More than 600 people crowded into the downtown Portland Hilton to listen to keynote speaker Jim Gray, a former federal prosecutor, California Supreme Court Judge and Libertarian vice-president candidate, skewer the Drug War and give his vision for federal drug policy. Judge Gray predicts the federal government will end prohibition […]

On the heels of the CNN poll showing that he is just 10 points behind Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in nationally polls, a new Reuters poll has Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders just trailing by 8 points. This is an amazing shift in voter sentiment as Clinton has been handily beating […]

Congressman Earl Blumenauer has been traveling coast-to-coast recently, drumming up support for marijuana legalization nationally and supporting the Oregon cannabis community in every way that he can. From introducing expungement legislation based upon Oregon’s recently passed expungement law to working on sensible federal banking reform, Blumenauer has been leading the […]

I explained to everyone on Wednesday how the New Project SAM Oregon Affiliate Can’t Explain Teen Marijuana Use Declines. That’s because the latest data from 2014 in the National Survey on Drug Use & Health are out and despite the prohibitionists’ fevered predictions, teens haven’t rushed to become joint-puffing youth marijuana […]

UPDATE: The California medical marijuana bills have been released. The East Bay Express has some commentary and the language of the landmark regulatory bills: AB 243, AB 266 and SB 643. Stay tuned to Marijuana Politics as we will have some more analysis about the impact of these bills, both to […]

Thirteen years ago when I was aspiring to do something about this crazy mixed up world, I endeavored to earn the title marijuana activist. I didn’t know much about cannabis, except I liked it and knew it shouldn’t be criminalized. I didn’t know anything about medical marijuana, and was pleasantly […]

Six counties and 17 cities in the state of Oregon are currently deciding to Prohibit Licensed Recreational Marijuana Facilities. That’s the list today, but sadly it seems to be growing by the week. By refusing to recognize the benefits of cannabis, or at least the benefits of doing away with […]

UPDATE: I have some very astute readers. One who shall remain anonymous but is very well-educated on the intricacies of state governments critiqued my Terrible Precedent section. I’ve modified the text with italics for the inserts and strikethrough for the deletions. It’s on the ballot now. ResponsibleOhio, the group that shocked […]

UPDATE: A new Reuters poll shows that the CNN survey is not an outlier, as Reuters has Sanders within single digits. The conventional wisdom was that the the Hillary Clinton campaign machine would steam roll Bernie Sanders and any other Democratic presidential candidate in her path. Pundits thought, and some […]

Clearly, it has become a detriment to support enforcing marijuana prohibition at the federal level, especially when that enforcement means that armed federal agents will be overriding the will of state voters that have passed marijuana measures. Marijuana Majority commissioned polls, conducted by Public Policy Polling, already found that a […]

It is understandable that ticket sales for the Oregon Medical Marijuana Business Conference (OMMBC) have been brisk as the state is about to start recreational sales to adults on October 1st through existing medical cannabis dispensaries and the latest draft rules to the state Rules Advisory Committee for the 2016 […]

In a rather shocking development, even for those that have long been supporters and of Bernie Sanders, the latest Qunnipiac poll has the Vermont Senator edging out Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton 41% to 40%. While this poll is clearly within the statistical margin of error, the most amazing development is the huge […]

As Marijuana Politics blogger Romain Bonilla recently posted, Hillary Clinton has strong financial ties to the private prison industry. These ties with the prison-industrial complex, mainly through common lobbyists, have been reported by a few blogs and rightfully make Drug War reformers suspicious of Clinton’s commitment to ending the use of […]

San Francisco politics is not for the faint of heart. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s tenure has been no exception. Sheriff Mirkarimi has fought off scandal after scandal after scandal. Yet, he has held to his long time progressive values, and persevered to serve his constituents. With the San Francisco elections on November 3, […]

Congressman Earl Blumenauer has been leading efforts to sensibly reform our marijuana laws for decades. As a young state legislator, he helped Oregon become the first state to decriminalize marijuana and he hasn’t slowed down one bit. Now in Washington, D.C., the Portland representative works across the political divide to convince […]