Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s “City Insider” blog picked up my last post about ONDCP’s spurious claims that San Francisco houses more medical marijuana facilities than Starbucks shops. A senior health inspector for the city told The Chronicle that ONDCP's claim that nearly 100 medical marijuana facilities are operating downtown was “extremely incorrect.” The city official confirmed that there are actually 24 medical marijuana facilities in the entire city.

The Chronicle further pointed out how absurd ONDCP's claims were from the perspective of anyone who actually knows San Francisco, and noted that ONDCP couldn't even get their numbers straight when it came to how many Starbucks are in the city.

It didn’t take long for the ONDCP to respond with a new blog post announcing the “good news” that their previous post received some “MSM (mainstream media) attention.” The fact that the drug czar's office considers an article calling them liars to be “good news” should tell you all you need to know about George W. Bush’s drug policy hacks.

ONDCP also altered its original post by reducing its random figure of 98 dispensaries to 71 – an equally arbitrary number. They claim to have obtained their list of medical marijuana dispensaries from a Google search; however the Google.com I use doesn’t yield results approaching anywhere near 71. Of course, a link to ONDCP’s source is conspicuously missing from their post.

ONDCP also decided to take a swipe at MPP and other supporters of medical marijuana by calling us “Washington, D.C. based lobbying groups that, attempting to legalize marijuana outright, prey on the compassion of voters.” Apparently, then, the dozens of prestigious medical organizations that support medical marijuana are also nothing more than predators for legalization...?

It's ONDCP that's really the distant Washington, D.C.-based group preying on taxpayers - who are forced to pay for the outright lies broadcasted on their blog, regardless of what San Francisco city officials or its hometown newspaper have to say about reality.

The truth is that San Francisco's leaders have worked hard to regulate the city's medical marijuana facilities, and it's the federal government's war on marijuana users that has caused real harm to the city. 

Use of marijuana and other illicit drugs by women who are pregnant is a cause of great controversy and some political grandstanding. In a few cases, this has led to draconian actions, including felony prosecutions of women in Texas.

Such actions are justified by studies that show that use of drugs such as marijuana or cocaine while pregnant may lead to low birth weight and other adverse effects. But most of these studies have not controlled for all the other factors potentially affecting these women, including stress, lack of early prenatal care, and not having enough money for necessities. A recent study in the Journal of Urban Health suggests that these other factors may be responsible for much of the tendency toward low birth weight (which, in turn, is associated with poorer infant health) that has been attributed to the use of marijuana or other drugs.

In this study, conducted with patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, women who used marijuana, cocaine, or opiates were much more likely to also suffer stress and depression, lack money for necessities, use alcohol or cigarettes, and not have early prenatal care. Interestingly, once other drug use was taken into account, the apparent effect of marijuana on birth weight disappeared. And once the other risk factors were considered, the effect of cocaine and opiates on low birth weight was no longer significant. The researchers suggest that drug use may be more a marker of risk than an actual risk factor for low birth weight.

None of this means that using marijuana or any other drug (when not medically indicated) during pregnancy is a good idea. But it does suggest that draconian policies that criminalize women may be aiming at the wrong target, and that programs that help women access prenatal care and deal with the other problems in their lives that are putting their unborn babies at risk might do more good.

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Just one day before Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved their state’s medical marijuana ballot measure, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) falsely claimed that there are currently 98 medical marijuana dispensaries operating in downtown San Francisco.

After drawing attention to the ONDCP’s boldface lie here on our blog, I decided to check in with San Francisco’s Health Department – the agency responsible for licensing medical marijuana facilities within the city.

Sure enough, according to them, the ONDCP’s figure is inflated by more than 400 percent: there are actually only 24 medical marijuana dispensaries operating in all of San Francisco.

One would think that the federal government would have done its homework before spending your hard-earned tax dollars posting lies online and even going so far as to fabricate a map showing make-believe medical marijuana club locations.

Sadly, in classic drug-warrior form, the ONDCP are continuing to lie to the public about medical marijuana without even an attempt to back their claims.

On a more jovial note about the ongoing anti-marijuana nonsense, our friend Mark Hughes in MPP’s Communications Department developed this hilarious parody of the ONDCP’s absurd new advertising campaign -- enjoy:

A news story from a Bend, Oregon TV station bears the alarming headline, "Medical Marijuana's Link to Crime." As this is becoming a recurring subgenre of local news stories, it bears some comment.

The gist of this and similar stories is that sometimes people who possess or grow medical marijuana get robbed. Well, sure. So do people who possess other items of value -- jewelry, cars, high-end electronics, etc.

For example, 1995 Honda Civics were the most-stolen vehicle in 2007 according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, but we have yet to see any news stories shouting, "Honda Civics Linked to Crime!"

What's happening, of course, is that some in law enforcement are trying to blame the victim in order to discredit medical marijuana, and some in the media are acting as their unwitting accomplices.

Yesterday we told you about a bizarre new anti-marijuana ad campaign from the increasingly beleaguered shop of White House drug czar John Walters. Well, to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, things just get curiouser and curiouser.

It turns out the ad agency that put the new ads together is an outfit called McKinney. And according to McKinney's Web site, one of the agency's clients is Southern Comfort, a brand of liquor -- a drug that's not only more addictive than marijuana, it's vastly more toxic and orders of magnitude more likely to induce violence or aggression.

Oddly missing from ONDCP's new ad blitz is any warning about the dangers of booze. But part of McKinney's work for Southern Comfort is something called the SoCo Night Institute, which is pretty explicitly aimed at students. "Featured Courses" include "Dancing With a Drink in Your Hand."

Meanwhile, blogger Radley Balko was so amused by ONDCP's new campaign that he's asking readers to send in names of successful, important people who've used marijuana. We suspect it will be a very long list.

On Nov. 4, voters spectacularly rejected eight years of the most intense government war on marijuana since the days of "Reefer Madness," led by outgoing White House drug czar John Walters -- voting overwhelmingly for a variety of reform proposals, including marijuana decriminalization in Massachusetts and medical marijuana in Michigan.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy has reacted with eerie silence, making no statements and issuing no press releases. But today on ONDCP's blog, the drug czar's office unveiled what may be their lamest anti-marijuana campaign yet. Yes, your tax dollars are actually funding this. For now.

By the way, jobs held by people who've acknowledged smoking marijuana include governor of California (Arnold Schwarzenegger), astronomer (Carl Sagan), mayor of New York (Michael Bloomberg), billionaire rock star/songwriter (Paul McCartney), and -- well, you get the point. 

Yesterday marked the 12^th anniversary of the passage of the first state law that effectively lifted criminal sanctions on the medical use of marijuana, California’s Proposition 215. In the years since 56% of California voters decided to stop criminalizing the ill, and public support for legal access to medical marijuana has grown to nearly 80%. That public sentiment has translated into policy reforms in at least 12 other states.

One would think that California’s law enforcement officials would do just that: enforce the law. But some of them spend time and even tax dollars lobbying against the state’s medical marijuana laws.

The California Narcotics Officers’ Association’s (CNOA) position paper on medical marijuana asserts, “There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine.” The CNOA ignores hundreds of studies on the efficacy of marijuana as medicine and the dozens of credible scientific and medical organizations that have publicly supported medical marijuana access.

Disinformation about medical marijuana isn't limited to privately funded Web sites like cnoa.org. The Sheriff’s Department in California’s capital county uses local tax dollars to maintain a Web page that claims, “There are no medically accepted uses for smoking marijuana.”

The medical community doesn’t share the sheriff’s medical opinion. Even the U.S. government’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) found, "Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting and all can be mitigated by marijuana ... there are patients with debilitating symptoms for whom smoked marijuana might provide relief."

The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department makes even more bizarre claims in its attempt to play doctor on the Internet -- such as claiming that marijuana could cause “increased facial and body hair” in women or that it can cause “diminished or complete loss of sexual pleasure.” Fortunately for the 14.5 million people who use marijuana, none of these far-fetched claims have been substantiated by science.

The sad fact is that California’s law enforcement lobby began campaigning against Proposition 215 in 1996 and when voters didn’t side with them, some its members never stopped.

Not only did Tuesday's election produce two major marijuana policy victories, but we also saw signs of progress in Washington, D.C.

Barack Obama has consistently said that he does not support the federal government arresting medical marijuana patients in states where medical marijuana is legal. He also affirmed to MPP that he would not use federal resources to raid medical marijuana dispensaries in California, something his predecessor’s administration has done countless times.

And the Politico reported that Obama’s pick for drug czar may be Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.  Bratton is “totally supportive of the concept of medical marijuana” (Source).

There were some promising changes in Congress as well.  With several elections still undecided, the Democrats are likely to pick up 22 new seats in Congress -- 17 of which belonged to medical marijuana opponents in the last Congress. And every single Democratic incumbent who lost Tuesday was a medical marijuana opponent.

As I noted in an earlier post, a number of the most outspoken medical marijuana opponents faced tough opposition going into the election -- and several of them were sent packing. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), Congressman Ric Keller (R-Fla.), and Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) are the most notable lawmakers who MPP will not miss. Congressman Mark Souder (R-Ind.), who once called MPP’s executive director a “an articulate advocate for an evil position,” held on to his seat despite predictions that he might lose.

Additionally, candidates who are close allies of MPP won spots in the House of Representatives, like Nevada State Senator Dina Titus, who is a strong supporter of medical marijuana.

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