Below is this week’s summary of pending state legislation and tips to help you become involved in changing the laws in your state.

New Hampshire: House Bill 1623, which would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis, was passed by the House on March 18. The Senate Judiciary Committee will now hold an important hearing on this bill at 3:00 PM on April 22. All supporters are encouraged to attend. Additionally, our allies at NH Common Sense are now encouraging supporters to contact Governor John Lynch directly and urge him to rethink his assertion that he will veto HB 1623 if it reaches his desk. New Hampshire supporters are strongly encouraged to urge their Representatives and the Governor to support these bills via NORML’s online advocacy system.

Minnesota: Minnesota’s House Ways and Means Committee has approved Senate File 345, along with its companion bill, House File 655. From Ways and Means, it now goes to a House floor vote, and if passed there, the Governor’s desk. This legislation would ensure that medical marijuana patients in Minnesota would no longer have to fear arrest or prosecution from state law enforcement. However, Governor Pawlenty has indicated that he is inclined to veto this bill if it gets to his desk. Minnesotans are strongly encouraged to urge their Representatives and the Governor to support these bills via NORML’s online advocacy system.

California: In an important victory for medical marijuana patients, the California Assembly Judiciary committee approved Assembly Bill 2279, sponsored by Assemblyman Mark Leno. This bill would protect Prop 215 patients from employment discrimination, most notably via urine testing. (The bill does not protect workers in safety-sensitive jobs, including law enforcement). The measure was approved on a party-line vote with 6 Democrats in favor, 3 Republicans opposed, and one Democrat abstaining. NORML will continue to update you on the progress of this important bill.

Rhode Island: The Rhode Island Senate Committee on Health and Human Services unanimously approved Senate Bill 2623 on Wednesday, April 9. SB 2693 would set up a dispensary system for Rhode Island’s state-qualified medical cannabis patients, and will now go before the Senate floor. Rhode Islanders are strongly encouraged to write their Senate and House members in support of this measure and its companion bill, House Bill 7888, through NORML’s online advocacy system.

The arrest and prosecution of a professional, baby boom couple in Pennsylvania helps underscore the genuine waste of taxpayer dollars and overall ineffectiveness of government to stop adult citizens who want to use cannabis, as well as highlight a well known, but underreported fact among millions of victims of cannabis prohibition laws: Punishment in the modern criminal justice system does not necessarily equate with incarceration so much as it does a series of expensive civil fines, taxpayer-funded probation and drug testing services, loss of student loans and employment (and, consequentially therein, income taxes to city and state coffers) and access to health care services (because of an arrest, cannabis offenders typically will go from paying for private health insurance to relying upon taxpayer-funded services or charities).

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Let’s hope for sanity’s sake that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is not as bonkers as so many editors and producers are today in the United Kingdom regarding the issue of cannabis. After foreshadowing his intent last week to re-classify cannabis to fetch a harsher penalty and direct police to make more arrests, Mr. Brown will apparently face a much anticipated advisory report from the highly respected, and rarely unobserved, Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that, like virtually every major government report or commission review, advises for more, not less tolerance and punitive measures for cannabis consumers.

Will Brown kowtow to this current (and really bizarre) epoch of British media Reefer Madness or respect the ACDM’s logical and pragmatic recommendation not to increase the penalties for cannabis? Why does the British Home Office (and apparently the opposition Tory leader David Cameron as well) continue to pretend The Netherlands–and their ongoing, 35-year positive experience with controlled cannabis sales–does not occur just 95 miles away?

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When the court clerk finally called our case, the judge almost immediately called the attorneys to a bench conference, where he quickly indicated he would not have the time to hold this evidentiary hearing, but that he would refer the case to another judge in another courtroom, and we would have our evidentiary hearing that very day.

Attorney Matt Feinberg; law student Brendan Hickey; Co-Defendant Rick Cusick; Lester Grinspoon, M.D.; Co-Defendant Keith Stroup; Professor Charles Nesson; and Keith Saunders, Ph.D.

We had actually filed a motion to dismiss the case, based on our allegation that the marijuana laws are unconstitutional, and we had requested a full evidentiary hearing where we could call a number of witnesses to make our case. We had expected that the 30-page affidavit from Lester Grinspoon, M.D., would be sufficient to convince a judge to schedule an evidentiary hearing in 30 or 45 days. We were certainly not anticipating holding a hearing that very day, nor would we expect the government would be ready to hold such a hearing without some time to prepare their case.

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It took less than one week for the White House to begin publicly lying about New Hampshire House Bill 1623, which seeks to make the possession of up to one-quarter ounce of pot a fine-only offense.

In a factually and grammatically challenged press release, Deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns alleged that the proposal — which passed the House last week by a 193 to 141 margin — would decriminalize the “manufacturing” and “distributing” of “over 90 marijuana joints.”

Okay, aside from the fact that the measure applies to possession offenses only, one has to ask, what is up with the White House calculators? If one-quarter ounce of pot equals roughly seven grams, and if one joint contains roughly one gram of marijuana, then what the Hell does the Drug Czar’s office think is in the other 83+ joints?

Of course, regardless of whether it’s the Deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns, White House Drug Czar John Walters, or UN Drug Czar Antonio Maria Costa, there’s not a Drug Czar alive who can’t help but lie about marijuana.

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