A little noticed policy at two California airports allows properly qualified passengers to fly the friendly skies carrying up to a half pound of marijuana, news agencies revealed Friday.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego conducted a study that suggests marijuana might protect the brain from binge drinking.

EXCERPT: In the first ruling of its kind, the California 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento held Wednesday that medical marijuana patients and growers can sue police for illegally raiding their properties and destroying their plants. The ruling came in County of Butte v.

With hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries operating across Los Angeles in violation of a moratorium, the City Council has set the stage to start enforcing the ban, which went into effect almost 21 months ago. The city clerk has notified 14 dispensaries that their requests for exemptions from the moratorium will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday.

Most, if not all, are likely to be denied on the grounds that they were not registered with the city by the moratorium's deadline in 2007. A denial would allow the city's code enforcement bureau and the city attorney to take legal steps to force them to shut down. 

Daniel Stein says the salvation of U.S. taxpayers could be marijuana.

As Washington breaks the bank on Wall Street bailouts, President Barack Obama's stimulus package and other spend-now, pay-later measures, most observers agree that politicians will eventually need to increase revenue or cut spending to cover the federal government's debts.

*Includes VIDEO

Marijuana activist Marc Emery says he plans to drop his fight against extradition to the U.S. and plead guilty to one charge of drug distribution in a Seattle courtroom next month.

Emery's extradition hearing in Vancouver was adjourned on Wednesday so his lawyer could negotiate a deal with the U.S. district attorney in which Emery could spend up to eight years in jail for one charge, while two other more serious charges are dropped, he said.

About eight out of 10 Michigan residents who have applied to Michigan's Medical Marijuana Program have been granted cards that allow them to use marijuana legally for medicinal purposes.

In the two months since applications became available to residents, the state Department of Community Health has received 2,377 applications and approved 1,903 of them as Thursday.

Medical marijuana advocates are planning a court challenge aimed at legalizing all cannabis use, in response to the latest restrictions announced by Health Canada.

The federal government announced last week that it would allow designated producers to grow marijuana for as many as two medical users, instead of a maximum of one, permitted under the old regulations.

On Feb. 5, the Obama administration quietly but firmly broke with more than a decade of federal policy on medical marijuana, signaling an end to the federal war on state medical marijuana laws. The question now is, what next?

In response to questions about a series of Drug Enforcement Administration raids on medical marijuana collectives in Los Angeles, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told the Washington Times, "The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind."

Come April 4, Michigan residents suffering from certain illnesses will be allowed to use marijuana for medicinal purposes, but one big, lingering question remains: How do they get the drug without breaking state and federal criminal laws?

The answer appears to be as hazy as Cheech and Chong's van.

It's official: the Dutch have managed to make pot smoking uncool. The Dutch don't smoke nearly as much cannabis as Canadians, which is surprising because cannabis use is legal in the Netherlands. What can we learn from this?

Cannabis is not taboo, as it is in North America, under prohibition. That could be why there is no real attraction for Dutch youth to take up the practice. UN statistics tell it like it is: 16.8 per cent of adult Canadians have tried cannabis, yet only 6.1 per cent of Dutch have (2007 World Drug Report, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). Yet cannabis is legally available in one of 280 licensed coffeeshops in the Netherlands. Obviously, there is no connection between availability and higher consumption rates.

The New York Times and other major U.S. media sources commonly report on the production of opium in Afghanistan as though it were under the control of the Taliban. The facts on the ground, however, tell a different story. Who dominates the Afghan opium trade?

Is medical marijuana legal in Michigan today? Well, kinda ... but kinda not. Don't light up just yet.

While the law approved by voters Nov. 4 took effect today ((Thursday)), no one can start smoking -- at least legally -- until spring, the deadline for the Michigan Department of Community Health to develop administrative rules. Even then, patients with a qualifying illness would need a doctor's permission and certification by the state to partake.

A law that lets people in pain use marijuana has left those procuring the illegal drug in a legal haze.

The Michigan Medical Marijuana Act forces qualified patients and caregivers to get medical marijuana and seeds from illegal black-market dealers, proponents say.

Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research  …

Scientists from Ohio State University report that marijuana, contrary to the conventional wisdom, may help ward off Alzheimer's and keep recall sharp. Their findings, released today at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington DC: chemical components of marijuana reduce inflammation and stimulate the production of new brain cells, thereby enhancing memory.

Don't look now, but the resounding two-to-one victory of Question 2, the marijuana decriminalization initiative, may well turn out to be a blessing to Gov. Deval Patrick and the legislature as they face the current fiscal reckoning.

It's not that the new law will save a lot of money - the proponents claimed around $30 million, but even that will not make a big difference. What makes a big difference is that for the first time, voters statewide have gone on record as supporting drug policy reform, providing the first opportunity in decades to rethink the laws that have flooded our courts, packed our prisons and strained our treasuries.

There are around 25,000 prisoners in Massachusetts state and county facilities, of which some 20 percent are drug law violators. It costs $43,000 to incarcerate one prisoner for a year. That $215 million is real money, and doesn't even include costs of detection, apprehension, and prosecution.

Voters in Michigan overwhelmingly approved a medical marijuana ballot measure -- making it one of a quarter of states to allow severely ill patients to use the illegal drug.

With 87 percent of the precincts reporting, 63 percent, or 2,557,410 people, voted "yes" on Proposal 1, which removes state penalties for registered patients to buy, grow and use small amounts of marijuana. Thirty-seven percent, or 1,519,273 voters, were opposed.

Andre Perry used to smoke marijuana for recreation. Now, he uses it for medication.

The 51-year-old retired auto worker thinks the drug should be legalized for medicinal use.

"It made my eyes ... better," says Perry, nearly blind from the effects of glaucoma. "And losing your sight, you are depressed a lot. It helps a lot with that, too. ... They should go and legalize it for people with medical conditions."

He could get his way if voters approve a state ballot proposal Nov. 4. Proposal 1 would let severely ill patients in Michigan use marijuana to relieve pain, nausea and other symptoms. Twelve states have similar provisions.

Michigan may become the latest state to let some severely ill patients use marijuana to treat pain, nausea and other symptoms.

If the Nov. 4 ballot proposal is approved, Michigan law would allow doctors to recommend marijuana for patients with cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS and other conditions the state agrees are covered under the law.

Those who favor the continued prohibition of cannabis base their arguments on the false premise that the continued enforcement of said laws "protects our children." This statement is nonsense. In fact, just the opposite is true.

The stories of the medicinal properties of pot will blow you away.

Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine is an important and accessible book -- not heavy on academic jargon, but rather lively and engaging, like a true detective novel -- with a broad appeal to those interested in the medical potential of cannabis, an end to the drug war and grass roots activism. I asked the co-authors, Wendy Chapkis and Richard Webb, how working on the book changed them.

Cannabis users are increasingly opting for high-strength skunk because weaker varieties of the drug have been frozen out of the market, campaigners warned today.

A report by charity DrugScope says that in some areas, skunk is so dominant it is almost impossible to obtain herbal cannabis or resin.

The annual assessment, DrugScope's Street Drug Trends Survey, also highlighted the increasing use of diazepam as an alternative to heroin.

Pharmacists and chemists have found another use for the multipurpose cannabis as a source of antibacterial chemicals for multidrug resistant bacteria.

A federal judge breathed new life Wednesday into medical marijuana advocates' effort to ward off the federal crackdown on medical pot in California, saying enforcement of US drug laws can go too far if it seeks to interfere with state authority.

US District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose denied a Bush administration request to dismiss a lawsuit by Santa Cruz city and county officials and members of a medical marijuana collective whose drugs were seized by federal agents in a 2002 raid.

Come on, people! When will little girls across the nation be able to say, "No, I don't smoke a lot for a girl. I smoke a lot for a human being!" When does the lady toker get her role model?!

The Tibetan prayer flags suspended on a string over the sleeping body of Captain Blue rose and fell in fluttering counterpoint to the wheezy rhythm of his breath. Lifted by a gentle breeze off the Pacific Ocean, each swatch of red, white, yellow, or green cotton bore a paragraph of Asian script. Every time a flag flaps in the breeze, it is thought, a prayer flies off to Heaven. Blue's mother says that when her son was an infant he used to sleep until noon, which is still the time that he wakes up most days, on his platform bed in a one-bedroom apartment overlooking Venice Beach, a neighborhood of Los Angeles.

A local daily newspaper reports that "many pot seizures of below 500 pounds go unprosecuted." The article goes on to say that pot seizures of less than 500 pounds account for 90 percent of the seizures, and about half of all the pot seized. The reason is that there are so dang many people caught importing herb that prosecuting the bulk of them would overwhelm the legal system.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, there were 9,560 seizure incidents along the southern border in 2004, totaling 1,102,925 kilograms (we called them "kilos" back in the late '60s, early '70s) of marijuana. In English that translates to 2,426,435 pounds, or more simply, about 2.4 million pounds.

When it comes to marijuana, Barry Cooper is on the wrong side of the law.

"The war on drugs is a failed policy; it's not working," Cooper says. "This isn't 1957 any longer, it's 2007—and the facts and the evidence show that marijuana should be legal."

Patients using marijuana for ailments ranging from chronic back pain to cancer are allowed by Washington state law to possess a two-month supply of the drug. But medical marijuana doesn't come with a standard dose or even a standard method of taking the drug.

The 1998 law has never spelled out how much usable pot nor how many plants make up a 60-day supply.

Now the Legislature has demanded an answer to the question by July, and the state is holding hearings to ask experts and citizens for their opinions on how to determine a two-month supply.

"There is so much you will have to take into account," says Joanna McKee, founder of Seattle's Green Cross Patient Co-op. "What about people who eat it? How different is the amount they need from people who smoke it?"

The market value of Pennsylvania's 2006 marijuana crop is estimated at $78 million. Once a small part of the nation's farm economy, marijuana is now America's top money crop and, with an annual market value of $35.8 billion, it ranks ahead of the market value of corn and wheat crops, combined.

As Pennsylvania's congressional delegation helps piece together a new federal farm bill in Washington, they should consider how marijuana, long an agricultural outcast, would better serve the folks back home as a legal, regulated crop -- like tobacco.

A good starting point for this policy review is, Marijuana Production in the United States (2006), a study by Dr. Jon Gettman, a regional economics expert and adjunct instructor at Shepard University.

Speaking last month to the Associated Press, Tom Riley -- spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy -- launched into an all too common ad hominem attack against medical marijuana and those who advocate for its regulation. "There is a charade going on here," he charged. "[P]eople who are interested in drug legalization using genuinely sick people as pawns to get sympathy to get their agenda through."

This critique bemuses us. After all, we actually know medical marijuana patients -- yes, real live medical marijuana patients. We interact with them at conferences. We help them organize protests. Some of us lobby with them in Congress or the state houses. Others help coordinate their legal defenses when they've been arrested. Many of them are our friends and colleagues too. Sure, we also want legalization, not just for medical use. But while the drug war continues to rage, we desire to have the sick and dying taken off the battlefield. Who wouldn't?

Governor Eliot Spitzer announced today that he could support medical marijuana in New York, and a bill is currently working its way through the legislature. Conversations with advocates over the past months swayed him, proving that some politicians do care.

The support, he acknowledges, is conditional. "It depends upon access control, how you regulate it, how you ensure you're not just dispensing a narcotic," he said. Assemblymember Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) had already introduced a medical marijuana bill, and he says that it has been amended to address concerns raised by Spitzer's aides.

Illicit highs wreck lives – but scientists are discovering they could also treat conditions from depression to strokes and cancer [...]

Research is increasingly showing that drugs may be able to help some patients with conditions as diverse as arthritis, cancer, and Parkinson's, to chronic pain, headaches, and heartburn.

Some, like cannabis, were used as medicine for centuries before they became illegal, and have been investigated as potential therapies for many disorders, but newer drugs, such as ecstasy and LSD, are also being investigated.

Got milk?

Oh, we got milk all right.

In addition to whole, two-percent and one-percent fat, skim and super skim, we now also can choose to have organic milk, hormone-free milk, lactose-free milk, soy milks in a rainbow of flavors, rice milk, even almond milk.

Add to the list of nondairy alternatives, with an emphasis on alternative, "hemp milk."

Gerd Leers, the mayor of the Dutch border town of Maastricht, has called for neighboring Belgium and Germany to open their own cannabis coffee shops and regulate the sale of marijuana in a bid to reduce the flow of "drug tourists" pouring into his city. He also said the regulation of cannabis is a problem that should be addressed at the European level.

The federal government charges patients 15 times more for certified medical marijuana than it pays to buy the weed in bulk from its official supplier, newly released documents show.

Critics say it's unconscionable to charge that high a markup to some of the country's sickest citizens, who have little income and are often cut off from their medical marijuana supply when they can't pay their government dope bills.

Records obtained under the Access to Information Act show that Health Canada pays $328.75 for each kilogram of bulk medical marijuana produced by Prairie Plant Systems Inc.

Doctors in Scotland yesterday voted in favour of cannabis drugs being prescribed on the NHS to ease the suffering of patients.

Members of the British Medical Association, meeting in Dundee, backed a call for change in the law to allow the use of cannabinoid medication to treat disease.

Dr Andrew Thomson, a Scottish GP and leading figure in the BMA, told the association's Junior Members Forum he had watched one of his patients suffer intolerable pain from multiple sclerosis and was powerless to suggest she took cannabis for her relief because of the law.

Researchers investigating the role of cannabinoids - chemical substances contained within cannabis – in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS), have found they could significantly enhance therapy, not only by reducing nerve damage and erratic nerve impulses, but perhaps even by hindering development of the condition.

The most liberal Democratic lawmakers from the Bay Area and the most conservative Republican legislators from Southern California have rolled together a bill allowing farmers to grow cannabis — the hemp variety, not pot.

Congress members from the Bay Area are among those who have introduced a similar measure in Washington, redefining industrial cannabis used in fine clothing and other goods as an agricultural product and not a drug.

Farming of hemp, a variety of cannabis that wouldn't get people high even if they smoked piles of the weed, was banned amid the nation's war on drugs.

Screaming Chris Mathews and the corporate media would have us believe that it's only the living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that are deplorable, not the medical care itself. Donna Shalala and Bob Dole have been assigned to investigate the situation. A superficial clean-up will ensue -rodents poisoned, moldy drywall replaced- while the quality of care gets lauded and prosthetic limbs are presented as proof that all is state-of-the-art.

Out in California, however, doctors in the Society of Cannabis Clinicians question the care doled out at Walter Reed and other military hospitals where wounded soldiers and vets are treated with toxic medications* while the safest painkiller known to man is systematically withheld. "If anybody needs and deserves cannabis-based medicine, it's the thousands of soldiers who have been seriously wounded in Iraq," says Philip A. Denney, MD. "Cannabis would help in treating insomnia, pain, PTSD, and a whole array of symptoms that wounded vets typically face."

Supporters believe marijuana's medicinal value is worth all the battles.

James and Lisa Masters were preparing to take their daughters fishing on the morning of Aug 2, 2006, when two social workers and two police officers knocked on their door.

"We were just finishing folding laundry, getting ready for the day," says James, "and we had just recently medicated."

They had picked a bad time to take their medicine. Both of the Masterses are medical marijuana patients, whose doctors recommend they get high to treat various physical and neurological illnesses.

The social workers raised allegations of child abuse and neglect toward the Masterses' daughters, ages 4 and 6. The police officers, who the Masterses were told came along in case the parents got violent — perhaps in a fit of reefer madness — smelled the weed.

The most recent and compelling report on US marijuana production reveals that not only is cannabis now the largest cash crop in the United States but also that, according to US Government data, domestic marijuana cultivation has grown ten-fold over the last 25 years.

This new report on marijuana production was recently published in the Bulletin of Cannabis Reform and distributed to the national media by the Marijuana Policy Project. In 2006 domestic marijuana cultivation was worth $35.8 billion, more than corn and wheat combined. Over 56 million marijuana plants were cultivated outdoors with a value of $31.7 billion and 11.7 million plants were cultivated indoors at a value of $4.1 billion.

"The fact that marijuana is America's number one cash crop after more than three decades of governmental eradication efforts is the clearest illustration that our present marijuana laws are a complete failure," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "America's marijuana crop is worth more than our nation's annual production of corn and wheat combined. And our nation's laws guarantee that 100 percent of the proceeds from marijuana sales go to unregulated criminals rather than to legitimate businesses that pay taxes to support schools, police and roads."

Democrats control Congress, a socialist is in the Senate and the president's approval ratings are in the tank. So it's no surprise that advocates of drug reform are looking forward to a new day -- sort of.

Consider this: A bill that would allow sick people to use marijuana might actually pass the House. Of course, it's probably dead on arrival in the Senate, and President Bush would almost certainly stamp it with an override-proof veto.

But "at the very least, we'll see some hearings on the issue," predicted Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the pro-reform Drug Policy Alliance.

Hearings? Big whoop. Things are looking up in the wake of Election Day, but anyone who expects a major shift in American drug laws is definitely smoking something illegal.

In a city where you can get just about anything delivered to your door -- groceries, dry cleaning, Chinese food -- pot smokers are increasingly ordering takeout marijuana from drug rings that operate with remarkable corporate-style attention to customer satisfaction.

An untold number of otherwise law-abiding professionals in New York are having their pot delivered to their homes instead of visiting drug dens or hanging out on street corners.

Among the legions of home delivery customers is Chris, a 37-year-old salesman in Manhattan. He dials a pager number and gets a return call from a cheery dispatcher who takes his order for potent strains of marijuana.

Within a couple of hours, a well-groomed delivery man -- sometimes a moonlighting actor or chef -- arrives at the doorstep of his Manhattan apartment carrying weed neatly packaged in small plastic containers.

Taleban fighters using giant Afghan marijuana forests for cover are proving a tough foe to smoke out, the head of Canada's armed forces has revealed.

Thickets three metres (10ft) high readily absorb heat, making them hard to penetrate with thermal devices, said Gen Rick Hillier in a speech in Ottawa.

"You really have to be careful the Taleban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he added. Burning them is not an option as they are laden with water, the general said.

Is the Dutch government wrecking Amsterdam's reputation as Europe's most liberal, "anything goes" destination?

For international travelers, Amsterdam has long served as a kind of nirvana. Considered a forward-thinking capital light years ahead of the rest of the world, much of the city's exceptional status is due its coffee shops -- essentially marijuana bars -- where smoking pot is perfectly legal. Coupled with other liberal sex and drug laws that have ensured a level of tolerance no European city can rival, Amsterdam has acted for many as a role model of what an enlightened 21st-century city should be.

But things aren't always what they seem. In recent years the Netherlands, like many countries around the world, has witnessed a rise in conservative power and with that, a corresponding tightening of its once-famous looseness. The legendary Dutch credo "anything goes" is increasingly becoming a thing of the past, and nowhere is this more apparent than in its coffee shops.

Last summer, Miami-Dade Police Sgt. Mauricio "Mo" Smith, a veteran of the cocaine cowboy Eighties and an expert on heroin, was shocked to discover a Kendall house where four men were raising more than 30 five- to six-foot-tall marijuana plants. A suburban hydroponics lab — that's routine. But this was located in an area so famously inhabited by Miami-Dade Police that it's nicknamed "Copland."

California farmers are on a high after the liberal state moved to overturn part of a 70-year-old US ban on growing and harvesting cannabis plants.

But those hoping that the so-called Golden State is about to become a marijuana smokers' paradise will be disappointed. The California proposal relates only to the cultivation of industrial hemp, used in the manufacture of items such as cosmetics, food, paper and clothing.

"Hemp bears no more resemblance to marijuana than a poodle bears to a wolf," said Tom McClintock, a Republican state senator who backed legislation that would reverse one key section of a 1937 law banning the growth of all types of the plant. "You'd die from smoke inhalation before you'd get high."

DEA and county officials close medical marijuana dispensaries in San Diego, say raids are a 'warning'.

In the past two years, the number of medical-marijuana dispensaries in San Diego County has grown from zero to roughly two-dozen – most of them located within San Diego city limits – with another dozen medical-cannabis delivery services focused solely on bringing pot to a person's home.

Only the L.A. area has experienced a similar increase in medical-cannabis-related businesses in such a short period of time. Unlike L.A., however, where local law enforcement have spoken out against federal closure of medical marijuana dispensaries, the issue has reached a tipping point in San Diego – earlier this month, federal and local law-enforcement agents raided 13 dispensaries and arrested 15 owners and employees. Five people have been charged with the federal crimes of conspiracy to distribute and conspiracy to manufacture marijuana; the remaining were arraigned in state court on drug sales and possession charges.

John Reid, the Defence Secretary, has insisted that he has no idea where the cannabis resin came from that was found by police at his Scottish home.