General

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has issued a strong statement regarding implementation of Amendment 64, the state constitutional amendment Colorado voters approved last year to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

Colorado voters didn’t exactly think through Amendment 64, the state constitutional amendment they approved last year to legalize recreational use of marijuana.

Listen to the Dr. Drew Podcast with Kevin Sabet using the link below: http://drdrew.com/036-kevin-sabet/

SAM Statement on Pew Poll on Marijuana Legalization: http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports-legalizing-marijuana/ The survey’s results are an indication, more than anything, of the careless discussion about legalization currently going on in this country. That discussion is being funded with millions of dollars from those who will profit off of legalization – marijuana’s version of Big Tobacco – as […]

Monumental news! This just in: Despite the odds, SAM Hawaii defeated the de facto legalization (“decriminalization”) bill in the legislature that was destined to easily pass a month ago, just prior to SAM’s trip to the islands! Working with local community advocates and supportive legislators, SAM’s team, led by Patrick Kennedy and Kevin Sabet, held […]

HONOLULU — Opponents of decriminalizing marijuana in this state have a new partner — a prominent national figure who has made it a point to fight legislation through education. Patrick Kennedy is the co-chair of Project SAM — Smart Approaches to Marijuana, or SAM.

Denver journalist Christine Tatum, a friend to SAM, writes: “It’s troubling that every regulatory framework of marijuana Colorado is considering is outside the bounds of federal law — and that the one regulatory framework that stands to save more lives and public resources is the very one its lawmakers haven’t found the political will to […]

We at Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) commend the Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee for sending two anti-marijuana resolutions to the full state Senate with “do-pass recommendations.”

We appreciate your letters of support which — like this one that arrived today from Joyce Morris in Colorado — encourage and energize(!) our volunteers. We invite you to contact us — and to support SAM.

Kevin Sabet fields questions about marijuana legalization while also speaking with Ryan Grim, Washington, D.C., bureau chief of The Huffington Post. He also got a chance to speak about our organization — and to explain why Big Marijuana is girding to go the ways of Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol — unless more of us […]

  Patrick Kennedy, Co-chair of SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) sent a  letter to  the Hon. Eric Holder today regarding the marijuana initiatives in CO and WA, on behalf of CADCA, NADCP, NNOAC, SAM, AAP-Colorado, and Smart Colorado. Click below to read the letter. FEB KENNEDY LETTER – DOJ Thank you.    

Columnist Maia Szalavitz devoted 1000 words on TheFix.com last week to single-handedly bash a project she clearly does not know much about.

Kevin Sabet and Dr. Drew spoke in 2011.

Dr. Christian Thurstone: “It really blows my mind that this is even a debate … that we even have to really push hard to get them away from schools.”

Patrick Kennedy spoke with MSNBC in January 2013.

SAM Director Kevin Sabet debates Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance on July 17, 2012 on CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello.

Prohibition — America’s notoriously “failed social experiment” to rid the country of alcohol — took center stage this week as PBS broadcast Ken Burns’ highly acclaimed series on the subject. And already, it has been seized on by drug legalization advocates, who say it proves that drug prohibition should be abandoned. But a closer look […]

When discussing drug policies and their enforcement, the war analogy is not a particularly useful one.

In 1989, just a few months after his inauguration, America’s new president, George H.W. Bush, called up his friend Tom Landry, who had just stepped down as the beloved coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

A radical program in the Pineapple State is shattering myths about how to deal with drug offenders who violate probation. If only the rest of the country would catch on.  Hawaii is revolutionizing probation.

California Assembly Bill 2254—often referred to as the Ammiano bill—and the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis (RCTC) proposition would legalize marijuana use for those 21 and over in California. The Ammiano bill would allow the state to regulate production and distri- bution and initially apply an excise tax of $50 per ounce. The RCTC proposition […]

Marijuana is the most frequently used illicit substance in the United States. Little is known of the role that macro-level factors, including community norms and laws related to substance use, play in determining marijuana use, abuse and dependence. We tested the relationship between state-level legalization of medical marijuana and marijuana use, abuse, and dependence. Methods: […]

On Jan. 9, 2013, the Boston Globe reported: “Kennedy’s group, called Smart Approaches to Marijuana — which is also led by a top pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston and a Cambridge-based drug policy expert — is warning of a public health crisis unless a science-based approach is taken to minimizing the harmful consequences of marijuana […]

Project SAM directors Patrick Kennedy and Kevin Sabet wrote this column, published Jan. 12, 2013 in The Denver Post.