On April 29, 2008 House of Representative’s Committee on the Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) sent a 17-page letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart with pointed questions, a listing of over 60 medical marijuana dispensaries or patient cooperatives that have been raided by the DEA and federal law enforcement between June 2005 to November 2007 and numerous citations from local municipalities that are on the record of supporting patient access to cannabis and oppose federal intervention.

Excerpt from Conyer’s letter to Leonhart:

“Every month new science supporting the therapeutic value of cannabis is published. As a result, medical and scientific organizations, like the American College of Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association, are urging reform of laws that place in legal jeopardy physicians or their individual patients who may benefit from the use of cannabis. As the Administrator, you have the discretion to decide whether to continue heightened enforcement activities in California and in other states that have authorized the use of medical cannabis by qualified individuals. Please explain what role, if any, emerging scientific data plays in your decision-making process to conduct enforcement raids on individuals authorized to use or provide medical cannabis under state law.”

Read the entire letter and list of raided medical marijuana dispensaries and cooperatives here.

Let’s hope the DEA’s answers are as illuminating as the questions being asked by Chairman Conyers.

In mid-March the Reason Foundation published a report entitled ‘Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition’. The report updates the precarious hemp industry in the United States and its continued struggles under absurdly strict federal laws that are meant to control the psychoactive strain of the plant, usually described as ‘marijuana’.

Hemp is legal for farmers to grow in virtually all countries where marijuana is still illegal (i.e, Canada, France, Great Britain, Switzerland, China, Romania, etc…), and to help highlight the non-sensible government policy Native Americans on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota will soon build a home constructed of hemp in conjunction with the 2008 Hemp Hoe Down.

“There are numerous environmental advantages to hemp,” said Skaidra Smith-Heisters, a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and author of the report. “Hemp often requires less energy to manufacture into products. It is less toxic to process. And it is easier to recycle and more biodegradable than most competing crops and products. Unfortunately, we won’t realize the full economic and environmental benefits of hemp until the crop is legal in the United States.”

More than a whiff of pro-pot comedy will be in the air on April 20 at The Arlington Draft House as Rob Cantrell brings his ‘420 Comedy Hollidaze’ to NoVA.

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In what I believe is a classic example of a commercial conflict of interest, TV weatherman for the Today Show, Al Roker, sat down this morning on the Today Show couch to plug his new ‘reality’ show DEA.

DEA, set to premiere tonight, April 2, on Spike TV (which is owned by MTV) follows in the footsteps of the long-running video-verite show COPS. The show is co-owned by Al Roker Entertainment.

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