Update (8/21/2009): Mexican President Felipe Calderón has signed this legislation into law. Click here to read more.

Mexico’s Senate passed a bill on Tuesday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana and other drugs. The bill would make it legal to carry up to 5 grams of marijuana in Mexico and defers low-level drug dealing cases to the Mexican states.

Proposed by President Felipe Calderon, the bill seeks to free up law enforcement resources in order to better fight violent drug cartels that have drawn international attention. The legislation must pass in the lower house before being sent to the president and signed into law.

This is notable not only because a similar proposal was vetoed by former Mexican President Vicente Fox under pressure from then-President Bush, but also because it closely follows Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan’s April 12 statement on Face the Nation that ending marijuana prohibition is a debate that should be happening on both sides of the border.

U.S. and Mexican officials estimate that between 60% and 70% of the drug cartels' profits come from marijuana sales in the U.S.  So while efforts to decriminalize marijuana possession in Mexico are laudable, ambitious legislation in the U.S. is needed to fully combat the rising tide of violence along the border.

See this piece from Reuters for more information on Mexico’s decriminalization bill.

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Minnesota's Senate just followed its New Hampshire counterpart with a medical marijuana victory of its own, passing its medical marijuana bill 36-28. The process in Minnesota is a little complicated: Today's vote was technically made by the Senate's Committee of the Whole, and needs an official vote that will probably take place later this week. But today's victory is a very good sign.

Supporters in Minnesota can help seal this victory by contacting their representatives in both chambers urging them to pass this medical marijuana bill now.

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The New Hampshire Senate just passed their medical marijuana bill, 14-10. If you live in New Hampshire, you can send Gov. John Lynch a fax urging him to allow the bill to become law. It's free.

As I said last night, this could be a big day for medical marijuana across the country, and this is a great start. More to come ...

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It's never easy to know for sure, but this week could be huge for medical marijuana reform if things go just right in state legislatures across the country. The senates in Illinois, Minnesota, and New Hampshire all could vote to pass medical marijuana bills as early as tomorrow. At the same time, the Rhode Island Senate could vote on a bill creating medical marijuana compassion centers, making safe access to qualified patients in the state far less burdensome.

So stay tuned – we'll let you know as soon as we know.

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Aaron Houston, MPP's director of government relations, has just posted some thoughts on President Obama's first 100 days on the Congress Blog of the Capitol Hill political paper, The Hill. You can read all of Aaron's thoughts here. The bottom line: "While we have a pretty good idea of where Obama is heading on issues like the economy and health care, his direction on marijuana and drug policy remains unclear."

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After a lengthy hearing, Judge George Wu once again deferred his sentencing decision in the case of the federally prosecuted California medical marijuana provider, Charles C. Lynch.

Judge Wu indicated that he's leaning toward a more lenient sentence than the five-year mandatory minimum sought by the federal prosecutor and said he needs a way around the mandatory minimum and alternatives to prison for Lynch, who operated his medical marijuana collective in compliance with state and local law.

The mayor and city attorney of Morro Bay also called for leniency as they described Lynch's commitment to following state and local medical marijuana laws.

The federal prosecutor, despite fighting to keep state law from being discussed during the trial, now claims that Lynch should be sent up the river for violating a technical aspect of California law involving his status as a primary caregiver. 

The new sentencing date is set for June 11 at the Los Angeles federal district courthouse.

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On Monday, National Public Radio marked the unofficial marijuana holiday 4/20 with a story called, "What If Marijuana Were Legal? Possible Outcomes?" We were not impressed, but you can listen to the story and read a transcript here.

After reviewing it, I wrote the following e-mail to the reporter and assorted NPR honchos:

I read the transcript of this -- haven't had the chance to hear it on the radio today -- and I must say I'm profoundly disappointed. You weren't interested in talking to us for the piece, but if you had, we might have helped you avoid some factual errors and highly questionable conclusions presented effectively as uncontested fact.

For example, vaporizers such as the Volcano, are not "supposed to provide a milder smoking experience." They allow inhalation of cannabinoid vapors without smoking  -- and thus without the tars and other combustion products implicated in respiratory problems caused by smoking. A minor point? Maybe, but not when you consider that the health risks of smoking are cited regularly by proponents of prohibition as one of the great dangers of marijuana.

And the suggestion that legalization would lead to more potent marijuana stands economic reality on its head. Economic and policy experts who have studied this conclude pretty much across the board that prohibition increases the potency of whatever contraband substance is prohibited. As Dr. Stephen Kisely wrote in the Dec. 2008 Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. "Where potency has increased, this could actually be due to the drug’s illegal status. Reducing the bulk of contraband enhances logistics of supply and profitability. For instance, the major effect of alcohol prohibition in the United States was an increase in the consumption of spirits at the expense of beer."

This is not exactly rocket science, but since you had the issue addressed by a spokesman for a group of narcotics officers, you got the official law enforcement spin, not actual research. And I can't help but note that while you told me when we spoke a few weeks ago that you didn't want to use advocacy groups for one side or the other, you did end up using advocates for the pro-prohibition side, but not their opponents (and if NPR doesn't recognize that narcotics officers' groups are advocates for prohibition, you guys need to get out more).

I will not belabor you with further examples, but there are several others I could cite. Please understand that my dismay is not about MPP not being mentioned or quoted -- frankly, we get plenty of press, and one story more or less is no big deal -- it's about NPR's consistent failure to do competent reporting on marijuana issues. This is not just you, it appears to be a systemic problem with NPR's news, and it's a constant source of frustration to those of us who wish that such a large, influential, noncommercial broadcast network had higher standards.

Regards,
Bruce Mirken, Director of Communications
Marijuana Policy Project

Postscript: I did get a response from the reporter, which he asked me to keep confidential, and I will honor that request. Suffice it to say that it did not address the story's errors of fact.

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In a severely disappointing move, the Department of Justice (DOJ)  issued a memo last week stating that the federal arrest and prosecution of California medical marijuana provider Charles C. Lynch was "entirely consistent" with its new policy on medical marijuana.

Charlie's sentencing had been delayed so that the DOJ could weigh in after Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that prosecutorial discretion will be used to focus solely on marijuana cases with alleged violations of both state and federal law. The short letter from U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien and the accompanying DOJ memo didn't explain how they came to this conclusion. 

By all credible accounts, Charlie and his collective - Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers (CCCC) - did everything in compliance with state law, and Charlie was only tried and convicted under federal law. 

Outrageously, the federal prosecutor made sure that any mention of California's medical marijuana law was strictly prohibited in the courtroom during Charlie's trial, and the jury wasn't allowed to consider it during their deliberations. If there was a violation of state law taking place, you'd think Charlie could have faced those charges in a state court.

CCCC didn't provide marijuana to anyone other than legally qualified patients or caregivers and was licensed by the city of Morro Bay, where it was located. In fact, the mayor, city manager, and representatives from the Morro Bay police department had routinely visited and inspected the site for compliance.

Charlie's sentencing is now scheduled for the U.S. District Courthouse in Los Angeles on Thursday. Please contact the White House today to express your outrage that the DOJ is trying to make a martyr out of Charles C. Lynch, despite the administration's new policy on medical marijuana.

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MPP's Bruce Mirken debates the benefits of taxing and regulating marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol on CNBC Reports. This policy change is being considered as a means to greatly reduce the current violence in Mexico surrounding drug cartels.

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Earlier this week there was a smattering of press attention to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, dealing with a deadly lung condition known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. "Marijuana plus cigarettes boosts lung disease risk," is how Reuters headlined the story.

The study suggested that the combination of marijuana and cigarettes may be worse than cigarettes alone. It did not find that marijuana by itself increased the risk of COPD, but Reuters went out of its way to say that the study had not proved there was no such increased risk.

As usual, the reality was a bit more complicated than the press reports.

While the study did find a suggestion of increased risk for those who smoked both marijuana and cigarettes, the risk for marijuana-only smokers was far from clear. Indeed, by some measures the COPD risk was actually less in the marijuana-only smokers than nonsmokers, but numbers were small enough that the differences were not statistically significant.

What most news accounts, including Reuters, failed to mention, is that there is a great deal of other data about marijuana and COPD, data that was summarized in an accompanying review by Dr. Donald Tashkin of UCLA, one of the world's leading experts on the effects of marijuana on the lungs. Tashkin wrote, "Given the consistently reported absence of an association between use of marijuana and abnormal diffusing capacity or signs of macroscopic emphysema, we can be close to concluding that smoking marijuana by itself does not lead to COPD [emphasis added]."

Bottom line: Cigarettes are really bad for your lungs. Combining cigarettes and marijuana might be even worse. Marijuana alone is clearly far less harmful -- but it's still a good idea to vaporize rather than smoke.

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