On July 30, 2008, MPP's Rob Kampia joined Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to discuss the benefits of HR5843, the “Personal Use of Marijuana By Responsible Adults Act." If you'd like to encourage your legislator to support this bill, visit https://www.mpp.org/federal-action/. Music is courtesy of His Boy Elroy. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/nc-sampling+/1.0/

Okay, "must" may be a bit strong, but before heading off on vacation for two weeks (and leaving you in the capable hands of my fellow bloggers), I want to mention two new books that deserve attention from anyone interested in marijuana and marijuana policy. Despite the awful title, "Dying to Get High"  is one of the most interesting books yet written about medical marijuana. Authors Wendy Chapkis and Richard J. Webb focus on the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), a patient-run collective…

Good news for people who don't like their local governments wasting time and money challenging laws they don't like in futile court battles: For the second time, a California court -- in this case, the Fourth District Court of Appeals -- has tossed challenges to the state's medical marijuana laws by the counties of San Diego and San Bernardino. San Bernardino taxpayers had already footed the bill for about $60,000 in salaries alone for this misguided legal adventure when it got tossed the first…

This is the exclusive second part to our Profiles in Marijuana Reform interview with Milton Friedman, available only on tv.mpp.org.

Part 1 of our sit-down interview with Nobel Prize winning economist, Milton Friedman. Click here for the second part of our interview available exclusively at tv.mpp.org.

So police discover a package of marijuana apparently shipped to the mayor of a small town in Prince George's County and respond by sending a SWAT team to pounce on the unarmed man as he returns from work, killing his two Labradors for good measure. The police then handcuff him and his mother-in-law next to their pets and interrogate them for hours as blood pools on the floor. And a PG police spokesman says the raid was carried out properly according to their policies. I'm sure it was. Does anybody…

 We distributed MPP Foundation's new radio public service announcements today to stations nationwide, aiming to educate the public about the effects of U.S. marijuana laws, and about recent developments regarding medical marijuana. The ads feature Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, and California Superior Court Judge Jim Gray. You can listen to the new spots here. And if you happen to work at a radio station, you're welcome to download and air them anytime.             The…

This morning's press conference, at which MPP and other marijuana policy reformers joined U.S. Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) to call for an end to federal criminal penalties for marijuana possession, was a rousing success, as this CNN story shows. And apparently it got under the skin of our overlords at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Having not gotten much media pickup on their preemptive press release issued yesterday --…

A new study just published in Archives of Internal Medicine shows a 360.5% increase in the death rate from fatal medication errors (FMEs) from 1983 to 2004, vastly outstripping most other causes of death. Notably, most of the increase in deaths took place at home, not in medical settings or other locations. FMEs are defined as deaths from mistakes involving medications: accidental overdoses, the wrong drug being taken, etc. They do not include deaths from "adverse reactions" (side effects) involving…

MPP-TV recently had a chance to sit down with travel guru and author Rick Steves to discuss marijuana policy both here and abroad. Here's what he had to say...