Yesterday marked the 12^th anniversary of the passage of the first state law that effectively lifted criminal sanctions on the medical use of marijuana, California’s Proposition 215. In the years since 56% of California voters decided to stop criminalizing the ill, and public support for legal access to medical marijuana has grown to nearly 80%. That public sentiment has translated into policy reforms in at least 12 other states.

One would think that California’s law enforcement officials would do just that: enforce the law. But some of them spend time and even tax dollars lobbying against the state’s medical marijuana laws.

The California Narcotics Officers’ Association’s (CNOA) position paper on medical marijuana asserts, “There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine.” The CNOA ignores hundreds of studies on the efficacy of marijuana as medicine and the dozens of credible scientific and medical organizations that have publicly supported medical marijuana access.

Disinformation about medical marijuana isn't limited to privately funded Web sites like cnoa.org. The Sheriff’s Department in California’s capital county uses local tax dollars to maintain a Web page that claims, “There are no medically accepted uses for smoking marijuana.”

The medical community doesn’t share the sheriff’s medical opinion. Even the U.S. government’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) found, "Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting and all can be mitigated by marijuana ... there are patients with debilitating symptoms for whom smoked marijuana might provide relief."

The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department makes even more bizarre claims in its attempt to play doctor on the Internet -- such as claiming that marijuana could cause “increased facial and body hair” in women or that it can cause “diminished or complete loss of sexual pleasure.” Fortunately for the 14.5 million people who use marijuana, none of these far-fetched claims have been substantiated by science.

The sad fact is that California’s law enforcement lobby began campaigning against Proposition 215 in 1996 and when voters didn’t side with them, some its members never stopped.

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Not only did Tuesday's election produce two major marijuana policy victories, but we also saw signs of progress in Washington, D.C.

Barack Obama has consistently said that he does not support the federal government arresting medical marijuana patients in states where medical marijuana is legal. He also affirmed to MPP that he would not use federal resources to raid medical marijuana dispensaries in California, something his predecessor’s administration has done countless times.

And the Politico reported that Obama’s pick for drug czar may be Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.  Bratton is “totally supportive of the concept of medical marijuana” (Source).

There were some promising changes in Congress as well.  With several elections still undecided, the Democrats are likely to pick up 22 new seats in Congress -- 17 of which belonged to medical marijuana opponents in the last Congress. And every single Democratic incumbent who lost Tuesday was a medical marijuana opponent.

As I noted in an earlier post, a number of the most outspoken medical marijuana opponents faced tough opposition going into the election -- and several of them were sent packing. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), Congressman Ric Keller (R-Fla.), and Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) are the most notable lawmakers who MPP will not miss. Congressman Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who once called MPP’s executive director a “an articulate advocate for an evil position,” held on to his seat despite predictions that he might lose.

Additionally, candidates who are close allies of MPP won spots in the House of Representatives, like Nevada State Senator Dina Titus, who is a strong supporter of medical marijuana.

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Join Nydia Swaby as she answers this week's question: "Is marijuana a 'gateway drug'?"

As always, please send us your questions about marijuana:

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Consider this: As I write this, with 67% of precincts reporting, marijuana decriminalization is passing in Massachusetts with 65% of the vote. Obama, who is carrying the state handily, is getting 62%.

In Michigan it's similar. With 40% of the vote in, medical marijuana is passing with 63% while Obama is carrying the state with 55%.

And this is not just a blue state phenomenon. In 2004, George W. Bush carried Montana with 59% of the vote, while medical marijuana passed with 62%.

Memo to the new Congress and President-elect Obama: Sane marijuana policies are not controversial.

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We'll have more on this soon, but voters in Massachusetts and Michigan appear to have passed both MPP ballot initiatives, making this one of the biggest nights for marijuana policy reform ever.

Massachusetts is now the 12th state to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana -- and the first to do so by voter initiative in the world! -- and Michigan is now the 13th medical marijuana state and the first in the Midwest. That means that one in four Americans now live in a state that protects patients who use doctor-recommended medical marijuana from arrest.

Like I said, it's a big night. Congratulations and thanks to everybody who worked so hard to pass these important reforms and to all the voters who saw past the fear-mongering and distortions from opponents of these sensible policies. Check out our complete list of marijuana policy-related ballot initiatives and their results here.

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Last week, the illustrious Bruce Mirken told us about how opponents of Michigan’s “Proposal 1” are lying to voters by saying that there are “pot-smoking clubs” in every neighborhood in California.

Now the marijuana-obsessed Drug Czar’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is spewing more hogwash about California’s medical marijuana situation.

The ONDCP’s blog is claiming that there are more medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco than Starbucks coffee shops. Their “analysis” concludes that “in downtown San Francisco alone, there are 98 marijuana dispensaries, compared to 71 Starbucks Coffee shops.”

Surprise! Contrary to their own stated policy of "maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information" the ONDCP is lying to us.

There are only 25 medical marijuana dispensaries in the entire city of San Francisco. This figure was reported in a San Francisco Chronicle article just last month.

San Francisco’s dispenaries are tightly regulated by local land-use ordinances and, contrary to the ONDCP’s claims, there is no evidence that they cause an inordinate amount of crime.

Most patients in San Francisco actually want to see more points of access to medical marijuana in their city. After all, there are almost 60 Walgreens pharmacies successfully dispensing Oxycontin, morphine, and a number of other potentially dangerous medications within city limits.

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Every time I think the murder of 22-year-old Rachel Hoffman couldn't get more repulsive, new details emerge suggesting there's no end to the incompetence, recklessness, and misplaced values of the officers who caused her death.

The young woman – whom the Tallahassee Police Department recruited as a confidential informant after threatening her with a marijuana charge – was murdered by the drug dealers she'd been sent to ensnare in a sting operation.

One of the many confounding aspects of the case to me was why they would send Rachel to buy not just an uncharacteristically large amount of drugs, but a gun as well. She had never been in legal trouble for anything except a couple relatively low-level drug offenses mostly involving marijuana, and she had absolutely no history of violence.

It now appears she suggested purchasing the gun herself because the cops had led her to believe a more high-profile bust would mean the end of her obligations as a CI, and that she would then be allowed to move on with her life.

The officer supervising her CI activities also continues to stick to his dubious claim that Rachel was a big-time drug dealer making $26,000 a week, even though her friends say they never saw her with that kind of cash or drugs, and her dad still paid her rent. Curiously, the officer also said he trusted her with the money she was given for the sting operation because she was a "very religious, family-oriented girl," and that stealing would have been out of character for her.

I suspect that Rachel's handlers in the Tallahassee Police Department knew she wasn't really a criminal in any practical sense. She was just an unlucky soul who got caught up in the ridiculously wide net created by our marijuana laws. In our cruel system, that means those sworn to protect her were now entitled to exploit her, and that she had forfeited her claim to our most basic civil right: life.

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The last of three Atlanta police officers pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the shooting death of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston nearly two years ago, thus concluding the federal investigation of that tragic incident.

It appears likely the investigation report will fault shortcuts taken by Atlanta narcotics officers to secure illegal search warrants, which, if you'll read our summary of the incident, you'll see is a grotesque understatement in Ms. Johnston's case. These officers arbitrarily targeted the woman's home as a crack house, lied to secure a no-knock warrant, shot her five or six times, and then attempted to plant a small amount of marijuana in order to justify their rampage.

Vile abuses of authority are a terrible, inevitable part of human nature. Accountability and harsh justice for the men involved in Ms. Johnston's death are necessary and appropriate. But until we look at the policies that embolden such men, expect more abuse.

After all, these drug enforcement professionals believed they might get away with the senseless slaying of a 92-year-old woman if she were found possessing marijuana. What does that say about the attitudes that underlie our marijuana policies?

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The opposition to Proposal 1, the Michigan medical marijuana initiative, is going on the air with this new TV ad -- a spot so egregiously dishonest that even my very jaded jaw dropped when I saw it. It may set an all-time record for the most lies ever packed into a 30-second commercial, spoken by a narrator over grainy, black-and-white footage of what purports to be a medical marijuana dispensary. The most obvious:

1) California's medical marijuana law is "just like Proposal 1." No, it's not. California's law has almost none of the limitations and restrictions the Michigan proposal does -- including a defined list of qualifying conditions and a mandatory patient registry and ID card system. And unlike California's law, Michigan's initiative does not authorize dispensaries. Period.

2) "Hundreds of pot-smoking clubs opened in strip malls all over the state. They grow pot there. They smoke it there. In every neighborhood." Even if this had the slightest relevance to Michigan (which it doesn't -- see above), the statement is just plain false. I say this with some certainty, since I live in San Francisco, perhaps the most medical marijuana friendly city in the state. California dispensaries are not in every neighborhood: Most communities have none at all, while others have strictly regulated where they can locate. Many do not allow smoking on site, and almost none grow on site.

I happen to think medical marijuana dispensaries -- when appropriately regulated and well run -- are a perfectly fine thing, but they are simply irrelevant to the Michigan debate. But the opponents know the facts won't help them, so in desperation they resort to shameless lies.

Please take a second to learn the truth about Proposal 1 and how you can help.

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It turns out that three of the Massachusetts district attorneys leading the fight against Question 2, the Massachusetts marijuana decriminalization initiative, admit to having used marijuana themselves in the past. To our knowledge, they have yet to explain how their having criminal records that would have barred them from their present careers would leave the state  better off.

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