This week Oakland, Calif., voters overwhelmingly approved a new business tax on medi-pot dispensaries. The tax -- which earned 80% voter approval -- is the nation's first on retail pot sales. There are currently four dispensaries licensed by the city and the tax ($18 for every $1,000 of gross receipts) is expected to raise at least $300,000 in additional tax revenue, although at least one local official estimates it could raise as much as $1 million per year, reports the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this month the Los Angeles City Council proposed a similar measure, and the Times reports that officials in Berkeley and San Francisco may follow suit. In other news, the Colorado Board of Health on Monday rejected proposed changes to the state's medi-mari law that the Denver Post says would have "effectively shut down medical-marijuana dispensaries" there. The Board rejected a proposal to cap to five the number of patients each medi-pot caregiver could oversee, and to require the caregivers to help patients with other daily care activities. Hundreds of advocates and patients attended the meeting to testify against the proposals. "We're happy the board did the compassionate thing," Brian Vicente director of Sensible Colorado, told the daily. "This is a win for Coloradan sick patients and the voters."

So far it's been a hot summer for marijuana-law reformers across the country. The action has been particularly hoppin' in California where the quest to have the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis 2010 initiative placed on next year's ballot has brought out the reasoned and the loony alike. Here's a quick review of what's happened in recent weeks: Backers of the RCTC2010 measure have been hard at work, crafting the proposed language for the initiative. The goal is to legalize (under state law only, mind you) possession of up to one ounce by adults over 21, and to allow for taxation, regulating the drug much like alcohol. Cities would retain local control, allowing them to opt out of the tax-and-regulate measure – maintaining a prohibition on growing, buying and selling – but would not have the option of making illegal use and possession. The Drug Law Blog has an interesting interview with initiative proponent Richard Lee here.

Oregon is poised to join the growing number of states that have reauthorized industrial hemp farming -- the environmentally-friendly, non-narcotic cousin of marijuana. On Monday, lawmakers there overwhelmingly voted in favor of the legalization measure, which now awaits the signature of Gov. Ted Kulongoski. If signed, Oregon would become the ninth state to remove legal barriers to its production. Reefer Madness has written extensively about the growing movement to reintroduce hemp farming, once a staple of the American agricultural landscape, so I won't go over and over the virtues of the crop again here. Still, it is worth revisiting several key points -- including the fact that the only reason -- only, only, only reason -- the crop is illegal to grow in the U.S. is that the Drug Enforcement Administration stands steadfast in maintaining that because hemp is the same plant as marijuana, it must be dope, and dope, as you know, is illegal. Alternately, they argue that allowing farmers to plant hemp would help pot growers hide their crop -- this argument is just bull; because of cross-pollination, any pot grown amid a sea of hemp would become completely useless as a drug.

Although former national drug czar John Walters liked to say – often with a smirk on his face – that no one in America goes to jail for marijuana possession, the truth is that they do – routinely. And, sometimes, they die there. That was the case earlier this month in Harris County, when 29-year-old Theresa Anthony who was in jail for two-and-a-half weeks on a minor pot possession charge, died in custody.

Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Mayor Cheye Calvo is suing the Prince George's Co. Sheriff's Office, hoping that the court will order the county to change the way it deploys its SWAT team -- an effort to ensure that no other families will have to endure what Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, did in August 2008, when officials killed the their two dogs during a botched drug raid at their home. To recap: A drug dog in Arizona hit on pot inside a package at a post office there that was addressed to Tomsic. Police brought the package to Maryland and, dressed like mail carriers, P.G. County deputies delivered the package to Calvo and Tomsic's home, where it sat outside all day July 30, 2008. When Calvo got home he picked up the package, brought it inside, and headed upstairs. That's when the P.G. narcos and Sheriff's SWAT team swooped in and broke into the home. Once inside, they shot dead Calvo and Tomsic's dogs. A week later the narcos admitted that the deadly raid was a mistake. Police said they'd arrested a delivery person in connection with a scheme to smuggle drugs by addressing drug-filled packages to uninvolved and unsuspecting people. The plan was to intercept the packages before they arrived at their addressed destinations -- a not-so-original plot that police could've, and should've, figured out before descending on the Calvo home.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has renewed the call for more sensible federal pot policies, filing two bills: one that would ease penalties related to minor possession, and another that would ban the feds from interfering with medicinal use of the drug. The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act (H.R. 2835), filed on June 11, would not only ban the feds from applying restrictions in the Controlled Substances Act to individuals using medi-pot in compliance with state law, but it would also do what pot-law reformers have been wanting for years: Move marijuana from CSA schedule I – the most restrictive – to schedule II, where many other prescription meds dwell. The bill would also forbid the feds from meddling in pot growing operations sanctioned by law in any of the 13 states where medi-pot use is currently legal, and would prohibit the government from applying any FDA provision to restrict the use of medi-mari in states where it is legal. (The bill would not, however, affect any "Federal, State, or local law regulating or prohibiting smoking in public.") To date 20 co-sponsors have signed on to the measure, including Texas' own Liberpublican Rep. Ron Paul.

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two rulings strengthening individual rights against state power. In the first, the court redefined the right of students to be free from unreasonable searches. In the second, the court reinforced the right of defendants to confront witnesses against them. In the first case, an 8-1 ruling by the court means that school officials will likely find it more difficult to justify the strip searching of students suspected of carrying contraband. In the case at hand, school officials at Stafford Middle School strip searched 13-year-old Savana Redding in 2003, after the principal got a tip that she might be carrying prescription strength ibuprofen and anti-inflammatory naproxen. After agreeing to having her backpack searched, the school principal, Kerry Wilson, ordered Redding to the nurse's office, where two other staff members ordered her to undress and then to "shake" out her bra, and to do the same thing with the elastic of her underpants, to prove she had no pills. No pills were found.

Chicago-area GOP U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk says today’s pot dealers are not just out to get you high – they’re out to get you really, really, really high, and to make a crap-load of cash doing it. According to Kirk, the potency of pot being dealt on the streets is now so great that it’s time for the federal government to fight back by increasing federal penalties for dealing the drug. High-potency pot – dope with 15% or more tetrahydrocannibinol, aka THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – makes users “zombie-like,” Kirk has been told by cops, he said in a recent press release. And dealers are turning to the high-pote pot to rack up profits akin to those seen by cocaine dealers. “Drug dealers know they can make as much money selling Kush [a strain of pot] as cocaine but without the heavier sentences that accompany crack and cocaine trafficking,” he said. “If you can make as much money selling pot as cocaine, you should face the same penalties.” Because an eye for an eye always makes things better.

So far, it's been an action packed year for medical marijuana advocates – indeed, so much has been happening that its been hard to keep up. In an effort to get current, Reefer Madness has compiled this cheat sheet of recent highlights:

In April, a group of doctors and medical researchers launched the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine, with the goal of setting the "gold standard for the practice of Cannabinoid Medicine" – in part by providing board certification for qualified practitioners. Researchers in New Zealand have found more evidence that cannabinoids can actually help treat cancer. New medi-pot laws are getting closer to passage in Delaware, Illinois, and New Jersey. In Jersey, the current version of the proposed medi-mari law is more strict than the original version. Still, Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign the measure into law if it gets to his desk. With passage of a medi-pot bill in the Illinois Senate, it now appears there is a three-way race to see which state will become the 14th to enact laws protecting ill patients using pot. In Rhode Island, lawmakers have passed a measure that would expand the state's medi-pot law to allow state-licensed dispensaries, reports the Marijuana Policy Project. The measure will now move to Gov. Donald Carcieri.