I must not be high enough to understand what exactly the point is of this latest ad from the drug czar's office -- the behaviors depicted in it seem typical for lots of teenagers, straight or stoned. Still, I'm happy to help them get their message out, whatever it is. Feel free to use the comments section and give me your own interpretations.

Yesterday we told you about a bizarre new anti-marijuana ad campaign from the increasingly beleaguered shop of White House drug czar John Walters. Well, to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, things just get curiouser and curiouser. It turns out the ad agency that put the new ads together is an outfit called McKinney. And according to McKinney's Web site, one of the agency's clients is Southern Comfort, a brand of liquor -- a drug that's not only more addictive than marijuana, it's vastly more toxic…

The opposition to Proposal 1, the Michigan medical marijuana initiative, is going on the air with this new TV ad -- a spot so egregiously dishonest that even my very jaded jaw dropped when I saw it. It may set an all-time record for the most lies ever packed into a 30-second commercial, spoken by a narrator over grainy, black-and-white footage of what purports to be a medical marijuana dispensary. The most obvious: 1) California's medical marijuana law is "just like Proposal 1." No, it's not. California's…

It turns out that three of the Massachusetts district attorneys leading the fight against Question 2, the Massachusetts marijuana decriminalization initiative, admit to having used marijuana themselves in the past. To our knowledge, they have yet to explain how their having criminal records that would have barred them from their present careers would leave the state  better off.

We have special feelings for Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) here at the Marijuana Policy Project, because a few years ago he called our executive director, Rob Kampia, "an articulate advocate for an evil position." Souder is perhaps the most implacable foe of medical marijuana in the U.S. Congress. And he may be in trouble. Last week CQ Politics, which tracks House races, changed its rating of Souder's Indiana 3rd District from "Republican Favored" to "Leans Republican," writing that "Republican strategists…

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…

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…

I don't get to say this often, so here goes: The latest statistics from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration support one of White House drug czar John Walters' most frequent claims about marijuana. According to the just-released CARAVAN Study for SAMHSA on Addictions and Recovery, John Walters, who likes to call marijuana "the blind spot of drug policy," is correct that most Americans just don't share his view that marijuana is "The Greatest Cause of Illegal Drug Abuse." In…

I've written before about the death of Rachel Hoffman, a recent Florida State graduate who was murdered in a botched drug sting after Tallahassee police used a petty marijuana charge to pressure her into acting as an informant. It's at least a little comforting to see that there's now some accountability for some of the principals involved in this tragic event. But I can't help wondering what would have happened had Rachel, through luck and grace, avoided her awful fate. What if she had safely purchased…

On Saturday, New Bedford Standard-Times columnist Jack Spillane weighed with an eminently sensible and amusing take on the opposition to Question 2 , the marijuana decriminalization initiative on the November ballot in Massachusetts. He quotes some funny/scary dialogue from the press conference held by prosecutors and other opponents that managed to escape the notice of other reporters. The silliness begins with Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter: And "I don't want to hear," he said, those…