Marijuana Policy Project's Aaron Houston, Director of Government Relations, is interviewed on Russia Today about the benefits of taxing and regulating marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol.

On Sunday night, CBS's "60 Minutes" did a grimly fascinating piece on the escalating drug war in Mexico. Reported by Anderson Cooper (whose day job, of course, is at CNN), the piece was as notable for what it didn't cover as what it did. Like most recent media coverage of the growing carnage along our southern border, the "60 Minutes" story carefully tiptoed around the proverbial elephant in the room.

That elephant, of course, is prohibition. Here is a piece of what I wrote in a letter to Cooper after watching his report:

There is nothing about the trade in marijuana or any other drug that is inherently violent. The violence is entirely an artifact of prohibition, a policy which consciously relegates a highly popular and valued product such as marijuana to the criminal underground. We experienced this dramatically during the U.S.'s experiment with Prohibition of alcohol: From 1919 to 1933, the liquor trade was fraught with violence, the murder rate soared, and prisons were jammed -- while gangsters got very, very rich. As soon as Prohibition ended, the bootleggers disappeared and the alcoholic beverage business returned to the hands of licensed, regulated, law-abiding businesspeople.

Of course, Cooper and CBS are far from alone. News media accounts of the catastrophe in Mexico have been disturbingly consistent in their avoidance of the central issue. Like "60 Minutes," many have avoided including, even briefly, anyone willing to question prohibition.

This is especially shocking after the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy (co-chaired by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo) urged decriminalization of marijuana and a broader rethinking of the drug war for precisely this reason. "We are farther than ever from the announced goal of eradicating drugs," the commission wrote in its recent report. "It is imperative to review critically the deficiencies of the prohibitionist strategy adopted by the United States."

U.S. policies on marijuana -- by far the largest cash cow for Mexican drug gangs -- are directly adding to the carnage taking place literally walking distance from San Diego and El Paso. It would be nice if our news media at least started asking the relevant questions.

The National Academy of Public Administration just released a devastating Senate-commissioned report detailing the failures of the drug czar's office during the Bush administration.

Here are a few key findings from the report:

1) That the drug czar's obsession with youth marijuana use hindered the office's ability to construct a more coherent overall strategy for drug policy



2) That the drug czar's office manipulated data to exaggerate -- and in some cases fabricate -- progress in reducing drug use and drug trade violence



3) That the drug czar's office established a political litmus test in hiring interns



4) That the drug czar's office refused to make itself accountable to Congress



5) That the drug czar's office failed to staff key positions with the kinds of policy experts who may have been able to develop effective strategies

Many of the findings echo what the Marijuana Policy Project has been saying for years, namely that the drug czar's irrational and singular focus on marijuana has damaged both the credibility of U.S. drug policy and its ability to reduce the harm caused by drugs and the drug trade.

Let's hope those President Obama taps to clean up the mess left by Walters and his crew take heed.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reinforced the White House's policy that federal resources shouldn't be wasted raiding medical marijuana dispensaries that operate within state law yesterday in a Justice Department press conference.

You already know this, but considering that the DEA has conducted hundreds of these stupid raids over the past several years, this is a very big deal for medical marijuana patients and fans of compassion and sanity.

Attorney General Eric Holder reaffirms President Obama's campaign promise to end the raids of medical marijuana dispensaries in California, calling it now "American policy".

MPP executive director Rob Kampia will be interviewed by Fox News' Glenn Beck today about California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's bill to regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol. The show airs starting at 5 p.m. Eastern time. While TV schedules are always subject to last-minute change, we're told Rob should be on at about 5:20 p.m. Eastern.

From time to time we hear dubious claims that marijuana is carcinogenic, even though there's abundant evidence that marijuana's active components are actually pretty potent anti-cancer drugs.

That alcohol is a far more serious cancer risk is underlined by this Washington Post story about a massive new British study  -- involving 1.3 million women -- indicating that even a single drink per day can increase the risk of many types of cancers. The researchers estimate that booze could account for as much as 5 percent of all cancers among women in the U.S.

No, that does not mean we should arrest and jail people for drinking. It does mean that discussions of the health risks of marijuana are often wildly out of balance, skewed by the stigma attached to an illegal substance.

Rob Kampia, executive director of MPP, is interviewed by Glenn Beck about the California bill introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol.

     California state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) today announced the introduction of legislation to tax and regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcoholic beverages. The bill, the first of its kind ever introduced in California, would create a regulatory structure similar to that used for beer, wine, and liquor, permitting taxed sales to adults while barring sales to or possession by those under 21.

       Estimates based on federal government statistics have shown marijuana to be California's top cash crop, valued at approximately $14 billion in 2006 -- nearly twice the combined value of the state's number two and three crops, vegetables ($5.7 billion) and grapes ($2.6 billion) -- in spite of massive "eradication" efforts that wipe out an average of nearly 36,000 cultivation sites per year without making a dent in this underground industry.

         Ammiano introduced the measure at a San Francisco press conference this morning, saying, "With the state in the midst of an historic economic crisis, the move towards regulating and taxing marijuana is simply common sense. This legislation would generate much needed revenue for the state, restrict access to only those over 21, end the environmental damage to our public lands from illicit crops, and improve public safety by redirecting law enforcement efforts to more serious crimes," said Ammiano. "California has the opportunity to be the first state in the nation to enact a smart, responsible public policy for the control and regulation of marijuana."  

            "It is simply nonsensical that California's largest agricultural industry is completely unregulated and untaxed," said Marijuana Policy Project California policy director Aaron Smith, who also spoke at the news conference. "With our state in an ongoing fiscal crisis -- and no one believes the new budget is the end of California's financial woes -- it's time to bring this major piece of our economy into the light of day."

            Independent experts from around the world, from President Nixon's National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse in 1972 to a Canadian Senate special committee in 2002, have long contended that criminalizing marijuana users makes little sense, given that marijuana is less addictive, much less toxic, and far less likely to induce aggression or violence than alcohol. For example, in an article in the December 2008 Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Australian researcher Stephen Kisely noted that "penalties bear little relation to the actual harm associated with cannabis."

One of the arguments regularly raised against medical marijuana is that THC is available in pill form, so -- according to the Drug Enforcement Administration and other opponents -- patients don't need that nasty weed, which has all sorts of other stuff in it.

The problem with that argument is that some of that "other stuff" is really useful, not to mention remarkably safe.  For example, an article recently published onlineby the journal Phytotherapy Research reviews the many beneficial effects of a less well-known marijuana component known as cannabidiol, or CBD. CBD, the article notes, "displays a plethora of actions including anticonvulsive, sedative, hypnotic, antipsychotic, antiinflammatory and neuroprotective properties," while being "well tolerated in humans, with a profile of very low toxicity and devoid of psychoactive and cognitive effects."

Indeed, CBD seems to counter some of the unwanted effects of pure THC, which in some people can include increased anxiety or the aggravation of a pre-existing vulnerability to psychosis.

Maybe some day human researchers will manage to improve on the natural properties of the marijuana plant, but they haven't done so yet.