Update to Bruce's post yesterday about the British government's effort to increase penalties for small marijuana violations over the objections of its scientific advisors: In what was really an expected formality, the House of Lords approved the move.

As Bruce pointed out, with its relatively good track record of science-based marijuana policy, it's difficult to imagine why Britain would suddenly want to ape our politically and ideologically driven approach. After all, superstition and zealotry are entrenched realities of failed U.S. marijuana policy making. But what's Britain's excuse?

Yesterday, George W. Bush began the time-honored tradition of granting pardons to convicted felons in the president’s final days in the White House. 14 pardons and two commuted sentences were announced late last night, and more are expected to be handed down before he leaves office on January 20.

Two former politicians who have been convicted of public corruption charges are looking to the president in hopes that he will shorten their prison sentences. Some pundits are even speculating that he may offer “preemptive” pardons to those involved in the unconstitutional torture of terrorism suspects after 9-11.

I wonder if President Bush has given any thought to pardoning some of the medical marijuana patients and caregivers his administration has helped to prosecute?

One such unfortunate person who comes to mind is Charles C. Lynch of Morro Bay, California.

When Charles opened a city-licensed medical marijuana collective on California’s Central Coast, the community welcomed him with open arms. The city’s mayor even helped cut the ribbon at the chamber of commerce welcoming ceremony. The collective provided a safe and legal supply of medical marijuana to seriously ill patients for nearly a year before federal agents raided the facility and arrested Charles on federal drug charges.

During the ensuing trial, federal prosecutors described Charles as a common drug dealer and blocked any mention of medical marijuana from being brought forth by his defense. As a result, a jury found Charles guilty on five counts of federal drug charges. His sentencing hearing is set for January 5 and he could face up to 100 years in prison for following his heart (and state law) by helping patients to get their medicine.

I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a presidential pardon than Charles C. Lynch and others like him whose only crime was helping to relive suffering.

For more on Charles' plight, check out this Reason.tv video.

Forces of common sense are making a last-ditch stand in Britain today. Earlier this year, the British government announced its intention to "upgrade" marijuana from "Class C," the lowest category of illicit drugs, where it's been since 2004, to "Class B": drugs considered more dangerous and subject to stiffer penalties. The move directly contradicted the advice of the government's official scientific advisers, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Today, a last-ditch effort to delay the change is being debated in the House of Lords, a proposal supported by a group of top scientists in a letter published this morning by the Guardian newspaper. Reclassification, they argue, "would be a sad departure from the welcome trend ... of public policy following expert scientific advice unless there is new evidence."

To Americans, the notion of marijuana policy being actually based on science may seem downright quaint, but the British have, at least until recently, made fairly credible efforts in that direction. If the Lords' motion doesn't succeed, that honorable tradition will be trashed.

And it will be trashed for no good purpose. As Molly Meacher, sponsor of the motion to delay reclassification, notes in her own column about the issue, marijuana use in Britain went down after penalties were reduced in 2004. "The UK experience," she writes, "is strongly supported by several studies of the impact of reduced criminalization of cannabis which show that at a time when cannabis use was increasing across the world the greatest proportional increase in use was in countries with the most severe penalties. We can only conclude that the government's action in upgrading cannabis to Class B will, if anything, lead to increased use of the drug."

And while this drama was playing out, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs was hearing from another distinguished scientist, Professor Sir Gabriel Horn, who chaired the Academy of Medical Science's working group on drugs, who urged that alcohol be brought under the same classification system as illegal drugs. "It's been recognised that [alcohol] is the most harmful recreational drug you could use," Prof. Horn said.

Join MPP's Nydia Swaby as she answers this week's question about marijuana: Is marijuana addictive?

Do you have questions about marijuana? E-mail us at socialnetwork@mpp.org with the subject line "Ask Nydia," and we'll film a response as soon as we can.

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The Dutch have evolved a mostly workable but somewhat contradictory system for handling marijuana: While technically illegal, possession and sale of small amounts through regulated "coffee shops" have been tolerated since the mid-'70s. This has effectively separated the retail market for marijuana from more dangerous drugs like cocaine and heroin, but because marijuana cultivation remains banned, coffee shops have no legitimate source for their product.

A group of 30 Dutch mayors has now proposed the logical solution: a system of government-licensed marijuana cultivation. While the present conservative government of the Netherlands has moved to reduce the number of coffee shops, the mayors argue that such a move is likely to be counterproductive.

We're actually going to miss John Walters when he finally leaves his post as drug czar. He and his minions keep making our points for us -- and apparently don't even know they're doing it. Take, for example, this post from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's blog, reproduced here in full:

In Case You Missed It: Leno and O'Reilly on Medical Pot in San Francisco

Our recent post on the large and undocumented number of medical pot clubs in California gained a national audience last night, with Jay Leno referencing the phenomenon during his opening monologue:

“And in a stunning announcement, the Office of the National Drug Control Policy reports that San Francisco now has more medical marijuana dispensaries than it does Starbucks.  Well, yeah.  That’s because marijuana is a lot cheaper than Starbucks.”

Also, in case you missed it, Bill O'Reilly's program discussed the problem as well.  Watch the video here. 

Oh dear. After a marijuana arrest every 36 seconds in 2007 -- over 872,000 altogether -- and record marijuana seizures in California this year, they think the idea that marijuana is cheaper than Starbucks coffee is a good talking point for prohibition?

Folks, it's official: Opposition to safe, legal access to medical marijuana for seriously ill patients has dwindled to the point where only the most obnoxious blowhards like Bill O'Reilly even bother stoking it.

Here he is spouting off on the latest lie from the White House drug czar's office that medical marijuana dispensaries outnumber Starbucks coffee shops in San Francisco. My colleague Aaron Smith has already exposed this nonsense as a complete fabrication, and it's already been reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, but apparently even imaginary dispensaries are enough to scare the crap out of guys like O'Reilly.

Funny, but O'Reilly and his staff didn't bother to talk to anyone who might have set the record straight. Wouldn't want to let the truth get in the way of a good story, after all.

This little brouhaha is generating a lot of attention. Now Wired News weighs in with an amusing item.

But it's important to remember that this is serious stuff. While ONDCP continues to denounce medical marijuana as a "fraud," here's what the city of San Francisco's health director, Dr. Mitchell Katz, had to say about federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in a letter to the U.S. Senate a few years ago:

""Patients who use medical cannabis are persons with immune disorders, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and spinal cord injuries, to name a few. Patients who turn to medical cannabis are generally unable to find relief for their chronic pain and nausea through other treatment methods.

"[DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco] have resulted in nearly 4,000 persons with chronic illness left without access to critical treatment upon which they depend. Certainly in this post-September 11 environment, it seems that a DEA priority punishing organizations for distributing medical cannabis to chronically ill individuals is misplaced."

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s “City Insider” blog picked up my last post about ONDCP’s spurious claims that San Francisco houses more medical marijuana facilities than Starbucks shops. A senior health inspector for the city told The Chronicle that ONDCP's claim that nearly 100 medical marijuana facilities are operating downtown was “extremely incorrect.” The city official confirmed that there are actually 24 medical marijuana facilities in the entire city.

The Chronicle further pointed out how absurd ONDCP's claims were from the perspective of anyone who actually knows San Francisco, and noted that ONDCP couldn't even get their numbers straight when it came to how many Starbucks are in the city.

It didn’t take long for the ONDCP to respond with a new blog post announcing the “good news” that their previous post received some “MSM (mainstream media) attention.” The fact that the drug czar's office considers an article calling them liars to be “good news” should tell you all you need to know about George W. Bush’s drug policy hacks.

ONDCP also altered its original post by reducing its random figure of 98 dispensaries to 71 – an equally arbitrary number. They claim to have obtained their list of medical marijuana dispensaries from a Google search; however the Google.com I use doesn’t yield results approaching anywhere near 71. Of course, a link to ONDCP’s source is conspicuously missing from their post.

ONDCP also decided to take a swipe at MPP and other supporters of medical marijuana by calling us “Washington, D.C. based lobbying groups that, attempting to legalize marijuana outright, prey on the compassion of voters.” Apparently, then, the dozens of prestigious medical organizations that support medical marijuana are also nothing more than predators for legalization...?

It's ONDCP that's really the distant Washington, D.C.-based group preying on taxpayers - who are forced to pay for the outright lies broadcasted on their blog, regardless of what San Francisco city officials or its hometown newspaper have to say about reality.

The truth is that San Francisco's leaders have worked hard to regulate the city's medical marijuana facilities, and it's the federal government's war on marijuana users that has caused real harm to the city. 

Use of marijuana and other illicit drugs by women who are pregnant is a cause of great controversy and some political grandstanding. In a few cases, this has led to draconian actions, including felony prosecutions of women in Texas.

Such actions are justified by studies that show that use of drugs such as marijuana or cocaine while pregnant may lead to low birth weight and other adverse effects. But most of these studies have not controlled for all the other factors potentially affecting these women, including stress, lack of early prenatal care, and not having enough money for necessities. A recent study in the Journal of Urban Health suggests that these other factors may be responsible for much of the tendency toward low birth weight (which, in turn, is associated with poorer infant health) that has been attributed to the use of marijuana or other drugs.

In this study, conducted with patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, women who used marijuana, cocaine, or opiates were much more likely to also suffer stress and depression, lack money for necessities, use alcohol or cigarettes, and not have early prenatal care. Interestingly, once other drug use was taken into account, the apparent effect of marijuana on birth weight disappeared. And once the other risk factors were considered, the effect of cocaine and opiates on low birth weight was no longer significant. The researchers suggest that drug use may be more a marker of risk than an actual risk factor for low birth weight.

None of this means that using marijuana or any other drug (when not medically indicated) during pregnancy is a good idea. But it does suggest that draconian policies that criminalize women may be aiming at the wrong target, and that programs that help women access prenatal care and deal with the other problems in their lives that are putting their unborn babies at risk might do more good.