Earlier this year, Cooley ignored the legal opinion of California’s attorney general when Cooley claimed (incorrectly) that virtually all medical marijuana dispensaries were operating illegally and should be shut down. 

Now, after two L.A. City Council committees rejected calls to ban the sale of medical marijuana, Cooley is once again making up his own rules, declaring that he will prosecute dispensaries even if the city council adopts an ordinance allowing the legal sale of medical marijuana under state law.

Perhaps someone should remind the district attorney that he is paid to uphold the law, not invent it.

In Maine, an estimated 58 percent of voters approved Question 5, making Maine the third state in the nation (along with Rhode Island and New Mexico) to establish state-licensed non-profit dispensaries that will provide medical marijuana to qualified patients. This is also significant because it is the first time such a system was enacted by voters. (The other two were approved by state legislatures.)

And in Colorado, more than 70 percent of voters in the tiny ski town of Breckenridge voted to remove city-level criminal penalties for possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults over 21. While possession of any amount is still illegal under state law, the citizens of Breckenridge have undoubtedly sent a message to lawmakers in Colorado—and around the country—by taking this first and necessary step toward the end of marijuana prohibition.

In California, where marijuana possession was “decriminalized” in 1976 and medical marijuana legalized 20 years later, the state Department of Justice reports that law enforcement conducted a record 78,492 marijuana arrests in 2008. About 80% of these (61,366) were for mere possession – not sale or cultivation.

The California-based Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) took a long look at trends for marijuana arrests in the state and revealed some disturbing information. In its recent report to the California Legislature, CJCJ showed that the arrest rate for marijuana possession has skyrocketed in California – up 127% – between 1990 and 2008. But during the same period, arrests for all other offenses in California decreased by 40% – including other drug possession, which sank by nearly 30%. The arrest rate for marijuana sales and manufacturing even decreased 21% during this period.

You can’t help but conclude from this data that California’s police agencies have developed an almost singular focus on marijuana possession as their top law enforcement priority. This is shocking, not only because most Californians now say they want marijuana legal, but because it’s a dangerous and irresponsible use of limited public safety resources.

Last year, while California’s law enforcement officers were rounding up a record number of marijuana consumers, almost 60,000 reported violent crimes never resulted in an arrest.* Thanks to decriminalization in California, these arrests usually don’t result in jail or lengthy detainment, but they do take real police time and other criminal justice resources.

Anyone unfortunate enough to have been a victim of an unsolved crime should support repealing marijuana prohibition and freeing up police to focus on public safety rather than consensual adult activity that’s no more harmful than drinking beer or wine.

*Source: FBI, Crime in the U.S., 2008

Several other advisers on the once 31-member group are rumored to be “planning collective action” against British Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who has taken to the airwaves to defend his controversial sacking of Nutt.

Johnson said Nutt publicly campaigned against government policy and “crossed the line” when he said illegal drugs such as marijuana, LSD, and ecstasy were safer than legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol.

“Professor Nutt was not sacked for his views, which I respect but disagree with,” Johnson wrote in today’s Guardian.  “He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy.”

It certainly is frustrating, to say the least, (“mind-boggling” might be a better word) when the people hired to reassess flawed government policies get punished for doing just that. But now that many high-profile members of Britain’s scientific community are speaking out about the incident, there is reason to hope that more Britons will realize just how misguided their current marijuana laws are, and that they too should support a change in the way the UK classifies certain drugs.

Nutt himself has continued to speak out about his ousting and the reasons behind it, arguing that his actions—as opposed to Johnson’s—were motivated by science, not politics.

In Nutt’s own words: “When [UK Prime Minister] Gordon Brown says that cannabis is a ‘lethal drug,’ when it clearly isn’t, young people are not going to pay him any notice. You don’t reduce drug harm by lying.”

Just a few hours prior to his sacking, Nutt had publicly condemned British politicians for “distorting” and “devaluing” scientific research used in the debate over illegal drugs. In an article published Thursday by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Nutt said that illegal drugs such as cannabis, LSD and ecstasy were less harmful than legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, and he called for changes in the way such substances are classified in order to better inform the public about their relative harms.

Specifically, Nutt criticized a January decision by British ministers to upgrade marijuana from a class C drug to the higher class B, a change that increased the maximum penalty for possession to five years in prison, and the penalty for dealing to 14 years.

Nutt still maintained that cannabis was “harmful,” but he made an appeal—based on reason and science—for the government to be honest with the public about marijuana and the fact that it causes no major health or social problems:

“I think we have to accept young people like to experiment, and what we should be doing is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives,” Nutt wrote. “We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. We have to tell them the truth, so that they use us as their preferred source of information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you’re probably wrong.”

To recap: The British Home Office asked Prof. Nutt to reexamine that nation’s drug laws and offer some suggestions based on sound scientific evidence. As requested, Nutt presented his findings and concluded—rightfully—that Britain’s 2004 decision to soften its marijuana laws was correct and should have been maintained. But because those findings contradicted government policy, he was fired. So much for free and open debate in a democratic society.

If you’re wondering if the same thing could happen here in the United States, it already has: Nutt’s predicament is eerily similar to the 1994 firing of then Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders (now a member of MPP’s VIP advisory board).

Witnesses advocating for reform included retired superior court judge James P. Gray and former San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan – both of whom have seen the futility of marijuana prohibition firsthand from inside the criminal justice system.

Some law enforcement organizations, who make a living arresting people for marijuana, also participated in the hearing. I’m sure readers of this blog won’t be surprised to know that these entrenched interests employed their usual tactic of hyperbole and flat-out lies to scare legislators from supporting reform.

One thing is for sure, and it’s that yesterday’s hearing was another step forward in the march toward marijuana sanity. The more lawmakers and the voting public are exposed to the truth about marijuana and the effects of marijuana policy, the more likely they are call for an alternative to prohibition.

This informational hearing set the stage for another hearing and a vote on A.B. 390 — legislation to tax and regulation marijuana — that the Public Safety Committee is expected to hold in January.

Here is one of the news reports covering this historic hearing and both sides of the debate:

Two-thirds majorities were needed in both the state House and Senate to override Lynch’s veto. The override passed in the House by a vote of 240-115, but came two votes shy in the Senate, which voted 14-10.

This result is particularly disappointing because an overwhelmingly majority of New Hampshire residents (71% according to a recent poll) support protecting seriously ill patients through medical marijuana laws. Unfortunately, several cowardly legislators remain under the impression that voting in favor of compassionate and commonsense laws might hurt them politically.

Fortunately, this fight is not over. MPP and our allies in New Hampshire will continue to work toward marijuana policy reform in the Granite State. Already we have seen tremendous progress: In 2007, the state House voted down a medical marijuana bill, but today, 67.6% of the House voted to make a medical marijuana bill law.

Learn more about the campaign in New Hampshire here.

The answer is 13. They are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

But many media—as well as some government sources—incorrectly counted Maryland as the 14^th state to protect medical marijuana patients from arrest and prosecution. Unfortunately, Maryland’s law does no such thing; the Free State has not yet earned a place among states with effective medical marijuana laws.

That’s because the Darrell Putnam Compassionate Use Act, signed into law in 2003 by then-Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R), falls short of the laws passed by the 13 medical marijuana states in many respects.

Here’s why: Maryland’s law protects patients from jail, but it does not protect them from arrest and does not give them any means of safe access to their medicine. Even patients using marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation are still subject to arrest, which has forced many to appear in court to prove they use marijuana because of medical necessity. While the law does protect seriously ill patients from any prison sentences if they can prove a medical necessity, it still allows for fines up to $100, and it gives prosecuted patients no recourse to seek refunds for legal fees. In many instances, the fate of medical marijuana patients in Maryland depends solely on their legal representation.

A proposal to create a state task force that would have re-evaluated Maryland’s current medical marijuana law died in committee earlier this year. But until reforms are passed, Maryland should not be included in the list of medical marijuana states.

Read more about Maryland’s medical marijuana laws and the latest legislative developments here.