[Artwork by REUBENSLP]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday. Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws. The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes. Fourteen states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. MORE

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said last week he wants to shutter clinics that sell pot for profit. Cooley’s plan is the latest salvo in a prolonged conflict in California over whether medical marijuana is truly having its intended effect or is being abused by the larger population. Until recently, raids on clinics typically led to federal prosecutions, but Cooley’s remarks and similar ones from Attorney General Jerry Brown signal a new approach to clear the haze left by Proposition 215, the 1996 state ballot measure that allowed sick people with referrals from doctors and an identification card to smoke pot. “Everybody is scared,” said Tepel, who has spoken with other pot store operators. “Why are voters’ rights being stepped all over? This kind of blind justice has to stop.” The crackdown is a crushing blow for dispensary owners who were relieved earlier this year when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said federal agents would only target marijuana distributors who violate both federal and state laws. Under federal law, marijuana is illegal. Holder’s comments appear to have emboldened entrepreneurs as marijuana shops cropped up across California. In Los Angeles alone, there are an estimated 800 dispensaries, more than any other city in the nation. In 2005, there were only four, authorities said. MORE

DREAMS OF MY FATHER: “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though.”

BOSTON GLOBE: Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Obama believes the public plan is still the “best possible choice,’’ but she said he’s not demanding it. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who is deeply involved with Democrats in trying to merge the various committee proposals, also appeared to set aside the public option. “It’s not the defining piece of health care. It’s whether we achieve both cost control, coverage, as well as the choice,’’ Emanuel said. MORE

NEW YORK OBSERVER: There’s also a more basic imperative for the president: He badly needs to be seen as having scored a political victory on health care, an issue that has flummoxed and undermined presidents for decades. The promise of his presidency was and remains transformational change, but his critics—with increasing support from mainstream outlets—are starting to score points with the claim that he really hasn’t done much. A health care signing ceremony would serve as a powerful refutation of this contention. Understandably, then, the White House view seems to be that some kind of reform bill, even if it ends up watered down and laughably limited in scope, is better than no reform bill—so why let a sticky subject like the public option be the deal-breaker? Reinforcing this sense is the fact that the public option, even in the context of the most generous and expansive legislation now under consideration, would only affect a sliver of Americans—mainly small business employees and individuals not covered by employer plans. The vast majority of Americans would be ineligible to buy in even if they wanted to. The White House seems to have concluded that there’s no good reason to go to war over something that affects so few. MORE

HUFFINGTON POST: More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.  A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June. MORE

CBS NEWS: In his speech, Mr. Obama argued that a public health option, health exchanges, and other reforms would increase competition in the health insurance marketplace. While 46 percent of Americans agree with the president, 19 percent disagree, and 26 percent say there would be no impact. MORE

TALK LEFT: While [some] are spinning as hard as they can against the public option, it is worth noting that the Washington Post poll they are using for this purpose actually shows 76% support the current public option proposals. MORE

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Here’s a problem for the GOP, high-lighted in the latest Quinnipiac University poll. The party’s attacks on health care reform, led by charges of a government takeover, seem to have pounded down American opinion not just on the President’s health reform efforts, but on their own image. And more, one thing that remains broadly popular: a government-run health insurance option. Here are the numbers. President Obama remains reasonably popular with a 50% job approval rating, even though only 40% of folks like his health care reform push, compared to 47% who do not. What they do like is the public option, by a very healthy 61% to 34% margin. MORE

ATLANTIC: As liberal Democrats will try (and are expected to fail) to add a public-option provision to Chairman Max Baucus’s health care bill this week in the Senate Finance Committee, Media Matters for America points out that more Americans believe in UFOs than oppose the public option. It sounds outlandish, but it’s about right: a 2007 Associated Press poll (cited by Media Matters) finds that 34 percent of Americans believe in the existence of UFOs. Meanwhile, anywhere from 26 to 42 percent oppose the public option, according to recent major polls not commissioned by backers or opponents of said option. MORE

HUFFINGTONPOST: In a bold push to pass a public option for insurance coverage, a progressive advocacy group is launching an ad campaign directly calling into question the toughness of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. MORE

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

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NEW YORK TIMES: Success takes time, but how much time does Stanley McChrystal have? The war in Afghanistan is now in its ninth year. The Taliban, measured by the number of their attacks, are stronger than at any time since the Americans toppled their government at the end of 2001. American soldiers and Marines are dying at a faster rate than ever before. Polls in the United States show that opposition to the war is growing steadily. Worse yet, for all of America’s time in Afghanistan — for all the money and all the blood — the lack of accomplishment is manifest wherever you go. In Garmsir, there is nothing remotely resembling a modern state that could take over if America and its NATO allies left. Tour the country with a general, and you will see very quickly how vast and forbidding this country is and how paltry the effort has been.

And finally, there is the government in Kabul. President Hamid Karzai, once the darling of the West, rose to the top of nationwide elections in August on what appears to be a tide of fraud. The Americans and their NATO allies are confronting the possibility that the government they are supporting, building and defending is a rotten shell. In his initial assessment of the country, sent to President Obama early last month, McChrystal described an Afghanistan on the brink of collapse and an America at the edge of defeat. To reverse the course of the war, McChrystal presented President Obama with what could be the most momentous foreign-policy decision of his presidency: escalate or fail. McChrystal has reportedly asked for 40,000 additional American troops — there are 65,000 already here — and an accelerated effort to train Afghan troops and police and build an Afghan state. If President Obama can’t bring himself to step up the fight, McChrystal suggested, then he might as well give up.

“Inadequate resources,” McChrystal wrote, “will likely result in failure.” The magnitude of the choice presented by McChrystal, and now facing President Obama, is difficult to overstate. For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge — a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men. And that’s if it succeeds. MORE

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Washington — Before President Obama commits additional troops to Afghanistan, the U.S. needs assurances that Afghan leaders preside over a stable government that is legitimate in the eyes of its citizens, top Democratic officials said in TV appearances Sunday. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said the overriding question facing the Obama administration is whether it has “a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need.” The White House is in the midst of a full-scale review of its strategy in Afghanistan. Options include adding tens of thousands of troops in a renewed bid to stabilize the country, as U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal wants, or narrowing the mission to focus on subduing the Taliban. The White House has devoted five meetings to its Afghan review, with more scheduled over the next two weeks, Emanuel said. Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who is visiting Afghanistan, endorsed the White House’s approach, saying Sunday that it would be premature to deploy more troops without a clear picture of the nation’s overall political condition. Kerry held talks with McChrystal, the U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan, and also met with officials in Pakistan. “I don’t see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces or even the further fulfillment of our mission that’s here today without an adequate government in place or knowledge about what that government is going to be,” Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “So there’s some very fundamental questions that have to be answered about the status of the Afghan government.” MORE

AFP: A report into mass fraud allegations that have tainted Afghanistan’s presidential election is to be released Monday with President Hamid Karzai under intense pressure to accept a possible run-off. The results of investigations by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) will form the basis of a decision on whether Afghanistan can finally declare a new president or must go to the polls for a second time. The paralysis since the August 20 election has angered Afghanistan’s backers. Senior US officials now say a political resolution is essential if President Barack Obama is to authorize extra troops to fight the Taliban. The report is expected to cut Karzai’s lead from 55 percent in preliminary results, possibly triggering a run-off as the victor must have 50 percent plus one vote to form a new government. Karzai’s main rival, ex-foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, has 28 percent and has spearheaded vote-rigging accusations against the president, once a darling of the West whose administration is accused of rampant corruption. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: The Taliban in Afghanistan are running a sophisticated financial network to pay for their insurgent operations, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the illicit drug trade, kidnappings, extortion and foreign donations that American officials say they are struggling to cut off. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have imposed an elaborate system to tax the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, as well as other crops like wheat grown in the territory they control, American and Afghan officials say. In the Middle East, Taliban leaders have sent fund-raisers to Arab countries to keep the insurgency’s coffers brimming with cash. Estimates of the Taliban’s annual revenue vary widely. Proceeds from the illicit drug trade alone range from $70 million to $400 million a year, according to Pentagon and United Nations officials. By diversifying their revenue stream beyond opium, the Taliban are frustrating American and NATO efforts to weaken the insurgency by cutting off its economic lifelines, the officials say. Despite efforts by the United States and its allies in the last year to cripple the Taliban’s financing, using the military and intelligence, American officials acknowledge they barely made a dent. MORE

[Hamid Karzai photo by Lynsey Addario/VII Network]

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

NEW YORK TIMES:  “I’m so totally paranoid I can’t stand myself,” said the distributor, who runs a nonprofit group here that grows and sells marijuana for medicinal purposes and who insisted on meeting in the privacy of a hotel room. It was not meant to be this way. New Mexico’s new medical marijuana law was intended to provide safe, aboveboard access to the drug for hundreds of residents with chronic pain and other debilitating conditions. By licensing nonprofit distributors, New Mexico hoped to improve upon the free-for-all distribution systems in some states like California and Colorado, where hundreds of for-profit dispensaries have sprung up with virtually no state oversight.

But even in New Mexico, the process — from procuring the starter seed (in Amsterdam, via a middleman) to home delivery (by a former Marine) — is not for the faint of heart. Those engaged in the experiment here never know if they will be arrested, because growing, selling and using marijuana remain illegal under federal law. And robbery is always a fear.

In a reversal of Bush administration policy, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in March that the government would not prosecute medical marijuana distributors who comply with state laws. That announcement has emboldened Rhode Island to adopt legislation similar to New Mexico’s: it will license three nonprofit “compassion centers” to grow and dispense the drug by 2012. At least six other states are now considering the model. But in recent weeks, law enforcement officers, some of them federal, have raided dispensaries in California and Washington State, and in the absence of any actual change in the federal law, many still fear prosecution. MORE

RELATED: The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer. The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years. “We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.” MORE

NEW JERSEY STAR LEDGER: Some of the most contentious social issues in this gubernatorial race — including medical marijuana and gay marriage — are also the subject of bills that could become law before the next governor shows up for the job. Gubernatorial candidates Chris Christie, Jon Corzine and Chris Daggett have not always made their positions clear on those topics or how strenuously they would push for such legislation, even in their first debate. Here are the candidates’ responses to our questions on the current state and potential future of medical marijuana, gay marriage, abortion and violent crime in New Jersey.

Q: Where do you stand on the current New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, under which licensed “alternative-treatment centers” would produce the drug for residents with specific diseases?

Corzine: “I’d sign that legislation. I want to make sure, as it goes through the Assembly, that it has the right constraints on it but I think we’re in the zone. I need to actually run through it with my counsel, all of the alternatives, but I think we’re close. I think we ought to move to this quickly. I think the people who would benefit from it, we would want to get to that sooner rather than later. I don’t think this, in any way, should be allowed to be a back-door access to recreational marijuana and we’ll make sure any bill that comes to my desk that gets my signature, we’re secure in that.”

Christie: “I do think that we can do a little bit better on the restrictions. I do favor allowing folks who have \serious illnesses — in a restricted number of illnesses — to have medical marijuana to alleviate suffering. I do want to make sure that we don’t have what’s gone on in California, where you have marijuana shops all over the place and people who are not really using it for serious illnesses. The current legislation, I think, is still a little bit weak on restrictions. I’d want to see it tightened up a little bit, but assuming that we could do that I would support it. I would take an active part in trying to make it the best bill we could so that I’d be able to sign it. It’s something that I would like to have be available to people who have significant pain and suffering issues connected with tragic illness.”

Daggett: “I don’t know all the details of the bill. I generally support the use of marijuana for medical purposes as long as it can be done in a way that targets its use by the intended patient and has adequate safeguards against misuse or illegal use. I would be willing to consider being actively involved but I tend to also agree in the separation of various parts of the government. The Legislature will likely want to put its stamp on it in its own way and we need to let that process have its own course.” MORE

INQUIRER: Jarvier Sandoval was, by all appearances, a dedicated horticulturist who kept watch over his tender shoots at all hours. Just two problems. One, his garden was in Wharton State Forest in Waterford Township. Two, he was growing cannabis. Sandoval, 27, appeared yesterday in Superior Court in Camden, where he was sentenced to five years in prison for possession of 325 marijuana plants with intent to distribute. MORE

WASHINGTON POST: Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico. Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality. (Special Report: Marijuana Nation) Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.  The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico’s war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state. MORE