UPDATED: This blog post was updated to more accurately reflect the position of the Marijuana Policy Project.

At the Center for American Progress on May 1, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske answered a question from MPP’s Steve Fox regarding marijuana prohibition. Or did he? What Steve essentially asked is that if a great many Americans use both marijuana and alcohol, and alcohol causes disease, violence and death while marijuana is not responsible for any of these problems, why are there laws prohibiting the use of marijuana, if alcohol is legal?

Now, with the exception of some brief gibberish about alcohol prohibition, the issue of allowing a harmful substance (alcohol) to be legally consumed by adults while outlawing a much less harmful substance (marijuana) was completely ignored. What was addressed, however, was the issue of prescription drugs.

The drug czar argued that there is no reason to tax, regulate, and control marijuana because legal prescription drugs take over 15,000 lives a year, saying, “we do a very poor job of keeping them out of the hands of abusers and young people.” This is interesting for several reasons, the first of which being that marijuana has not been responsible for any deaths in recorded human history. Also, medical marijuana patients are able to substitute marijuana for many of the dangerous prescriptions Gil is talking about, thereby minimizing their risk of becoming one of the 15,000 killed each year by legal prescription medications. Another reason for skepticism, and probably the most obvious: why should responsible users of a less harmful substance be penalized because the ONDCP is bad at its job? By keeping marijuana illegal, Gil and the Obama administration are giving drug dealers and cartels responsibility for deciding who can and cannot buy marijuana instead of an objective system of regulation, and to be honest, I’ve never heard of a drug dealer who checked IDs.

You can see the full video here. This kind of doubletalk is disrespectful to both the audience and the American people. If someone cannot be trusted to be honest enough to answer a simple question, how can that same person be trusted to make decisions that impact the lives of private citizens?

Last week, Scott Morgan at StoptheDrugWar.com made the argument that it may be premature to think that Mitt Romney would be worse than President Obama when it comes to marijuana policy. He accurately pointed out that Romney was not in favor of medical marijuana, but that he also hadn’t really explained his position clearly. Romney certainly was not openly suggesting the kind of attacks perpetrated by the Obama administration over the last few years. To assume that he would be worse than Obama simply because he is a Republican, the party traditionally most opposed to marijuana policy reform, would be reactionary.

Well, Romney still has not clearly laid out his position, but he gave us all some hints in an interview published the following day. He only spoke about the issue under duress and berated the reporter for bringing it up, saying that marijuana policy reform was not a significant issue.

Here is the gist of what he said:

“I think marijuana should not be legal in this country. I believe it’s a gateway drug to other drug violations. The use of illegal drugs in this country is leading to terrible consequences in places like Mexico and actually in our own country,” said Mr. Romney. “I oppose legalization of marijuana. I oppose legalization of other kinds of drugs, but I can tell you that I have a plan to get this economy going.”

What can we tell from this? Well, most obviously, Mitt Romney does not support making marijuana legal. He outright opposes it.

He is also woefully uninformed of the research showing that the gateway theory is junk science and that prohibition brings marijuana users in contact with harder drugs. In previous interviews, he has also stated that he does not think marijuana is medicine, despite the mountains of research to the contrary.

He does not understand that since marijuana has never killed a single user in recorded history, it must be our marijuana policies that are causing “terrible consequences” in Mexico

He does not understand that making marijuana legal could help get our economy going. In fact, if states were only free to develop their medical marijuana industries without federal interference, they could reap the economic benefits the way Colorado, which has more than 4,000 marijuana industry workers, has done.

That’s all pretty bad. But does it mean that President Romney would use federal resources to interfere with state medical marijuana laws?

Maybe not. In the same interview, Romney also says, “I’m not running on marriage and marijuana. Those are state issues.”

Dare we hope that Romney believes in states’ rights to such an extent that he would respect state medical marijuana laws, even though he feels so negatively about marijuana?

You be the judge. Just take a look at his other positions on states' rights issues first.

Nearly Three-Quarters of Democrats Break with Administration Policy, Vote to Prevent Federal Agencies from Targeting Individuals in Compliance with State Medical Marijuana Laws

An amendment to the 2013 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill in the U.S. House that would effectively end federal interference in medical marijuana states is being considered today, and we need your help!

The Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr-McClintock Amendment would stop federal agencies from spending any funds to target individuals acting in compliance with state medical marijuana laws. This would include patients and providers, so long as those providers were following the law within their respective states.

If this passes, providers will no longer have to live in fear that the businesses they worked hard to build and keep in compliance with their state and local laws will be arbitrarily raided and destroyed by federal agents. Patients will no longer be forced to buy inferior medicine from dangerous criminals at the whim of U.S. attorneys. States will finally be free to determine the marijuana policies that work best for the seriously ill among their residents.

We need your help to make this happen. Please follow this link and call your member of Congress TODAY! Tell them that they need to support this amendment and make the federal government stop wasting its time and resources on medical marijuana.

President Obama owes a debt of gratitude to the medical marijuana community for his election in 2008 — a debt that patients, providers, and businesses hoped would be fulfilled by the president following through on the promises he made to respect state medical marijuana laws.

As you can see in this recent op-ed in the Washington Post by MPP’s Rob Kampia, not only has the administration failed to keep its promise of respecting states’ rights on this issue, it is now the most hostile administration in U.S. history towards medical marijuana!

More than three out of four Americans support legalizing medical marijuana for serious medical conditions. With an approval rating of less than 50%, Obama needs to recognize the political ramifications of these continued attacks on the medical marijuana community. If he wants to hold on to the White House this fall, Obama needs to keep the promises he made four years ago, and end the crackdown. As his attorney general said a few days ago, all he has to do is say the word.

News flash to the Obama administration: if your recent crackdown on medical marijuana was intended to discourage states from passing or considering laws that allow for dispensaries, it’s not working. Since a rash of intimidating letters from U.S. Attorneys were distributed early last year, state regulated dispensaries have opened in Maine, and laws that call for them were enacted in Vermont and Delaware. Four other “states” (Washington D.C. is one) are in some stage of implementing regulated dispensaries, and two states, Colorado and New Mexico, have regulated dispensaries that have been up and running throughout this time.

Now Michigan might be joining them. Earlier today legislation was introduced in Lansing that would explicitly recognize medical marijuana dispensaries—known as “provisioning centers” under the bill. It sets minimum statewide security and safety regulations, but allows local municipalities to regulate them further.  The bill aims to clarify what the Michigan press often calls a legal “gray area,” in which dispensaries currently operate but are often raided or shut down and subject to radically different treatment from one city to the next.

The irony of Obama's crackdown is that it uses the Controlled Substances Act to prevent states from doing just that - controlling substances. In fact, Representative Mike Callton, a Republican, says he's sponsoring the bill to help keep surplus marijuana out of the black market. “It also provides for local control,” Callton said. “A locality can determine if that’s right for their community and if that’s right for their community, how many do they want?”

Jimmy Kimmel drew laughs at this weekend’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner for calling out the president on his senseless crackdown. Let’s hope the continuing tide of states defying that crackdown shows the president this is no laughing matter.

Republican legislators nationwide should perk up their ears and take notice of what is happening in New Hampshire, where a Republican-sponsored medical marijuana bill has blazed a trail of surprising successes.

SB 409 had already passed the Republican-dominated Senate March 28, and today the 400-member House, which is about 75% Republican, voted 236-96 in favor, with strong bipartisan support.

Unfortunately, Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, announced in advance of the House vote that he intends to veto the bill as he did a similar bill in 2009.

How can this be possible, some might ask? According to the bill’s prime sponsor, Senator Jim Forsythe (R-Strafford), support for allowing medical marijuana is perfectly consistent with Republican principles. “I’ve never used marijuana in my life,” the former Air Force pilot has often explained, “but as a matter of principle, I don’t believe it’s appropriate for government to interfere with choices that should be made between a doctor and a patient.”

Forsythe and his Senate cosponsors, Senator Ray White (R-Bedford) and Senator John Gallus (R-Berlin), began with support from the Senate’s five Democrats, but they had a tough hill to climb with their Republican colleagues. Previous bills had never received more than one vote from a Republican senator, but after a compelling public hearing in which patients shared their stories face-to-face with legislators, the bill quickly gained momentum.

The paradigm shift began to materialize in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee March 22, when two former opponents announced they would be supporting the bill. The committee chairman, Senator Jeb Bradley (R-Wolfeboro), represented New Hampshire in Congress from 2003-2007, and Senator Gary Lambert (R-Nashua) is a retired Marine and a former prosecutor, so these were two very significant conversions.

The bill passed the committee that day in a 5-0 vote that sent shockwaves around the State House, and then, the following Wednesday, strong speeches on the floor by Senators Bradley and Lambert carried the bill to victory in a Senate comprised of nineteen Republicans and only five Democrats.

Has the world gone topsy-turvy? Or are Republicans in New Hampshire just getting on the right side of history in advance of some of their colleagues in other states?

Following today’s historic House vote and Governor Lynch’s heartless veto threat, all eyes will be on the eleven Republican senators who have not yet crossed the line from “undecided” to “supportive.” Three additional votes will be necessary to override the veto, but with the momentum SB 409 has shown so far, it would be tough to bet against the patients who are asking for this sensible, compassionate reform!

Last week, during the five days leading up to and including 4/20, MPP promoted a 10-to-1 matching challenge for the Colorado campaign.

Thanks to the generosity of one donor, we pledged to give $100 to Colorado for every $10 donated to our general fund last week. And, more importantly, we pledged to give $1,200 for every $10 monthly donation we received (because monthly credit card donations are 12 times as potent as singular donations).

The results from last week are in the box below. A few observations:

- This was MPP’s first-ever money bomb, and I’d have to say it was a success. The power of monthly credit card donations massively increases MPP’s revenues, which is why we promote the monthly pledge program so consistently

- As of March 31, we had 582 monthly pledgers nationwide.  But now, because of last week’s “money bomb,” we have 712 monthly pledgers!

- Unfortunately, raising money via Facebook continues to be a challenge. If you have any ideas for how to do better on this front, please leave a comment below.

Thanks to the generosity of the 381 folks who participated in the bomb, we will now be sending a minimum of $694,383 to the Colorado campaign! We plan to send $500,000 in the near future, which will allow the campaign to invest in television advertising for the fall. Additional checks, totaling $194,383, will be sent periodically to help the campaign cover other important expenses  (such as billboards).

Onward!

Two National Email Alerts:

One-Time Gifts: 145 donations, $10,884.48 total

Monthly Pledges: 115 pledges, $3,846 total

Social Media Fundraising:

One-Time Gifts: 21 donations, $470 total

Monthly Pledges: 10 pledges, $77.50 total

One Colorado Email Alert:

One-Time Gifts: 85 donations, $9,201.96 total

Monthly Pledges: 5 pledges, $149.99 total

Total Donations:

One-Time + (Monthly Pledges x 12): $69,438.32

Total Donation to Colorado from 10-to-1 Promotion: $694,383.20

Many of you will no doubt be enjoying this day by taking advantage of the relatively lax enforcement of marijuana laws in certain parts of the country. Some of you, particularly folks in California whose fame may or may not protect them from the long arm of the law, may be partying like this:

But during your celebrations today, please take a minute to remember that people still get arrested for simple marijuana possession all over the country. People still do time for this relatively harmless plant.

The majority of Americans realize how idiotic it is to arrest people for marijuana, but our elected leaders refuse to listen and instead keep telling us that they know what is best for us.

We cannot look to politicians to end this farcical, tragic war on marijuana users. This video from the Summit of the America’s conference last week is proof that our leadership, from the top down, will not listen to popular opinion, science, or international pressure when it comes to marijuana policy.

The time has come to let our leaders know that we demand change. One way is to tell them directly by contacting the President and your members of Congress. But words only go so far. Politicians need their marijuana policy failures to hit them where it hurts. That’s why we need you.

Were you an Obama campaign donor who is now disappointed with the President’s continued war on marijuana? Has that disappointment made you reconsider donating to his re-election campaign? If so, we want to hear your story.

If you donated more than $1,000 to Obama’s 2008 campaign and do not plan to do so this time around for the reasons above, please contact me and you might be featured in an ad with MPP!

Every White House drug czar who has reigned since the office was created in 1989 makes numerous incorrect and deceitful statements.

But, I only like to rebut the czars’ nonsense when it really catches my attention, like the following statement today from Director Gil Kerlikowske ...

“The people that are involved in hoping to legalize drugs are very well funded,” he said. “They’re very organized, they have offices, they’re well supported, and with the push of a button, they can get as many signatures as they want, and we see that with a number of other special interest groups, so it’s not surprising.”

The drug czar’s office is formally known as the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Let’s do a quick comparison between MPP and ONDCP ...

Of course, MPP has allies whose annual budgets — combined — are about $15 million.

ONDCP has allies, such as the DEA, whose annual budget is $2 billion. And, unlike our team, the DEA has badges, guns, and jail cells to quash its political opponents.

I’d trade our resources for the DEA’s and ONDCP’s resources any day of the week. Deal?