New Mexico governor signs medical marijuana bill News
New Mexico governor signs medical marijuana bill

[JURIST] New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson [official website] signed into law the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act [Senate Bill 523 text and history] Monday, legalizing medical marijuana [JURIST news archive] in the treatment of certain "eligible conditions and symptoms." Eligible conditions include chronic or debilitating diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma. The New Mexico Department of Health [official website] will establish regulations for licensing, production, and distribution, to be monitored by a panel of eight health care professionals. New Mexico Business Weekly has more.

About a dozen US states permit the use of medical marijuana. The US Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich [opinion text; Duke Law case backgrounder] upheld Congress's power to criminalize the growth and personal use of marijuana for medical purposes.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.