On Wednesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives endorsed nearly all of MPP's arguments for regulating and taxing marijuana as we now regulate beer, wine, and liquor. But don't get your hopes up too much: The word "marijuana" never appears in the resolution hailing 75 years of successful alcohol regulation and the end of Prohibition.

Nevertheless, try reading the following excerpts and mentally substituting the word "marijuana" for "alcohol":

Whereas passage of the 18th Amendment, which prohibited 'the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors' in the United States, resulted in a dramatic increase in illegal activity, including unsafe black market alcohol production, organized crime, and noncompliance with alcohol laws ...

Whereas development of a transparent and accountable system of distribution and sales, an orderly market, temperance in consumption and safe practices, the efficient collection of taxes, and other essential policies have been successfully guided by the collective experience and cooperation of government agencies and licensed industry members throughout our geographically and culturally diverse Nation;

Whereas regulated commerce in alcoholic beverages contributes billions of dollars in Federal and State tax revenues and additional billions to the economy annually ...

Whereas members of the licensed alcoholic beverage industry have created and supported a wide range of national, State, and community programs to address problems associated with alcohol abuse, including drunk driving and underage drinking: Now, therefore, be it

      Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress--

            (1) celebrates 75 years of effective State-based alcohol regulation since the passage of the 21st Amendment;

            (2) recognizes State lawmakers, regulators, law enforcement officers, the public health community and industry members for creating a workable, legal, and successful system of alcoholic beverage regulation, distribution, and sale; and

            (3) continues to support policies that allow States to effectively regulate alcohol.

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

One of the arguments raised regularly by opponents of marijuana law reform is the claim that any lessening of penalties will lead to higher rates of marijuana use, and from that all sorts of terrible consequences will flow. This argument has already been raised against Question 2 in Massachusetts. It's one of those claims that makes intuitive sense, but research suggests it's simply not true.

That's not just my opinion. A few years ago the White House asked the National Research Council to look at the data being collected about illegal drugs in order to better understand how that data could be used to inform policy. The NRC report, "Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us," looked in some detail at what research tells us about the effect of drug laws.

Here's a bit of what they had to say, from pages 192-193 of the report:

The issue most extensively studied has been the impact of decriminalization on the prevalence of marijuana use among youths and adults. Penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use were significantly reduced in 11 states in the 1970s (Bonnie, 1981b). All of these laws preclude incarceration for consumption-related marijuana offenses, making the offense punishable only by a fine, and most also classify the offense in a category (typically a civil infraction) that does not carry the stigmatizing consequence of having been convicted of a crime— hence the term 'decriminalization.'

Most cross-state comparisons in the United States (as well as in Australia; see McGeorge and Aitken, 1997) have found no significant differences in the prevalence of marijuana use in decriminalized and nondecriminalized states (e.g., Johnston et al., 1981; Single, 1989; DiNardo and Lemieux, 1992; Thies and Register, 1993). Even in the few studies that find an effect on prevalence, it is a weak one. ...

In summary, existing research seems to indicate that there is little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use, and that perceived legal risk explains very little in the variance of individual drug use.

The most recent state-level data from the federal National Survey on Drug Use and Health continue to show little difference in use rates between states that have decriminalized marijuana and those that haven't.

For example, in Mississippi, a decrim state, 8.45% of those aged 12 and up say they've used marijuana in the past year. In neighboring Louisiana and Alabama, both of which continue to arrest and jail people caught possessing marijuana, the rates are 9.58% and 7.99%, respectively. Some decrim states, like Oregon, are above the national average of 10.37%, while others are below. Overall, the difference between decrim and non-decrim states is well within the survey's margin of error.

The lesson: Just because something seems like it should be true -- or makes a good sound bite -- doesn't make it so.

The latest Crime in the United States report from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program is out, and the news is disturbing. Marijuana arrests set another all-time record in 2007, totaling 872,720 -- that's a marijuana arrest every 36 seconds.

Arrests for marijuana possession totaled 775,138, greatly exceeding arrests for all violent crimes combined, which totaled 597,447.

Bizarrely, at his recent press conference announcing new drug use survey data, White House drug czar John Walters stated, "We didn't arrest 800,000 marijuana users," and called that figure, when raised by MPP's Aaron Houston and Dan Bernath, a "lie."

Well, he was sort of right. Dan and Aaron were low by 72,000.

Today's Los Angeles Times has a story on the rise of prescription drug abuse based on stats from the just-released National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The Times story expresses alarm at the rise in recreational use of prescription drugs, and understandably so, but misses a key point:

In recent years, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has spent well over a billion dollars on broadcast and print ads which have overwhelmingly emphasized the dangers of marijuana as compared with prescription drugs (or other substances) that are far more addictive and toxic than marijuana. This disproportion has somewhat lessened in the last year or so, but during Walters' first five or six years as drug czar the skewing of priorities was truly remarkable. Ads specifically targeting prescription drug abuse from ONDCP were nearly unknown until about a year ago.

Indeed, the ad featured on ONDCP's home page this morning is an anti-marijuana ad, albeit a strangely cryptic one.

Does this not send an unspoken message to both kids and parents? After all, if the ads are all demonizing marijuana and say nothing about those pills in the medicine cabinet, then those pills -- which, after all, are legal -- must be safe, right? Kids aren't stupid. They pick up on what we don't say as much as what we do.

Prescription drug abuse is not a new problem, and if one looks at the NSDUH stats going back to 2002, the increase has been fairly small (see table G.4 in the link above) -- real, yes, but it's not like this was an unknown problem that suddenly exploded. ONDCP chose to ignore it in favor of Walters' marijuana obsession, and we are now seeing the results. 

Because the "expert" sources cited by the Times were all either from government or government-allied think tanks, that perspective was missing from the story.

Join MPP-TV's Noah Brozinsky as he reviews five of the 2008 presidential candidates' positions on marijuana policy.

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 marijuana patients at the time of their arrest, although Montana law allowed them to present an affirmative defense that their marijuana use was medically necessary and therefore justified under the law.

Morally, however, there is absolutely no excuse for the nightmare state law enforcement inflicted on Scott and Summer. It's too late for Scott now, but Beaverhead County Attorney Jed Fitch has a moral imperative to use his prosecutorial discretion to drop Summer's charges and allow her to tend to her health and her grief.

If you agree, please let Mr. Fitch know.

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. Oh, but great news – nobody goes to jail for marijuana, and we don't arrest 800,000 Americans for marijuana each year.

Watch how he dodged our questions. First Aaron's ...

... and then mine:

Note to the next drug czar, if we must have one: You can do way better than this. The bar is set pretty low.

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 law and their duty to obey it, San Diego's and San Bernardino's boards are stubbornly making one last futile appeal to the state Supreme Court.

So, with Fresno acknowledging reality and San Diego and San Bernardino clinging to fantasy, that leaves 15 more counties that – five years later – have yet to act. Seems like a simple call: implement a program required by law and supported by the state attorney general and the California Police Chiefs Association or break the law, make law enforcement's job more difficult, and expose legal medical marijuana patients to false arrest at taxpayer expense.

Every decision should be this easy.

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 entails, and would not generate a criminal record. Eleven other states already have such "decriminalization" laws on the books, and they're working just fine. Notably, they have not produced an increase in rates of marijuana use, as the National Research Council has noted.

So opponents trying to frighten voters about Question 2 have no choice but to make stuff up. For example, a story in Monday's Cape Cod Today describes claims being made by local District Attorney Michael O'Keefe: "'This is not your father's marijuana of 20 or 30 years ago,' the district attorney said. He said marijuana now is far more potent, and contains substances designed to addict the user."

Research indicates that O'Keefe's claims are false.

Can marijuana be contaminated? Sure, as can any product. But no one has produced evidence that contamination is increasing, much less that sinister forces are intentionally introducing "substances designed to addict the user."

The issues of marijuana potency and contamination were addressed in a study by a group of Australian researchers, published earlier this year by the journal Addiction. They note that reported changes in potency are based on samples seized by law enforcement, which may or may not be representative of what's actually being used by marijuana consumers. But even if one accepts evidence of a rough doubling of average marijuana potency in the U.S. over the last 20 years or so, that doesn't mean users are getting more stoned: "More recent studies have reported that certain types of users may adjust the amount of cannabis smoked depending on potency," the researchers write.

One is tempted to say, "Well, duh." Drinkers consume smaller amounts of bourbon than they do of beer. Why would anyone expect marijuana users to be any different?

Let's be serious. Even a doubling of potency is far less than the difference in alcohol content between beer and wine. Could anyone claim with a straight face that wine is an entirely different drug than beer because of its higher alcohol content?

The bottom line, according to the Australian scientists, is that there is no solid evidence that any of this represents an actual danger: "Claims made in the public domain about a 20- or 30-fold increase in cannabis potency and about the adverse mental health effects of cannabis contamination are not supported currently by the evidence. ... [M]ore research is needed to determine whether increased potency and contamination translates to harm for users..."

But you can bet that the scare stories will be flying thick and fast in Massachusetts from now till November. We'll see if the voters are persuaded by science fiction.