From Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Includes information about teenage use and overall use.

The United States' first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration's move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it -- as long as they are out of public view -- despite a federal ban."Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana," said Martinez. "We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis."Members pay $25 per month to use the 100-person capacity cafe. They don't buy marijuana, but get it free over the counter from "budtenders". Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., it serves food but has no liquor license.

What did Mecke think of that bill’s being called SB 420? “There’s a lot of humor in politics. A little tongue-in-cheek goes a long way with some of these issues,” he said laughing. I asked him how many legislators understood the connotations of 420, and he suggested that it might make a good survey to take among legislative members-to get a sense of how "up to speed" they are on current culture.

So perhaps branding is the problem. Maybe in advocacy situations it's better to persuade based on the facts of the issue, rather the whether it is red or blue. If advocates in Maine could harness their residents' attachment to liberty, common sense and independence (with a healthy dose of facts about how legalizing gay marriage would actually add to state coffers and not subtract from heterosexual marriages), the choice might look more right vs. wrong, rather than right vs. left.

Voters in Maine, overwhelmingly decided that patients should have easier access to medical marijuana. Preliminary poll results showed nearly 60 percent of voters approved a ballot initiative that makes Maine only the fifth state to allow dispensaries. Currently, more than 50 percent of Americans live in a state that has some form of recognition of patient rights to cannabis.

These are heady days for the medical tourism industry. With U.S. healthcare prices spiraling upward, more and more insurers and individuals are looking abroad for treatment. By some estimates, 650,000 Americans will check into foreign hospitals from Mexico to Thailand this year. The boom has created rich opportunities for entrepreneurs catering to first-time medical travelers, start-up businesses and eager hospital managers in developing countries. Enter lawyer couple Jonathan Edelheit and Renée-Marie Stephano.

After years of effort on the part of Medical Marijuana advocates, California is now issuing state identification cards intended to help legitimate patients avoid unnecessary detainment and arrest. The state's new Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) is being administered by the California Department of Public Health.

In an act of merciful sanity, the Obama administration has made good on its promise to stop interfering with states that allow the medical use of marijuana.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today that while he remains "basically" opposed to legalizing marijuana for recreational use, he's looking forward to a debate on the issue.

Criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state has always been abominable. The Obama administration deserves major credit not only for ceasing this practice, but for memorializing it formally in writing. Just as is true for Jim Webb's brave crusade to radically revise the nation's criminal justice and drug laws, there is little political gain -- and some political risk -- in adopting a policy that can be depicted as "soft on drugs" or even "pro-marijuana." It's a change that has concrete benefits for many people who are sick and for those who provide them with treatments that benefit them. So credit where it's due to the Obama DOJ, for fulfilling a long-standing commitment on this issue.

US Attorney General Eric Holder has issued guidelines to federal prosecutors advising them not to prosecute providers or users of marijuana who are in compliance with state medical use laws. Major shift in policy to tolerate medical use of marijuana in places where such use is legal.

In a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department, federal prosecutors are being told that prosecuting medical marijuana cases is not an efficient use of their time, and that dispensaries that operate within their state's medical marijuana laws will no longer be a target of prosecution. The Justice Department memo relays that the reason for the policy change is a commitment "to making efficient and rational use of its limited investigative and prosecutorial resources". This is a departure from the Bush Justice Department, where federal agencies and prosecutors ignored state mandates and continued to pursue cases against people distributing and using marijuana for medical purposes. The text of the memo can be found at http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/192.

What's killing you, Barack, is what's killing us all: an evil germ called "Medical Loss Ratio." "Medical Loss Ratio" [MLR] is the fancy term used by health insurance companies for their slice, their take-out, their pound of flesh, their gross - very gross - profit. The "MLR" is the difference between what you pay an insurance company and what that insurer pays out to doctors, hospitals and pharmacists for your medical care. I've totted it up from the raw stats: The "MLR," insurance companies' margins, is about to top - holy mama! - a quarter trillion dollars a year. That's $2.7 trillion over the next decade. Until the 1990's, insurers skimmed only about a nickel on the dollar for their "service," Wendell Potter told me. Potter is the CIGNA insurance company PR man who came in from the cold to tell us about what goes down inside the health insurance gold mine. Today, Potter notes (and I've checked his accuracy), porky operators like AIG have kicked up their Loss Ratio by nearly 500 percent.

A great article looking at the facts and economic statistics regarding marijuana use and how its legalization could help save the economy.

The best solution to our environmental problems is to end prohibition. There is no other viable option short of the immediate end to military conflict that will have the same positive impact on the ecosystem. Our first step towards a sustainable existence should begin with cannabis. Its assimilation into our civilization is the safest, simplest, most efficient immediate solution that we can implement in time to prevent an ecological catastrophe. Cannabis is a plant, and its use is as old as civilization itself. It has thousands of immediate and potential applications. Its cultivation rejuvenates the soil, it can replace wood products, it’s medicinal, and it can be used as building material, textiles, paint, plastic, fuel, paper, food and body care. It is one of the most important bounties of nature. It’s a plant that we were meant to use. So what’s the hold up? The short answer is America’s “War on Drugs”.

In spite of a law on California books for over a decade which allows the sale of medical cannabis to properly licensed patients, the district attorney in Los Angeles County is preparing an all-out legal assault against the "vast majority" of dispensaries.

Every year approximately 200,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors and healthcare-associated infections as tools to fight these needless deaths go unused at many hospitals. [Note: This webpage deserves some browsing and listening to the stories out there of the medical errors reported and no one being held accountable.]

According to our friends at NORML, there are now 13 states who are openly resisting federal laws on medical marijuana. And now my home state of California is on the verge of taking it to the next level - full legalization.

when Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn proposed taxing medical marijuana clinics in the city, you’d think there would be fury. But no one was upset. Not the ones who would pay the tax. Not at all, according to Hahn. “I’ve heard support across the board for taxing medical marijuana,” she tells Kush LA. Maybe this could kill two birds with one stone: end the waste of the Drug War and get more money into state treasuries.

Of late, some influential people are trying to legalize marijuana in California. If you feel that the purpose behind such an impending act is to allow people of the entire state to get a high, you are absolutely wrong. The objective behind this move is to address the budget woes of the State of California.