prosecutions at any one time to four.

Several recent high-profile killings have been linked by law enforcement to pot, including:

• The Sept. 30 fatal shooting of Adam Coveney, 29, of Waltham. Four men, including a Newton North High School senior, have been charged in connection with the alleged dealer robbery and murder.

• The Sept. 28 massacre of four people in Mattapan — among them, a 21-year-old woman and her 2-year-old son — allegedly in a pot-dealing turf dispute.

• The May 2009 fatal shooting of Justin Cosby, 21, inside a Harvard University dorm, allegedly in a bid to rob him of pot and cash.

• The June 2009 murder of Tyriffe Lewis, 17, in Callahan State Park in Framingham, where prosecutors say he was lured by two men seeking revenge in a fight over marijuana.

In Boston, where one of the most shocking mass killings in recent city history was pot-related, police Commissioner Edward Davis blames drugs in general for surging violence — 65 murders compared to 44 last year at this time. Of Question 2, he said, “I can tell you I’m concerned. I wish we had gone another way in Massachusetts.”

But Mike Meno of the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project, which helped push Question 2, faults partial decriminalization for the violence: “If they’re worried about the criminal element, the answer is to end the criminalization of marijuana and regulate it like alcohol. Marijuana is not going away. Anyone who believes that is naive. It’s used by millions of Americans.”

Leone said he fears decriminalization has created a booming “cottage industry” for dope dealers to target youths no longer fearing the stigma of arrest or how getting high could affect their already dicey driving. Leone’s combined distribution and trafficking caseload rose from 445 in 2008 to 464 in 2009. This year’s caseload stood at 422 as of last week, on track to match or exceed last year.

Leone, who is handling the Framingham, Waltham and Cambridge murder cases, said, “What we’re seeing now is an unfortunate and totally predictable outcome. It’s a cash-and-carry business.” With more small-time dealers operating, he said, turf encroachment is inevitable. “That tends to make drug dealers angry.”

In Essex County, District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said his marijuana trafficking case load jumped from three in 2007 and one in 2008 to eight in 2009.

“It’s a dangerous business,” Blodgett said. “We’ve had arrests of people who’ve never been involved in trafficking before but got involved in the game. And whenever that happens, there’s going to be violence.”

Wellesley Deputy Police Chief William Brooks III, speaking on behalf of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, said, “The whole thing is a mess. The perception out there among a lot of people is it’s OK to do it now, so there’s an uptick in the number of people wanting to do it. . . . Most of the drug-related violence you see now — the shootings, the murders — is about weed.”

Quoted in AP/Boston Globe

2010-11-06T14:14:00.000-04:00

Mass. voters back loosening of marijuana laws

By Steve LeBlanc Associated Press / November 6, 2010

BOSTON—Voters in more than a dozen state legislative districts backed dramatic expansions to legal access to marijuana in Tuesday's elections, and advocates plan to use the results to press lawmakers to loosen restrictions on the drug.

Advocates placed 18 advisory questions on Tuesday's ballot to get a sense whether voters would support another overhaul of marijuana laws.

Nine of the questions supported the use of marijuana for medical reasons while another nine backed legalizing the drug outright, allowing the state to regulate and tax it.

Voters responded to the questions with a resounding "yes." Support ranged from 54 percent in some districts to up to 70 percent in others, according to an Associated Press review of campaign returns.

In the largest district, the 1st Middlesex and Norfolk senate district encompassing Newton, Brookline and parts of Wellesley, 63 percent of voters backed full legalization of the drug. The question there asked: "Shall the state senator from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation that would allow the state to regulate the taxation, cultivation and sale of marijuana to adults?"

An aide to that lawmaker, state Sen. Cynthia Creem, D-Newton, said she could not be reached for comment Friday.

Other cities and towns that backed full legalization included: Salem, Swampscott, Marblehead, Hudson, Maynard, Stow, Dover, Needham, Falmouth, Nantucket, Deerfield, Amherst, Lincoln, Sudbury and Wayland.

Supporters of the questions say voters are ahead of lawmakers in their growing acceptance of marijuana.

"This shows lawmakers that if they want to pursue this through the legislative process rather than with a ballot initiative, there is popular support," said Mike Meno of the Washington DC-based Marijuana Policy Project.

That group supported a 2008 ballot initiative overwhelming backed by Massachusetts voters which decriminalized the possession of an ounce of less of the drug. The law instituted a $100 civil fine instead. Meno said his group is pushing bills in the Massachusetts Legislature that would allow the medical use of marijuana under a doctor's supervision.

Other advocates, including Steven Epstein of Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, have said the goal of the advisory questions was to see if voters are ready to make marijuana a legal product that can be purchased and taxed, like alcohol.

It's unclear how soon a question about marijuana restrictions could get on a statewide ballot.

State law prohibits advocates from placing a question on the ballot for two election cycles if it is "substantially the same petition" as an earlier petition. If a question proposing full legalization or expanded medical marijuana use is deemed substantially the same as the question decriminalizing marijuana, then the earliest a question could make the ballot is 2014. If not, a question could be placed on the 2012 ballot.

In California, a high-profile ballot question that would have allowed possession of marijuana for personal use was defeated Tuesday, 54 to 46 percent.

Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone opposes loosening the law. He said the marijuana available today is far more potent than what was sold decades ago. He also said users are more likely to be involved in car crashes than nonusers.

"With young people using and abusing alcohol and other drugs at troubling rates, to add another element to this already dangerous equation would be extremely detrimental, irresponsible, and hazardous to our community as a whole," Leone said in a statement.

Leone said he's keeping open mind on the use of marijuana for medical purposes, provided the benefits can't be obtained any other way.

Advocates also placed advisory questions on ballots before seeking to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in 2008. The effects of the resulting law have been mixed.

Although the law set a civil fine of $100 for those caught with an ounce or less of marijuana, some Massachusetts towns have given up enforcing it, saying it's written with too many loopholes to be effective.

Quoted in Christian Science Monitor

2010-11-01T14:38:00.000-04:00

Tea Party Tally

Marijuana legalization: why tea party might support Prop. 19

Conventional wisdom says tea party conservatives would vote against marijuana legalization in California. Yet Prop. 19 could test how serious tea partyers are about states' rights.

Ronald Reagan didn't start the war on drugs, but he made it a mainstay of his presidency. So it would make sense for tea party members who are inspired by Mr. Reagan to oppose Proposition 19 in California, which would legalize marijuana possession.

But conventional wisdom and current small-government electoral fervor may meet in a strange (and potentially smoky) place on Election Day.

Instead of opposing Prop. 19, parts of the tea party – including some of its stalwarts like Tom Tancredo in Colorado and Rand Paul in Kentucky – have hailed drug legalization as an ideological linchpin in the fight between progressivism (a broader role for government) and the ideals of states' rights (get the government out of living rooms).

Whether or not tea party conservatives and libertarians – the two main strands of the powerful political insurgency movement – will help put Prop. 19 over the top is an open question. But some commentators are seeing anecdotal support among many tea partyers for marijuana legalization in California.

In the end, the Prop. 19 vote could provide a key insight into whether the tea party can breach the GOP's culture-war walls – or whether law-and-order drug enforcement will remain the conservative party line.

"I thought Prop. 19 was going to be more of a liberal Democratic thing, and then suddenly I find, hey, I'm wrong," says Leo Laurence, a former California sheriff's deputy and currently a writer and pro-legalization activist at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "I had written that the tea party would probably oppose it, but then I got phone calls saying, 'No, you're wrong on that.' Tea party people have a very strong position that the government has no right to get involved in your private affairs ... when you're not hurting yourself or somebody else. And that's basically Prop. 19 in a nutshell."

If Prop. 19 passes and the Obama Justice Department challenges it in court, as it has promised to do, the tea party could paint a crackdown as more evidence of an overarching government that has little respect for the rights of states to self-determine.

Yet the poll numbers don't necessarily indicate that things will turn out this way. Republicans oppose the measure by 65 percent to 25 percent, and those over age 60 are against it by 63 percent to 29 percent, according to the nonpartisan Field Poll.

Don Polson, a columnist and Realtor in Tehama County, Calif., chimes in with a more traditional assessment of marijuana legalization, even citing a tea party group: "Tea Party Patriots and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association say: Prop 19 NO [F]or obvious reasons pot should not be further encouraged among our young people," he writes in the Red Bluff Daily News.

What's more, overall support for the initiative has been flagging amid opposition from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and most of the state's newspaper editorial boards. Down from a peak of 49 percent support, polls now put it at 42 percent, again according to the Field Poll.

Still, as the marijuana-legalization movement matures, it could become a rallying cry for tea party-style politicians. When Mr. Tancredo, a gubernatorial candidate in Colorado, made a speech in support of drug legalization, his poll numbers shot up.

Even some outright Republicans have eased their opposition to marijuana legalization, with support growing by 7 percent since 2005, according to Gallup. Nearly 50 percent of independents – whom both parties are energetically wooing – support legalization, also according to Gallup.

"The Tea Party movement runs parallel to the Republican Party, which traditionally has taken a very firm law-and-order, just-say-no approach to the drug question," writes the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch in an editorial. "But the Tea Party movement also has a strong libertarian streak, and its live-and-let-live approach to issues of personal morality troubles social and religious conservatives who think government should manage people's private lives."

In a July story entitled "Why the tea party is the hidden force behind legal pot," Esquire magazine pointed to the growth of libertarianism as well as concerns about Mexico's violent drug war as reasons for the shift among many US conservatives toward legalization. Mexican drug cartels make up to 70 percent of their profits from illicit sales of marijuana in the United States.

More simply, "People don't want government telling them what they can use to unwind with after work," Mike Meno of the Marijuana Policy Project told Esquire.

But Charles Postel, a political historian at San Francisco State University, says the emerging model of tea party-GOP relations can be most clearly seen in Texas. There, the tea party-inspired platform of the Republican Party espouses libertarian economic ideals but vows to ratchet up marijuana misdemeanor offenses to felonies.

"There's a very strong conservative tradition in this country, and part of it has been libertarian on questions of the economy [but] has always had a very strong repressive streak on other issues," says Mr. Postel. "I don't think it's ever been easy to separate those two things."

Denver Post

2010-10-03T18:09:00.002-04:00

Major changes are at hand for marijuana politics

By John Ingold
The Denver Post

SAN FRANCISCO — The medical-marijuana political movement in America began the night police busted into Dennis Peron's apartment with a warrant.

They twisted Peron's arms behind his back and placed him in handcuffs. They forced Jonathan West, Peron's boyfriend, to the ground, and an officer held him there, Peron said, with a boot on the young man's chest. When officers learned West had AIDS, Peron said, they put on rubber gloves.

"He was very skinny, very weak," Peron, a longtime marijuana and gay-rights activist and former pot dealer from San Francisco, recalled. "And they were very mean."

That night in 1990, Peron was arrested for possession and distribution of marijuana he said he was keeping to alleviate West's suffering. A year later, after West died at age 29, Peron began collecting signatures to put an initiative on the San Francisco ballot recommending to state officials that marijuana be allowed for medical use.

It was the first medical-marijuana initiative campaign in the country, and it passed with overwhelming support.

"This was my revenge," Peron said recently. "They did that to Jonathan. What are they doing to other people? I wanted to get even. I hated those guys."

Two decades later, what started that night in Peron's apartment has reordered not just the debate around marijuana but also the broader political landscape.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have started medical-marijuana programs — either through ballot initiatives or legislative action. A 15th, Maryland, allows medical use as a defense against criminal charges. Only once, in South Dakota in 2006, has medical marijuana been defeated in a statewide election.

Estimates show more than 600,000 people in the United States can now possess and use marijuana legally, according to a Denver Post survey of medical-marijuana states. Given the current growth rates in some state medical-marijuana programs and the

Richard Lee, horticulture professor, moving marijuana plants in one of the classes at his Oaksterdam University in Oakland, CA. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

potential for other states to join in — Arizona and South Dakota voters will decide this year — that number could soon top 1 million state-legal marijuana users nationwide. Already, more than a quarter of the United States population lives in a state with a legalized marijuana program.

More than half of the nation's medical-marijuana patients — an estimated 350,000 — live in California, but Colorado is the clear medical-marijuana capital of the country. With nearly 20 patients for every 1,000 residents, Colorado has twice the number of medical-marijuana patients per capita as California.

The state's 809 dispensaries are five times per capita the estimated number in California. More than 2,000 dispensaries

Click on image to enlarge

nationwide sell marijuana at least somewhat openly.

And now all those patients and businesses and dollars have given new standing to marijuana politics, doing what stoner lobbyists tried to do for decades but failed: bringing the country to the precipice of the most ambitious changes in marijuana law in nearly a century.

Muscle behind initiatives

In California, where voters in November will decide whether to legalize possession of limited amounts of marijuana, it is a medical-marijuana businessman who is the campaign's primary funder and cheerleader. The same is true in Oregon, where voters are being asked to authorize nonprofit dispensaries.

Unions, NAACP chapters and a growing number of politicians — who see new political and economic advantages to marijuana — have flocked to pot. Political donors — such as financier George Soros and insurance honcho Peter Lewis — have dumped millions into the cause. Some Democrats have begun openly discussing how marijuana campaign issues can help their party's candidates at the polls.

"Medical marijuana normalized the issue of marijuana for many politicians and much of the public," said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the group Americans for Safe Access.

"It presents a different face of marijuana users," said Mike Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, another marijuana lobbying group. "That's why it's going to be more and more likely, perhaps in 2012, that you're going to see two, three or four states with tax-and-regulate initiatives on the ballot."

A Colorado group — the Cannabis Therapy Institute, itself a product of the state's medical-marijuana boom — has already started what is being called the Legalize 2012 Project and put up a website where supporters can make donations toward a promised statewide legalization ballot initiative.

That all of this sprang from a local campaign intended as a eulogy to West does not actually surprise Peron. An uncompromisingly big thinker, Peron said his ultimate goal was to "free America from oppressive laws" and whatever the pretext was for marijuana liberalization didn't matter. Peron said he thinks all marijuana use is medicinal, and he sees the fight to end marijuana prohibition as a civil-rights issue.

"Potheads," he said one recent afternoon from his sun-splashed apartment in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, "they're my people. I never had people. They're my people. And they're being taken advantage of, ripped off."

After his success with San Francisco's medical-marijuana initiative, Peron worked to take the campaign statewide and began collecting signatures for what became California's Proposition 215. He quickly found himself the object of nationwide attention.

"I gave people hope that things could change," he said. "I was coming from the heart, and I believed it."

Hope was desperately thin among marijuana activists in the mid-1990s after years of "Just say no" and "I didn't inhale," said Allen St. Pierre, now the director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. When a handful of the nation's most prominent drug-policy-reform activists and funders began a series of invite-only meetings in 1995, St. Pierre said, the discussion was about just getting a win, any win.

Medical marijuana, which had higher approval in polls than marijuana legalization, was seen as a new approach, he said. The group latched on to Proposition 215.

"It was a volunteer effort and going nowhere," said Ethan Nadelmann, a former Princeton professor who organized the 1995 meetings and who is now the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Soon George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund manager and rainmaker for progressive political causes, wrote a check to Peron's campaign to help gather enough signatures to get it on the ballot.

By the time the campaign concluded — with a 10-percentage-point victory at the polls in November 1996 — Soros had written checks for $500,000, according to numerous published reports. Peter Lewis, the chairman of Progressive Insurance, and John Sperling, the founder of the University of Phoenix, also cut six-figure checks. George Zimmer, of Men's Wearhouse fame, made sizeable contributions as well.

Medical-pot successes spread

Nadelmann said each of the funders' motivations differed. Lewis and Zimmer were keen on marijuana reform. Sperling was concerned about incarceration rates, he said. And Soros was interested in effective drug policy and dying with dignity, Nadelmann said.

"Among major donors, some, like Soros, were not interested in broader marijuana legalization," he said.

Peron said he knew some of the donors through marijuana-reform groups and said he didn't doubt their sincerity in helping the sick find relief. But he said he also began to feel squeezed out by their involvement in the campaign.

"All these people started to give me money," Peron recalled. "And it was great, I was glad for it. But in the end, they started taking credit for it."

After the success of Proposition 215, the initiative's funders looked to take medical marijuana nationwide and continue their winning streak, without Peron. A new organization called Americans for Medical Rights backed winning medical-marijuana campaigns in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Nevada and Colorado, often providing the large majority of funding for those campaigns.

In Colorado, for instance, Americans for Medical Rights contributed all but $250 of the $242,450 the group Coloradans for Medical Rights raised in promoting the state's medical-marijuana ballot initiative, according to state records. Opponents of the measure, by contrast, raised $147,231, most of that from small donors. The measure passed with 54 percent of the vote in 2000.

Americans for Medical Rights' political campaigns primarily occurred in states where marijuana-use rates were already highest. Of the 10 states with the highest average annual ranking for marijuana use since 1998, only New Hampshire and Massachusetts don't allow medical marijuana, according to federal data. Only one state with a medical-marijuana program, New Jersey, falls in the bottom half of that category. Colorado has the fourth-highest average annual ranking. Nadelmann said the campaign didn't deliberately target high-use states but rather looked for places with a ballot-initiative process where medical-marijuana polled well and there were activists in place who could help.

"The key was to draft something that had local buy-in," he said.

Though the advocacy groups didn't consider it at the time, St. Pierre said, the campaigns were also sowing the seeds for the next generation of marijuana activism, one that may just render the traditional pot lobby irrelevant.

"No one at that time envisioned that there would be a medical-marijuana industry that would start," St. Pierre said.

But as the medical-marijuana businesses the campaigns enabled took root and flourished, they accumulated two things crucial in politics: money and friends.

Business owners earned money to spend on activism, which in turn protected their businesses. Dispensaries and medical-marijuana schools provided natural spots for organizational meetings. And medical-marijuana patients became an easily tapped source of campaign door- knockers and phone-bankers.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Oaksterdam, the marijuana-fueled empire that longtime cannabis activist Richard Lee has created in a handful of shops and buildings in downtown Oakland, Calif. At Oaksterdam University, students learn the tools of the medical-marijuana trade. At Coffeeshop Blue Sky, medical-marijuana patients purchase lattes at the counter up front and baggies of Green Kush marijuana at the counter in back. And at the Oaksterdam Gift Shop, the ganja-tourist can pick up a sweat shirt to commemorate the day.

Taking steps to legalization

But these days, the real activity is in a sunny storefront filled with folding tables and telephone lines. It is here where Lee is waging his campaign to pass Proposition 19, perhaps the most prominent marijuana-legalization initiative in the nation's history — because it is one of the only ones to actually have a chance of passing.

Proposition 19 would allow people older than 21 to possess an ounce of marijuana or grow as many cannabis plants as they can in a 25-square-foot space. It would also allow cities to develop more ambitious plans for large-scale marijuana sales and cultivation.

When Lee began pitching the idea to the established marijuana lobby two years ago, he was met with a sniff. Too soon, they told him. Wait until 2012, a presidential election with a predictable higher turnout. The usual funders largely sat on their wallets.

Undaunted, Lee has spent nearly $1.5 million in direct and in-kind contributions to fund the campaign himself, according to California secretary of state's office records.

"The war is now, here," Lee said, in explaining his urgency. "It's happening."

"He isn't wedded to these same institutions as we are," NORML's St. Pierre said.

"They have enough money at this point that they can fund their own liberation."

Polls show the measure with a slim lead, and its relative success has caused the established marijuana lobby to do an about-face.

"Richard Lee was prescient in many ways in reading the 2010 election cycle in being a unique opportunity to address the failures of marijuana prohibition in the depths of this state's fiscal crisis," said Stephen Gutwillig of the Drug Policy Alliance, a successor of Americans for Medical Rights.

In other words, Lee, by arguing about the amount of tax money legal pot could generate for recession-strapped governments, found a new way to sell marijuana politics. What's more, without the support of the usual marijuana groups, Lee went out and sold the idea to an entirely new set of supporters in a way that has aligned marijuana with mainstream political interests like never before.

"We're seeing a lot of people supporting us who didn't in the past — because of the Great Recession," Lee said. "It's freaky almost."

Take, for instance, the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Months ago, union representative Dan Rush began talking to his bosses in California about supporting Lee's campaign. At first, Rush said, they laughed. But gradually they warmed to his argument that legal marijuana presented an opportunity for the union.

"Jobs," Rush said in summing up the union's interest in the initiative. "It's taking the underground plantation economy . . . and turning it into sustainable, single-earner union jobs."

Unusual political allies

Rush has also been crucial, Lee said, in turning other unions into supporters, a list that now includes California branches of the Service Employees International Union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Communication Workers of America. Lee has reciprocated the interest by turning Oaksterdam into an entirely union shop.

"The unions have political muscle," Lee said. "So to have them as allies is one more step in ending cannabis prohibition."

Proposition 19 has drawn support from other political quarters. (The measure's primary opponents have been law enforcement groups, social- values organizations and the alcohol industry.) A smattering of religious leaders, former law enforcement officials and doctors have endorsed the initiative.

So, too, has the California chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In a commentary posted on The Huffington Post, California NAACP president Alice Huffman wrote that ending marijuana prohibition is a civil-rights issue.

"This is a war that disproportionately affects young men and women and the latest tool for imposing Jim Crow justice on poor African-Americans," she wrote.

Lee said the campaign is counting on the energy of nontraditional voters to help at the polls.

The campaign has largely eschewed traditional rallies in favor of rigorous online outreach and small, grassroots events. But, during a late-summer visit, it was clear the campaign still had work to do to generate enthusiasm about the initiative.

Ambivalence, opposition

In San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, home to likely the highest concentration of glass stores and smoke shops in the country, shopkeepers said they had heard little discussion about the initiative and seen no campaigning.

"They must be confident it's going to pass," one reasoned.

Sitting outside the P-Kok clothing store, 23-year-old Caroline Lepman said she had mixed feelings about the initiative. She supports legalization, she said. But, in a way, that's what already exists.

"California seems to be doing a pretty good job with its current legislation," she said.

On a summer day at the Berkeley Farmers Market — as friendly a turf for marijuana politics as exists in America — voters seemed mostly indifferent. Many walked by the Proposition 19 table without so much as a glance, giving it the same amount of attention they did to tables promoting rainwater recycling, urban gardening and a campaign to end "corporate personhood." The distraction of a nearby bongo drum-guitar-recorder trio playing "Twist and Shout" also hindered the modest voter-outreach efforts.

Most voters seemed aware of the initiative and generally supportive.

But one woman — she gave her name only as Deborah, for self-evident reasons — said she worried the initiative would cut into a crucial side business for her, that is, growing dope. Legalization could lower marijuana prices, she said, making it less profitable for small-time growers like herself.

"Everyone I know either grows or smokes, and we like it the way it is," she said. "We don't want anybody to take it from us. . . . And I wouldn't feel any safer at night. It wouldn't do anything for me. I hate to be selfish, but I have to speak for the grower."

In a state that has more marijuana users than any other state in the country, this is, surprisingly, a common argument. And it's one that typically elicits a patient smile and a sigh from Lee. Nowhere is this concern more prevalent than in the woods of northern California, where generations have made a decent living as pot farmers, and folks are now worried that legalization could bring about the loss of not just income but their lifestyle as well.

Future still uncertain

Speaking before a roomful of marijuana growers this summer in Ukiah, Calif., Lee attempted to make his typical pitch.

It would keep thousands of small-time offenders out of jail. It would save the state money and bring in new revenue.

But then he turned blunt.

"I didn't get into this to keep the price high," he said. "I'm sorry. In my view, getting the price down is a way to reduce the violence."

The expressions on the growers' faces sagged. Lee kept smiling.

Whether Lee's coalition will hold together until Election Day is, like many things on the frontier of marijuana politics, uncertain. At a recent cannabis convention in San Francisco, some in the crowd heckled Lee, and a Sacramento dispensary just formed a political committee to oppose the initiative.

But regardless of the outcome, Lee sees his campaign — feuds and all — as a positive step forward.

"Whenever I get down that there is infighting," he said, "I think about how it's a good thing we're big enough to have infighting."

Meanwhile, across the bay in San Francisco, Dennis Peron is less optimistic. The man who started medical-marijuana politics has now seen two generations of activists stand on his shoulders and promise more. The weight — and wait — is getting to him.

Talk of regulating marijuana, he bemoaned, is another form of criminalizing it. Taxing it, he fumed, is just a bribe to government to keep from getting busted.

What happens to the movement, he asks, if this thing loses?

"People are going to lose hope who just found it," he said. "The nation is going to think California abandoned them."

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com

Vermont Today: Shumlin's stance on marijuana earns him big donations from outside Vermont

2010-10-03T18:01:00.002-04:00

By Peter Hirschfeld
Vermont Press Bureau

A national organization dedicated to the decriminalization of marijuana is investing lots of green in Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin.

The Marijuana Policy Project, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., has contributed $14,000 toward electing Shumlin. The Windham County senator is one of only two candidates in the 37 gubernatorial races nationwide to have endorsed decriminalization, which replaces criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana with civil fines.

“I think Vermont could be one of the next three or four states to decriminalize marijuana,” said Dan Riffle, a legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project. “And I think if Peter Shumlin is elected governor, it could speed that process up.”

The group has made $7,000 in direct contributions to Shumlin's campaign from two of its political action committees and has given $7,000 to the Vermont Democratic Party with the intention, Riffle said, that it would support his candidacy. That would make Shumlin the organization's largest political beneficiary in the 2010 election cycle.

Decriminalization is hardly the centerpiece of Shumlin's campaign platform.

“The next governor has 200 really tough challenges to deal with simultaneously,” Shumlin said. “This issue for me will be 199.9 on that list.”

And he doesn't want voters to confuse his pro-decriminalization stance with support for recreational marijuana use.

“I do not condone smoking marijuana,” he said. “I think we have a real drug and alcohol problem in this state, and it's something I plan to confront head on.”

But Shumlin says decriminalization would allow the criminal justice system to focus its limited resources on crimes that have a more substantial impact on public safety and quality of life.

“I have always supported the decriminalization of marijuana because I want to spend our judicial and law-enforcement resources locking up and prosecuting drug dealers, rapists, child pornographers and other violent offenders,” Shumlin said.

Despite a heated campaign in which Shumlin's Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, has sought to paint him as soft on crime, the Democrat is standing firm on his position.

Looking at costs

For many proponents, decriminalization is more an issue of social justice than law and order. Brattleboro resident Vidda Crochetta, who co-founded a nonprofit called Marijuana Resolve earlier this year with former state legislator Daryl Pillsbury, said his advocacy is driven by a desire to unburden responsible adults from the “social stigma” of marijuana use.

“This is about protecting adults who prefer the use of a drug that is essentially a private behavior, like drinking a glass of wine or going home after work and having a six-pack,” Crochetta said.

Shumlin, though, says his views are shaped not by libertarianism but by fiscal conservatism.

The 1,083 arrests for marijuana offenses in 2006 accounted for 56 percent of all drug arrests in Vermont and about 6 percent of arrests overall, according to state and federal data. More than 90 percent of marijuana arrests in Vermont were for possession, and supporters of decriminalization say those arrests exact an unnecessary toll on public-safety resources.

According to a 2009 study conducted on behalf of the Bulletin of Cannabis Reform, marijuana arrests cost Vermont almost $18 million annually in police, court and prison expenses.

“Decriminalization is a sensible reform not just for marijuana policy but for law-enforcement policy,” said Mike Meno, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. “Rather than having police waste time targeting low-level marijuana offenders that aren't a threat to public safety, they can focus on violent crimes.”

Other steps

Decriminalization isn't a new issue in Montpelier. Bills supporting it appear perennially in the Statehouse and generally garner scores of legislative sponsors, Shumlin among them. In 2009, the Vermont Senate passed a bill that would have effectively decriminalized possession of an ounce or less of marijuana. The House Judiciary Committee refused to take up the bill.

In 2004, Vermont passed a medical-marijuana law that allows patients with certain chronic conditions to possess the drug without risk of criminal sanctions.The Marijuana Policy Project wants to expand that by creating state-sanctioned dispensaries at which eligible patients would be able to obtain marijuana.

Were it to pass decriminalization legislation, Vermont wouldn't be in uncharted territory. In 2008, voters in Massachusetts approved a referendum that decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. In November, voters in California will consider a similar ballot measure.

In Connecticut, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy also supports decriminalization.

According to Riffle, 12 states have either passed decriminalization laws or have criminal statutes that limit the penalties for possession to fines.

“Some politicians out there falsely believe the public doesn't support this, but the polling data says exactly the opposite,” Riffle said. “People are realizing prohibition laws don't make sense.”

In August, two weeks before the Democratic primary, Shumlin spoke in favor of decriminalization at a forum at the University of Vermont hosted by Marijuana Resolve. He won the primary by about 200 votes, a victory that decriminalization supporters attribute at least in part to his position on marijuana.

“Shumlin was in a five-way race and he wasn't necessarily the front runner,” Meno said. “He was the only candidate who was outspoken on this issue and he ended up winning, I think partially as a result of his support for marijuana decriminalization.”

In the general election, Crochetta said, Shumlin's position will continue to play well with Vermont residents, some of whom, he believes, will show up on Election Day solely because of Shumlin's views on marijuana reform.

“This issue might in fact increase voter turnout because people who don't ordinarily vote will vote in this election,” Crochetta said. “I think you'll see a lot of hemp advocates and marijuana advocates out there that might not have been before.”

High usage

Marijuana usage rates in Vermont are among the highest in the nation, according to state and federal data. According to a 2007 survey, 54,000 Vermonters used marijuana in the previous month, nearly 10 percent of the population.

Dubie says that's one of the reasons Vermont can't afford to go the decriminalization route. About 14 percent of admissions to substance-abuse treatment programs, according to state data, are due to marijuana use (about half of those are court-ordered admissions). Alcohol accounts for 56 percent of admissions.

“I do not support decriminalization of marijuana because it sends the wrong message to society, and mostly children,” Dubie said.

San Francisco Weekly

2010-10-01T17:52:00.000-04:00

California Marijuana Laws Now Nation's Most Liberal

By Joe Eskenazi, Fri., Oct. 1 2010 @ 12:25PM

After Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger affixed his signature on a Sen. Mark Leno-authored bill yesterday, California's marijuana policy became the nation's most progressive, pot activists tell SF Weekly.

While existing law calls for anyone busted with an ounce or less of pot to be tried for a misdemeanor and fined $100, Leno's SB 1449 changes that to an "infraction." As a result, there's no longer any need for a trial, and there will be no criminal record incurred. "You get a ticket and there's a $100 fine," Said Mike Meno, the spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. "It's almost like a parking citation." In San Francisco, it might even be cheaper.

California's forthcoming policy is essentially identical to a two-year-old law enacted in Massachusetts. In Meno's estimation, these states are in the forefront when dealing with marijuana possession.

The least progressive? Take a guess. Having trouble? Okay, Ratso Rizzo wanted to go there with Joe Buck.

That's right -- it's Florida. If Rizzo and Buck were caught with an ounce of reefer, they could spend up to five years in prison and shell out a $5,000 fine. The second- and third-harshest states are Montana and Arkansas. See the full list here.

Schwarzenegger -- famously caught smoking a joint while eating an enormous piece of cake in the film Pumping Iron -- offered the following rationale for signing the bill:

Notwithstanding my opposition to Proposition 19, however, I am signing this measure because possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name. The only difference is that because it is a misdemeanor, a criminal defendant is entitled to a jury trial and a defense attorney.
In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket.

NY Daily News

2010-10-01T17:50:00.001-04:00

Addictions & Answers: Can we ever win the war on drugs?

Addictions & Answers

Friday, October 1st 2010, 4:00 AM

BILL: Dave, the first time I ever heard the phrase, "The War on Drugs" was back on Dragnet, when Jack Webb declared we were winning it. And now here's this new AP report that says "the rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use and a surge in ecstasy and methamphetamine abuse, the government reported Wednesday."

DR DAVE: Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the 9% increase in drug use disappointing but said he was not surprised given "eroding attitudes" about the harm done by illegal drugs and the growing number of states approving medicinal marijuana.

BILL: Mike Meno, of the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, recently said, "It's time we stop this charade and implement sensible laws that would tax and regulate marijuana the same way we do more harmful - but legal - drugs like alcohol and tobacco." Since I don't think I took more than a half dozen puffs of marijuana in my life – it just left me cold – I got in touch with Mark A.R. Kleiman, a Professor of Policy Analysis at UCLA and author of "When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment", about whether pot is indeed harmless.

He said: "If you take the people who've used pot as often as five times" - i.e., exclude people like you, Bill, who tried it and found it did nothing for them - "about 9% wind up as heavy daily users for an average of three and a half years each? That is not harmless. But 750,000 user arrests per year and 30,000 dealers behind bars? Too many. If grown-ups want to toke up, why not let them?"

DR. DAVE: He'd like to see pot made legal?

BILL: He says the danger is "the dealers would then try to create addicts, just like the brewers and the tobacco companies." What he proposes is to "allow people to grow their own pot or form consumer co-ops. No retailing, no billboards." My feeling is keeping pot illegal merely gives it glamour. Didn’t we learn anything from Prohibition?

DR DAVE: While in a recent survey, less than one-third of the California Society of Addiction Medicine's 400 physician members said they believed prison deters substance abuse, there are solutions other than jail on one side, and supermarket weekend Pot Sale Jamborees on the other.

Dr. David Moore is a licensed psychologist and chemical dependency professional who is a graduate school faculty member at Argosy University’s Seattle Campus. Bill Manville is a Book of the Month novelist; his most recent non-fiction work, "Cool, Hip & Sober," is available at online bookstores. He teaches "Writing To Get Published" for Temple University.

HuffPo: Attempts to Ban Fake Marijuana Are Further Proof of Prohibition's Failure

2010-09-25T17:55:00.000-04:00

(Link here)

Perhaps as early as next week, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is expected to sign a series of bills that would outlaw K2 -- one of several names given to synthetic cannabinoids ("fake marijuana") that are sprayed onto different herbs and sold legally in smoke shops across the country.

Such products are labeled "not for human consumption," but people use them anyway, because, when smoked, they can mimic the effects of marijuana, but they don't show up on drug tests. More importantly, unlike marijuana, K2 is legal to buy -- though perhaps not for long. In just six months, 13 different states have moved to ban the substance, fueled primarily by reports of K2's adverse health effects. With Granholm's signature, Michigan would become the 14th.

At first glance, these actions might appear to be a reasonable way to protect the public from a dangerous substance. But -- as I'll explain -- they're really just a testament to the folly of our nation's marijuana laws.

First, some background: K2 was created in 1995 by John Huffman, a chemistry professor at Clemson University who was researching the effects of cannabinoids, marijuana's unique, active components. Only in the last year has it become widely available and used by consumers. Now, the effects of K2 might indeed be exaggerated in order to further demonize the substance (as a marijuana reformer, I'm all too familiar with this phenomenon), but papers across the country have published reports of K2 users suffering from accelerated heart rates and increased blood pressure, sometimes even ending up in the emergency room.

It's unclear whether these reactions are caused by the substance itself, or the various herbal concoctions that vendors spray it on. What is clear, however, is that natural, whole-plant (aka, "real") marijuana has no such adverse effects on users. In fact, a recent study from the University of Michigan showed that marijuana leads to fewer emergency room admissions than virtually any other legal or illegal drug.

Put more simply, our country's insane prohibition on marijuana -- a safe, non-toxic, and well-studied drug -- is now leading consumers to experiment with lesser-known, and potentially much more dangerous, alternatives.

Professor Huffman himself has said that people who use K2 are "idiots." But are they? Being arrested and convicted for marijuana possession can bring life-long consequences, such as the loss of a job or financial aid for college. Using K2 comes with no negative consequences -- except, perhaps, to one's health.

All this K2 nonsense is simply one more reason -- alongside more important issues like sensible law enforcement, personal liberty, racial justice, and potential tax revenue -- why America needs a legal, regulated marijuana market. Whereas the full health effects of K2 are largely unknown because they haven't been studied, marijuana is perhaps the most studied plant in history -- one that a former DEA judge once called "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." In a regulated market, consumers would know exactly what they're purchasing and putting into their bodies. This is not the case when somebody buys K2 -- or one of its various knockoffs -- that's been sprayed onto some mystery plant matter.

I don't have a solid opinion one way or the other as to whether K2 should be banned or regulated like other drugs. But I do know this: The only reason anyone uses K2 and not marijuana is because K2 is legal and marijuana is not. It's as simple as that. Make marijuana legal, and few, if any, consumers will waste their time seeking out K2.

It's for this reason that K2 bans are misguided, because they don't address the core issue: millions of Americans want to use marijuana, or something that will mimic its effects, and if they're afraid about illegal means of doing so, they will continue to seek out legal alternatives. In fact, the Associated Press has reported that in states where K2 has been banned, merchants have simply changed its name, altered its chemical makeup slightly, and continued to sell it to customers. That's right: people in those states are now seeking legal alternatives to the legal alternative to marijuana. And round and round we go.

Californians will have a unique chance to end this lunacy once and for all this November, when they vote on Proposition 19, which would allow adults to grow and possess -- and localities to regulate -- natural, whole-plant marijuana. If Prop. 19 does pass, I have a feeling there won't be much of a market for K2 in the Golden State.

Oh, and just for kicks, what does Huffman, the creator of K2, think about attempts to ban it?

"It's not going to be effective," he told the AP. "Is the ban on marijuana effective?"

My appearance on CNN

2010-09-17T17:47:00.000-04:00

NPR: Rise In Drug Use Tied To Relaxed View Toward Pot

2010-09-17T17:45:00.000-04:00

(Link here)

by Alan Greenblatt

Marijuana advocates have been arguing for years that pot is not only harmless but has beneficial qualities. Such claims are having an effect.

Fewer than half of Americans think marijuana should be legalized — but just barely half. The most recent Gallup and CBS News polls on this topic both show that 44 percent favor legalization. Compare that with roughly 25 percent in favor from the late 1970s into the mid-1990s.

The change in attitude toward pot shows up not only in polls, but in use. A survey released Thursday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration showed that use of illegal drugs rose last year to the highest levels in nearly a decade. Marijuana use was most prevalent, but ecstasy and methamphetamine posted gains, too.

Drug policy experts say this reflects changes in the perceived risks of taking drugs — both of being caught and of suffering societal disapproval. A California initiative to legalize marijuana this November would amplify this effect if it passes.

"There is such a push on the part of the marijuana lobby to soften up the public," says Eric Voth, a physician who chairs the Institute on Global Drug Policy, an anti-drug alliance of physicians, scientists and attorneys. "The perception of harm has dropped. You saw this increase in pot first and now you're seeing this increase in ecstasy and meth."

Taking It To The States

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia allow people to use marijuana for medical purposes, such as improving the appetite of cancer and AIDS patients.

"What people are responding to is the realization that the government has been lying for decades and that marijuana is less harmful than legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco," says Mike Meno, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors legalization.

Medical marijuana has become big business. Americans are spending $25 billion a year on marijuana, according to Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron. The number of patients and licensed dispensers has doubled over the past year in Rhode Island alone. In July, the Oakland City Council approved construction of four industrial-sized marijuana factories.

Last month, the Boulder County SWAT team destroyed 7,500 marijuana plants — about five football fields' worth. But medical marijuana remains a growth industry in Colorado. Next week, doctors, dispensers and marketing experts will gather at a downtown Denver hotel for the Plant Medicine Expo & Healthcare Provider Conference.

"It's way beyond legalizing," Voth says. "The medical excuse opened the door."

What Goes Down Must Come Up

Voth and other drug war veterans say they've seen this all before. During the 1970s, about a dozen states decriminalized marijuana. Eventually, the era's spike in drug use — particularly cocaine — prompted harsher laws under the Reagan administration and a parents' movement that forced a crackdown.

Use of marijuana and other illegal drugs reached their peak in the late 1970s. In 1979, 1 out of every 3 high school seniors was smoking dope on a regular basis, according to Herbert Kleber, a Columbia University psychiatrist who served as deputy drug "czar" under President George H.W. Bush.

That number dropped markedly during the early 1990s. With people witnessing fewer ill effects due to diminished drug use, it started to seem safe again to indulge. Drug use is still nowhere near the levels of the 1970s, but the latest figures mark a reversal nonetheless.

"It's not so much that the rise is so great as that it contrasts with the long period of decline," says Lloyd Johnston, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan. "Clearly that decade of improvement has come to a halt."

Changes In Attitude

Those who oppose recreational use of marijuana blame the well-organized and funded campaign to normalize it. "Attitudes for all kinds of reasons have been softening about the risks and dangers of marijuana," says John Carnevale, an economist and drug policy consultant who has worked on the issue during both Republican and Democratic administrations, including those of presidents Clinton and Reagan.

Drugs that enjoy a patina of medical approval — whether marijuana or prescription drugs such as OxyContin, which has seen enormous growth in recreational use — seem safe, or at least safer than street drugs. If doctors prescribe them, how bad can they be?

"The idea that smoking is medicine is an indicator in the minds of young users that this is not harmful," Carnevale says.

Patients get their prescriptions filled at Sunset Junction medical marijuana dispensary on May 11 in Los Angeles.

Looking To California

California voters, who approved a pioneering medical marijuana initiative in 1996, will soon decide whether to legalize marijuana altogether. November's Proposition 19 has not yet attracted the same number of wealthy out-of-state backers, such as financier George Soros, as the earlier initiative.

But it has garnered support from a number of state and local officials, eager for the billions in tax revenues that legalized pot promises to generate. On Monday, the Service Employees International Union's California State Council — one of the biggest public employee unions in the state — endorsed Proposition 19.

Polls indicate the proposition has roughly a 50-50 chance of passing. Both marijuana advocates and opponents agree that passage would have an enormous impact, with other states likely to follow suit and the drug becoming more readily available to young people.

"If California were to pass Proposition 19, it would be revolutionary," says Meno, the Marijuana Policy Project spokesman. "People would see that the sky doesn't fall, the police will have more resources to fight crimes and there will be more revenues for local budgets."

Future Growth — Or Backlash

It's not clear how the Obama administration, which announced last year that it would end the Bush administration policy of routinely raiding medical marijuana dispensaries, would react to outright legalization in one state. Every former chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to oppose the initiative.

"I don't expect [to see] us returning to a drug war hysteria under an Obama administration," says Miron, the Harvard economist. But, he adds, "If Proposition 19 passes, some Republicans will get energized and demand that there's a federal response. The Obama administration will be in a pickle if that happens. They don't want to be fighting over that issue, but they don't want to be seen as too much in the pro-drug camp."

Robert L. DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and Health, says that regardless of the outcome in California, marijuana advocates have "already won" by shifting the terms of debate and increasing acceptance of drug use. He predicts that illegal drug use will continue to rise.

But DuPont, who served as a top drug policy official under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, also predicts that increasing use will, in time, bring tolerance to an end. "I'm confident these folks have created the reaction that will stop them," he says. "The data's going to get worse in coming years and that's going to re-create the bipartisan opposition to illegal drug use that we saw between 1979 and 1991."

NPR: Increased Drug Use Fuels Debate Over Legalization

2010-09-16T17:41:00.000-04:00

Link here.

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm David Greene.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

And I'm Melissa Block.

Illegal drug use in the U.S. is up to the highest level in nearly a decade, according to a government report out today. Officials say more people are using methamphetamine and ecstasy. And the most commonly abused drug, marijuana, is now even more common.

NPR's Tovia Smith reports.

TOVIA SMITH: Officials say marijuana use is changing because public attitudes are changing to the point where most young people today see pot as basically harmless.

Ms. HEATHER TURNER (Student, UCLA): If anything, it's just a stress reducer. It's better than smoking a cigarette or having a drink.

SMITH: Heather Turner is a student at UCLA who's taking this semester off. Like many on campus, she says she sees pot as having little or no downside.

Ms. TURNER: It's really tremendous what it can do for people, you know, for everything from like, migraines to menstrual cramps, to people going through chemotherapy and stuff.

SMITH: Officials call that view disturbing but not surprising as more states legalize medical marijuana use and talk about decriminalizing it altogether. Gil Kerlikowski, from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, says kids are getting the message that smoking pot is totally safe and harmless.

Mr. GIL KERLIKOWSKI (Office of National Drug Control Policy): What we need to do is to understand that marijuana does have harms. It is not a harmless drug.

SMITH: But advocates of legalizing marijuana insist the news that marijuana use is up only goes to show that cracking down on users doesn't work.

Mr. MIKE MENO (Marijuana Policy Project): The government's been sending the wrong message to people for decades by classifying marijuana alongside drugs like heroin and LSD. And they should just give it up.

SMITH: That's Mike Meno with the Marijuana Policy Project, that supports making pot totally legal - as a ballot question in California this year would do. He says marijuana use isn't increasing because people see it as less harmful but rather, because the sale of marijuana is uncontrolled and unregulated.

Mr. MENO: We need to apply the same type of sensible regulations that we do to alcohol and tobacco, two things that you need an ID to buy, that you need to be a licensed vendor to sell. Drug dealers who sell marijuana do not check IDs.

SMITH: Of course, kids do find ways around those restrictions, but today's study shows no increase in underage drinking, even as other drugs are up. Methamphetamines and ecstasy, that had been declining or flat for years, jumped 60 and 37 percent, respectively.

Mr. PETER DELANEY (Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality): You know, I think that we often start making headway and doing good on this problem, and then we kind of take our eyes off the ball.

SMITH: Peter Delaney is director of the office that did the research at the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. He says there needs to be more effort to counter the message that marijuana is not harmful. But he says public health officials also need to redefine the question of what harm means.

Mr. DELANEY: When I hear kids on campuses say hey, it's only pot, I'm saying, what's your grades like? You know, do you go to class? We have to stop having a relativistic discussion - saying oh, it's not harmful; please, it's not like heroin - and start having a kind of a clear discussion of, this is what this one this one does; this is what that one does. Drug use, it does impact on you.

SMITH: Sadly, officials say there is one number in their survey that hasn't changed: The number of people who are getting treatment for drug abuse is still just about a tenth of those who need it.

Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

AP's Quotations of the Day for Sept. 16, 2010

2010-09-16T17:35:00.000-04:00

"The two leaders are not leaving the tough issues to the end of their discussions; they are tackling upfront — and did so this evening — the issues that are at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We take this as a strong indicator of their belief that peace is possible and of their desire to conclude an agreement." — George Mitchell, the U.S. envoy for Mideast peace efforts, in remarks after Mideast leaders ended their latest round of peace talks, still divided on major issues.

___

"You have every right to keep the heat on me and the Democrats, and I hope you do. That's how our political process works. But don't forget who is standing with you, and who is standing against you. Don't ever believe that this election coming up doesn't matter." — President Barack Obama at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's awards dinner appealing to Hispanics to support Democrats in the November elections despite his failed promise to pass an immigration overhaul.

___

"It's time we stop this charade and implement sensible laws that would tax and regulate marijuana the same way we do more harmful — but legal — drugs like alcohol and tobacco." — Mike Meno, a spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, after the government reported that the rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use and a surge in ecstasy and methamphetamine abuse.

AP: Illegal Drug Use Higher Than in Nearly a Decade

2010-09-16T17:32:00.001-04:00

By SAM HANANEL

updated 9/16/2010 8:22:04 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use and a surge in ecstasy and methamphetamine abuse, the government reported Wednesday.

Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the 9 percent increase in drug use disappointing but said he was not surprised given "eroding attitudes" about the perception of harm from illegal drugs and the growing number of states approving medicinal marijuana.

"I think all of the attention and the focus of calling marijuana medicine has sent the absolute wrong message to our young people," Kerlikowske said in an interview.

The annual report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found marijuana use rose by 8 percent and remained the most commonly used drug.

Mike Meno, a spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, said the survey is more proof that the government's war on marijuana has failed in spite of decades of enforcement efforts and arrests.

"It's time we stop this charade and implement sensible laws that would tax and regulate marijuana the same way we do more harmful — but legal — drugs like alcohol and tobacco," Meno said.

On a positive note, cocaine abuse continues to decline, with use of the drug down 32 percent from its peak in 2006.

About 21.8 million Americans, or 8.7 percent of the population age 12 and older, reported using illegal drugs in 2009. That's the highest level since the survey began in 2002. The previous high was just over 20 million in 2006.

The survey, which was being released Thursday, is based on interviews with about 67,500 people. It is considered the most comprehensive annual snapshot of drug use in the United States.

Other results show a 37 percent increase in ecstasy use and a 60 percent jump in the number of methamphetamine users. In the early 2000s, there was a widespread public safety campaign to warn young people about the dangers of ecstasy as a party drug, but that effort declined as use dropped off.

"The last few years, I think we've taken our eye off the ball on ecstasy," Kerlikowske said.

Meth rates had been declining
Meth use had been dropping after a passage of a 2006 federal law that put cold tablets containing pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters. But law enforcement officials have seen a rise in "smurfing," or traveling from store to store to purchase the medicines, which can be used to produce homemade meth in kitchen labs.

Kerlikowske attributed the rise in meth abuse to more people getting around the law and an increase in meth coming across the border with Mexico.

The rise in marijuana use comes as California voters prepare to decide in November whether to legalize the drug. An Associated Press-CNBC poll earlier this year found that most Americans still oppose legalizing marijuana, but larger majorities believe it has medical benefits and want the government to allow its use for that purpose.

Medical marijuana sales in the 14 states that allow it have also taken off since the federal government signaled last year that it wouldn't prosecute marijuana sellers who follow state rules. The survey does not distinguish between medicinal and non-medicinal marijuana use.

The survey found the number of youths aged 12-17 who perceived a great risk of harm from smoking marijuana once or twice a week dropped from 54.7 percent in 2007 to 49.3 percent in 2009.

Link here

LA Times: Facebook Bans Use of Marijuana Ad

2010-08-25T17:23:00.000-04:00

An advertisement for Just Say Now was rejected after being on the social networking site for more than a week, the pro-pot campaign says.

By John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times

August 25, 2010

Pot leaves are easy to find on Facebook pages. But the nation's largest social-networking site has decided they cannot appear in advertisements, prohibiting them as "illegal content."

The policy was disclosed Tuesday after a national campaign promoting legalization accused Facebook of censoring political speech. The Just Say Now campaign said the popular website rejected its ads after they had run for more than a week. The ads featured the readily recognizable leaf and asked the website's users to "sign the petition to President Obama to support states' rights to legalize marijuana."

[...]

The Marijuana Policy Project, which promotes legalization nationwide, also does not use the pot leaf. "There is still so much stigma associated with that," said Mike Meno, a spokesman.

Link here.

Daily Caller: Obama sticks with DEA nominee Michele Leonhart despite criticism of raids

2010-08-18T17:14:00.002-04:00

The Forgotten Ban

By Mike Riggs - The Daily Caller 1:06 AM 08/18/2010

For a while, it looked like progressives and small government types might never stop warring over the passage of the Democrats’ health care bill earlier this year. But it seems a few members of each team — FireDogLake, the 10th Amendment Center, and a slew of marijuana activists – have finally found common cause in calling for President Obama to rescind the nomination of Michele Leonhart to head the Drug Enforcement Agency.

In a letter released late last month, the groups accused Leonhart, a deputy administrator appointed by President George W. Bush and the acting administrator since the resignation of Karen P. Tandy in 2007, of ignoring a Justice Department directive not to “waste resources” by raiding dispensaries and growers operating legally in states that allow the sale of medical marijuana.

But according to a senior White House official, not even the combined grassroot powers of FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher, a leading voice in the progressive community and a supporter of the single-payer health care plan abandoned by congressional Democrats earlier this year, and the 10th Amendment Center, which has provided guidelines to states that wish to repeal Obamacare, can derail Leonhart’s nomination.

Obama is confident that Leonhart is the right choice, the White House staffer said, and that as of Friday the president wasn’t considering anyone else for the position. In other words, the response from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to a chorus of concerns boils down to: Leonhart or bust.

In response to this message, critics have pointed out that Obama is shifting his stance on marijuana policy.

“It’s unfortunate — and outright baffling — that the Obama administration would choose someone for this post whose resume is so strongly at odds with the ‘new direction’ this administration had promised for drug policy in general and medical marijuana in particular,” the Marijuana Policy Project’s Mike Meno told The Daily Caller. “During the election campaign, and again through the Department of Justice memo in October, President Obama vowed to stop the outrageous Bush-era practice of raiding and prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers who operate under state law. If change is what they seek, why would the administration nominate a Bush holdover under whom the DEA continues to raid the private property of citizens obeying state law? It makes no sense.”

MPP and other marijuana activists have pointed to a series of raids the DEA conducted in California as recently as last month as evidence that Leonhart is continuing the Bush-era strategy of cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, even if they are operating legally under California law. They say this conflicts directly with statements Obama made on the campaign trail, such as this one from April 2008:

“When it comes to medical marijuana, I have a practical view more than anything. My attitude is that if it’s an issue of doctors prescribing medical marijuana as a treatment for glaucoma or a cancer treatment, there really is no difference between that and a doctor prescribing morphine, or anything else.”

But the White House and the Justice Department both told TheDC that Holder’s memo does not give dispensaries carte blanche to grow or sell marijuana, and that recent raids don’t conflict with what Obama expressed while campaigning.

“I wouldn’t say the memo ‘discourages’ certain raids,” a DOJ offical told TheDC. Rather, “it talks about prioritizing resources most efficiently.” And both the White House and the DOJ argued that the gist of the Holder memo was that the DEA would “not focus its limited resources on individual patients with cancer or other serious diseases.”

Critics see the distinction between cancer patients who take medical marijuana and the people who sell them medical marijuana as hair-splitting.

“Attorney General Eric Holder was crystal clear last year when he directed officials within his department not to waste federal resources interfering with state medical marijuana laws,” wrote FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher in the open letter distributed by the Marijuana Policy Project. “Yet throughout the tenure of President Obama’s administration, the DEA’s raids have continued in a manner wholly inconsistent with the spirit of that directive. What part of ‘not a priority’ does Michele Leonhart not understand?”

Even the Tea Party-friendly 10th Amendment Center is willing to share the peace pipe with Hamsher and the FireDogLake community if it means stopping Leonhart’s confirmation. “We absolutely can come together on this issue,” said the center’s Michael Boldin, while adding that “Leonhart’s nomination should be moot,” because “constitutionally, her whole position should be abolished.”

What the alliance needs but likely won’t receive is political support from Congress. Not even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi–who has voiced her support for medical marijuana but not Proposition 19, the referendum item that would legalize cannabis sales in California–has offered a symbolic objection to Leonhart’s nomination, which the Senate Judiciary Committee could take up later this year.

Not that it would do any good.

Ultimately, says syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum, “it was Obama who picked her instead of someone with different priorities, and he and his attorney general are letting her continue to violate his campaign pledge.”

NBC 4 Washington: D.C. Liquor Board to Oversee Medical Cannabis

2010-08-12T17:21:00.001-04:00

Some are concerned by the liquor connection, but D.C.'s law remains strict

By KRISTON CAPPS

Updated 12:23 PM EDT, Mon, Aug 9, 2010

When the District's medical marijuana regulations go into effect next year, legislators from states mulling similar bills around the nation will be looking to D.C. as an example. Will they find a solution that will serve conservative constituencies as in Alabama and Tennessee -- two states considering passing their own medical marijuana legislation -- or will they find a system prone to abuse?

At a superficial glance, the draft regulations that make the District's liquor board responsible for producing and distributing medical cannabis suggest a lenient or recreational atmosphere for D.C. In fact, the city's severe marijuana laws don't leave a lot of room for abuse -- and may exclude patients in need.

The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis takes a first stab at the draft regulations with a Saturday report on how the medical marijuana dispensaries will be licensed. DeBonis notes that the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board will oversee the growth and distribution of medical marijuana and the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration will enforce it, according to draft rules released by the Fenty administration on Friday.

DeBonis talks to Wayne Turner, the co-author of Initiative 59, which was the medical marijuana initiative overwhelmingly approved by District voters in 1998 that was hamstrung by Congress after it passed. Turner takes a negative view on the role of the liquor board in regulating medical marijuana in D.C. So does At-Large D.C. Council member David Catania, who would prefer the D.C. Department of Health to run the program. (The health department is responsible for registering the D.C. patients who are eligible for medical cannabis.)

"The District law is perhaps the most tightly regulated medical marijuana law in the nation," says Mike Meno, director of communications for Marijuana Policy Project, a marijuana legalization advocacy group.

After Congress lifted its budget ban prohibiting medical marijuana, Council member Catania -- along with At-Large Council member Phil Mendelson and Council Chairman (and mayoral candidate) Vince Gray -- drafted the legislation implementing Initiative 59 earlier this year.

That legislation establishes tighter regulations than evident in most of the 14 states where medical marijuana is legal.

In D.C., there are just five qualifying conditions for medical marijuana: Cancer, HIV, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and glaucoma. That's stricter than the list of admissible conditions for 13 of the other 14 states with legalized medical marijuana -- some of which are introducing new conditions.

Another condition included in the new law -- perhaps the most stringent of all -- prohibits patients in D.C. from using marijuana they grow themselves. Only dispensaries have the authority to grow and distribute marijuana under the law. So, a patient who has been self medicating using home-grown marijuana on the advice of a doctor could still be arrested even after the regulations come into effect in January 2011 -- if that marijuana did not come through a dispensary.

Meno says that the fact that the District's marijuana dispensaries will be regulated by the liquor board is "definitely a unique aspect of the District law." However, the thinking behind the restrictive D.C. law is not unique on the East Coast.

"D.C. falls in line with a trend of medical marijuana jurisdictions, especially on the East Coast," says Meno. He says that some jurisdictions, especially in California, failed to pass local regulations that clarified the law, leading to some limited abuse of the system. Jurisdictions that have passed medical marijuana legislation in the meantime -- including D.C. -- have "erred on the side of caution."

It remains to be seen whether the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration will serve as effective stewards of the medical marijuana dispensary system and prevent the prevent the proliferation of abuse. In drafting its regulations, the D.C. government has acted decidedly to stymie the possibility that recreational users will get their hands on medical cannabis.

"Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of patients at a disadvantage," says Meno.

Minnesota City Pages: K2 and the Synthetic Marijuana Boom

2010-07-28T13:22:00.002-04:00

The irony is that there would be no market for K2 in the first place if marijuana weren't outlawed. The high is just about what you'd expect from year-old dirt weed: It makes you stupid for a couple of hours and leaves you feeling like your mouth is an ashtray and your head is full of cloudy water.

This is the essential paradox of the synthetic weed products: In a legal vacuum, no one would ever choose to smoke it more than once. Its only appeal is to the poor souls whose paycheck comes with random drug tests, or those without connections to the real stuff.

"The only reason anyone is using this stuff is because they can get arrested for using marijuana," says Mike Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. "We could have a legal regulated marijuana market where people know what they're getting. Instead we have people messing around with these mystery drugs that are much less safe. It's nonsense."

Read the entire article here.

The Washington Post: District patients shouldn't expect legal sale of marijuana until early 2011

2010-07-28T13:19:00.001-04:00

With Congress staying out of the issue, medical marijuana advocates called the enactment of the law a "historic" victory for their movement.

"By allowing this law to take effect, Congress is actually taking a positive step towards sensible medical marijuana laws that serve to better the best interests of seriously ill patients," said Mike Meno of the Marijuana Policy Project.

Read the whole article here.

Huffington Post: More Politicians, Strategists See Opportunity in Supporting Marijuana Reform

2010-07-22T10:43:00.001-04:00

Link here.

For far too long, most politicians have operated under the (false) notion that supporting efforts to reform marijuana laws amounted to political suicide. But nowadays--as public support for reform continues to grow at a record pace--there are increasing signs that the movement to end marijuana prohibition is reaching a crucial threshold for victory: Political strategists are beginning to realize that candidates can not only benefit from supporting pro-legalization efforts, but suffer for opposing them.

Already this election season, we have seen two major statewide political groups--the California NAACP and the Washington state Democratic Party--endorse state ballot initiatives that would make marijuana legal for adults.

Then this weekend in San Jose, the California Democratic Party voted to remain neutral on November's Proposition 19 ballot measure despite widespread internal support, almost entirely out of concern that endorsing legalization would harm the party's anti-legalization candidates, among them Sen. Barbara Boxer and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. Many other Democratic officials have already endorsed the initiative on their own, and the L.A. Times reports, "despite taking a cautious stance, [the Democrats] appeared solidly behind the initiative, cheering and whooping much more raucously for the pro-endorsement speakers."

Consider the pitch made by just one of those speakers:

Robert Cruickshank, public policy director for the Courage Campaign, which backs progressive causes, called for the vote in an attempt to overturn a party committee's recommendation to adopt a neutral position. He started by reminding the assembled Democrats that the party's chairman, former San Francisco state Sen. John Burton, has said pot was the issue that would motivate young voters to go to the polls in this off-year election.

"If we endorse Proposition 19 and take a courageous position to support reform, just as we took courageous positions on same-sex marriage and other contentious issues, we will win the moral argument, we will win Proposition 19 and we will win races in November," Cruickshank said.

Others have pointed out that marijuana ballot initiatives could help Democratic voter turnout overall as well. Earlier this month, on an apparent "tip from an Obama official," The Atlantic's Joshua Green discovered "a few Democratic consultants who have become convinced that ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana, like the one Californians will vote on in November, actually help Democrats in the same way that gay marriage bans were supposed to have helped Republicans."

This strategy falls short, however, when Democrats fail to support marijuana initiatives. MPP's Steve Fox has already hypothesized that single-issue California voters who turn out in favor of Proposition 19 could also vote against Brown because of his opposition to the initiative ("Vote Green, Not Brown"). Now the state Democratic Party seems to share that concern.

And it's not just Democrats who see opportunity in supporting sensible marijuana policies. Right now in Connecticut there is a GOP primary race for the state's 4th Congressional District, in which two candidates' opposing views on marijuana policy are emerging as a potential campaign issue. Both candidates--Rick Torres and Rob Merkle--say they have used marijuana in the past, but only one, Torres, favors taxing and regulating the drug. Merkle, whose father prosecuted and sent to jail major drug traffickers, wants it to remain illegal. Torres says that makes Merkle a hypocrite.

The following is an unfortunately buried lede in an otherwise predictable article about feigned "outrage" over the recent finding that Merkle was arrested for marijuana possession more than 10 years ago.

Torres said that what disturbs him about the arrest is that Merkle and his campaign blasted Torres for his stance on marijuana laws. Torres said he favors legalization.
Merkle said he does not -- a stance, in light of his arrest and lenient treatment, that Torres said he finds hypocritical.

Whether that difference will benefit either candidate remains to be seen. But with marijuana measures on the ballot this year in California, Arizona, South Dakota, Oregon, and Detroit, and even more expected for 2012, don't be surprised to read about more candidates trying to court the steadily growing number of voters who no longer support policies that squander law enforcement resources and criminalize otherwise law-abiding adults simply for using a recreational substance that is safer than alcohol.

Politically, it might be in their best interest.

Follow Mike Meno on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarijuanaPolicy

POLITICO: Pot Group High-Ish on Palin (old)

2010-07-15T14:39:00.002-04:00

By PATRICK GAVIN | 6/21/10 3:29 PM EDT

Sarah Palin surprised many late last week when she said that marijuana usage was a "minimal problem."

"If somebody's gonna to smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society," Palin told the Fox Business Network.

The Marijuana Policy Project, which favors pot legalization, is high on her remarks, but down on Palin's lack of action on the issue.

"If Sarah Palin recognizes that marijuana is a 'minimal problem' and that law enforcement has greater priorities, she should get off the fence and join the growing ranks of libertarian-minded Republicans, including Rep. Ron Paul and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, who have called for an end to the outdated and failed policies of marijuana prohibition," Mike Meno, communications director at MPP, told POLITICO via email. "As someone who claims to be a proponent of personal liberty, Palin must recognize that the government's war on marijuana users is an outrageous assault to American civil liberties-leading to the arrest of more than 750,000 Americans every year for the simple possession of a substance that is safer than both alcohol and tobacco. More than 100 million Americans-including Sarah Palin-have used marijuana. Does she truly believe they all belong in jail?"

Quoted in Esquire

2010-07-14T11:52:00.000-04:00

Why the Tea Party Is the Hidden Force Behind Legal Pot

July 14, 2010 at 10:49AM by John H. Richardson

You're right, there does seem to be an awful lot of activity in the world of marijuana legalization this summer. Let's put together the pieces:

1. In 2010, more than a dozen state legislatures introduced new medical-marijuana laws, including conservative states where you wouldn't expect them — Kansas and Alabama, Tennessee and Nebraska.

2. Medical marijuana will be on the ballot this in Arizona and in South Dakota.

3. In Oregon, activists pushing for a new law to regulate medical-marijuana dispensaries collected 130,000 signature and put that on the November ballot, too.

4. Five other states are considering laws to relax and extend their existing medical-marijuana laws.

5. Eight states considered decriminalization laws that would replace jail sentences with fines, including Connecticut, Hawaii, Tennessee, and Virginia. (Already, fines are the only penalty for "personal use" amounts in 12 states, including Mississippi, California, Minnesota, and Oregon — 13 if you count Alaska, which considers small amounts at home functionally legal.)

6. The elimination of all criminal penalties for amounts under one ounce is also under consideration for a November initiative in Detroit, which would join a growing fraternity of quasi-open cities, along with Seattle and Denver.

7. Mainstream groups are becoming more open about their support, including the state Democratic Party of Maine and the NAACP, both of which endorsed legalization efforts.

8. And, of course, there's California, which is voting on full legalization this November. And that Prop 19 vote looks like it'll come down to the wire.

"What you're really seeing is groundswell," says Mike Meno of the Marijuana Policy Project. "There was a poll in October showing that 81 percent of Americans nationally support medical-marijuana laws. I always tell people, What other public-policy issue can 81 percent of Americans agree on?"

One factor Meno cites is the Tea Party movement, especially the libertarian streak represented by Ron Paul, who frames pot legalization as yet another states' rights issue. "People don't want government telling them what they can use to unwind with after work," Meno says.

Not only that, but a Gallup poll last fall showed significant growth in support from Republicans for outright legalization — 7 percent from 2005 to 2009, from a low of 21 percent to 28 percent today. Democrats had an even bigger jump, from 41 percent to 58 percent — a total increase of 13 percent in just four years. (Oddly, the independents, usually the weather vanes of American politics, show unusual conviction on this issue, going up only three percent in the same four years, from 46 percent in support in 2005 to 49 percent last year.)

Libertarian support helps explain the ballot initiatives in Arizona and South Dakota, hardly strongbeds of liberalism. Another cause, it seems clear now, is growing alarm about the violence associated with Mexican drug cartels, which make 60 to 70 percent of their profits off marijuana. (For history buffs, the irony is that marijuana laws were originally rooted in American hatred of Mexicans and the cheap "ditch weed" they smoked for recreation.)

All eyes are on California, where polls show the public almost perfectly divided but where the demographics suggest that change is inevitable — according to an April poll from a California CBS affiliate, only 39 percent of people 66 years or older thought pot should be legal, but a bracing 74 percent of folks 18 to 34 support it.

So even if California votes no, Meno says, "the wind is definitely at the backs of the anti-prohibition side."

Photo Credit: Rick Bowmer/AP Images

Quoted in the San Francisco Bay Guardian

2010-07-14T11:48:00.002-04:00

Oakland considers limiting and licensing marijuana growers

07.13.10 - 12:48 pm | Steven T. Jones

The medical marijuana community – everyone from small growers to Harborside Health Center, the biggest dispensary in Oakland – are reacting strongly against an ordinance proposed by Oakland City Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid to limit and license marijuana cultivation, a proposal that will be heard tonight (7/13) at 6 p.m. by the council's Public Safety Committee.

While medical marijuana advocates welcome regulations as a necessary step toward legitimizing the industry, they generally oppose anything limits a patient's rights to grow their own weed. "We support local regulation but not when it's at the expense of patients," Mike Meno, a spokesperson for the DC-based Marijuana Policy Project, told the Guardian.

Quoted in the Daily Caller

2010-07-12T10:33:00.001-04:00

San Francisco medical marijuana regs draw praise from pot advocates

By Chris Moody - The Daily Caller | Published: 1:26 AM 07/12/2010

If you want to sell marijuana in San Francisco, you’re going to have to play by some new rules — and advocates for pot legalization couldn’t be happier about it.

San Francisco passed new rules last week regulating the sale and distribution of medicinal marijuana in baked goods and other edible items, taking one step closer to making pot a mainstream product in the Golden State.

The new regulations, announced by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, require all baked goods that include marijuana to be individually wrapped with labels that list the exact amount of the drug in the product. Goods cannot resemble any kind of candy that may attract children, and no one under legal age may be present during the baking or manufacturing process. Dispensaries that offer hot and cold products on the same property, like brownies and milkshakes, must receive a special permit from the Public Health Department.

While the marijuana trade makes its way from black markets to government-regulated ones, San Francisco is taking the first of many steps toward imposing regulations and taxes on marijuana. It’s a move in the right direction, marijuana activists say.

“For the most part the regulations seem pretty common sense,” said Mike Meno, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project. “We don’t want this to be uncontrolled and unregulated. That’s what we’ve had for 70-plus years.”

California’s marijuana industry has boomed over the past few years in response to the state’s lax stance on medicinal drug products, with vendors opening up shop in cities across the state. California voters will decide in November whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use and allow local governments to set their own regulations, setting the stage for potentially hundreds of new rules in the coming years.

“This is all a natural process towards the mainstreaming of cannabis,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “With legalization clearly comes regulation.”

As long as marijuana products remain illegal, St. Pierre says, the government can do nothing to ensure the safety and quality of the product and they certainly cannot tax it. With a state budget deficit in the tens of billions, activists say that taxation of the product could help close the gap on the budget shortfall.

NORML launched an ad campaign in 2009 calling for the taxation and regulation of the drug, and many groups have outlined a number of ways the government can ensure safe production and distribution. Groups that advocate for new regulations have called for restrictions on driving after using marijuana, education programs that inform the public on safe use, and of course, strict laws against sales to children.

“Overall its just another example of the direction that medical marijuana and the marijuana industry as a whole is heading in, and that’s sensible regulation,” Meno said.

Polling data on the state proposition show that it remains unclear whether marijuana legalization advocates will get their wish in November. Although public opinion has shifted over the years, polls show that California voters are currently split on the issue. Nonetheless, advocates for reform remain steadfast.

“For so many years marijuana has been uncontrolled and unregulated and prohibition has been a disaster. All we’ve been asking for are the same types of treatment that are applied to so many other products in this country,” Meno said. “This is about the mainstreaming of marijuana.”

LTE in the Redding Record Searchlight

2010-07-11T20:56:00.000-04:00

ENDING DRUG WAR THE ONLY WAY TO WIN

Few people on either side of the marijuana debate would disagree that outdoor illegal marijuana growing operations are enormous problems for the environment in California and states across the country. But when you phrase the debate by asking whether or not these illegal grows are "worth fighting," you miss the point entirely.

Officials have been "fighting" these outdoor grows for nearly 30 years - since the creation of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting ( CAMP ) in 1983 - and by every objective standard they have only made the problem worse, squandering millions of precious tax dollars and law enforcement resources in the process.

Year after year, officers report record-breaking marijuana seizures, and year after year criminals simply plant more. Officials think that they are helping the environment by removing marijuana from protected lands, but in reality, they're the reason those lands have become such attractive growing sites for drug cartels. Prior to 2002, the majority of CAMP seizures took place on private lands or indoors. As a result, the cartels changed their operations, choosing instead to plant marijuana largely in publicly preserved parklands, much to the detriment of California's environment and wildlife. As officers raid more of these sites, they force the cartels to encroach deeper and deeper into protected lands in order to avoid detection.

Such tactics, employed by Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko and countless others, do not "keep an out-of-control problem from growing even worse." They make it worse. After almost three decades, it's clear that another strategy is needed.

Let's stop wasting money and misappropriating manpower that only further encourages criminals to plant more marijuana, ruin the environment, and terrorize many of our communities. The only solution is to regulate the state's marijuana industry, rendering both the cartels and CAMP obsolete.

Mike Meno, Marijuana Policy Project, Washington, D.C.

Quoted by Andrew Sullivan

2010-07-11T20:53:00.002-04:00

Why Do Cops Care About Pot?

07 Jul 2010 08:02 am

Because targeting marijuana gives police departments access to federal anti-drug money. Mike Meno sighs:

As we’ve stated many times before, marijuana eradication programs are not only horribly ineffective at reducing the supply of marijuana, but even worse, they force law enforcement to commit massive amounts of resources and manpower to marijuana offenses at the expense of much more serious crimes. That’s why it’s so insane for the federal government to encourage and reward this type of misallocation. As the Journal article points out, California police departments are expected to lose $100 million in state funding this year, presumably leading even more departments to take up the eradication cause.

Quoted in Cape Cod Times

2010-07-11T20:51:00.001-04:00

Marijuana law leaves Cape officials high and dry

By Aaron Gouveia

agouveia@capecodonline.com

July 05, 2010

FALMOUTH — The new law decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana has left local officials dazed and confused.

For 18 months, police officers have been issuing $100 non-criminal citations to people caught with less than an ounce of marijuana. But it's what happens when people don't pay their fines that is flummoxing officials in some communities.

[...]

Representatives from the clerk's offices in Barnstable and Orleans district courts would not comment on the civil citations and referred questions back to the individual towns.

But Michael Meno, director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, said there should be no confusion when collecting outstanding debt.

"The intent of the law is that any enforcement mechanism is the same as any other civil citation," Meno said. "Any problem with collecting the fines would be indicative of a problem with the civil citation system in general and not marijuana decriminalization itself."

My first column in Huffington Post

2010-07-02T14:57:00.000-04:00

Read it online here.

Radio interview on Iowa's AgInfo.net

2010-06-23T16:20:00.002-04:00

Listen to it here.

Before I begin this report, let me make it patently clear that I am not a drug user as in illegal. Sure I drink beer…don’t smoke…cigarettes or marijuana and have never dabbled in any of that stuff. But a press release came across my computer that I had to look into. It came from Washington, DC and involves the Marijuana Policy Project or MPP, the nation’s largest marijuana policy reform organization…and they’re trying to legalize the use of this weed for medical and recreational purposes. First a few facts:
*Someone is arrested for a marijuana offense every 37 seconds.

*89% of these are for marijuana possession — not for sale or manufacture.

*In the U.S., there are more arrests for marijuana possession each year than for all violent crimes combined.
And according to MPP, Marijuana prohibition has failed. Mike Meno is the Director of Communications for MPP: “Eventually we’d like to see marijuana taxed and regulated in a manner similar to alcohol”. Tomorrow we examine the agricultural implications of all of this.

Quoted in Gothamist

2010-06-20T14:33:00.001-04:00

Will Medical Marijuana Lead to Criminal Reefer Madness in NY?

Earlier this week NYC's special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan (website: SPECNARC.org!) fired off a letter to state legislators considering a bill that would legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Among her concerns, she feels that the bill would create a situation similar to LA, where pot dispensaries supposedly outnumber Starbucks. That's what we call Utopia, but it's Brennan's nightmare, and she thinks the New York bill is "far too loosely drawn, and offers no safeguards to protect the health of those who use it, and the safety of the communities where marijuana dispensaries would be located."

Brennan also argues that "dispensaries have proven to be public nuisances and magnets for crime," and criticizes the bill for not requiring a doctor in "good standing" to meet with a patient in person before writing a pot prescription. For counterpoint, we turn to Mike Meno, Director of Communications for the Marijuana Policy Project. He tells us, "Bridget Brennan’s fears are way off mark. New York’s medical marijuana bill is specifically crafted to safeguard against abuse through regulation—one of the many reasons it has garnered support from the likes of former Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau and state Sen. Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain.

"Brennan believes, wrongly, that the bill would allow “an unlimited number of ‘unregulated’ marijuana dispensaries, which could be near schools or in high-crime neighborhoods.” In reality, New York’s dispensaries will be licensed, tightly regulated and subject to intense scrutiny. The bill allows only state-licensed establishments to distribute medical marijuana, and the state health department will be able to deny a license to anyone it finds is not 'of good moral character.' Dispensaries would also be subject to local zoning laws."

Meno's riposte continues below, concluding that Brennan's comparisons to LA are not specifically too apt:

It’s also misleading to compare New York’s bill to the medical marijuana law California passed in 1996. The reason Los Angeles became home to more dispensaries than Starbucks (which may no longer be the case after the L.A. City Council regulated the city’s dispensaries 14 years after the fact) is because California did not impose statewide regulations on its program. New York’s law would provide regulation from the onset, and therefore more closely resemble the tightly controlled medical marijuana program in place in New Mexico.
Lastly, there is very little evidence to back Brennan’s claim that “dispensaries have proven to be public nuisances and magnets for crime.” In fact, a recent study in Denver showed that dispensaries are less likely to attract crime than banks and liquor stories. That same study showed they are as likely to be robbed as pharmacies—which, like medical marijuana dispensaries, exist to provide people with safe access to legitimate medical treatment options.

Quoted in AP-Iowa/Chicago Tribune

2010-06-20T13:29:00.001-04:00

Medical marijuana issue in Iowa hits roadblock

DES MOINES, Iowa —

The future of medical marijuana in Iowa is uncertain after a legislative leader and the state's pharmacy board said it is up to the other to move forward on the issue.

The pharmacy board voted unanimously in February to recommend that marijuana be allowed in Iowa for medicinal use. In its recommendation, the board also asked the Legislature to create a study committee to look at how the use of medical marijuana could be implemented.

Now, both sides have decided they've done all they can do, leaving it up to other to take the next step.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Des Moines, said that after the board's recommendation he discovered what apparently was a long-forgotten law on the Iowa books that allowed the pharmacy board to authorize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

"We were operating under the paradigm that it was against the law because of a statute," McCarthy said.

McCarthy said no study is needed and that because of the existing law the pharmacy board has the authority to treat marijuana like any other schedule II drug that requires a prescription.

"No change is needed," McCarthy said.

Lloyd Jessen, the board's executive director, disputes the idea that lawmakers don't need to act.

"They want us to do what they need to do and that's to implement a program and we don't have the authority to do that," Jessen said. "It's not a simple issue."

Jessen said the board cannot establish a distribution system for medical marijuana, create a list of medical conditions that marijuana could be prescribed for, set criminal penalties for violating the law, or put in place a quality control system without legislative action.

"The Legislature needs to understand we are limited," he said. "We are here to regulate pharmacies and pharmacists. These are all things the board can't do by making a rule for this. This requires legislation that is signed by the governor."

Jessen accused the Legislature of trying to sidestep the issue and leave tough questions to a regulatory agency.

Medical marijuana is legal in 14 states plus the District of Columbia. Nine of them legalized medical marijuana in public votes, and five others were legalized by legislative action, said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Washington D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, which works to increase public support for marijuana policy reform.

"There are 15 models around the country that show how to implement a law and they don't need to reinvent the wheel here," Meno said.

Polls have indicated support in Iowa for legalizing marijuana for medicinal use. The latest, by KCCI-TV earlier this month, showed 62 percent support for medical marijuana.

McCarthy insists the pharmacy board has the authority to implement a program.

"What they have asked us to do is already law," he said. "It should work like any other scheduled drug. We don't micromanage that -- what the distribution stream is or how doctors prescribe it."

Jessen disagreed and said a lot has changed since the law was passed in the mid-1970s.

"This is a broad society issue that needs input from everybody involved, including law enforcement and the medical community," he said.

Jessen also questioned why the governor-appointed board would take action that is in opposition to what the governor supports.

"The governor's own office of drug control policy is on record opposing medicinal marijuana," he said. "Why would the board implement a policy that is in direct conflict with the governor?"

Carl Olsen, a proponent of medicinal marijuana who spearheaded the petition drive that led to the pharmacy board's recommendation to legalize medical marijuana, said people who could benefit from the drug are suffering while officials bicker.

"What we have is a law that everybody claims they don't understand," Olsen said. "Then they expect people to be arrested and go to prison for using medicine while they argue about what it means."

Quoted in the Daily Caller

2010-06-20T13:14:00.001-04:00

Sarah Palin wants cops to leave weed smokers alone

By Mike Riggs - The Daily Caller | Published: 06/18/10 at 2:19 PM | Updated: 06/19/10 at 12:36 PM

Whodathunkit: The Thrilla from Wasilla, Mrs. USA, the grizzliest mama of them all is A-OK with folks getting stoned in the privacy of their own homes. “If somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm,” former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said recently on FOX News, the fuzz should just leave them be.

The folks at the Marijuana Policy Project, America’s largest weed legalization lobby, are happy to hear it. But they’d like to see Palin cash that check with some action.

“If Sarah Palin recognizes that marijuana is a ‘minimal problem’ and that law enforcement has greater priorities,” the MPP’s Mike Meno wrote in a statement to the press, “she should get off the fence and join the growing ranks of libertarian-minded Republicans, including Rep. Ron Paul and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, who have called for an end to the outdated and failed policies of marijuana prohibition.”

Meno even takes a swipe at Palin’s caveat — that legalizing weed would harm the kiddies: “Palin says she opposes making marijuana legal because of the message it would send to young people, but our current policies ensure that young people have better access to marijuana than nearly anyone else. Unlike the licensed merchants who sell tobacco and alcohol, drug dealers do not check IDs.”

They sure don’t!

While The Daily Caller has yet to hear back from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, it did reach out to its smoking readers for reactions to Palin’s statement.

“I’m a stoner who finds sarah palin linguistically and ideologically indecipherable, EVEN WHEN I’M NOT STONED,” wrote an artist in Atlanta. “I think hers is a pretty typical independent-but-not-republican sentiment, which is the type of rep she’s trying to foster, right? So it actually makes a lot of sense to me. Plus, maybe alaska is a total bummer and you need ganja to power through winter.”

A deejay in Washington had slightly less kind things to say. “I do disagree with most of her other positions on issues, and she usually comes across as ridiculous in her public and media appearance. So this one position on weed doesn’t make me any more keen to see her become our next President or hold any position of political authority. It does strike me as simple common sense, though.”

Palin said during her appearance that law enforcement resources are wasted on the war against fun. “Perhaps there are other things that our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do and not concentrate on such a, relatively speaking, minimal problem that we have in the country.”

Quoted in the Oakland (MI) Press ... under the wrong name

2010-06-11T13:54:00.002-04:00

Milford Council votes for medical marijuana moratorium

By STEVE KELM
Special to The Oakland Press

The Milford Village Council voted unanimously to adopt a six-month moratorium on medicinal marijuana within village limits.

This type of moratorium is also fairly common in other states that have recently passed medical marijuana laws. According to Mark Meno, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, states that have medical marijuana laws but do not have statewide regulations about where dispensaries can operate often adopt these types of moratoriums.

The Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the country and helped to campaign in Michigan for marijuana reform in 2008.

As Meno alluded to, the most confusing part of the medical marijuana law seems to be the lack of rules governing the creation and running of a medical marijuana dispensary.

Meno believes regulations on the creation of dispensaries may have been purposefully vague in the Michigan law because of past presidential administrations.

“When Michigan passed its medical marijuana law in the days of the Bush administration, the federal government was hostile to state medical marijuana laws. States worried that if they were to license dispensaries, the federal government might intervene.”

Quoted in Lansing City Pulse

2010-06-09T16:15:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, June 9,2010

Negative approach

Is the case of Frederick Wayne Dagit bad for the medical marijuana cause?

by Neal McNamara

On Tuesday afternoon, the Rev. Frederick Wayne Dagit sat in a black- and white-striped Ingham County Jail jumpsuit in 55th District Court in Mason. He looked calm, rested and alert. It was his second appearance in court after the Tri- County Metro Narcotics Squad raided his Okemos house and Williamstown Township pot smokers club and church exactly two weeks ago, allegedly finding a total of more than 200 pounds of marijuana at both locations.

Michael Van Huysse, Dagit’s court appointed attorney, asked Judge Donald Allen Jr. to reduce Dagit’s $500,000 bond and for a preliminary examination to be moved up two weeks. Allen adjourned Dagit’s next hearing until June 22, but did not immediately reduce his bond. Allen said he would consider it — though only reducing it to $150,000, still outside of Dagit’s financial reach — but had concerns about Dagit’s criminal history and the fact that he’d only lived in the area for six months.

Van Huysse’s pleas that Dagit, who suffers from cirrhosis, was not healthy enough to remain in jail and that he was an important pillar in the medical marijuana community did not seem to faze Allen. Dagit, a medical marijuana cardholder, will remain in that striped jumpsuit until at least June 22.

In the two weeks since Dagit’s arrest, it appears that law enforcement officials were targeting Dagit alone — not the medical marijuana smoking club he oversaw in Williamstown Township, nor the business partners. The club is open, and no one else has been arrested. According to court documents, police set up a buy/best scenario with Dagit alone.

Medical marijuana activists say that while arresting someone for marijuana is stupid, it’s the law, which still has to be obeyed.

Greg Francisco, the former executive director of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association, says that the state needs to start regulating medical marijuana smoking clubs — like Dagit’s — so that people are not being arrested for violating an unclear law.

Francisco said that he and Dagit have “struck sparks” in the past and was not surprised about the arrest. He said that before his arrest, Dagit seemed determined to get a “test case.”

“I don’t want a beer drinkers club opening up down the street without regulation. Fortunately they do have regulation; it’s called a liquor license,” Francisco said. “We as an association don’t object to reasonable regulation.”

Dagit’s arrest could cause backlash against medical marijuana, but Francisco feels that a visible solution would be clear regulation on medical marijuana.

Mike Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which sponsored the 2008 medical marijuana ballot drive, said that Michigan’s law was purposefully silent on medical marijuana distribution. Under the administration of George W. Bush, the federal Justice Department was vigilant about cracking down on medical marijuana for violating federal law. The administration of Barack Obama is doing the opposite, which is why states like Colorado and Rhode Island are beginning to pass legislation regulating dispensaries.

“There’s a lot of the confusion resulting from the fact that Michigan’s law doesn’t speak to dispensaries,” Meno said. “Without that clarity, local law enforcement is interpreting the law differently from county to county or city to city. It sends a mixed message about what patients can and can’t do.”

Meno’s organization sees medical marijuana as a separate issue from ending marijuana prohibition — that is, the arrest and prosecution of marijuana users, buyers and sellers. So a case like Dagit’s has the potential to damage the public’s perception of medical marijuana, though it’s still a mostly popular measure.

“We don’t want these laws to be a mockery,” Meno said. “These are laws that are passed for sick people, not for everyone.”

My op-ed for Minnesota Public Radio

2010-06-09T11:13:00.000-04:00

It's not the marijuana but its prohibition that fuels crime

by Mike Meno

June 9, 2010

Last month, while attempting to explain a recent rise in gang-related violence, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak made a string of unfortunate -- and flat-out misleading -- comments. Specifically, he attempted to blame violence by criminal gangs on citizens who consume marijuana.

"When you pay for marijuana, you are paying for the bullet that goes into the head of someone on the streets," he said in one interview.

The mayor's logic is flawed. By placing the blame for violence entirely on marijuana's consumers, Rybak conveniently ignored the central role in gang violence that is played by marijuana's prohibition and the politicians who support it.

It is true that gangs make considerable amounts of money selling marijuana. According to some government estimates, Mexican drug cartels make more than 60 percent of their profits from marijuana alone and control distribution networks in more than 250 American cities, including Minneapolis.

However, the only reason such criminal groups make any money at all from marijuana is that our current policies allow them to. By keeping marijuana illegal and confined to the black market, our wildly ineffective marijuana laws -- and any elected official who supports them -- are to blame for handing criminals a virtual monopoly on the lucrative marijuana trade. (Many people may be surprised to learn that marijuana is estimated to be America's largest cash crop, a $36 billion-a-year industry larger than corn and wheat combined.)

Like alcohol prohibition in the last century, marijuana prohibition has helped to fuel violent crime in Minnesota and across the country.

Rybak's own deputy police chief has acknowledged that violence in the marijuana trade is caused by its prohibition, telling station KARE11 last month: "It is illegal to distribute marijuana, so the people distributing marijuana are criminal syndicates that are engaged in very violent activity to protect their turf."

Mayor Rybak is simply out of touch with reality if he refuses to acknowledge prohibition's leading role in gang violence. Marijuana's consumers, who total at least 15 million Americans every month, have been demonized long enough by more than 70 years of "Reefer Madness" style propaganda and laws that criminalize use of a substance that by every objective standard is far safer than alcohol and tobacco. By saying marijuana consumers are to blame for gang violence as well, Mayor Rybak contributed little to the urgent and rapidly expanding debate over how to change our nation's broken marijuana laws.

If the mayor truly wants to end violence associated with marijuana, he needs to be honest with his constituents and join the growing ranks of those calling for an end to prohibition and the failed policies that drive money into the hands of criminals -- and, yes, bullets into people's heads.

The only real solution to the prohibition-fueled violence is to regulate marijuana, and bring its sale under the rule of law, the same way we ended the criminal violence that stemmed from alcohol prohibition. If the millions of Americans who regularly consume marijuana had the legal option to purchase it from licensed and law-abiding establishments, they would have no reason to patronize the criminal market.

There's a reason these same gangs that deal marijuana aren't brewing hops or selling moonshine.

----

Mike Meno is director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, which describes its mission, in part, as to "change state laws to reduce or eliminate penalties" for marijuana use.

Quoted in AP story on "cannabis caravans"

2010-06-07T16:24:00.003-04:00

Cannabis Caravans Fuel Medical Pot Boom in Montana

The roving cannabis caravans appear to be unique to Montana, although mobile marijuana operations have arisen elsewhere. A rolling marijuana dispensary in California sold chocolate-covered cookies, brownies, pretzels and other marijuana-laced items out of an RV before authorities moved to shut it down.

Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, the chief lobbying arm of the legalization movement, said the 14 states that allow medical marijuana have varying regulations that could make it difficult for the caravans to operate outside Montana.

"The more I hear about these things, it sounds like they're not following the intent of the law," Meno said. "People say they might be making a mockery of the law, and I hope that's not the case."

Quoted in the Billings Gazette, Missoulian (MT)

2010-05-30T12:39:00.002-04:00

Regulation of medical marijuana a struggle nationwide

Other states facing medical marijuana explosion

HELENA – Montana is hardly alone among the states that have legalized medical marijuana and now are struggling with how to regulate a rapidly growing and increasingly contentious industry.

The most common regulatory effort, officials say, focuses on those who provide the drug to approved patients.

Moves are afoot in Oregon and Colorado to regulate marijuana “dispensaries,” which are largely unregulated in Montana.

“Since the Obama administration changed federal policy, there’s been a real drive in states with medical marijuana laws to actually regulate their industry at a state level, especially the providers of medical marijuana,” said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., a group advocating for lesser state penalties for the medical and non-medical use of marijuana.

Quoted in the Statesman Journal (Ore.)

2010-05-21T12:43:00.002-04:00

Petitioners Seek Medical Marijuana Outlets

By Stacey Barchenger and Peter Wong • Statesman Journal • May 21, 2010
Advocates of medical marijuana on Thursday submitted 110,000 signatures, more than the amount required, for a ballot measure to allow state-licensed pot dispensaries in Oregon.
The proposed measure would not change the medical conditions under the law for which medical marijuana may be used.
If such a measure ever becomes law, Oregon would join California and a few other states that allow dispensaries. But supporters of the measure argue that reported problems with dispensaries in California are precisely what the Oregon measure is trying to avoid. And one marijuana reform-minded group says it will remain neutral on the issue.
"We support dispensary programs," said Mike Meno of the national Marijuana Policy Project. "For many patients, they are the best way to get safe access to their medicine."
The Marijuana Policy Project lobbies at the state and federal levels for medical marijuana to be taxed and regulated like alcohol.
California's law allowed for dispensaries but left regulation to local jurisdictions, Meno said.
"Especially in states where we're pushing for new medical marijuana laws, they get a bad rap from stories they hear out of California; that there's more dispensaries there than Starbucks," Meno said. A state-regulated program could avoid a flood of dispensaries, he said.
Oregon's original medical marijuana measure, approved by voters in 1998, allows only patients with state-issued cards, or their caregivers, to grow a specified number of mature plants. The current number of mature plants is six. The law did not allow marijuana sales, which would have conflicted with federal law.
"But now that the Obama administration has indicated that they will allow states to regulate medical marijuana, Oregon needs to create a regulated system so every patient can access quality controlled medicine," said John Sajo, director of Voter Power, the group that organized the petition-signature campaign.
Fourteen states have medical marijuana programs. States that will soon allow regulated dispensaries include Rhode Island, Maine, Washington D.C. and New Jersey, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

Quoted in the Washington Business Examiner

2010-05-19T14:40:00.002-04:00

Medical marijuana use pits compassion against workplace safety

If an employee arrives at work intoxicated or high, conventional wisdom is that the employer is likely to terminate that employee fairly quickly.

And most likely, few people would second guess such an action.

But with a growing number of states, including Washington, legalizing the use of doctor-prescribed marijuana for medical conditions, workplace decisions regarding employees who test positive for the drug aren’t so black and white anymore.

Employers throughout the nation and the South Sound are trying to determine how to be compassionate to employees who are sick, yet still maintain a safe working environment.

That balance is becoming more difficult to achieve because businesses are conducting more drug tests than they were five years ago, according to MBG Management Services Inc., a 30-year-old human resources consulting company that focuses on helping employers deal with drug or alcohol abuse problems that affect workplace safety or productivity.

Ron Kuest, president and founder of MBG, said that Washington’s medical marijuana law specifically states that employers are not required to accommodate marijuana use in the workplace.

“Because the impairing effects, particularly in information processing, last for weeks to months depending on use, I recommend employers not permit use,” Kuest said. “If an employer does choose to accommodate, then I would strongly recommend the employer require the notification be made to the employer before use begins. I recommend legitimacy of use be assessed by a medical review officer and a work assessment be conducted by an occupational medicine clinic. With those checks in place, the use of medical marijuana then becomes the same as the use of any other strongly impairing prescription medication.”

And Kuest said he expects more human resources issues to arise as the use of medical marijuana increases.

“Due to the increasing publicity surrounding the use of marijuana as medication there will, no doubt, be increasing pressure for use,” Kuest said. “I can tell you as a trained pharmacist, for most employees there are other more effective medications used to treat specific conditions other than marijuana. I think this is validated by the fact that in the state of Washington, we have never had a client request assistance in addressing this issue. Yet the state law has been in effect for 11 years.”

But the Marijuana Policy Project disagrees with his assessment.

Mike Meno, director of communications for MPP, said there is a growing consensus in the science community that marijuana is a safe, effective medicine for a range of health issues.

He said MPP would like to see employers treat medical marijuana users the same way they would treat employees taking other legal medications.

“If someone is legally using marijuana, why should that person be punished if they can still perform their studies on the job without it interfering at all?” Meno asked. “We wouldn’t promote anyone being under the influence at the job.”
Meno said the problem with drug testing and employers firing employees based on the results of those tests is that marijuana stays in a person’s system for a long time.

For example, he said, patients might use medical marijuana on a Friday to help get a good night’s sleep without pain, but when tested a week later, the drug will still show up in their system.

Meno said that in this type of situation, the employee was likely never close to being at work under the influence of the drug. But they still could be subject to disciplinary action.

“People should look at this with common sense and a compassionate view point,” he said. “(HR) people just need to realize it’s a legal medication now. For dozens of people, medical marijuana might be what is making them able to work. A lot of patients report medical marijuana gives them effective pain relief while allowing them to function in their day-to-day lives. Have compassion for these people. If it is not affecting their work, why should they suffer for it?”

LTE in Providence Journal

2010-05-17T15:10:00.001-04:00

Treat pot like alcohol

As a commission created by the Rhode Island Senate examines the harmful and costly impact marijuana prohibition has had on the state, it was reassuring to see your editorial board join the growing ranks of those who want to see our marijuana laws changed (Journal’s Feb. 9 editorial “Decriminalize pot”).

Marijuana prohibition has done nothing but waste billions of taxpayer dollars, fuel an illicit market and make criminals out of those who choose to use a substance that is undeniably safer than alcohol. A bill being sponsored by nearly half the General Assembly would reduce the penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana to a $150 fine and result in substantial savings for the state.

Decriminalizing marijuana does little, however, to break the monopoly that criminal gangs and drug dealers currently have on the market.

According to Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that for alcohol would produce savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.

Rhode Island could set a powerful example for the rest of the nation by becoming the first state to responsibly remove marijuana from the criminal market altogether, taxing and regulating it like alcohol, and reaping untold millions in new revenue.

Mike Meno, Washington, DC

This writer is director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project

LTE in the Washington Post

2010-05-08T11:31:00.001-04:00

The prohibition of marijuana: That's the problem.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

D.C. Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham might be an unlikely advocate for overhauling our nation's broken marijuana laws, but he articulated a central truth about the harms associated with marijuana and marijuana prohibition ["As D.C. votes on marijuana, seeds already firmly planted," front page. May 4]. "People don't feel marijuana is dangerous," Newsham said, "but it is, because of the way it is sold."

Exactly. Marijuana is virtually nontoxic, incapable of producing a fatal overdose and much less dangerous than both alcohol and tobacco. But by keeping marijuana illegal, our policies have created an underground, unregulated market that is controlled by criminals and violent gangs.

More than 15 million Americans use marijuana every month, and many of them will risk their safety when trying to buy it from drug dealers who are not required to follow any of the responsible controls, regulations and laws that we have successfully applied to the sale of alcohol.

It's time for officials to acknowledge reality: Marijuana doesn't kill people. Prohibition does.

Mike Meno, Washington

The writer is director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, which promotes support for nonpunitive marijuana policies.

Live TV appearance on Russia Today

2010-05-06T12:51:00.001-04:00

Watch it here.

Quoted in AFP

2010-05-05T18:49:00.001-04:00

US capital okays medical marijuana

WASHINGTON — City councillors in Washington voted unanimously on Tuesday to allow the US capital to join 14 states in allowing medical marijuana to be used to treat certain chronically ill patients.

Under the new law, which has to be signed by Mayor Adrian Fenty and then survive a 30-day period of review by Congress before taking effect, physicians will be able to prescribe medical marijuana to patients suffering from illnesses including HIV/AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis and glaucoma.

Mike Meno of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) envisaged no problems with Congress passing Washington's medical marijuana law.

Up to eight licensed dispensaries would be set up for patients to go to get their marijuana, said Meno.

The dispensaries would in turn get their marijuana from licensed growers in the capital, each of which will be allowed to grow up to 95 plants at indoor facilities.

"DC's law doesn't allow personal cultivation," Meno said.

According to MPP, which is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States, ballot initiatives in November in South Dakota and Arizona will ask voters there to choose whether or not to allow medical marijuana in their states.

Another dozen states are mulling similar laws.

Quoted in the Durango Herald

2010-05-03T10:24:00.001-04:00

Colorado to air marijuana cooking show

Cooking shows allow medical marijuana patients to see what their culinary options are, said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, based in Washington, D.C.

“For many patients, cooking marijuana into food is the preferred method of delivery," Meno said. “It doesn't involve smoking, so there's no potential damage to their lungs."

Quoted in Drug War Chronicle

2010-04-26T14:55:00.000-04:00

4/20 Events Bring Out Thousands Nationwide

Even the Marijuana Policy Project, which specializes in working the corridors of power, had little bad to say about 4/20. "Our approach to improving marijuana laws is to take it from a serious lobbying position," said Mike Meno, the group's communications director. "But at the same time, we rely on grassroots support from people who are passionate about the issue, and many of them like 4/20. While we would prefer a more buttoned-down approach, we don't discourage anyone from getting involved in other ways. We just ask that they do so with a focus on what is going to help and improve our chances," he said.

Still, Meno said, those sorts of events can cut for or against reform. "It's sort of a double-edged sword," he reasoned. "It's great if there's a big turnout and people see how diverse it is and how much support there is for changing the law, but on the other hand, if only a half-dozen people show up, maybe it's not the best thing image-wise."

Quoted in the St. Petersburg Times

2010-04-22T10:13:00.001-04:00

Quadriplegic faces jail time for using medicinal marijuana

The Marijuana Policy Project does, in fact, support widespread legalization. But spokesman Mike Meno pointed to mounting scientific evidence that marijuana can relieve the pain and symptoms of debilitating illnesses such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis without the side effects of prescription narcotics.
"It's tragic that Florida is one of 36 states where patients are still treated as criminals," Meno said, "if marijuana is the medicine that works best for them."

Quoted in CNBC.com

2010-04-19T14:50:00.001-04:00

Part of CNBC's special report, "Marijuana & Money."

The Marijuana Policy Project, MPP, believes taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol is the best way to set up the industry with government setting sales tax rates.
“Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the country," says the MPP's Mike Meno. "It is a 36-billion dollar a year industry, bigger than corn and wheat combined. The notion that our largest cash crop should go untaxed and unregulated, especially in such tough economic times, is nothing short of insane,” he says.

Interview on Drug Truth Network

2010-04-13T11:18:00.000-04:00

My interview with Dean Becker is available here.

Quoted in the Baltimore Sun

2010-04-11T13:48:00.001-04:00

Medical pot backers hail vote

The Maryland Senate voted 35-12 on Saturday to give sick people access to marijuana, sending a strong message that the upper chamber is serious about the controversial idea.

House leaders have said they will not take up the measure this year. The legislature's 90-day session ends on Monday.

Nevertheless, advocates hailed the Senate vote as a victory. "We are very happy," said Mike Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a national organization promoting medical use of pot. "To vote by such a margin means that the Senate is in line with public sentiment nationally and here in Maryland."

Quoted in Missouri Suburban Journals

2010-04-11T13:45:00.001-04:00

Marijuana questions fail by slim margins in Cottleville

“It is sad to know that Missouri is one of 36 states where patients are still treated like criminals if they try to use marijuana,” said Mike Meno, communications director for the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project, the nation’s largest marijuana policy reform organization.

Medical marijuana is legal in 14 states. In nine of those states, the laws were enacted by ballot initiatives, Meno said.

During an off-election year like this one, evidence suggests people who are strongly opposed to an issue are more likely to turn out at the polls, Meno said.

“I hope local activists and supporters can have better luck in the future,” Meno said, referring to the Cottleville measures. “I would ask people with compassion for patients to come out the next time they have the chance and show their support for medical marijuana laws.”

Quoted in Washington Examiner

2010-03-30T22:41:00.001-04:00

D.C. leaders OK guidelines for medical pot

The issue is a hot topic among groups like the Marijuana Policy Project, which said that 13 of the 14 states with legalized medical marijuana permit home cultivation.

"For a lot of patients, it's a cheaper and easiest option for getting their medicine," said Mike Meno, director of communications for the lobbying group. "We support the measure to give patients safe and reliable access to their medicine."

Quoted in Gothamist

2010-03-30T16:27:00.001-04:00

As Medical Marijuana Moves Through New York Senate, Debate Intensifies

We contacted Mike Meno, the Director of Communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, for a rebuttal, and he did not disappoint:

The first thing the article gets wrong is that the tax would not be on the medicine itself, but rather on the dispensers—just like we tax other drugs. Second, it would be an excise tax on the product itself, not the sales transaction, so it wouldn't be a sales tax (or a "sin" tax). Third, the claim that New York could end up with recommendation mills (like in parts of California) is not accurate, because New York's law would require patients to have an ongoing relationship with their doctor. Fourth, because of federal law, marijuana can't actually be prescribed, but is instead recommended. Because of this, marijuana would not be a prescription drug but would rather be in a class of its own.
But the most glaring inaccuracy in the article is the assertion that marijuana is not medicine. Marijuana's medical value has been supported by an ever-growing body of peer-reviewed scientific studies, public health organizations including the American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine and American College of Physicians, and most recently by a $9 million study from the University of California, San Diego, that was based on 15 separate clinical trials.

There's a reason 14 other states have passed medical marijuana laws and more than a dozen others are considering them—it's because doctors and patients say it works, and that they need safe and legal access to this legitimate treatment option. If some in New York see a way to make tax revenue from this new industry during tough economic times, that isn't reason to dismiss marijuana's proven medical efficacy.

But who are you going to believe, that crazy stoner or the columnist who once described Plan B as "basically a double dose of the regular birth-control pill."

Quoted in The American Conservative

2010-03-29T10:26:00.002-04:00

Will the Medical Marijuana Movement Survive Wal-Mart?

Wal-Mart was so righteous in its move to sever all ties with this heretofore loyal associate, that it initially tired to block his access to unemployment benefits, too. “This is not acceptable ,” said Mike Meno of the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project, which launched a boycott of Wal-Mart, shortly after the story broke. “This is a guy with kids. Not only is this shameful neglect and immoral, but it is potentially illegal.”

LTE in Frederick News Post

2010-03-23T11:06:00.001-04:00

Smith no judge of medical marijuana
Originally published March 23, 2010

Charlie Smith needs a reality check ("Prosecutor at odds with medical marijuana," March 19). His opposition to Maryland's medical marijuana bill flies in the face of all available scientific evidence and the urging of scores of medical professionals, including the Maryland Board of Pharmacy, Maryland Pharmacists Association, and Maryland Nurses Association, who all endorse the bill.

Smith is a law-enforcement official -- not a doctor. He has no professional qualifications to decide whether or not medical marijuana is a "proven drug" for certain conditions, and he has no business broadcasting his ignorance on the topic.

By saying he would not support medical marijuana without "doctors saying that it has efficacy," Smith is being knowingly dishonest. He knows doctors have said medical marijuana has efficacy, because this week in Annapolis he testified against a substantial number of them who said just that, including Del. Dan Morhaim, the bill's main sponsor in the House. (Sen. David Brinkley of Frederick is the sponsor in the Senate.)

It's also telling that none of the law enforcement officials Smith says he "spoke" to bothered to testify against the bill. In reality, the state police have taken a "neutral" position.

Perhaps Smith should as well.

MIKE MENO

Marijuana Policy Project

Quoted in DailyFinance.com

2010-03-23T10:30:00.000-04:00

Read the whole article here.

Similarly, the Marijuana Policy Project hasn't gotten Casias' job back, but it has made strides -- Wal-Mart no longer plans to contest Casias's unemployment benefits. MPP spokesman Mike Meno recognizes that a boycott is an uphill battle, but he says the group has no plans to back down.

"We are not looking to lift this boycott any time soon," says Meno. "We're trying to draw attention to this despicable act. It's not just unjust or immoral for Wal-Mart to fire this guy who worked there diligently for five years, it also violates Michigan's marijuana laws."

Quoted in Esquire

2010-03-12T13:06:00.001-05:00

Read the full article here.

Now Michigan spends 25 percent of its budget on prisons, and it's cutting education to keep up the payments. In that regard, the state is very much part of a national trend. In the words of Mike Meno, national spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project: "They're laying off teachers in California, in Utah they're talking about cutting the twelfth grade — people are getting really desperate, and this is a good time to take a look at the prisoners in jail simply for using a substance that's far safer than alcohol."

Op-ed in Forbes.com

2010-02-26T17:58:00.001-05:00

Here's the link.

Commentary
Don't Believe The Hype
Mike Meno, 02.26.10, 5:38 PM ET
Peter A. Lipson's recent column about medical marijuana contains a slew of egregious inaccuracies. Not only is it poorly researched, but he fails to acknowledge the small mountain of evidence that has shown marijuana to be a safe, legitimate and potentially lifesaving medicine for many seriously ill patients.

Marijuana has been used as a medicine for at least 5,000 years, but the "real question," Mr. Lipson writes, "is whether it safely and effectively mitigates the course or symptoms of any medical condition."

To answer that, one needs only to refer to the substantial number of peer-reviewed studies on the topic, as well as the many esteemed health organizations that have endorsed patients' legal access to medical marijuana.

Just take the American Nurses Association, which says, "there is a growing body of evidence that marijuana has a significant margin of safety when used under a practitioner's supervision."

Still not convinced?

In 2008 the American College of Physicians--124,000 doctors of internal medicine--stated, "Evidence not only supports the use of medical marijuana in certain conditions, but also suggests numerous indications for cannabinoids," marijuana's unique, active components.

The American Academy of HIV Medicine, American Public Health Association, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and countless others, have echoed these conclusions.

Ignoring such support, Mr. Lipson argues that marijuana could not be a "science-based treatment" because it "does not come in easily measured doses." He adds that the notoriously ineffective Marinol pill could be, however, because it contains "set amounts" of cannabinoids.

But whereas whole-plant marijuana contains up to 80 different cannabinoids, many possessing therapeutic properties, Marinol contains just one (THC) and therefore does not offer the full medicinal potential that marijuana does. And--contrary to what Mr. Lipson says--Marinol is actually less effective as a dosing option than smoked or vaporized marijuana, because when ingested orally the pill takes longer to have an effect. Alternatively, inhaled marijuana provides near immediate relief, allowing patients to administer dosage based on their specific needs.

Mr. Lipson also claims that "data in favor of the use of marijuana tend to be anecdotal and hyperbolic." This is simply not true. Controlled clinical trials published in a substantial number of peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Neurology, The Lancet and the Journal of Opioid Management, show marijuana helps ease neuropathic pain, a condition common in those suffering from HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other diseases. These studies show marijuana relieves that pain even when conventional painkillers fail.

If this sampling isn't enough, just last week, the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, at the University of California, San Diego, released a report based on 15 separate studies and nearly $9 million in research showing again that smoked marijuana can provide relief from pain caused by nerve damage and the muscle spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis.

Instead of even acknowledging these findings--released days before his column was published--Mr. Lipson instead overstates long-debunked prohibitionist scare-talk, warning readers that, "marijuana has many negative effects, such as addiction and withdrawal." Well, according to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, that level of addiction is relatively minor. In a 1999 report the Institute of Medicine reported that "millions of Americans have tried marijuana ... [but] few marijuana users become dependent on it."

That same government report found that "nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and all can be mitigated by marijuana," which directly counters Mr. Lipson's baseless claim that marijuana "doesn't seem to help with weight loss in cancer … or with nausea and appetite loss."

Then there's Mr. Lipson's conclusion, which states that medical marijuana advocates "should focus their efforts on improving the study of marijuana rather than the premature use of it as a drug." While it is true that the federal government actively prevents the research necessary for marijuana to pass through the FDA approval process, thousands of suffering Americans cannot afford to wait for the federal government to come to its senses. The rationale behind the push for medical marijuana is moral, despite what Mr. Lipson says. It is unconscionable that patients who could find relief from marijuana should be denied access to a potentially lifesaving medicine and treated like criminals if they use it, simply because the federal government has failed to allow research.

Rather than call attention to this dilemma facing seriously ill patients, Mr. Lipson sadly promotes baseless claims, helping to preserve an unjust system that keeps legitimate medicine from patients who need it most.

Mike Meno is assistant director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Read more Forbes opinions here.

Quoted in NYC's Wanted Mag

2010-02-11T16:41:00.001-05:00

Read the entire article here.

"On January 18, New Jersey became the 14th State to legalize medical marijuana. Like those brave states before it, California the first back in 1996, New Jersey is relying on what Mike Meno, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project calls a “small mountain of peer-reviewed research that has been done on marijuana over the last 20 years.”

Based on that research, he said, many of the country’s most prominent health organizations have jumped on board stating strongly that the outlaw herb has legitimate medical value to help everything from glaucoma to depression and that patients should not be denied access.

The political and legal machines are both gearing up on the side of legalizing marijuana and, of course, that is what it takes.

In addition to the now 14 states that have decriminalized marijuana for medical use, ranging from New Jersey’s new initially stricter laws to California’s more relaxed stance, other states have reduced penalties to the extent that possession of small amounts of marijuana is comparable to a traffic citation and some cities, like Denver and Seattle, have deemed it the lowest law enforcement priority, according to MPP’s Mr. Meno.

California rep. Tom Ammiano has proffered a bill to legalize and regulate cannabis as we do with alcohol, a plan that would produce $1.4 billion in state tax revenue every year for the desperate-for-cash state. And even the Federal government is beginning to come around, maybe because its leader admitted he inhaled. In October, the Justice Department delivered on Obama’s campaign promise to cease using federal law enforcement in states that have made marijuana legal for medical use. “This is the most meaningful reform in policy because it frees states up to pass more medical marijuana laws without fear of recrimination,” Mr. Meno said.

LTE trade-off in the Baltimore Sun

2010-02-04T15:15:00.003-05:00

This idiot wrote this, so I wrote this:

Mike Gimbel should know better

It is downright disturbing to see that Mike Gimbel, someone who has worked in substance abuse programs, could express such a shockingly callous and ignorant view of medical marijuana dispensaries and drug treatment centers by implying that they would have a negative effect on "our communities, especially our children." ("Md. wouldn't be able to control marijuana dispensaries," Readers respond, Feb. 4). As Mr. Gimbel himself should know, such establishments exist in order to provide reprieve and care for afflicted members of our community.

The medical marijuana bill currently proposed by lawmakers in Annapolis would establish a very limited number of state-licensed dispensaries throughout the state. These distribution centers would safely provide medical marijuana only to qualified patients who suffer from certain debilitating diseases and have been recommended marijuana by a doctor with whom they have a long-standing relationship.

So how exactly would it harm our community to safely provide medicine only to those who could benefit from it?

If Mr. Gimbel is truly worried about the effect such dispensaries would have on children, he might be interested in reading a 2008 study of official state government surveys of teen drug use (compiled at mpp.org/teenuse), which found that no state with a medical marijuana law has experienced an increase in youth marijuana use since its law's enactment. In fact, all medical marijuana states have reported overall decreases, many exceeding 50 percent in some age groups.

Mike Meno, Baltimore

This writer is assistant director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington.

MPP's first video blog

2010-02-03T17:13:00.001-05:00

Watch the first-ever episode of "MPP Insider" here.

High Times: Marijuana Reform: More Popular Than You Might Realize

2010-02-03T16:26:00.002-05:00

Read it here.

My first live TV interview

2010-01-27T13:26:00.001-05:00

Talking about medical marijuana in Maryland on ABC2's "Good Morning Maryland." Watch it here.

Quoted in the Frederick News Post (MD)

2010-01-27T10:52:00.000-05:00

Read the entire article here.

Maryland law allows for a limited medical-use defense in court, but patients can be given a $100 fine and criminal conviction even after the defense has been employed, said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project.
"We don't think that does a good enough job of protecting patients," he said.

Quoted in The Washington Post

2010-01-20T15:53:00.002-05:00

Read the whole article here.

As drafted, the Health Department will establish the medical conditions under which patients could qualify for a prescription. Catania's bill states that the conditions should be based on illnesses that are "chronic or long-lasting, debilitating [and] produce intractable pain which does not respond to ordinary medical or surgical measures."
Mike Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, said his organization fears that criteria is too restrictive.

"We are just worried the decisions about who can use marijuana [are] being left up to bureaucrats and not doctors," he said.

Cheech & Chong & Meno

2010-01-14T12:24:00.002-05:00

Quoted in Politico

2010-01-12T12:02:00.001-05:00

Read it online here.

"Cheech and Chong Go to D.C."
By KIKI RYAN | 1/12/10 4:24 AM EST
The legendary Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are rolling into town for Wednesday night’s gala dinner celebrating the Marijuana Policy Project’s 15th anniversary. But will the comedic duo’s presence send the entire dinner up in smoke? “You’d be hard-pressed to find tie-dye at this event,” said Mike Meno, assistant director of communications for MPP, an organization with 29,000 members.

Set for the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, with tickets (which are still available) costing $250 per person, the event is still every bit the Washington formal. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) — who has a long record of supporting the rights of states to make their own decisions on legalizing marijuana — will speak. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson — the libertarian-leaning Republican who has a political action committee set up for a 2012 White House run — will also deliver remarks. (No word on whether “Dave” will be there.)

“The subject might be a little different than what people are used to, but a bipartisan, mainstream group of people attend,” Meno said.

My appearance on "Midday With Dan Rodricks" on WYPR

2010-01-11T17:12:00.002-05:00

Listen to it here. Also in studio: Del. Dan Morhaim.

High Times: A Push For "The Best Marijuana Laws In The World"

2010-01-06T15:29:00.001-05:00

Read my latest High Times column here.

Quoted in The Gazette, my old stomping ground

2009-12-18T14:59:00.002-05:00

Read the whole article here.

"Public perception has indeed been on our side," said Michael Meno, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington. "The problem is that the people are ahead of the politicians on this one, and there are still those politicians that still think it's politically risky to come out in favor of laws that will protect sick and dying patients from arrest."

LTE in the Herald News (Mass.)

2009-12-18T14:58:00.000-05:00

Marijuana is legitimate, effective medicine

If Arthur T. Dean agrees that “medical questions are best determined by science” (“Balanced media needed in medical marijuana debate,” Dec. 16), he should take heed of the small mountain of peer-reviewed scientific research that has shown medical marijuana to be a safe and effective treatment for a wide range of conditions, including cancer, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis.

Such research has resulted in scores of esteemed health organizations — including the American College of Physicians, American Public Health Association, American Nurses Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society — officially recognizing that marijuana has legitimate medical value.

And if Mr. Dean is worried about the number of teenagers using marijuana, he might consider why teen use of alcohol and tobacco have declined in recent years while teen use of marijuana has not.

The reason, of course, is that alcohol and tobacco are taxed, regulated and controlled, and their sale to underage customers results in harsh penalties for vendors.

Marijuana, on the other hand, is completely unregulated and easily accessible to teenagers for the simple reason that drug dealers do not check IDs.

Indeed, for the past 30 years, more than 80 percent of teenagers have told government surveys that marijuana is “easy to get.”

If Mr. Dean wants it to be harder for teenagers to purchase and use marijuana, he should support laws that would tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol.

One additional clarification: Mr. Dean was incorrect when he said new Department of Justice guidelines applied only to states that have passed medical marijuana laws through ballot initiatives.

Four of the 13 states that have passed medical marijuana laws have done so through their state legislatures, including Rhode Island, where a gubernatorial veto was overridden by a 68-0 vote in the House and a 35-3 vote in the Senate.

Mike Meno
Marijuana Policy Project

'Medical Marijuana Gets a Hearing'

2009-12-15T12:02:00.002-05:00

Here's a radio piece about a medical marijuana hearing in Wisconsin that I was interviewed for. You can hear the audio by clicking here.

"Today’s the day state lawmakers take public testimony, on whether Wisconsin ought to legalize medical marijuana. Mike Meno with the Washington, D.C. based Marijuana Policy Project, says the bill is about protecting sick and dying patients, many of whom have not gotten relief from traditional pain treatments. “For thousands, and perhaps millions of Americans, marijuana is a medicine, nothing more, nothing less,” Meno says.

Opponents fear legalizing medical marijuana will send mixed messages on drug use, but Meno says it’s about fairness and compassion. “These people are not trying to get high, they’re trying to get better,” he says. And Meno says it’s not just about decriminalizing medical marijuana – it’s about patients no longer having to obtain the drug from criminals. “We shouldn’t force them to subject themselves to harm by trying to get this effective medicine on the street, from drug dealers.”

Assembly and Senate health committees are holding a public hearing on the bill today at the Capitol. SB 368 would allow seriously ill patients to use medical marijuana without fear of arrest or jail if their doctor recommends it. Qualifying patients with doctors’ notes could grow their own marijuana or obtain it from “compassion centers” around the state. If approved, Meno says Wisconsin would become the 14th state to allow use of marijuana as a medicine."

My TV appearance on Fox 5 DC

2009-12-15T11:59:00.000-05:00

Watch it here.

My TV appearance on NBC 4 Washington

2009-12-10T16:37:00.001-05:00

Watch it here.

LTE in the Centre Daily Times (Pa.)

2009-12-09T12:16:00.002-05:00

Allow medical marijuana

While testifying Dec. 3 in Harrisburg against a medical marijuana bill that would protect sick and in some cases dying patients from arrest and possibly jail, Sharon Smith, of Moms- Tell, said, “Let the medical experts make this decision, not the legislators.” Exactly.

That’s why Pennsylvania needs a medical marijuana law (like 13 other states already have and a dozen more, including New Jersey, are considering): So decisions about effective treatment and proper medication can be made by patients and their doctors — not by politicians and law enforcement officers.

Numerous esteemed public health organizations — including the American Public Health Association, American Nurses Association and American Academy of HIV Medicine — support the right for patients to have legal access to marijuana with their doctors’ recommendation.

Last year, the American College of Physicians — 124,000 doctors of internal medicine — stated, “Evidence not only supports the use of medical marijuana in certain conditions but also suggests numerous indications for cannabinoids,” marijuana’s unique, active components.

Pennsylvania’s lawmakers should do the right thing by passing a law allowing seriously ill patients to use this potentially life-saving medication without fear of arrest or imprisonment.

Mike Meno Washington, D.C.

The writer is assistant director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project.

MPP Blog: Czech Republic to Decriminalize Personal Marijuana Possession

2009-12-08T17:38:00.001-05:00

Read it here.

High Times: 15 Years of Changing Marijuana Laws

2009-12-04T15:13:00.002-05:00

Read my latest High Times column here.

MPP Blog: More Evidence that Marijuana Might Help MS Patients

2009-12-04T13:34:00.000-05:00

Read it here.

My first video blog

2009-12-01T13:19:00.001-05:00

An overview of the 2009 Drug Policy Reform Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Watch it here!

MPP Blog: Study: Marijuana Can Help Curb Alcohol, Prescription Drug Abuse

2009-12-01T12:29:00.001-05:00

Read it here.

MPP Blog: Israel Moves Toward Expanded Medical Marijuana Law

2009-11-25T14:12:00.001-05:00

Read it here.

MPP Blog: Israeli Hospital Accommodates Medical Marijuana Patients

2009-11-24T13:15:00.001-05:00

Read it here.

MPP Blog: L.A. County D.A. Continues To Invent His Own Rules

2009-11-17T19:54:00.001-05:00

Read it here.

MPP Blog: Through Regulation, West Hollywood Becomes “Medical Marijuana Success Story”

2009-11-16T14:30:00.000-05:00

Read it here.

MPP Blog: Three More Members of UK's Drug Advisory Board Resign

2009-11-10T17:21:00.001-05:00

Read it here.

Attribution in TampaBay.com

2009-11-05T11:29:00.001-05:00

But while the study claims there is "no relationship between marijuana arrest and use rates" a look at the state data provided by the group shows Florida's pot use actually decreased from 2003 to 2007. Mike Meno, a spokesman for the group, says however that Florida has average use rates compared with other states and if the tough laws worked, the rate should be lower.

Here's the full post.

MPP Blog: Landmark Electoral Victories in Maine and Colorado

2009-11-04T12:04:00.001-05:00

Read about it here.

MPP Blog: Fired UK Drug Adviser Continues to Speak Out; Two Others Resign in Protest, More May Follow

2009-11-02T15:31:00.000-05:00

Read it here.

MPP Blog: UK Drug Adviser Fired After Marijuana Comments

2009-10-30T15:37:00.001-04:00

Read the post here.