Last night, after years of work -- and months of intense pressure by patients, advocates, and supportive legislators -- the Illinois Senate passed a bill that would protect qualified Illinois medical marijuana patients from arrest for the first time ever, 30-28.

But there's still more work to accomplish before seriously ill Illinois medical marijuana patients can safely acquire and use their medicine without fear of arrest. If you're an Illinois resident, please help us build on the momentum from this victory and encourage your friends and family in Illinois to do so.

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Over the last several days, the popular Web site Digg has been allowing users to submit and vote up or down various questions to be posed during today's "Digg Dialogue" and CNN interview with Calif. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). 

When Schwarzenegger was asked about taxing and regulating marijuana as a result, he replied that he doesn't support changing the current marijuana laws because believes -- perhaps alone among citizens -- that the current laws have "worked very well for California."

You've got to wonder by what measure he's gauging marijuana prohibition's success. When California first banned marijuana in 1913, the plant was virtually unknown. Now nearly one in ten Californians admit to having used it within any given year - despite the more than 74,000 marijuana arrests made in the state last year alone. More California teens report using marijuana than tobacco, and the drug can be found in nearly every high school in the state. This is a successful law?

Once again, the public is way ahead of politicians on marijuana policy. Taxing and regulating marijuana enjoys majority support in California - at least according to one of the state's most respected pollsters. Arnold's job performance ratings, on the other hand, are a whole other story.

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For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed -- falsely -- that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:

The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don't have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.

Just for fun, let's compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California's actual prison population is 171,000.

So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?

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One of the canards regularly raised by opponents of medical marijuana is that it just gets people high and doesn't provide real medical relief. For example, last year former deputy drug czar Scott Burns told a California newspaper, "Anybody can say something makes me feel better anecdotally. And I hear that a lot.  'Marijuana is the only thing that makes me feel good.' I say you should try crack, because from what I hear, crack cocaine will make you feel really good as well."

Anyone inclined to believe such nonsense should check out an article just published online by the journal Pharmacological Research. The article, by two researchers from the University of Naples, covers the potential benefits of cannabinoids in illnesses involving intestinal inflammation (e.g. Crohn's disease) and in colorectal cancer.

The authors explain that "cannabinoids exert important physiological and pathophysiological actions in the digestive tract, including appetite regulation, emesis, protection of the gastric mucosa, intestinal ion transport, gastric emptying and intestinal motility." They then go into a detailed and highly technical explanation of how the body's CB1 and CB2 receptors -- the route through which marijuana and the body's own marijuana-like chemicals act -- are involved in controlling the excessive inflammation that is the hallmark of Crohn's and other forms of inflammatory bowel disease and how enhancing those actions can help.

The researchers then go into a similarly detailed discussion of the cellular mechanisms by which cannabinoids -- including natural plant cannabinoids like THC and CBD -- fight colorectal cancer, opening the discussion with this: "Cannabinoids exert antiproliferative, antimetastatic and apoptotic actions in colorectal carcinoma epithelial cells as well as antitumoural effects in experimental models of colon cancer."

So, can we lay to rest once and for all the lie that medical marijuana is just about "getting high"?

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Yesterday, Congressman Steven Cohen (D-Tenn.) did a fantastic job of arguing against two common and misinformed prohibitionist arguments during a congressional hearing with FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Watch the video below to see Congressman Cohen refute the arguments that marijuana is particularly harmful and that marijuana is a gateway drug.

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An Arizona family describes why they support the need for a medical marijuana law.

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Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate today that sought to undermine the 13 state medical marijuana laws. Coburn’s legislation was defeated in committee (13-10) on a party-line vote.

Offered as an amendment to the Family Smoking and Tobacco Control Act, Coburn’s legislation would have placed state medical marijuana laws under the regulatory control of the FDA – not necessarily a bad thing on its own. But Coburn's intentions become apparent when you realize that FDA approval requires specific, FDA-approved research into marijuana’s risks and benefits as a medicine, something the federal government has blocked for decades. Without the research, MPP feared that the FDA would shut down medical marijuana access nationwide.

The fact that medical marijuana opponents are going on the offensive (and failing) speaks volumes to the success we’ve had in recent months.  The Supreme Court recently affirmed California’s medical marijuana law, and the new administration has stated a policy of non-interference with state medical marijuana laws – and both points were raised during the committee debate. Even Sen. Coburn conceded, “It is not an illegal product in 13 states.”

It is possible that Sen. Coburn will continue his attack on medical marijuana, but given the opposition he faced today, it's unlikely he'll succeed.

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MPP Director of Government Relations Aaron Houston discusses the contradictions between State and Federal law regarding the use of marijuana. Specifically, he addresses the U.S. Supreme Court decision not to review a challenge to California medical marijuana law brought by two counties in that state. The counties had been defeated in lower court decisions that affirmed the right of States to make laws that violated Federal law. 05/19/2009

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Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota's Republican governor (pictured below), has "great empathy for the sick." I know it's true because he said so.

He just thinks they belong in jail if they need medical marijuana.

He announced his intention to veto the medical marijuana bill at his news conference today. Then, amazingly, he went on to wax rhapsodic about how "The sky is blue, the sun is out. The minds of Minnesotans are turning to Memorial Day, summer, fishing."

Tell that to Joni Whiting, whose daughter Stephanie gained some comfort and the ability to eat from medical marijuana during the last months of her doomed struggle with melanoma. Pawlenty thinks it's just fine to treat Joni, Stephanie, and others in that dreadful situation as common criminals.

Bear in mind that the bill the governor says he'll veto is so drastically narrowed down that none of the purported concerns of law enforcement, whose direction he's supposedly been taking, have even a shred of validity. As passed, it would only have covered terminally ill patients, and even they wouldn't have been allowed to grow their own marijuana.

Pawlenty reportedly has national ambitions. Maybe he thinks there's a large block of voters out there who think cancer patients belong in jail. Or maybe he's just heartless. In any case, you can count on talk of a 2010 constitutional amendment -- which would bypass the governor -- to get a lot more serious.

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The latest news from Minnesota is a classic good news/bad news situation. The good news is that the state House of Representatives passed a medical marijuana bill, which is now on its way to the desk of Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty. This is the first time that a state legislature in the Midwest has ever passed a modern, effective medical marijuana bill.

The bad news is that before passing the bill, they watered it down seriously.

There are honest disagreements about this issue, but parts of the debate were just frivolous -- as when one member proposed an amendment to change the word "marijuana" in the bill to "pot." Really. I am not making this up.

That amendment failed, but the final version took out the ability of patients to grow their own medicine and limited the bill's protection to patients who are terminally ill. That leaves out an awful lot of patients who deserve protection, including K.K. Forss, whom I met last year while making presentations to newspaper editorial boards about the bill.

Politically, the legislature's action puts the governor in an interesting spot. He has previously signaled opposition, basically siding with law enforcement officials who claimed that the bill would be open to rampant abuse and would flood the state with marijuana. Those claims were always dubious, but with the bill so drastically narrowed, they're now downright ridiculous.

We hope the governor signs the bill, imperfect as it is. With a two-year sunset clause, there's a built-in opportunity to improve it in 2011. And the track record of improving flawed medical marijuana laws in other states is pretty good. Vermont, for example, passed a highly restricted medical marijuana law in 2004 and then broadened it significantly three years later, boosting the amount of marijuana patients may possess and increasing the number of medical conditions covered.

On the other hand, if the governor vetoes, there is a distinct possibility of placing a constitutional amendment on the 2010 ballot. That won't be easy, but it's possible.

Either way, K.K., we're not giving up.

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