In late 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderon announced a new government-backed military offensive against his country’s drug cartels, believing they could be defeated through sheer brute force. Four years later, more than 28,000 people have been killed, and the drug cartels are more powerful than ever, controlling vast manufacturing and distribution networks that have helped to bankroll kidnappings, extortion, human trafficking, and the corruption of an estimated 60 percent of U.S. border agents. The…

Once again, government officials are trying to suppress the will of voters when it comes to marijuana issues. The Detroit Free Press reports today that the Detroit Election Commission has voted 3-0 to reject a November ballot initiative that would have given city voters a chance to decide whether to allow adults to legally possess small amounts of marijuana. Members of the commission said they were following a recommendation by the city's Law Department, which said the proposal was pre-empted by…

MPP legislative analyst Dan Riffle discusses proposed regulations for a medical marijuana law in Washington, D.C. on NewsChannel 8.

Bruce Fein served as a high-ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, and has since gone on to work for conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Now, as a member of the “Just Say Now” advisory board, he’s joined the growing number of conservatives who are calling for a legal and regulated marijuana market. Watch below:

Progressive political blog FireDogLake launched its online marijuana legalization campaign yesterday. Complete with a website and an advisory board that includes former law enforcement officers, physicians, and activists, the campaign—called “Just Say Now”—is designed as a “transpartisan” nexus of sorts for the growing nationwide movement to end marijuana prohibition. Partnering with FDL for the campaign is Students For Sensible Drug Policy, which recently made an excellent decision by naming our…

More than 2,000 people in Colorado applied for licenses to run state-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries, growing facilities or related businesses before this weekend’s application deadline, according to state officials. In total, the state made $7.34 million from application fees alone. More than 700 applied specifically for dispensary licenses, far exceeding the number expected by state officials, who estimated that only half of the state’s roughly 1,100 pre-existing dispensaries would apply…

Exciting developments in the movement to end marijuana prohibition keep flooding my inbox. Here’s just a sampling from over the weekend: Citing a new survey, Ryan Grim gives more credence to the idea that marijuana ballot initiatives could help Democrats drive “surge voters” to the polls in 2012. (Something I’ve written about a time or two.) A survey making the rounds among strategists, which has yet to be made public, indicates that pot could be just the enticement many of these voters need: Surge…

A website set up by Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire’s office asked citizens to vote on different ideas to help plug the state’s $3 billion budget gap. The most popular—out of more than 1,700 submitted ideas—was legalizing and taxing marijuana. (Not the first time we’ve seen such a result in an online forum.) So what does the governor think about ending the state’s prohibition on marijuana? “It’s a legitimate idea,” said her spokesperson, Karina Shagren. “But we’d have to see how the federal…

Artist, designer, and animator Haik Hoisington just sent along his most recent animation, and I consider it a must-watch for marijuana policy reform activists. "The Flower" does an amazing job of contrasting a society that regulates (and taxes) a flower with one that chooses the path of prohibition.

A Rasmussen poll released earlier this week about Americans’ attitudes toward marijuana didn’t reveal any surprising changes in levels of support for reform—43% favor ending prohibition, just slightly less than the 44% Gallup found last October—but it did contain this one interesting nugget: However, 65% believe it is at least somewhat likely marijuana will be legalized in the United States in the next 10 years. Just 28% do not expect this to happen. That’s fascinating. If the majority of Americans…