Yesterday the New York State Assembly approved AB 7347, a bill that would legalize medical marijuana in the state for certified patients with serious illnesses. The bill passed the chamber by a vote of 90-50 and it will now head to the Senate.

Medical marijuana is expected to have a tougher time getting approval in the more conservative New York State Senate which is currently controlled by Republicans. While Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo has so far neither endorsed nor promised to veto the bill, his recent public statements about medical marijuana have been lukewarm at best.

Recent polling does show that the voters of New York overwhelmingly want the Senate to follow the Assembly’s lead on this issue, they want Cuomo to sign a medical marijuana bill if it gets to his desk. 61 percent of New York Voters support legalizing marijuana for medical use, just 33 percent oppose the reform.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has signed legislation rolling back criminal penalties for the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Chafee announced the signing Wednesday night after the General Assembly ended its formal session. Chafee, an independent, had been expected to sign the bill into law.

Adults caught with an ounce or less of marijuana would face a $150 civil fine. Minors would also have to complete a drug awareness program and community service.

The previous state law made possession of small amounts of marijuana a misdemeanor. Violators had faced possible jail time and fines up to $500.

Elinor Ostrom, the first and only woman to win the Nobel Economics Prize since it was first awarded 40 years ago, died Tuesday, said Indiana University. She was 78.

The university where Ostrom worked since 1965 and conducted groundbreaking research on the ways people organize themselves and manage resources said she died of pancreatic cancer at 6:40 a.m. (1140 GMT) at IU Health Bloomington Hospital.

In her research, Ostrom conducted numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, proving them better managed than what other theorists had suggested about common property.

In effect, she showed that ordinary people are capable of creating rules that allow for the sustainable and equitable management of shared resources, countering conventional wisdom that only private ownership or top-down regulation could prevent their destruction.

A just-released statewide poll by Rasmussen Reports provides strong evidence that Colorado may likely become the first state to re-legalize and regulate the personal use of marijuana this November.

On June 6th, Rasmussen Polling conducted a survey of likely voters in Colorado and found majority support for marijuana legalization. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed supported legalizing marijuana if it were regulated like alcohol and cigarettes. Only 27 percent of respondents are opposed to legalization and 12 percent remain undecided.

This is great news for Amendment 64, a 2012 statewide ballot initiative to end marijuana prohibition and regulate marijuana like alcohol, which will appear on the Colorado ballot this November. Rasmussen’s recent survey shows support shifting upwards from previous polling. In December 2011, Public Policy Polling reported that 49 percent of Coloradan’s believed that marijuana use should be legal versus 40 percent who believed it should remain illegal.

Lately, the mainstream media has caught on to the important role that Amendment 64 will play in this fall’s presidential election. This poll is just further proof of that claim’s validity. During the same time period, Rasmussen polled Colorado voters on their presidential preference and respondents were split, 45 percent for Obama and 45 percent support for Romney. Amendment 64 promises to turn out greater numbers of independent minded and youth voters in November, if either candidate embraced rational marijuana policy reforms, this important battleground state could be theirs to win.

My feelings about marijuana have changed a lot since I was diagnosed with cancer. And specifically, since I started chemotherapy in January. For me, medical cannabis has been an important part of getting through chemo. My oncologist wrote a recommendation letter for me, and I have a card that makes it legal for me to purchase pot.

It helps me more than many of the pharmaceuticals my cancer docs prescribe for chemo side effects. It eases nausea and stops vomiting, it helps me sleep when the steroids accompanying chemo keep me up, it acts as a gentle analgesic against the excruciating bone pain that certain chemo drugs bring, and it stimulates appetite in those awful days after infusions when food is repulsive.

These things are important. If you can't eat or sleep, your body can't heal in time to be strong enough for the next infusion.

Earlier on the same day of the cannabis dinner, I'd gone in for an MRI to see how the chemo had progressed in shrinking my tumor. Medical imaging is a stressful thing when you have cancer, because of the ever-present fear that a scan may reveal very bad news. MRIs in particular are loud and claustrophobia-triggering for many people, including me.

I prepared an by taking a nice big bite of a chocolate-chip pot cookie hour before the scan. So I wouldn't panic inside, and so the technician could capture a good image of my insides.

In a last minute addition to the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has submitted an amendment that would legalize the production of industrial hemp, a potential new bumper crop for U.S. farmers.

“Industrial hemp is used in many healthy and sustainable consumer products. However, the federal prohibition on growing industrial hemp has forced companies to needlessly import raw materials from other countries,” Wyden said in prepared text. “My amendment to the Farm Bill will change federal policy to allow U.S. farmers to produce hemp for these safe and legitimate products right here, helping both producers and suppliers to grow and improve Oregon’s economy in the process.”

Allowing American farmers to produce industrial hemp, which is different from its more notorious cousin marijuana, would yield significant and immediate profits the first year, according to an analysis conducted in 1998 (PDF) by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky.

Researchers found that farmers in the state of Kentucky alone could see between $220 to $605 in net profits per acre of hemp. Adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index, those 1998 dollars would actually be worth $310 and $854 today, although the study’s authors note that variables in supply and demand for hemp could change that valuation.

Three anti-science bills that would have severely set back the education of students in Oklahoma died quietly last week when the legislative session came to an end.

Among the bills that were killed includes:

SB 1742, which would have allowed teachers to challenge evolution using the Biblical theory known as creationism.

HB 1551 died previously in early April. That bill amounted to a full-fledged attack on climate change and evolution. Republican state Rep. Steve Russell attempted to amend an unrelated education bill, called HB 2341, to include the anti-science language of HB 1551 but that also failed.

With the end of the legislative session, all of these efforts to force creationism into science classrooms have been defeated meaning science has once again prevailed in another Republican dominated state. Earlier this month, science scored victories over creationism in Missouri and Alabama.

good news: that bill failed to pass the vote. The bad news? It only failed 7-9. Nearly half the people in the state’s Education Committee felt it would be OK (haha) for students to fail to learn actual science, and not be penalized for it.

And Kern, the bill’s sponsor, will no doubt not take this defeat lying down. She has a long, long history of blatant anti-reality leanings — she once compared being gay to having cancer — and I’m sure she’ll be proposing some new version of nonsense soon.

But there’s some hope. Fred Jordan, another member of the Education Committee, said,

"We’re opening the door for teachers to kind of say whatever they want to say, whether it’s religious issues, creation, evolution. I really feel like we’re opening the door to where any and everything can come in."

At a recent campaign stop in Colorado, a CBS news reporter questioned Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on a number of issues relevant to Centennial State voters. Among them was marijuana. Romney, appearing visibly agitated, did not take kindly to the inquiry.

“Aren't there issues of significance that you'd like to talk about?” Romney barked, before veering off into prototypical Reefer Madness territory: “I think marijuana should not be legal in this country. I believe it is 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 country.

In Colorado alone, an estimated 100,000 residents are authorized to grow and possess cannabis for therapeutic purposes under state law, including some 15 percent of all residents living in the Mile High City. (Nationwide, well over one million Americans are now estimated to be using marijuana medicinally in compliance with the laws of their states, 17 of which now recognize the medical utility of pot.) In recent years, Colorado state officials have licensed several hundred brick-and-mortar retail outlets to dispense cannabis – a move that has allowed for the creation of several thousand local jobs and has raised several millions of dollars in new revenue. (Two other states, Maine and New Mexico, also presently license medical marijuana dispensaries; four additional states – Arizona, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont – as well as the District of Columbia, are presently in the process of doing so.) And this coming November, at the same time voters will be deciding their next President, Coloradoans will also be deciding the fate of A 64 – a constitutional amendment that seeks to allow for the legalization and regulation of cannabis for all adults. Yet, to hear Romney tell it, American voters don’t particularly care about cannabis.

Rosenblum's election: Holton enjoyed the avid support of Oregon’s law enforcement community as well as a fundraising advantage. In a typical election for attorney general, that would have been a hard combination to beat.

“Dwight got painted as a conservative and Ellen a liberal,” said Jack Roberts, former Oregon Labor Commissioner. “I don’t think those labels were entirely fair to either candidate. But Ellen was able to take advantage.”

Halfway through the race, Holton seemed to have all the momentum.

The race took a surprising turn in April after the pro-marijuana legalization camp threw its support to Rosenblum.

Harris' election: California Attorney General’s race has significant implications for the distribution of medical cannabis in California, as Cooley had pledged to prosecute dispensaries that engage in over-the-counter cash sales of marijuana to authorized patients.

By contrast, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has previously voiced strong support for protecting the legal rights of patients who use cannabis medicinally, stating, “We will not prosecute people who use or sell marijuana for medicinal purposes.”

Harris, on recent crackdowns: Federal prosecutors should be careful not to overreach in their crackdown on California's pot dispensaries, even though there are ambiguities in the state's medical marijuana laws, the state attorney general said Thursday.

The law passed 15 years ago by California voters has ambiguities that must be resolved either by the state Legislature or the courts, state Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement.

However, Harris said she was worried that "an overly broad federal enforcement campaign will make it more difficult for legitimate patients to access physician-recommended medicine in California."

One would think that candidate Romney would be learning from these life lessons, but he isn’t. Neither is his party. Last week, House Republicans led the charge to defeat a bipartisan budgetary amendment that sought to limit the use of taxpayers’ dollars to fund Department of Justice and DEA operations targeting medical marijuana consumers and operators who are compliant with state law. (During the floor debate, Republican Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia likened the physician-supervised, state-authorized use of medicinal cannabis to that of engaging in “sexual trafficking.”) Two-hundred-and-twelve Republicans (88 percent of GOP House members who cast votes) decided against the measure, which was ultimately defeated 262 to 163. (Ironically, during Romney’s CBS interview, he specifically referred to marijuana as a “states issue;” apparently the majority of his political brethren in Congress disagree.)