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.

Many people are at least vaguely aware that government-sanctioned medical marijuana programs exist in Canada and the Netherlands. But few Americans are aware that another of America's strongest allies, Israel, also has a national medical marijuana program. And, according to a translation posted by MAPS of a recent article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, that program is growing.

Three hundred patients are now enrolled, representing a 1,400% increase in new permissions to use medical marijuana in the last two years, according to the paper. Strikingly, the program includes not only the obvious indications like neuropathic pain or nausea and vomiting related to treatments for cancer or HIV/AIDS, but conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder that are often not included in U.S. medical marijuana laws, though there is reason to believe that marijuana may be helpful for at least some PTSD patients.

Meanwhile, seven German patients recently became the first in their country to receive whole marijuana for medical use with government approval. As the rest of the world starts to enter the 21^st century on this issue, will the U.S. continue to be stuck in 1937?

Two weeks and eight arrests after a photo of Michael Phelps smoking from a bong made headlines, Richland County, S.C., Sheriff Leon Lott has called off the criminal investigation of the Olympic champion.

Unlike Phelps, who has expressed regret for the entire incident, Lott was unrepentant about wasting the county's time and resources on a case that at most would have led to charges of possession of a pinch of marijuana. He also didn't apologize for the armed raids and arrests of eight college kids whom he hoped he might pressure into verifying whether the contents of Phelps' bong might have been marijuana.

He did say he hoped Phelps had learned something from all this. I suppose it's too much to hope that Lott might actually learn something here too.

One point upon which MPP agrees with federal officials is that kids shouldn’t use marijuana recreationally. But we’ve criticized exaggerated ad campaigns from the drug czar’s office on the grounds that lying to kids is likely to backfire. A study published recently by the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors suggests we’re right.

Based on a two-year survey of adolescents, researchers looked at how changes in teens’ expectations regarding the effects of using marijuana (i.e., that it would “mess up my life” or lead to being “more creative and imaginative,” etc.) affected whether or not they began to use it. Changes in expectations did correlate with the teens’ decisions to use marijuana, with the correlation noticeably stronger among those who started using marijuana in the second year of the survey than among those who didn’t. This suggests, the researchers write, that changes in expectations “brought about by actual experiences have greater effects” on intentions to use than do changes in expectations based on second-hand sources, like what teens hear from parents, teachers, friends, etc.

Translation: If you tell kids that smoking marijuana will turn them into heroin addicts, and then they try marijuana and no such thing happens, real-world experience will pulverize the propaganda every time. Or, as the researchers explain it:

“When threatened outcomes are experienced as less severe than anticipated, intentions to engage in threatened behavior may be amplified.”

Put more simply, lying to kids does more harm than good. There are lots of good reasons for teens not to use marijuana as a toy, but in explaining this to them, there is simply no substitute for telling the truth.

My colleague John Berry made this 30-second video about Michael Phelps and the hypocrisy surrounding the reaction to the photo of him smoking something out of a bong. I think he pretty much nails it.

A commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as an utter failure in a report released Wednesday.

The report, by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, called for the U.S. to re-examine its punitive, enforcement-based drug policies and consider decriminalizing the use of marijuana.

What’s really startling about this report is not its findings – we’ve long known the war on drugs was a failure – but rather our government’s response.  As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday: “If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence … We're taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now."

Not only does this statement ignore the plethora of evidence showing that U.S. drug policy has failed to curb marijuana use, it clearly admits that drug-trade violence is a symptom of marijuana prohibition and not marijuana use – something MPP has been saying, and drug warriors have been denying, for years.

Please take this opportunity to visit www.house.gov and tell your member of Congress about the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy’s report entitled Drugs and Democracy: Toward A Paradigm Shift.