ABC's "20/20" aired this story Friday about Rachel Hoffman, a young Florida woman who was murdered by drug dealers after Tallahassee police pressured her into acting as an informant to avoid minor marijuana charges.

It would be easy to blame this on the extraordinary cowardice and ineptitude of the Tallahassee Police Department, but cowardice and ineptitude are inherent in our country's war on marijuana users.

Tragedies like this one will remain routine, hideous occurrences as long as we treat innocent Americans like Ms. Hoffman as criminals.

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Saturday's Los Angeles Times does a pretty good story on this unfolding medical marijuana case, focusing on the bizarre dance defense attorneys must do to help the jury understand what's really going on, having been barred from using the phrase "medical marijuana" -- which is, of course, a nonexistent concept under federal law. 

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This video, from the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care, has Dr. George Wagoner describing the relief his wife found from marijuana in her battle against ovarian cancer.

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I promise, we will not do a new post every time an ONDCP official lies. We'd never get any work done. But the falsehoods uttered by deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns in this interview in the Arcata Eye, a small northern California paper, are so blatant that they deserve mention. To avoid having to write a War and Peace-length tome, I'll focus on just two:

LIE #1:  Tough laws and enforcement are reducing marijuana use: Burns says, "drug use is down in the United States dramatically since 2001 ... So we know that when we push back, the problem gets smaller."

Actually, virtually every expert analysis has found this to be untrue. In 2001  the National Research Council, in a White House-commissioned study, found "little apparent relationship between the severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and the prevalence or frequency of use." Just weeks ago, a new World Health Organization study found that drug laws have little if any relationship to use rates -- and that the rate of marijuana use in the U.S. is over double that of the Netherlands, where adults are permitted to possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana from regulated businesses.

LIE #2: Marijuana belongs in Schedule I, with drugs like LSD and heroin that are banned from medicinal use. Burns says, "Because of the higher potency, it is the same as cocaine and methamphetamine and heroin. ... I say you should try crack, because from what I hear, crack cocaine will make you feel really good as well. This is not about making people feel better. ... physician after physician, and scientist after scientist have said, 'You have to be kidding me.'” 

Oh dear.  First, does Burns really believe that relieving suffering (making sick patients "feel better") is somehow inappropriate for medicine? Is he unaware of the mass of clinical research documenting that marijuana does indeed relieve symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and neuropathic pain? 

Second, methamphetamine and cocaine are in Schedule 2 -- that is, they are legal medicines. And no, the approximate doubling of average marijuana potency over the last 20 years doesn't make it a whole new drug -- no more than wine is a whole different drug than beer because it has three times the alcohol level. Indeed, there is no proof that higher potency marijuana poses any danger at all. A recent analysis in the journal Addiction stated, "more research is needed to determine whether increased potency and contamination translates to harm for users."

As for what doctors think, the American College of Physicians -- 124,000 neurologists, oncologists and other internal medicine specialists -- recently called for marijuana to be taken out of Schedule I "given the scientific evidence regarding marijuana’s safety and efficacy in some clinical conditions."

Did Burns' nose grow longer as he was speaking?

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MPP just released a new documentary examining the effects of marijuana prohibition on people's lives.  The piece looks at four stories (including our own Rob Kampia's) as examples of how marijuana prohibition and its consequences impact the lives of a diverse group of Americans and their families.

We've split the video up into two parts, which are available on the MPP-TV video blog: Part 1 and Part 2. This is powerful stuff, and we hope you'll watch and share it with friends.

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We struggled a little bit with what to make of this very long, very comprehensive New Yorker feature by David Samuels on the murkier aspects of California's medical marijuana business.

The piece is well reported and provocative, but it comes nowhere near presenting a full picture of the situation.

Samuels focuses on what to many represents the worst abuses of California's medical marijuana laws, and demonstrates that the results aren't that horrible: adults purchasing a drug that's magnitudes safer than alcohol under at least a quasi-legal structure, paying taxes on the product and avoiding dangerous street dealers. Meanwhile, manufacturers and distributors operate under definable regulations, observe zoning restrictions and prohibitions on sales to minors.

Nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt. The main dangers anybody faces are from law enforcement.

However, the article only depicts a sliver of the realities of medical marijuana laws in California – let alone in the other 11 states with much tighter laws. People will disagree about just how horrible it is for healthy adults to safely, semi-legally obtain marijuana, but we can't forget about the thousands of medical marijuana patients battling painful, debilitating conditions for whom safe, legal access is truly a matter of life and death.

On that much, at least, there's a clear consensus, among regular folks and medical professionals alike, most recently demonstrated by the American College of Physicians' position paper calling for, among other things, legal protection for patients and their doctors in states with medical marijuana laws.

Also troubling is that the article vastly overstates the degree to which Californians – sick and healthy alike – enjoy legal protection for marijuana. The fact is 63,824 people were arrested for marijuana in the state in 2006 – a 12% increase since the medical marijuana law was passed in 1996.

Drug warriors and culture crusaders – not generally known for their adeptness with nuance – will surely see this piece as validation of their belief that the only way to keep marijuana out of the hands of healthy adults is to arrest the sick adults who use it.

We should welcome that argument and counter it vigilantly – it's absolute madness that our law regards the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana as criminals. But we can't allow real, suffering medical marijuana patients to become hostages in that debate.

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Jury selection has begun in the trial of medical marijuana dispensary operator Charles Lynch, reported here on Tuesday. In a lengthy cover story on the medical marijuana battles on California's Central Coast, New Times San Luis Obispo mentions a small fact from the trial that sums up these federal medical marijuana prosecutions in a nutshell.

Not only have federal prosecutors successfully barred introduction of evidence showing that the marijuana Lynch provided was for medical purposes, they actually filed a motion to keep "sick looking" people from being allowed to testify. Fortunately, the judge turned down that request, but the jury will still never be told the basic facts of the situation. And that says more about the morality of this case than I ever could.

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While the U.S. government was busily denouncing medical marijuana as some sort of  "drug legalizer" conspiracy, one of America's closest allies in the world quietly set up a medical marijuana program. Israel's medical marijuana program has gotten virtually no press in the U.S., but this Jerusalem Post article from a few months ago has some of the basics.

Medical marijuana access is restricted to a handful of indications such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, and Crohn's disease, and to patients for whom conventional medicines have failed. This week, Dr. Yehuda Baruch, who runs the program, told me that a total of 222 patients have gotten government approval to use medical marijuana, with 113 actively in the program at present.

Israel, of course, is one of America's closest allies, with both President Bush and Democratic candidate Barack Obama regularly speaking of America's "special relationship" with that small nation. But perhaps Drug Czar John Walters thinks that Israel, too, is part of the conspiracy to "fool" the public into thinking marijuana is medicine.

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The trial of Charles Lynch, originally scheduled to start Tuesday, now is scheduled to begin on Wednesday, July 23. Lynch operated a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, Calif. -- legal under state law and with permission from the city. But the county sheriff, vehemently opposed to medical marijuana dispensaries, called in the Drug Enforcement Administration, which raided the dispensary and filed drug charges against Lynch.

Check out this Reason TV video for details about the case, including a 17-year-old cancer patient Lynch helped, with his parents' full support. Partly because a few of the dispensary's patients were under 21, Lynch faces a potential 100 years in federal prison. And because this is a federal trial, the jury won't be allowed to hear evidence that the marijuana Lynch provided was for medical purposes.

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Dr. John Newmeyer is an epidemiologist and author of "Mother of All Gateway Drugs: Parables for Our Time." He sits down with us to discuss his views on marijuana and the drug war in general.

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