In the latest sign of the growing legitimacy and political clout of America’s emerging marijuana industry, medical marijuana business leaders and others have announced the creation of the National Cannabis Industry Association, an organization founded with the express purpose of improving business conditions for the burgeoning marijuana industry. From today’s New York Times:

Based in Washington, the group, the National Cannabis Industry Association, will focus primarily on lobbying, but will also help medical marijuana businesses navigate a patchwork of laws that differ depending on location.

“This is an industry that is emerging — from the dispensaries to the ancillary businesses that are now coming out of the shadows,” said Aaron Smith, a medical marijuana advocate in Phoenix and the group’s executive director. “While there is good work being done, there isn’t anyone out there representing the industry’s interests directly.”

The group’s board members, which include some of the more prominent names in the medical marijuana industry, say the need for a national association has become increasingly apparent with the explosion of the legal marijuana business. Such businesses include dispensaries, growing facilities and equipment suppliers.

According to a press release the group sent out this morning, “In addition to working to repeal the federal prohibition of marijuana, NCIA is already focusing on more immediate policy goals for the industry such as ensuring that the nation’s revenue and banking policies are not out of step with state laws allowing medical cannabis sales.”

Readers may remember Aaron Smith from his past work as MPP’s California state policy director, where he helped advance marijuana law reform legislation in the California state legislature by working with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle (and was also a frequent contributor to this blog!). We wish him all the best in his new role at NCIA.

You can learn more about the group at TheCannabisIndustry.org.

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Yesterday, George W. Bush began the time-honored tradition of granting pardons to convicted felons in the president’s final days in the White House. 14 pardons and two commuted sentences were announced late last night, and more are expected to be handed down before he leaves office on January 20.

Two former politicians who have been convicted of public corruption charges are looking to the president in hopes that he will shorten their prison sentences. Some pundits are even speculating that he may offer “preemptive” pardons to those involved in the unconstitutional torture of terrorism suspects after 9-11.

I wonder if President Bush has given any thought to pardoning some of the medical marijuana patients and caregivers his administration has helped to prosecute?

One such unfortunate person who comes to mind is Charles C. Lynch of Morro Bay, California.

When Charles opened a city-licensed medical marijuana collective on California’s Central Coast, the community welcomed him with open arms. The city’s mayor even helped cut the ribbon at the chamber of commerce welcoming ceremony. The collective provided a safe and legal supply of medical marijuana to seriously ill patients for nearly a year before federal agents raided the facility and arrested Charles on federal drug charges.

During the ensuing trial, federal prosecutors described Charles as a common drug dealer and blocked any mention of medical marijuana from being brought forth by his defense. As a result, a jury found Charles guilty on five counts of federal drug charges. His sentencing hearing is set for January 5 and he could face up to 100 years in prison for following his heart (and state law) by helping patients to get their medicine.

I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a presidential pardon than Charles C. Lynch and others like him whose only crime was helping to relive suffering.

For more on Charles’ plight, check out this Reason.tv video.

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Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s “City Insider” blog picked up my last post about ONDCP’s spurious claims that San Francisco houses more medical marijuana facilities than Starbucks shops. A senior health inspector for the city told The Chronicle that ONDCP’s claim that nearly 100 medical marijuana facilities are operating downtown was “extremely incorrect.” The city official confirmed that there are actually 24 medical marijuana facilities in the entire city.

The Chronicle further pointed out how absurd ONDCP’s claims were from the perspective of anyone who actually knows San Francisco, and noted that ONDCP couldn’t even get their numbers straight when it came to how many Starbucks are in the city.

It didn’t take long for the ONDCP to respond with a new blog post announcing the “good news” that their previous post received some “MSM (mainstream media) attention.” The fact that the drug czar’s office considers an article calling them liars to be “good news” should tell you all you need to know about George W. Bush’s drug policy hacks.

ONDCP also altered its original post by reducing its random figure of 98 dispensaries to 71 – an equally arbitrary number. They claim to have obtained their list of medical marijuana dispensaries from a Google search; however the Google.com I use doesn’t yield results approaching anywhere near 71. Of course, a link to ONDCP’s source is conspicuously missing from their post.

ONDCP also decided to take a swipe at MPP and other supporters of medical marijuana by calling us “Washington, D.C. based lobbying groups that, attempting to legalize marijuana outright, prey on the compassion of voters.” Apparently, then, the dozens of prestigious medical organizations that support medical marijuana are also nothing more than predators for legalization…?

It’s ONDCP that’s really the distant Washington, D.C.-based group preying on taxpayers – who are forced to pay for the outright lies broadcasted on their blog, regardless of what San Francisco city officials or its hometown newspaper have to say about reality.

The truth is that San Francisco’s leaders have worked hard to regulate the city’s medical marijuana facilities, and it’s the federal government’s war on marijuana users that has caused real harm to the city. 

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Just one day before Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved their state’s medical marijuana ballot measure, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) falsely claimed that there are currently 98 medical marijuana dispensaries operating in downtown San Francisco.

After drawing attention to the ONDCP’s boldface lie here on our blog, I decided to check in with San Francisco’s Health Department – the agency responsible for licensing medical marijuana facilities within the city.

Sure enough, according to them, the ONDCP’s figure is inflated by more than 400 percent: there are actually only 24 medical marijuana dispensaries operating in all of San Francisco.

One would think that the federal government would have done its homework before spending your hard-earned tax dollars posting lies online and even going so far as to fabricate a map showing make-believe medical marijuana club locations.

Sadly, in classic drug-warrior form, the ONDCP are continuing to lie to the public about medical marijuana without even an attempt to back their claims.

On a more jovial note about the ongoing anti-marijuana nonsense, our friend Mark Hughes in MPP’s Communications Department developed this hilarious parody of the ONDCP’s absurd new advertising campaign — enjoy:

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Yesterday marked the 12^th anniversary of the passage of the first state law that effectively lifted criminal sanctions on the medical use of marijuana, California’s Proposition 215. In the years since 56% of California voters decided to stop criminalizing the ill, and public support for legal access to medical marijuana has grown to nearly 80%. That public sentiment has translated into policy reforms in at least 12 other states.

One would think that California’s law enforcement officials would do just that: enforce the law. But some of them spend time and even tax dollars lobbying against the state’s medical marijuana laws.

The California Narcotics Officers’ Association’s (CNOA) position paper on medical marijuana asserts, “There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine.” The CNOA ignores hundreds of studies on the efficacy of marijuana as medicine and the dozens of credible scientific and medical organizations that have publicly supported medical marijuana access.

Disinformation about medical marijuana isn’t limited to privately funded Web sites like cnoa.org. The Sheriff’s Department in California’s capital county uses local tax dollars to maintain a Web page that claims, “There are no medically accepted uses for smoking marijuana.”

The medical community doesn’t share the sheriff’s medical opinion. Even the U.S. government’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) found, “Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting and all can be mitigated by marijuana … there are patients with debilitating symptoms for whom smoked marijuana might provide relief.”

The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department makes even more bizarre claims in its attempt to play doctor on the Internet — such as claiming that marijuana could cause “increased facial and body hair” in women or that it can cause “diminished or complete loss of sexual pleasure.” Fortunately for the 14.5 million people who use marijuana, none of these far-fetched claims have been substantiated by science.

The sad fact is that California’s law enforcement lobby began campaigning against Proposition 215 in 1996 and when voters didn’t side with them, some its members never stopped.

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