Republican congressional candidate Ricky Gill cancelled a Stockton fundraiser that was to be co-hosted by a businessman whose son was just indicted on federal marijuana charges.

Those who brought the event to my attention believe Gill’s association with anyone under federal investigation or indictment is damning, especially given that this is the second instance. My colleague, Lisa Vorderbrueggen, has written about the Gill family’s business connections to – and Gill’s own campaign contributions, later returned, from – Harvey Whittemore, the Nevada lobbyist now under federal indictment in a campaign-finance scandal.

But this seems like a somewhat different matter, given the debate now raging in California and elsewhere over the Obama Administration’s crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries operating in accordance with state and local laws.

The $125-per-person fundraiser was to be held tomorrow, Thursday, July 26, at Le Bistro, a Stockton restaurant co-owned by Bruce Davies, a local Realtor; the Davies family was listed among the event’s co-hosts. Bruce Davies in 2010 had applied to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Stockton, according to the Stockton Record, and had proposed using part of Le Bistro’s kitchen to produce edible marijuana products.

Matthew Davies, Bruce Davies’ son, was indicted by a federal grand jury this month on marijuana cultivation charges; he and two other Stockton men are accused of having grown marijuana in a warehouse and a home within the city.

The Stockton Record reports that a multi-agency probe began last September after Davies and told a CHP officer that he was on his way to his marijuana storage facility, where he stored marijuana for his Medizen dispensary in Sacramento, because the burglar alarm had gone off – hardly an effort to hide his activities. Federal agents later seized 1,962 plants and 40 pounds of processed marijuana from the warehouse, which also apparently had supplied the Central Valley Caregivers Cooperative in Stockton.

Gill is running against Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton, in the newly drawn 9th Congressional District. McNerney in 2008 reversed his previous opposition to medical marijuana, voicing support for an amendment that would bar the federal government from spending money to investigate and prosecute those who are operating in accordance with their states’ medical marijuana laws.

Gill spokesman Colin Hunter today said the campaign cancelled the fundraiser as soon as Matthew Davies’ indictment was reported in the Record, and Gill has not received any contributions from the Davies family.

“This is a transparent attempt to distract from the real issue in this campaign: Jerry McNerney’s utter failure to stand up for our communities in Congress on jobs, foreclosures and agriculture,” Hunter said. “Perhaps the Democrats ought to worry about the real contributions McNerney took – from big banks and from Solyndra’s lead investor, to name just a few – rather than the hypothetical contributions Ricky didn’t.”

Hunter said Gill “does not object to the legitimate, physician-prescribed use of marijuana to treat serious, chronic or debilitating illnesses. He believes state and federal governments should work together to craft a sensible enforcement plan that will hold accountable those individuals operating outside or in clear violation of medical marijuana regimes, but will not penalize seriously ill patients seeking only to manage their pain.”

So, how scandalous would it have been if Gill had raised money from people linked to medical marijuana? Lots of Bay Area politicians have taken contributions from people connected to local dispensaries. But consider who and where Gill is: What flies in the mostly Democratic Bay Area might not fly for a Republican in that Central Valley-centric district (even if Democrats have a 7-point registration edge there).

A California member of Congress re-introduced a bill yesterday to let federal criminal defendants use medical marijuana evidence at trial.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in the Oakland-based Gonzalez v. Raich case gave the federal government discretion to enforce its ban on marijuana even in states with laws allowing its medical use, and let federal prosecutors exclude all evidence of compliance with state law from federal marijuana trials.

“The federal government has tilted the scales of justice towards conviction by denying medical marijuana defendants the right to present all of the evidence at trial,” Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, said in a news release issued by Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access. “My bill would restore due process rights to law abiding citizens acting within the parameters of state and local laws. Juries should hear the entire story of a patient’s medical marijuana use before choosing to convict, not the heavily edited version they currently hear.”

Farr’s H.R. 6134, the “Truth in Trials Act,” has 18 cosponsors including Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland; George Miller, D-Martinez; Pete Stark, D-Fremont; and Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, as well as Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa.

“The federal government should be leaving enforcement issues up to the local and state officials who designed the medical marijuana laws in the first place,” Americans for Safe Access executive director Steph Sherer said in the news release. “But, as long as the Justice Department is going to arrest and prosecute people in medical marijuana states, defendants ought to have a right to a fair trial.”

This is Farr’s fourth iteration of this bill:

Americans for Safe Access notes the Obama Administration has far surpassed the Bush Administration’s rate of indicting and prosecuting people operating under states’ medical marijuana laws, making the bill more crucial than ever.

Medical marijuana advocates are trumpeting what they call a major legal victory providing some protection for dispensaries that provide the drug to patients.

The California Supreme Court has denied review of a February state Court of Appeal ruling from Los Angeles which had held that dispensaries need not have patients participating in their operation.

The appeals court in People v. Colvin had held that Attorney General Kamala Harris’ argument – that member-patients must engage in unspecified “united action or participation” to qualify for protection under the state’s medical marijuana law – would likely “limit drastically the size of medical marijuana establishments,” and provide “little direction or guidance to, among others, qualified patients, primary caregivers, law enforcement, and trial courts.” It would, in fact, “contravene the intent of [state law] by limiting patients’ access to medical marijuana,” the lower court had held.

The Court of Appeal also held that “collectives and cooperatives may cultivate and transport marijuana in aggregate amounts tied to its membership numbers,” and it affirmed that possession of extracted or concentrated forms of medical marijuana was legal under state law.

“This has not been a problem in the Bay Area, but now we’re sure it’s not going to be,” said Joe Elford, chief counsel with Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access. “The decision not to review People v. Colvin should now put to rest this unfounded notion that patients must ‘till the soil’ or somehow participate in the production of the medicine they purchase at a dispensary.”

Elford said the court letting Colvin stand means the state Justice Department might have to change its arguments in other, similar cases.

Advocates are descending upon Sacramento on Saturday through Monday for a “unity conference” and lobbying blitz on behalf of creating a new state regulatory system for medical marijuana.

The conference this weekend – organized by Americans for Safe Access, United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 5, California NORML, the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, and the Emerald Growers Association, and hosted by the Sacramento Central Labor Council – will see medical marijuana experts helping participants better understand how to influence policy in California’s current political and legal landscape.

“Californians are eager to fully implement the state’s medical marijuana law, and push back against federal interference,” ASA Executive Director Steph Sherer said in a news release. “We’re simply giving them the tools to more effectively lobby their local, state and federal governments in order to achieve that aim.”

They’ll put their new knowledge to work starting Monday, lobbying every Assembly and state Senate office to support AB 2312 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco. This “Medical Marijuana Regulation and Control Act” would create a nine-member Board of Medical Marijuana Enforcement within the Department of Consumer Affairs to regulate the industry, and would authorize local governments to levy transaction and use taxes of up to 2.5 percent on marijuana sales.

Among AB 2312’s opponents is the California District Attorneys Association, which says that although the bill lets local governments opt out, it would let this new state board govern the zoning of medical marijuana facilities in the absence of a local ordinance – essentially mandating city and county complicity with something that’s still illegal under federal law. “As such, we cannot abide this usurpation of local sovereignty by the state,” the association said in an Assembly Appropriations Committee staff analysis.

The League of California Cities agreed, calling the bill “premature. It could further confuse the issues at hand rather than resolve them, while creating significant new costs for local jurisdictions.”

But Ammiano contends his bill would finally clear up much of the ambiguity left by Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, by having growers, processors, manufacturers, testing and labeling providers, transporters, retailers and delivery services all registered with and regulated by the state “creating a network of accountability and transparency that does not exist today.

“Providers who are engaged in above-board operations will have nothing to fear as this will allow law enforcement to effectively utilize their limited resources by focusing their efforts on the remaining bad actors,” Ammiano said in the bill analysis.

Ammiano has prepared a video address for the conference, as have Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, and Sam Farr, D-Carmel. Conference sponsors include the Drug Policy Alliance and several medical marijuana providers including Abatin in Sacramento, Harborside Health Center in Oakland, and the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center (SPARC).

The House again tonight rejected a bipartisan amendment to forbid the Justice Department from interfering with states’ implementation of their medical marijuana laws, declining to rebuke the Obama Administration for recent raids in states including California.

The vote was 163-262, after about 43 minutes of debate earlier in the day. All Bay Area members voted in favor of the amendment.

Reps. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, now have offered this amendment to the Justice Department’s appropriations bill six times over the past decade; their high-water mark was 165 “aye” votes in 2007. Joining them in offering this year’s amendment were Reps. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, and Sam Farr, D-Carmel.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical use; the Connecticut and New Hampshire legislatures recently passed medical marijuana bills now awaiting their governors’ signatures. Federal law, however, still bans all marijuana cultivation, distribution, sale and use.

The Obama Administration has taken a multi-pronged approach to cracking down on medical marijuana providers. In some cases, U.S. Attorneys have threatened dispensaries’ landlords and banks with prosecution; in others, the IRS has rejected standard tax deductions from medical marijuana businesses operating in compliance with state law. And in some cases, such as that of Oaksterdam University last month, federal agents have raided medical-marijuana-related businesses.

President Obama has said the federal government isn’t pursuing medical marijuana users, but rather is focusing upon large-scale commercial operations that may be supplying recreational users as well. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, issued a statement last week expressing “strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California.”

Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, earlier Wednesday had issued a statement in support of the amendment. “History is calling on President Obama to protect terminally ill patients from suffering, and he is dangerously close to falling on the wrong side,” Piper said. “He will continue to pay a political price as long as his administration continues to waste taxpayer money undermining state law.”

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which has begun organizing workers at medical marijuana businesses, also had issued a statement saying that “at a time when millions of hardworking Americans are out of work and still struggling to make ends meet, the use of taxpayer money for the misguided targeting and prosecution of an industry that provides Americans with good middle class jobs with benefits is counterproductive. The U.S. Justice Department should not use the fewer resources it has to focus on targeting patients and dispensaries abiding by state law.”

UPDATE @ 9:43 A.M. THURSDAY: Piper this morning said the fact that most Democrats and nearly 30 Republicans voted for the amendment “shows that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are in political hot water for their attacks on patients and providers. We’ve seen major push-back from elected officials at the local and state level; now we’re seeing it at the national level.”

Asked how a slight drop from 2007’s support constitutes “major push-back,” he replied that yesterday’s vote “is still a third of the House, and when you break down the numbers, 7 percent of Republicans and 65 percent of Democrats voted for the amendment in 2007 and 11 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of Democrats voted for it last night.”

“Support is rising, but because Republicans are largely hostile and have more seats now than in 2007 the overall vote outcome looks similar,” he said. “Overall, I feel good. This was an amendment offered to a funding bill, with no hearing, and relatively little debate. So I consider the 163 to be the floor.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, weighed in yesterday against the Obama Administration’s recent actions against medical marijuana providers:

“Access to medicinal marijuana for individuals who are ill or enduring difficult and painful therapies is both a medical and a states’ rights issue. Sixteen states, including our home state of California, and the District of Columbia have adopted medicinal marijuana laws – most by a vote of the people.

“I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California, and undermine a policy that has been in place under which the federal government did not pursue individuals whose actions complied with state laws providing for medicinal marijuana.

“Proven medicinal uses of marijuana include improving the quality of life for patients with cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and other severe medical conditions.

“I am pleased to join organizations that support legal access to medicinal marijuana, including the American Nurses Association, the Lymphoma Foundation of America, and the AIDS Action Council.

“Medicinal marijuana alleviates some of the most debilitating symptoms of AIDS, including pain, wasting, and nausea. The opportunity to ease the suffering of people who are seriously ill or enduring difficult and painful therapies is an opportunity we must not ignore.

“For these reasons, I have long supported efforts in Congress to advocate federal policies that recognize the scientific evidence and clinical research demonstrating the medical benefits of medicinal marijuana, that respects the wishes of the states in providing relief to ill individuals, and that prevents the federal government from acting to harm the safe access of medicinal marijuana provided under state law. I will continue to strongly support those efforts.”

“We applaud Pelosi’s leadership in urging President Obama to address medical marijuana as a public health issue,” Americans for Safe Access Executive Director Steph Sherer said in a news release today. “Rather than defending a policy of intolerance, President Obama should end his unnecessary and harmful attacks once and for all.”

The Alameda County Democratic Party unanimously adopted a resolution yesterday “decrying the federal raids on dispensaries and calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to refrain from future expenditure of public resources on any act that contradicts the will of the California voters regarding medical marijuana.” The San Francisco Democratic Party passed a similar resolution last week, and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement earlier last month.

Medical marijuana activists say the Obama Administration has stepped up federal crackdowns on California’s medical marijuana cooperatives and providers; in one of the latest actions, federal agents last month raided Oakland’s Oaksterdam University and the home of its founder, legalization advocate Richard Lee.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, President Obama noted medical marijuana users aren’t being targeted:

“Here’s what’s up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law. I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, ‘Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books.’ What I can say is, ‘Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.’ As a consequence, there haven’t been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.

“The only tension that’s come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we’re telling them, ‘This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.’ That’s not something we’re going to do. I do think it’s important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we’ve done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We’ve had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that’s an appropriate debate that we should have.”

California medical marijuana’s situation again still seems stuck in neutral as a regulatory bill advances even while an Oakland institution prepares to announce its fate.

The Assembly Public Safety Committee voted 4-2 on Tuesday to pass AB 2312 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, which would create the first statewide regulatory framework for the medical marijuana industry. The bill now goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

“Only by regulating medical cannabis will California be able to regain control and ensure safe access for patients,” Ammiano said in a news release. “Effective regulation benefits everyone – patients, providers, doctors and law enforcement. Passing AB 2312 is an opportunity for the Legislature to defend Prop. 215 by regulating and controlling an industry that has the clear support of the people of California.”

AB 2312 would create a nine-member Board of Medical Marijuana Enforcement with the Department of Consumer Affairs to enact and enforce regulations on growing, processing, manufacturing, testing, transporting, distributing and selling marijuana and marijuana products for medical purposes; the board. It also would authorize local taxes on medical cannabis up to 2.5 percent.

Don Duncan, California director of Americans for Safe Access, said police, lawmakers and patients “want clarity about what is legal under state law. AB 2312 answers their questions and provides a path towards the sensible, well-regulated medical marijuana program the voters wanted when they approved Proposition 215.”

Yet even if the Legislature passes this bill (where others, including earlier ones by Ammiano, have failed), it would put California further at odds with federal law’s total ban on marijuana.

Federal agents raided Oaksterdam University a few weeks ago, casting doubt upon the future of this and other marijuana-related businesses founded and owned by Richard Lee, who largely bankrolled an unsuccessful 2010 ballot measure to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

Lee will hold news conferences tomorrow – live at the school at 11 a.m., and then a national press call at 1 p.m. – to discuss his plans and the fate of his businesses.
Besides Lee, those scheduled to speak include former state Sen. John Vasconcellos, who helped draft the state’s current regulations; Americans for Safe Access Executive Director Steph Sherer; United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 International Vice President Ron Lind; and representatives from local elected officials’ offices.

It’s a run-up to a national day of action this Friday, April 20, which will include an 11:30 a.m. protest outside the federal building on Oakland’s Clay Street.

A former South Bay lawmaker who authored the state’s medical marijuana framework says state officials have misunderstood, or perhaps twisted for their own ends, a crucial section of that law dealing with whether dispensaries can operate on a for-profit basis.

It’s been the state’s contention for years that for-profit dispensaries aren’t allowed. But former state Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, issued an open letter earlier his month saying that’s not at all what his SB 420 of 2003 said. Here’s the operative part of that letter:

It was certainly true that one side wanted to outlaw any profit-making, while the other side did not and would not. So right there and then – in order not to lose our coherence as a working team hoping for a broadly supported result and to hold our coalition together – we took the openly deliberated, fully appreciated compromise way out: We catered to neither side on this issue. Instead the Task Force crafted the language that appears in Health and Safety Code section 1 1362.765(a) as follows: “…. nor shall anything in this section authorize any individual or group to cultivate or distribute marijuana for profit.”

It was so carefully crafted that neither side could claim victory. In effect that issue was entirely left to whatever otherwise is the status of that issue in California law.

Although certain members of our Task Force did advocate for a prohibition on profit-making, that position was firmly rejected by the Task Force in favor of the above compromise language.

The language we fashioned means nothing more – nor less – than what it explicitly says. Nothing in that section prohibits profit. Nothing in that section explicitly authorizes profit, either. But I must point out that nobody is required to obtain an “authorization” from the Legislature to make a profit in California.

In fact, it would have been utterly incongruous for us constituting that A.G.’s Task Force, to have come up with such a ban on profit, which could not readily be interpreted or found to be explicitly or implicitly in support of implementing Proposition 215′s intention to allow patients to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes.

In short, the language in question, which was painstakingly crafted as a result of careful give-and- take from all sides, simply restates a self-evident fact about what is not in that section, but the language does not in any respect purport to prohibit profit – if that had been the intent, the language would have so stated clearly. It obviously does no such thing.

This made my head hurt a little, so I called Oakland attorney Robert Raich, who has argued a medical marijuana case to the U.S. Supreme Court and was part of the task force that drafted SB 420. He broke it down for me: This language was a sop to the cops.

“We needed to throw a bone to them to make them happy so they wouldn’t completely oppose it and walk away from the table altogether,” he said. “But you don’t really need authorization from the Legislature to make a profit. … The fact that it says it doesn’t authorize profit doesn’t mean it prohibits it.”

Raich said he explained it to one of his Oaksterdam University students thusly: The student can say he doesn’t authorize his girlfriend to use his car, and if the girlfriend then drives it, she has run afoul of his lack of authorization. But if the student says he doesn’t authorize Raich to drive Raich’s car, there’s no real effect because the student never had authority over Raich’s car to begin with.

Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office declined to comment on Vasconcellos’ letter.

But, having covered California’s medical marijuana policy since 1997, I’m guessing the state isn’t impressed. I think its lawyers would note all marijuana cultivation and distribution was illegal before voters approved certain narrow exceptions in Proposition 215 of 1996, the Compassionate Use Act; that ballot measure certainly didn’t create a right to profitable sales. Vasconcellos’ 2003 law also didn’t alter that status quo: The section dealing with collective/cooperative cultivation is silent on it, and the section Vasconcellos cites, dealing with primary caregivers, made it clear the Legislature wasn’t authorizing such sales.

So I’d be willing to bet that if someone presents Vasconcellos’ letter in court, the state would argue that such a radical departure from existing law isn’t something the Legislature would have left to implication or conjecture. But I also think the state would argue that Vasconcellos’ letter doesn’t fit within the rules that courts use for determining legislative history and intent, and so is moot anyway.

An Oakland-based medical marijuana advocacy group filed a federal appeals court brief today asking that the government be forced to reclassify the drug for medical use.

The Drug Enforcement Administration last July denied a petition filed in 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, and only after the coalition sued the government for unreasonable delay. Americans for Safe Access, which was part of that coalition, appealed the rescheduling denial today.

“For the first time in more than 15 years we will be able to present evidence in court to challenge the government’s flawed position on medical marijuana,” ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford said in a news release. “By ignoring the wealth of scientific evidence that clearly shows the therapeutic value of marijuana, the Obama Administration is playing politics at the expense of sick and dying Americans.”

Marijuana remains on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which lists drugs deemed to have a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety under medical supervision.

California became the first state to legalize medicinal use of marijuana with its Proposition 215 of 1996, but federal law still bans all cultivation, possession and use – a conflict that has led to many prosecutions and countless political headaches ever since. Medicinal use is now legal in 16 states plus the District of Columbia, and the governors of Washington and Rhode Island in November petitioned the federal government to reschedule the drug so that their states can implement their medical marijuana laws without conflict.

Although two other rescheduling petitions have been filed since the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, marijuana’s medical efficacy was reviewed only once by the courts, in 1994.

The ASA appeal brief argues that the federal government acted arbitrarily and capriciously in its efforts to deny marijuana to millions of patients throughout the United States, and that the DEA has no “license to apply different criteria to marijuana than to other drugs, ignore critical scientific data, misrepresent social science research, or rely upon unsubstantiated assumptions, as the DEA has done in this case.”

ASA urges the court to “require the DEA to analyze the scientific data evenhandedly,” and order “a hearing and findings based on the scientific record.”

That record, the group says, includes studies conducted in the past decade that showing medical benefits of marijuana for illnesses such as neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s, and perhaps even in inhibiting growth of cancer cells. The National Cancer Institute, a division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, last year added cannabis to its list of Complementary Alternative Medicines. And the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians both have urged the federal government to review marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance.

The governors of Washington and Rhode Island announced today they’ve petitioned the federal government to move marijuana off its list of most-restricted drugs so that their states can implement their medical marijuana laws without conflict.

Sounds like good news for drug-reform advocates, right? Not exactly. Some of the nation’s most prominent drug reformers agree with the governors’ request, but not their motivation for making it; others caution there’s still much more to be done.

Rhode Island has a medical-marijuana law on the books since 2006 but Gov. Lincoln Chafee has balked at implementing a planned system of dispensaries. Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire earlier this year vetoed parts of her state’s medical marijuana bill dealing with establishment of dispensaries. Both governors cited federal prosecutors’ threats.

Drug Policy Alliance founder and executive director Ethan Nadelmann said the governors should be asserting their states’ rights and implementing their laws, not using federal law’s ban as a reason to punt.

“The governors’ call for re-scheduling marijuana so that it can be prescribed for medical purposes is an important step forward in challenging the federal government’s intransigence in this area,” he said. “But their call should not serve as an excuse for these two governors to fail to move forward on responsible regulation of medical marijuana in their own states. Governors in states ranging from New Jersey and Vermont to Colorado and New Mexico have not allowed the federal government’s ban on medical marijuana to prevent them from approving and implementing statewide regulation of medical marijuana. Governors Gregoire and Chafee should do likewise.”

Steph Sherer, executive director of the Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access, was somewhat more satisfied, “strongly applauding” the governors’ move.

“We look forward to a time when patients do not have to live in fear,” she said, but she also encouraged both governors to go ahead with medical marijuana production and distribution programs in the meantime.

Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia agreed the two governors’ request is “a good first step, in that it shows that politicians are catching up with the scientific consensus, which is that marijuana has medical value.”

“Rescheduling marijuana, however, will not change the federal penalties for possessing, cultivating, or distributing medical marijuana. That is the change we really need,” Kampia said. “These governors should be insisting that the federal government allow them to run their medical marijuana operations the ways they see fit, which in these cases includes allowing regulated distribution centers to provide patients with safe access to their medicine and not force them to turn to illicit dealers.”

Only Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), issued a statement of unmitigated support – unmitigated even by adequate punctuation, creating the most awesome run-on sentence I’ve seen recently:

(T)o finally witness governors so frustrated with the absurdly mis-scheduled cannabis plant as being dangerous, addictive and possessing no medical utility (wrongly grouped with heroin and LSD) that they are reaching out to the president to fix this clear injustice and warping of science is a clear demonstration that the friction between the federal government’s recalcitrance on accepting medical cannabis (or for that matter ending Cannabis Prohibition in total) and state politicians who can no longer justify towing the fed’s ridiculous ban on physician-prescribed cannabis to sick, dying and sense-threatened medical patients is coming to a dramatic conclusion in a government showdown, one that may bode well for the larger Cannabis Prohibition reforms needed, festering just below the surface of the public’s mass acceptance of medical access to cannabis.

I ran out of breath just reading that.