The United States could improve its national budget by nearly $18 billion annually if we taxed and regulated marijuana like alcohol, according to a newly released study from the Cato Institute.

“The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition,” by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock, a doctoral candidate at the Stern School of Business at New York University, estimates the amount of money state and federal governments could both save from reduced expenditures and make from tax revenue, if marijuana and other drugs were made legal, taxed, and regulated.

The report concludes that, between savings and tax revenue, government budgets would improve by $17.4 billion annually if we regulated marijuana, and approximately $88 billion annually if we regulated all drugs.

Those are some pretty big numbers. But this part of the conclusion is what really caught my eye:

“About half of the budgetary improvement from legalization is due to reduced criminal justice expenditures. But for this component of the impact to show up in government budgets, policymakers would have to lay off police, prosecutors, prison guards, and the like. Because such a move would be politically painful, it may not occur. It is certainly true that reduced expenditure on enforcing drug prohibition can still be beneficial if those criminal justice resources are re-deployed to better uses, but that outcome is difficult to achieve.”

Politicians might not have the stomach for it, but luckily we live in a country where many states can enact laws through ballot initiatives, such as Prop 19, the marijuana legalization measure Californians will vote on this November. According to the Cato report, making marijuana legal in California could raise $351.88 million in tax revenue, and save about $959.75 million in government expenditures. That’s more than $1.3 billion annually.

In July, the California Board of Equalization estimated that the state could collect up to $1.4 billion by ending marijuana prohibition.

You probably guessed wrong.

Peter Shumlin (D), the president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate, is one of only two major-party gubernatorial candidates in the nation to advocate publicly for the decriminalization of marijuana. (The other candidate is Dan Malloy, the Democratic nominee for governor in Connecticut.)

On August 10, just two weeks before Vermont's primary election, Shumlin said on television, "We simply are penny wise and pound foolish to be using law enforcement dollars to be locking up criminals when they're dealing with small amounts of marijuana." He was consistent all the way through the campaign.

By making marijuana decriminalization -- the removal of all criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana -- a major campaign issue, Shumlin was able to overcome the odds by prevailing in a five-way Democratic primary.

His opponent in the Nov. 2 general election, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie (R), is ultra-hostile to decriminalization efforts.

Supporters of sensible marijuana policies must do everything we can to help Shumlin get elected on November 2. If we succeed, Vermont has a good chance of decriminalizing the possession of marijuana, as well as allowing a handful of medical marijuana dispensaries to provide patients with improved access to their medicine in 2011.

When I met Shumlin in a Springfield cafe in 2002, he impressed me with his candor, especially since he was telling me the opposite of what I wanted to hear.

Howard Dean (D) was governor and about to run for president, and Shumlin was helping him steer clear of controversy by bottling up our medical marijuana bill in the state Senate. I suggested to Shumlin that he was single-handedly preventing medical marijuana from becoming legal. "Don't kid yourself," he responded. "Governor Dean would veto the bill anyway, so I'm just saving everyone the trouble." He went on to say that he'd help pass medical marijuana during the 2003-2004 cycle.

He kept his word. With his help and the leadership of state Rep. David Zuckerman (Progressive), our medical marijuana bill was enacted into law in May 2004.

The story of our 2004 victory points to how we plan on being successful again in Vermont, if we can get Shumlin elected.

Vermont's original medical marijuana bill, which sought to allow patients and their caregivers to grow their own marijuana for a variety of medical conditions, passed the Democrat-controlled Senate in 2003. But the bill temporarily stalled in the Republican-controlled House health committee, where we were shy of a majority vote.

One legislator on that committee, Rep. Bill Keogh (D), publicly said he'd support our bill if a majority of his constituents voted for the local medical marijuana initiative that would soon be on the citywide ballot in Burlington, the state's largest city. The initiative then received 83% of the vote, Keogh changed his vote, and we therefore reached majority support on the committee.

But we had a governor problem. Jim Douglas (R), who replaced Howard Dean in January 2003, had publicly stated he was opposed to the bill. So we ran a heavy rotation of three TV ads in Vermont -- separately featuring an AIDS patient, a cancer patient, and an MS patient -- to pressure the governor and the legislature.

In the meantime, we were gathering postcards to the governor from concerned citizens all across Vermont. A reporter who was writing a story about our lobbying juggernaut was flipping through the postcards and noticed a name of particular importance -- Kenneth Angell, the Catholic bishop of Vermont.

After the bishop released a public statement in support of our bill, the governor and the House health committee chair cut a deal: They'd let the bill pass out of committee, provided it would protect medical marijuana use for only three medical conditions; coincidentally, they chose AIDS, cancer, and MS.

The bill passed out of committee and also on the House floor, and Gov. Douglas let the bill become law without his signature.

Because there were no abuses of the new law, we were able to expand it in 2006 by increasing the number of medical conditions and the number of ounces/plants that patients could have. This expansion became law without controversy.

Flash forward to this year: On March 2, the voters of Montpelier, the state capital, passed a local marijuana-decriminalization initiative with an overwhelming 72% of the vote. And a bill to expand the state's existing medical marijuana law to allow for the sale of medical marijuana through nonprofit dispensaries, which was cosponsored by Shumlin, passed three different Senate committees in March.

Vermont is poised to pass both a decriminalization bill and a dispensary bill next year, if Shumlin gets elected this November 2. In Vermont, successful gubernatorial races cost only $2,000,000 or so for the winning candidate; the Marijuana Policy Project has already raised/donated $14,000, and we continue to ramp up. Please help us make it happen.

(Note: This article also appeared on the Huffington Post.)

If California voters pass Prop 19 this November, Oregon state Rep. Peter Buckley (D) says he will introduce a similar measure in the Oregon legislature in 2011 to tax and regulate marijuana for adults. From the Mail Tribune:

In addition to raising revenue, Buckley said, it would dramatically reduce criminal activity now associated with it, including the illegal pot gardens now frequently found on area federal forestlands.

"But what happens in California is the key," said Buckley, who is co-chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

"California is huge," he said. "If California decides to legalize it, I want my colleagues to at least let Oregon voters weigh in on the issue."

He believes that Oregonians likely would follow California's lead, followed by residents in Washington state.

Californians approved that state's landmark medical marijuana law 14 years ago; Oregonians followed suit four years later.

Prop 19 is currently ahead 49-42 in the latest poll. Can you feel the momentum?

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said this weekend that “[t]ransnational drug trafficking organizations operating from Mexico represent the most immediate national security threat faced by the United States in the Western Hemisphere.”

Gee, if only there were some way to cut off their largest source of revenue …

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly using a $7 million surveillance plane to spy on marijuana grows in Colorado.

Glad to see they've got their priorities right.

With only about five weeks left until Election Day, a new Field Poll of likely voters shows California’s Proposition 19 leading 49 to 42 percent, fueled by large majorities of voters younger than 40 and those who live in the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. That’s an extremely promising increase from the last Field Poll taken in June, which showed the initiative losing 48 to 44.

Another poll last week released by PPP also found the initiative leading 47 to 38.

These numbers indicate steadily expanding support for the measure to make marijuana legal for all adults in California, despite the cowardly opposition of nearly every mainstream politician and newspaper in the state.

As campaign contributions have revealed, the groups backing the misguided fight against Prop. 19 – the alcohol industry, narcotics officers, corrections officers – stand to lose much from a regulated marijuana market and are perfectly happy with the continued criminalization of millions of citizens who choose to use a substance that’s safer than alcohol.

On November 2, California voters will have a unique opportunity to combat these private interests by voting for Prop 19 -- a desperately needed measure -- at a time when most public officials are too reluctant or foolish to admit that it’s the right thing to do.

In their hearts, the average voter knows that our current marijuana laws are a failure, and that it is time for change. If these polls are any indication of voter turnout, that change might be coming to California in a matter of weeks.

Stay tuned for updates.

Perhaps as early as next week, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is expected to sign a series of bills that would outlaw K2 -- one of several names given to synthetic cannabinoids ("fake marijuana") that are sprayed onto different herbs and sold legally in smoke shops across the country.

Such products are labeled "not for human consumption," but people use them anyway, because, when smoked, they can mimic the effects of marijuana, but they don't show up on drug tests. More importantly, unlike marijuana, K2 is legal to buy -- though perhaps not for long. In just six months, 13 different states have moved to ban the substance, fueled primarily by reports of K2's adverse health effects. With Granholm's signature, Michigan would become the 14th.

At first glance, these actions might appear to be a reasonable way to protect the public from a dangerous substance. But -- as I'll explain -- they're really just a testament to the folly of our nation's marijuana laws.

First, some background: K2 was created in 1995 by John Huffman, a chemistry professor at Clemson University who was researching the effects of cannabinoids, marijuana's unique, active components. Only in the last year has it become widely available and used by consumers. Now, the effects of K2 might indeed be exaggerated in order to further demonize the substance (as a marijuana reformer, I'm all too familiar with this phenomenon), but papers across the country have published reports of K2 users suffering from accelerated heart rates and increased blood pressure, sometimes even ending up in the emergency room.

It's unclear whether these reactions are caused by the substance itself, or the various herbal concoctions that vendors spray it on. What is clear, however, is that natural, whole-plant (aka, "real") marijuana has no such adverse effects on users. In fact, a recent study from the University of Michigan showed that marijuana leads to fewer emergency room admissions than virtually any other legal or illegal drug.

Put more simply, our country's insane prohibition on marijuana -- a safe, non-toxic, and well-studied drug -- is now leading consumers to experiment with lesser-known, and potentially much more dangerous, alternatives.

Professor Huffman himself has said that people who use K2 are "idiots." But are they? Being arrested and convicted for marijuana possession can bring life-long consequences, such as the loss of a job or financial aid for college. Using K2 comes with no negative consequences -- except, perhaps, to one's health.

All this K2 nonsense is simply one more reason -- alongside more important issues like sensible law enforcement, personal liberty, racial justice, and potential tax revenue -- why America needs a legal, regulated marijuana market. Whereas the full health effects of K2 are largely unknown because they haven't been studied, marijuana is perhaps the most studied plant in history -- one that a former DEA judge once called "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." In a regulated market, consumers would know exactly what they're purchasing and putting into their bodies. This is not the case when somebody buys K2 -- or one of its various knockoffs -- that's been sprayed onto some mystery plant matter.

I don't have a solid opinion one way or the other as to whether K2 should be banned or regulated like other drugs. But I do know this: The only reason anyone uses K2 and not marijuana is because K2 is legal and marijuana is not. It's as simple as that. Make marijuana legal, and few, if any, consumers will waste their time seeking out K2.

It's for this reason that K2 bans are misguided, because they don't address the core issue: millions of Americans want to use marijuana, or something that will mimic its effects, and if they're afraid about illegal means of doing so, they will continue to seek out legal alternatives. In fact, the Associated Press has reported that in states where K2 has been banned, merchants have simply changed its name, altered its chemical makeup slightly, and continued to sell it to customers. That's right: people in those states are now seeking legal alternatives to the legal alternative to marijuana. And round and round we go.

Californians will have a unique chance to end this lunacy once and for all this November, when they vote on Proposition 19, which would allow adults to grow and possess -- and localities to regulate -- natural, whole-plant marijuana. If Prop. 19 does pass, I have a feeling there won't be much of a market for K2 in the Golden State.

Oh, and just for kicks, what does Huffman, the creator of K2, think about attempts to ban it?

"It's not going to be effective," he told the AP. "Is the ban on marijuana effective?"

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the Huffington Post.)

In the latest development in the quest for justice in Columbia, Missouri, Jonathan Whitworth and family are suing the officers responsible for a botched February SWAT raid that endangered their lives and resulted in the death of one of their dogs.

This story received national attention when a video was released showing the police entering the home in what they call a “dynamic entry” and immediately opening fire, killing one dog and injuring another. After enormous pressure from the media and activist community, the Columbia Police Chief agreed to revise the city’s SWAT guidelines to prevent further incidents.

Unfortunately, the officers involved were never disciplined for their dangerous behavior, and both the chief and police review board found that they had acted appropriately. While this family will have to suffer the lasting pain of losing a pet and the trauma of a violent intrusion in their lives, the paramilitary thugs that terrorized them, over a gram of marijuana and a pipe, suffered no consequences whatsoever.

Let’s hope the judge hearing this case feels differently.

Just in case you haven’t seen the video, this is what the officers are being sued for:

SAFER executive director Mason Tvert calls out an anti-Prop 19 spokesman  -- "what this gentleman's job is here is to raise doubt, and to scare people, and he's again being paid by the alcohol industry" -- on CNN. I'd say more, but the clip speaks for itself. Enjoy!