Last week, the Montana House passed H.B. 161, a bill that would repeal the medical marijuana initiative passed by voters in 2004, in a preliminary vote that fell along party lines. This week, in preparation for the final House vote, the prohibitionists have switched their arguments from baseless fear mongering to "fiscal responsibility."

Yesterday, the main supporter of the bill argued that repeal of the medical marijuana law would cost the state money at first, but that it would save money in the long run. From the Billings Gazette:

House Speaker Mike Milburn, R-Cascade, told the House Appropriations Committee that a cost estimate from the governor's budget office shows if his bill repealing the law passes, it would cost the state nearly $263,000 in fiscal 2012 but save the state about $317,000 in 2013, $479,000 in 2014 and $496,500 in 2015 …

… As estimated by the budget office, the additional costs the first year are because of the cost of estimated increases in incarcerations of people using what would then be an illegal drug. The net savings in the three future years would be from reducing state employees and the cost of running the registration for medical pot.

If Milburn's stated intention of targeting and prosecuting 20,000 Montana citizens, who are not currently criminals but who will be if H.B. 161 passes, isn't sickening enough, his economic narrow-mindedness and disrespect for the voters of Montana certainly is.

The estimate of money saved in the future by the state government is based on eliminating bureaucratic costs for running the medical marijuana program. Unfortunately, this doesn’t take into account the roughly 1400 jobs that will be lost if medical marijuana is repealed. It doesn’t consider the continued cost of prosecuting medical marijuana patients. And it doesn’t mention the revenue created by the medical marijuana industry that goes right back into the local economy. Apparently Milburn is more concerned with the amount of money in the government coffers than with the livelihood of the average Montana resident.

So let’s get this straight: Mike Milburn is willing to use his political buddies in the state legislature to overrule the will of the people of Montana, who overwhelmingly approved the use of medical marijuana by 62% of the vote. He is willing to spend taxpayer money to hunt down sick people and put them in jail. He is willing to put 1400 Montanans out of work, and take millions of dollars out of the local economy.

He is willing to do all this because he thinks too many people are using marijuana.

Are you willing to let him succeed?

If not, you can help here.

In addition to two medical marijuana regulation bills being considered in Hawaii, a separate bill that would remove criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana is moving through the state Senate. Last week, it passed through two Senate committees and is now headed to the full Senate for a vote before advancing further. Considering that 20 of 25 members of the Senate are co-sponsors, it should be a breeze.

The bill would make possession of an ounce or less of marijuana a civil infraction. This would carry a $100 fine, but would not come with a criminal record or jail time. It also removes the mandate for drug treatment for someone possessing the same amount. Teachers and school administrators would no longer be required to notify the police of student possession if they preferred to deal with an incident in-house, which would surely free up many law enforcement resources.

As usual, law enforcement and others opposed to this commonsense measure are complaining that such laws send a mixed message to children. And as usual, they are ignoring the message that is sent when adults tell youth to stay away from alcohol, while openly distributing, using, and advertising it ubiquitously. Yet, no one is calling for a return to alcohol prohibition. Maybe they think kids are stupid. Or maybe they are just afraid to admit they are wrong, and that there is no justification for making criminals out of adults who choose to relax with a substance that is safer than alcohol.

The drug war claimed another victim this week, this time in the form of organized professional sports. On Wednesday, February 2, the LPGA Tour announced that it would postpone the Tres Marias Championship, which was to be held in Morelia, Mexico. Tour officials stated that their security firm determined that safety issues surrounding the event are “too severe” to have the event this year, and in order to hold the event in future years, things would have to “improve dramatically.”

I’ll be the first to admit that losing one golf tournament is nothing to lose sleep over and it should be put into context (we all know the true tragedy of the War on Drugs). However, the fact that a security firm decided that the current state of affairs in Morelia, Mexico renders a LPGA tournament unplayable due to safety concerns should give everyone pause. Today Morelia loses a major golf tournament, tomorrow could see other industry follow suit. Once industry leaves, the only employers are the cartels that create the violence that drives away the business and the police who do battle with them. The cycle of violence continues. Rinse and repeat.

If American officials, who invest heavily in Mexico’s war against cartels, were to simply lift the prohibition on marijuana, we could see real change for our neighbors to the south. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that Mexican drug cartels derive 60% of their profits from marijuana sales to the U.S. market. With one policy decision, we could cripple the cartels’ bank accounts and their power structure, bringing an end to the violence that has devastated vast areas of Mexico. When that day comes, it will certainly be a fine day for golf.

From the Huffington Post:

In watching the evolving hubbub around President Obama's statement about drug legalization on Youtube on January 27, when he said, "I think this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate, [but] I am not in favor of legalization," I'm reminded of December 7, 1993.

Sitting at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., someone at my table asked U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders if she would support legalizing drugs as a way of curbing drug-related violence. Her now-famous answer was this: "I do feel we'd markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized. I don't know all the ramifications, but I do feel we need to do some studies. Some other countries that have legalized drugs, they certainly have shown that there has been a reduction in their crime rate, and there has been no increase in their drug rate."

New to the fake conservatism of D.C., I was surprised at the national outcry that resulted. For days, political commentators and newspaper editorial boards pulled their hair out, incredulous that President Clinton's top physician would say something so "irresponsible."

Compare that knee-jerk reaction with today's public response to a similar remark, except this time it's the actual president who made the remark. There's much less outcry today, and many people are actually criticizing Obama for not going farther and declaring that at least marijuana should be legal.

The differences between the two events and the surrounding discussions show how far politicians, the political chattering class, and the public have matured in just 17 years. Indeed, public support for making marijuana legal was only 25% back then, but now it's 46% -- a rise of 1.4% per year.

While I'm glad the president is favoring debate -- rather than shutting down debate, as his predecessors did -- the rest of his response was fairly disappointing. Here are my major criticisms of the president's approach to this debate ...

-- Public Health Problem: He also said, "I am a strong believer that we have to think more about drugs as a public health problem." By definition, removing something from the sphere of criminal justice requires legalizing or decriminalizing it. If Obama really believes this, then why continue to treat marijuana use as a crime? For example, eating gobs of cheeseburgers and eggs is widely considered a public-health problem, but no one is arguing that such consumers should be arrested. And it should be noted that cholesterol kills more people in America every year than have been killed by marijuana use in all of recorded history.

-- Obama, the Criminal: Obama is a former user of marijuana and cocaine, so to oppose the legalization -- or at least the decriminalization -- of drugs like these is hypocritical. If he's unwilling to push for substantial drug policy reform, there's only one way out of the hypocrisy, and that is to turn himself in for arrest. Having never experienced the negative effects that a criminal record can have on getting an education or finding a job, it seems like he is willfully overlooking that if he had been one of the 800,000 people who are arrested for marijuana every year, he would probably not be where he is.

-- Shrink Demand: Obama dedicates most of his answer to talking about how we need to shift taxpayer resources from reducing the supply of drugs to reducing the demand for drugs. The ideal approach is not to use taxpayer money for either, and instead to let adults and private institutions decide for themselves how they want to handle drugs; but if money must be spent on one side or the other, clearly, the money should shift from law enforcement and interdiction to drug treatment and education. Continuing to arrest people for marijuana does nothing to reduce demand, and is one of the most expensive aspects of the drug war.

It's also worth noting that 100 of the top 100 questions from the public were about drug policy reform. You read that right.

It wasn't that long ago that discussing the legalization of drugs was akin to discussing whether it should be legal to dump toxic waste on the property line between your yard and your neighbor's yard: Both were such unpopular ideas that there was no need to feature either debate on TV or newspaper editorial pages.

Now, support or opposition to marijuana policy reform is a common discussion in the media and at the dinner table; it's now more akin to discussing school vouchers, with each side polling between 40% and 60%.

The marijuana issue is indeed legitimate, and with support for reform steadily climbing, it's definitely in the spotlight. But it won't be that way forever, so if you want to effect change while the wind is at our backs, you know where to find me.

President Obama held another public forum yesterday on Youtube, and once again the questions were dominated by concerns about our nation's drug policies. Many in the reform movement were worried that we would be ignored or laughed off again. Well, the President did respond:

We at MPP are pleased that President Obama is at least taking the issue of drug policy reform seriously. But his response is not much better than what President Bush might have said. Yes, we need to improve access to drug treatment and we need to focus on other options in the criminal justice system for first-time, non-violent offenders. But we need to have a far more serious discussion about the potential benefits of creating a legal, regulated market for marijuana.

It is time to end marijuana prohibition and it is inappropriate for the president to group that subject into an across-the-board opposition to "legalizing drugs."

Medical marijuana patients in the Aloha State could be looking at major improvements to their ability to access their medicine. Last week, two proposals were introduced in the state legislature to augment the 10-year-old law.

Sen. Will Espero proposed a bill that would increase the number of plants a patient can personally grow from four to 10. Patients would also be able to designate a caregiver to grow the same amount of plants instead, and each caregiver would be able to take on up to four patients. This bill would also keep patients' names and grow site locations private, and would allow a person with a qualifying condition to get a medical marijuana recommendation from a doctor other than his or her primary care physician.

A bill that would set up state-licenced compassion centers was also introduced by Sen. J. Kalani English. While the licensing fees and taxes for these businesses would be large, this proposal would be the first of its kind to allow dispensaries to provide marijuana to non-Hawaii residents who are legal medical marijuana patients in their home states.

Of course, the police are fighting this tooth and nail, and are trotting out the same old predictable arguments. According to Sen. Espero, Hawaii lawmakers aren't buying it anymore. And neither is the new governor.

On Wednesday, January 19, Idaho State Representative Tom Trail introduced legislation that would protect seriously ill residents in his state from arrest and prosecution for using marijuana with their doctors’ recommendations. Rep. Trail, a Republican from Moscow, Idaho, recognized the compassionate need for a distinction between medical and non-medical use of marijuana and acted on it.

If passed, Idaho would become the 16th state, along with the District of Columbia, to distinguish between medical and non-medical marijuana use. Idaho is surrounded by medical marijuana states, sharing borders with Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Montana. Additionally, Idaho borders Canada, a medical marijuana country.

Although the bill is solid, Rep. Trail has his work cut out for him. In a state as “red” as they get, dispelling myths and making sure the truth is heard can be difficult. However, the soft-spoken conservative from Moscow, Idaho seems to be an ideal champion for this issue.

If you live in Idaho and would like to be updated on Rep. Trail’s efforts, or for updates on marijuana legislation in any state, please sign up for MPP’s state specific e-mail alerts at www.mpp.org/subscribe.

UPDATED: Shocking. That's the only word that comes to mind when seeing the video of Todd Blair, 45, gunned down by armed police storming his home on a no-knock raid in Utah last September. Blair, no doubt surprised by the sound of yelling and having his door kicked in, emerges from an interior doorway holding a golf club over his head. Before Blair can react, Sgt. Troy Burnett shoots him three times and Blair slumps to the floor dead.

No "drop the weapon," no "get down on the ground," just bang!, bang!, bang! It's a chilling scene that's over before it started, and all the police found was a small amount of marijuana and an empty vial alleged to have contained other drugs.

This type of raid won't come as a surprise to regular readers of our blog, of course. We see these stories all the time because they're playing out every day in this country at an alarming rate. Lives are ruined and lost, and for what? A few grams of marijuana? It's just another—albiet outrageous—example of how prohibition has failed as a policy at every conceivable turn. If videos like this aren't a sure sign that it's time to end marijuana prohibition and adopt sensible polices like taxation and regulation, then I'm not sure what is. (originally written by John Berry, with updates by Dusty Trice)

Please donate to the Marijuana Policy Project!

Two cases involving medical marijuana patients have reached the supreme courts of their respective states, and their results could have far-reaching implications for medical marijuana in the future.

In Washington, the state Supreme Court announced it will hear the appeal of a woman who was fired from her job at a telephone call center for testing positive for marijuana on a workplace drug test, despite being a registered medical marijuana patient. While the medical marijuana law in Washington does not protect patients using marijuana in the workplace, the patient had never used her medicine while on the job, and did not work in a role where residual intoxication could prove dangerous to others. Her employer terminated her for using a medicine that she was legally allowed to use in her own home.

It is not known whether this company, Teletech, has fired employees for testing positive for other controlled substances that they have been using legally on the advice of a physician. My guess is they have not.

The final ruling in this case will clarify the rights of employers and employees in medical marijuana states and will no doubt influence the language of future bills, as will the case of Joseph Casias, a Michigan medical marijuana patient who was fired under similar circumstances.

And on March 3, the Oregon Supreme Court will tackle the case of Cynthia Willis, a medical marijuana patient and long-time holder of a concealed-carry handgun permit. Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters denied Willis' permit renewal after he learned that she was a patient, citing conflict with federal law barring drug users from possessing firearms.

So far, the lower courts have sided with Ms. Willis. Let's hope the highest court in the state does, too. People should never be denied their constitutional rights simply because they are sick.

This article by Rob Kampia was recently in Huffington Post:

A few years ago, when the Marijuana Policy Project was lobbying the Minnesota legislature to pass a modest medical marijuana bill, the state prosecutors association led the opposition. Rank-and-file police from the Twin Cities left their beats to fill up committee hearing rooms -- in uniform, with handguns strapped to their waists -- in an attempt to intimidate the state legislators on the committees.

And law enforcement lied, lied, lied, so much so that we started distributing daily "Law Enforcement Lie of the Day" videos to all state legislators and political reporters in the state. We also slammed the leading local prosecutor's office with phone calls from angry constituents; he privately threatened to arrest us for "obstructing justice." I almost wish he had arrested us so that he would have had to explain why trying to help sick people interferes with justice, but he didn't.

For a couple years, it was all-out warfare, but we finally passed a medical marijuana bill through the legislature in May 2009, only to see Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) veto the bill, saying he preferred to "stand with law enforcement."

State prosecutors, police, sheriffs, and attorneys general -- not to mention federal DEA and FBI agents -- are almost universally opposed to marijuana policy reform measures in every state, to the point where they actually spend time and taxpayer money campaigning and lobbying against us. Why?

1. IGNORANCE: For the most part, rank-and-file cops aren't trained scientists or policy experts. They don't spend much time reading medical studies or public policy analyses, and they generally don't have much knowledge about the issue beyond how it directly affects their jobs. When presented with such information, they tend to listen to the people they encounter most in their work. Unfortunately, those people are almost always government officials or those with a vested interest in keeping marijuana illegal, such as drug treatment specialists. Since this information comes from "trusted sources,' it's usually accepted as fact, and differing viewpoints are therefore ignored.

2. JOB SECURITY: Before MPP helped decriminalize marijuana possession in Massachusetts in November 2008, we learned that marijuana-possession arrests accounted for 6% of all arrests in that state each year. So, to some extent, law enforcement was opposing our ballot initiative because they were concerned that some of them might need to be laid off if there were fewer "criminals" to arrest and prosecute. As for me, I never thought that 6% of law enforcement would be laid off; more likely, we were freeing up law enforcement to go after real criminals. Which leads me to...

3. QUALITY OF LIFE: According to the FBI, 48 law-enforcement officers nationwide were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2009, and none of these were killed by enforcing drug laws. It makes sense that going after murderers would be more dangerous than sniffing under college students' doors. But policing exists to make society safer, and hunting down nonviolent marijuana users at the expense of thousands of unsolved assaults, rapes, and murders does nothing to accomplish this.

4. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: It's hard for any person to change his or her political opinion after years of believing that opinion. So you can imagine how it would be even harder to change your opinion on an issue after you've ruined the lives of hundreds or thousands of people by arresting them on that issue. In other words, once a cop arrests marijuana users, testifies against them in court, and moves up the political food chain because of all this, it's almost impossible for that cop to then declare, "I was wrong."

Thankfully, there's an organization of principled law enforcement professionals who are neither ignorant, self-serving, nor mentally calcified. I'm talking about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization that deserves your wholehearted support.

And there is another ray of hope: When I talk to cops on the beat in the District of Columbia, where I live, I ask them, "What's the worst crime you usually have to deal with?" They almost always answer, "Domestic violence." I ask, "Is marijuana involved in that?" They laugh and say, "Never. It's almost always alcohol." So should marijuana be decriminalized, or maybe even legalized? "Probably, but the higher-ups would never go for that," they say.

So there you have it: There are plenty of police officers who see the futility and unfairness of marijuana prohibition up close, but most law enforcement officials with real authority support marijuana prohibition. Why the discrepancy?

The most obvious explanation is that the higher-ups are (1) more likely to be appointed or hired by mayors and city councils, and (2) responsible for presenting departmental budgets to those politicians every year. So perhaps there's a fifth reason why so many law enforcement officials are hostile...

5. FEAR OF OUT-OF-TOUCH POLITICIANS: Politicians are far behind the public when it comes to understanding the harms of marijuana prohibition. Whether politicians are afraid of being perceived as "soft on crime," of sticking their necks out on what is still a fairly contentious issue, or of offending particular special interest groups, opposition remains high among elected representatives. Law enforcement officials looking for bigger budgets and better jobs will echo these politicians ad nauseum, providing them with political cover and legitimacy. And there we have a self-perpetuating cycle.

This is why it's important to engage law enforcement on this issue at every opportunity. Whether it is the cop on your corner or the chief of police, opening the dialogue is vitally important.