We just got word that the Rhode Island Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill, 35-2, that would establish "compassion centers" to provide medical marijuana to qualified patients, making access for the seriously ill far safer and more reliable. Just to recap, that means three huge victories for medical marijuana patients and advocates today. Earlier, the senates in New Hampshire and Minnesota both passed bills that would protect seriously ill patients from arrest for using medical marijuana with their…

Last Friday I had the opportunity to meet Glenn Greenwald, the best-selling author and Salon contributor who was presenting his report – funded by the Cato Institute – on Portugal's experience decriminalizing personal possession of drugs over the past eight years. Few, even in the drug policy world, have paid much attention to Portugal's remarkable but sensible 2001 decision to remove drug use and possession from the criminal realm and address it solely as a public health issue. The details of Portugal's…

There appears to be a problem with Americans' peripheral vision that makes us unable to see anything to our south. However, the real, hot drug war raging in Mexico has finally bubbled to the point where even we can't miss it. We probably never would have noticed – nor even acknowledged the role played by Americans' insatiable appetite for illicit drugs including marijuana, which makes up about 60% of Mexico's drug trade – if it weren't for the inevitable expansion of that war into our own country. The…

It's nice to see Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck has sobered up on marijuana policy reform a bit since his Feb. 25 interview with MPP's Rob Kampia, in which he seemed to have a case of the giggles. Here's Beck with former deputy foreign minister of Mexico Andres Rozental March 3 discussing how ending marijuana prohibition might be the only way to curb the devastating violence in Mexico over the illegal marijuana trade.

  On Sunday night, CBS's "60 Minutes" did a grimly fascinating piece on the escalating drug war in Mexico. Reported by Anderson Cooper (whose day job, of course, is at CNN), the piece was as notable for what it didn't cover as what it did. Like most recent media coverage of the growing carnage along our southern border, the "60 Minutes" story carefully tiptoed around the proverbial elephant in the room. That elephant, of course, is prohibition. Here is a piece of what I wrote in a letter to Cooper…

The National Academy of Public Administration just released a devastating Senate-commissioned report detailing the failures of the drug czar's office during the Bush administration. Here are a few key findings from the report: 1) That the drug czar's obsession with youth marijuana use hindered the office's ability to construct a more coherent overall strategy for drug policy

 2) That the drug czar's office manipulated data to exaggerate -- and in some cases fabricate -- progress in reducing drug…

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reinforced the White House's policy that federal resources shouldn't be wasted raiding medical marijuana dispensaries that operate within state law yesterday in a Justice Department press conference. You already know this, but considering that the DEA has conducted hundreds of these stupid raids over the past several years, this is a very big deal for medical marijuana patients and fans of compassion and sanity.

Two weeks and eight arrests after a photo of Michael Phelps smoking from a bong made headlines, Richland County, S.C., Sheriff Leon Lott has called off the criminal investigation of the Olympic champion. Unlike Phelps, who has expressed regret for the entire incident, Lott was unrepentant about wasting the county's time and resources on a case that at most would have led to charges of possession of a pinch of marijuana. He also didn't apologize for the armed raids and arrests of eight college kids…

A commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as an utter failure in a report released Wednesday. The report, by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, called for the U.S. to re-examine its punitive, enforcement-based drug policies and consider decriminalizing the use of marijuana. What’s really startling about this report is not its findings – we’ve long known the war on drugs was a failure – but rather our government’s response.  As…

One of the purposes of this blog is to highlight the insanity of our war on marijuana users. So I have to admit I'm a little resentful that in such a short time Sheriff Leon Lott has done such an effective job illustrating that point in his hot pursuit of Michael Phelps. The Richland County, S.C., sheriff had announced earlier he would investigate and – god willing – arrest the Olympic champion after he was photographed smoking from a bong at a college party. As if he hadn't already done enough…