In an unexpected slap in the face to local medical marijuana patients, last week the Rhode Island Health Department announced that it had rejected all 15 applicants to open the state’s first medical marijuana compassion center. Officials were originally supposed to reward the first licenses in June, but postponed after a series of delays. Rhode Island’s law calls for at least one, and up to three compassion centers to provide patients with safe access to their medicine. So why weren’t any applications…

Last week, a federal judge in Seattle sentenced prominent Canadian marijuana activist Marc Emery to five years in U.S. prison, after Emery pleaded guilty in May to one count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana. For years, Emery ran a marijuana seed-selling business, the profits from which he donated almost entirely to marijuana policy reform efforts. For that reason, his prosecution by U.S. law enforcement has been viewed by many as purely political, a charge officials have since denied. But in…

Federal raids on state-legal medical marijuana entities have continued under the Obama administration, despite repeated assurances that they would end. But there has been one noticeable difference from how the raids were carried out under the Bush administration: officials are no longer publicizing them. Mike Riggs has the story in the Daily Caller: [T]he DOJ has demonstrated one marked change now that it’s under Democratic control: The department has stopped publicizing medical marijuana raids,…

As California voters prepare to vote on Proposition 19, which would bring a much-needed end to nearly 100 years of failed marijuana prohibition in that state, it's important to pay attention to the arguments that proponents use to persuade the electorate to vote in favor of taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol (T&R). How an issue is framed can make or break it, as seen by efforts to reduce penalties for crack cocaine and peyote. On August 3, President Obama signed a bill into law that reduced…

Peter Shumlin was today declared the official winner of Vermont’s Democratic primary for governor, after state officials completed a recount that showed him beating his closest competitor by 203 votes. A strong supporter of efforts to decriminalize marijuana possession in Vermont, Shumlin is currently the state’s Senate pro tempore. He’ll be facing Republican Brian Dubie, who opposes decriminalization, in the general election for governor. It isn’t clear yet what role marijuana policy will play in…

Two must-read op-eds from last week explain why ending marijuana prohibition is perhaps the only effective way to curtail the ever-increasing violence plaguing Mexico: In The Washington Post, Hector Aguilar Camín, publisher of the Mexican magazine Nexos, and Jorge G. Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who teaches at New York University, write that California’s Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana for adults, “may, at long last, offer Mexico the promise of an exit from our costly…

Inhaled marijuana can provide relief to patients suffering from chronic nerve pain, and can also help them sleep, according to a Canadian study published last week in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal gave different types of marijuana to adult volunteers suffering from intractable pain that hadn’t responded to other medications. As described by the New York Times: Each volunteer was given a titanium pipe to take home along with quarter-teaspoon…

For decades, prohibitionists have claimed that marijuana is a “gateway drug” that inevitably leads to use of harder substances like heroin and cocaine — despite the fact that every objective study ever done on the gateway theory has determined that it’s absolute crap. Last week, researchers at the University of New Hampshire released yet another study discrediting the gateway theory. Their findings, based on survey data from more than 1,200 students in Florida public schools, showed that a person’s…

Earlier this week, Oakland County authorities raided two medical marijuana businesses and several private homes, arresting 15 people and confiscating what was allegedly $750,000 worth of marijuana and equipment. One of the facilities raided, Clinical Relief, is located in Ferndale, Michigan where the City Council voted just two days earlier to lift a moratorium on such businesses. Now comes news that one of the individuals whose home was raided, 67-year-old Sal Agro, has died of an apparent heart…

Unofficial vote totals show that marijuana decriminalization supporter Peter Shumlin won the Vermont Democratic primary for governor yesterday by an agonizingly tight margin of fewer than 200 votes. Although votes are in from all 260 precincts, towns and cities have a couple of days to certify official results. Currently president pro tempore of the Vermont state Senate, Shumlin has been a staunch supporter of efforts to remove criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana in Vermont—something…