A Wal-Mart spokesperson has told Fox News that the company is no longer challenging Casias’s eligibility for unemployment, reversing the despicable stance it took before news of the firing made national headlines.

While this change falls far short of the treatment Joe deserves after dedicating the last five years of his life to being a model employee for Wal-Mart, it’s at least a sign that Wal-Mart is feeling the heat from mounting criticism in a country that supports medical marijuana laws by more than 80%.

So let’s keep up the pressure! Allowing Casias to collect unemployment still doesn’t change Wal-Mart’s discriminatory policy of firing medical marijuana patients who are following state law and a doctor’s recommendation.

To learn how to e-mail Wal-Mart’s CEO to say you stand in solidarity with Casias and want Wal-Mart’s policy to change, click here.

After dutifully working at a Wal-Mart in Battle Creek, Michigan, for five years, Casias was suddenly terminated because he tested positive for marijuana during a drug screening administered after he sprained his knee on the job. To make matters worse, Wal-Mart is contesting Casias’s eligibility for unemployment, and Michigan has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, at almost 15%.

MPP is asking shoppers to demand that Wal-Mart abandon its discriminatory policy of firing employees who are legal medical marijuana patients under state law.

We need to send a strong message to Wal-Mart and other businesses in medical marijuana states that it is not acceptable to fire sick people for trying to get better by following their doctor’s recommendation and obeying state law. Marijuana is a legitimate medicine, supported by science and protected by law in 14 states, including Michigan.

To send Wal-Mart an email saying that you disapprove of its policy and will refrain from shopping at Wal-Mart stores until it changes, click here.

Despite his condition, he has dutifully gone to work every day for the last five years at a Wal-Mart in Battle Creek, Michigan, where in 2008 he was named Associate of the Year.

Casias is also a legal medical marijuana patient under Michigan state law. He uses marijuana with the recommendation of his doctor to relieve the effects of cancer.

But Wal-Mart, the world’s largest public corporation, has no sympathy for his condition or regard for Michigan’s state law. Last November, Wal-Mart fired Casias because he tested positive for marijuana during a routine drug screening.

Here’s what a Wal-Mart spokesman had to say:

“In states, such as Michigan, where prescriptions for marijuana can be obtained, an employer can still enforce a policy that requires termination of employment following a positive drug screen. We believe our policy complies with the law and we support decisions based on the policy.”

To add insult to injury, Wal-Mart is now challenging Casias’ eligibility for unemployment. Simply outrageous. This is the thanks he gets for showing up to work and doing his job for the last five years, despite being stricken with a potentially life-threatening illness. “I gave them everything,” Casias told a local news outlet. “One-hundred-ten percent every day. Anything they asked me to do I did. More than they asked me to do. Twelve to 14 hours a day.”

Sadly, the dilemma facing medical marijuana patients who still have no legal protection from being fired is nothing new.

Readers who would like to register a complaint with Wal-Mart can find corporate contact information here.

John J. Dilulio, Jr., the man who once co-authored a book with two former drug czars that described America’s drug war as “the most successful attack on a serious social problem in the last quarter-century,” has now reversed course, writing in the journal Democracy that it is “insane” to “expend scarce federal, state, and local law enforcement resources waging ‘war’ against [marijuana] users.”

Specifically, Dilulio, who served for eight months in 2001 as director of President George W. Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, listed making medical marijuana legal as one of “six steps to zero prison growth,” along with removing all federal mandatory-minimum drug sentencing policies. He also said the United States should “seriously consider decriminalizing [marijuana] altogether” because marijuana arrests have “close to zero” effect on crime rates and there is “almost no scientific evidence” showing marijuana to be more harmful than alcohol or legal narcotics.

This is coming from the same guy who in 1996 co-authored a (now out-of-print) book that was subtitled “How to Win America’s War Against Crime and Drugs,” with former directors of the Office of National Control Policy Bill Bennett and John Walters.

I would love to know what got Dilulio to change his views of drug policy—and how we could make other former prohibitionists see the light as well.

Here is the complete excerpt of Dilulio’s article that discusses marijuana policy:

“Sixth, legalize marijuana for medically prescribed uses, and seriously consider decriminalizing it altogether. Last year there were more than 800,000 marijuana-related arrests. The impact of these arrests on crime rates was likely close to zero. There is almost no scientific evidence showing that pot is more harmful to its users’ health, more of a “gateway drug,” or more crime-causing in its effects than alcohol or other legal narcotic or mind-altering substances. Our post-2000 legal drug culture has untold millions of Americans, from the very young to the very old, consuming drugs in unprecedented and untested combinations and quantities. Prime-time commercial television is now a virtual medicine cabinet (“just ask your doctor if this drug is right for you”). Big pharmaceutical companies function as all-purpose drug pushers. And yet we expend scarce federal, state, and local law enforcement resources waging “war” against pot users. That is insane.”

The shift in federal policy was indeed a breakthrough for the medical marijuana movement, but did little good for Bryan Epis of Chico, California.

Last week, a federal judge ordered Bryan to prison for a 2002 conviction involving 100 marijuana plants he maintained for several state-legal patients. Under the current administration’s policy, Bryan would likely be left alone by the feds, but the problem is that his arrest and conviction occurred well before the new policy was implemented.

Bryan was sentenced to ten years in federal prison and has already served two years behind bars, but has been out on various appeals since 2004. Today he’s sitting in the Sacramento County jail awaiting transfer back to a federal penitentiary.

Friends and family are hoping President Obama pardons Bryan so that he isn’t forced to waste more of his life locked in a cage because of his compassion towards sick and suffering patients.

Bryan’s partner is circulating a petition urging President Obama to grant a pardon and she requests your help. A printable petition form can be downloaded here. Please help Bryan by collecting as many signatures as you can and mailing the petition back to the address at the bottom of the page.

A spokesman for Statewide Insurance Services said the new program will include operations related to medical marijuana dispensaries and growers, including workers’ compensation, general liability, auto insurance, equipment breakdown and damage, and property or product loss—including marijuana spoilage.

As the cultivation and distribution of state-sanctioned medical marijuana proliferates in 14 states (and counting), it is only right that such establishments receive the same protections as other legitimate businesses. By taking this much-needed step, Statewide is helping to send a strong message to the rest of the country that this nearly untapped-market is not just credible, but ripe for new business opportunities, and here to stay.

The New York State Assembly passed medical marijuana legislation in 2007 and 2008, but the issue has never gotten a Senate floor vote. For the first time last year, a Senate medical marijuana bill passed the Senate Health Committee, but progress stalled because of the Senate leadership struggle, which lasted until just before the legislature recessed. Will 2010 be the year New York lawmakers listen to the will of the people and finally pass a law to protect its states sick and dying patients from arrest or jail?

Taking guidance from the DEA, the VA does not allow its doctors to recommend medical marijuana. Those who do will face civil and criminal penalties, in addition to the loss of their license. (Veterans can still try to obtain a recommendation from an outside physician.)

This policy is unchanged in states where medical marijuana is legal, such as New Mexico, where the most common affliction of those enrolled in the state’s medical marijuana program is post-traumatic stress disorder—something experienced by one in five returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a 2008 study.

As readers of this blog are well aware, there’s been a great deal of research and patient testimony showing medical marijuana to be effective at relieving the effects of PTSD.

But rather than help veterans access such safe and effective treatment, the VA’s current policy, according to one veteran, has forced many sufferers of PTSD to rely on more addictive prescription drugs, or self-medication with alcohol and other dangerous substances.

Is this really how we want to treat the veterans of our armed services?

According to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration use among people 50 and older who report using marijuana in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent in 2002 to 2.9 percent in 2008. Marijuana use among 55- to 59-year-olds has more than tripled during that same time period (1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent in 2008).

Among the group of seniors who now use marijuana is 67 year old Perry Parks, a retired Army pilot who suffers from crippling pain from degenerative disc disease and arthritis. He has tried all sorts of prescription drugs, but found little success. However, he found relief two years ago after using something he tried in college, marijuana. He says by using marijuana he realized he “could get by without the narcotics,” referring to prescription painkillers. Parks says he is now “essentially pain free.”

Will the nation’s 78 million baby boomers stand up against the status quo one last time and lead the effort to end this country’s failed war on marijuana? We sure hope so.

Over the past few weeks the DEA has entered and confiscated thousands of dollars worth of medical marijuana from two Colorado medical marijuana labs (Denver’s Full Spectrum Laboratories and Colorado Springs’ Genovations). Most recently the DEA arrested licensed medical marijuana grower Chris Bartkowicz, who was conducting a medical marijuana growing operation in the basement of his suburban Denver home. Bartkowicz now sits in jail facing five to forty years in prison and fines of up to $2 million.

Yesterday’s protest was organized and led by Sensible Colorado’s executive director Brian Vicente, who aptly points out that “at the most fundamental level, it’s just a blatant and ridiculous waste of resources to go after an individual who was absolutely growing for medical purposes.” Vicente went on to say that the “U.S. Attorney needs to get out of the dark ages,” and that “his comments are representative of decades past.” They sure are. Right on, Mr. Vicente.