Last night, CNBC aired its much-touted documentary, "Marijuana Inc." It was a decidedly mixed bag. It was a portrait of an industry that is huge and thriving, despite the energetic efforts of assorted law enforcement agencies to "eradicate" it. No sane person could watch the program and come away thinking that present government efforts to curb marijuana production or use are working.  With California's Mendocino County as the focus, the crashing failure of the war on marijuana was on vivid display. What…

Tonight at 8:40 p.m. Eastern time, MPP director of government relations Aaron Houston will debate former Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson on "CNBC Reports." The debate airs right before the premier of CNBC's documentary about the marijuana business, "Marijuana Inc.: Inside America's Pot Industry." The live debate will only be shown once (the documentary will repeat at 1 a.m. Eastern), but will also be available on CNBC's Web site.

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced penalties against the Rite Aid drugstore chain for a variety of violations of the Controlled Substances Act. These included having "knowingly filled prescriptions for controlled substances that were not issued for a legitimate medical purpose" and failing to account for shortages or surpluses "of the most highly abused drugs, including oxycodone and hydrocodone products." For these rather serious offenses involving highly addictive narcotics, Rite…

Massachusetts voters didn't like the old marijuana law, so they changed it. Some Massachusetts officials don't like the new law, so they're, well, pouting. Today is the first day Massachusetts adults will no longer have to fear arrest for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana. Under the new system, approved by 65% of commonwealth voters on Election Day, violators will now be subject to a $100 civil citation and nothing more. The question now is whether those law enforcement officials who campaigned…

Well, the federal government's National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009 is out, and -- who'dda thunk it? -- "Marijuana availability is high throughout the United States." This is despite record seizures of marijuana plants in 2007, as well as an all-time record number of marijuana arrests, over 872,000. Indoor cultivation -- often in converted homes and other dubious locations -- has increased "because of high profit margins and seemingly reduced risk of law enforcement detection." This year's Monitoring…

The forces that have been working to undermine California’s Compassionate Use Act suffered another legal defeat today – this time from the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court refused to hear an appeal in the case of Garden Grove v. Superior Court of California, et al. In this case, the police department for the City of Garden Grove - in defiance of a court order - refused to return marijuana that an officer had seized from a state-legal medical marijuana patient. In October 2005, the city…

Use of marijuana and other illicit drugs by women who are pregnant is a cause of great controversy and some political grandstanding. In a few cases, this has led to draconian actions, including felony prosecutions of women in Texas. Such actions are justified by studies that show that use of drugs such as marijuana or cocaine while pregnant may lead to low birth weight and other adverse effects. But most of these studies have not controlled for all the other factors potentially affecting these women,…

Every time I think the murder of 22-year-old Rachel Hoffman couldn't get more repulsive, new details emerge suggesting there's no end to the incompetence, recklessness, and misplaced values of the officers who caused her death. The young woman – whom the Tallahassee Police Department recruited as a confidential informant after threatening her with a marijuana charge – was murdered by the drug dealers she'd been sent to ensnare in a sting operation. One of the many confounding aspects of the case…

The last of three Atlanta police officers pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the shooting death of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston nearly two years ago, thus concluding the federal investigation of that tragic incident. It appears likely the investigation report will fault shortcuts taken by Atlanta narcotics officers to secure illegal search warrants, which, if you'll read our summary of the incident, you'll see is a grotesque understatement in Ms. Johnston's case. These officers arbitrarily targeted…

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.