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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Wednesday lashed out at a reporter who asked him tough questions about same sex marriage, immigration and marijuana.

"Aren't there issues of significance that you'd like to talk about?" Romney quipped to CBS 4 reporter Shaun Boyd. "The economy -- the economy -- the economy, the growth of jobs, the need to put people back to work. The challenges of Iran. We've got enormous issues that we face. But, go ahead. You want to talk about medical marijuana."

"I think marijuana should not be legal in this country," the former Massachusetts governor opined. "I believe it's a gateway drug to other drug violations. The use of illegal drugs in this country is leading to terrible consequences in places like Mexico and actually in our own country. I oppose legalization of marijuana. I oppose legalization of other kinds of drugs."

Research has repeatedly shown that the so-called "gateway effect" of marijuana is negligible.

A 2010 study from the University of New Hampshire found that the use of harder illicit drugs had more to do with life factors like stress and employment status. Young people who had diminished stress over employment were less likely to use marijuana and other illegal drugs.

"Employment in young adulthood can protect people by 'closing' the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities," study author Karen Van Gundy explained.

The problem with the "gateway effect" theory is that "correlation isn’t cause," Time's Maia Szalavitz wrote in 2012.

"Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang members are probably more [than] 104 times more likely to have ridden a bicycle as a kid than those who don’t become Hell’s Angels, but that doesn’t mean that riding a two-wheeler is a 'gateway' to joining a motorcycle gang," she noted. "It simply means that most people ride bikes and the kind of people who don’t are highly unlikely to ever ride a motorcycle."

Romney also repeated his position that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

"My position on gay marriage is the same that it's been, well, from the beginning. And that is marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman," he said. "That the posture I had as governor and I have that today."

"If a civil union is identical to marriage other than with the name, why, I don't support that," he continued. "But I certainly recognize that hospital visitation rights and benefits of that nature may well be appropriate and states are able to make a provision for a determination for those kinds of rights as well as benefits that might accrue to state workers. My position is the same that it's been from the beginning, which is that I don't favor a civil union if it's identical to marriage. And I don't favor marriage between people of the same gender."

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Activists with the Occupy Wall Street movement are claiming that police in Minneapolis gave them illegal drugs and other items for participating in a study on impairment.

In a 35-minute documentary produced by Twin Cities Indimedia, Rogue Media, Communities United Against Police Brutality and Occupy Minneapolis, multiple activists describe being offered illicit drugs.

The report alleges that police gave out drugs, cigarettes and fast food as part of the Minnesota State Patrol's Drug Recognition Evaluator program, which trains officers in detecting drug impairment. Police reportedly picked up suspects near Peavey Plaza and drove them to a facility in Richfield where they were tested.

An activist named Panda told filmmakers that after getting stoned in front of police, they asked him if he wanted to smoke even more.

"I stopped in my tracks, said 'yes,' and then I smoked with a cop," he recalled, adding it was "some of the best shit I've had in a while." On the way back from the testing facility, Panda said officers bought him a double cheeseburger from McDonald's.

Later Panda explained that officers had offered him "a quarter more" of marijuana if he would become an "informant" to snitch on other Occupy protesters.

"They checked our eyes, they checked our ears, checked our lungs," another participant recalled after police got him "high as fuck."

"They checked our blood pressure, our pulse and all that. There were a lot [of police officers]. There were like 30 or 40."

The claims first came to light during a controversial City Hall hearing on Wednesday about banning overnight activity in Minneapolis' public plazas.

"They gave me a full bag of weed," Forest Olivier told the Council. "And they gave me a pipe to smoke it out of. And they just took us out to – I forgot the name of the airfield – but its somewhere in Richfield, out near the bus line. 66th and Cedar. And they let us smoke it on the sand hills where the dirt pits were."

In a posting on the E-Democracy forum, Council Member Cam Gordon called the allegations "disturbing."

"Last night, I was called by a concerned mother who was very upset because her son had been given free drugs by a police officer when he went out to participate in what he thought would be social action in a public plaza to help improve his community and country," Gordon wrote. "She was shocked to learn from her son later that police gave her son illegal drugs and asked him to use them, indicating that it was okay and that it was part of a police program."

"Her trust in the police was broken and she was baffled at how such a thing could ever be condoned by her government. She felt that it was the police's responsibility to help keep her son safe and protect him from harm and consider that by their action the police had put him in harms way and as a violation of a public trust," he added.

"One of the things that is most concerning about this to me is how the young and vulnerable appear to be being targeted," Gordon said. "Beyond that, I cannot see how this program, practiced how it apparently is being practiced, can be considered ethical or in the public interest."

Minnesota State Patrol spokesman Lt. Eric Roeske told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that officials were "looking into" the allegations.

Watch the full video report from Communities United Against Police Brutality, uploaded May 2, 2012.

(h/t: City Pages)

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Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told columnist George Will and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Sunday that Republican opposition to marijuana legalization was "a great embarrassment to the conservatives."

During a town hall-style debate on ABC, Frank demanded a response from Will about decriminalizing marijuana.

"I mean, personal liberty, if someone wants to smoke marijuana who's an adult, why do you want to make them go to jail?" Frank asked.

"With regard to marijuana, I need to know more about whether it's a gateway drug to other drugs," Will replied. "I need to know how you are going to regulate it, whether you're going to advertise it."

"Anything is a gateway to anything," Frank said, dismissing Will argument. "That's the slippery slope argument which is a very anti-libertarian argument. The fact that if somebody is doing something that's not in itself wrong, that it might lead later on to something else then stop the something else. Don't lock them up for smoking marijuana."

"What you're calling a cop-out, I'm calling a quest for information," Will insisted.

"How long's it going to last, George?" Frank asked. "We've been doing this for decades."

"I understand liberalism's aversion to information because it often doesn't go in their direction," Will quipped.

"No, I'm not averse to it," Frank shot back. "I've been studying this for a long time. You know, you're on Medicare. How much longer are we going to have to wait for you to make up your mind?"

"Let's get off marijuana," Ryan interrupted, eager to move to the next topic.

"It's a great embarrassment to the conservatives," Frank pointed out. "They want to tell people who they can have sex with. Come on, all this is big government! Who can I have sex with? Who can I marry? What can I read? What can I smoke? You guys, on the whole -- not all of you -- but the conservatives are the ones who intrude on personal liberty there."

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Over the weekend, struggling Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson reminded MSNBC viewers that GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich had once to called to punish some drug offenders with death.

"Newt Gingrich, in 1997, proposed the death penalty for marijuana -- for possession of marijuana above a certain quantity of marijuana," Johnson explained. "And yet, he is among 100 million Americans who've smoked marijuana."

"I would love to have a discussion with him on the fact that he smoked pot, and under the wrong set of circumstance he proposed the death penalty for, potentially, something that he had committed. I have troubles with that," he added.

Johnson, a former New Mexico governor who has advocated for marijuana legalization since 1999, is at least partially correct about Gingrich's position.

As Speaker of the House, Gingrich introduced the "Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996."

The bill would have required a "sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances." It would have applied to anyone convicted more than once of carrying 100 doses -- or about two ounces -- or marijuana across the border. Defendants would have had a window of 18 months to file their one and only appeal.

"If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children," the Georgia Republican said at a fundraiser for Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) in 1995. "I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this."

"The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, 'Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?' the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically."

U.S. law already allows the death penalty in the cases of large-scale drug operations -- or continuing criminal enterprises -- that result in murder.

Gingrich charged in 1994 that 25 percent of President Bill Clinton's White House staff used drugs, but at the same time admitted that he had also smoked pot 25 years earlier.

"That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era," he explained.

"See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral," Gingrich reportedly told Wall Street Journal reporter Hilary Stout in 1996. "Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn't change, only the morality… That's why you get to go to jail and I don't."

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Here's some bipartisanship I could get behind -- taking a step in the right direction to end our ridiculous "war on drugs" which is filling our prisons up with non-violent drug offenders.

Marijuana Bill In Congress: Barney Frank, Ron Paul Legislation Would End Federal Ban On Pot:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) will introduce legislation on Thursday to end the federal ban on marijuana and let the states decide whether to legalize it.

“The legislation would limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, allowing people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal,” according to the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates for pot legalization. “The legislation is the first bill ever introduced in Congress to end federal marijuana prohibition.”

More than a dozen states allow the sale of medical marijuana, but the practice is not legal under federal law, leading to confusion and clashes between local and federal authorities. Read on...

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Lawrence O'Donnell read from some of former President Jimmy Carters' latest op-ed at the New York Times, calling for an end to America's "war on drugs."

Call Off the Global Drug War:

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

More at the link above so go there to read the rest and good for President Carter for speaking out on this matter.

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January 22, 2010 FOX And Friends

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November 11, 2009 CNN

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

From the LA Times read more...

May 14, 2009 CNN

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May 14, 2009 CNN's American Morning.

LENO: Governor Schwarzenegger said he's trying to get marijuana legalized here in California. He wants to legalize it.

(APPLAUSE)

I believe the campaign slogan is "Change we can breathe in." "Yes, change we can breathe in."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: Well, late night having some fun with the debate over legalizing marijuana, but Washington taking the drug very seriously. It's because pot is by far one of the most abused drugs in America and today, it's even more potent than ever.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

MESERVE: John, Kiran, this is a Mississippi marijuana grow room, and it is all absolutely legal.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): In a vault -- barrel upon barrel of high- grade marijuana.

(on camera): What would the street value of this be?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot.

MESERVE (voice-over): This facility at the University of Mississippi is the only one in the country licensed by the federal government to grow large quantities of marijuana for research.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are the female flowering buds.

MESERVE: But that isn't all scientists do here. Marijuana samples from seizures all across the country, thousands of them, are sent here every year.

The dope is put through a sieve to remove seeds and stems. It's weighed to put in solution and chemically analyzed. The results, today, the government is announcing that for the first time ever, the average level of THC, the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana now exceeds 10 percent. The lab has found some samples higher than 30 percent.

That means it takes less dope to get high. Experienced users may adjust their intake and smoke less, but inexperienced users may not.

MAHMOUD ELSOHLY, UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI POTENCY MONITORING PROJECT: They'll get paranoid. They'll be irritable. And that's just the opposite of what they were looking for.

MESERVE: The government says high-potency marijuana is sending more people to the emergency room and to drug treatments, but will kids listen?

DR. LAWRENCE BRAIN, CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST: Telling them that, you know, 10 percent, and three times more potent than what their parents smoked is not an argument that they'll likely to buy into or to even utilize in any constructive sort of way.

MESERVE: In fact, researchers say after years of decline, there's been a recent uptick in marijuana use.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Scientists here predict the average potency of marijuana will go up another five percent in the next five to 10 years as growers become even more sophisticated.

John and Kiran, back to you.

ROBERTS: Jeanne Meserve for us this morning.

Jeanne, thanks so much.