I am intellectually satisfied that marijuana has a wide range of medical values. [...] Therefore I believe marijuana should be available to patients who need it. So how do I understand what is happening in California? [...] There is a large experiment underway in California yet there probably is no consensus on what the experiment actually is about. Is it an experiment in medical marijuana? Or is it an experiment as Joel Stein says, in legalized marijuana for adults over 18. Certainly it will be hard to evaluate because the experiment is not being controlled or designed. There are important questions: What is the actual role of the physicians who are issuing the recommendations? Are they facilitating the proper treatment of serious medical conditions that have been resistant to conventional medical treatment? Are they serving to block improper juvenile use of marijuana? Does their "gatekeeper" role help mitigate the abuse of marijuana? It is time to ask the academic world to step forward to begin to seriously evaluate this experiment.

Is this a reaction to the beginning of the end of marijuana prohibition? (SALEM, Ore.) - A new federal government report on the ill effects of marijuana on teens may be a last ditch effort to demonize the medical weed before it sees its own day of emancipation. As it stands, even the most hardcore marijuana legalization advocates do not support children using anything that causes intoxication. This new report uses scare tactics and seems to regard medical facts as a meaningless burden...

1. Is the use of civil asset forfeiture, which has typically been reserved for the worst drug traffickers and kingpins, an appropriate tactic to employ against individuals who suffer from severe or chronic illness and are authorized to use medical marijuana under California law? [...] 2. Given the increased level of trafficking and violence associated with the international drug cartels across Mexico, South America and elsewhere, do you think the DEA's limited resources are best utilized conducting enforcement raids on individuals and their caregivers who are conducting themselves legally under California law? 3. Have you considered that DEA activities against qualified individuals is negatively impacting the ability of state and local officials across California to collect tax revenue, which they are entitled to under California law? 4. ... 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. [...] Finally, attached with this letter is a list of approximately 60 raids that the DEA conducted between June 2005 and November 2007. Please provide an accounting of the costs, dollars and resources, used to conduct law enforcement raids on the attached list of individuals. [...]

We already have 170,000 prisoners in California. We don't need more prison beds -- we need sentencing reform and better support in the community for recovering drug addicts, people with mental illness, and parolees.

Before me are 77 chairs and 77 diplomas, each representing a young person who was recently a student here at SDSU, but who is no longer with us. 2 of them were recently lost to tragic, yet preventable drug overdoses. And 75 of them were arrested as part of yesterday's reactionary drug sting. 77 students are gone from campus, but we must ask ourselves, has drug abuse left the campus as a result? Are students any safer from dying of an entirely preventable drug overdose? Sadly, the answer to both questions is "No."