MPP has formally endorsed Libertarian Party nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in the race for president. Johnson is one of two candidates who received an "A+" grade in MPP's presidential candidate report card.

Below is a statement from our Executive Director, Rob Kampia, that contextualizes MPP's endorsement.

"MPP is a single-issue organization, and our mission is simple: 'Regulate marijuana similarly to alcohol in the United States.' We don't take a position -- and we therefore don't take into account a candidate's position -- on other issues, such as abortion, guns, gay rights, Iraq, taxes, or Social Security. We also don't work in Canada or Portugal.

"Of the three presidential candidates who will appear on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C., Gary Johnson clearly has the best position on marijuana policy. When he first advocated for legalization in 1999, he was the highest-ranking public official in the U.S. to do so -- as the sitting Republican governor of New Mexico, no less.

"Shortly after he left office, Johnson and I drove around New England lobbying the governors of VT and RI, the speaker of the NH House, and staffers in the NY governor's office. Johnson is a forceful advocate for legalization and is still one of MPP's strongest allies.

"Legalization has been Johnson's number-one issue for 17 years. MPP's endorsement of Johnson was an easy call; the more difficult question is whether MPP should support a candidate who's good on medical marijuana but bad on legalization, when the candidate is facing an opponent who's bad on everything.

"It's fine if voters prefer to consider a candidate's marijuana position in the context of a dozen other positions, but that's not MPP's mission. We're narrowly focused on marijuana policy and are happy to work alongside anyone who shares our mission, whether they're Socialists, Republicans, or otherwise."

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Gary Johnson, this year’s Libertarian Party candidate for president, spoke at a rally on Tuesday outside the Democratic National Convention. He criticized both President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for avoiding one of the nation’s most important political issues. Obama has laughed off or ignored persistent questions about marijuana legalization, while Romney is equally dismissive, calling the issue insignificant.

During his two terms as governor of New Mexico, Johnson established himself as the highest-ranking public official to call for a dramatic shift in the nation’s drug laws. He explains that during his two terms, he applied a cost-benefit analysis to every issue. Regarding costs of the war on drugs, he has cited the United States’ world-record incarceration rate and the fact that approximately half of current criminal justice expenditures deal with drug cases.

On his campaign website, the former governor also refers to the harms of alcohol prohibition and the parallel harms of current drug prohibitions, including the enrichment of organized crime and the associated violence. The site clearly states his support for legalizing marijuana, specifying that the federal government should “end its prohibition mandate” and allow the states to determine their own policies. This is one area where he agrees with former Republican presidential contender and libertarian icon Ron Paul, to whom he has compared himself and whose supporters he may be courting. Although he does not explicitly call for legalization of other drugs, he does refer to drug abuse as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice problem, making reference to the decriminalization which is in effect in Portugal and presenting it as a model for the U.S. to consider.

Johnson’s support in national polling remains quite low, and his name has often been omitted from the polls. It is likely that he will be excluded from the presidential debates, which does not bode will for his chances of ultimately winning the presidency. However, Johnson is the most prominent advocate of drug policy reform in the race and is expected to be on the ballot in all 50 states. Support of even 5% puts him at the top of the pack of third parties, as it dwarfs the best-ever presidential results for both the Libertarian Party itself and the Green Party, whose candidate Ralph Nader won 2.7% in the 2000 elections. His position in the race not only makes him a significant figure in the drug policy reform movement, but should work to raise public awareness of the issue and to improve the prospects for real reform.

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“The Colbert Report” dedicated about a third of last night’s episode to a lively discussion about Prop 19 in California – and it was chalk full of gems. After rallying his audibly excited audience with an overview of where the measure stands (“If Prop 19 were a human, it would be the most popular candidate in California”), host Stephen Colbert turned to two guests – Joseph Califano, of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson – to argue for and against making marijuana legal.

Califano opposes Prop 19. The entire debate over marijuana, he said, comes down to children:

“We have two legal drugs in America – alcohol and tobacco – and we’ve had no success keeping them out of the hands of kids. So if you legalize pot in California, all the kids will have access to it.”

Yeah, I know. My head hurt when I heard this, too. It’s amazing how twisted, bankrupt, and dishonest a statement that is. First off, Califano conveniently ignores the fact that young people already have access to marijuana – better access than they do to alcohol and tobacco, because marijuana dealers aren’t required to check IDs. (On the same day this segment aired, a report from the International Centre for Science and Drug Policy said that despite decades of increased arrests, seizures, and enforcement efforts, marijuana remains “universally available” to young people.) Secondly, there has been a great deal of progress in recent years in lowering the use rates for alcohol, and especially tobacco, among young people. That success has come about through sensible regulations and fact-based education campaigns – not the criminalization of tobacco users.

If Califano truly believes we need to “change the culture” surrounding marijuana the same way society changed the culture surrounding tobacco, he should embrace the regulation of marijuana, accompanied by science-based education. But doing so could negatively affect the bottom line for the substance abuse centers Califano represents – and who depend on court-ordered entries for arrested marijuana users for a great deal of their business.

Luckily, Gary Johnson was there to inject some honesty into the conversation.

“I just think that there should be truth in this. I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke pot, but I’ve drank alcohol and I’ve smoked pot, and I can tell you there’s a big difference between the two, and that is that marijuana is a lot safer than alcohol. I think you can introduce truth into the equation; we can tell our kids the truth regarding this. When it comes to the truth and my kids, I love them. I’d rather see them smoke marijuana than alcohol – but I don’t want them caught. I don’t want them subject to the criminal justice system when it comes to marijuana.”

Bravo, governor. It takes courage to say something like that, and by doing so on national television, Gary Johnson is making it easier for other public figures to follow suit.

How’s that for changing the culture?

Watch the entire segment below:

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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 war on drugs.”

The debate here is not framed in terms of personal drug use but rather whether legalization would do anything to abate Mexico's nightmarish violence and crime. There are reasons to think that it would: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has said that up to 60 percent of Mexican drug cartels' profits come from marijuana. While some say the real figure is lower, pot is without question a crucial part of their business. Legalization would make a significant chunk of that business vanish. As their immense profits shrank, the drug kingpins would be deprived of the almost unlimited money they now use to fund recruitment, arms purchases and bribes.

In addition, legalizing marijuana would free up both human and financial resources for Mexico to push back against the scourges that are often, if not always correctly, attributed to drug traffickers and that constitute Mexicans' real bane: kidnapping, extortion, vehicle theft, home assaults, highway robbery and gunfights between gangs that leave far too many innocent bystanders dead and wounded. Before Mexico's current war on drugs started, in late 2006, the country's crime rate was low and dropping. Freed from the demands of the war on drugs, Mexico could return its energies to again reducing violent crime.

And in a piece published on FireDogLake and The Huffington Post, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson says U.S. officials need to stop funding Mexico's drug war and instead “welcome the debate on marijuana prohibition,” — something our current drug czar has repeatedly spurned.

America’s policy for almost 70 years has been to keep marijuana—arguably no more harmful than alcohol and used by 15 million Americans every month—confined to the illicit market, meaning we’ve given criminals a virtual monopoly on something that U.S. researcher Jon Gettman estimates is a $36 billion a year industry, greater than corn and wheat combined. We have implemented laws that are not enforceable, which has thereby created a thriving black market. By denying reality and not regulating and taxing marijuana, we are fueling not only this massive illicit economy, but a war that we are clearly losing.

The latest Prop 19 poll shows the initiative ahead 47-43, so its likelihood of passing is still anyone’s guess. But if it does pass, Camín and Castañeda say Prop 19 will “enhance [Mexican President] Calderon’s moral authority in pressing President Obama” and allow the Mexican government “to more actively lobby the U.S. government for wider changes in drug policy.”

All the more reason for Californians to turn out and vote yes on 19 this November.

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Check out former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (R) -- an expected 2012 presidential contender -- discussing the need to end marijuana prohibition last night on MSNBC.

“I think it is at a tipping point, and people are ahead of the politicians on this one, and it’s still gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. I think statistically we’re about two and half years from 50 percent of Americans actually understanding this. From my own experience it’s really thin ice. With just a little bit of knowledge on this issue, people seem to move on this issue. People seem to be embracing this notion of, ‘Gee, it’s not working, we really have to do something different.’”

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Sarah Palin says she doesn’t support making marijuana legal, but during an appearance on Fox Business News this weekend, she agreed with fellow panelist Ron Paul that police have better things to do than arrest nonviolent marijuana offenders.

Check out the video and read her comments below:

“I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts. And if somebody is going to smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and clean up some of the other problems we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do and not concentrate on such a, relatively speaking, minimal problem that we have in the country.”

A few months back, MPP offered the former Alaska governor $25,000 to give a speech to supporters of a regulated marijuana market, but she did not accept the offer. When she ran as the Republican nominee for vice-president in 2008, Palin admitted to using marijuana in her youth but said she opposed making marijuana because of the “message” it would send to her children. At the time, MPP issued a statement saying, “That she used marijuana is no big deal, but what is a big deal is that she thinks that the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana, including herself, belong in jail. That wouldn’t be good for her kids.”

What’s frustrating about this is seeing, once again, a prominent politician acknowledge the ridiculousness of marijuana prohibition but not have the courage to call for its end. If Gov. Palin truly believes in the limited government she so often promotes, she should not only acknowledge that the government’s war on marijuana users is an enormous infringement on American civil liberties, but more importantly, that it needs to stop.

We’ve already seen one prospective 2012 presidential candidate, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, clearly voice his support for making marijuana legal. Will others follow?

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For all of us who have always hoped to see a mainstream politician have the courage to unabashedly call for an end to marijuana prohibition, our days of waiting seem to be over.

Last night on The Colbert Report, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson – who is widely considered to be a likely candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination — dedicated the entirety of his appearance to explaining why prohibition is a waste and new policies are needed.

“I think that marijuana should be legalized,” Johnson began. “I think 90 percent of the drug problem today is prohibition related.” And it just got better from there.

Watch the clip below, and you won’t be disappointed:

In January, Johnson was a featured speaker at MPP’s 15^th anniversary gala in Washington, D.C.

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