Several San Diego-area medical marijuana collectives were raided today in a county-wide sweep apparently coordinated by the district attorney's office. It's unclear at this time whether or not any arrests have been made or exactly what -- if any -- state law violations are being alleged in these cases. Given San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' dismal record of circumventing California's medical marijuana laws and prosecuting patients, this recent action is unfortunately not very surprising.…

In Tuesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Jon Carroll went off on an ad that’s run lately in his paper and others promoting a drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The drug is called Humira, and Carroll is aghast at warnings in the ad, which advise that people taking this drug might be at risk for fatal infections, heart failure, and “certain types of cancers.” “I look at the risk-benefit ratio, and I worry,” Carroll concludes, and understandably so. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease,…

On Sunday, the British newspaper The Observer wrote, "In June 1971, US President Richard Nixon declared a 'war on drugs.' Drugs won."  Read the rest here.

As summer nears its end, marijuana “eradication” efforts are in high gear – and nowhere more so than in California, whose effort is called the “Campaign Against Marijuana Planting” – CAMP for short. And as usual, the news is filled with stories of CAMP raids like this one, in which whopping numbers of marijuana plants are seized. These are habitually accompanied by breathless tales of criminal gangs despoiling forests and wilderness areas with their marijuana growing operations. Missing from these…

At least some in the international news media have belatedly discovered a study casting doubt on the purported link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. I say “belatedly” because the study was published online back in June, although the print version came out this month. A group of British researchers examined a rather basic notion: If marijuana use  causes schizophrenia, then a major increase in marijuana use should lead to an increase in schizophrenia diagnoses in the following years. In an…

We’ve all heard the claims before – from federal officials, police groups opposing state medical marijuana bills, etc. – that there is no evidence that marijuana is a legitimate medicine. Readers of this blog know that’s nonsense, but there’s been a need for an article in the peer-reviewed scientific literature that lays out the scientific case in a clear, tightly-focused way. Recently, a group of scientists published a review article in the Journal of Opioid Management that does just that. The article,…

Earlier this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) launched MyIdea4CA.com, a website which encourages Twitter users to “tweet” their ideas for how to “move California forward” and then allows visitors to give each of those ideas an up or down vote. The site has only been live for a few days and already the top three most popular “tweets” involve making marijuana legal, taxed, and regulated in California. It is encouraging that high-level pols like Gov. Schwarzenegger and President Obama are…

The Obama administration’s official position on the movement to decriminalize drug use in Latin America is to take a “wait-and-see attitude.” However, San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne was willing to share his thoughts with the Associated Press: "Now they will go [to Mexico] because they can get drugs. For a country that has experienced thousands of deaths from warring drug cartels for many years, it defies logic why they would pass a law that will clearly encourage drug use." His quote illustrates…

Argentina is expected to remove criminal penalties for marijuana possession today, according to the Buenos Aires Herald: Supreme Court Justice Carlos Fayt said the court has reached a unanimous position on an expected ruling that would decriminalize the possession of drugs for personal consumption, which would be announced analyzed today. If the court rules as expected, Argentina will become the second Latin American country in the last four days to allow the personal use of marijuana.

Last week, Mexico passed a new law decriminalizing simple possession of marijuana and other drugs. Perhaps our neighbor to the south will now consider the possibility of full legalization (regulating marijuana like alcohol, as opposed to simply removing penalties for possession). A number of people in Mexico are calling for a debate, with  former President Vicente Fox as one of the most prominent voices in that chorus. However, others are wondering if legalization in Mexico would make a difference.…