More than 2,000 people in Colorado applied for licenses to run state-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries, growing facilities or related businesses before this weekend’s application deadline, according to state officials. In total, the state made $7.34 million from application fees alone. More than 700 applied specifically for dispensary licenses, far exceeding the number expected by state officials, who estimated that only half of the state’s roughly 1,100 pre-existing dispensaries would apply…

Exciting developments in the movement to end marijuana prohibition keep flooding my inbox. Here’s just a sampling from over the weekend: Citing a new survey, Ryan Grim gives more credence to the idea that marijuana ballot initiatives could help Democrats drive “surge voters” to the polls in 2012. (Something I’ve written about a time or two.) A survey making the rounds among strategists, which has yet to be made public, indicates that pot could be just the enticement many of these voters need: Surge…

A website set up by Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire’s office asked citizens to vote on different ideas to help plug the state’s $3 billion budget gap. The most popular—out of more than 1,700 submitted ideas—was legalizing and taxing marijuana. (Not the first time we’ve seen such a result in an online forum.) So what does the governor think about ending the state’s prohibition on marijuana? “It’s a legitimate idea,” said her spokesperson, Karina Shagren. “But we’d have to see how the federal…

Artist, designer, and animator Haik Hoisington just sent along his most recent animation, and I consider it a must-watch for marijuana policy reform activists. "The Flower" does an amazing job of contrasting a society that regulates (and taxes) a flower with one that chooses the path of prohibition.

A Rasmussen poll released earlier this week about Americans’ attitudes toward marijuana didn’t reveal any surprising changes in levels of support for reform—43% favor ending prohibition, just slightly less than the 44% Gallup found last October—but it did contain this one interesting nugget: However, 65% believe it is at least somewhat likely marijuana will be legalized in the United States in the next 10 years. Just 28% do not expect this to happen. That’s fascinating. If the majority of Americans…

Washington, D.C.'s medical marijuana law cleared a mandatory 30-day Congressional review period Monday night, after Congress declined to take action against a D.C. Council bill that allows the District to license between five and eight medical marijuana dispensaries. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton made the announcement on Tuesday. The District will join 14 states across the country in having effective medical marijuana laws. This historic development comes almost 12 years after 69 percent of District…

Major news! The Department of Veterans Affairs has formally announced that patients being treated at V.A. facilities will be allowed to use medical marijuana if they live in one of the 14 states where it is legal. This historic development was trumpeted over the weekend in a front-page New York Times story that quoted MPP’s Steve Fox. “We now have a branch of the federal government accepting marijuana as a legal medicine,” Steve told the Times, adding that the department needs to make its guidelines…

Last month, we wrote about the tragic slaying of Trevon Cole, a 21-year-old father-to-be who was shot and killed by a police officer in front of his pregnant fiancé during a raid on their Las Vegas home. At the time, police claimed they had evidence that Cole was a marijuana dealer; undercover officers had reportedly purchased marijuana from him on three separate occasions and allegedly took an unknown amount from his home during the raid. Cole’s fiancé said at the time that Trevon smoked marijuana…

The cost of pointless marijuana eradication efforts in California went up Wednesday when sheriff’s deputies shot and killed an unidentified man while hiking around in the woods looking for clandestine grow sites. It is currently unknown whether this man was involved in marijuana cultivation, whether he was armed or fired at deputies, or even if there was any marijuana found nearby. Authorities are being typically tight-lipped about the entire incident. What is known, beyond any doubt, is that eradication…

Here it is, the latest MPP Insider!