I've written before about the death of Rachel Hoffman, a recent Florida State graduate who was murdered in a botched drug sting after Tallahassee police used a petty marijuana charge to pressure her into acting as an informant. It's at least a little comforting to see that there's now some accountability for some of the principals involved in this tragic event. But I can't help wondering what would have happened had Rachel, through luck and grace, avoided her awful fate. What if she had safely purchased…

On Tuesday, the Office of National Drug Control Policy sent out an email and put up a post on its blog (yes, ONDCP really has a blog, but unlike ours, they don't let readers post comments -- why, I wonder?) promoting a new "Marijuana Awareness Kit." Actually, it's mostly a rehash of old material, but still an interesting window into ONDCP's thought process. The packet's introduction, for example, warns, "The fact is, cigarettes and marijuana are now tied as the illegal substance kids report is the…

California's medical marijuana state ID cards protect qualified patients and caregivers from arrest, and each of the state's 58 counties is required to make them available to their residents. However, in a crusade against the voter-approved medical marijuana law, some counties have refused to implement the program. Fortunately, most counties are respecting the rule of law – even in traditionally conservative, rural and agricultural communities. Just yesterday, the Board of Supervisors in Kings County…

  Every year around this time,  Project Censored recognizes the 25 "most censored" news stories from the prior year -- stories of great public significance that got little or no attention from the mass media. This year, they've honored MPP and NORML's Paul Armentano for pointing out the alarming rise in marijuana arrests. Since The Project Censored materials were written, the latest FBI Uniform Crime Reports survey has been released, showing yet another marijuana arrest record.  

On Saturday, New Bedford Standard-Times columnist Jack Spillane weighed with an eminently sensible and amusing take on the opposition to Question 2 , the marijuana decriminalization initiative on the November ballot in Massachusetts. He quotes some funny/scary dialogue from the press conference held by prosecutors and other opponents that managed to escape the notice of other reporters. The silliness begins with Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter: And "I don't want to hear," he said, those…

Medical marijuana advocates often hear that marijuana can't be a real medicine because it hasn't been approved by the FDA. One common response to this is that the Drug Enforcement Administration continues to block the only avenue that could produce the research needed to seek FDA approval for medical marijuana, over a year and half after an administrative law judge ruled that the project should go ahead.  But that's just the start. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published…

This is the story of Rachel Hoffman, a young girl who has now become just one more victim of the government's war on marijuana users. A casual marijuana user, Rachel became embroiled with the Tallahassee Police Department, forcing her into a dangerous situation as an untrained informant. Did you know you can help MPP without spending a dime? Sign up for MPP’s free e-mail alerts and you’ll learn about ways to help us spread the word whenever important developments happen. Let's make sure we never…

On Wednesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives endorsed nearly all of MPP's arguments for regulating and taxing marijuana as we now regulate beer, wine, and liquor. But don't get your hopes up too much: The word "marijuana" never appears in the resolution hailing 75 years of successful alcohol regulation and the end of Prohibition. Nevertheless, try reading the following excerpts and mentally substituting the word "marijuana" for "alcohol": Whereas passage of the 18th Amendment, which prohibited…

One of the arguments raised regularly by opponents of marijuana law reform is the claim that any lessening of penalties will lead to higher rates of marijuana use, and from that all sorts of terrible consequences will flow. This argument has already been raised against Question 2 in Massachusetts. It's one of those claims that makes intuitive sense, but research suggests it's simply not true. That's not just my opinion. A few years ago the White House asked the National Research Council to look at…

The latest Crime in the United States report from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program is out, and the news is disturbing. Marijuana arrests set another all-time record in 2007, totaling 872,720 -- that's a marijuana arrest every 36 seconds. Arrests for marijuana possession totaled 775,138, greatly exceeding arrests for all violent crimes combined, which totaled 597,447. Bizarrely, at his recent press conference announcing new drug use survey data, White House drug czar John Walters stated,…