Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I) signed marijuana decriminalization into law Tuesday. It goes into effect April 1, 2013. Chronicle story here.

For the second time in a year, Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles has denied a life-saving organ transplant to a patient solely because of his or her medical marijuana use. Chronicle story here.

On Thursday, Eric Holder lied to Congress about DOJ's escalating attacks against medical marijuana:

Mr. Holder said federal officials are not going after those who are staying within the confines of their states' medical marijuana laws, but said some have "come up with ways in which they are taking advantage of these state laws."

"We limit our enforcement efforts to those individuals, organizations that are acting out of conformity with state law," Mr. Holder told a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. [Washington Times]

That statement is simply false, and flagrantly so. It's been widely reported in the press that federal prosecutors have threatened to arrest state officials merely for administering their own medical marijuana laws. One cannot claim that regulators performing their official duties are "acting out of conformity with state law". They are the state. You can't threaten them with arrest and then subsequently claim that enforcement is only directed at those who violate local laws.

Moreover, the feds have raided hundreds of dispensaries without making any effort at all to determine whether state laws are being violated. Most of the time, they're just confiscating money and medicine without even charging anyone. They keep saying the people they raid were breaking local laws, but they aren't proving that to be the case. When have they ever demonstrated that any of these businesses were violating state laws?

This whole just-enforcing-state-laws excuse is the same nonsense we were hearing from the President a month ago, and the Obama Administration's ability to comfortably repeat this crap owes much to the media's total failure to follow up on it.

A trial over a big cocaine bust in Michigan ended up taking out a judge, a prosecutor, and a pair of cops as they constructed a conspiracy of lies to help win their case. Chronicle feature story here.

DrugWarFacts.org, a publication of Common Sense for Drug Policy, is an in-depth compilation of key facts, stats and quotes on the full range of drug policy issues, excerpted from expert publications on the subjects. The Chronicle is running a series of info items from DrugWarFacts.org over the next several weeks, and we encourage you to check it out. Chronicle article here.

According to Dr. Bronner's, David Bronner is going to be in jail overnight (ouch), and is being charged with disorderly conduct, blocking a public way, and attempted distribution of marijuana.

If distribution is the charge they bring, things may get interesting. The US federal government bans growing of hemp plants, despite their lack of the psychoactive ingredient THC. But it is legal to import the sterilized seeds and the oil, among other things. It's oil (on bread), ground from the plants on site, that David was providing to people. Can a distribution charge of a food substance that is sold legally right here in the US stand up? The right to sell such food substances was tested and secured, in large part through Dr. Bronner's supported efforts. Perhaps there's some issue with the absence of an opportunity for FDA oversight, but that doesn't sound like a drug distribution charge to me. Perhaps some knowledgeable attorneys can weigh in here.

In the meanwhile, here are six video clips we shot from our smart phones today, followed by a professional one by Robin Bell.

Also, updates will continue to be available from the Dr. Bronner's Twitter feed (and ours). And at VoteHemp for news on the Wyden-Paul Senate hemp amendment.

David explains the differences between marijuana and hemp:

A federal appeals court has thrown out a Job Corps worker drug testing program, saying the government had not provided any reason to grant an exception to the Fourth Amendment's ban on warrantless searches and seizures. Chronicle story here.

David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, which imports more than 20 tons of hemp oil each year from Canadian farmers, was arrested by members of the DC Metropolitan Police Department after committing an act of civil disobedience within sight of the White House early Monday morning. Chronicle story here.

France's Socialists don't want to legalize marijuana, but their likely coalition junior partners, the Greens, do. It's a start. Chronicle story here.

This week's exciting news that Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg are backing an effort to end New York City's mindless marijuana arrest crusade didn't exactly result in a round of applause at the FOX News studios. Here's Bill O'Reilly babbling about it.

O'Reilly says the cops "know who the wise guys are," and they're only bothering people who deserve it. That sounds reassuring, oh, except for the fact that NYPD has already searched more young black men than they even have in the entire city. So yeah, they might be catching some of these "wise guys" as O'Reilly so eloquently describes them, but only because they're also searching every other young black man in the city. There is no clever strategy behind it. They're just searching all the black dudes. Stop trying to make it sound sophisticated, Bill.

But the real problem with O'Reilly's logic, and it also highlights the irony of whole ridiculous situation, is that there's no component in this new marijuana decriminalization proposal that would actually require police to stop constantly racially profiling everyone they see. That's not even what this is. 

Simple possession is already decriminalized in New York. The measure in question would simply downgrade the more serious charge of "possession in public view" so that racial profiling victims would no longer be charged with the public display of marijuana as a result of police ordering them to empty their pockets. The policy of police racially profiling people and illegally searching them remains intact under this plan. You just get off the hook if any pot is found during the course of police committing misconduct against you.

I'm still in favor of the reform – anything that might stop all these pot busts is great – but it's insane that they're actually going so far as to legalize "public display" of marijuana simply because they can't stop the cops from yanking pot out of people's pockets and then lying about it. New York's marijuana law wasn't really even the problem here and shouldn't actually need to be changed to prevent the racially abusive enforcement and prosecution scheme that's been going on in New York for the past decade.

These were false arrests to begin with and the most appropriate solution would be for police and prosecutors to stop systematically violating people's rights. But apparently that is more difficult than reducing the penalties for marijuana. Wow.

It's kinda hard to pretend pot doesn't exist when almost everyone is talking about it. This week, both Reuters and  Associated Press dropped big stories about the implications of marijuana policy on the presidential election and the whole discussion is making Obama and Romney look a little silly.

Voters in this presidential battleground state won't just decide whether to go red or blue this fall but also green -- as in marijuana.

Whether to legalize marijuana will be on the Colorado ballot in November. President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney have identical stances on pot legalization -- they oppose it. And neither is comfortable talking about it.

Yet Obama and Romney find themselves unwittingly ensnared in the legalization debate -- and both may want to take it more seriously if their race in Colorado is close. [FOXNews]

It's really rather remarkable that one of the hottest debates in American politics right now is something neither major party candidate even dares to discuss. As accustomed as we are to having these issues ignored by people in positions of political power, there really is a point at which you just can't ignore it anymore and I think that might be exactly where we're finding ourselves at this very moment.

After all, if the President himself can't explain our marijuana laws to us in a way that makes sense, what does that say about our marijuana laws? A lot of people are seriously pissed off about this, and the longer Obama fails to defend it, the worse he looks. There is no excuse for a leader's failure to discuss public policy with the public. There just isn't.

And now we have a major swing state in which a legalization measure is polarizing the electorate around this exact issue. Obama and Romney will approach that situation how? By standing there like fools and saying nothing at all? By saying it isn't important, even though the voters think it is? Neither look is particularly flattering.

Saying something even slightly sympathetic about fixing our marijuana laws in some way would probably pick up a not-insignificant number of votes for whoever dared to do it. However loud we must make ourselves to get that point across, it is apparently at least a little louder than this, but that's okay because we're getting steadily better at making noise. 

Update: Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is yet another factor here. Unfortunately, Obama and Romney are so similarly disappointing on this issue that we can't even be sure who will be more affected by Johnson's candidacy. 

Follow Scott Morgan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drugblogger

(This article was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

New York decriminalized pot possession 35 years ago, but NYPD keeps arresting and jailing people for "possession in public view" after forcing them to empty their pockets. Now, the governor and NYC mayor are behind a change in the law to prevent that practice. Chronicle story here.