Let's deal with the bad news up front: Bogged down in a major fight over budget and tax issues, the Illinois House of Representatives finished its spring session and left town without acting on the medical marijuana bill. Legislators generally don't return to session until a November "veto session."

The good news is that we made historic progress this year. The bill passed the state Senate for the first time ever, and cleared all the necessary House committees. That leaves the measure well positioned for a vote either during the veto session this fall or when they reconvene for the next full session in January.

In a statement issued earlier today, House sponsor Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) said, “This bill gained more and more momentum at every stage of the legislative process, and I think the pace at which it moved is testament to the support it enjoys.”

We'd all prefer to see the process happen faster, but neither MPP, the bill's sponsors, nor the dozens of courageous patients who've come forward to speak about their own personal experiences with medical marijuana have any intention of giving up.

In mid-May, spurred by a press release from the drug czar's office, the American news media reported with varying levels of hysteria that average marijuana potency had soared past the 10% THC level for the first time. Clearly the sky was falling, or at least was about to.

Small problem: According to the actual report, from the Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, average marijuana potency is only 8.52% -- a fact easily determined by doing something most journalists apparently didn't bother to attempt: reading the report, which is based on tests of samples seized by police. The way they got to the claimed rate of 10.1% was by including samples of hashish (average potency 20.76%) and hash oil (15.64%).

There's more. While the potency of marijuana samples did increase a bit from the comparable period a year ago, the overall proportion of samples represented by hash and hash oil also increased. That is, a greater percentage of the cannabis products seized and sent in for testing was the high-strength stuff.

But are these police seizure samples tested representative of what's actually available to marijuana consumers? There is absolutely no way to be sure, but every indication is that they aren't.

First, the number of samples tested dropped markedly, from 1290 a year ago to 818 in the current period. Why such a big drop? The MPMP report doesn't say.

Second, as with prior years, the domestically produced marijuana tested tended to be significantly weaker than the imported stuff, but domestic cannabis only represented 29.7% of the samples tested. No one seriously believes that less than a third of the marijuana consumed in the U.S. is produced here. Indeed, a 2005 State Department report suggests that the real proportion is almost the exact reverse: "More than 10,000 metric tons of domestic marijuana and more than 5,000 metric tons of marijuana cultivated and harvested in Mexico and Canada is marketed to more than 20 million users in the United States. Colombia, Jamaica, and Paraguay also export marijuana to the U.S.” Those last three countries, though, represent a tiny fraction of what comes here from Mexico and Canada.

Is the average potency of marijuana inching upward? Probably, though there isn't the slightest evidence that this makes it more dangerous. Is the real average potency over 10%? Only if you believe in the tooth fairy.

Last night, after years of work -- and months of intense pressure by patients, advocates, and supportive legislators -- the Illinois Senate passed a bill that would protect qualified Illinois medical marijuana patients from arrest for the first time ever, 30-28.

But there's still more work to accomplish before seriously ill Illinois medical marijuana patients can safely acquire and use their medicine without fear of arrest. If you're an Illinois resident, please help us build on the momentum from this victory and encourage your friends and family in Illinois to do so.

Over the last several days, the popular Web site Digg has been allowing users to submit and vote up or down various questions to be posed during today's "Digg Dialogue" and CNN interview with Calif. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). 

When Schwarzenegger was asked about taxing and regulating marijuana as a result, he replied that he doesn't support changing the current marijuana laws because believes -- perhaps alone among citizens -- that the current laws have "worked very well for California."

You've got to wonder by what measure he's gauging marijuana prohibition's success. When California first banned marijuana in 1913, the plant was virtually unknown. Now nearly one in ten Californians admit to having used it within any given year - despite the more than 74,000 marijuana arrests made in the state last year alone. More California teens report using marijuana than tobacco, and the drug can be found in nearly every high school in the state. This is a successful law?

Once again, the public is way ahead of politicians on marijuana policy. Taxing and regulating marijuana enjoys majority support in California - at least according to one of the state's most respected pollsters. Arnold's job performance ratings, on the other hand, are a whole other story.

For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed -- falsely -- that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:

The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don't have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.

Just for fun, let's compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California's actual prison population is 171,000.

So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?

One of the canards regularly raised by opponents of medical marijuana is that it just gets people high and doesn't provide real medical relief. For example, last year former deputy drug czar Scott Burns told a California newspaper, "Anybody can say something makes me feel better anecdotally. And I hear that a lot.  'Marijuana is the only thing that makes me feel good.' I say you should try crack, because from what I hear, crack cocaine will make you feel really good as well."

Anyone inclined to believe such nonsense should check out an article just published online by the journal Pharmacological Research. The article, by two researchers from the University of Naples, covers the potential benefits of cannabinoids in illnesses involving intestinal inflammation (e.g. Crohn's disease) and in colorectal cancer.

The authors explain that "cannabinoids exert important physiological and pathophysiological actions in the digestive tract, including appetite regulation, emesis, protection of the gastric mucosa, intestinal ion transport, gastric emptying and intestinal motility." They then go into a detailed and highly technical explanation of how the body's CB1 and CB2 receptors -- the route through which marijuana and the body's own marijuana-like chemicals act -- are involved in controlling the excessive inflammation that is the hallmark of Crohn's and other forms of inflammatory bowel disease and how enhancing those actions can help.

The researchers then go into a similarly detailed discussion of the cellular mechanisms by which cannabinoids -- including natural plant cannabinoids like THC and CBD -- fight colorectal cancer, opening the discussion with this: "Cannabinoids exert antiproliferative, antimetastatic and apoptotic actions in colorectal carcinoma epithelial cells as well as antitumoural effects in experimental models of colon cancer."

So, can we lay to rest once and for all the lie that medical marijuana is just about "getting high"?

Yesterday, Congressman Steven Cohen (D-Tenn.) did a fantastic job of arguing against two common and misinformed prohibitionist arguments during a congressional hearing with FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Watch the video below to see Congressman Cohen refute the arguments that marijuana is particularly harmful and that marijuana is a gateway drug.

An Arizona family describes why they support the need for a medical marijuana law.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate today that sought to undermine the 13 state medical marijuana laws. Coburn’s legislation was defeated in committee (13-10) on a party-line vote.

Offered as an amendment to the Family Smoking and Tobacco Control Act, Coburn’s legislation would have placed state medical marijuana laws under the regulatory control of the FDA – not necessarily a bad thing on its own. But Coburn's intentions become apparent when you realize that FDA approval requires specific, FDA-approved research into marijuana’s risks and benefits as a medicine, something the federal government has blocked for decades. Without the research, MPP feared that the FDA would shut down medical marijuana access nationwide.

The fact that medical marijuana opponents are going on the offensive (and failing) speaks volumes to the success we’ve had in recent months.  The Supreme Court recently affirmed California’s medical marijuana law, and the new administration has stated a policy of non-interference with state medical marijuana laws – and both points were raised during the committee debate. Even Sen. Coburn conceded, “It is not an illegal product in 13 states.”

It is possible that Sen. Coburn will continue his attack on medical marijuana, but given the opposition he faced today, it's unlikely he'll succeed.

MPP Director of Government Relations Aaron Houston discusses the contradictions between State and Federal law regarding the use of marijuana. Specifically, he addresses the U.S. Supreme Court decision not to review a challenge to California medical marijuana law brought by two counties in that state. The counties had been defeated in lower court decisions that affirmed the right of States to make laws that violated Federal law. 05/19/2009