Early this morning on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann walked onto the stage to be interviewed. As she entered, Fallon’s house band and hip-hop icons The Roots played the beginning of a song by the legendary band Fishbone. While I won’t repeat the title of the song here, it seems to suggest that the Roots … do not think she is a truthful person. Back in 2009, the Minnesota Legislature passed a medical marijuana bill that was immediately vetoed by then-governor…

Last week was a busy one for medical marijuana reform efforts in Oregon. First, the signature drive to put an initiative on the November ballot that would add medical marijuana dispensaries to the state's existing law is coming to a close. With more than 74,000 signatures already verified, it is highly likely that this initiative will appear before the voters this year. In other news, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that medical marijuana patients applying for a concealed-carry handgun license…

Great news from the great state of Iowa: Today the state’s Board of Pharmacy voted 6-0 to recommend to lawmakers that the state reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II drug and create a task force to study the possible implementation of medical marijuana in the state. This recommendation puts Iowa one step closer to enacting a medical marijuana law, as its own officials have now definitively recognized marijuana as a medicine. The Iowa House and Senate are each considering bills that would protect…

Apparently, the Iowa Board of Pharmacy's standard of proof for the efficacy and safety of medical marijuana is pretty high. Much higher, than that of, say, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, which in 1999 concluded, "Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting and all can be mitigated by marijuana." The board was required by a court order to evaluate the scientific evidence surrounding medical marijuana Monday to determine whether it ought to be…