Mayor Vince Gray is reviewing the policies that will govern the District's medical marijuana program and is being pushed to make changes that could help improve the program's reception on Capitol Hill. At-large Councilman David Catania informed Gray that if the mayor doesn't act, the city's Alcoholic Beverage Control Board will be able to send out solicitations for marijuana dispensary applications on February 14. Gray said, "Hopefully by [Feb. 14] we'll be operative, but we'll see how it works out."

NORML took the time to review the Top 100 questions on the "Ask Obama" site and condense each one into a few words so President Obama could get an idea what is important to the country. When Obama did this in 2010 he heard loud and clear about marijuana law reform. Americans asked about re-scheduling cannabis to allow medical marijuana to flourish, decriminalizing marijuana to end thousands of arrests, legalizing pot to raise tax revenue, ending prohibition to cripple Mexican drug traffickers, regulating cannabis to keep it out of kids’ hands, reforming drug laws to re-prioritize police resources, embracing industrial hemp as a truly green energy source, and using science, not politics, to dictate our drug policy. And President Obama flat-out ignored the citizenry, despite those questions dominating in both quantity and popularity. When Obama did this in 2009 he got the same response from the public. That time he didn’t ignore his fellow Americans; he just laughed at them.

The mayor of Ciudad Juárez has accused federal police of killing one of his bodyguards in an incident that underlines the growing tension between the different authorities in Mexico's drug prohibition war capital. "My bodyguard, accompanied by another, identified himself, raised his hands and was shot in the head," Héctor Murguía Lardizábal told reporters. "That's a murder." The mayor said that when he went to the federal police base in a nearby hotel to demand an explanation, he received a volley of insults an had a gun pointed at him.

Undeterred by last year's failure to pass a marijuana legalization initiative, and a plea by national advocacy groups to hold off until next year for another effort, Sensible Washington is filing a new initiative with the Secretary of State.