10 Signs of Medical Marijuana Progress in the Last 4 Months

1. MARIJUANA THE BIGGEST ISSUE: Two huge surveys of citizen activists across
the country -- one on Change.gov on December 12 and one on Change.org on January
15 -- showed that the number-one issue on people's minds is ending the
government's war on marijuana users.

2. BONG HIT SEEN AROUND THE WORLD: On February 1, the world learned that
Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps had used marijuana a few months before,
demonstrating yet again that using marijuana is compatible with being wildly
successful in our society. When Kellogg's dropped its endorsement contract
with Phelps -- and MPP and other organizations responded by calling for a
boycott of Kellogg's -- the public's perception of Kellogg's took a
nose dive. (See
http://tv.mpp.org/shorts/michael-phelps-barack-obama-and-george-w-b...
and
http://www.businessinsider.com/dumping-phelps-over-bong-rip-damages...
.)

3. EL PASO RESPONDS TO MEXICAN VIOLENCE: Responding to the prohibition-caused
violence just over the border in Mexico, on January 6 the El Paso City Council
unanimously passed a resolution calling for "an honest, open national
debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics," which drew the ire of some
Texas politicians but also sparked a great deal of positive media coverage
nationwide. (See
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/567/el_paso_city_council_debate...
.)

4. NATIONAL POLLING HIGHEST EVER: Between January 11 and February 14, three
different national polls indicated that either 40%, 41%, or 44% of the American
people now support ending marijuana prohibition. This is the highest level of
support since marijuana was first prohibited in 1937, with support having risen
by 1% a year since 1995. (See
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/americans-growing-kinder-to-... .)

5. REVOLT IN LATIN AMERICA: On February 12, a commission led by three former
presidents from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico released a long-awaited report that
blasted the U.S. drug war and called for the decriminalization of marijuana.
(See
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/02/11/brazil.marijuana/index...
.)

6. ENDING THE DEA's RAIDS IN CALIFORNIA: On February 25, Attorney General
Eric Holder announced that the DEA would no longer be raiding medical marijuana
clinics in California and the 12 other states where medical marijuana is legal.
(See
http://tv.mpp.org/news/eric-holder-says-no-more-dea-raids-in-press-...
.)

7. MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILLS MOVING: MPP's medical marijuana bills are
moving through the Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New
York legislatures, and the Drug Policy Alliance's similar legislation is
moving in New Jersey. We have a real chance of making medical marijuana legal in
four of these six states this year and -- in the meantime -- it's very
possible that Montana and Rhode Island will expand their existing medical
marijuana laws, too.

8. BROADER MARIJUANA BILLS MOVING: California shook the nation when a bill to
tax and regulate marijuana was introduced on February 23. And even before that
happened, the Hawaii, Montana, Vermont, and Washington legislatures had already
begun considering bills to decriminalize marijuana. (See
http://tv.mpp.org/news/rob-kampia-interviewed-on-glenn-beck-show-22509 .)

9. MPP DOMINATING ON YOUTUBE: As of today, MPP's channel on YouTube.com
-- http://www.youtube.com/user/MPPstaff -- is the 10th most subscribed of all
nonprofit channels, and MPP's videos are consistently in the top 10
most-viewed of all nonprofit videos in any given week. (And our 65,000 friends
on MySpace.com place MPP among the top 10 most popular nonprofit organizations
there, too.)

10. ONGOING MEDIA EXPLOSION: According to the weekly reports we get from
Google, MPP has been getting its message into the news in the last month at 10
times the volume of previous months. And four different national TV specials are
tentatively scheduled to look at marijuana over just a two-month span: CNBC
looked at the marijuana industry in northern California on January 22, NBC's
"Dateline" covered the Rachel Hoffman tragedy
(http://tv.mpp.org/shorts/rachel-hoffman-a-cautionary-tale/ ) in Florida on
January 23, ABC's "20/20" with John Stossel will be looking at
medical marijuana on March 13, and MSNBC with Al Roker will be looking at the
multi-billion-dollar marijuana industry on March 15.