Pardon the quickie citation: from today's WaPo:
...residents of Maine voted overwhelmingly to allow the sale of medical marijuana over the counter at state-licensed dispensaries.
...the American Medical Association reversed a longtime position and urged the federal government to remove marijuana from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act, which equates it with heroin.
and
In Los Angeles ... more than 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries opened, some employing in-house physicians to dispense legal permission to virtually all comers. The boom town atmosphere brought complaints from some neighbors, but little of the crime associated with underground drug-dealing.
Advocates cite the latter as evidence that, as with alcohol, violence associated with the marijuana trade flows from its prohibition.
"Seriously," said Bruce Merkin [of the Marijuana Policy Project] "there is a reason you don't have Mexican beer cartels planting fields of hops in the California forests."
The article's titled:
Support for legalizing marijuana grows rapidly around U.S.
Approval for medical use expands alongside criticism of prohibition
There's plenty more in it about popular support for legalization as such - already 44% nationwide, 53% in the West -- "generational" and growing 1-2% per year.
The article attributes much of the new sanity to the President's leadership.
Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he was astonished recently to be invited to contribute thoughts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. ...
"I've been thrown out of the ONDCP many times," St. Pierre said. "Never invited to actually participate."