The Marijuana Policy Project has largely sat out the campaign to end marijuana prohibition in California this election cycle, but the recent escalation of infighting among allies who claim to support marijuana legalization has inspired me to speak out, and firmly. The best way to explain is to tell a true story about something that happened just across the border, in Nevada, in 2006. MPP was in the midst of campaigning for our ballot initiative to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol in Nevada.…

Yesterday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that downgrades the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction. This new law means that the more than 60,000 people who are arrested in California every year for small-time marijuana possession will no longer be arrested, given criminal records, or have to appear in court. Instead, they will receive a $100 fine similar to a parking citation. SB 1449 will also save California untold millions in…

For the second time this week, a poll of likely California voters shows Proposition 19, the measure to make marijuana legal for all adults, ahead – this time by more than 50 percent. In a just-released survey of 2,004 adult residents throughout the state, the Public Policy Institute of California shows Prop 19 leading by a margin of 52 to 41 percent. Earlier this week, the California Field Poll found Prop 19 up 49 to 42. Some details from the PPI poll: Among California’s likely voters, 52 percent…

Check out this great video from LEAP, in which executive director Neill Franklin explains how prohibition has destroyed the relationship between law enforcement officers and the communities they police. "When I talk to young people, they say the only reason you come into our neighborhood is to search us for drugs," says Franklin, a 33-year law enforcement veteran. "I want us -- cops -- to be the ones that kids can come up to in the streets when they have an issue or a problem. Not run in the other…

The United States could improve its national budget by nearly $18 billion annually if we taxed and regulated marijuana like alcohol, according to a newly released study from the Cato Institute. “The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition,” by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock, a doctoral candidate at the Stern School of Business at New York University, estimates the amount of money state and federal governments could both save from reduced expenditures and make from tax…

In this year's gubernatorial race in Vermont, one candidate delayed passage of a medical marijuana bill in the state Senate in 2002, and another candidate's last name is "Dubie." Which candidate do you think is in favor of decriminalizing marijuana? You probably guessed wrong. Peter Shumlin (D), the president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate, is one of only two major-party gubernatorial candidates in the nation to advocate publicly for the decriminalization of marijuana. (The other candidate…

If California voters pass Prop 19 this November, Oregon state Rep. Peter Buckley (D) says he will introduce a similar measure in the Oregon legislature in 2011 to tax and regulate marijuana for adults. From the Mail Tribune: In addition to raising revenue, Buckley said, it would dramatically reduce criminal activity now associated with it, including the illegal pot gardens now frequently found on area federal forestlands. "But what happens in California is the key," said Buckley, who is co-chairman…

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said this weekend that “[t]ransnational drug trafficking organizations operating from Mexico represent the most immediate national security threat faced by the United States in the Western Hemisphere.” Gee, if only there were some way to cut off their largest source of revenue … Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly using a $7 million surveillance plane to spy on marijuana grows in Colorado. Glad to see they've got their priorities right.