This morning's press conference, at which MPP and other marijuana policy reformers joined U.S. Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) to call for an end to federal criminal penalties for marijuana possession, was a rousing success, as this CNN story shows. And apparently it got under the skin of our overlords at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Having not gotten much media pickup on their preemptive press release issued yesterday --…

A new study just published in Archives of Internal Medicine shows a 360.5% increase in the death rate from fatal medication errors (FMEs) from 1983 to 2004, vastly outstripping most other causes of death. Notably, most of the increase in deaths took place at home, not in medical settings or other locations. FMEs are defined as deaths from mistakes involving medications: accidental overdoses, the wrong drug being taken, etc. They do not include deaths from "adverse reactions" (side effects) involving…

MPP-TV recently had a chance to sit down with travel guru and author Rick Steves to discuss marijuana policy both here and abroad. Here's what he had to say...

ABC's "20/20" aired this story Friday about Rachel Hoffman, a young Florida woman who was murdered by drug dealers after Tallahassee police pressured her into acting as an informant to avoid minor marijuana charges. It would be easy to blame this on the extraordinary cowardice and ineptitude of the Tallahassee Police Department, but cowardice and ineptitude are inherent in our country's war on marijuana users. Tragedies like this one will remain routine, hideous occurrences as long as we treat innocent…

Saturday's Los Angeles Times does a pretty good story on this unfolding medical marijuana case, focusing on the bizarre dance defense attorneys must do to help the jury understand what's really going on, having been barred from using the phrase "medical marijuana" -- which is, of course, a nonexistent concept under federal law. 

This video, from the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care, has Dr. George Wagoner describing the relief his wife found from marijuana in her battle against ovarian cancer.

I promise, we will not do a new post every time an ONDCP official lies. We'd never get any work done. But the falsehoods uttered by deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns in this interview in the Arcata Eye, a small northern California paper, are so blatant that they deserve mention. To avoid having to write a War and Peace-length tome, I'll focus on just two: LIE #1:  Tough laws and enforcement are reducing marijuana use: Burns says, "drug use is down in the United States dramatically since 2001 ... So we…

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…

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…