The first report on this major federal drug use survey is out in the form of this story from AP (which includes a short comment from MPP, dissenting from the official spin). Bottom line: Little change in drug use overall, but the drug czar and other federal officials are still claiming progress. A couple MPPers will be attending this morning's press conference at which the survey will be discussed, so watch this space for a more detailed analysis later today.

As summer winds toward an end, it's time for the government's annual drug surveys to start coming out.  The first, being released Sept. 4, is the biggest federally-sponsored drug use survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Typically this is followed a few weeks later by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports -- not a drug survey per se, but the definitive annual accounting of marijuana arrests (which set yet another new record in the UCR report released last fall). Then, typically in December, comes Monitoring the Future, which focuses on use by adolescents.

With release of each report, federal officials miraculously find in the results evidence that their policies are working just fine, even when an honest look at the data shows they aren't. And the media often fail to be sufficiently skeptical of the official spin.

Will that happen this year? Watch this space for updates.

Noting that his just-announced vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has acknowledged having smoked marijuana, MPP is urging Sen. John McCain to respect states' rights to set their own marijuana policies if he is elected president.

On Aug. 6, 2006, the Anchorage Daily News reported:

Palin said she has smoked marijuana -- remember, it was legal under state law, she said, even if illegal under U.S. law -- but says she didn't like it and doesn't smoke it now.

 'I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled.'

The paper quoted Palin as saying she opposed legalization of marijuana because of the "message" that would be sent to her children.

"Governor Palin is one of many millions of Americans who have used marijuana and gone on to live productive, wildly successful lives," said MPP executive director Rob Kampia said in a statement released a little while ago. "That she used marijuana is no big deal, but what is a big deal is that she thinks that the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana, including herself, belong in jail. That wouldn't be good for her kids.

"Perhaps most importantly, Alaska is one of 12 states that allow the medical use of marijuana, and one in five Americans currently live in those states. The heavy hand of the federal government has trampled state authority and tried to interfere with the implementation of these state-level medical marijuana laws. The GOP ticket should embrace the time-honored Republican principle of local control by promising to end the federal government's war on sensible medical marijuana laws in both red and blue states."

Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have medical marijuana laws. New Mexico's is the latest, passed by the Legislature last year. Montana's medical marijuana law appeared on the November 2004 ballot, receiving 62 percent of the vote, exceeding George W. Bush's total of 59 percent.

Early in the presidential campaign, McCain seemed to support a states' rights position on medical marijuana, but later backed away from this and became overtly hostile, receiving an "F" grade from Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi answered questions yesterday submitted via the popular social news Web site, Digg.com.  Digg user adroit asked Pelosi, “[a]s a taxable resource, what stops marijuana from being legalized, for medicinal or recreational purposes, throughout the country?”

“I myself have supported medicinal use of marijuana over and over again … there just isn’t enough support for it,” said Speaker Pelosi.  She then called on the public to help raise awareness about the issue, saying, “We need people’s help to be in touch with their members of Congress to say why [medical marijuana] should be the case.”

Why not take the speaker's words to heart and send a letter to your member of Congress right now?  You can take action in less than a minute at MPP’s online action center.

At its August meeting, the 57-year-old Society for the Study of Social Problems passed a strong resolution in support of medical marijuana. SSSP's resolution goes further than some other groups have gone by specifically endorsing key legislative proposals in Congress.

As the new resolutions haven't yet been posted on the SSSP Web site, here is the text in full: 

2008 RESOLUTION APPROVED

AT THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

AUGUST 1 BUSINESS MEETING

Resolution: Medical Marijuana

From: Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division

WHEREAS the Society for the Study of Social Problems find the following:

1.  Federal drug policy on marijuana threatens the health and well being of thousands of Americans by prohibiting even the medicinal use of cannabis under physician supervision in states with medical marijuana laws.  The federal government has actively impeded research on the medical use of marijuana despite patient and physician reports that it may help to relieve such debilitating symptoms as nausea, pain, and loss of appetite associated with serious illnesses.

2.  In February of this year, the American College of Physicians -- representing 124,000 oncologists, neurologists and other doctors of internal medicine -- released a position paper declaring that the scientific evidence “supports the use of medical marijuana in certain conditions” and calling on the federal government to reclassify marijuana to permit medical use.  In addition, the American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine, and many other national organizations are on record supporting safe and legal access to medical marijuana for patients whose doctors recommend it.

3.  The American public, too, overwhelmingly supports patients’ rights to use medical marijuana; national polls show that more than three out of four Americans favor its legal use.  Already twelve states -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Washington -- have enacted medical marijuana laws.

4.  However, until there are changes in federal drug policy, the threat to patients and caregivers of arrest by federal agents continues.

There are now two pieces of federal legislation pending that would help to alleviate this threat:

A. The Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment:

The DEA has conducted dozens of raids on legal and registered medical marijuana patient collectives and dispensaries in states such as California where the medical use of cannabis is legal under state law; the Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently prosecuting more than three-dozen licensed medical cannabis patients and care providers. The Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment would limit the ability of DOJ to arrest and prosecute patients and providers who are acting within the limits of their state law by prohibiting the DEA from using any funds to interfere with state medical marijuana laws. The amendment, which has been proposed in each of the past several sessions, will once again be voted on this summer.

B. The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act. 

H.R. 5842 would end marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug to allow doctors to prescribe it for medical use. Additionally, this bill would protect medical marijuana patients who use marijuana legally under state law from arrest and jail.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the SSSP supports both the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment and the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act.

The SSSP membership directs that copies of this resolution to all federal legislators and the administrative offices of the DEA and DOJ.

The sometimes-chaotic medical marijuana situation in California has spurred a fair amount of sensationalized and unbalanced press coverage, even in the esteemed New Yorker. Yes, there have been some problems and some misuse of the law, but an editorial in today's L.A. Times hits the nail on the head as to the real source of the problems:

Most of the negative consequences [of Proposition 215] can be attributed to the gap between state and federal marijuana laws. The fact that even sellers considered legitimate by the state can be prosecuted and ruined by federal agents encourages black-market dealers, who endanger their communities by ignoring fire codes, selling to healthy minors and fighting turf wars with other dealers. ... [T]he only long-term solution is for the feds to stop the medical marijuana raids and leave California law enforcement to California officers.

Precisely.

It looks like the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors will make taxpayers foot the bill for their lesson in constitutionality yet again, voting yesterday to continue their futile lawsuit against state medical marijuana laws. Although it hasn't been a problem for 40 other California counties, the board maintains that federal law prevents them from obeying a state law requiring a county identification card system for medical marijuana patients.

The board – along with their counterparts in San Diego County – have already lost this argument twice in court, first in 2006 by a Superior Court judge and then again earlier this month in a unanimous decision by the 4th District Court of Appeals.

This time it will be the state Supreme Court's job to explain to county officials that they must obey all laws, even the ones they don't like.

A common source of frustration for MPP – and for most folks in the marijuana policy reform movement – is being mischaracterized as "pro-pot" or "pro-drug" by the press. Not only are these labels misleading and politically charged, they're completely inaccurate.

Most of us who wish to end marijuana prohibition do so because we see the policy's utter futility and its legacy of failure and waste. Our argument isn't that marijuana is fun; it's that marijuana prohibition is a disaster, and that perpetuating it is inhumane and irresponsible. That's true whether you use marijuana or not, and whether you approve of marijuana use or not.

I don't think reporters mischaracterize us on purpose. Reporters pride themselves on their ability to approach topics with a healthy dose of skepticism. But most of them haven't given marijuana policy as much thought as, say, the pro-choice movement, which you'll rarely – if ever – see referred to as "pro-abortion."

And it isn't just the small papers and local news channels. A few weeks ago, CNN Headline News' "Showbiz Tonight" called MPP a "pro-pot group." And just last week, a reporter with the Washington Post used the same label to describe us in a story about Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr.

I'm not bringing this up to bash anybody. When I contacted the Post reporter to request a correction to the online version of her story, she was prompt in responding to me, and I believe that she and her editor gave my request sincere consideration based on their point of view. But they declined to change the story.

It makes sense that defenders of marijuana prohibition like to characterize critics of our current policies as being pro-marijuana or as encouraging marijuana use. They have a much better chance defeating this straw man than if they were to engage in an honest debate about properly assessing marijuana's relative dangers to individuals and to society and developing effective policies designed to mitigate those dangers. It's very difficult to defend prohibition in that light.

It can certainly get wearisome countering these same mischaracterizations in the press, but it's also an opportunity. Although I failed to get the Post article corrected, I did get in touch with the paper's ombudsman, who agreed that the phrase "pro pot" was "simplistic" and posted a note to the Post staff advising them about my complaint and her opinion.

So who knows? I'd like to think that pointing out the problem at least caused some folks over there to think about marijuana policy for a moment or two.

Never fear, we're not asking readers to support the annual exercise in futility known as marijuana "eradication," which is now in full swing as summer nears an end and harvest season approaches. Not only has there never been the slightest indication that these campaigns reduce the marijuana supply -- the supposed objective -- but the U.S. Department of Justice's own National Drug Threat Assessment 2008 indicates that "eradication" campaigns directed at outdoor farms are actually driving a shift to indoor growing in converted homes, resulting in year-round production of high-potency marijuana (often with jerry-rigged wiring and other dangerous conditions) and an "exponential increase in profits" for the criminal gangs that control most large-scale marijuana cultivation and distribution.

But there is something you can do: Help keep the news media honest.

 Most news coverage of these hopeless and counterproductive campaigns is devoid of skepticism or analysis. See, for example, this Aug. 23 story from a chain of California papers that fails to cite a single source not connected with law enforcement. That's not journalism, it's stenography.

If you see a story like this, write a letter to the editor, asking the paper to actually investigate the efficacy of marijuana "eradication" campaigns rather than simply act as a mouthpiece for failed polices. If y

ou see an unbalanced story on TV, write or call the station's news director. And let MPP's media team know about it. You can reach me at Bruce@mpp.org or Dan Bernath at DBernath@mpp.org.

Finally, one quick word about making complaints to the media: Be diplomatic. Don't yell or make accusations. Be calm, clear, concise, and factual when you lay out your case. Reporters and editors are human, after all, and no one likes being yelled at. And (sadly) many are unaware that there is another side to this story.

While some medical uses of marijuana remain controversial, a new study of marijuana and HIV-related neuropathy published online in early August by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology closes the case regarding one important indication: neuropathic pain. 

Neuropathic pain -- pain from damage to the nerves -- can be caused by any number of conditions, including HIV (as in this study), diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. And it is notoriously resistant to conventional pain drugs, as the article notes. The patients in this study, conducted at UC San Diego, still suffered significant pain despite being on a variety of pain drugs. Two-thirds were taking opioid narcotics and still suffering.

Marijuana didn't work for every patient, but on average, pain declined from "strong" to "mild to moderate," accompanied by "similar improvements in total mood disturbance, physical disability, and quality of life." For the vast majority of patients, side effects were relatively mild.

This is the third published clinical trial to demonstrate that marijuana can safely and effectively relieve neuropathic pain, following a UC Davis study published in April and a UC San Francisco study published in February 2007.

Remember, this is a type of pain for which there are no good, universally effective treatments, and which causes suffering for millions. Marijuana works. Case closed.