MPP Director of Government Relations Aaron Houston talks about President Obama's flippant response to the question of decriminalizing marijuana at the first "Online Town Hall" on Russia Today. He also discusses how taxing and regulating marijuana will help quell the violence associated with the drug war in Mexico and provide a much-needed boost to the economy. 03/27/2009

White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs is asked to clarify President Obama's position on legalizing marijuana and on medical marijuana after he brought up the topic in the first Online Town Hall. Questions involving marijuana reform appeared in several categories and received far more votes than any other policy issue. 03/26/2009

A week after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would only target marijuana growers and collectives that were in violation of BOTH state and federal law, the DEA raided Emmalyn's California Cannabis

President Obama addressed the idea of taxing and regulating marijuana at an online town hall event today. His words: “No, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

Clearly, he got that wrong. But that isn’t everything.

The president himself, not the moderator who was reading questions submitted via whitehouse.gov, raised the topic. His answer was prefaced with the recognition that this was a “fairly popular question.”

Actually, it was the most popular question, by far. Yet the president failed to treat it with the same thoughtfulness awarded to other topics. The entirety of his response is below (yes, it’s only 53 seconds long). Do you think he handled it fairly?

Yesterday, armed federal DEA agents raided Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic, a licensed medical marijuana facility in San Francisco. This action - seemingly at odds with the recent policy change announced by the U.S. Justice Department - drew the ire of San Franciscans, who overwhelmingly support medical marijuana access.

[caption id="attachment_408" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="DEA raids S.F. medical marijuana collective, photo by MPP's Troy Dayton - March 25, 2009 "][/caption]

According to a vague statement released by the DEA last night, the collective was not complying with state law and therefore wasn't subject to the recent policy change.

However, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has issued a conditional permit to the collective, which was actively working with the city to obtain a permanent license. The medical marijuana permitting process in San Francisco is one of the more difficult in the state and includes mandatory inspections for compliance.

MPP is asking supporters to demand an explanation from the White House about this recent attack on San Francisco patients.

"Because so little information has been released thus far, we have more questions than answers," Aaron Houston, MPP director of government relations says. "But with an actual shooting war at the Mexican border, not to mention federal law enforcement there being so overwhelmed that traffickers coming through the border with up to 500 pounds of marijuana are let go, it's very hard to believe that this is the best use of DEA resources, especially in a city with an active program to license and regulate medical marijuana providers."

Something is stirring in the U.S. news media that I was beginning to think I'd never see: In last two or three months, a complete rethinking of our marijuana laws has become a legitimate issue in the eyes of the mainstream media -- something it hasn't been for a long time.

To illustrate how big this is, let me take you back to early 2002, shortly after I started as MPP's communications director. The first time I ever called CNN to try to pitch them a story on marijuana policy, it went like this:

I said, "Hello, this is Bruce Mirken from the Marijuana Policy Project --" and the woman who answered the phone burst out laughing. She had to put me on hold for a minute to compose herself. When she came back on the line, she said, "Okay Mr. Marijuana, what can I do for you?" While this was not the actual producer I was trying to reach, she was the one you had to get through in order to speak to that person. And I never got through. 

Things have changed. 

Earlier this month, CNN called me to set up an interview with D.L. Hughley about marijuana prohibition. That interview is currently set to air this weekend on what turns out to be the final episode of "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," which airs on Saturdays at 10 p.m. Eastern and 7 p.m. Pacific and repeats on Sunday (though TV news schedules have a way of changing at the last minute). This comes on the heels of appearances by MPP executive director Rob Kampia and myself on CNBC, MSNBC and Fox News, among others.

Meanwhile, columns and editorials questioning prohibition seem to be nearly everywhere in recent weeks, including the Providence Journal, CNN's Web site, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times and many other outlets.

What was once dismissed as a fringe issue is suddenly mainstream. 

Yesterday, the federal sentencing of medical marijuana provider Charles C. Lynch was postponed until at least April 30. Judge George H. Wu held off sentencing in order to give the prosecution time to provide him with a written copy of the new Department of Justice policy on medical marijuana.

In what might be a positive development for Charlie and supporters of medical marijuana, Wu said that the policy change could impact his sentencing decision.

According to reports from folks in the courtroom, the prosecution fought hard to urge the judge to impose a mandatory minimum five-year sentence.

Watch Reason TV's coverage of the press conference that followed yesterday's decision:

MPP Executive Director Rob Kampia debates the failure of the war on marijuana and the benefits of taxation and regulation on CNBC Power Lunch. Also on the show was Asa Hutchinson, former head of the DEA. 03/20/2009

Today, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Charles C. Lynch – a man who you must have already heard about here or in any number of news stories about his case. Charlie is one of the last victims of George Bush’s war on medical marijuana.

This is a man who complied with every state and local medical marijuana law and was even told by federal officials that they would leave him alone so long as he complied with these statutes. What Charlie didn’t expect was for a rogue county sheriff to call in the DEA to arrest and prosecute him under draconian federal marijuana laws, after being frustrated by California’s state law that should have protected him.

On Monday, Charlie faces sentencing on five counts of federal drug crimes in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. He is facing up to 20 years in prison for helping sick and dying patients to obtain their medicine in a safe, clean setting. 

Charlie's sentencing comes only five days after U.S. Attorney General Holder confirmed that the nation’s policy on medical marijuana has changed for the better.

[caption id="attachment_369" align="alignright" width="373" caption="Charlie posing with a supporter during a rally at the Los Angeles federal courthouse, October 2008"][/caption]

All of us here at MPP – and indeed anyone who has ever met Charlie – are feeling a little sick right now thinking of what this good man is going through. Hopefully Charlie's judge is also sympathetic and will take state law – not to mention the recent policy change at the DOJ –  into consideration before handing down a sentence.

Charlie’s tragic story is a painful reminder of just how important our work is and how our destructive marijuana policy affects people's real lives, every day.

There appears to be a problem with Americans' peripheral vision that makes us unable to see anything to our south. However, the real, hot drug war raging in Mexico has finally bubbled to the point where even we can't miss it.

We probably never would have noticed – nor even acknowledged the role played by Americans' insatiable appetite for illicit drugs including marijuana, which makes up about 60% of Mexico's drug trade – if it weren't for the inevitable expansion of that war into our own country.

The explosion of violence, most recently reported by The Washington Post, is shocking and heartbreaking. One thousand dead just this year. Two thousand guns flowing into Mexico from the United States every day. Mexican drug cartels operating in more than 230 U.S. cities, up from 50 as recently as 2006.

And federal law enforcement's take on this spiraling chaos?

"The violence we see is actually a signpost of success," Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence official Anthony P. Placido told the Post.

Now, I admit that international drug enforcement is not my area of expertise, but I seem to remember from my own stint in the military that we usually considered increasing violence to be a bad thing.

I'd be willing to write this off to being just one DEA guy with a tin ear and a delusional, rosy outlook, but this isn't the first time federal law enforcement has made this assertion. In February, an anonymous official told the Wall Street Journal, "If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence" in Mexico.

So we could reduce the demand for illegal drugs – and therefore the violence associated with their trade -- by ending marijuana prohibition and regulating the drug's manufacture and sale in the U.S. Except that would be seen by our federal law enforcement officials as a failure.

Maybe it's just me, but I could accept that kind of failure.