Last week, I posted the results of the MPP-commissioned poll showing that despite outrageous claims being made by local officials, there is wide support for medical marijuana among Los Angeles County voters. A new poll now shows that support for medical marijuana access isn't confined to Los Angeles.

A poll released Wednesday in San Diego found super-majority support for medical marijuana in that city. The poll -- commissioned by addiction recovery Web site keepcomingback.com -- found 77% agreement that "officials must make sure that San Diego's medical marijuana patients have convenient access to their medicine in the city." 70% support regulating the city's medical marijuana collectives in some way, while only 9.5% support banning them (3% said they didn't need any regulations). The poll also collected other interesting information about how San Diegans view medical marijuana sales. Read more about it here.

This poll should send a firm message to San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who just last month ordered a series of shocking raids on local medical marijuana patients and suppliers.

Yesterday I posted a brief summary of a new study of vaporization of marijuana as an alternative to smoking. Since that original post, I’ve spoken to a couple of researchers about this study, and they raised a few points that seem worth sharing:

First, for reasons that aren’t clear, before performing the tests of smoking and vaporization, the researchers put the marijuana through a drying procedure that ordinary marijuana consumers don’t do. This might have eliminated some plant compounds, such as terpenoids, that are actually of interest.

A second possible flaw is that the researchers considered all “byproducts” – defined as substances other than cannabinoids --  together. They didn’t analyze precisely what they were, lumping bad stuff like the toxic combustion products contained in smoke with potentially beneficial plant compounds like those terpenoids mentioned above. That puts the finding that fewer byproducts were produced at 230 degrees Celsius than were produced at lower temperatures in a somewhat different perspective: We don’t know if the same byproducts were produced at 230 degrees as were produced at lower temperatures – and what’s in that mixture could be just as important as how much of it there is.

Professor David Nutt, chairman of Great Britain’s advisory council on the misuse of drugs, was forced to resign today after he criticized the British government’s decision to toughen penalties for marijuana possession.

Just a few hours prior to his sacking, Nutt had publicly condemned British politicians for “distorting” and “devaluing” scientific research used in the debate over illegal drugs. In an article published Thursday by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Nutt said that illegal drugs such as cannabis, LSD and ecstasy were less harmful than legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, and he called for changes in the way such substances are classified in order to better inform the public about their relative harms.

Specifically, Nutt criticized a January decision by British ministers to upgrade marijuana from a class C drug to the higher class B, a change that increased the maximum penalty for possession to five years in prison, and the penalty for dealing to 14 years.

Nutt still maintained that cannabis was “harmful,” but he made an appeal—based on reason and science—for the government to be honest with the public about marijuana and the fact that it causes no major health or social problems:

“I think we have to accept young people like to experiment, and what we should be doing is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives," Nutt wrote. "We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. We have to tell them the truth, so that they use us as their preferred source of information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you're probably wrong.”

To recap: The British Home Office asked Prof. Nutt to reexamine that nation’s drug laws and offer some suggestions based on sound scientific evidence. As requested, Nutt presented his findings and concluded—rightfully—that Britain’s 2004 decision to soften its marijuana laws was correct and should have been maintained. But because those findings contradicted government policy, he was fired. So much for free and open debate in a democratic society.

If you’re wondering if the same thing could happen here in the United States, it already has: Nutt’s predicament is eerily similar to the 1994 firing of then Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders (now a member of MPP’s VIP advisory board).

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a first-of-its kind hearing on the “legalization and regulation of marijuana,” held in the California Assembly Committee on Public Safety. The three-hour hearing included testimony from experts who told the legislature that arresting adults for marijuana is a gross waste of police resources and that the only way to control marijuana is to end prohibition and institute regulations for its sale.

Witnesses advocating for reform included retired superior court judge James P. Gray and former San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan – both of whom have seen the futility of marijuana prohibition firsthand from inside the criminal justice system.

Some law enforcement organizations, who make a living arresting people for marijuana, also participated in the hearing. I'm sure readers of this blog won't be surprised to know that these entrenched interests employed their usual tactic of hyperbole and flat-out lies to scare legislators from supporting reform.

One thing is for sure, and it's that yesterday's hearing was another step forward in the march toward marijuana sanity. The more lawmakers and the voting public are exposed to the truth about marijuana and the effects of marijuana policy, the more likely they are call for an alternative to prohibition.

This informational hearing set the stage for another hearing and a vote on A.B. 390 -- legislation to tax and regulation marijuana -- that the Public Safety Committee is expected to hold in January.

Here is one of the news reports covering this historic hearing and both sides of the debate:

This video is being distributed by a group opposing legislation to tax and regulate marijuana in California. Seriously. We are not making this up.

MPP's Aaron Smith speaks in support of California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's bill to tax and regulate marijuana after a hearing to discuss the effects of the law when it passes. This was the first time that a legislative body has held hearings on the possibility of ending marijuana prohibition in California. 10/28/2009

Opponents of medical marijuana love to condemn smoking, but a new study adds more data to the growing pile of research confirming that vaporization provides the benefits of inhalation without the unwanted combustion products in smoke.  In a study comparing vaporization to smoking in the journal Inhalation Toxicology, researchers from Leiden University report, “Based on the results, we can conclude that with the use of the vaporizer a much ‘cleaner’ and therefore a more healthy cannabis vapor can be produced for the medicinal use of C. sativa, in comparison to the administration of THC via cigarettes.”

The article also provides some new practical information on vaporization, suggesting that a temperature of 230 degrees Celsius is ideal, and that using smaller amounts of marijuana in the vaporizer produces more vapor, but does not extract THC more efficiently, so there is no apparent gain in using an amount less than about half a gram at a time.

Today, the New Hampshire General Court narrowly failed to override Gov. John Lynch’s veto of HB 648, which would have made the Granite State the 14^th in the nation to have an effective medical marijuana law.

Two-thirds majorities were needed in both the state House and Senate to override Lynch’s veto. The override passed in the House by a vote of 240-115, but came two votes shy in the Senate, which voted 14-10.

This result is particularly disappointing because an overwhelmingly majority of New Hampshire residents (71% according to a recent poll) support protecting seriously ill patients through medical marijuana laws. Unfortunately, several cowardly legislators remain under the impression that voting in favor of compassionate and commonsense laws might hurt them politically.

Fortunately, this fight is not over. MPP and our allies in New Hampshire will continue to work toward marijuana policy reform in the Granite State. Already we have seen tremendous progress: In 2007, the state House voted down a medical marijuana bill, but today, 67.6% of the House voted to make a medical marijuana bill law.

Learn more about the campaign in New Hampshire here.

Today the California state Assembly will hold a historic hearing looking at whether marijuana prohibition should be replaced with a system of regulation and taxation. The growing push for change in California – which also includes a handful of ballot initiatives in circulation -- was covered by this morning’s New York Times in an article that perhaps unintentionally reveals the feebleness of opponents’ arguments.

The story quotes John Lovell, lobbyist for several California police groups and the major voice for maintaining prohibition: “We get revenue from alcohol,” he said. “But there’s way more in social costs than we retain in revenues.”

If that’s the best they can do, the debate is over. The main social cost of alcohol comes from its tendency to promote violent and aggressive behavior, something marijuana simply doesn’t do, as explained in this article from the journal Addictive Behaviors. Not long ago, an independent panel of experts rated alcohol as significantly more dangerous than marijuana, in an article published in the prestigious journal The Lancet (unfortunately, the summary of the article you can read online for free doesn’t include the chart ranking various drugs).

If we want to reduce the social costs associated with booze, evidence suggests giving adults a safer, legal alternative makes sense. Mr. Lovell, meet reality.

Congressman Sam Farr (D-Calif.) introduced the Truth In Trials Act of 2009 today (H.R. 3939), a bill that would give medical marijuana patients and providers the ability to argue in federal court that their actions were legal under state law.

Currently, a federal judge cannot consider state-level legality during a medical marijuana case. For example, Charles Lynch, a California resident who was on trial for operating a medical marijuana clinic that by all accounts operated in compliance with state law, was unable to defend himself by citing California’s medical marijuana law. And consequently, Lynch received a year-long jail sentence. He's just one of more than 100 people who were prosecuted under federal law during the Bush administration while being denied the right to defend themselves adequately in court.

The Truth In Trials Act would provide an affirmative defense for medical marijuana patients operating within the bounds of state law. If passed, it will protect patients and providers from disgraceful prosecutions in federal court.

While the Truth In Trials Act represents only a small step in the fight for substantive, national medical marijuana reforms, it will bring a fundamental fairness to federal medical marijuana trials. Please write your member of Congress and ask him or her to co-sponsor this bill. At MPP’s online action center, writing Congress is quick and easy.