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.

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.

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.

President Obama leaves soon for talks with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday. We can't help but wonder: Will they talk about marijuana policy?

Consider: Mexico's Congress has been holding an extended debate on whether marijuana should be legal for personal use or remain prohibited. And Mexico's ambassador to the U.S.  recently said this is a debate that "needs to be taken seriously" on both sides of the border.

President Obama, as everyone knows by now, addressed the issue rather less seriously  in late March. So, once the doors close and the TV cameras are left outside, will the two presidents have the sort of serious discussion that still strikes fear in the hearts of way too many American politicians? We hope so. The families of the 7,000 people killed since January 2008 by Mexican drug war violence largely funded by U.S. marijuana prohibition deserve at least that much.

Join the Marijuana Policy Project on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 for its 4th Annual Party at the Playboy Mansion! For more details, please visit https://www.mpp.org/pb2009/

In yet another sign that the debate on fundamentally shifting our marijuana policy has reached critical mass, a remarkable exchange occurred on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday. In a discussion of violent Mexican drug gangs with Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S., host Bob Schieffer asked, "What if marijuana were legalized? Would that change this situation?"

Rather than giving the standard official response that any such discussion was absurd, Ambassador Sarukhan seemed to be walking a very delicate path, acknowledging strong feelings on both sides of the argument but pointedly not dismissing the idea, saying, "This is a debate that needs to be taken seriously." Watch the full exchange here. 

The question of why some kids start using alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and other drugs at a young age remains a source of controversy. How much of a role do genes play? The environment -- peers, parents, educational efforts? What about the "gateway theory," the idea that one drug -- marijuana is the most likely to be blamed -- leads to use of others?

A new study of twins recently published online by the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence suggests that genes may play a large role, but to some degree every drug is a gateway drug.

By studying both fraternal and identical twins (in this case, they focused on African-American teen girls, a population underrepresented in prior studies), researchers can set up mathematical models designed to probe the influence of environment and genetics. Focusing on alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana, they found that early use either of alcohol or cigarettes was associated with an increased likelihood of being an early marijuana user, and early drinking was also associated with early cigarette use.  In general, those who had never used a given substance were the least likely to report having used the others -- so in a sense, almost any drug teens try seems to be a gateway drug.

Even more interesting, though, is the more detailed number crunching designed to tease out genetic vs. environmental influences. Inherited influences explained 44% of the variance in initiation of alcohol, 62% for cigarettes, and 77% of the variation in marijuana initiation. Because the confidence intervals (statistical-speak for margin of error) were fairly wide, those numbers should not be taken as gospel, but clearly genes play a major role in susceptibility to early substance use.

There is little doubt that some kids are innately more susceptible to early drug use than others. And a teen who tries one drug -- whatever it is, legal or illegal -- is more likely than his or her peers to try others. These are real issues that parents and educators need to face, and simplistically blaming marijuana as "the gateway drug" won't help them.

Okay, I'm a bit behind on my reading, but this is worth mentioning even though it's a little late. In its December issue, the American Journal of Public Health published the final, officially sanctioned evaluation of the anti-marijuana ads that former drug czar John Walters bombarded us with during the first half of the Bush administration (the evaluation period ends in June 2004). The bottom line: "[T]he campaign is unlikely to have had favorable effects on youths and may have had delayed unfavorable effects."

Translation: The ads didn't help, and may have actually encouraged teens to try marijuana.

The researchers drew this conclusion by measuring the marijuana-related attitudes and behaviors of thousands of teens before and after seeing the ads and correlating that behavior with their level of exposure to the campaign. There was simply no sign of a positive effect. And, though the results were somewhat inconsistent, several measurements connected increased exposure to the ads with development of pro-marijuana attitudes and increased likelihood of trying marijuana.

The drug czar's office hated this evaluation, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and a private firm called Westat. Indeed, they kept it bottled up long after it should have been released. Then, when Congress got hold of it a couple years ago, they tried to dismiss it. Spokesman Tom Riley insisted to Adweek magazine that a reported general decline in teen marijuana use was proof of the campaign's success, saying, "The most telling statistic is that adult drug use has not appreciably changed while teen drug use [the target of the campaign] has gone down dramatically. I think that's the definition of successful advertising."

But the researchers easily shred such claims, noting that a great many other factors could have influenced use rates. As evidence, they cite "even larger declines in both tobacco and alcohol use than in marijuana use" that occurred at the same time, "suggesting that all substance use was on a downward trend regardless of the campaign."

So why did the anti-marijuana ads flop so badly? The researchers suggest two possibilities: The youthful tendency to rebel against adults telling them what not to do, and the possibility that the ads caused teens to think marijuana use is commonplace.

Here's another one: Walters' ads were so preposterous (some suggested that smoking marijuana will lead to shooting your friends or running over little girls on bicycles) that they caused young people to disbelieve the anti-marijuana message entirely. MPP will keep saying this until someone listens: Lying to kids about marijuana doesn't work.

MPP-TV just released this excellent video highlighting the need to tax and regulate marijuana. This piece is especially relevant now that California is considering groundbreaking reform legislation that has triggered a national discussion about the wisdom of marijuana prohibition.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to meet Glenn Greenwald, the best-selling author and Salon contributor who was presenting his report – funded by the Cato Institute – on Portugal's experience decriminalizing personal possession of drugs over the past eight years.

Few, even in the drug policy world, have paid much attention to Portugal's remarkable but sensible 2001 decision to remove drug use and possession from the criminal realm and address it solely as a public health issue.

The details of Portugal's system are worth checking out, but basically Portugal, after careful, empirical study, concluded that criminalizing drug use was creating two barriers to introducing treatment to those who might need it. First, it diverted funds that ought to go to drug treatment to ineffective law enforcement efforts. Second, the threat of arrest naturally caused those who might seek treatment to avoid, rather than seek out help from government institutions.

Under the current system, those caught possessing a personal amount of drugs, including marijuana, are cited by police and required to appear before a three-person panel made up of legal and healthcare professionals within 72 hours. The panel then conducts an informal interview with the person to determine what, if any, treatment might be necessary.

Greenwald was careful to note that the policy change was not an ideological decision, nor was it seen by Portuguese officials as some sort of social experiment. Rather, it was viewed as a necessary fix to alarming increases in drug abuse in the late '90s.

The result, according to Greenwald's analysis of the data and countless interviews with Portuguese officials, law enforcement and clients, has been a hands-down success. Despite some initial fears, drug use and drug-related crime have not increased. In many important categories and demographics, 15- to 19-year-olds for example, drug use rates have actually decreased.

And, nearly eight years later, there's little enthusiasm at all, even among conservatives and law enforcement leadership, to go back to criminalizing personal drug use and possession.

Greenwald argues that there's no reason to think that there's anything about the conservative, largely Catholic country that would make its success with decriminalization unique. He also suggested that, in general, empirical evidence supporting reform might be far more persuasive for advocates than ideological arguments about personal freedom or limiting government intrusion in adults' private lives.

I agree with Greenwald, and the data supporting his conclusions about Portugal's success with decriminalization are compelling and undeniable. But some comments made by Dr. Peter Reuter, the University of Maryland criminology professor who played devil's advocate at Greenwald's presentation, served as a reminder that there's still an important ideological component to the argument for sensible marijuana policy reform.

Reuter agreed that the data show decriminalization clearly hasn't exacerbated the country's drug problem. But he said he was less convinced that it proves decriminalization has actually caused decreases in drug use and abuse, pointing out that drug use rates in certain categories, notably marijuana, have decreased in many countries in the past several years.

Reuter said he believes popular culture has a far greater influence over drug use rates than drug policies themselves, a belief supported by a 2008 World Health Organization comparative study of 17 countries' drug use rates and drug policies.

It also reminds me a little of the Bush drug czar office's flimsy claims that arresting millions and lying to children about the dangers of marijuana were to thank for small decreases in youth marijuana use in recent years. We've always been very careful to avoid jumping to conclusions about causality and have been vigilant in calling our opponents out when they get carried away, as they often do.

So, if the best we can say is that, despite the unsubstantiated fears of prohibitionists, decriminalizing marijuana doesn't increase marijuana use rates or marijuana related-crime, then we're still left with an ideological debate: Either you believe that marijuana is inherently evil and that stigmatizing its use by making users criminals is worthwhile despite being ineffective, or you believe our marijuana policies should be measured by their effectiveness and not by arbitrary standards of morality.

Either way, I think we win.