(NY Times) Based in Washington, the group, the National Cannabis Industry Association, will focus primarily on lobbying, but will also help medical marijuana businesses navigate a patchwork of laws that differ depending on location.

“This is an industry that is emerging — from the dispensaries to the ancillary businesses that are now coming out of the shadows,” said Aaron Smith, a medical marijuana advocate in Phoenix and the group’s executive director. “While there is good work being done, there isn’t anyone out there representing the industry’s interests directly.”

The group’s board members, which include some of the more prominent names in the medical marijuana industry, say the need for a national association has become increasingly apparent with the explosion of the legal marijuana business. Such businesses include dispensaries, growing facilities and equipment suppliers.

The board of this new group includes industry heavyweights like Bob Selan, CEO of Kush Magazione, and Stephen DeAngelo, CEO of Harborside Health Centers.  Aaron Smith is a name familiar to longtime marijuana advocates for his work in directing Marijuana Policy Project’s activities in California.

While NORML has always stood as the lobby for the cannabis consumer, we’re happy to see a lobby developing for the cannabis businesses, too.  Together we can keep pushing for an end to marijuana prohibition so everyone from grower to distributor to consumer has an equal and fair market in which to participate.

The group will be debuting at KushCon in Denver next month.  We’ll be there to provide live streaming video on the web.

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Click the Full Story to watch MPP’s Aaron Smith discussing California Assembly Bill AB390 and TaxCannabis2010.org…

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Hemp Headlines

1. Arkansas Attorney General claims medical marijuana initiative is “flawed”
2. Michael Martin fighting marijuana manufacturing and conspiracy charges
3. Update on move to make Dutch coffeeshops “members only” near Belgian border

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Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano and MPP California Policy Director Aaron Smith on California AB 390 Committee vote coming soon.

(Wall Street Journal) A schism has emerged among California’s pot-legalization advocates. On one side are those pushing to get a proposition to voters quickly, including activists such as Richard Lee, who last month began collecting signatures to put a pot-legalization measure on the state’s November 2010 ballot.

California NORML's Dale Gieringer says "wait 'til 2012"...

On the other side is a go-slow camp calling for a 2012 vote, including activists like Dale Gieringer, director of the California chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, or Norml. “I do think it will take a few more years for us to develop a proposal that voters will be comfortable with,” said Mr. Gieringer.

...but Oaksterdam University's Richard Lee bets $1,000,000 on 2010.

The 2010 ballot proponents say there is no time like the present, because California’s economic mess gives pot legalization an urgent fiscal appeal. Taxing pot could help reverse cuts in spending to education, health care and other services enacted this year, said Mr. Lee, who along with fellow activist Jeff Jones is gathering signatures for a 2010 measure. “We’re the answer for all of the things on the news,” Mr. Lee said.

Go-slow advocates say Mr. Lee’s camp doesn’t understand the California electorate and the subtle strategies of exploiting election cycles. “The demographics are clearly much better in 2012, and victory would therefore be much easier,” said Aaron Smith, California policy director of the Marijuana Policy Project, a national pot-advocacy group. “You have the younger, more progressive voters that get out in the presidential elections.”

I understand Aaron’s and Dale’s thinking: more young and progressive people come out for a presidential election year like 2012 than will come out for a mid-term election cycle like 2010.  (Maybe MPP learned that lesson with a 39% legalization loss in the mid-term elections of 2002 and a 44% loss in mid-term 2006 in Nevada.  Of course, their Alaska legalization failed with 44% in presidential year 2004, so maybe it really doesn’t matter.)

However, I’m with Richard Lee on the timing.  We are in the perfect storm for legalization:

• the floundering economy, especially in California, has voters desperate for revenue – shouldn’t we strike while that iron is hot, or at least before the economy improves?
• the Mexican drug war is scaring the hell out of folks on the border; how many more Mexican civilians, cops, and officials get tortured and murdered while we wait for “the right time”?
• the acceptance of medical marijuana nationally has not yet experienced a major backlash – but will it if the Wild West California dispensary atmosphere has three more years to generate negative headlines?

Whether Lee’s initiative is the right one for 2010 is still worth debating.  But I don’t think the timing is wrong at all.  You put marijuana legalization on the ballot with enough money to push it in the media and you’ll see a youth turnout unprecedented for a mid-term election.  The regular political rules don’t apply to marijuana.

SAN FRANCISCO — Today’s thumping rejection of a series of ballot measures aimed at easing California’s hemorrhaging budget deficit adds new urgency to the drive to regulate California’s largest cash crop, marijuana, advocates said tonight.

“It’s clear that voters didn’t like the solutions put forth by the legislature on last night’s ballot,” said Aaron Smith, California policy director for the Marijuana Policy Project. “But a Field poll last month showed solid support for making marijuana a legal, regulated product and making producers and sellers pay taxes that they now avoid”.

“For the legislature to leave marijuana untaxed even as our state faces catastrophic cuts to schools, transportation, public safety and other critical services borders on the criminal.”

A 2006 study by public policy researcher Jon Gettman found marijuana to be California’s top cash crop, exceeding the value of the number two and three crops,vegetables and grapes, combined. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, two million Californians acknowledge having used marijuana in the past month. Estimates have suggested that California could save hundreds of millions in law enforcement costs and gain more than a billion in tax revenues if marijuana were taxed and regulated as proposed in legislation introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco).

“Now that it seems we’ve hit the end of the road in the search for solving California’s budget mess, we need to be looking outside the box,” Smith added. “Replacing the failed policy of marijuana prohibition with a system of regulation and taxation would not only be sound public policy, but it also looks a lot more politically popular than anything else being offered up by Sacramento right now.”

via Canna Zine News – Rejection of Budget Measures Boosts Drive to Tax, Regulate Marijuana.

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-01-21.mp3)

Today’s Stash features your weekly dose of Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine.  Today we talk about a recent study on heavy teenage use of marijuana and IQ scores, and generally what is the age that science would set for adult use – 18 or 21?

Then Aaron Smith from Marijuana Policy Project is here to tell us about San Bernadino County’s possible breaking of California’s open meetings rule in their quixotic quest to refuse to obey the law regarding medical marijuana.

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2008-07-01.mp3)

Happy Canada Day!

Today we visit with Philippe Lucas from the Vancouver Island Compassion Society.  He fills us in on their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Health Canada medical marijuana program, and explans the history of Ottawa’s reluctance to get involved with medical marijuana.

Aaron Smith from the Marijuana Policy Project joins us from Fresno, California.  He’s promoting a screening of the documentary “Waiting to Inhale” near Fresno in an effort to educate the public and policymakers.  Fresno is considering how to adopt the state-mandated ID card system for medical marijuana patients.

The screening is free and hill be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno at 2672 E. Alluvial Ave., Clovis, CA.  The date is next Monday, July 7th, at 7pm, and following the screening is a panel discussion.

Also, you get to hear my spiced-up rendition of my ode to the DEA’s 35th birthday today.

So, it’s Canada Day, eh?  Enjoy your NORML Daily Audio Stash!