MPP legislative analyst Dan Riffle discusses proposed regulations for a medical marijuana law in Washington, D.C. on NewsChannel 8.

Bruce Fein served as a high-ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, and has since gone on to work for conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Now, as a member of the “Just Say Now” advisory board, he’s joined the growing number of conservatives who are calling for a legal and regulated marijuana market.

Watch below:

Progressive political blog FireDogLake launched its online marijuana legalization campaign yesterday. Complete with a website and an advisory board that includes former law enforcement officers, physicians, and activists, the campaign—called “Just Say Now”—is designed as a “transpartisan” nexus of sorts for the growing nationwide movement to end marijuana prohibition.

Partnering with FDL for the campaign is Students For Sensible Drug Policy, which recently made an excellent decision by naming our former colleague Aaron Houston as its new executive director. Though we miss Aaron’s presence in the office, his new position ensures that he’ll continue to play a leading role in combating the destructive policies of marijuana prohibition.

For more, check out this clip of FireDogLake founder and publisher Jane Hamsher announcing the “Just Say Now” campaign on CNN.

More than 2,000 people in Colorado applied for licenses to run state-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries, growing facilities or related businesses before this weekend’s application deadline, according to state officials. In total, the state made $7.34 million from application fees alone.

More than 700 applied specifically for dispensary licenses, far exceeding the number expected by state officials, who estimated that only half of the state’s roughly 1,100 pre-existing dispensaries would apply for licenses. State officials will now conduct thorough background checks on applicants before awarding licenses, which are expected to generate additional millions in annual revenue for Colorado.

“This outpouring of applications is another sign of how willing and eager marijuana business owners are to be taxed, regulated, and given equal treatment to other legitimate establishments,” said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, in a press release. “By sensibly regulating its medical marijuana industry, Colorado stands to gain untold millions in new revenue while at the same time providing legal clarity and rational oversight to what may soon be the largest regulated marijuana market in the world.”

In June, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter (D) signed legislation designed to regulate the state’s medical marijuana industry through a system of local and state licenses. A state-licensed 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.

A Rasmussen telephone poll released May 15 showed that there is also plurality support among Colorado voters for further expanding the state’s marijuana laws. Forty-nine percent of likely voters said they support taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol, with an additional 13 percent still undecided.

Exciting developments in the movement to end marijuana prohibition keep flooding my inbox. Here’s just a sampling from over the weekend:

Citing a new survey, Ryan Grim gives more credence to the idea that marijuana ballot initiatives could help Democrats drive “surge voters” to the polls in 2012. (Something I’ve written about a time or two.)

A survey making the rounds among strategists, which has yet to be made public, indicates that pot could be just the enticement many of these voters need: Surge voters, single women under 40 and Hispanics all told America Votes pollsters that if a legalization measure were on the Colorado ballot, they'd be more likely to come out to vote. Forty-five percent of surge voters and 47 percent of single women said they'd be more interested in voting if the question was on the ballot. Most of these were energetic, with 36 and 30 percent, respectively, saying they'd be "much more interested" in coming out to vote. Roughly half said it would make no difference. For Latinos, 32 percent said they'd be "much more interested" in voting and another 12 percent said they'd be somewhat more attracted to the idea of trudging to the polls.

Surge voters said they would support the measure by a margin of 63-35. Young single women would back it 68-31.

In Oregon, the Court of Appeals has ruled that a parent who tests positive for marijuana cannot lose custody of their children without evidence that his or her marijuana use resulted in child endangerment.

The state had argued that the mother's marijuana use "presented a reasonable likelihood of harm to her two children."

But the appeals court agreed with the mother's argument that the state failed to provide any evidence connecting her behavior with risk to the children. […]

[Department of Human Services] workers found that the home was clean, the children had appropriate food to eat and they appeared "happy and healthy," the appeals court wrote in its decision. A DHS worker also had testified that the mother "appears to have appropriate parenting skills."

[…] The mother admitted using the drug at a party a week or two earlier but said she did not use it frequently and never used it around the children. A test taken a few weeks later came back negative for marijuana and other drugs.

And in an interview with The New York Times, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) predicts that a bill he has sponsored to remove federal penalties for the personal use of marijuana could pass within five years.

For all your love of financial regulation, you’ve joined with the libertarian Republican Ron Paul to write bills that would shrink government. Do you think your bill to legalize marijuana will ever pass? Yes, in the next five years.

Will that expand the tax base? As a nation, do you think we could smoke our way to solvency? I want to be clear; that’s not my major motivation. My major motivation is personal freedom. When we outlaw marijuana or online gambling, all you do is create more criminals and deprive us of revenue.

A website set up by Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire’s office asked citizens to vote on different ideas to help plug the state’s $3 billion budget gap. The most popular—out of more than 1,700 submitted ideas—was legalizing and taxing marijuana. (Not the first time we’ve seen such a result in an online forum.)

So what does the governor think about ending the state’s prohibition on marijuana?

“It’s a legitimate idea,” said her spokesperson, Karina Shagren. “But we’d have to see how the federal government would respond.”

Though it’s not a ringing endorsement, this response is quite encouraging for a governor whose state this year considered both a legislative bill and a ballot initiative that would have made marijuana legal for adults.

The initiative didn’t gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, but with polls showing more than half of Washington voters supporting an end to marijuana prohibition, it’s all but certain local organizers will try again in upcoming years.

Even more promising, this year the initiative received an official endorsement from the Washington state Democratic Party. And Gov. Gregorie just happens to be a Democrat.

Artist, designer, and animator Haik Hoisington just sent along his most recent animation, and I consider it a must-watch for marijuana policy reform activists. "The Flower" does an amazing job of contrasting a society that regulates (and taxes) a flower with one that chooses the path of prohibition.

A Rasmussen poll released earlier this week about Americans’ attitudes toward marijuana didn’t reveal any surprising changes in levels of support for reform—43% favor ending prohibition, just slightly less than the 44% Gallup found last October—but it did contain this one interesting nugget:

However, 65% believe it is at least somewhat likely marijuana will be legalized in the United States in the next 10 years. Just 28% do not expect this to happen.

That’s fascinating. If the majority of Americans come to think that marijuana legalization is inevitable, could that make it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Could many otherwise neutral or indifferent voters be encouraged to support reform because they want to be on the winning side? Would that make opponents mellow in their resistance? Whether or not there’s merit to the idea, reformers can’t become complacent. There’s still a lot that needs to happen before we finally turn the page on the failure of marijuana prohibition—including winning some of these ballot measures in November.

Such victories will only advance the perception that prohibition’s days are nearing an (inevitable) end.

Washington, D.C.'s medical marijuana law cleared a mandatory 30-day Congressional review period Monday night, after Congress declined to take action against a D.C. Council bill that allows the District to license between five and eight medical marijuana dispensaries. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton made the announcement on Tuesday. The District will join 14 states across the country in having effective medical marijuana laws.

This historic development comes almost 12 years after 69 percent of District voters approved a referendum on medical marijuana in 1998. Congress had blocked the law’s implementation until last year. Now the District Department of Health and Mayor Adrian Fenty are tasked with developing a set of regulations for dispensaries that will be licensed to distribute medical marijuana to qualified patients. Medical marijuana is not fully legal yet, as the new law allows qualified patients to legally possess marijuana only if it comes from a licensed dispensary.

“After thwarting the will of District voters for more than a decade, Congress is no longer standing in the way of effective relief for D.C. residents who struggle with chronic ailments,” MPP executive director Rob Kampia said in a press release. “This moment is a long overdue victory for both D.C. home rule and the wellbeing of District residents whose doctors believe medical marijuana can help ease their pain.”

Under the bill, patients who are suffering from chronic conditions including HIV/AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis, and receive a recommendation from their doctor will be able to obtain safe access to medical marijuana through a system of licensed dispensaries. A task force will be charged with, among other things, recommending additional conditions, such as PTSD or severe, chronic pain to the list of qualifying conditions. Unlike the laws in 13 out of 14 medical marijuana states, patients will not be allowed to grow their own medicine, though the task force will also examine the issue of home cultivation. Medical marijuana will be subject to the city’s 6 percent sales tax.

Major news! The Department of Veterans Affairs has formally announced that patients being treated at V.A. facilities will be allowed to use medical marijuana if they live in one of the 14 states where it is legal.

This historic development was trumpeted over the weekend in a front-page New York Times story that quoted MPP’s Steve Fox. “We now have a branch of the federal government accepting marijuana as a legal medicine,” Steve told the Times, adding that the department needs to make its guidelines clear to patients and V.A. officials nationwide.

Under the policy, V.A. doctors still won’t be allowed to recommend marijuana to patients, but legal medical marijuana users will not be automatically precluded from pain management programs. Previously, many veterans believed they could lose access to prescription pain medications if they were found to be using medical marijuana, and some—including an Army veteran interviewed by The Times—were even told they needed to choose between medical marijuana and other pain medications. This latest policy clarification should prevent similar future incidents.

But there is still more that needs to be done. The new policy does not apply to patients or veterans in the 36 states where medical marijuana is still illegal. Many veterans rely on the V.A. for all their healthcare needs as well, and even if they live in a medical marijuana state, they may not be able to receive a recommendation from a non-V.A. doctor.

Regardless, this is a huge step forward – and one more crack in the federal government’s baseless opposition to sane medical marijuana policies.