NORML SHOW LIVE Halloweed Special with “The Black Tuna” Robert Platshorn

We’re back in studio this Saturday for our special Halloweed show! Our guest is ROBERT PLATSHORN, a.k.a. “The Black Tuna”. We’ll be discussing his life as America’s longest-imprisoned (30 years) non-violent marijuana offender, once referred to by President Carter’s attorney general as one of the “slickest, most sophisticated pot smugglers of the 70′s.” Read all about it in Platshorn’s book, “The Black Tuna Diaries”.

We’re also broadcasting from the site of NORML’s West Coast Media HQ Halloweed party, with guests such as Oregon NORML‘s Madeline Martinez and UrbAge Designs‘ Scott Gordon. Plus your calls about the scariest marijuana moments in your life. It’s live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The show runs from 6pm-8pm Pacific Time (9-11pm Eastern) streaming live at http://live.norml.org. You can call in with your questions and comments at 347-994-1810. Archived episodes of NORML SHOW LIVE are available for download from our site or by subscribing through iTunes.

Testimony from California Assembly committee hearing on legalization of marijuana

Yesterday’s testimony by supporters and foes of Assembly Bill 390, an act to tax and regulate marijuana in California, is now posted on the web at the following URLs:

Part I: http://www.calchannel.com/channel/viewvideo/798

Part II: http://www.calchannel.com/channel/viewvideo/799

Part III: http://www.calchannel.com/channel/viewvideo/800

Retired Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray’s testimony was one of the last to be heard, and to use a World Series metaphor, we couldn’t have asked for a better “clean up” hitter:

BREAKING NEWS: California Lawmakers To Debate Marijuana Legalization Tomorrow!

California state lawmakers are scheduled to hear testimony tomorrow in support of taxing and regulating the commercial production and distribution of marijuana for adults age 21 and older.

[Paul Armentano 10/29 update: Archived video of the entire hearing is now available online here. The hearing is three hours long and archived in three separate parts.]

[Paul Armentano updates: Just a quick update for folks. There is extensive media coverage of today's hearing. Go to Google News and type in "Ammiano marijuana." There are well over 100 news items, ranging from the New York Times to UPI to Bloomberg to AP, etc. The hearings were also carried live on The California Channel, but the video has not yet been archived. (Check back to the Cal Channel website tomorrow or Friday, but here's a five minute clip care of youtube.) NORML's testimony from today is available here and here. Following the hearing, many of us met with numerous key lawmakers (and their staff) on the Public Safety and Health Committees to discuss the issue further. (I had four meetings myself.)

As for "what's next?" First off, this was an INFORMATIONAL HEARING only. There will be NO Committee vote at this time. There will likely be a second informational hearing scheduled before the Assembly Committee on Health. After that, the Public Safety Committee is anticipated to hold a separate hearing specific to AB 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act in January 2010. IF we have the votes at that time to pass the bill out of Committee, the Chair (who is the bill's sponsor) will call it for a vote sometime this spring. If we don't have the votes on the Committee, then the bill will languish in Committee. It's that simple.]

Members of the California Assembly Committee on Public Safety have called for the hearing, entitled “Examining the Fiscal and Legal Implication of the Legalization and Regulation of Marijuana.” The hearing will be chaired by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), sponsor of Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act. It will take place at 10am in room 126 of the State Capitol.

A press conference will take place prior to the hearing at 9 am in Capitol Room 317.

California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer is scheduled to testify before the Committee at noon. [Editor's note: Read Dale's written testimony here.] NORML has also submitted prepared testimony to the Committee, which is available online here.

Several representatives from law enforcement, including the California Police Chiefs Association and the Office of the Attorney General’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, are scheduled to testify in opposition to the bill.

“The criminal prohibition of marijuana provides law enforcement and state regulators with no legitimate market controls,” states NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano in prepared testimony.  “This absence of state and local government controls jeopardizes rather than promotes public safety. I urge this Committee to move forward with the enactment of sensible regulations for legalizing marijuana.”

Tomorrow’s hearing marks one of the first times since 1913 that the California legislature has debated ending criminal prohibition.

If you live in California you can contact your member of the Assembly in advance of tomorrow’s historic hearing here.

Four Prohibition Pragmatists And A Drug War Whore

A quick review from this week’s avalanche of cannabis-related news, comes a stark contrast that reveals: Four Prohibition Pragmatists And A Drug War Whore

Prohibition Pragmaticism

Wisconsin – When asked by the media about a recently introduced medical cannabis bill in his state, as well as to comment on the Obama administration’s new policies on medical cannabis, Governor Jim Doyle said he has no problem with the use of cannabis to treat severe pain and other medical conditions by way of a physician’s recommendation, and that restricting the use of medical cannabis makes no sense when doctors can already prescribe more dangerous drugs like morphine.

British Columbia – Stephen Gamble, president of the Fire Chiefs’ Association of B.C., recently came out in favor of fire department inspections of the home gardens of federal medical cannabis patients and caregivers in BC, to make sure the cannabis grow operations are safe, and not creating fire hazards. However, numerous medical cannabis patients and advocates in B.C. have spoken out against the proposal citing special federal privacy protections for medical patients.

Washington, D.C. – The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA), in numerous media reports, acknowledged another major departure from prior administrations regarding federal medical cannabis policies: State-compliant medical cannabis patients may not be harassed or arrested for their medical cannabis whilst traveling in federally-controlled airports.

Oakland NLC member Robert Raich, for years, has been pursuing the TSA to allow medical cannabis patients flying out of Oakland International Airport to lawfully possess their medicine in compliance with TSA rules, which are to concentrate on terrorism and public safety concerns, (i.e., weapons, explosives, knives, etc…), and that pilots and the airline crew are not liable for the presence of lawfully possessed medical cannabis.

New Hampshire – New Hampshire’s new US attorney, John Kacavas, told the media that he will not prosecute medical cannabis patients. [The new policy from Obama]…”is saying in a smarter battle against drugs, people who use it to improve their appetite, people who use it to alleviate their pain probably ought not to be prosecuted federally.”

Then…The Drug War Whoring

Washington, D.C. – In one of the grossest, most gratuitous, desperate attempts to get media attention I’ve ever seen (which says a lot…), former public relations flack for the infamous House Select Narcotics Committee (sui generis of many bad, failed and constitutional-warping anti-drug legislation of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thankfully this congressional committee no longer exists, and these days the once leaders of the group, like powerful New York democrat Charlie Rangel, now support decriminalizing cannabis) and former drug czar Barry McCaffrey’s in-house anti-pot propagandist Bob Weiner employs PRNewswire to hump his absurd press release attacking President Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s clarification of their ‘hands off’ policies regarding the use of federal law enforcement in states with medical cannabis laws (and presumably in states without state protections for medical cannabis patients).

In a country where approximately 75% of the population support medical access to cannabis, one has to wonder what is wrong with people like Bob Weiner. What does he not get? Or, is the only source for his revenue and self-being these days–almost eight years after taxpayers stopped funding his anti-cannabis propaganda when Weiner, a Democratic political appointee, lost his job when the Bushies took over in 2000–is to whore himself out to the media and anti-drug groups as some kind of anti-cannabis zealot, one that mocks science with his ignorance and drips contempt for the compassion that others seem to possess.

Weiner, a self-proclaimed expert on cannabis, does not seem to understand that 1) cannabis is not prescribed anywhere in the US, 2) the DOJ memo only impacts federal, not state attorneys, 3) Weiner claims, relying on unnamed law enforcement agents, that 9 out of 10 medical cannabis patients are frauds, citizens ‘faking’ a medical need ‘just to get high’, 4) Weiner oddly compares a non-toxic and therapeutic substance like cannabis to laetrile, therein invoking the late Senator Kennedy to supposedly prove the “false hope” of medical cannabis, when, in fact, Senator Kennedy supported both patient access to medical cannabis and active cannabis medical research at the University of Massachusetts @ Amherst, and 5) Weiner whines that politics, not science is the controlling factor; feigns there is a dearth of science regarding cannabis (when there are over 17,500 studies relating to cannabis and/or cannabinoids).

Watch Weiner and the so-called war on drugs get rightly ridiculed by Penn and Teller…or the entire episode here.

Feast your eyes on Weiner’s Wednesday PRNewswire release to see what a real drug war whore looks like seeking the media and public spotlight:

Medical Marijuana: ‘Be Careful,’ ‘Ex-White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Tells DOJ About ‘New Lax Enforcement’ Policy; ‘Use May Explode in Healthy People’

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — “Be careful about the new lax enforcement policy for medical marijuana,” former White House Drug Policy Spokesman Bob Weiner is telling the Department of Justice and the Obama Administration.

“You may get way more than you bargained for”, Weiner cautions of the new policy barring states attorneys from busting and prosecuting users and caregivers of so-called “medical” marijuana who act “in accordance with state law.”

“Prescription marijuana use may explode for healthy people.”

Unfortunately, as many as 90% of purchases at clinical distribution centers are “false defenses”, some law enforcement agents report – “which means individuals are not really sick but simply want the pot,” Weiner asserts.

“Medical marijuana is not as effective as other healing mechanisms for many illnesses such as glaucoma, pain, or nausea that users try it for because of false hype leading to false hope. Just as laetrile was legalized in the 1970′s in 27 states to cure cancer but was found to be useless apricot pits, leading Senator Kennedy in a Senate hearing to decry the ‘false hope’ delaying true treatment, ‘medical’ marijuana today could be a placebo delaying far better treatments,” according to Weiner.

“Many medical marijuana advocates press its use for pain killing and appetite enhancement,” Weiner asserted, “but you might feel just as good after a shot of gin. Science, not politics, must drive what is determined to be safe and effective medicine in America. The medical marijuana advocates never mention the potentially better applications of THC in marijuana from suppositories, jells, aerosols, or the already approved pill Marinol — they just want the high from the smoked version.

“There is a real danger that if marijuana is made essentially a prescription drug, its abuse and usage explosion could parallel other prescription drugs over the last decade, such as OxyContin, which have tripled nationally and quintupled in many locations because of the ease of availability.”

“No one wants to deny a dying cancer patient a hit of grass, if that’s what he or she wants. But to announce and implement a policy of broad-brush non-enforcement when there is so much loose about usage of medical marijuana and its distribution is a dangerous policy.”

“The new policy, a three-page DOJ memo anyone can download, does not only say leave the users alone. It also says leave the ‘caregivers’ alone if they comply with state law. The distribution centers, which are suppliers, and the staff could well be considered ‘caregivers’. DOJ would have serious problems discerning between illicit dealers and distributors.”

Weiner served as White House Drug Policy Office spokesman for 6-1/2 years and communications director of the House Select Narcotics Committee for five years.

Contact: Bob Weiner/Rebecca Vander Linde 301-283-0821/202-306-1200

SOURCE Robert Weiner Associates Issues Strategies

NORML SHOW LIVE Saturday – SPECIAL TIME 4:00pm Pacific – with Cheech & Chong at Cypress Hill Smokeout

Saturday Night’s episode of NORML SHOW LIVE will be at a special time – 4:00pm Pacific / 7:00pm Eastern – to take advantage of the lineup here at the Cypress Hill Smokeout in San Bernardino, California.  Cheech & Chong are playing a “4:20″ set, so I will be there live, bringing you the comedy from NORML’s favorite comedy team.

Following Cheech & Chong in the lineup are the newly re-formed band Sublime, which many will remember for their cover of “Smoke 2 Joints” among many others.  We’ll bring you some of their set as well.  I’ve also got an interview with “My Fair Brady’s” Adrianne Curry, Steve Bloom from Celebstoner discussing the celebrity panel, and PonyBoy from Los Marijuanos from Friday’s festivities.  Calling in to the show are Kottonmouth Kings and responding to her Jay Leno snub, 2006 Miss New Jersey Georgine DiMaria.  (All subject to change due to the chaotic nature of a festival!)

Interspersed with the live audio will be my interviews with many of the artists, celebrities, and just normal folks attending this two day outdoor festival.  Join us live at http://live.norml.org, where you can also participate in our online chat and speak live to the host and guests – dial in to 347-994-1810 to participate.

NORML Women Make Waves

We’ve published several blog posts over the past weeks emphasizing the role of women in marijuana law reform.

Why? Well, for starters, women are now voicing their support for sensible marijuana law reform in record numbers.

According to this week’s Gallup poll, support for marijuana legalization has jumped 12 percent among women since 2005. By comparison, support among men rose just four percent over this same time.

In short, if we are to succeed to pushing public support for marijuana regulation to majority levels in this country then we — unquestionably — need the greater support of women.

Fortunately, NORML has its own core group of female activists who are unabashedly speaking out publicly in favor of cannabis law reform. Their efforts are changing public opinion and garnering mainstream media attention.

Here are just a few recent examples.

Kathleen Parker: Legalizing Pot May Be Women’s Work

[Note: Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist. Her most recent commentary, spotlighting NORML-ally Jessica Corry, ran in newspapers across the country under various headlines.]

Today’s activist, more likely, doesn’t have facial hair, but she does have kids.

Lately to the smallish conservative crowd, notably once led by anti-prohibitionist William F. Buckley, is Jessica Corry of Colorado, a married, pro-life Republican mom, soon to be “freedom fighter of the month” in High Times magazine.

Recent partakers undoubtedly will have to rub their eyes for a double take when they spot Corry, who spoke last month at a NORML conference (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) in San Francisco, wearing an American flag lapel pin, a triple strand of pearls and a gold marijuana leaf pin.

Another day, another stereotype in the dust bin.

… Corry is hardly alone and, in fact, may be part of a “toking point.” (Is there a drug yet for “Tipping Point Fatigue”?) In its October issue, Marie Claire magazine featured “Stiletto Stoners” about accomplished career women who prefer to relax with pot. A September Fortune cover story, “Is Pot Already Legal?” examined the issue. In April, former (2006) Miss New Jersey, Georgine DiMaria, [Editor's Note: Georgine is an active member of NJ NORML.] outed herself as a stealth marijuana user to treat her asthma.

Next we have Salon.com:

Salon.com: Meet the marijuana moms

The real crux of Parker’s article, another idea she picks up from Corry, is the prediction that it will be women who lead the charge for legalization. It was the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, both point out, who in 1929 spearheaded the movement to get rid of the ban on alcohol. (Thanks, ladies!) Parker also cites a Marie Claire article on “Stiletto Stoners,” high-achieving women who smoke weed, and the recent revelation that Miss New Jersey 2006 uses medical marijuana to calm her asthma. I would add the example of Marie Myung-Ok Lee, a mother who wrote in Double X about feeding her autistic nine-year-old son pot (in cookie form).

And finally there’s this excellent commentary in the L.A. Daily News penned by NORML Legal Committee member Allison Margolin, who rightfully criticizes Los Angeles District Attorney for threatening to prosecute “100 percent” of the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries.

Pot crackdown flies in the face of law and sense

[excerpt] Whatever the perverse reasons motivating the district attorney’s position, the issue is not why but how to stop this alarming waste of resources. The media has focused on the fact that the amount of dispensaries in L.A. has mushroomed over the past year and on the ease with which marijuana users are obtaining recommendations. No one has focused on the fact that the war against dispensaries is another chapter in the escalation of the drug war, another excuse to send people to state prison, another mechanism to disenfranchise people whose medicine is not respected by law enforcement as legitimate.

This has to stop. In the wake of prison overcrowding and budget crisis, sending more people away and depriving the state of taxes they are currently reaping from dispensaries is not the answer.

This week, the LAPD is expected to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries across Los Angeles. The time for action is now – before more people are caught up in the system, before more resources are wasted and before more lives are ruined.

Normal women, NORML women — fighting to end prohibition.

In Defense of Intelligence, Washington Post Columnist Looks Like A Fool

I can only imagine how many letters to the editor have arrived at the Washington Post after it published columnist Charles Lane’s intellectually flaccid and insulting column (i.e., Mr. Lane mocks Angel Raich’s medical condition and cites an alleged NORML survey that does not exist) entitled ‘Medical marijuana is an insult to our intelligence‘.

Below is a letter-to-the-editor that was sent by NORML board member Paul Kuhn…You too can weigh in on Mr. Lane’s ‘defense’ of intelligence (and lack of compassion) here.

[Paul Armentano updates: The letter to the Washington Post from Paul Kuhn was just one letter penned by NORML representatives. CALIFORNIA NORML, for instance, responded with a separate letter as well, as have several others. As a result the Post has now added this, half-hearted in my opinion, 'clarification':

Clarification: An earlier version of this posting said Angel Raich claimed that each of the medical conditions cited in her lawsuit was life-threatening. She asked me to explain that she only contended that one of her conditions -- chronic weight loss due to an inability to keep food down -- was life-threatening. I am happy to oblige. She is about to undergo an operation to reduce her Schwannoma, which is a benign brain tumor.]

Medical marijuana is an insult to our intelligence

The Justice Department says it’s backing off the prosecution of people who smoke pot or sell it in compliance with state laws that permit “medical marijuana.” Attorney General Eric Holder says “it will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers.” Party hardy! I mean — let the healing begin!

I don’t think the federal government should be spending a whole lot of time on small-time druggies, and I’m undecided about legalizing pot, which enjoys 44 percent support among the general public, according to a recent poll. Recreational use is not the wisest thing — and if my 12-year-old son is reading this, that means you! — but it’s no more harmful than other drugs (e.g., alcohol) and impossible to eradicate. On the other hand, I worry it’s a gateway to harder stuff. So I think we probably should have an open debate about decriminalization.

But it should be a real debate, about real decriminalization, and not clouded — pardon the expression — by hokum about “medical marijuana.” To the extent it puts the attorney general’s imprimatur on the notion that people are getting pot from “caregivers” to deal “with serious illnesses” — as opposed to growing their own or flocking to “dispensaries” just to get high — the Justice Department’s move is not so constructive.

I do not deny that for some people, including some terminal cancer patients and pain-wracked AIDS sufferers, marijuana is a blessed relief. Let ‘em smoke, I say, just as the Justice Department has usually ignored such cases since long before Holder spoke up. But if you believe there is any scientific evidence that smoked marijuana has the multiplicity of therapeutic uses that advocates claim — well, I’ve got a bag of oregano I’d like to sell you.

Usually, drugs have to pass exacting testing by the Food and Drug Administration before they go on the market. There’s a good reason for this: we don’t want people spending money on products that might be ineffective or actually harmful. In California and elsewhere, however, snake oil — sorry, “medical marijuana” — got on the market via a different route: popular referendum. The pot for sale in dispensaries is subject to none of the purity controls that actual pharmaceutical drugs must meet. Indeed, the new DOJ policy essentially recognizes a gray market for pot, leaving these supposedly seriously ill people at the mercy of their dealers — I mean caregivers — with respect to quality and efficacy.

What other substances should we handle this way? Cocaine? Laetrile? Didn’t President Obama just sign a bill authorizing the FDA to regulate the nicotine content of tobacco? And I thought he promised to “restore science to its rightful place.”

Under California’s law, you don’t even need a prescription to get pot (which would admittedly have been a problem, since the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency controls who gets a prescription pad, and not many doctors would use theirs to prescribe an illegal drug). All it takes is a “written or oral recommendation” from a physician.

A few years ago, a California woman called Angel Raich took her defense of medical pot all the way to the Supreme Court. She lost on the legal issue, which had nothing to do with the medical effectiveness of pot. Along the way, though, she claimed that she was suffering from “life-threatening” scoliosis, temporomandibular joint dysfunction, bruxism, endometriosis, headache, rotator cuff syndrome, uterine fibroids, and Schwannoma. The Latin names might have snowed some judges, but physicians recognized each of these conditions as a common, non-life-threatening problem for which conventional treatments were available. Raich listed a cornucopia of potent drugs, from Vicodin to Methadone, that she had tried previously and gotten no satisfaction. I’m not a doctor, but I thought she might consider a consultation for hypochondria, or perhaps marijuana dependency.

This is not an isolated instance. According to a survey by NORML, the pro-”medical marijuana” organization, which can be expected to emphasize the desperate health of users, only 22 percent of California medical marijuana users suffer from AIDS-related disease. Most of the rest have more subjective maladies such as “chronic pain” or “mood disorders.”

Raich’s physician was Frank Lucido, a well-known Berkeley doctor and pro-pot activist — he also makes money as an expert witness on “medical marijuana” — whose Web site boasts that he was “investigated by the Medical Practices Board of California for cannabis evaluation practices in 2003, and fully exonerated.” The case involved his recommendation of marijuana to treat attention deficit disorder in a 16-year-old boy, but, as I say, he was fully exonerated.

In a brilliant article (requires subscription) on this subject in the Hastings Center Report, a bioethics journal, lawyer and anesthesiologist Peter J. Cohen noted that “medical marijuana” groups have been notably passive about demanding FDA testing and approval for this purported elixir. Instead, they took their case to the people. As Cohen argued, this is no way to make health policy: “medical marijuana,” he wrote, should be “subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as any drug proposed for use in medical therapy, rather than made legal for medical use by popular will.” The “medical marijuana” movement may not be a threat to our civilization, but it is an insult to our intelligence.

Re: Charles Lane’s column on medical marijuana.

Dear Editors,

In the most inane column I have read in the Post, the most offensive comments are those labeling Angel Raich a hypochondriac fraud. Next Thursday, she will undergo brain surgery at Stanford Hospital.

The most puzzling comments are those acknowledging marijuana is a “blessed relief” for certain patients and at the same time “an insult to our intelligence.”

The most misinformed comments are those asking why marijuana is not FDA-approved when the government prohibits research on marijuana.

When my late wife was battling  cancer, marijuana relieved her pain after the best legal medications failed.  I’ll believe my own eyes over Mr. Lane’s confused words.

Sincerely yours,

Paul H. Kuhn
Nashville TN

NORML Founder Keith Stroup on CNN’s Blogger Bunch discussing Obama DOJ memo on medical marijuana

Video available at http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/10/20/dcl.blog.pot.cnn?iref=videosearch

Gallup poll registers most support ever for marijuana re-legalization

PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup’s October Crime poll finds 44% of Americans in favor of making marijuana legal and 54% opposed. U.S. public support for legalizing marijuana was fixed in the 25% range from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, but acceptance jumped to 31% in 2000 and has continued to grow throughout this decade.

The highest level of support for decriminalizing the use of marijuana today is seen with self-described liberals, among whom 78% are in favor. In contrast, 72% of conservatives are opposed. Moderates are about evenly divided on whether the use of marijuana should be legal, although they tilt against it (51% vs. 46%).

Gallup also finds a generational rift on the issue, as 50% of those under 50 and 45% of those 50 to 64 say it should be legal, compared with 28% of seniors.

Public mores on legalization of marijuana have been changing this decade, and are now at their most tolerant in at least 40 years. If public support were to continue growing at a rate of 1% to 2% per year, as it has since 2000, the majority of Americans could favor legalization of the drug in as little as four years.

Americans are no more — and no less — in favor of legalizing marijuana when the issue is framed as a revenue-enhancement tool for state governments. Regardless of how the question is asked, 53% of Americans living in the West — encompassing California, where the issue could be on the ballot in 2010 — support legalization.

It’s not a question of if cannabis will be re-legalized; it is a question of when, where, and how. Stats guru Nate Silver has opined that overall support for re-legalization should top 60% by 2022/2023 independent of any other factors but the continuing movement of Baby Boomers into retirement age. However, we here at NORML don’t really want to see another 11 million arrests between now and then, so we urge all of you to contact your elected officials to help us prove Mr. Silver to be too pessimistic.

Breaking News: President Obama Issues New Medical Marijuana Guidelines

In what can only be described as major departure in the so-called ‘war on drugs’, the Obama Administration is issuing a new three page memo this morning [Paul Armentano updates: You can now read the memorandum, signed by Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden, here. You can also share your thoughts with the White House on the administration's decision via NORML's Take Action Center here.] mapping out the federal government’s new guidelines for states that have laws protecting medical cannabis patients.

In February Attorney General Eric Holder indicated in a press conference that the Obama Administration–which favors physician-recommended access to medical cannabis–would abate from what had been an aggressive law enforcement (and propaganda) campaign against medical access to cannabis.

Today’s memo from the Department of Justice formalizes these changes and is a MAJOR victory for citizens who support cannabis law reform!

Report: New DOJ guidelines to back medical marijuana laws
By Bridget Johnson – 10/18/09 11:40 PM ET

The Hill

The Obama administration is set to make a sharp turn from the Bush administration when it comes to state laws regarding medical marijuana usage, the Associated Press reported late Sunday.

The guidelines to be issued to federal prosecutors Monday will suggest that it’s not a good use of time to go after users and distributors of medical marijuana in the 14 states that allow such usage, while encouraging that illegal pot operations involving violence, firearms and sale to minors still be pursued.

Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington currently have state laws allowing at least limited use of marijuana for medical purposes. The AP reported that federal prosecutors in these states, as well as top officials at the FBI and DEA, would being receiving the three-page Justice Department memo outlining the new policy.

Under the George W. Bush administration, medical marijuana dispensaries were still targeted for violating federal law despite state laws allowing pot for medical use. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled a shift in this policy in March, stating that federal enforcement would concentrate on illegal marijuana operations that use medical pot allowances as a cover.

The move doesn’t come as a surprise, as Obama the candidate had expressed support for states that allowed medical marijuana.

“I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users,” then-Sen. Barack Obama said on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.