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For Immediate Release
October, 19 2009, 11:12am EDT
Contact:
ASA Media Liaison Kris Hermes 510-681-6361
Advocates Hail New Federal Guidelines on Medical Marijuana a Victory for Patients
Efforts still needed to establish comprehensive national policy and expanded research
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Department of Justice issued new
guidelines on medical marijuana today to U.S. Attorneys in states that
have adopted medical use laws. Advocates are hailing the new guidelines
as a victory and an important step toward a comprehensive national
policy on medical marijuana. While the new guidelines have yet to be
put into practice, advocates hope they will allow states to implement
their medical marijuana laws without
interference by the federal government.
"This is a huge victory for medical marijuana patients," said Steph
Sherer, Executive Director of Americans for Safe Access, the nationwide
medical marijuana advocacy organization. "This indicates that President
Obama intends to keep his promise not to undermine state medical
marijuana laws and represents a significant departure from the policies
of the Bush Administration," continued Sherer. "We will continue to
work with
President Obama, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Congress to
establish a
comprehensive national policy, but it's good to know that in the
meantime states can implement medical marijuana laws without
interference from the federal government."
In June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gonzales v. Raich
that the government had the discretion to enforce federal marijuana
laws even in medical marijuana states. While the Court did not
invalidate the laws of California and 12 other states, all of them were
under threat of interference by the federal government. In California,
the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was used extensively by the
Bush Administration to raid medical marijuana providers. The federal
government's aggressive enforcement has also had the effect of inciting
rogue law enforcement to ignore state law in favor of the more
stringent federal law. During the Bush Administration, more than 200
federal raids occurred in California alone.
As promising as the new guidelines appear, certain questions still
remain. For instance, will U.S. Attorneys be instructed at some future
point to allow defendants
the use of medical evidence and state law compliance in federal
criminal cases? Currently, the federal government is prosecuting more
than two dozen medical marijuana cases in which defendants are
prevented from using medical evidence. In addition, the new
guidelines urge prosecutors to still pursue marijuana cases which
involve activity that is legal under some state medical marijuana laws.
For further information:
DOJ guidelines on medical marijuana issued today:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/medical-marijuana.pdf
ASA's Federal Policy Recommendations:
https://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/article.php?id=5612
Americans for Safe Access is the nation's largest organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research.
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Election Day Sweep for Dems Just Predictable Blue State Wins? Local, State Races Tell Different Story
In addition to high-profile victories in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, Democrats came away with upset wins in Georgia and Mississippi.
Nov 05, 2025
Leading Republicans such as US House Speaker Mike Johnson and right-wing media outlets like Fox News are trying to downplay Democrats' sweeping victories in key elections held on Tuesday, even though many of the party's victories came in areas that are not traditional Democratic strongholds.
Speaking in Washington, DC on Wednesday morning, Johnson dismissed the Democratic wins as entirely predictable given the recent voting histories of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.
"There's no surprises," Johnson said. "What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what's to come, that's what history teaches us."
Mike Johnson: "What happened last night is blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results." pic.twitter.com/AO72p71Zsj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2025
But despite Johnson's claims, Democrats on Tuesday also won major victories in two southern states that supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election.
As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson ousted incumbent Republicans serving on Georgia's Public Service Commission, which is responsible for regulating utility prices in the state.
According to The New York Times, this will mark the first time that any Democrat has served on the commission since 2007, and it came after the commission signed off on six rate increases for the state's largest electricity provider over the past two years.
The Times also reported that Georgia Republicans are worried that the twin losses in Public Service Commission are an ill omen for next year's elections, when the GOP will seek to oust Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and maintain its hold on the governor's mansion.
In an interview with Politico, one Republican strategist said that the Democrats' wins in Georgia showed the challenges facing the GOP in getting low-propensity Trump voters to the polls in elections where he is not on the ballot.
"The one thing that would worry me, besides making sure you hold the House, is looking at how Democrats were able to fire up their base in some of these local elections in Georgia," they said.
In Mississippi, meanwhile, Democrats broke the GOP's supermajority in the state Senate for the first time in over a decade by flipping three seats. According to Mississippi Free Press, losing the Senate supermajority will make it significantly harder for the Mississippi Republicans to "override a governor’s veto, propose constitutional amendments, and execute certain procedural actions."
While Democrats in the state celebrated the wins, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Cheikh Taylor warned that it could be undone if the US Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has historically been used to create of majority-minority districts to ensure Black voters in southern states have proper representation.
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Writing on his Substack page, Morris revealed that "almost every single county" in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia in this week's elections moved toward Democrats compared to how they voted in 2024.
"What we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections," Morris explained. "With few exceptions, voters everywhere moved to the left from 2024 to 2025."
What's more, Morris found that the shift toward Democrats wasn't simply the result of having lower turnout elections, which typically are beneficial to the party out of power.
"Average turnout in [New Jersey and Virginia] was close to 80% of 2024 levels, which is impressive for an off-off-year election—and the swing to Democrats there was still 7-8 points," he explained. "So I wouldn’t dismiss the results of last night just because low-turnout-propensity voters stayed home. There's evidence of both persuasion and turnout effects in last night’s contests."
David Smith, the Guardian Washington, DC bureau chief, writes in his analysis of election day that "the results were in part a referendum on Trump, whose approval rating has never been lower," and he added that the president was displaying stark political vulnerabilities just one year into his second term.
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Even still, warned Smith, it's important that Democratic leaders don't mistake anger at Trump for glowing enthusiasm for their work atop the party, which remains at historic lows.The results on Tuesday were "never going to solve the riddle" of which direction the Democrats should head, he wrote, with both "progressives and moderates" provided "fodder to make a case" for their respective approach to politics.
For progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who spoke to MSNBC from New York at Mamdani's victory party, the Democrats need to understand that the party "does not have one face," but that everyone who wants to defeat Trump and the fascist Republicans "all understand the assignment" before them.
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"The blowout showed how showing up to fight is the most important thing in Democratic politics right now," wrote David Dayen at The American Prospect.
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The people of California dealt a huge counterpunch to Republican efforts to gerrymander their way to a 2026 midterm victory, voting overwhelmingly on Tuesday for new congressional maps that are expected to net Democrats an additional five seats in the next US House elections.
Republicans have appeared on track to cling to power after President Donald Trump pushed red states to carry out largely unprecedented mid-decade redistricting efforts. New maps enacted or approved in Texas, Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina were expected to net the GOP an extra nine seats that may have proven decisive in holding off a blue wave next November.
But on Tuesday, as Democrats romped up and down the ballot nationwide, more than 5.1 million California voters almost singlehandedly stymied the Republican advance in its tracks, passing Proposition 50 with nearly 64% of the vote, and approving new maps drawn up by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democrats with a more aggressive partisan gerrymander.
David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect, wrote on social media that in one fell swoop, the Democrats "have largely neutralized Trump's gerrymandering push."
However, he noted that the GOP could grab a possibly insurmountable advantage if the US Supreme Court votes to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, effectively legalizing racial gerrymandering and, in the process, potentially netting Republicans at least 19 more seats.
Notably, California's maps only needed to be approved by voters in the first place to override those drawn up by the state's independent redistricting commission, which was also created by a ballot measure in 2008. Meanwhile, the new maps drawn in red states have been enacted by state legislatures without voter approval.
As the champion of Prop 50, Newsom argued that desperate times called for desperate measures, saying it was a necessary counter to Trump's "attempt to rig the 2026 election and redistrict his way out of accountability in states like Texas.”
On Tuesday night, after Prop 50's resounding passage, Newsom told a gathering of California Democrats in Sacramento that the party was "on its toes, no longer on its heels."
The passage of Prop 50 may give other blue states a shot in the arm to pursue their own mid-decade gerrymanders and further chip away at the GOP advantage.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has signaled her support for the state pursuing its own redistricting, and a constitutional amendment has been proposed to override the state's independent, bipartisan redistricting commission.
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Some thoughts on Dick Cheney and his legacy. pic.twitter.com/vY7S3nu2nt
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) November 4, 2025
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Cheney infamously said after 9/11 it would be time to "take off the gloves," which resulted in a torture regime operated by the CIA and war crimes across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond at the direction of the Bush administration.
Bob Brigham, a self-identified progressive from Montana, was among those who applauded Platner for his statement.
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