"The Law and Marijuana": NORML Essays

A series of essays is being published by NORML, submissions were sent in by attorney's from their legal committee. Sean McAllister, from Breckenridge Colorado, detailed a number of the reasons why marijuana prohibition is still going on in America. He points to prohibition failures as one of the many reasons we need to explore legalization.

Marijuana remains illegal even though prohibition has miserably failed. After 35 years of a war on drugs largely targeting marijuana, the same number of high school students now say marijuana is easy to get and they had used it as answered those question in the affirmative in 1975. It remains illegal even though the Obama administration has declared an end to the “war on drugs,” while at the same time laughing off marijuana legalization.

This Huffington Post article provides an in depth examination of Barney Frank's recent marijuana legislation.

The medical marijuana bill aims to fix a problem in the federal classification of marijuana. The problem was best summed up in a live performance by Bill Maher I saw a number of months ago, where he talked about medical marijuana laws that states such as California (and others) have passed. I don't remember his exact words, but it went something like this: "It's still illegal to grow it, it's illegal for doctors to prescribe it, it's illegal to sell it, it's illegal to buy it, but if a joint happens to fall from the sky into your lips, then it's OK to smoke it."

"America's High" special that Anderson Cooper last week was disappointing to me. Each weeknight two segments aired featuring a pot story. Most of the information was recycled, and I felt they should have followed more current news headlines. Instead they just ran features of stories that have been in the headlines for months. Below is a video of Bruce Mirken on CNBC discussing marijuana.