The Obama administration recently announced it would defer to state medical marijuana laws.

Stephen Gutwillig
Special to CNN

This year is a watershed year in pot politics.

The Obama administration recently announced it would defer to state medical marijuana laws and stop federal prosecutions of patients and providers who comply with them.

In California, the tanking economy inspired Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to call for debating marijuana taxation and regulation, a bill was introduced in Sacramento to do just that, and four separate ballot initiatives are circulating to allow voters the chance to decide the issue for themselves.

Schwarzenegger's position was echoed by New York Gov. David Paterson and by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, who suggested legalizing pot could cripple Mexican and U.S. gangs. The unprecedented momentum to question marijuana prohibition is being fueled by a widely remarked-upon phenomenon - the cultural mainstreaming of marijuana.

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Editor's Note: The Los Angeles City Council has long debated how to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries. A proposed ordinance, drafted by City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, was recently sent to the City Council. The measure would prohibit sales of medical marijuana. Most dispensaries would be forced to close, including 186 that the city allowed to operate according to authorities. Read the full draft measure below.

Carmen A. Trutanich
City Attorney

Honorable Members:

This office has prepared and now transmits for your consideration the attached revised draft ordinance, approved as to form and legality. This draft ordinance would add Article 5.1 to Chapter IV of the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) regulating the collective cultivation of medical marijuana, pursuant to state law, in the City of Los Angeles. Pursuant to instructions from your Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee, it includes several changes from the last draft ordinance transmitted on September 22, 2009. The changes are summarized below.

When this matter is considered, we will be prepared to discuss the impacts of this ordinance, the case of Los Angeles Collective Association, et a/. v. City of Los Angeles, LASC BC 422215 and any other relevant litigation. If necessary, we will ask that the meeting be recessed into closed session for this purpose, pursuant to Government Code section 54956.9(a) and (b)(1).

Find the full draft ordinance here...

Allison B. Margolin
Criminal Defense Attorney

As the Obama administration attempts to steer federal agents away from prosecuting marijuana dispensaries, the Los Angeles District Attorney and City Attorney’s Office is attempting to undermine that shift by articulating a deceitfully narrow view of the state law.

Despite reports of trillion dollar deficits nationally and a collapsing state economy, District Attorney Steve Cooley says his office is committed to closing down revenue-generating medical marijuana dispensaries and the LA District Attorney’s office continues to take prisoners of war in their fight against safe access to medical marijuana.

In doing so, LA City is threatening to plunge the state’s economy into further collapse by taking potential tax revenues that could be going to the state treasury. Moreover, the City’s position threatens to generate crime by forcing the huge demand for marijuana back to the street. If the free market has allowed for the proliferation of dispensaries, that demand is not going away. The avenue for its fulfillment will simply change and could go from safe to entrenched in the poly-drug trafficking black market economy.

Most alarming, perhaps, is that the District Attorney seeks not only to thwart the proliferation of these establishments but seeks to create a whole new class of felons – medical marijuana operators. And the DA’s view of the state law - that it does not allow for the operation of dispensaries - is not just shocking. It flies in the face of case law handed down by the California courts.

Just this past August, the Fourth Circuit of the California Court of Appeals (in People v. Hochanadel) affirmed what Attorney General Jerry Brown announced last year, that storefront dispensaries that receive money in exchange for marijuana, may qualify as legal cooperatives.

Furthermore, in that case, the California judiciary upheld a 2005 interpretation of the marijuana sales law allowing for cash for marijuana transactions. As the court appeals said in the 2005 Urziceanu case, speaking about the State legislature’s expansion of the 1996 medical marijuana referendum,

“This new law represents a dramatic change in the prohibitions on the use, distribution, and cultivation of marijuana for persons who are qualified patients or primary caregivers and fits the defense defendant attempted to present at trial. Its specific itemization of the marijuana sales law indicates it contemplates the formation and operation of medicinal marijuana [***64] cooperatives that would receive reimbursement for marijuana and the services provided in conjunction with the provision of that marijuana.”

These two decisions also affirmed the notion that simply because some of the marijuana being sold at medical marijuana cooperatives may have been purchased from people who are not members of the cooperative does not invalidate the medical defense, or make the possession of that marijuana illegal.

Yet, the District Attorney’s office prosecutes people simply on the basis that some of the marijuana at a dispensary allegedly came from non-members, or that the marijuana is sold for more than that for which it is bought. The fact that a dispensary has gross profits does not mean that the owners are making profits. Yet again, the District Attorney’s office has used the gross-profit theory to deprive people their freedom, incarcerate law-abiding citizens, and attempt to create another class of felons.

The District Attorney’s policy and deliberate misinterpretation of the law begs the question: why?

Perhaps law enforcement enjoys marijuana dispensary busts more than others because the defendants are generally civil, non-gun-toting law abiding civilians. Perhaps it's the money, but strangely enough, in cases I have represented recently, the state does not always keep the proceeds from dispensaries.

Even where the state prosecutes the cases, in Los Angeles’ Criminal Court Building, in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles, the DA’s office has been turning over assets seized from medical busts over to the federal government.

Whatever the perverse reasons motivating the District Attorney’s position, the issue is not why but how to stop this alarming waste of resources. The media has focused on the fact that dispensaries in LA have mushroomed over the past year, and on the ease with which marijuana users are obtaining recommendations.

No one has focused on the fact that the war against dispensaries is another chapter in the escalation of the drug war, another excuse to send people to state prison, another mechanism to disenfranchise people whose medicine is not respected by law enforcement or the LA District Attorney’s office as legitimate.

This has to stop. In the wake of prison overcrowding and budget crisis, sending more people away, depriving the state of taxes they are currently reaping from dispensaries, is not the answer.

The District Attorney is supposed to aim to do justice, not to obtain as many convictions as possible. The District Attorney, representing the State of California, is not supposed to deliberately ignore the state law as a vehicle to fund police departments and exert its power.

It is time for the people of the State of California to take back their power, to tell their DAs that they represent the People and the People don’t want medical marijuana operators to be treated as criminals.

This week, the District Attorney’s Office is expected to unleash the LAPD on medical marijuana dispensaries across the City. The time for action is now – before more people are caught up in the system, before more resources are wasted, before more lives are ruined.

Editor’s Note: Ms. Margolin, a Harvard law grad, is a criminal defense attorney practicing state and federal criminal law in Los Angeles. She was Adjunct Professor of Law at University of West Los Angeles in 2008, teaching “The American Drug War: From Marijuana to Meth.”

A federal move could encourage other states to make their own laws allowing medical marijuana use.

Roger Parloff
Fortune Magazine

When Irvin Rosenfeld, 56, picks me up at the Fort Lauderdale airport, his SUV reeks of marijuana. The vice president for sales at a local brokerage firm, Rosenfeld has been smoking 10 to 12 marijuana cigarettes a day for 38 years, he says.

That's probably unusual in itself, but what makes Rosenfeld exceptional is that for the past 27 years, he has been copping his weed directly from the United States government.

Every 25 days Rosenfeld goes to a pharmacy and picks up a tin of 300 federally grown and rolled cigarettes that have been sent there for him by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), acting with approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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Program Note: For more on the medical marijuana controversy,  tune in to America's High, an AC360° special program, on Friday, July 24 at  11pm ET.

Justin Scheck and Stu Woo
Wall Street Journal

Sellers of marijuana as a medicine here don't fret about raids any more. They've stopped stressing over where to hide their stash or how to move it unseen.

Now their concerns involve the state Board of Equalization, which collects sales tax and requires a retailer ID number. Or city planning offices, which insist that staircases comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Then there is marketing strategy, which can mean paying to be a "featured dispensary" on a Web site for pot smokers.

After years in the shadows, medical marijuana in California is aspiring to crack the commercial mainstream.

"I want to do everything I can to run this as a legitimate business," says Jan Werner, 55 years old, who invested in a pot store in a shopping mall after 36 years as a car salesman.

State voters decreed back in 1996 that Californians had a right to use marijuana for any illness - from cancer to anorexia to any other condition it might help. But supplying "med pot" remained risky. The ballot measure didn't specify who could sell it or how. The state provided few guidelines, leaving local governments to impose a patchwork of restrictions. Above all, because pot possession remained illegal under U.S. law, sellers had to worry about federal raids.

But in February, the Justice Department said it would adhere to President Barack Obama's campaign statement that federal agents no longer would target med-pot dealers who comply with state law. Since then, vendors who had kept a low profile have begun to expand, and entrepreneurs who had avoided cannabis have begun to invest.

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CNN

Program Note: Tune in tonight to for our special coverage of the debate around the legalization of marijuana, 'America's High: The case for and against pot,' on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Allison Margolin
Criminal Defense Attorney

Charles Lynch, a dispensary operator from Morro Bay, California, who was indicted and convicted in federal court for activities related to selling marijuana to medical patients, received a sentence last Thursday of a year and a day.

John Littrell, Lynch’s attorney, indicated that Lynch received what is known as the “safety valve.” This is a federal statute that allows for a defendant who is otherwise subject to mandatory minimum sentences to have a reprieve and be sentenced outside of them. In order to qualify for the so-called 'safety valve,' the defendant cannot be the “leader” of the organization. Littrell indicated the judge would issue a written order amidst objection by the U.S. Attorney to the safety valve in part on that basis.

He also indicated that Lynch was sentenced to 366 days in order to qualify for good time credits that would reduce Lynch’s sentence to around 10 months.

It is refreshing and fabulous that Judge Wu has liberally interpreted the safety valve to help reduce the prison exposure of a defendant who would have a medical defense in state court. Although the attorneys were precluded from mentioning the medical defense during Lynch’s jury trial, it is clear that his medical defense, though not technically available, motivated the court to sentence the defendant far below the 10-year-mandatory minimum that would otherwise apply to his convictions.

I believe that defense attorneys should use this case as well as USA v. Landa, 281 F. Supp. 2d 1139 (2003) , in which the district court contemplated compliance with state law as a basis for a downward departure in the guidelines (although that case lacked evidence of state law compliance), to argue that state law has a place in contemplating punishment when the state and federal law differ and the state gives more rights than the federal government.

I drafted a motion like this for Stephanie Landa on her appeal. For anyone interested, the argument is that the 10th Amendment is violated by the federal enforcement of marijuana’s Schedule I status in the medical states.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times Magazine published an article, “Obama’s Judicial Philosophy Analyzed,” by Charlie Savage, about what the author perceived to be Obama’s judicial philosophy and the one he believed Supreme Court justices appointed by Obama would follow.

The article suggested that Obama is interested in a court who articulates rights that many states (maybe a super-minority) have recognized, and pushes the other states along. That is why the recent legalization of medical marijuana in Rhode Island should be celebrated as a victory and replicated in more states.

Then we can use federal marijuana cases as a vehicle to go back to the U.S. Supreme Court and ask that the use of marijuana for medical purposes be recognized as a right that is held superior to the ban of the conduct by the Controlled Substances Act, the statute that regulates controlled substances and places marijuana in a category that has no medical use, Schedule I.

Editor's Note: Harvard-educated Lawyer Allison B. Margolin is now a practicing criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles. She is often referred to as 'L.A.'s 'dopest' attorney.

In Juarez, Mexico, 1,600 people were killed in 2008, three times more than the most murderous city in the U.S.

Rusty Fleming
Documentary Filmmaker and Author
www.drugwarsthemovie.com

It was a little after midnight when I crossed over the bridge from Laredo, Texas into the sister city of Nuevo Laredo Mexico. After having my car searched I was cleared through the Mexican Customs check point where the military was staged and drove towards my destination.

I had a source of mine, a local reporter, call me four hours earlier to tell me to meet him at a specific restaurant at 1am because he had some photographs and information for me. I was investigating a specific series of brutal murders that had taken place in the Laredo corridor. This meeting with a contact wasn’t all that unusual—most of the investigative journalists in Mexico work under intense circumstances as they often fall upon information relating to the drug cartels that they either can not, or will not, report on because it would be a death sentence for them.Therefore, they give the information to someone like me who will get it aired or published in a way that does not connect them.

I arrived early to the restaurant and since the weather was pleasant, I decided to take a seat on the patio and have a glass of tea. I sat for a few minutes when my source arrived and sat down, ordered a drink and handed me a large white envelope. He told me this was everything I had been asking his editor about the day before and that I should be careful how I use it. I thanked him, (by paying him), and we talked for about 20 minutes after which he asked if I could give him a ride home.

He got into my rental car and told me to drive towards his house on the outskirts of town. We drove past the airport and headed towards Monterrey, and just as I was about to make the turn off the highway to drop him near his home, we saw three sets of headlights about two hundred yards off the main road in a desolate section of land.

I stopped the car and told him I wanted to see what was going on. Without objection from my friend, I drove within a few yards of what appeared to be about a half dozen local cops attempting to seal off a crime scene. We exited our vehicle and walked towards the area where the police cars were shining their lights. As I looked down, I found myself standing over three bodies that appeared to be young boys who were obviously dead. I stepped over to the side a few steps and there were three more lying in the bushes. As the police started talking to my reporter friend, I leaned over the first three bodies and even though I’m no forensic expert, I could clearly see they had all been shot execution-style in the back of the head. My friend confirmed the other three had the same type wounds.

Within a few hours we were able to piece together some of the basic common threads between these young corpses. They were all teenage boys—the oldest was 17, the youngest 13. They had all been working for one of the cartels as couriers and crossing about a hundred pounds of marijuana (worth about $2000) into the United States and had pocketed the money. They had been caught by their handlers (the men in charge of supervising the young gang members) and since the cartel uses hundreds of kids like these all over Mexico and the U.S, someone made the decision to make examples of these kids. A message needed to be sent out so the rest of the young recruits would realize the severity of not following orders.

Six .40 caliber bullets to the heads of these boys was a very powerful message.

It was a gruesome sight and it made me realize for the first time that these kids probably never fully understood the “consequences” of getting involved with the cartel and dealing a little harmless weed.

For years, I’ve heard people from all over the country, including celebrities, politicians and business men, make the argument that pot is harmless and doesn’t carry the same “consequences” as cocaine and heroin.

Let me respond: To the men that manufacture, transport and sell these narcotics, these drugs are equal the same thing—Money. No matter what the substance, it is intended to be converted into money and that is entirely what this is all about for cartels. A 13-year-old can be killed over a load of pot just as fast as someone can be killed over a load of cocaine, heroin, or meth.

The discussion about the legalization or decriminalization of certain narcotics is starting to pick up traction in our country today. I embrace that discussion. That doesn’t mean I embrace the legalization, but I definitely think it’s time to have a detailed, mature discussion on the matter. But the discussion is meaningless unless we deal with the truth, and the truth is the illicit narcotics trade is not only more profitable than ever before in the history of smuggling but more deadly than before too.

The drug policy in America has become almost schizophrenic, especially as it relates to marijuana. No doubt we have to have some type of comprehensive reform as it relates to the way we are prosecuting the “war on drugs” (dare I even say war on drugs) because what we have been doing has not worked very well by any standard. Maybe legalization is part of that solution, but this problem is far more complex than any ONE solution. Just like the fence that was built to secure our border, and hasn’t. What the fence did succeed in doing is curbing one problem in a certain area, but creating more problems in other areas.

Neither will the legalization of narcotics fix everything wrong with the drug war. It will curb some things, but it will also create new problems in areas we are not prepared for today, causing a whole new set of consequences. Unlike those teenage boys lying in the desert—we should take the time to understand and fully comprehend those consequences before we endeavor to take that next step.

Legalizing marijuana is off the table, the White House says.

Eliza Browning
AC360° Associate Producer

All week we've been reporting on the debate surrounding the legalization of marijuana. We've examined the use of marijuana for medical purposes, shown you legal marijuana dispensaries and illegal marijuana 'gardens.' Tonight we'll continue to examine whether or not there is a case for legalization. We've spoken to doctors, policymakers and experts on the subject. They all have their own opinions. What do you think? Do you think marijuana should be legalized in the United States?

Program Note: Watch Randi Kaye’s full report tonight on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Randi Kaye kneels beside a marijuana plant on her visit to a 'marijuana garden' with a team of sheriff's deputies and officials who destroy the plants.

Randi Kaye | Bio
AC360° Correspondent

The helicopter waiting for us was bright blue and yellow. That was our ride into the Los Padres National Forest in California. We were about two hours north of Los Angeles. After the dirt and sand swirling around us settled down, we climbed aboard.

Our pilot flew during Vietnam so I wasn't too worried when he took us into the canyon of the forest and hovered there while our photographer shot video of the "marijuana garden" below us.

Hovering in a canyon in a chopper is not for the faint of heart. We came to do a story for AC360° on the "marijuana gardens" that exist on public land - like national parks and U.S. forests. About 80 percent of marijuana grown outdoors is grown in those areas.

We came to the right spot here. As we hovered we could see the plants below us as well as the irrigation system the growers illegally installed in the forest. The system diverts the rain water to these “gardens,” so the rest of the forest is deprived of water while the marijuana plants thrive.

Our pilot dropped us on a ridge. I was glad we didn't see where we were landing until after we climbed out of the chopper. We were with deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and they gave us green floppy hats to wear to help blend in among the trees so "they" wouldn't see us.

Who are "they?" I'm told “they” are Mexican immigrants who have been smuggled across the border. They’re the ones who are allegedly responsible for growing this stuff. They bring in the seeds, the fertilizer and everything else they need when they enter the U.S. It's all financed, according to law enforcement, by the drug cartels in Mexico.

It’s a basic exchange: immigrants rely on the cartels to get them across the border, and the immigrants re-pay their debt by tending the "marijuana gardens" for the cartels.

It’s an uphill battle for law enforcement, which doesn't have enough money or manpower to keep destroying the drug.

When we came upon the first plants I was floored. Never had I seen so much marijuana. The smell was overpowering. Overall, our group estimated we found about 7,000. We’re told the street value of that amount is about $3.5 million.

We watched as the officers from the sheriff's department and US Forest Service destroyed every single plant they came across. I ripped one out of the ground and it uprooted easily. They broke most of them in two.

All the while I kept wondering if the growers were watching us. Our guys were carrying rifles and handguns and they said during a raid like this the growers usually hide in a bunker stocked with food built under the forest floor for a day or so to make sure the coast is clear. That was very unsettling since we also were told the growers carry AK-47 rifles and military-style weapons to protect the pot plants.

After hiking about a mile deep into the forest (I've never seen or touched so much Poison Oak!)we found what our team calls the "hooch". It’s the camp where the growers live in the forest from spring until fall while they grow the marijuana. There was a tent and some canned food items. Also some bb's which apparently they use to kill rodents and small animals to eat while they are camped there.

The sheriff's deputies went through the camp to make sure there weren't any weapons or drugs and then destroyed it. Once the job was done and thousands of plants uprooted, we hiked our way back out of the forest. It was tougher going back uphill, trust me! It was a relief to be out safely. We stood on top of the same ridge where we were dropped, muddy and smelling of marijuana, waiting for our ride to arrive. A few minutes later the helicopter brought us out of the forest.

The "garden" was destroyed but even our team had to admit there's a good chance it will all be replanted again.

Be sure to check out Randi's video : Pot growing in parks

Near the U.S.-Mexican border.

Rusty Fleming
Documentary Filmmaker and Author
www.drugwarsthemovie.com

As she sits on her couch looking back at me, Consuelo wipes the tears from behind her glasses and tries to tell me about the night her 18-year-old daughter was taken - suddenly and violently – and never heard from again.

Her trembling hands and shaking legs speak volumes of the pain she suffers day-in and day-out, wondering about the fate of youngest daughter. “Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she cold and hungry? Have they hurt her? If they did kill her where is her body?” These thoughts and many more, race through the mind of this single mother a hundred times a day.

Consuelo – not her real name; she’s too afraid to use her real name – is a 49-year-old mother of four. “Today is my baby’s 20th birthday. It’s been over two years and we’ve heard nothing.”

Consuelo can hardly speak her daughter’s name before her face flinches with pain and her eyes fill up again with tears. With a breath of exasperation and more than a hint of resentment she says, “No one has helped us, no one.”

As horrific as this story is, it’s a story that has been played out hundreds of times in the last five years all across the U.S.-Mexico border. Sometimes it ends with the return of the loved one, in some cases alive but in most cases, dead. Sometimes like in Consuelo’s case it never ends. I’ve interviewed over fifty families in the last four years of parents, husbands and wives all across the southwest border that have one thing in common, they are all still living the same nightmare on a daily basis, “what has happened to my loved one in Mexico.”

My first encounter was with a man whose daughter and best friend became the center of attention in the mainstream media for a short time after the kidnappings in September of 2004.

So compelled by their story, I made them the centerpiece of the kidnapping segment of my documentary, Drug Wars. William Slemaker sat down with me and told me the frightening details of the night his daughter, Yvette Martinez, 24, and her best friend, Brenda Cisneros, 21, were kidnapped, just a half mile from the bridge crossing back into the U.S. by the local police in Nuevo Laredo only to be handed over to a drug lord the next day. He told me that when he reported the two girls missing, he was surprised to find out how helpless U.S. authorities were and how hopeless the Mexican authorities were.

After a grueling night listening to William and five other families tell me their stories of pain and despair, I was emotionally drained to the point that I got up from the chair I had been sitting in for nearly six hours, walked into the bathroom of the adjoining room, broke down and cried like a baby. As a parent, I could not help but place myself in the shoes of these parents and feel for just a moment the pain they have been feeling for years. I walked back into the room where they had all gathered and as I embraced them all and thanked them for coming to talk to me, I knew I never wanted to know what it would be like to be in their position. That is what keeps me reporting on the border today: their pain.

The pain of these individuals motivates me every time I want to quit, every time I get discouraged about reporting the stories that never seem to make a difference. Every time I look at my bank account and see that I have literally broke myself and my family financially to get the word out to as many people as possible—I think of them and suddenly my problems are not so bad after all. I stop feeling sorry for myself and start working again.

Not all of the kidnappings I have worked in the past four years have this never ending kind of pain attached. Some people do actually get confirmation of the death of their loved one, occasionally they even get the remains in which they can bury, cremate grief over and gain some type of closure on. And then every once in a while a happy ending comes—their loved one comes home, alive—not always well, but alive.

The last kidnapping I covered in Nuevo Laredo, Texas was just such a case. Two young girls, 18 and 19 years old, were out late at night at a bar in Nuevo Laredo and at about 2:30 am, they were kidnapped and held without a ransom demand for a week. On the seventh day—their captors released them near a truck stop on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo. I spent most of that week with Gina (not her real name), the mother of the eldest of the two girls. Her grief, pain and suffering was all too familiar to me.

Alas, there were two silver linings to this story. The obvious one was that the girls were returned to their families, emotionally beat down and physically hurt, but alive and well enough to recover. But the one silver lining that had an even bigger impact on me than the girls being reunited with their loved ones, was the unconditional love and support this family that I shared that week with received from one man. He was the same man that first called me on the phone to tell me about the kidnappings before the local news had even reported it. He told me “Rusty, you need to get down here and investigate this.”

This man stood by Gina and held her hand as she walked, held her head as she cried and helped her at every critical turn. This man stood there with a face of tears as the news of the safe return of this young girl was confirmed by the authorities and celebrated along with the family as they waited in anticipation for the teenage victim to walk thru the doors of the Webb County Sheriff’s office. When it was all over, Gina went on national television thanking this man for all he had done to encourage, help and support her and she thanked God for sending this man to her because she had no one else. That man was none other than William Slemaker.

William has managed to take the pain he endured for the past four and a half years and turn it into a useful and powerful tool to help others faced with the same plight. I have taken William with me all over the country to speak at conventions and several venues where we premiered Drug Wars and audiences from everywhere are drawn to his story but drawn even closer by his passion to help the hundreds of other people who have missing loved ones in Mexico. My prayer for William and his family is that through helping others and showing them the unconditional love and support that the pain and grief they have suffered over Yvette’s disappearance will be removed—without a trace.

Randi Kaye visits a marijuana garden where 7,000 plants were taken down that day - that's a street value of about $500,000.

Editor's Note: Starting on Monday we'll be taking a close look at marijuana and its use in the United States. Is there a case for legalization? We traveled around the country, met with people on all sides of the issue, walked through medical marijuana dispensaries and got a clear idea of the different kinds of marijuana out there.

And what about using marijuana for medical purposes? Hear Melissa Etheridge's take on the issue. She says it helped her through her battle with cancer. But there's the other side too. We will speak to a 34-year-old teacher who is bi-polar who used marijuana for treatment but says it ruined her life. She tells Randi Kaye why she thinks marijuana is addictive and how she says the drug nearly killed her.

Tune in for the AC360° special report, 'America's High: The case for and against pot,' starting Monday at 10 p.m. ET. What do you think about the issue? Post your questions and we'll try to answer them this week.