[caption id="attachment_8614" align="alignright" width="215"] Gov. Maggie Hassan[/caption]

As New Hampshire legislators move closer to achieving consensus in favor of decriminalization, New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan says she remains opposed. She told the Nashua Telegraph last week that she did not support HB 618, a modest bill that would reduce the penalty for possessing up to one-half ounce of marijuana to a violation.

If you are a New Hampshire resident, please take a moment to call her office today and urge her to change her mind!

You can also urge her to rethink her position on Twitter and Facebook. (Please be respectful if you do — rude or hostile public comments will not help convince legislators to pass HB 618).

Supporters of marijuana regulation in Colorado are calling for the resignation of the six Colorado sheriffs who filed a federal lawsuit Thursday intended to force Colorado marijuana production and sales back into the underground market.

According to news reports, the sheriffs claim they are experiencing a “crisis of conscience” because they believe federal marijuana laws prohibit them from enforcing state marijuana laws. However, the U.S. Controlled Substances Act includes a provision that clearly states is not intended to preempt state laws, and it specifically authorizes states to pursue their own marijuana laws.

MPP's Mason Tvert explains on "CBS This Morning":

The following guest post, contributed by MedMen, is part of a guest series providing insights into the legal marijuana industry.

The marijuana policy reform movement is coalescing around the idea of regulating marijuana like alcohol. While most supporters of ending marijuana prohibition appear to stand behind this idea, others have expressed concerns about the prospect of a tightly regulated marijuana market. While some of them are valid — high barriers to entry, for example — there are three reasons why regulating marijuana like alcohol is the best path forward: safety, security, and consistent quality.

Safety

While contaminated marijuana has never been definitively linked to any deaths, this does not mean that danger of contamination is nonexistent. Molds, mildew, and pesticide residue can have adverse effects, and for some consumers — such as medical marijuana patients with weakened immune systems — they can be serious. States allowing medical and recreational marijuana owe it to their citizens to mandate that all marijuana products pass stringent testing requirements before making it to market in order to minimize the potential harm to consumers. And in cases in which a tainted product slips through, a regulated system will allow authorities to track down the producer and seller(s) of the product to ensure no more of it makes it to store shelves.

Security

As the days of marijuana consumers having to rely on back-alley dealers come to an end, so will the violence associated with back-alley marijuana deals. State regulated dispensaries ensure consumers have access to marijuana in safe, secure locations. Security cameras and controlled access deter and prevent many of the dangers previously associated with purchasing marijuana in the underground market. These security requirements and standards are needed to ensure patients, customers, and products are protected.

Consistent Quality

Product consistency is a huge concern for medical patients and recreational consumers, alike. One of the biggest benefits of purchasing a product in a legal, regulated market is having confidence that the product is what it’s supposed to be and does what it’s supposed to do. For example, Illinois will be requiring cultivators to register strains with the state in an effort to guarantee that patients know exactly what they are getting. And in Colorado, marijuana-infused products are tested to ensure they are consistent not only from one unit to another, but also from one serving to another within the same unit.

Bottom Line

Sensible regulation allows for a happy medium where consumers are protected, but small businesses are not edged out of the market. Regulations do not have to be so over-the-top and onerous that only the largest companies can enter the market. The marijuana industry, just like the alcohol industry, has room for the big players (Anheuser Busch, Miller-Coors, etc.) as well as the smaller ones (micro-breweries). And through reasonable regulations, we can ensure all of these businesses are able not only to exist, but to thrive.

Learn more about MedMen at http://www.MedMen.com.

More than half of Americans want to make marijuana legal, according to the highly regarded General Social Survey.

The Washington Post reports:

In interviews conducted between March and October of last year -- when the legal marijuana markets in Colorado and Washington were ramping up -- researchers asked 1,687 respondents the following question: "Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?"

Fifty-two percent said pot should be legalized, 42 percent opposed it, and another 7 percent were undecided. Support is up 9 percentage points from 2012, the last time the survey was conducted.

The survey reiterates similar results in other major national polls, including Pew and Gallup.

The strong numbers in the latest General Social Survey indicate that the issue isn't losing salience with the public. At the national level, support for legal marijuana remains robust -- and doesn't show signs of wavering any time soon.

[caption id="attachment_8602" align="alignright" width="200"] Gov. Terry McAuliffe[/caption]

Last week, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed a bill into law that will provide limited legal protections to patients with intractable epilepsy who find relief from low-THC marijuana. MPP does not consider Virginia a medical marijuana state because the law is so limited that it does not meet our definition of an effective medical marijuana law.

The new law allows certain patients and their parents to raise a defense in court for possession of certain strains of marijuana, which must have no more than 5% THC. It does not prevent the trauma and expense of an arrest or prosecution.

HB 1445 also fails to include any means of accessing those oils. The only realistic way to obtain them is for families to travel across the country to one of the very few states that allows out-of-state patients to access medical cannabis preparations. Even then, patients will have to travel through states where all marijuana is illegal to get home.

You can learn more about the law’s details here.

If you are a Virginia resident, please ask your legislators to make sure this is only a first step. Ask them to champion a compassionate, comprehensive law next year that doesn't leave thousands of patients with other serious conditions behind. Let them know Virginia should join the 23 other states that leave medical decisions to patients and doctors, and allow safe, in-state access to this beneficial medicine.

Just after midnight last night, a law making marijuana legal for adults quietly went into effect in the Nation's Capital.

Initiative 71, which was approved 70-30 by D.C. voters in November, allows adults 21 years of age or older to possess up to two ounces of marijuana; grow up to six marijuana plants in their homes (of which no more than three can be flowering at a time) and possess the yield of those plants in the location where it was grown; and transfer without payment (but not sell) up to one ounce of marijuana to other adults 21 years of age or older. It will remain illegal to use marijuana in public.

Certain members of Congress attempted to halt implementation of this law, even going so far as to threaten D.C. leaders with arrest. Others offered their support, asserting that the District is well within its legal rights to stop punishing adults for using a substance that is safer than alcohol.

MPP will continue to work with the D.C. Council to pass legislation regulating marijuana similarly to alcohol.

“We are hopeful that Congress will not stand in the way of D.C.’s efforts to regulate and tax marijuana,” said Robert Capecchi, MPP's Deputy Director of State Policies. “Members of the District Council are clearly interested in adopting such a system, and they appear ready to move forward if Congress doesn’t interfere.”

Marijuana officially became legal for adults in Alaska as the legalization initiative approved by voters in November took effect on February 24. As we (and state lawmakers) expected, the sky did not fall in The Last Frontier, which is now the third state in the nation to allow adult marijuana use.

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Echoing results from last September, a new poll shows that an even greater percentage of Coloradans are happy with their marijuana laws.

From Denver Post:

More than 13 months after recreational pot sales first started in Colorado, residents of the state still support marijuana legalization by a definitive margin, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll released Tuesday.

When asked, “Do you still support or oppose this law?” 58 percent of respondents said they support the pot-legalizing Amendment 64 while 38 percent said they oppose it. Men support legalization (63 percent) more than women (53 percent). And among the 18-34 age demographic, of course, there was more support of legal pot (82 percent) than among voters 55 and older (50 percent against).

...

The new numbers show a certain kind of progress for legal marijuana in Colorado. In the 2012 election, Amendment 64 passed 54.8 percent to 45.1 percent, and a December 2014 poll by The Denver Post found that more than 90 percent of the respondents who voted in the 2012 election said they would vote the same way today.

A study recently published in Scientific Reports compared the risk of death associated with a number of drugs, including marijuana. The results added even more evidence proving that marijuana is far safer than legal alcohol.

The Washington Post reports:

Researchers sought to quantify the risk of death associated with the use of a variety of commonly-used substances. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance, followed by heroin and cocaine.

And all the way at the bottom of the list? Weed -- roughly 114 times less deadly than booze, according to the authors, who ran calculations that compared lethal doses of a given substance with the amount that a typical person uses. Marijuana is also the only drug studied that posed low mortality risk to its users.

These findings reinforce drug safety rankings developed 10 years ago under a slightly different methodology. So in that respect, the study is more of a reaffirmation of previous findings than anything else. But given the current national and international debates over the legal status of marijuana and the risks associated with its use, the study arrives at a good time.

...

Given the relative risks associated with marijuana and alcohol, the authors recommend "risk management prioritization towards alcohol and tobacco rather than illicit drugs." And they say that when it comes to marijuana, the low amounts of risk associated with the drug "suggest a strict legal regulatory approach rather than the current prohibition approach."

In other words, individuals and organizations up in arms over marijuana legalization could have a greater impact on the health and well-being of this country by shifting their attention to alcohol and cigarettes. It takes extraordinary chutzpah to rail against the dangers of marijuana use by day and then go home to unwind with a glass of far more lethal stuff in the evening.

The Parliament of Jamaica adopted a law on Tuesday that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana and created a new agency that will regulate the cultivation and sale of medical marijuana. Now that the measure has been approved in the House and Senate, Governor-general Patrick Allen is expected to sign the measure into law.

The act makes possession of up to 2 ounces of marijuana a petty offense that could result in a ticket but not in a criminal record. Cultivation of five or fewer plants on any premises will be permitted. And tourists who are prescribed medical marijuana abroad will soon be able to apply for permits authorizing them to legally buy small amounts of Jamaican weed, or "ganja" as it is known locally.

In addition, adherents of the homegrown Rastafari spiritual movement can now freely use marijuana for sacramental purposes for the first time on the tropical island where the faith was founded in the 1930s.