MPP just released a new documentary examining the effects of marijuana prohibition on people's lives.  The piece looks at four stories (including our own Rob Kampia's) as examples of how marijuana prohibition and its consequences impact the lives of a diverse group of Americans and their families.

We've split the video up into two parts, which are available on the MPP-TV video blog: Part 1 and Part 2. This is powerful stuff, and we hope you'll watch and share it with friends.

We struggled a little bit with what to make of this very long, very comprehensive New Yorker feature by David Samuels on the murkier aspects of California's medical marijuana business.

The piece is well reported and provocative, but it comes nowhere near presenting a full picture of the situation.

Samuels focuses on what to many represents the worst abuses of California's medical marijuana laws, and demonstrates that the results aren't that horrible: adults purchasing a drug that's magnitudes safer than alcohol under at least a quasi-legal structure, paying taxes on the product and avoiding dangerous street dealers. Meanwhile, manufacturers and distributors operate under definable regulations, observe zoning restrictions and prohibitions on sales to minors.

Nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt. The main dangers anybody faces are from law enforcement.

However, the article only depicts a sliver of the realities of medical marijuana laws in California – let alone in the other 11 states with much tighter laws. People will disagree about just how horrible it is for healthy adults to safely, semi-legally obtain marijuana, but we can't forget about the thousands of medical marijuana patients battling painful, debilitating conditions for whom safe, legal access is truly a matter of life and death.

On that much, at least, there's a clear consensus, among regular folks and medical professionals alike, most recently demonstrated by the American College of Physicians' position paper calling for, among other things, legal protection for patients and their doctors in states with medical marijuana laws.

Also troubling is that the article vastly overstates the degree to which Californians – sick and healthy alike – enjoy legal protection for marijuana. The fact is 63,824 people were arrested for marijuana in the state in 2006 – a 12% increase since the medical marijuana law was passed in 1996.

Drug warriors and culture crusaders – not generally known for their adeptness with nuance – will surely see this piece as validation of their belief that the only way to keep marijuana out of the hands of healthy adults is to arrest the sick adults who use it.

We should welcome that argument and counter it vigilantly – it's absolute madness that our law regards the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana as criminals. But we can't allow real, suffering medical marijuana patients to become hostages in that debate.

Jury selection has begun in the trial of medical marijuana dispensary operator Charles Lynch, reported here on Tuesday. In a lengthy cover story on the medical marijuana battles on California's Central Coast, New Times San Luis Obispo mentions a small fact from the trial that sums up these federal medical marijuana prosecutions in a nutshell.

Not only have federal prosecutors successfully barred introduction of evidence showing that the marijuana Lynch provided was for medical purposes, they actually filed a motion to keep "sick looking" people from being allowed to testify. Fortunately, the judge turned down that request, but the jury will still never be told the basic facts of the situation. And that says more about the morality of this case than I ever could.

While the U.S. government was busily denouncing medical marijuana as some sort of  "drug legalizer" conspiracy, one of America's closest allies in the world quietly set up a medical marijuana program. Israel's medical marijuana program has gotten virtually no press in the U.S., but this Jerusalem Post article from a few months ago has some of the basics.

Medical marijuana access is restricted to a handful of indications such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, and Crohn's disease, and to patients for whom conventional medicines have failed. This week, Dr. Yehuda Baruch, who runs the program, told me that a total of 222 patients have gotten government approval to use medical marijuana, with 113 actively in the program at present.

Israel, of course, is one of America's closest allies, with both President Bush and Democratic candidate Barack Obama regularly speaking of America's "special relationship" with that small nation. But perhaps Drug Czar John Walters thinks that Israel, too, is part of the conspiracy to "fool" the public into thinking marijuana is medicine.

The trial of Charles Lynch, originally scheduled to start Tuesday, now is scheduled to begin on Wednesday, July 23. Lynch operated a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, Calif. -- legal under state law and with permission from the city. But the county sheriff, vehemently opposed to medical marijuana dispensaries, called in the Drug Enforcement Administration, which raided the dispensary and filed drug charges against Lynch.

Check out this Reason TV video for details about the case, including a 17-year-old cancer patient Lynch helped, with his parents' full support. Partly because a few of the dispensary's patients were under 21, Lynch faces a potential 100 years in federal prison. And because this is a federal trial, the jury won't be allowed to hear evidence that the marijuana Lynch provided was for medical purposes.

Dr. John Newmeyer is an epidemiologist and author of "Mother of All Gateway Drugs: Parables for Our Time." He sits down with us to discuss his views on marijuana and the drug war in general.

An editorial in the July 18 New York Times worries about rising drug overdose deaths among young people, but misleadingly brings marijuana into the picture, for no good reason. 

While the Times is right to raise alarm over rising drug overdose deaths among youth, references to marijuana in that context are both puzzling and misleading.

Marijuana has never caused a medically documented fatal overdose. Because THC does not suppress vital functions such as breathing, the consensus among researchers is that it is literally impossible to fatally overdose by smoking marijuana. So why does the Times even bring up marijuana in the context of overdose deaths?

The editorial sounds the alarm over increased marijuana potency, but government scare stories about potency are red herrings. There is no evidence that higher-THC marijuana is more addictive or in any way more dangerous. There is, however, considerable evidence that when potency increases, marijuana users smoke less, just as drinkers drink less vodka than they would beer -- thereby minimizing their risk of bronchitis or other lung issues related to smoking. 

A new article in the European Journal of Cancer Care answers medical marijuana opponents who claim that cancer patients don't need marijuana to relieve the nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. Opponents claim that while studies in the past showed THC to be roughly comparable to other anti-nausea drugs, it wasn't substantially better. Since those studies, they argue, better anti-nausea drugs have come into use, making medical marijuana irrelevant. In any case, they add, THC is available in pill form as Marinol.

Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo conducted a systematic review of studies of cannabinoid drugs for relief of chemo-induced nausea. Alas, the studies all involved oral THC or other cannabinoids, not whole marijuana, so the pill-vs.-plant issue isn't addressed, but many of the other distortions put out by opponents are firmly debunked.

First, the analysis found clear advantages for cannabinoids over the other tested. In some cases there were statistically significant differences in efficacy, and with amazing consistency, patients preferred the cannabinoids.

Most important, the Sao Paulo researchers demolish the claim that we don't need marijuana because we  now have better anti-nausea drugs. They note that these newer drugs still fail some patients, and "this cannot be corrected by an increase in dosage or frequency of administration," adding that when the nausea hits a day or more after chemo treatment, the "gold standard" drug combination "rarely obtains 50% of the desired effect."

And the coup de grace: "Cannabinoids seem to act through different mechanisms [than standard drugs] and can be effective for people who respond in an unsatisfactory way to the antiemetic drugs used today."

That's what some of us have been saying for years.

In the second part of this video documenting the real world impact of marijuana prohibition, we hear from medical marijuana patient Bernie Ellis about the potential loss of his home. Then, we speak with Ronnie and Anisha Naulls, California medical marijuana patients and dispensary owners whose family has been dramatically affected by the government’s war on marijuana.

In this first part of "The Human Cost of Marijuana Prohibition," we hear from Marisa Garcia, a student whose experience with a drug misdemeanor has left her without financial aid, and from MPP's own Rob Kampia, who tells us not only about his own experiences in jail, but also about those of several others who were not so fortunate. Click here for part 2.