Funny Bruce should mention White House drug czar John Walters' taxpayer-funded boondoggle to Michigan to throw his political weight against the state's medical marijuana voter initiative yesterday. It just so happens the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released its report on White House abuses of the Hatch Act, which governs executive branch employees' participation in partisan political events, the very same day. The report singles Walters' office out for its audacity, saying,…

Once again, the White House drug czar is on the road spreading disinformation at taxpayers' expense -- this time campaigning against Proposal 1, the Michigan medical marijuana initiative. In a series of appearances in Lansing and the suburbs of Detroit, John Walters condemned the measure, as described by the Detroit Free Press: LANSING -- A team of top national antidrug officials joined the late-starting campaign to defeat Michigan's medical marijuana initiative Tuesday, telling reporters Proposal…

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…