Earlier this week, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) signed two bills that will regulate the state’s booming medical marijuana industry and bring definitive legal status to about half of Colorado’s estimated 1,100 dispensaries.

The new law will make Colorado home to the largest number of state-licensed dispensaries anywhere in the United States. A state-regulated medical marijuana program is up and running in New Mexico and similar programs will soon be operational in Rhode Island, Maine, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. — but the number of sanctioned dispensaries to be allowed in each of those states is fewer than 10. Colorado’s law will authorize hundreds, and potentially more if future demand increases.

The Centennial State now has the opportunity to set a national example for how to oversee and regulate a large, orderly, and well-functioning medical marijuana industry. And while the country keeps its eye on California to see if that state’s voters decide to lift marijuana prohibition entirely this November, Colorado seems increasingly poised to take that next crucial step as well. A Rasmussen telephone poll released May 15 showed that 49 percent of likely Colorado voters support taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol, with an additional 13 percent still undecided.

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The City of Brotherly Love just got a little kinder.

Beginning today, anyone in Philadelphia who is found possessing up to one ounce of marijuana could have his or her charge downgraded from a misdemeanor to a summary offense.

Under the new policy, which was announced in April by new district attorney Seth Williams, offenders will still be processed by law enforcement, but most can have their records expunged after they take a class and pay a $200 fine. Officials hope the change will help clear the city’s clogged court system.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"You're still arrested, you're still brought in, you're still fingerprinted, you're still given a prelim," said Tasha Jamerson, spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office.

Only at the preliminary arraignment are procedures changing, as many cases will be "diverted" from misdemeanor charges, said McCann.

That won't be automatic either.

Some reasons for withholding leniency for pot possession include attempting to sell, being caught during a serious crime, and having a criminal record.”

While the new policy is a far cry from removing all penalties for marijuana possession, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

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Today, the City of Los Angeles will begin enforcing its ordinance regulating storefront medical marijuana dispensing collectives.  The ordinance will force most of the city’s collectives to shut down (over 400 establishments), while the remaining 138 or so (those who registered with the city prior to Nov. 13, 2007) will have to comply with new zoning laws that are stricter than those for adult entertainment businesses, retail alcohol vendors, and pharmacies.

I will be the first to acknowledge that thoughtful planning and zoning are important for any community. But the way that Los Angeles has chosen to regulate medical marijuana treats marijuana as if it were far more dangerous than the products sold by pharmacies and liquor stores and willfully thrusts the city into an even worse economic position than it’s already in.

Once their neighborhood dispensaries have been shut down, forced to move, or so overloaded with business that long lines render the experience too inconvenient, I predict that many Angelenos will turn to the traditional unregulated street dealer for marijuana.  That means sales taxes won’t be paid on those transactions, it will be impossible to monitor the quality or origin of that marijuana, and the typical turf wars and crime associated with black markets will become more prevalent in our communities.

From an economic standpoint, the ordinance will shut down over 400 businesses, putting at least 1,000 people out of work and vacating all of those retail spaces – a sizeable impact on the city’s already shabby economy.

As with many other aspects of our nation’s drug control policies, you really have to abandon common sense to see how this will be better for Los Angeles.  And frankly, I’m tired of doing that.

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A ballot initiative in Detroit that would make it legal for adults to possess up to one ounce of marijuana for personal use has been certified by city election officials, according to local reports.

A local group called Coalition for a Safer Detroit turned in more than 6,000 signatures to place the initiative on November’s ballot. According to the Detroit News, the City Council now has 30 days to pass the initiative into law or it will be up to voters to pass it in November.

Should the initiative pass, Detroit will join the growing ranks of cities that are now taking it upon themselves to implement sensible marijuana laws in the absence of federal leadership.

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Even when medical marijuana patients are protected from arrest and provided safe access under their state’s law, they may still face forms of discrimination, as we are unfortunately reminded time and time again.

Perhaps the most tragic and emotionally charged instance is when parents lose custody of their children because a court or judge rules that their marijuana use, even if it’s medicinal, constitutes child endangerment.

Luckily, a ruling last week by the Colorado Court of Appeals may help prevent future instances, at least in that state. In a 2-1 decision, the three-judge court ruled that a parent’s use of medical marijuana does not necessarily lead to child endangerment, and that the impact of a parent’s medical marijuana use on a child should be determined on a case-by-case basis. In this case, a father had agreed to undergo drug screenings as part of the custody plan made with his divorced wife, but then asked a judge to waive that requirement after he received a license to use medical marijuana for knee and back pain resulting from a motorcycle accident.

The court found that the father’s medical marijuana use in no way “represented a threat to the physical and emotional health and safety of the child, or otherwise suggested any risk of harm.”

The ruling was clear, however, that the court was not expressing an opinion on whether medical marijuana use constituted endangerment; “rather, we conclude only that endangerment was not shown here,” the opinion stated. “We also express no view on father’s constitutional right to use medical marijuana.”

In a related development, Noah Kirkman, the 12-year-old Canadian boy who has been in an American foster home since 2008, was ordered back to Canada and into the custody of his grandparents this weekend. As I wrote previously on the blog, his mother, Lisa, had been deprived custody of her son because of her use of and activism for medical marijuana.

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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said this week that he has no plans to try to make the state’s recently passed medical marijuana law more restrictive—as he had suggested he might do while on the campaign trail—but that he wants to delay implementation of the law by at least six months.

“I think the public would agree it has to be done correctly,’’ he told local outlets.

Christie’s actions are causing concern among some lawmakers and advocates, who say the process shouldn’t be unnecessarily prolonged. The state legislature has already passed the law, and there are seriously ill patients in New Jersey who are being forced to go without access or protection until it takes effect.

Stay tuned for updates.

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Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has recently taken to Minnesota’s airwaves in a misguided attempt to blame violence at the hands of criminal gangs on consumers of marijuana. “When you pay for marijuana, you are paying for the bullet that goes into the head of someone on the streets,” he told the Star Tribune, in one instance.

Today, MPP called upon Mayor Rybak to get honest about what actually fuels violence in the marijuana trade: prohibition. Here’s the statement by MPP’s Steve Fox:

“Like alcohol prohibition in the last century, marijuana prohibition has helped to fuel violent crime in Minnesota and across the country. Mayor Rybak is out of touch with reality if he does not recognize that prohibition—and any elected official who supports it—is to blame for giving criminals a virtual monopoly on marijuana’s lucrative trade. It is unrealistic to assume we can somehow magically remove the demand for marijuana. The only true solution is to regulate marijuana, and bring its sale under the rule of law, the same way we ended the criminal violence that stemmed from alcohol prohibition.

“If the mayor wants to end violence associated with marijuana, he too needs to be honest, and join the growing ranks of those calling for an end to prohibition and the failed policies that drive money into the hands of criminals, and yes, bullets into people’s heads.”

Well, as it turns out, the first call I got back about our release was from Mayor Rybak himself. He was not too pleased, to say the least. To his credit, the mayor seemed more nuanced and open-minded about the issue than some of the Minnesota headline writers have made him out to be. He reiterated that this is a complicated subject, but that he is open to a debate on solutions. “I’m telling people that we need to talk about this,” he told me.

If you’re in the Minneapolis area and want to tell Mayor Rybak what you think about this, he responds regularly to comments made on his Facebook page.

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Two high-school teachers in Norfolk, Virginia have been placed on paid administrative leave because a parent objected to them handing out a one-page flier and showing a film, both about constitutional rights, to a 12^th grade government class.

The handout, “When Dealing With Police …”, tells students what to do if they get stopped by police officers, if they see someone stopped by police officers, or if they get arrested (example: “Ask, ‘AM I FREE TO GO?’ If not, you are being detained. If yes, walk away.”)

And the film, “Busted: The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters,” should be familiar to many readers of this blog. It was produced a few years back by Flex Your Rights, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes education on constitutional rights in police situations and recently put out another film, “10 Rules for Dealing With Police,” to more than respectable reviews. Both films received funding from MPP.

Anyone who has ever watched “Busted” knows it’s an entertaining presentation of Constitutional Rights 101. Featuring commentary from Ira Glasser, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, the film depicts people in everyday police encounters and explains to viewers what rights they have at every step along the way. It’s been endorsed by Nobel Prize Winner Milton Friedman and former ACLU president Nadine Strossen, among others.

Not exactly the kind of product that should lead to teachers being removed from the classroom.

The parent who made the initial complaint (and courageously chooses to remain anonymous) told the Virginian Pilot that her daughter came home after viewing the materials, and said, “You won't believe what we are learning in Government. They are teaching us how to hide our drugs.” I’d be curious to know if the parent even bothered to watch the film or read the flier herself before filing the complaint. Obviously her daughter missed the point, and now, unfortunately, her teachers aren’t there to explain it to her.

Here’s what Steve Silverman, the executive director of Flex Your Rights, had to say about the ordeal:

“It's certainly disturbing that civics teachers are being punished for teaching students about how constitutional protections apply during police encounters. The Bill of Rights is not some abstract concept that ought to be forgotten after finals, nor is it a trick designed to protect evil-doers.

The Bill of Rights was deliberately designed by the Founders to protect the innocent against abuses by government power. The fact that some lawbreakers might use constitutional protections to avoid punishment is a poor excuse for abetting constitutional illiteracy.

Flex Your Rights materials embody this principle. Our videos are regularly screened in hundreds of college and high school classrooms and embraced by an array of professional and civic groups – including police instructors, lawyers and concerned parents. Never to my knowledge has any institution taken such measures against educators using our materials.”

I just hope the student whose parent complained never finds herself in an unfortunate encounter with police. She’ll probably wish she paid more attention to what her teachers had to say.

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According to a local news station, a New Mexico man who is registered with the state’s medical marijuana program was denied access to his medical marijuana, as well as any temporary replacement medication, while being held in the Dona Ana County Detention Center. The explanations offered by the detention center were confusing to say the least.

"[M]arijuana at this time is not approved to go into that facility,” said a spokesperson. “One of the reasons is when you smoke, whether it's tobacco or marijuana, everyone around you is smoking it, too.”

Ignoring the fact that there are multiple delivery methods for medical marijuana other than smoking, such as vaporization or ingestion, this argument makes no sense. Scientific studies have shown that second-hand contact with marijuana smoke has little to no effect on the body. (Anecdotally, probation and parole officers have long rejected the “I was at a party where people were smoking” defense for failed drug tests.)

Even if this were not the case, concessions for certain types of medication are made daily in the corrections system. For example, it could be dangerous to allow diabetic inmates to use hypodermic needles when in the company of other prisoners, but they are not denied access to their medicine. Instead, they are allowed to take their medication in a more secure and private location that does not present a danger to others.

The Dona Ana County Detention Center surely could have taken steps to make this happen. The staff must disagree with the voters of the state of New Mexico that marijuana is a legitimate medicine, since the policy of the detention center is that “if someone is detained and needs medications, we will make sure that they are properly medicated.”

According to the detainee, they did not. Even though they had his medicine in their possession, which they returned to him upon his release! Can someone please explain this?

Dona Ana County Detention Center (not to mention the detainee) is very lucky that the consequences of this incident were not worse. They very easily could have been, as they were for Jonathan Magbie, a paralyzed medical marijuana patient who died in a Washington, D.C. jail after being denied adequate medical attention.

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Every once in a while, there is room for humor at the expense of America’s war on marijuana and this is a story that I couldn’t help but share:

In their unyielding pursuit to rid the world of all of its marijuana plants, police in Corpus Christi, Texas arrived at a city park last week to pull up hundreds of weeds. The only problem with their gardening project is that these weeds were not marijuana at all but a type of wild mint that grows in the area.

Corpus Christi’s KRIS TV news reports that police…

…spent an hour pulling up about 400 plants and filling several garbage bags with the weeds. But, when they got back to the police station and ran some tests it turned out the suspected pot plants were just a fairly common type of weed called 'horse mint.'

This is clearly an embarrassing waste of public safety resources. However, I can’t help but think about how much more useful an activity like clearing weeds out of a park is compared to chasing down adults for growing marijuana plants on their own property.

What do you think?

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