A story out of Las Vegas involving a marijuana legalization campaign and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is stirring up quite a bit of news coverage.

As SAFER co-founder and Marijuana Is Safer coauthor Steve Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) explains in a post on AlterNet:

Today, in the heart of Sin City, former Alaska governor, Republican vice presidential candidate, Fox News “analyst” and the darling of the Tea Party set Sarah Palin delivered a keynote address to attendees of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America’s convention. Might this be a sign that Palin is prepared to take up the fight for individual freedoms espoused by Ron Paul and other libertarian-leaning leaders of the Tea Party movement?

One group in Nevada is testing this hypothesis by asking Palin to put her mouth where their money is. Nevadans for Sensible Marijuana Laws (a ballot advocacy group backed by my organization, the Marijuana Policy Project) has offered to pay Palin $25,000 to give a similar speech to marijuana policy reformers. Such a speech would convey a simple message: If we can defend and even celebrate the individual freedom to use alcohol, we should certainly allow individuals the freedom to use marijuana, a substance objectively less harmful than alcohol.

CLICK HERE to read the rest of Steve's post on AlterNet.

Is marijuana a harmless giggle, as John Lennon once called it, or a dangerous and illicit addiction?

The debate has once again been pushed to the forefront, thanks to a couple of timely factors.

Fourteen states have passed laws in favor of medical marijuana, designed to ease the suffering of those in chronic pain, while state lawmakers are debating whether or not some form of limited legalization—and, therefore, taxation—could help plug massive budget holes.

 “The economy is sharpening the minds of politicians,” says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Norml. “It’s hard to argue that prohibition is succeeding."

Powerful, yet subtle demographic forces are also at work.

After an attempt to decriminalize statewide the adult possession of an ounce or less of marijuana failed at the polls in 2006, Mason Tvert, executive director of the drug policy reform organization Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) and his colleagues hit upon a new strategy: Focus energy on local campaigns such as city and campus pro-marijuana initiatives.

So far, the plan has worked like a charm. Nederland recently decriminalized marijuana, following in the footsteps of Breckenridge earlier this year and Denver before that. And now, SAFER has announced another victory: In a campus-wide election this past Tuesday and Wednesday, students at Fort Lewis College in Durango overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling on university marijuana penalties to be no greater than those for alcohol. The school is the third Colorado university to have passed such a measure, with University of Colorado-Boulder and Colorado State University leading the charge.

"It's another university where students have taken action and think it's time for change," says Tvert. "We saw this at CU and CSU, and now we're seeing it down in Durango. It's really part of a statewide movement."