Russ Belville

The latest public opinion poll to ask Americans about legalizing marijuana like alcohol and tobacco shows 56% agree with the idea, according to Rasmussen Reports.  The support for marijuana legalization rises if it...

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske has a new article on The Huffington Post where he once again attempts to fulfill his statutory duty to scare the bejeezus out of Americans who might be considering the legalization of marijuana in three states and the medicalization of...

I've just returned from Houston, Texas, where I participated in a two-day forum held by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. This informative discussion included representatives from law enforcement, judiciary, clergy, academia, drug law reform, anti-drug advocacy, medicine and government, from Texas, from America, from...

We continue our 2011 Year-End Retrospective with a look at The Top Ten "Stupid Stoner Stories" of 2011.  (Yesterday we looked at The Top Ten Cannabis Science Stories of 2011 and we began on Tuesday with The Top Ten "Reefer Madness" Stories of 2011.  We end tomorrow with...

Cross-posted from The NORML Daily Stash Blog

It's end-of-year retrospective time!  While my colleagues on the NORML Blog (go check out the new look that matches the new site) are going to bring you the biggest marijuana news stories of 2011, here at The NORML Daily...

Yesterday we revealed The Top Ten "Reefer Madness" Stories of 2011.  Today we continue our Year-End Retrospective with a look at the biggest news stories of scientific research into cannabis, public opinion polls on legalization, and statistical research on cannabis consumers.  We call it The Top Ten Cannabis Science...

We don't know his or her name, but somewhere in one of 16 states and the District of Columbia is America's 1,000,000th legal medical marijuana patient. We estimate the United States reached the million-patients mark sometime between the beginning of the year to when Arizona began issuing patient...

We've all heard of Murphy's Law, the saying that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong." I'm a big fan of these adages, whether they are proven by scientific observation, like Moore's Law (computer processors get twice as powerful every eighteen months) or just represent...

Last Wednesday on our NORML Stash blog we pointed out this incredible paragraph on the website of the National Cancer Institute at cancer.gov on their general information page about medical cannabis. The website had been updated on March 17 with a remarkably honest appraisal of the antitumoral effects...

Intuit, the financial software giant behind Quicken and Quickbooks, has revoked the merchant services account of Alternative Medical Choices Inc. (AMC), a medical clinic that offers consultations with doctors for the approval of medicinal cannabis use under Oregon law, claiming that service is an "unacceptable business practice".

Iva...

Dear President Obama,

Once again you have asked us about changing American policy and the direction this country should take.  Your "Ask Obama" forum sponsored by YouTube promises to take questions from the American people on the issues they...

As you may know by now, in a tragic act of insane violence, Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords was targeted for assassination, but survived the point-blank gunshot allegedly fired by Jared Lee Loughner, a...

Cue the video to about 3:02 and you will hear the head of The 700 Club, Pat Robertson, the guy who agreed with Falwell about "feminists, pagans, abortionists" and such causing the 9/11 attacks,...

Marijuana supporters nationwide awoke on November 3rd to find they had been defeated in all four statewide initiatives on the ballot....

California's Prop 19 will be the most talked-about ballot initiative in the November election.  This measure would make lawful the possession and sharing of one ounce of marijuana outside the home and allow for personal cultivation of a small marijuana garden and possession of its harvest...

The headline in Friday's LA Weekly blog by Dennis Romero, "'LULAC,' Huge Latino Group, Endorses Prop. 19, California's Marijuana Legalization Initiative", is informative and fair enough.  It's the lede that made me wince:

Surprise surprise. Latinos...

That "professional left" is what some might call "your base", Mr. President, and they think you should legalize marijuana.

Washington political news outlet The Hill reports on the recent "professional left" remarks made...

I have been blogging recently about dispensaries in California that are hostile to Prop 19- - California's marijuana legalization initiative. What I suspect are sock puppet fronts for these businesses have also sprung up, the so-called "Stoners Against Legalization" blogs. I've decided to feature these in a...

Ryan Grim at Huffington Post reports on the notion going round political circles that California's Prop 19 (and, to a lesser extent, medical marijuana initiatives in Arizona and South Dakota, and dispensaries for medical marijuana in Oregon) will be for the Democrats what anti-Gay Marriage...

Yesterday on our daily webcast for NORML we interviewed Dale Sky Clare, a spokesperson for Proposition 19, the initiative that will ask Californians to vote on a very limited form of marijuana legalization. We discussed the latest polling on the initiative from SurveyUSA, showing...