Once again, the top brass at NASCAR have taken a stand against marijuana users. Yesterday, officials for the racing organization suspended crewmember and former driver Randy LaJoie indefinitely after he tested positive for marijuana. The test was not to make sure that he could be a driver, but that he could be a spotter. For those of you not familiar with racing, the spotter sits in the stands and relays car positions to his or her driver through a headset. Please forgive my ignorance of the details of racing, but it seems as if this is basically a professional spectator, with the enviable bonus of getting to yell at the driver.

Seriously, a drug test is required for this job.

LaJolie now joins the massive ranks of athletes and celebrities forced to apologize for using a substance safer than alcohol.

"I screwed up," LaJolie said in an interview the day he was suspended.

NASCAR’s behavior is not that surprising. Back in March, officials waited until the last minute to deny Cannabis Planet TV the opportunity to sponsor, and place advertisements on, one of the cars. The car was allowed to race, but with different sponsors.

It seems like the world of racing is lining up against marijuana. In a recent press release, the Office of National Drug Control Policy announced the start of a new campaign with Indy 500 racer Sarah Fisher to combat drugged driving.

This is all well and good. MPP does not advocate driving under the influence of any substance, including marijuana. It just seems strange that ONDCP and the racing community would spend valuable resources targeting marijuana in light of a recent study that shows marijuana use has very little impact on driving ability.

To date, NASCAR is still on very good terms with its alcohol sponsors.

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Last week was a busy one for medical marijuana reform efforts in Oregon.

First, the signature drive to put an initiative on the November ballot that would add medical marijuana dispensaries to the state's existing law is coming to a close. With more than 74,000 signatures already verified, it is highly likely that this initiative will appear before the voters this year.

In other news, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that medical marijuana patients applying for a concealed-carry handgun license could not be denied based on their status as a "drug user." While legal to use with a doctor's recommendation in Oregon, marijuana is still considered an illegal drug under federal law. According to the federal Gun Control Act, marijuana use can be justification to prevent a person from carrying a concealed firearm. According to the Court of Appeals, however, state and local law enforcement personnel are required to follow state law, which does not explicitly prevent medical marijuana patients from obtaining the license.

Finally, with another groundbreaking move by a public entity, the Oregon Board of Pharmacy has voted to reschedule marijuana as a Schedule II drug. While this will have little effect on medical marijuana in the state, it carries a symbolic importance in the greater national campaign to remove marijuana from the overly restrictive Schedule I. In February, the Iowa Board of Pharmacy recommended the same change, but Oregon appears to be the first state to actually enact it. Marijuana still remains a Schedule I drug on the federal level.

With all these moves to legitimize marijuana going on, it seems like things are looking up for Oregon patients. Make sure to keep your eye on Oregon in coming months to see if the dispensary initiative qualifies and if voters approve it in November.

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As New York’s legislative session draws to a close this week, MPP, New York Patients First, and hundreds of New Yorkers are pushing hard to ensure that medical marijuana is included in this year’s state budget. In March, the Senate passed a resolution calling for medical marijuana to be included in the budget, but New York Gov. David Paterson — who has previously voiced his support for a medical marijuana law — has never come out and said he supports its inclusion. Paterson is demanding the budget pass this week, so he is essentially all that stands in the way of New York becoming the 15^th medical marijuana state.

If you live or vote in New York and support protecting seriously ill patients from arrest, please call the governor TODAY and tell him to not stand in the way of patient relief. Click here to find out how.

Since New York's medical marijuana bill was first introduced in 1997, 13 states have had laws enacted — including neighboring Vermont and New Jersey. The budget is a natural place for the bill because it would raise tens of millions of dollars for the cash-strapped state through modest excise taxes and licensing fees.

Stay tuned for updates.

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Major news: It was announced today that Sativex, a cannabinoid-based liquid medicine sprayed under the tongue, has been approved for use in Great Britain to help treat the muscle spasticity suffered by multiple sclerosis patients. Sativex is a natural marijuana extract that is produced by British-based GW Pharmaceuticals. It has been approved for use in Canada to treat neuropathic pain since 2005.

“Once again, the scientific community has confirmed that marijuana is medicine and it can provide safe and effective relief to patients suffering from certain conditions,” said Rob Kampia, MPP’s executive director, in an statement issued today. “Sadly, our federal government, through the Drug Enforcement Administration, has blocked effective research into the therapeutic effectiveness of marijuana. The United States could be leading the world in the development of cannabinoid-based medicines, but instead our government has ceded this industry to the U.K., while intentionally prolonging the agony of patients in this country.”

The Food and Drug Administration has already approved the pill Marinol, which contains marijuana’s main psychoactive component, THC, for medical use in the United States, but unlike Sativex, Marinol does not contain all of marijuana’s more than 60 different cannabinoids, and therefore doesn’t offer the full therapeutic potential of marijuana. Among patients, Marinol is notoriously ineffective.

“The good news is that this announcement buttresses our argument that marijuana is an effective medicine. To have liquid marijuana legal for medical use but marijuana illegal would be like having coffee legal but coffee beans illegal,” Kampia added.

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Earlier this week, the Tennessean newspaper published an interview with former Tennessee Titans running back LenDale White in which White acknowledged that he was likely going to be suspended from the National Football League for four games because of marijuana use. White accepted his “wrongdoing” with the following mea culpa:

"I did it, so it is my fault. I smoked marijuana; that is all I have ever done. That's all I do, that's it. I smoke. I don't care about any other drugs, but it's marijuana. … But I have changed. I am a good man. Unfortunately the stuff that I did in my recent past caught up to me in the present and it's affecting my future.''

We have written on this blog before about the travesty of having athletes and celebrities pilloried in the media for marijuana possession. And I have personally decried NFL policies that punish players for marijuana use and end up steering them toward alcohol instead. But the quote above really hits me hard for some reason.

We have seen other athletes, like Michael Phelps and Tim Lincecum, apologize for making the “mistake” of using marijuana. That is almost to be expected. I mean, the bottom line is that they did violate the law in some minor way. So as much as I might feel like they have nothing to apologize for, I can see why they are dong it.

What White is saying is different. He said that he has “changed” and is now a “good man.” The obviously implication is that when he was using marijuana, he was “bad.” Well, he wasn’t -- at least not for using marijuana on its own. If he didn’t do anything to harm anyone else after consuming marijuana, then he was just choosing to relax with a substance less harmful than alcohol.

Unless White believes that having a beer makes him a bad person, there is no reason he should feel that way about using marijuana. In fact, given the fact that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, the act of using marijuana instead of alcohol is far from bad; it is actually sensible.

So keep your chin up, LenDale! Societal attitudes are shifting, slowly but surely.

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For those of you who don't regularly see our video features, I present to you the MPP Insider #009.  You can access the HD version by right-clicking and viewing on YouTube, or by viewing the video in fullscreen mode.

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Could the tiny island of Guam become the first U.S. territory to pass a medical marijuana law?

Yesterday, a bill was introduced into Guam’s 15-member legislature that would give qualified patients legal access to medical marijuana and create a system of “compassionate health care centers” to grow and dispense it.

Guam now joins more than a dozen U.S. states that have considered or are considering medical marijuana legislation this year.

It’s still unclear what chances the Guam bill has of passing, but if it were to become law, medical marijuana would then be legal in 14 U.S. states, one federal district (Washington, D.C.) and one U.S. territory.

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In a shocking series of events that is still under investigation, Las Vegas police on Friday shot and killed Trevon Cole, 21, while serving a warrant that claimed Cole was selling marijuana. According to reports, Cole’s 20-year-old fiancé, Sequioa Pearce—who is 9 months pregnant—was forced to kneel and held at gunpoint in the moments just before Cole was shot.

A police spokesman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that undercover officers had bought marijuana from Cole three times before the warrant was served, and investigators reportedly took an unknown amount of marijuana and digital scales from his home. Pearce, his fiancé, says Cole, who has no criminal record, “did smoke marijuana from time to time,” but was not a drug dealer.

The officer who shot Cole is a 10-year veteran who the Review-Journal reports has been involved in other questionable shootings. Police said he fired his weapon on Cole after Cole made a “furtive movement,” which Pearce denies.

While police investigate the incident, Cole’s family remains shocked and in desperate need of an explanation. Writes the Review-Journal, “They had been preparing for a birth, not a death.”

"We were mentally prepped to know in June we were coming to Vegas to see the baby, to be here for the birth of the baby," said Cole's aunt, Kimeryn Williams. "Not for this."

I don’t need to tell readers how horrifying this episode is. As with other notorious drug raids that have come to light, there are obvious questions here that need asking:

• Did Cole pose such a threat to public safety that officers had to break through his door with guns drawn?

• Why were such forceful tactics used to arrest someone that police claim—at the very best—was a smalltime marijuana dealer?

• How much money and police resources were spent to raid Cole’s home and murder him in front of the mother of his unborn child?

• Were there no murders, rapes, robberies or more serious crimes occurring in Vegas on a Friday night that these officers could have been working to prevent or solve?

The message people need to take from this stomach-turning incident is the one MPP broadcasts over and over again: Marijuana does not kill people, but prohibition does. If marijuana were sold in a legal and regulated market, tragedies like this would cease to exist and police could better spend their time dealing with crimes more serious than the possession of a substance safer than alcohol.

There should be many developments on this story, so please stay tuned to the blog for updates.

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Sarah Palin says she doesn’t support making marijuana legal, but during an appearance on Fox Business News this weekend, she agreed with fellow panelist Ron Paul that police have better things to do than arrest nonviolent marijuana offenders.

Check out the video and read her comments below:

“I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts. And if somebody is going to smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and clean up some of the other problems we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do and not concentrate on such a, relatively speaking, minimal problem that we have in the country.”

A few months back, MPP offered the former Alaska governor $25,000 to give a speech to supporters of a regulated marijuana market, but she did not accept the offer. When she ran as the Republican nominee for vice-president in 2008, Palin admitted to using marijuana in her youth but said she opposed making marijuana because of the “message” it would send to her children. At the time, MPP issued a statement saying, “That she used marijuana is no big deal, but what is a big deal is that she thinks that the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana, including herself, belong in jail. That wouldn’t be good for her kids.”

What’s frustrating about this is seeing, once again, a prominent politician acknowledge the ridiculousness of marijuana prohibition but not have the courage to call for its end. If Gov. Palin truly believes in the limited government she so often promotes, she should not only acknowledge that the government’s war on marijuana users is an enormous infringement on American civil liberties, but more importantly, that it needs to stop.

We’ve already seen one prospective 2012 presidential candidate, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, clearly voice his support for making marijuana legal. Will others follow?

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As we’ve noted previously, not even celebrities are immune to the government’s war on marijuana users.

The latest example is Chace Crawford, a 24-year-old actor from the TV show “Gossip Girl,” who was charged Friday with possession of less than two ounces of marijuana. Crawford and his friend were arrested two weeks ago in Texas while driving in a car—with an unlit marijuana cigarette.

The charge is a misdemeanor, but if convicted, Crawford could face up to six months in prison.

Six months in prison. For a single unlit joint.

I would love to know how many taxpayer dollars will end up being spent to arrest, process, and prosecute Crawford simply for possessing a substance that is safer than alcohol. By the way, it’s worth pointing out (as MPP’s Steve Fox and his co-authors did in the book “Marijuana is Safer”) that Crawford’s arrest will almost definitely drive him to use that more dangerous substance—alcohol—since doing so comes with none of the legal consequences or social ridicule that accompany marijuana use.

The disturbing subtext to this is that Crawford’s horrifically disproportionate potential punishment is coming to light only because he is a celebrity. More than 750,000 Americans are arrested every year for marijuana possession—and the vast majority of their stories will never get told.

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