Scott Day, a friend of MPP and a Montana medical marijuana patient who suffered from a rare, painful degenerative disease, died Tuesday at 34. Scott and his wife Summer were raided in February and charged with possession, manufacturing, and distributing marijuana. Summer believes the stress of prosecution had a great deal to do with the deterioration of Scott's health this year. Legally, prosecutors may have been justified in pursuing the couple under state law. The two were not registered medical…

MPP-TV has released a Marijuana Policy Presidential Video Voter Guide.  Want to see and hear what the candidates' positions on marijuana policy are?  Here's your chance.  Head on over to MPP-TV and check it out.

Drug czar John Walters isn't really a free-exchange-of-ideas kind of public servant, so MPP's Aaron Houston and I took the opportunity to ask him a couple questions last week at his press conference announcing the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health. In Walters' mind it's bad that kids perceive marijuana as less harmful than methamphetamine, his disreputable anti-marijuana ads work like a charm, and the latest statistics prove that the only way to reduce drug use is by prohibiting marijuana.…

Fresno County's Board of Supervisors yesterday voted to become the 41st county to implement the medical marijuana I.D. card system required by a 2003 state law, making it easier for police to verify valid medical marijuana patients. The board was waiting for the results of San Diego and San Bernardino counties' second legal challenge to the program, which the 4th District Court of Appeals tossed in a unanimous decision last month. In contrast to the Fresno boards' sensible acknowledgement of the…

It was probably inevitable: Lacking actual facts to make their case, opponents of Question 2 in Massachusetts have begun spinning fictional scare stories in order to frighten voters out of reforming that state's marijuana laws. Question 2 would replace the current criminal penalties for possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by adults with a civil fine. Marijuana would still be illegal, but simple possession of a small amount wouldn't require arrest, booking, and all the time and expense that…

It's been known for a while that some cannabinoids, the active components in marijuana, have antibacterial properties (one of many useful facts you won't find on ONDCP's Web site). Now, as noted by stories in the New York Times and Web MD, five cannabinoids, including THC, have been shown to be active against a particularly worrisome form of staph infection that's resistant to conventional antibiotics. It took these major media outlets a while to catch up with the study, published August 6 in the…

"When we push back against the drug problem, it gets smaller."                         -- John Walters, White House Drug Czar  Well, now we know why federal officials chose to release the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) on a day when the Republican convention's climax and a string of hurricanes is likely to keep it out of the headlines. The survey pretty much dynamites Office of National Drug Control Policy chief John Walters' claims of success in reducing marijuana and drug…

The revelation that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has acknowledged using marijuana -- but now thinks it should remain illegal -- prompted the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill to invite MPP to post our thoughts on this issue on the paper's blog. Previous marijuana discussions on The Hill's blog have generated heated debate, so check out the link above and join the conversation.

The first report on this major federal drug use survey is out in the form of this story from AP (which includes a short comment from MPP, dissenting from the official spin). Bottom line: Little change in drug use overall, but the drug czar and other federal officials are still claiming progress. A couple MPPers will be attending this morning's press conference at which the survey will be discussed, so watch this space for a more detailed analysis later today.

As summer winds toward an end, it's time for the government's annual drug surveys to start coming out.  The first, being released Sept. 4, is the biggest federally-sponsored drug use survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Typically this is followed a few weeks later by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports -- not a drug survey per se, but the definitive annual accounting of marijuana arrests (which set yet another new record in the UCR report released last fall). Then, typically in December,…