Over the weekend, the Oakland Tribune reported that law enforcement officers at Oakland International Airport follow an official written policy of respecting California's medical marijuana laws. Qualified medical marijuana patients traveling out of Oakland are not arrested or cited for possession of eight ounces or less of processed marijuana. In fact, patients are allowed to board their plane with their marijuana just as they could with any other legal medicine or prescription drug.

The policy was enacted after an intensive local lobbying campaign by Robert Raich, one of California's preeminent attorneys specializing in medical marijuana law. Although the federal government continues to criminalize medical marijuana, Raich points out that federal regulations restricting marijuana possession aboard an aircraft provide an exception if it is "authorized by or under any Federal or State statute."

Airport security screenings are conducted by the federal Transportation Security Administration, but passengers in possession of marijuana and other drugs are deferred to the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, which applies the favorable policy.

Hopefully all the airports in California -- and 12 other medical marijuana states -- will follow Oakland's lead so that even more patients will be able to travel without fear of persecution.

MPP Assistant Director of Communications Mike Meno is interviewed about the Justice Department announcement that the federal government will no longer use resources to prosecute medical marijuana users and providers that are in compliance with state law. 10/19/2009

Bruce Mirken discusses the Obama administration's memo intended to stop federal resources from being used to prosecute medical marijuana users and caregivers operating within state laws. 10/19/2009

A new Gallup poll released today shows 44% support for making marijuana legal in the U.S., a record high for this particular poll. The poll also shows 53% support in the west.

While we’ve seen higher numbers in the past, and the level of support varies from poll to poll, this recent number shows a trend that’s undeniable: Americans are quickly realizing that taxing and regulating marijuana is preferable to prohibition.

The chart below shows the change in attitudes among various groups. Notice that all of them have increased since 2005.

Huge news!

The Obama administration issued guidelines today clearly stating that the federal government will not arrest medical marijuana patients or providers who comply with state law. This development is the most significant, positive policy change for medical marijuana patients since 1978.

According to Justice Department officials, the orders sent today to federal prosecutors, the DEA, and the FBI clearly state that medical marijuana patients and providers who are in compliance with state law should not be arrested or prosecuted by the federal government. This codifies statements made by the attorney general earlier this year.

The policy is a signal of support for medical marijuana from President Obama and the new administration. And the guidelines are exactly what MPP’s Aaron Houston asked for in a congressional hearing earlier this year.

Under the Bush administration, the feds raided, arrested, and otherwise terrorized medical marijuana patients and their caregivers. Even in the 13 states with medical marijuana laws, patients still lived in fear. With this new policy change, medical marijuana patients finally know exactly where they stand with the law and can focus on their health, not their legal status.

To help MPP build on this momentum, please write your member of Congress. We’ve set up an action item online to make this quick and easy. You can also help by sharing this blog post on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and other social network sites online.

Those of us feeling perturbed by the recent parade of California officials trying to undermine that state’s medical marijuana laws might find comfort in the recent trends of another medical marijuana state: Colorado.

After 53% of voters in the Centennial State approved a medical marijuana amendment in November 2000, Colorado has quietly emerged as a potential model for how states can responsibly and competently oversee the establishment of a medical marijuana industry.

There are currently more than 100 dispensing collectives statewide, an estimated 13,000 residents with valid medical marijuana cards, and 800 different physicians who have recommended them, according to recent figures. New dispensaries are being opened and considered in municipalities all over the state with little reported opposition.

When protests have been raised, municipalities have, by and large, purposely avoided the type of reactionary backlash seen in California and instead tried to strike a balance among the collectives, patients and critics through discussions and regulations—not orders to shut down. For example, several skeptical municipalities have decided to place temporary moratoriums on new dispensaries until they decide how best to regulate the establishments.

This difference between California and Colorado might best be seen when comparing some of their top lawmen. In California, L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley said all collectives are illegal and “are going to be prosecuted.” In Colorado, by stark contrast, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett has said he wants to be the country’s most progressive D.A. when it comes to medical marijuana. He has even said he’s willing to consider full marijuana legalization.

And if these signs aren’t encouraging enough, the Denver Post is reporting that the tiny valley town of Ophir (population 163) will decide on Tuesday whether to consider becoming the state’s first municipality to grow medical marijuana as a way to make up for lost tax revenues.

Says planning and zoning chairwoman Sue Beresford, "A town can dream, can't it?"

Despite the success experienced by dozens of California cities and counties regulating -- and in one case, even taxing -- medical marijuana sales, some municipalities have seen fit to shutter all open access to patients. In San Diego, where local voters approved the state's medical marijuana initiative 13 years ago, the county district attorney  continues to assert that it's illegal to dispense medical marijuana to patients whose physicians have approved its use. Despite repeated losses in court and overwhelming opposition to medical marijuana raids, District Attorney Dumanis has vowed to continue her pogrom against San Diego's sick.

On the other end of the state, the small town of Red Bluff may be taking it upon itself to re-write California's voter-approved medical marijuana law altogether. The city's planning commission voted 3-2 on Tuesday to support of an ordinance which would not only ban storefront medical marijuana dispensing collectives but also prohibit all medical marijuana cultivation. Apparently, the news that California laws specifically allow cultivation by patients and their caregivers hasn't reached Red Bluff in all these years. Nor have the loads of case law supporting these rights been taken into account when the majority of commission cast its vote to thwart state law.

The Red Bluff City Council should reject this offensive proposal but if they don't, I'm confident that it will be overturned in court. Further, public officials like D.A. Dumanis and the three Red Bluff planning commissioners who openly defy the will of their state's voters and its legislature should find another line of work.

One thing that drives me crazy is the tendency of the media and others to refer to THC as “the active ingredient” in marijuana. While THC is indeed responsible for marijuana’s “high,” it is one of about 80 unique compounds, called cannabinoids, that are not seen in any other plant. Many of these have interesting, potentially significant, medical applications, and are not psychoactive.

Anyone who wants to learn about these other cannabinoids should check out this recent review published in the journal Trends in Pharmacological Sciences.

The article devotes a lot of space to cannabidiol (CBD), the most studied of these compounds, noting that “CBD exerts several positive pharmacological effects that make it a highly attractive therapeutic entity in inflammation, diabetes, cancer and affective or neurodegenerative diseases.” Notably, CBD has antipsychotic actions, but fewer side effects than “typical antipsychotics.” Lots of other cannabinoids have potentially useful properties as well. For example, cannabichromene has antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory activity, plus “modest” analgesic effect.

The article tends to be a bit dismissive of THC because of its psychoactivity, and focuses mainly on cannabinoids as individual chemicals rather than as components of an herbal medicine that has proven extraordinarily useful in its natural form (biases that are pretty much typical in the medical literature), but even with these limitations, it’s an important read.

The Los Angeles Times reports today that L.A. District Attorney Steve Cooley thinks California's medical marijuana collectives are breaking state law. Cooley vowed to prosecute all the medical marijuana facilities in his county, estimated to have nearly 1,000 medical marijuana collectives. Cooley can say that these collectives are illegal all he wants, but that doesn't make it true.

Last year, the state's attorney general issued a legal opinion that clearly stated that "a properly organized and operated collective or cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana through a storefront may be lawful under California law." Maybe Cooley didn't get the memo.

If Cooley is somehow successful in eliminating L.A.'s medical marijuana facilities, the effect would be disastrous for patients forced to find their medicine in the underground market and would be a boon to the violent drug cartels that often supply that market. Voters in Los Angeles -- who overwhelmingly support medical marijuana -- are probably scratching their heads trying to figure out why their district attorney wants to enrich criminal drug dealers at the expense of patients.

Cooley's priorities are dangerously misguided. Los Angeles County maintains a backlog of more than 3,000 untested rape kits (evidence collected from a sexual assault). This means that these rapes have been reported but are still not being investigated due to limited resources. I guess Cooley thinks law enforcement efforts would be better spent terrorizing seriously ill patients and the people who provide their legal medicine than solving violent crimes like sexual assault.

It seems yet another California official refuses to recognize that state’s medical marijuana law, and instead wants to deny patients the treatment that’s recommended by their doctors and protected under state law.  Barely a week after the police chief of Redding, California sent a warning to local dispensing collectives about their defiance of federal law, a superior court judge in Fresno County today issued a two-week restraining order that temporarily shuts down all nine medical marijuana collectives that have opened in Fresno this year.

Judge Alan M. Simpson sided with city officials, who since August have been trying to shut down the collectives through a nonsensical zoning ordinance that requires the businesses to obey both state law (under which they’re legal) and federal law (under which they’re not). Such an ordinance is essentially impossible for the collectives to obey as long as medical marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Lawyers for the collectives say they will argue at an Oct. 22 hearing that because state laws permit medical marijuana, local governments can’t use zoning ordinances to ban the collectives. Until then, medical marijuana patients in Fresno will be unable to safely or legally obtain their recommended treatment within city limits.

“The real winners in that will be the drug dealers and the drug cartels,” said Sean Dwyer, owner of California Herbal Relief Center, one of the closed collectives, which itself caters to 800 patients. “Because rather than being able to get their medication from us legally, they will be forced to buying it illegally off the street.”

When will California officials understand that their job is to enforce California’s laws, not the federal government’s? Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996. Sadly, as attorney William Logan told a local ABC affiliate, “here we are 13 years later, [still] trying to figure out how to get medicine to patients.”