While the federal government continues its raids on collectives, governors from states around the country seek to end the persecution by removing marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act.

Governors Lincoln Chaffee (Rhode Island) and Governor Christine Gregoire (Washington) are requesting the government to reschedule marijuana, which would recognize it as having potential medical use. Another governor, Peter Shumlin of Vermont, added his name to the document after it was filed and Colorado's John Hickenlooper will make a similar request, The Colorado Independent reports.

The governors of Vermont and Washington have states with medical marijuana laws, but both have gone on record as being hesitant in implementing them because of the federal crackdown in California.

Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, says, "These governors should be insisting that the federal government allow them to run their medical marijuana operations the ways they see fit, which should include selling medical marijuana through state-licensed dispensaries."

San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, an outspoken critic of the Department of Justice's raids on medical marijuana dispensaries will meet with U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, according to the Bay Area Reporter.

The crackdowns have lead to confusion as what is the prevailing law regarding dispensaries. Banks and property owners are weary about doing business with anyone in the medicinal pot business, fearing involvement in the asset forfeiture the feds are threatening, which Ammiano described as "thuggery" and "undemocratic."

Haag replied to those charges stating, "Although all marijuana stores are illegal under federal law, I decided to use our limited resources to address those that are close to schools, parks, and playgrounds."

However one of the points of contention is the distance between collective and school, demonstrating just one of the sources of confusion. Federal "drug-free school zones" are mandated to fall within 1,000 of schools, but state medical marijuana laws mandate that medical pot shops stay 600 feet away.

While California's medical marijuana's laws are in disarray, New Jersey is planning to implement its own laws and hopes to avoid the problems plaguing the Golden State, thirteen.org reports.

New Jersey will only allow marijuana to patients with terminal illness, or to those that traditional pain medications have not worked. The patients will also be required to be under the care of the doctor who prescribes the marijuana for at least a year.

The dispensaries that distribute the marijuana will have to be licensed by the state. Under the California system, there are no requirements for the state to oversee collectives. Patients will also be limited to two ounces a month, with the potency limited to 10 percent.

However, advocates for access are criticizing the overseer of the program, who is a police veteran and not a doctor.

It will be interesting to see if New Jersey's program can bring order to the medical pot landscape.

Former Detroit police chief Isaiah McKinnon says what many pro-marijuana activists have always known about people who are drunk and people who are high. Drunks are violent and belligerent, while those who smoke weed are docile and pose no risk.

McKinnon believes that the farce surrounding marijuana criminalization should torn down and the drug legalized for use. The Daily Tribune reports that McKinnon noted the discrepancy in the sentence of marijuana activist John Sinclair, who received 10 years in prison, compared to the four or five year sentences others who were sentenced for shooting people received early in his career as a police officer.

"To me it was woefully unfair," he says.

Now a professor of education at University of Detroit Mercy, McKinnon believes police need to focus on serious crimes — which marijuana possession and consumption is not — and that cannabis use should be looked at through the perspective of public health.

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Los Angeles sued nine marijuana collectives for violating state law and being within 600 feet of a school. If the storefronts remain open, city attorneys are seeking fines of $5,000 a day.

The city cannot enforce its own laws prohibiting medical pot shops being within 1,000 feet of a school because of court challenges. Other cities are attempting to close shops in their jurisdiction, but the cost of taking each of them to court is cost prohibitive.

Los Angeles has sued about 40 medical marijuana dispensaries. However, Asha Greenberg, assistant city attorney, estimates only about 10 have closed. The Los Angeles Times reports 372 collectives in the city have registered and have begun paying a 5 percent tax on gross receipts.

The local municipalities of California need to recognize that the patchwork of laws regulating medicinal marijuana in each city needs to be standardized. Where one city prohibits, another will allow — and reap the financial and tax benefits of their citizens shopping for their medicine somewhere else.

The San Francisco Weekly profiles former Marine Michael Welch and his medical marijuana collective, Sanctuary.

Welch, who is HIV-positive, uses pot to control the side effects of the antiretroviral pills he takes. He moved to San Francisco because of its medical marijuana laws and Sanctuary was the first collective permitted by the city. However, like many other dispensaries in California, Sanctuary has been targeted by the feds to shutdown.

The U.S. Attorney cited Sanctuary's proximity to a playground — but it's generated no complaints in the seven years its been open and is in complete compliance with San Francisco's laws regarding collectives. The closure of Sanctuary, according to Welsh, will bring back street drug dealers which have been gone for about five years.

"We pay our taxes. The cartel doesn't pay taxes," he says. "And what is it worth?"

When asked why the federal government would put a former Marine in the situation he's in — dead if he lives anywhere else or homeless if he continues to live in San Francisco — he responded, "They don't care — they have no compassion for anyone."

Like many things in the government, its "War on Drugs" is going private. With the words "private" and "war," it means, of course, feds are calling in the "security contractors."

Or, if you happen to communicate like a normal human without quotes or euphemism, mercenaries.

A pentagon office is soliciting $3 billion in bids under the umbrella of halting drug-fueled terrorism, Wired.com's national security blog Danger Room reports. The contracts the Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office offers includes training for commandos in Azerbaijan, providing training to helicopter crews in Mexico and providing "protection support" for the Pakistani boarder police.

Wired reports the office, which issues three year contracts, is one of the government's most profitable centers of cash forr private security contractors. The article compares it to the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which writes the largest contacts for mercenaries that total $10 billion every five years.

Government watchdogs, including Congress' Wartime Contracting Commission, expressed their concern over the office's lack of oversight.

Is it right for the government to continue its "war on drugs" by proxy? Given the history of private military contractors charging many times more for the same jobs done by an equivalent enlisted soldier or officer in the field, how can the Department of Defense justify this office's $3 billion budget?

Patients who are OK'd for medical marijuana are finding out the hard way that it doesn't necessarily mean employers are OK with their prescriptions, Bakersfield TV station KGET reported.

The California Supreme Court ruled a company that fired an employee for using medical marijuana was within its rights. Employers must argue that the pot impairs the employee from doing their job — and the decision doesn't just apply to patients carrying a card, but to pain killers and other medicines that could have adverse affects on performance.

However, if an anti-drug policy isn't in place and the employees don't know about it, workers on prescription medicines have a good chance contesting their employer in court.

San Francisco State Senator Mark Leno proposed a bill in the spring to protect medical marijuana users from being fired from their job, but he later indefinitely delayed it.

Is it fair that patients with a prescription — not just medical marijuana patients, but patients using other pain medicines as well — could be fired from their job for following their doctor's advice?

While I'm sure there's a joke here using the usual "In Soviet Russia…" meme, sometimes it takes an outsider to show how stupid and contradictory the war against marijuana really is.

In this commentary from The Voice of Russia, Gladkov Vladimir discusses the current federal crackdown on California dispensaries. It's a truly depressing state of affairs when a country that's broken the shackles of communism and embraced the free market (albeit in a very extreme manner) in the last 20 years sees the obvious stupidity of shutting down access to patients in need.

"In any event," Vladmir writes, "the Obama administration has picked the wrong moment for the launch of its questionable campaign. While the country is hopelessly struggling with the economic and social depression it seems that there are a lot more urgent problems to address than persecuting producers of a medical substance."

No doubt the Chinese will chime in about this as well — making this issue a true international laughingstock.

In a dramatic change in posture, the Los Angeles City Council is exploring the possibility of shutting down collectives throughout the city.

While the city has tried to balance granting access to patients and regulating the dispensaries, Los Angeles has been staunchly pro-medical marijuana. However, Councilman Jose Huizar's motion would close all dispensaries in the city.

Huizar's motion stems from a recent Long Beach court decision that found any regulation of medical marijuana on the city level invalid because the laws are in violation of federal drug statutes.

Though the ban was proposed the same week as Thanksgiving, the holiday did not deter patient access advocates from turning out to the hearing on Wednesday, Nov. 23, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Yamileth Bolanos, president of the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance, said, "For six years, this council has done nothing. We came and told you about the proliferation of the collectives in the city. This council did nothing. Irresponsible to do nothing? Yes, it was very irresponsible to do nothing. And today, calling for a ban is the most irresponsible thing you can do because you're turning over the distribution of medical marijuana to the cartels and the gangs in the city."