MPP Blog

Two must-read op-eds from last week explain why ending marijuana prohibition is perhaps the only effective way to curtail the ever-increasing violence plaguing Mexico:

In The Washington Post, Hector Aguilar Camín, publisher of the Mexican magazine Nexos, and Jorge G. Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who teaches at New York University, write that California’s Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana for adults, “may, at long last, offer Mexico the promise of an exit from our costly war on drugs.”

The debate here is not framed in terms of personal drug use but rather whether legalization would do anything to abate Mexico’s nightmarish violence and crime. There are reasons to think that it would: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has said that up to 60 percent of Mexican drug cartels’ profits come from marijuana. While some say the real figure is lower, pot is without question a crucial part of their business. Legalization would make a significant chunk of that business vanish. As their immense profits shrank, the drug kingpins would be deprived of the almost unlimited money they now use to fund recruitment, arms purchases and bribes.

In addition, legalizing marijuana would free up both human and financial resources for Mexico to push back against the scourges that are often, if not always correctly, attributed to drug traffickers and that constitute Mexicans’ real bane: kidnapping, extortion, vehicle theft, home assaults, highway robbery and gunfights between gangs that leave far too many innocent bystanders dead and wounded. Before Mexico’s current war on drugs started, in late 2006, the country’s crime rate was low and dropping. Freed from the demands of the war on drugs, Mexico could return its energies to again reducing violent crime.

And in a piece published on FireDogLake and The Huffington Post, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson says U.S. officials need to stop funding Mexico’s drug war and instead “welcome the debate on marijuana prohibition,” — something our current drug czar has repeatedly spurned.

America’s policy for almost 70 years has been to keep marijuana—arguably no more harmful than alcohol and used by 15 million Americans every month—confined to the illicit market, meaning we’ve given criminals a virtual monopoly on something that U.S. researcher Jon Gettman estimates is a $36 billion a year industry, greater than corn and wheat combined. We have implemented laws that are not enforceable, which has thereby created a thriving black market. By denying reality and not regulating and taxing marijuana, we are fueling not only this massive illicit economy, but a war that we are clearly losing.

The latest Prop 19 poll shows the initiative ahead 47-43, so its likelihood of passing is still anyone’s guess. But if it does pass, Camín and Castañeda say Prop 19 will “enhance [Mexican President] Calderon’s moral authority in pressing President Obama” and allow the Mexican government “to more actively lobby the U.S. government for wider changes in drug policy.”

All the more reason for Californians to turn out and vote yes on 19 this November.

Inhaled marijuana can provide relief to patients suffering from chronic nerve pain, and can also help them sleep, according to a Canadian study published last week in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association.

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal gave different types of marijuana to adult volunteers suffering from intractable pain that hadn’t responded to other medications. As described by the New York Times:

Each volunteer was given a titanium pipe to take home along with quarter-teaspoon capsules of cannabis that they were instructed to open, tip in to the bowl of the pipe, light and then inhale, holding the smoke in their lungs for 10 seconds before exhaling.

The cannabis with the highest concentration of THC, 9.4 percent, appeared to deliver a modest reduction in pain: 0.7 point on an 11-point scale, compared with the placebo. There were no significant differences with the lesser concentrations.

According to the findings published in JCMA, patients who used marijuana experienced “significantly reduced average pain scores” and were also able to sleep better and had less anxiety compared with patients who were given placebo.

“Our results support the claim that smoked cannabis reduces pain, improves mood, and helps sleep,” researchers concluded.

Opponents of medical marijuana often claim that medicine cannot be smoked. And while, of course, smoking is not the only (or preferred) method of delivery for medical marijuana patients, this study once again confirms not only that whole-plant marijuana has medical efficacy, but specifically that smoked marijuana does as well.

For decades, prohibitionists have claimed that marijuana is a “gateway drug” that inevitably leads to use of harder substances like heroin and cocaine — despite the fact that every objective study ever done on the gateway theory has determined that it’s absolute crap.

Last week, researchers at the University of New Hampshire released yet another study discrediting the gateway theory. Their findings, based on survey data from more than 1,200 students in Florida public schools, showed that a person’s likelihood to use harder drugs has more to do with social and environmental factors than whether or not they’ve ever tried marijuana.

“There seems to be this idea that we can prevent later drug problems by making sure kids never smoke pot,” lead researcher Dr. Karen Van Gundy, associate professor of sociology at UNH, told CBS News. “But whether marijuana smokers go on to use other illicit drugs depends more on social factors like being exposed to stress and being unemployed – not so much whether they smoked a joint in the eighth grade.”

These findings echo virtually every other previous study done on the topic. In 2008, for example, the RAND Corporation found that “[t]he gateway theory has little evidence to support it, despite copious research,” and the federal government’s own Institute of Medicine, in a report commissioned by the drug czar’s office, has declared that “[t]here is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone [to other drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect.”

In a news release last week, the UNH researchers urged American drug policy makers to reconsider current penalties in light of their findings. “Employment in young adulthood can protect people by ‘closing’ the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities,” Van Gundy said.

Of course, no one should expect these findings to have much of an impact on prohibitionists’ rhetoric, since that would require them to acknowledge, well … reality. But it was encouraging to see this study reported in such mainstream news outlets as The Los Angeles Times, Business Week, and CBS News. The next time some dishonest prohibitionist tries to call marijuana a gateway drug in print or on the air, any reporter or anchor worth their salt should be able to point out that there isn’t any scientific evidence to support the gateway theory. But maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Earlier this week, Oakland County authorities raided two medical marijuana businesses and several private homes, arresting 15 people and confiscating what was allegedly $750,000 worth of marijuana and equipment. One of the facilities raided, Clinical Relief, is located in Ferndale, Michigan where the City Council voted just two days earlier to lift a moratorium on such businesses.

Now comes news that one of the individuals whose home was raided, 67-year-old Sal Agro, has died of an apparent heart attack. Agro, who recently had hip replacement surgery, and his two sons ran the Clinical Relief facility in Ferndale prior to this week’s raid. Here’s video of Agro recounting the actions of the officers who carried out the raids. According to Agro, the masked officers destroyed portions of his home, pointed a shotgun at his daughter-in-law, and confiscated 20 marijuana plants (he and his wife are each registered patients; under Michigan law, registered patients may possess up to 12 plants each for medical use). Despite all this, Agro claims he was never placed under arrest and was denied any opportunity to view the search warrant until after the raid.

It’s obviously too early to say whether the raid contributed to Agro’s death (though the stress of the raid and arrest of his wife and two children couldn’t have helped), but in addition to concerns over how such raids are carried out is the question of why? Michigan voters spoke clearly when 63% – and a majority in every county – approved a medical marijuana ballot initiative in 2008. Also, on election day 2008, Ferndale voters approved a local ordinance that would allow medical marijuana dispensing. And as I mentioned earlier, the Ferndale City Council had lifted its moratorium on businesses like Clinical Relief’s. Sheriff Bouchard may have hinted at his long-term goals when he opened a press conference to discuss the raids by saying he and prosecutor Jessica Cooper would use the time to “talk about what we think the legislature needs to do.”

One final wrinkle to the story is whether judges have the ability to deny patients access to physician-recommended medicine during the pendency of their trials. Of those arrested earlier this week, some were arraigned in the 51st District where they were denied access to medical marijuana by Judge Richard Kuhn, who likened the situation to drunk driving suspects who are not allowed to drink while on bond. Others were arraigned in the nearby 43rd district where Judge Joseph Longo took no action to deny access to medical marijuana. “They have every right to use whatever medications” their physicians prescribe, Longo told the Detroit Free Press.

I often wonder, would a judge deny access to much more dangerous medications like opioid painkillers to those with prescriptions from their doctors?

Unofficial vote totals show that marijuana decriminalization supporter Peter Shumlin won the Vermont Democratic primary for governor yesterday by an agonizingly tight margin of fewer than 200 votes. Although votes are in from all 260 precincts, towns and cities have a couple of days to certify official results. Currently president pro tempore of the Vermont state Senate, Shumlin has been a staunch supporter of efforts to remove criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana in Vermont—something MPP has spent years lobbying for.

“Small marijuana offenses, when you’re already on probation, can send you to prison,” Shumlin told the Rutland Herland in June. “That doesn’t seem to me to be the best use of scarce taxpayer dollars.”

While a recount is likely because the final tally was so close, Shumlin’s victory in a five-person primary is yet another example of how candidates can benefit — not suffer — from supporting efforts to reform marijuana laws. Assuming Shumlin is the Democratic candidate, Vermont’s general election will also be of greatest interest to marijuana policy reformers. The Republican candidate for governor, Brian Dubie, is an opponent of decriminalization, and the race is expected to be close.

MPP executive director Rob Kampia appeared on Fox Business News’s “Freedom Watch” with Judge Andrew Napolitano this weekend to discuss the merits of ending marijuana prohibition in the United States.

Joined by John Stossel, Rob debated pundit S.E. Cupp, who claimed that marijuana policy reformers were “confused” about how to treat marijuana.

“We’re not confused,” Rob responded. “It’s pretty clear that marijuana would actually be better if it was regulated and taxed, rather than keep it in the hands of drug dealers, where it’s untaxed and unsafe. And let’s not joke around here; marijuana is clearly safer than alcohol. So if we’re going to regulate and tax alcohol in our society, we should surely do the same with marijuana.”

You can watch the entire clip below:

A coroner’s inquest jury ruled this weekend that the fatal shooting of Trevon Cole by a Las Vegas narcotics officer during a botched marijuana raid in June was justified, despite reports of conflicting testimony and contradictory evidence.

Cole, 21, was shot dead in front of his pregnant fiancée after officers raided their Las Vegas home on June 11. He was unarmed. It was later revealed that officers meant to target a different man with the same name, who they claimed was a major marijuana dealer. Officers were serving a search warrant on Cole after allegedly buying 1.8 ounces of marijuana from him over a five-week period.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Detective Bryan Yant, who has been involved in other questionable shootings, testified that he fired the fatal shot after Cole stood up and moved his hands toward the officer “in a shooting motion.”

“Unfortunately he made an aggressive act toward me,” Yant said, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. “He made me do my job.”

It took the jury only 90 minutes to clear Yant, even though the Review Journal and other sources report that his testimony and that of others were riddled with disturbing inconsistencies, including:

• Only one of the six officers present during the raid heard Yant give verbal orders to Cole. That officer testified that Yant said nothing to Cole about his hands.
• The bullet that killed 300-pound Cole traveled through his cheek and neck in a downward angle, leading the medical examiner to find it “highly unlikely” that Cole stood and stepped toward Yant, as Yant claims.
• Both the medical examiner and homicide detective who investigated the scene believe that Cole was crouched over the toilet when he turned toward Yant.
• Assistant District Attorney Chris Owens said the evidence suggests there was an “accidental discharge” when Yant kicked in the bathroom door. Other officers present heard both a door kick and a gunshot.

Read the full article in the Review Journal for more outrageous details about this weekend’s inquest, including egregious errors Yant made on the affidavit prior to the raid, and other apparent violations of department policy that officers made while executing the raid.

Cole family attorney Andre Lagomarsino called the inquest “a kangaroo court and dog and pony show” and is vowing to file a civil rights lawsuit, as well as a possible racketeering lawsuit, against the Vegas police department. “I think in this case I believe absolutely Detective Yant was held above the law,” Lagomarsino told the local ABC affiliate. Phil Smith from the Drug War Chronicle has more details about the possible racketeering case.

Stay tuned for updates.

The National Black Police Association yesterday became the latest group to endorse California’s Proposition 19, the November ballot measure that would make marijuana legal for adults 21 and older. From the Los Angeles Times:

The National Black Police Assn., which has about 15,000 members, is the second African American organization to back the measure. The California NAACP has also endorsed it, citing the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of African Americans caught with marijuana.

Ron Hampton, the police association’s executive director, said he decided the group should get behind the measure because it would eliminate laws that have a negative impact on the black community.

“It means that we will be locking up less African American men and women and children who are using drugs,” said Hampton, a retired Washington, D.C., police officer with 25 years experience. “We’ve got more people in prison. We’ve got more young people in prison. Blacks go to jail more than whites for doing the same thing.”

Hampton said that the money being spent on the war on drugs could be better spent on education, housing and creating jobs. “It just seemed like to me that we have been distracted in this whole thing,” he said. “We can take that money, and focus and concentrate on things that really make a difference in our community.”

For more, watch LEAP executive director Neill Franklin discuss the endorsement on MSNBC:

The idiocy of our country’s approach to medical marijuana was on full display for all to see at the Minnesota Vikings training camp yesterday.

Since the age of 10, Percy Harvin, a Vikings wide receiver, has suffered from chronic, debilitating migraines. Luckily, later in life, Harvin found a therapeutic substance that not only relieved his migraines effectively, but also allowed him to play football. It was marijuana.

But during last year’s NFL combine, Harvin, a promising prospect, tested positive for marijuana, and was subsequently drafted much lower than expected. The Vikings finally picked him 22nd overall, reportedly after a long talk about his marijuana use, and specifically, how it needed to stop if he wanted to keep playing.

Harvin complied, and the migraines didn’t seem to be a problem for much of his breakout rookie season. “Questions about his ability as a receiver seem silly now,” Jim Trotter of Sports Illustrated wrote at the time. “The only thing that has slowed him is migraines.” Toward the end of last season, the migraines got worse, and Harvin was sidelined. Except now he wasn’t able to use marijuana to treat them, and nothing else seemed to work.

On Monday, after another stint in the hospital, Harvin was finally back in uniform at Vikings training camp. Cindy Boren of the Washington Post describes what happened next:

Harvin, who has battled migraines since he was 10 and sought treatment last year at the Mayo Clinic, had not practiced for two weeks because of migraines, returning to the field only Monday. Suffering another attack Thursday, he managed to return to the field and looked up to the sky to field a punt. He doubled over, vomited and seemed momentarily unresponsive and was taken to the hospital. The scene was so disturbing for players that the rest of practice was called off.

If medical marijuana were legal in the United States, and treated like any other legitimate medicine by the NFL, then Harvin could consult with a doctor about the best way to use marijuana to help relieve these awful migraines. (And anyone who is a migraine sufferer knows just how awful they can be.) More importantly, the Vikings could have a productive wide receiver. Instead, they’re forced to stand by idly as their $1.04 million investment is carted off the field in an ambulance, overcome by pain that could easily be relieved by a safe, non-toxic medicine.

How’s that for sensible marijuana policies?

Many readers have been questioning the accuracy of an Associated Press article I blogged about recently claiming Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul, who has defended the rights of states to pass medical marijuana laws, “is opposed to the legalization of marijuana, even for medicinal purposes.”

As a former reporter, I always strive for accuracy, so I just got off the phone with a representative of the Paul campaign in order to clarify the candidate’s position — which isn’t as simple as the AP made it out to be.

“Doctor Paul’s stance has not changed, and that is a case of sloppy reporting,” said Nena Bartlett, Paul’s assistant campaign manager. “His position is that it’s a states’ rights issue.”

However, when I asked Bartlett if Paul personally supports medical marijuana laws, and would, for example, vote for a bill protecting patients from arrest if he were a member of a state legislature, she demurred.

“I’m actually not positive that he’s taken that stance,” Bartlett said. “He just believes it should be left up to the states … I’m not sure if that’s a position he would take at this time. It’s a decision for doctors and patients at the local level.”

So there we have it. Rand Paul believes the federal government should not interfere in state medical marijuana laws. But he does not support such laws himself, at least not at this time. It was therefore inaccurate for the AP to say he “is opposed” to medical marijuana laws. (Though the Paul campaign will not say he’s “in favor” of them either.) I regret having helped to spread that misinformation, and want to apologize to our readers.

MPP’s blog — like nearly every other one online — relies almost entirely on outside news organizations to provide us with information that we then analyze and make entertaining for our readers. As this episode demonstrates, sometimes news outlets get it wrong—even ones as old and esteemed as the AP. With that in mind, I hope our readers will appreciate where we’re coming from, and understand that we will always do what’s in our power to promote accurate information — and correct something when it’s wrong.

As always, thanks for reading.

Check out former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (R) — an expected 2012 presidential contender — discussing the need to end marijuana prohibition last night on MSNBC.

“I think it is at a tipping point, and people are ahead of the politicians on this one, and it’s still gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. I think statistically we’re about two and half years from 50 percent of Americans actually understanding this. From my own experience it’s really thin ice. With just a little bit of knowledge on this issue, people seem to move on this issue. People seem to be embracing this notion of, ‘Gee, it’s not working, we really have to do something different.’”

One month after MPP and an ideologically diverse coalition of drug policy reformers and advocacy groups called on President Obama to withdraw Michele Leonhart as his nominee for DEA administrator, a spokesperson for the White House has declared that the president is confident that the Bush holdover is the “right” choice for the job. Mike Riggs has the story in The Daily Caller:

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.

MPP and others – including FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher and the states-rights group the Tenth Amendment Center – pointed to Leonhart’s interim leadership of the DEA, which has included federal raids on state-legal medical marijuana providers and the denial of medical marijuana research applications, as evidence that she is continuing Bush-era policies that Obama promised to end. During the campaign, and in an October memo from the Department of Justice, the president and his administration pledged to end federal raids on state-legal medical marijuana providers.

But when Riggs asked the feds whether recent raids in California violate the spirit of the October memo, spokespeople for both the White House and DOJ seemed to backtrack on the president’s pledge.

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.”

One can’t help but wonder, with the nomination of Leonhart, the ongoing raids, and this type of public about-face on the issue, if President Obama is now reneging on his campaign pledge to approach medical marijuana issues differently than his predecessor.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs thinks it’s absurd to even suggest such a thing. “I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush,” Gibbs said recently. “Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it’s crazy.”

Crazy is exactly right, Mr. Gibbs. I mean, it’s not like President Obama picked the same person George W. Bush did to lead the DEA, and has insisted on standing by her while she employs the same policies that were in place under Bush. Oh wait …

Medical marijuana will soon be more widely available to qualifying patients in Germany, according to a government health spokesperson. From the English-language news site The Local:

Doctors could write prescriptions for cannabis, and pharmacies would be authorised to sell the plant once the law had been adjusted, a member of [Germany’s] junior coalition party, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), said Monday.

Marijuana would also be permitted for use as a pain reliever for the terminally ill in hospices and other care facilities, making it a legal part of their emergency pain-relief stocks.

[...] According to the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines (ACM), only 40 patients in the country are currently allowed a medical marijuana prescription – even though law enforcement generally tolerates small amounts for personal use.

Meanwhile, patients in 36 of the 50 United States are still treated as criminals if they relieve their symptoms through marijuana, and our federal government persists in incorrectly classifying marijuana as a Schedule I drug—meaning it has “no accepted medical value”—while at the same time blocking the much-needed research necessary to move marijuana through the FDA approval process.

Elsewhere, Great Britain has approved liquid marijuana for medical use, and Israel is seeking to further expand its own medical marijuana law—even allowing hospitals to administer medical marijuana to patients.

Make sure to tell your elected officials that you’re tired of seeing the United States lag behind while other developed nations implement compassionate and science-based medical marijuana policies by visiting MPP’s Federal Action Center.

Four years after 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was shot and killed by Atlanta narcotics officers who falsified evidence before and after a completely unwarranted raid on her home, the city of Atlanta has announced it will pay a $4.9 million settlement to her family. 

In November 2006, officers conducted a “no knock” raid on Johnston’s home based on bogus information from an informant who said he had purchased drugs there. (After the raid, the informant told a local news station that he had never even been to Johnston’s home, and that police asked him to fabricate the story after the shooting.)

Johnston, who lived alone, apparently mistook the plainclothes officers for intruders and, according to the prosecutor trying the officers, fired one shot through the door and hit nothing. The police responded, firing 39 shots, killing Johnston and apparently wounding three of their own.

Investigators did not find any evidence that drugs were being sold in the apartment. In an apparent attempt to fabricate a cover story, one of the officers, J.R. Smith, planted three bags of marijuana in the home, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Yonette Sam-Buchanan.

The raid made national headlines, and the three officers involved eventually plead guilty to federal charges including conspiracy, voluntary manslaughter and making false statements. They are currently serving sentences in federal prison.

“The resolution of this case is an important step in the healing process for the city and its residents,” Atlanta’s mayor, Kasim Reed said in a statement yesterday. “As a result of the incident, several police officers were indicted in federal and state court on charges and were later convicted and sentenced for their actions. In addition, the narcotics unit of the Atlanta Police Department was completely reorganized, which included changes in policy and personnel.”

Unfortunately, raids like the one on Kathryn Johnston’s home continue to occur every day in places all over the country. Some compensation for Johnston’s family is a good start to repairing the damage, but a much more appropriate legacy for this highly-publicized tragedy would be for officials nationwide to realize that in a free society, armed officers shouldn’t be sent on missions to break down doors and potentially use violence in order to enforce nonviolent drug offenses.

UPDATED: Read a more recent post clarifying Paul’s comments here.

Back in May, when Kentucky Republican Rand Paul defeated an establishment candidate to win his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate, I pointed out that one of the issues Paul used to win over voters was his support of medical marijuana laws.

Now, in a telling political move, the son of Ron Paul has reversed his stance on the issue, telling the Associated Press last week that “he is opposed to the legalization of marijuana, even for medicinal purposes.” (He also stated that he doesn’t think the government’s war on drugs is “a real pressing issue” and that he wants to cut federal funding for drug treatment programs.)

Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with that episode from his past that’s been discussed so much in the news lately. Is Paul selling out medical marijuana patients as part of a strategy to deflect criticism? Or am I being too cynical?

For the record, Paul’s Democratic opponent, Jack Conway, isn’t much better when it comes to marijuana issues, and has received police endorsements because of his support for tougher law enforcement strategies.

In the latest example of a changing political atmosphere surrounding marijuana issues, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Washington state has been forced to clarify a series of cliché jokes his office made at the expense of medical marijuana research and patients.

Last week, Republican Dino Rossi issued an extremely immature and thoughtless press release criticizing federally funded research being conducted at Washington State University into marijuana’s effect on pain medication. The two-year study by psychology professor Michael Morgan involves injecting rats with synthetic cannabinoids and opiates in order to find ways to improve treatment for people suffering from chronic pain.

Rather than emphasize the great need for this type of research, as well as the proven efficacy of marijuana in helping to manage pain, Rossi decided to revert to hackneyed and unoriginal middle-school level humor. “Washington state taxpayers are tired of their money going up in smoke,” read the release issued by his office. “This bill isn’t going to stimulate anything other than sales of Cheetos.”

Morgan, who received $148,438 in federal stimulus funds from the National Institutes of Health, defended his research in an email to the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

“It is odd that Rossi thinks he knows more about good research than these neuroscientists. The goal of stimulus funds going to research was to create jobs and advance research to improve health care. Contrary to what Rossi’s press release says, I have created jobs. I funded both a graduate and undergraduate student with the $50,000 that I receive each year. It also provided a month of summer salary for me given that the State does not pay professors in the summer. The undergraduate I am currently funding actually graduated in May and would be unemployed if I did not offer her a job,” Morgan wrote.

He said pain treatments cost billions of dollars each year.

“…what we proposed has nothing to do with smoking marijuana or what Rossi implies. It would have been nice if Rossi had checked his facts before trashing research that could be very beneficial. There are millions of Americans suffering from chronic pain. Is Rossi arguing that we should not do research to find better ways to reduce this suffering?”

One day later, a spokesperson for Rossi was put on the defensive, and tried to backtrack by saying “no judgment was made [by the campaign] on the validity of the research.”

This last development is important for one major reason: After years of being considered a third-rail issue that politicians were free to scorn, more candidates and officials are now waking to the reality that marijuana reform issues—and medical marijuana in particular—are very, very popular among voters. As the Rossi campaign has discovered, the most controversial thing about medical marijuana nowadays can be opposing it. Nationally, 81 percent of Americans support medical marijuana.

In another interesting aside, Steve Elliot points out that Rossi this year earned distinction as one of the 11 Most Crooked Candidates in the entire nation, according to a list put together by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Yesterday, organizers of the ballot measure to make up to an ounce of marijuana legal in Detroit filed an appeal to overturn the city election commission’s outrageous decision to remove the question from the November ballot.

In June, the Coalition for a Safer Detroit submitted more than 6,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot. Earlier this week, in an affront to democratic ideals, the Detroit Election Commission voted 3-0 to remove the measure, saying they were following a recommendation from the city’s law department, which was concerned that removing criminal penalties for marijuana in Detroit would be pre-empted by state law.

“If you’re on the cutting edge of social change, litigation is just a cost of doing business,” Tim Beck, the petition’s organizer, told the Detroit Free Press.

In late 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderon announced a new government-backed military offensive against his country’s drug cartels, believing they could be defeated through sheer brute force. Four years later, more than 28,000 people have been killed, and the drug cartels are more powerful than ever, controlling vast manufacturing and distribution networks that have helped to bankroll kidnappings, extortion, human trafficking, and the corruption of an estimated 60 percent of U.S. border agents.

The majority of the cartels’ revenue – more than 60 percent, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy – comes from selling marijuana in the United States. Remember this.

Finally realizing the futility of the status quo, Calderon last week softened his position and said he was open to a debate about lifting prohibition as a way to combat the cartels and deprive them of their main source of income. (Officially, he remains an opponent of legalization.)

Then over the weekend, Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox (who as a former president is more politically flexible than his sitting successor) went even further, saying he firmly supports ending prohibition as a way to quell the violence. “Radical prohibition strategies have never worked,” Fox wrote, explaining that he sees legalization “as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allowed cartels to earn huge profits.”

This line of thinking is not new, obviously. Other Latin American nations are realizing prohibition doesn’t work, and former leaders of Brazil and Columbia, as well as former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, have been among those calling for its end.

Meanwhile, as the war rages on in Mexico, street shoot-outs have become commonplace, journalists fear their own safety so much that they don’t even report the violence, and school children are being trained to duck and cover in order to avoid the crossfire.

But with Mexico awash in blood and its leaders desperately looking for solutions, our officials have offered nothing but the same failed options. With one hand, the U.S.  gives the Mexican government millions of dollars to continue funding its horrifically unsuccessful war, and with the other, our officials continue to deny the irrefutable reality that prohibition has not worked and another approach is needed — one that will stop handing the cartels a virtual monopoly over such a lucrative trade.

When asked directly if legalizing and regulating marijuana in the United States could help weaken the cartels, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske was characteristically close-minded. “All the things they are involved in, all these incredibly horrible crimes, of which narcotics is only a part, would still go on,” he told The Dallas Morning News.

A spokesperson for the State Department was even more tight-lipped: “While the question of debating legalization is for Mexicans to decide, we don’t think the legalization of drugs is the answer.”

A few things:

1. Kerlikowske’s own office, ONDCP, is the same one that reported cartels make (at least) 60 percent of their money from selling marijuana here in the U.S. So we can only assume the drug czar is being knowingly dishonest when he says taking marijuana out of the criminal market wouldn’t have some impact on the cartels. If those drug organizations were operating at 40 percent of their current wealth, that would mean 60 percent fewer corrupt officials, weapons purchases, cartel manpower, etc.
2. “The question of debating legalization” is not just “for Mexicans to decide.” Maybe the State Department hasn’t noticed voters in the largest U.S. state will have an opportunity to turn the page on marijuana prohibition just three months from now, and several other states are considering similar proposals.
3. For government officials, it doesn’t have to be a question of whether or not regulation, rather than prohibition is “the answer.” They could simply start off with the middle road Calderon took and say it’s time for a debate. That’s what Gov. Schwarzenegger did last year in California, and now the debate over Prop. 19 has helped launch a national dialogue about ways to reform our disastrous marijuana policies.

While the mainstream media, state governments, and a growing number of politicians and pundits are eagerly wading into the debate over America’s marijuana prohibition, top officials in Washington still refuse to accept that it’s not only already underway but is increasingly moving in a new direction.

Or as Sylvia Longmire, a drug cartel analyst and border security consultant, told AOL News:

It’s difficult to comprehend how the U.S. government could acknowledge Calderon taking on the legalization debate, knowing full well that U.S. demand and consumption helps fuel the drug war, and not take at least baby steps towards engaging in a similar debate [in the U.S.].

Difficult is one way to put it. Infuriating might be another.

Once again, government officials are trying to suppress the will of voters when it comes to marijuana issues. The Detroit Free Press reports today that the Detroit Election Commission has voted 3-0 to reject a November ballot initiative that would have given city voters a chance to decide whether to allow adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana.

Members of the commission said they were following a recommendation by the city’s Law Department, which said the proposal was pre-empted by state law forbidding possession of the drug. Detroit attorney Matt Abel, a petition organizer, said: “This would have sent a message to the police that they should focus on more serious crime.” Abel said he and others behind the proposal were considering filing an appeal in Wayne County Circuit Court.

In June, the Coalition for a Safer Detroit turned in more than 6,000 signatures to place the marijuana measure on the ballot.

Stay tuned for updates about the ongoing effort to ensure that Detroit voters have their say on November 2.