Reading this Atlanta Journal Constitution story revealing that more than half of the city's police academy graduates used marijuana, and a third of them have criminal records, two thoughts occur to me. First is the hypocrisy of a situation in which some people use marijuana and get arrested while others use marijuana but go on to lead productive lives – as police officers for heavens sake. Who decides which fate befalls a particular marijuana user? If marijuana use isn't terrible enough to disqualify…

Once again the mass media are wringing their hands over damage to national forests and parks caused by clandestine marijuana farms, particularly in California. And yes, there are problems -- damage caused by pesticides and rat poison used to keep animals away, not to mention the fact that the untaxed proceeds often go to some pretty unsavory characters. But -- and we've said this before, but it's worth saying again -- these problems have nothing to do with marijuana and everything to do with foolish…

Robin Prosser was a former concert pianist and systems analyst who suffered from an autoimmune disease similar to lupus for over 20 years. The disease left her in constant pain and made her allergic to most pharmaceutical painkillers. Only medical marijuana brought her relief, but the DEA seized her medicine. Unable to cope with the chronic pain any longer, she committed suicide on October 18th, 2007. Do you feel the need for feed? Then get our MPP-TV RSS feed and see if it satisfies your desires.

In preparation for a parliamentary hearing scheduled for October 15, a coalition of German health organizations, including the German AIDS Support Society, the German Society for Pain Therapy, and the German Epilepsy Association, have issued a statement calling on the government to facilitate access to medical cannabis for patients without threat of prosecution. The Berlin Declaration, as it's called, is in German, but the International Association for Cannabis as Medicine has provided the following…

Join MPP's Sara Cannon as she takes a look at outright lies made by the Drug Free America Foundation. Every 36 seconds, someone is arrested for marijuana in the U.S. Coincidentally, it only takes about 36 seconds to sign up to receive MPP’s free e-mail alerts and start finding out what you can do to help end the war on marijuana users.

A follow up to yesterday's post: An astute reader in Texas sent an interesting link today: a court docket from Amarillo, Texas in which eight people were sentenced to jail for simple possession of marijuana (listed below).  Texas law has a specific provision for repeat marijuana offenders that makes jail time a likely sentence, so these might not be the first offender unicorns John Walters was after, but these cases reveal two things. First, people go to jail for having small amounts of marijuana…

Two new reports by public policy expert Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at George Mason University, highlight the ineptitude of U.S. marijuana policy during the Bush Administration. The reports – one analyzing marijuana use rate statistics and the other examining the explosion in court-ordered marijuana treatment admissions – directly contradict the White House drug czar's office's frequent claims of success in reducing marijuana use rates. There's little question that this administration's Office of…

White House Drug Czar John Walters told the press last month that “people don’t go to jail for the possession of marijuana” and challenged MPP to prove him wrong.  In his words, "if you find the unicorn ... I'll buy you a steak dinner."   Well Mr. Walters, it took nearly three minutes on Google, but I found your unicorn.  Seven of them, actually. On August 13, 2008, the Clinton County Municipal Court near Jackson, Mississippi sentenced seven people, in unrelated cases, to jail for simple possession…

"If something is not legal, you can't regulate it very effectively."             -- Prof. Robin Room, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne   On October 2, the Global Cannabis Commission, a group of top scientists commissioned by the Beckley Foundation, issued its groundbreaking report, "Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate." Your faithful correspondent was able to attend the daylong seminar in which the report was discussed, held in the distinctly imposing Moses Room of the House…

A staggering $15.2 billion budget deficit in California didn’t stop Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from sending thousands of state-legal medical marijuana patients into unemployment. Last night, the “Governator” vetoed A.B. 2279, which would have made it illegal for employers to fire or deny employment to state-legal medical marijuana patients for testing positive for marijuana. A.B. 2279 included provisions that exempted safety-sensitive positions and didn’t force employers to violate federal law.…