It's usually a good idea to make everyone pay up front:

Health Canada is getting tough with patients who use government-certified medical marijuana, demanding full payment in advance before shipping the weed.

The move, effective Nov. 30, is designed to halt the rising number of accounts in arrears -- and force more patients to pay off old debts that now total more than $1.2 million. [CTV Toronto]

I can't help but find the whole thing rather amusing, but the Canadian government is probably really pissed off about all this. They didn’t even want to have a federal medical marijuana program, but the courts forced them to do it. Now they're getting back at everyone by growing some of the worst cannabis in Canada:

The marijuana, which has received poor reviews from many users for being harsh and ineffective, has a THC content of about 12.5 per cent.

Actually, 12.5% isn't all that bad, but everyone says it's super-gross, which it probably is if you compare it to what the rest of the country is enjoying. Regardless, if I were a seriously ill patient in desperate need of medical marijuana, I'd rather be using Health Canada's product than the famously awful schwag that's grown by the U.S. government.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) has introduced legislation calling for a thorough evaluation of the U.S. criminal justice system, namely for the purpose of exploring ways to reduce our world-record prison population. As you might guess, simply discussing whether we should keep millions of American behind bars is enough to terrify the drug war's most committed champions.

They can’t handle the tough questions, so they're trying to make it illegal to even ask. Drug war hall-of-famer Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) today introduced an amendment to Webb's bill that would literally prohibit the commission from talking about legalization or even decriminalization:

AMENDMENT intended to be proposed by Mr. GRASSLEY
….
SEC. ll. RESTRICTIONS ON AUTHORITY.
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.

These words are a legal blueprint for silencing all criticism of the war on drugs before the experts even get a chance to discuss it. The whole thing flagrantly violates the spirit of the entire inquiry and renders meaningless everything Webb is trying to do. And yes, that's exactly the point.

No one has done more than Charles Grassley to make the drug war into the horrible mess that it's become, so you can bet he'll do anything to protect his shameful legacy. If he succeeds, the bill will almost certainly end up protecting bad policies instead of exposing them. We can’t let that happen. Click here to tell your Senators to oppose this misguided amendment and let the experts do their job without political interference.

A serious evaluation of criminal justice and drug policies is long overdue and that effort means nothing unless all options are debated openly.

When it comes to reforming marijuana laws, one of our greatest remaining obstacles is the fact that many people just can’t picture what a sensible marijuana policy would look like. The reformer's utopian view of a regulated marijuana economy operates in stark contrast to the pungent smoldering apocalypse that exists in the nightmares of our opposition. It's like we're not even speaking the same language.

So I'd like to share a vision of what is possible when cannabis is provided by responsible people:



It's a triumphant statement that cannabis, like other valued commodities, can be handled with accountability to the consumer and the public. So much of the ugliness that clouds this issue (drug gangs, violence, environmental harm) is just a symptom of our failure to let the best people supervise it. Through regulation, we encourage responsible business practices and create an environment in which providers will constantly strive to maintain a healthy relationship with their community.

The time has come for opponents of legalization to stop obstructing reform and start actively participating in it. Once it's understood that marijuana laws are changing, we must all begin working together to develop a system that addresses as many different concerns as possible. Instead of trying to block any form of legalization, skeptics should be thinking about what distribution model they'd be most comfortable with. The excellent example depicted above can be replicated elsewhere, but only if everyone works together instead of fighting it out to the bitter end.

This is what real drug control looks like and there's nothing here for anyone to be afraid of.

The British Labor government has created a firestorm of controversy with its firing of Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) last Friday. Nutt was canned by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after the psychopharmacologist again went public with his criticism of the government for refusing to follow a science- and evidence-based drug policy.

As of today, after a weekend of furious back and forth in dozens of newspaper articles, two more members of the ACMD have resigned in protest over the firing, and a mass resignation of the 31-member body may come after a meeting next Monday. Johnson told parliament Monday that he had agreed to a request from the ACMD for an urgent meeting, but he also told parliament he had ordered a review of the ACMD to satisfy ministers that the panel is "discharging its functions" and that it still represents a value to the public.

The ACMD's charge is to "make recommendations to government on the control of dangerous or otherwise harmful drugs, including classification and scheduling under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and its regulations," its web page explains. "It considers any substance which is being or appears to be misused and of which is having or appears to be capable of having harmful effects sufficient to cause a social problem. It also carries out in-depth inquiries into aspects of drug use that are causing particular concern in the UK, with the aim of producing considered reports that will be helpful to policy makers and practitioners."

Tensions between the ACMD and the Labor government began rising after the government up-scheduled marijuana from a Class C drug (least harmful) back to Class B, where it had been prior to being down-scheduled in 2004. The Labor government ignored the ACMD's recommendation that marijuana remain Class C. Things only got worse when the ACMD recommended that Ecstasy be down-scheduled from Class A (most harmful) to Class B, and the government promptly ignored that advice.

At that point, Nutt went public with his criticisms of then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. He also famously compared the dangers of Ecstasy to those of horse-riding, deeply offending both the horsey set and the Labor government. Smith told Nutt to shut up, and he managed to do so until last week.

Last week, in a lecture and briefing paper at the Center for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London, Nutt accused Smith of "distorting and devaluing" scientific evidence when she decided to reclassify marijuana. He also said that Ecstasy and LSD are less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.

"We have to accept young people like to experiment – with drugs and other potentially harmful activities – and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives," he said. "We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong.”

Nutt's briefing paper included a ranking of various licit and illicit drugs by comparative harm. Heroin and cocaine were ranked the most harmful in Nutt's scheme, with alcohol fifth, marijuana ninth, LSD fourteenth, and Ecstasy eighteenth.

"We need a full and open discussion of the evidence and a mature debate about what the drug laws are for — and whether they are doing their job," Nutt said.

That was too much for Home Minister Alan Johnson. He told parliament Monday that Smith had warned Nutt not to publicly disagree with ministry decisions again. "Well, it has happened again," said Johnson. "On Thursday October 29 Professor Nutt chose, without prior notification to my department, to initiate a debate on drug policy in the national media, returning to the February decisions, and accusing my predecessor or distorting and devaluing scientific research. As a result, I have lost confidence in Professor Nutt's ability to be my principal adviser on drugs."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is standing behind Johnson. An official spokesman said the firing was based on the "important principle" that advisers should present advice to ministers but not speak out against their policy decisions. "It would be regrettable if there were other resignations, but this is an important point of principle," the spokesman added. "The government is absolutely committed to the importance of having independent advice and evidence presented by advisory bodies."

Nutt defended himself and attacked the government in a London Sunday times opinion piece. "My sacking has cast a huge shadow over the relationship of science to policy," he wrote. "Several of the science experts from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) have resigned in protest and it seems likely that many others will follow suit. This means the Home Office no longer has a functioning advisory group, which is very unfortunate given the ever-increasing problems of drugs and the emergence of new ones. Also it seems unlikely that any 'true' scientist — one who can only speak the truth — will be able to work for this, or future, Home Secretaries.

One of the ACMD members who resigned, chemist Les King, said ministers were putting inappropriate pressure on scientists to make drug policy decisions based on political—not scientific—reasons. "It's being asked to rubber stamp a predetermined position," he said, warning that others could leave the council over the brouhaha. "If sufficient members do resign, the committee will no longer be able to operate," King said.

Scientist and Labor MP Robert Winston said Nutt had a "very reasonable" point about the relative dangers of legal and illegal drugs, and that he was disappointed by the firing. "I think that if governments appoint expert advice they shouldn't dismiss it so lightly," he said. "I think it shows a rather poor understanding of the value of science."

Reuters reported Saturday that the firing is causing consternation in scientific circles. Scientists told the news agency the decision could undermine the integrity of science in policy-making, including critical areas like health, the environment, education, and defense.

"Scientific data and their independent interpretation underpin evidence-based policy making -- and nobody rational could possibly want a government based on any other type of policy making," said Chris Higgins, chair of an advisory committee on spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow" disease.

Maurice Elphick, a professor of animal physiology and neuroscience at Queen Mary, University of London, said politicians should look elsewhere if they wanted data to back social policies and allow science to maintain objectivity. "If, however, politicians really do want to have an objective assessment of the relative risks to health of different recreational drugs, then they should listen to what the medical scientist has to say, not sack him." he said.

The Labor government has picked a fight with science. It's unclear how this will all play out, but Labor doesn't seem to be doing itself any favors so far.

The debate over legalization is heating up in California, and from the looks of things, the two sides aren’t even speaking the same language. Here's Judge James Gray speaking from experience about the advantages of regulating marijuana:



And here's the best response the opposition could put together:



Stay tuned, folks. There will be plenty more stupid crap where that came from, I assure you. But if those tired old clichés were worth anything anymore, legalization wouldn’t be on the tip of every tongue in California and beyond.

This conversation is an inherent victory for us, while our opposition's response is just another embarrassment for them.

You know that border fence we've spent billions of dollars building? Yeah, it's not really helping so much:

SAN MIGUEL, Ariz. — A pickup truck in Mexico pulls up to the 5-foot vehicle barriers that make up part of the multibillion-dollar border fence. A retractable ramp is extended from the truck, forming a bridge up and over the barriers.

Then, a second pickup — this one loaded with a ton of marijuana — rolls over the bridge and into the U.S.

With gadgetry such as custom-built ramps as well as ultralight planes, false doors and good old-fashioned duct tape, smugglers have demonstrated unbounded creativity when it comes to sneaking drugs across the Mexican border. And the U.S. government acknowledges there is only so much it can do to stop the flow. [AP]

Unfortunately, our brave drug soldiers are convinced that expensive and futile interdiction efforts are better than nothing:

"We have to keep it at a manageable level so society can continue to operate," said Elizabeth Kempshall, agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's office in Arizona.

They're literally insisting that society will collapse if they don't keep doing this. It's awfully silly when you consider that almost all the drugs are already getting through anyway. If that stuff were going to destroy our society, it would have happened already.

But don't bother trying to explain that to the drug warriors, because they're too busy thinking of new ways to waste money in an attempt to "win" something:

"This is a war of technology, and I believe that the only way we are going to win it is if our technology is better than theirs," said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.

The fact that our approach to substance abuse has evolved into a "war of technology" is just ridiculous. We'll never get anywhere with this nonsense no matter how many times we double down on our investment. It's plainly absurd to suggest that we can outspend our opponents when the game makes them obscenely rich while costing us billions.

It's like arguing that the secret to winning with scratch-off tickets is to constantly buy more and more of them.

The Washington Post has a disturbing piece that ought to broaden recent discussion of the conflict between the drug war and legitimate medical treatments. The DEA is taking legal medicines away from elderly people who need them:

Heightened efforts by the Drug Enforcement Administration to crack down on narcotics abuse are producing a troubling side effect by denying some hospice and elderly patients needed pain medication, according to two Senate Democrats and a coalition of pharmacists and geriatric experts.
…
Terence McCormally, a doctor who cares for patients in nursing homes in Northern Virginia, said the tug of war reflects "the tension between the war on drugs and the war on pain."

"For the doctor and the nurse, it's a nuisance," he said, "but for the patient it is needless suffering."

Our efforts to control the lives of people who take drugs for fun have led us to destroy the lives of people who take drugs for serious medical conditions. The harsh reality here is that the best medicines often become popular with people they weren't intended for. That's going to happen no matter what you do. But if every effective pain reliever is overly restricted, then the medicine's primary purpose of relieving pain can never be achieved.

The drug war has gone blind even to the most basic functions that drugs are supposed to serve in our society. As efforts to prevent diversion and recreational use continue their inevitable failure, we face a very real threat that desperate drug war bureaucrats will legislate many of our best medicines out of existence.

Wednesday was a historic day at the California state capitol. For the first time since the state banned marijuana in 1913, marijuana legalization was the topic of a hearing in the state legislature. The hearing was organized by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), head of the Assembly's Public Safety Committee, to discuss his marijuana legalization bill, AB 390.

For three hours, proponents and opponents of reform clashed before an overflowing hearing room--the hearing was so popular capitol employees had to add a monitor in the hallway for those who couldn't get into the session. Both supporters and foes of legalization were well represented, and they mostly followed their predictable scripts. To this observer, law enforcement's dire warnings and objections sounded increasingly threadbare and shopworn and the arguments of legalizers especially compelling, but then, I agree with the legalizers.

I think what is important about Wednesday's hearing is not so much what was said--we've heard it all before, on both sides--as where it was said and in what context. Just a few days ago, they were talking legalization at the statehouse in Boston; now, they're doing it at the statehouse in Sacramento. Nobody expects the California bill to pass this year, but the fact that legalization is finally getting a serious hearing is a sign of progress.

I'll be reporting on the hearing and the preceding press conference in more detail later this week for the Drug War Chronicle. Check out the article on Friday.

A very unique new marijuana blog is just starting to get noticed on the web and I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to check it out in case it disappears (which I predict could take place soon, unfortunately). It's called Marijuana in the News and there is seriously nothing else like it anywhere on the web.

What makes Marijuana in the News so special? The author bitterly detests marijuana.  The whole thing is a rambling hatefest against reform, literally the precise opposite of what you'll find here. I predict it will become semi-popular, but only among marijuana reform activists who take sadistic pleasure in pissing themselves off.

So go pay 'em a visit, enjoy yourself, and feel free to drop the author a friendly note in the comment section, cause it's looking pretty lonely in there. Be nice though, because reform is all about making the world a happier place where people hug and hold hands instead of arguing on the internet. Love thy neighbor, I say, even if thy neighbor wants to arrest people with AIDS.

Whenever matters of marijuana policy make their way into the national spotlight, you can count on coming across some really ridiculous analysis from folks who haven’t exactly been paying attention. There are many ways to misunderstand the marijuana debate, my favorite of which might be the theory that -- even though it's all over the news -- it's actually part of a secret conspiracy.

Here, we have the editorial board of The Washington Post speculating that Obama's recent medical marijuana announcement could be part of a plan to legalize marijuana without anyone noticing:

Yet this policy shift leaves significant questions unaddressed, including whether the Justice Department's decision essentially constitutes a first step toward legalizing marijuana. Such an immense policy decision should not be ushered in surreptitiously, but should be tackled head-on, with a full-throated public debate about the possible benefits and consequences.

This is just completely delusional on multiple levels:

1. The administration leaked the story to the AP on a Sunday night, which is the opposite of secretive. That's what you do when you want a week's worth of intensive media coverage.
2. Telling the DEA not to arrest sick people is a far cry from supporting legalization for everyone. It's very possible – and very common – for people to support the former and not the latter. For example…
3. The Obama Administration is opposed to legalization. They've said so before and after last week's medical marijuana announcement. That question is not "unaddressed" even remotely.
4. There's a "full-throated public debate" about marijuana legalization going on right now. And The Washington Post has been participating in it with numerous recent stories and editorials. You want us to send more op-eds?

I can't even begin to fathom how The Post came up with this craziness, but if they want more debate, I'm ready to rock. I'll show up at your office tomorrow morning with 15 awesome ideas for marijuana stories that I guarantee you The New York Times hasn’t thought of yet. And I ask for nothing in return, except some acknowledgement that marijuana legalization is not a secret conspiracy, but rather a defining issue at this moment in American politics.

Update: Pete Guither has more.

Wow, just watch this video of former drug czar Barry McCaffrey denying that a federal war on medical marijuana ever took place:



Literally every word that leaves McCaffrey's mouth throughout the segment is wildly and demonstrably false as illustrated here by Cato's Tim Lynch. Such staggering dishonesty from a former drug czar shouldn’t surprise me, I know, but there's something about the intensity and specificity of McCaffery's claims that just chills the blood. I feel like he crossed a line here, in that even drug czars typically attempt to cloak their fabrications within some sort of contrived fact-like narrative.

Really though, what we're seeing here is the emergence of an interesting and increasingly common phenomenon: the once proud drug war cheerleader who now has no recollection of any drug war ever taking place. The closer we get to finally banishing this colossal mess into the bowels of history where it belongs, the harder it will be to find anyone who admits having been involved in any of it.

The federal war on medical marijuana was McCaffrey's legacy, so it's perfectly fitting that he would come unhinged after a week of listening to the whole country celebrate its collapse. As galling as his denials may feel to those who've born the brunt of this brutal crusade, we could instead interpret this bizarre behavior as a tacit acknowledgment that what he did was wrong. It's probably the best we're ever going to get.

It all started last winter when, after decades of spoon-feeding the American public an infinite litany of anti-pot propaganda pieces, the press rather spontaneously discovered that it's better for business to talk about legalization instead. In an industry that was virtually devoid of voices for reform just a couple years ago, one can now scarcely find a prominent political pundit with anything nice to say about our marijuana laws.

This segment from This Week with George Stephanopoulos might be the best example yet:



Here, let's try to paraphrase that:

George Will: Legalizing marijuana will destroy the drug cartels.
John Podesta: It'll be legal once everyone figures out it can pay for health care.
Laura Ingram: Cancer patients, botox, whatever. Gimme some brownies!
Al Hunt: Now that my kids are all grown-up, I suppose I'm cool with it.
Cynthia Tucker: Really, we need to rethink all our drug laws, not just marijuana.

That's about as solid a bipartisan consensus as you'll ever see on a Sunday talk show, and you've gotta wonder how much longer the war on marijuana can survive in a political climate like this.

San Diego's ASA chapter protested outside the California Narcotics Officers Association awards ceremony this week. As well they should -- CNOA is a statewide drug police union that has a nasty habit of publishing some of the most warped propaganda about the drug war I've seen.

Larger copies of the protest photos, and more of them, online here.

Heroin maintenance is coming to Denmark. And it's about time -- how about here too? The evidence is in, and it's only ideology that stands in the way of saving lives that now are being needlessly lost.

In the meanwhile, watch the video from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and the Danish Street Lawyers about the new program:

The Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, a bill named after a well-known Wisconsin medical marijuana patient and activist, was mentioned here last week. Check out another article about from two days ago in the Express Milwaukee newspaper, Medical Marijuana Advocates Won't Wait.

Good article -- and good title, why should they have to wait?

Charles Lane at The Washington Post stepped in it big time yesterday with an awful piece that literally had to be edited after publication for shocking insensitivity. Now he's returned with another, falling back on the desperate argument that medical marijuana is a Trojan Horse for recreational legalization.

Listen, medical marijuana isn't a trick and it's pathetic to pretend that the people trying to legalize marijuana are behaving surreptitiously when we've been screaming "legalize marijuana" at the top of our lungs for a damn long time now. You can't blame us for the fact that the medical marijuana debate necessarily serves to illustrate so much about the absurdity of marijuana prohibition as a whole. Nor does it in any way undermine our credibility when we place the interests of seriously ill patients before those of casual users when setting our political priorities.

Critics of medical marijuana advocacy often accuse us of demanding unusual regulatory exceptions for marijuana, complaining that it hasn’t been approved by the FDA and that the whole concept of medicine by referendum is absurd, as though there exists any other path for us to take. It really shouldn’t be necessary to explain all the ways in which endemic and entrenched anti-pot prejudice across numerous government agencies renders preposterous any notion that we could just play this out by the usual rules. We've been trying that for decades now and we get cheated at every turn, so you can save your appeals to procedure.

Marijuana can't be treated like other medicines, because it's nothing like them. It was here first and it's vastly cheaper, safer, and more versatile than its modern pharmaceutical counterparts. It's a bush that just grows out of the ground and what we want is for the government to stop arresting people who've found ways to use it. There's nothing even the least bit complicated or disingenuous about that.

Those who now lament the cascading political momentum of medical marijuana as some sort of grand conspiracy have it exactly backwards. Marijuana was prohibited through a vicious series of outrageous lies and perversions of science. We all know the history of racism, demagoguery, and blind hysteria that somehow turned a helpful plant into a scary satanic deathbush. From the very beginning, there has never been a time when any of this made sense. To now stand proudly atop the pedestal of prohibition while questioning our credibility and our motives is just insane.

Yes, there is a massive lie at the center of this debate, but we're not the ones telling it. The drug war itself is the true Trojan Horse that masquerades as a symbol of health and safety, while harboring destruction within its folds.

In honor of this week's big medical marijuana news, the geniuses at The Daily Show have compiled some of their funniest segments on the drug war. Check it out.

by Bernd Debussman Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,800 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

Friday , October 16

In Michoacan, three bodies were found , all with messages attached. The messages were directed at the Zetas organization, and appear to have been from La Familia. La Familia was once part of the Zetas organization, but the two groups have been fierce rivals since the group split from the Gulf Cartel (and the Zetas) in 2006. In other parts of Mexico, two men were assassinated in Tijuana, and a boy who was jogging was killed after being caught in a firefight between gunmen and the army in Tamaulipas. Five people were murdered in Culiacan, Sinaloa, three in Hermosillo, Sonora, one in Durango, and six in the Ciudad Juarez area.

Saturday , October 17

In Tijuana, the nude, mutilated body of a man was found hanging from an expressway overpass. It is the second such discovery found in the last two weeks. Local news outlets reported that the man’s tongue had been cut out, which suggests that drug traffickers suspected he was an informant. Additionally, a gun battle between police and drug traffickers left one police officer dead and two wounded. A suspected cartel member was also killed in the incident. Police recovered five assault rifles and vests with federal insignia from several vehicles used by the gunmen. The day before, the the decapitated body of a woman whose hands and feet had been bound were found in a different part of the city.

Monday , October 19

Two people were killed after being ambushed by a group of heavily armed gunmen in Guerrero. One of the dead was a policeman, and the other was a civilian who was riding a bus that was caught in the crossfire. Additionally, five bodies showing signs of torture were recovered from various parts of Acapulco. Attached to each of them were notes threatening “kidnappers, thieves and traitors” and signed by Arturo Beltran-Leyva, the boss of the Beltran-Leyva cartel. 18 people were killed in drug-related killings in Ciudad Juarez. At least 21 other drug-related homicides were reported in Mexico, including nine beheaded bodies found in Tierra Caliente.

Tuesday , October 20

In Guerrero, at least three banners were found which threatened police and Genaro Garcia Luna, the Secretary of Public Safety. The signs were signed by what appears to be a new, Guerrero branch of the “La Familia” cartel which is based in Michoacan. The signs also accused Garcia Luna of protecting the Beltran-Leyva cartel and the allied Zetas organization. In another part of Guerrero, the body of a bus driver was found by the side of the road, and showed signs of torture. A second body was found near Acapulco.

Near the city of Ciudad Mante, police arrested a man who had 107 kilos of marijuana in a hidden compartment of his pick-up truck.

Wednesday , October 21

A suspected member of the Juarez Cartel was added to the FBI’s ten most wanted list. Eduardo "Tablas" Ravelo, 41, is allegedly a high-ranking member of the Barrio Azteca gang. In exchange for a steady supply of narcotics, Barrio Azteca performs enforcement tasks for the cartel on both sides of the border, and can effectively be considered part of the Juarez cartel which operates on American soil. Ravelo is suspected of ordering the killing of another high-ranking gang member, David "Chicho" Meraz, during an internal power struggle. Meraz was killed in Ciudad Juarez last year. Ravelo is reportedly hiding in Juarez under the protection of the cartel.
Earlier in the week, another man with suspected cartel connections was also added to the FBI’s ten most wanted list. Jose Luis Saenz, of Los Angeles, is suspected of killing at least four people (including his girlfriend) and is allegedly an enforcer for an unnamed Mexican drug trafficking organization. In October 2008 he shot and killed another gang member in LA County who apparently owed $620,000 to the cartel.

Across Mexico, 40 drug-related homicides were reported in a 24-hour period, bringing the 2009 total to over 6,000. Thirteen of these were in Chihuahua, and of these, nine were in Ciudad Juarez. According to a running tally by El Universal, 1,000 people were killed in drug-related violence in Mexico in the last 40 days. The previous 1,000 had been killed over 41 days, and the 1,000 before that in 44 days. Since August 1st, an average of 24 homicides were reported daily, approximately one every hour. One out of every three drug-related homicides was in Ciudad Juarez. Much of the violence is due to the conflict being fought by the Sinaloa Federation and the Juarez cartel over control of the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso drug trafficking corridor.

Total body count for the week: 113
Total body count for the year: 5,928

Read the last Mexico Drug War Update here.

It's awfully hard to find anyone complaining about this week's big medical marijuana news, but the editorial board at the Christian Science Monitor has done an admirable job of summing up the case against medical marijuana in all its bitter incoherence:

The federal government has limited resources to fight drugs, and funds should not be wasted on prosecuting users and providers of medical marijuana who comply with state laws, the Obama administration said this week.

While this argument may indeed seem a sensible prioritizing of federal effort and dollars, the White House and the public should realize it comes with a cost.

That cost is Washington's tacit approval of state-sanctioned medical marijuana, which the drug's proponents will take as a green light to push even harder for their ultimate goal: full legalization of marijuana use and distribution.

That, right there, is everything you'll ever need to know about why anyone still opposes medical marijuana. It is not any more or less complicated than the fact that they're afraid of legalization and they won’t hesitate to throw seriously ill patients under the bus if they think it will curb our momentum. It's a motivation so selfish and shameful, we've rarely seen it acknowledged and its emergence now is really a remarkable testament to the vacancy of credible objections presently available to those seeking to undermine patient access.

What perfect irony that those who advocate arresting patients as a necessary means to prevent broader legalization would dare accuse us of exploiting the sick and dying for political ends.

Stossel just took a job over at FOX News and if that means we'll be seeing more of this, I'm all for it (the good stuff starts at 2:25):

All it takes is a few words from Stossel to send O'Reilly (who's been known to vaguely support medical marijuana) into a rambling tailspin about how legalizing medical marijuana causes heroin addicts to sell it to children. Yeah, that's pretty much what we've learned to expect from him, but as much as O'Reilly makes me sick, I think he epitomizes the sort of pure drug war lunacy that's done so much to alienate the public.

Apparently, the producers at FOX see it too, which would help to explain why they've brought Stossel in on the conversation.