Last January I proclaimed in the The Hill’s Congress blog: “Marijuana law reform is no longer a political liability; it’s a political opportunity.” Ten months later it appears that an unprecedented number of state-elected officials are heeding the message. Here’s just a sample.
COLORADO: Last week the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice recommended legislators to substantially reduce marijuana penalties so that the possession of up to four ounces of pot would classified as a petty offense. Offenses involving greater amounts of cannabis (up to 16 ounces) would be reduced to a misdemeanor. State Attorney General John Suthers told the Denver Post that he supports the Commission’s recommendations which, if enacted, would make Colorado’s pot possession laws among the most lenient in the nation.
RHODE ISLAND: A special nine-member Senate panel met for the first time this week to debate revising the state’s criminal marijuana policies. The panel’s chair, Democrat Sen. Joshua Miller, said that the task-force will primarily focus on the subject of decriminalization, but that members will also likely debate the merits of taxing a regulating the adult use of cannabis. The panel’s recommendations to the legislature are due on January 10, 2010. In 2009, Rhode Island’s legislature became only the second to approve legislation licensing the establishment of medical cannabis dispensaries.
WISCONSIN: Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle recently announced his support for legislation that seeks to make Wisconsin the fourteenth state to allow for the legal use of medical cannabis. Both the Assembly and the Senate Public Health Committees are scheduled to hear testimony in favor of the legislation, known as the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, on Tuesday, December 15, 2009.
WASHINGTON: Incoming Seattle city attorney Peter Holmes announced this week that his office will no longer charge anyone with simple marijuana possession offenses. “We’re not going to bring any more (marijuana possession) charges,” he said. There are other more important, more pressing public safety matters in need of attention with the limited resources we have.” Holmes added that he supports legislation that stalled in 2009 that seeks to depenalize marijuana. Those proposals are expected to be heard by the legislature in 2010.
PENNSYLVANIA: Next month legislators will hold their first hearing — ever — on legalizing the use of medical cannabis. The House Committee on Health and Human Services will hear testimony on HB 1393, The Barry Busch Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act of 2009, on Wednesday, December 2, at 11am in Room 140 of the Main Capitol. Contact Philly NORML for further details.
ARKANSAS: Democrat Senator Randy Laverty announced this week that he is considering introducing legislation to lessen or eliminate criminal penalties for marijuana possession offenses. Legislators in several other states, including New Hampshire and Texas, are also expected to debate marijuana legalization proposals in 2010.
CALIFORNIA: In the coming months legislators are expected to hold additional hearings on Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, which seeks to tax and regulate the commercial production and retail sale of cannabis to those age 21 or older. The California Assembly Committee on Public Safety is anticipated to vote on the measure by late January. The vote will mark the first time that California, or the legislature of any state, has voted on the issue of cannabis regulation in over three decades.
By any standard, 2010 will be a historic year for legislative activity regarding marijuana law reform. Will you play a role in bringing common sense marijuana regulations to your community? Get active, get NORML, and be the change you want to see!
NORML SHOW LIVE provides you with exclusive access to Oregon’s world-famous Cannabis Café, this Saturday Night from 6pm-8pm Pacific.
You’ve read about it on the Reuters wire, New York Times, the Times of London, and even Al Jazeera, USA Today, and the Associated Press will be bringing you the story soon, but only “Radical” Russ can get you inside the first café exclusively for Oregon’s 21,000 medical marijuana cardholders.
Madeline Martinez from Oregon NORML and the NORML Board joins us to describe how her vision of a cannabis café has become a reality. We also speak to the patients in the café enjoying cannabis liberty in a way few outside Amsterdam enjoy.
We’ve upgraded to the latest 4G WiMax wireless technology to bring you the best remote audio possible from the café. Cannabis Karri will be screening your calls from back in the studio and Cousin Kenny will take your questions online via our live chat window.
It’s two hours of live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, NORML SHOW LIVE features a recap of the week’s top stories in medical marijuana, consumer cannabis, and industrial hemp; interviews with the top cannabis activists, politicians, scientists, doctors, actors, musicians, and comedians; and your calls live at 347-994-1810.
(PhillyNORML: Chris Goldstein & Derek Rosenzweig) Philadelphia could save more than $3,000,000 annually by not taking pot smokers in for mugshots.
Minor marijuana possession arrests in Philadelphia are handled with mandatory custody; this is a different process than every other county in Pennsylvania costing the city millions of dollars. A disproportionate number of citizens (84%) arrested for marijuana possession in the city are black.
Research by PhillyNORML this year has uncovered these two disturbing trends that present serious challenges to the city. But in a sign of a pragmatic shift in attitudes, city officials have held an ongoing dialogue with reform advocates to proactively address these concerns.
In March of 2009 the Philadelphia chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws performed their annual observation of the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Report data for the marijuana arrest numbers. At the same time, the city was beginning to face a heartbreaking economic plight that pitted police jobs against a lack of Public Safety Budget funds.
Data indicates that 4,716 adults were arrested in 2008 on the singular criminal misdemeanor charge of marijuana possession less than 30 grams. In Philadelphia such arrests are required to be custodial. For even a single cannabis joint this means an offender must be handcuffed, transported to a holding cell, photographed and perhaps make bail before release. In every other county in Pennsylvania there is no mandate for the custodial arrest of citizens found with small amounts of marijuana. Instead, summary violations are issued along with a date to appear in court.
PhillyNORML is a sterling example of how ordinary cannabis consumers can band together under the NORML banner and affect real change at the local level. Reformers at the national level don’t have the on-the-ground knowledge of local politics like everyday citizens living in cities like Philadelphia. Local reformers can better cultivate personal relationships with mayors, city councils, and all their staff, as well as integrate with groups as disparate as unions and libertarian groups, parents and police, and churches and universities.
If you’re sitting around wondering when they are going to legalize pot, you’re part of the problem. YOU have to legalize pot. You and your like-minded pot smokers, cannabis consumers, medical marijuana patients, and lovers of liberty, peaceably assembled to exercise your free speech and to petition your government for a redress of grievances… there’s nothing more American than being NORML.
[Editor's note: This post is excerpted from this week's NORML weekly media advisory. To have NORML's media advisories delivered straight to your in-box, sign up for NORML's free e-zine here.]
Members of the California Medical Association’s (CMA) House of Delegates have endorsed a resolution stating that the criminal prohibition of marijuana is a “failed public health policy.”
As enacted, Resolution 704a-09, the “Criminalization of Marijuana” states: “[The] CMA considers the criminalization of marijuana to be a failed public health policy, … and encourage[s] … debate and education regarding the health aspects of changing current policy regarding cannabis use.”
The California Medical Association has more than 35,000 members statewide.
The newly adopted resolution coincides with the scheduling of legislative hearings regarding Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, which seeks to tax and regulate the commercial production and retail sale of cannabis to those age 21 or older.
The California Assembly Committee on Public Safety is anticipated to vote on AB 390 by late January.
Last week, the American Medical Association resolved that “marijuana’s status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines.” The organization had previously called for cannabis to be “retained in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act,” a legal classification that defines the substance and its natural compounds as possessing “no currently accepted use in treatment in the United States.”
[Editor's note: This post is excerpted from this week's forthcoming NORML weekly media advisory. To have NORML's media advisories delivered straight to your in-box, sign up for NORML's free e-zine here.]
Health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers than they are for those who use cannabis, and are more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers, according to a report published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal.
According to the report, “In terms of [health-related] costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user.”
The review, authored by researchers from the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia at the University of Victoria and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse at the University of Ottawa, stated: “Alcohol is used by a very large number of people with the vast majority of these using in low- or moderate-risk ways. Conversely, cannabis and tobacco are used by far fewer people. The majority of cannabis use is low- and moderate-risk, however, while the majority of tobacco is high-risk.”
The study reported that social costs applicable to marijuana are primarily “enforcement-related.”
The authors concluded: “The harms, risks and social costs of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco vary greatly. A lot has to do with how the substances are handled legally. Alcohol and tobacco are legal substances, which explains their low enforcement costs relative to cannabis. On the other hand, the health costs per user of tobacco and alcohol are much higher than for cannabis. This may indicate that cannabis use involves fewer health risks than alcohol or tobacco.
“These variations in risk, harms and cost need to be taken into account as we think about further efforts to deal with the use of these three substances. … Efforts to reduce social costs related to cannabis, for example, will likely involve shifting its legal status by decriminalizing casual use, to reduce the high enforcement costs. Such a shift may be warranted given the apparent lower health risk associated with most cannabis use.”
According to a recent Rasmussen national poll of 1,000 likely voters, Americans believe by more than two to one that alcohol is “more dangerous” than marijuana.
Show 012 This Saturday, 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific
My deepest apologies to those of you who tried listening last Saturday to Show 011, the Grand Opening of the Oregon NORML Cannabis Café. We were beset by technical difficulties and could not complete the show.
I will solve the technical issues and return this weekend to Oregon’s first Cannabis Café. Oregon’s law does not allow for marijuana sales, but does allow patients to medicate “out of public view”. Any cardholder may freely exchange medicine with any other. So Madeline Martinez and Oregon NORML have created a private, members-only club for the social benefit of medical marijuana patients.
However, this is not a medical marijuana dispensary with a café; this is a café for medical marijuana patients. Patients can visit the smoke-free vapor bar where a budtender will load up one of six Volcano Vaporizers, fill the bag with the vapor of any one of more than twenty of the strains available, and cap it with a sterilized mouthpiece. Others bring their own pipes or papers and request a small ceramic bowl filled with their choice of freshly-ground cannabis strain and roll a joint as they play pool or smoke a bowl as they join in a card game. All sorts of café food and drink are available, though not alcoholic beverages (the owner surrendered his liquor license rather than fight with the commission over the use of cannabis in the café.) Many have questioned how this café can operate due to Oregon’s smoke-free laws, but the actual statutes in question specifically reference “tobacco smoke”. Thus, no tobacco smoking is allowed in the café.
Most amazingly, all the cannabis is provided free through the donations of local area medical marijuana growers. Oregon’s law provides for six mature plants, eighteen seedlings, but only twenty-four ounces of dried, cured marijuana. I say “only” and people’s jaws drop, wishing they could possess 24 grams, much less a pound and a half of marijuana. But that works out to four ounces per mature plant, which some growers are able to surpass, so they donate their excess to Oregon NORML for distribution to patients. In fact, on the day of the Grand Opening, the café had more marijuana at the end of the day then they had started with, thanks to generous donations.
While I attended on Saturday night, two officers from the Portland Police Bureau stopped by to investigate the operations. They were very friendly and just wanted to know where the medicating was taking place and how Oregon NORML was controlling the situation. They were pleased to learn how relentlessly ID’s and medical cards were being checked and that the front entrance was closed as a measure to help control the smell from permeating the public area. The police let everyone know that they had no intention of harassing the club or its patrons and that absent any complaints from neighbors the Cannabis Café would be free to operate.
Annual membership in Oregon NORML is required, since it is a private club, as well as monthly club dues, which go to support Oregon NORML’s lobbying and outreach efforts and pay the overhead of running the club, respectively. This Saturday, November 21, we’ll return to the café and speak to Madeline Martinez and these patients and hear their medical marijuana stories, as well as taking questions about the café from the live audience and our callers. It’s live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, NORML SHOW LIVE features a recap of the week’s top stories in medical marijuana, consumer cannabis, and industrial hemp; interviews with the top cannabis activists, politicians, scientists, doctors, actors, musicians, and comedians; and your calls live at 347-994-1810. Join us every Saturday Night, live, at http://live.norml.org from 9-11pm Eastern / 6-8pm Pacific.
At a time of heightened national security post-911, a near-depression economy and state government budgets bleeding red coast to coast, what is the moral and economic imperative that compels some in law enforcement to seek lifetime sentences for small-time cannabis growers?
Again, cannabis consumers and activists should never shrink back from prohibitionist (and some in the media) arguments that “no one gets arrested for cannabis in the US (it’s practically legal!)” when over 755,000 cannabis consumers are busted annually for simple possession (94,000 others were charged with cultivation, distribution or conspiracy therein).
Even more so when there are outrageous claims made that ‘no goes to jail or prison for pot’.
Unfortunately for a Jackson Mississippi man named Ronald Sekul, he can attest to how wrong these false claims are as he stares down a lifetime sentence for cultivating 51 cannabis plants.
Man could get life in pot bust, Jackson resident was growing 51 plants, officials say
A 33-year-old Jackson man accused of growing marijuana in his apartment could get up to life in prison if convicted.In the case of Ronald Christopher Sekul, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics intends to ask prosecutors to apply a law called the “kingpin” statute, MBN Director Marshall Fisher said.
The statute can be applied to Sekul’s case because he allegedly had a drug operation for longer than 12 consecutive months and had more than 10 pounds of marijuana, Fisher said.
Sekul was arrested Wednesday for allegedly growing 4-foot marijuana plants in the back bedroom of the fourplex he lives in at 1510 Myrtle St., according to MBN.
He is out of jail on $50,000 bond.
Read the entire article here.
Think about, life in prison for cultivating one of the most popular agricultural products in America–arguably the number one commercially cultivated commodity in the country. Think about the annual expense incurred by the taxpayers of Mississippi for the incarceration of Mr. Sekul: $22,000-30,000 a year; think about the total cost to the taxpayers if Mr. Sekul spends 10 years in prison (approx. $275,000), 20 years (approx. $600,000) or 30 years (approx. $1 million).
Rather than tax and actually control cannabis like more dangerous and addictive government-sanctioned drugs like tobacco and alcohol products, is it not remarkable beyond words that the state and federal governments still engages both massive number of annual cannabis-related arrests and the incarceration annually nationwide of an estimated 45,000-65,000 cannabis-only offenders, while still not achieving any of the stated goals of prohibition (view a comprehensive NORML report analyzing cannabis arrests in the US here, read page 45 to see where none of the government’s stated goals are achieved).
Feds Are The Ones Still Stirring Pot With Taxpayers’ Money
However, there is a potential policy silver-lining to buttress the expense to the taxpayers and tragedy of what our society is trying to do Mr. Sekul and that is that President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, can stop these kinds of foolish and expensive incarcerations for cannabis by de-funding the federal grants provided to local law enforcement and their ‘multi-jursidictional anti-drug task forces’, like JET, the Jackson Enforcement Team, which boasts of Mr. Sekul’s arrest.
How many fewer Americans would be arrested annually if the federal government didn’t fund local arrests?
Exactly how many taxpayer dollars could be saved if the expense and trouble of local cannabis arrests were not subsidized by the feds?
by George Rohrbacher, Member, NORML board of directors; medical cannabis patient
[Editor's Note: This essay was originally published on March 1st, 2009. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's deconstruction and the fall of Communism being recognized around the world this week, and with the ever-falling support for cannabis prohibition in America, this essay from NORML board member George Rohrbacher seems even more apropos today than last March.]
It is said that almost everyone in the marijuana law reform movement has a seminal moment they can point to when their public activism started. My moment was in the fall, six years ago.
I’m a past president of our local Kiwanis Club. I’ve been a member for years; we meet for breakfast at 6:30am, every Wednesday morning. My fateful “activism moment” was meeting face-to-face with one morning’s Kiwanis Club program, our town’s newly acquired dope dog. Some rock-ribbed citizen had left money in his will for the city to buy a dope dog for our town of 3,000, in a county of 18,000 people. The dog’s handler and the police chief were up at the speaker’s table. I had to fight back the urge to turn around and run.
As I sat down at my usual spot, ordered breakfast and clipped on my Kiwanis Club nametag, my heart was just racing! Thank God, my neck pain had not been severe enough that morning that it had required some marijuana medication, because, I imagined, triggered by the smell of freshly consumed ganja, that huge German Shepard would have leaped from the podium to pin me down to the floor, the dog’s sharp white teeth snarling and snapping at my throat.
As we went through club business about our kid’s reading program, ate breakfast and conducted the normal chit-chat that makes Kiwanis Club so enjoyable, I slowly calmed myself. I had not been found out as a marijuana user, yet. There was no need for me to panic, because the likelihood that I would be found out now by this agent of the state, was growing smaller and smaller by the moment. But, as the primal fear drained away, it started to piss me off; this dope dog was invading my space.
The dog handler got up and spoke glowingly about his charge, the alpha male of his litter. This dog had been born of a long and impressive pedigree in Baden-something, formerly East Germany. Looking at me from across the room was the pride of the jack-booted police state, the purebred German Shepard—smart, vicious, relentless.
The dog handler went chirping on, to mostly nodding heads, about what a fantastic dog he had and how many pot busts he had already made with it. Suddenly, all I could think was: This dog was born in East Germany, it’s father could have pulled someone down off the Berlin Wall…this dog’s great-grandfather would have marched the Jews or Gypsies to the ovens at Buchenwald or Auschwitz… And now, my own little town had a new resident from the same police dog gene pool that serviced the two most brutal totalitarian regimes in the history of the mankind!
Scenes from my childhood of when German Shepards attacked the Civil Rights marchers at Selma floated before my eyes… This well-groomed dog was a tool of the modern police state in all its scariest manifestations. The more I thought about it, the madder and madder I got.
I paid my breakfast bill and left in the first wave. I drove back out to the ranch and fed our cows their daily ration of hay, all the while mulling over my close brush with the dope dog. By the time I got done with my chores and back to the house, I absolutely had to do something! I picked up my telephone and called NORML, and I volunteered for the fight that very day…our fight for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”
Marijuana prohibition is a corrupt and evil social institution, just like the Berlin Wall was. For generations both have been symbols of the ruthless and relentless oppression of the state. Then, one day, by the sheer weight of internal political rot and thousands of little hammers, the Berlin Wall came down, and it came down virtually overnight! Marijuana Prohibition is just as corrupt and evil as the Wall, and it, also, is rotting internally from seven decades of injustice. It, too, is ready for collapse.
The Schedule I federal classification of cannabis — which states that, by law, the marijuana plant and its natural compounds have “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” — has long since passed the point of farcical. Nevertheless, defenders of the so-called “Schedule I lie” have possessed, for nearly 30 years, one prestigious ally that they could always rely on to endorse their absurd position: the American Medical Association.
Not anymore!
Today the AMA voted to reverse its longstanding endorsement of cannabis’ Schedule I prohibitive status. The vote took place during the organization’s annual Interim Meeting of the House of Delegates in Houston, Texas, and marks the first time that the AMA has revisited its position on cannabis in eight years.
As newly amended, the AMA’s official position (see specifically pages 12, 13, and 14) regarding the medical use of cannabis no longer “recommends that marijuana be retained in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.” Rather, the Association now resolves “that marijuana’s status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines.”
The AMA also today demolished long-held pot prohibitionist claim — frequently publicized by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and others — that “no sound scientific studies have supported medical use of smoked marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data support the safety or efficacy of smoked marijuana for general medical use.” To the contrary, the AMA has adopted a report drafted by its Council on Science and Public Health (CSAPH) entitled, “Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes,” which states, “Results of short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis.”
Now that the AMA has finally acknowledged reality, is anyone else wondering if David Evans (or the DEA) will finally update their talking points?
Riding on the wave of President Obama’s memo to end DEA interference in states’ medical marijuana laws and an unprecedented response from the media, Oregon NORML’s Cannabis Café opens at 4:20pm on November 13, 2009 at 700 NE Dekum St, Portland, OR 97211.
“The response has been overwhelming,” says Madeline Martinez, Executive Director of Oregon NORML. “We are excited to be able to provide a safe place for patients to medicate that is out of public view within the guidelines of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA).”
Many patients travel to Portland for medical care and treatment and have no place they can go to use their medicine during those often exhausting and intensive trips. “Do they go out into an alley and hide in the back of their car?” Martinez said. “There needs to be a place, much like our meetings, where people can socialize and network.”
In the week since the announcement of the café’s opening, stories have appeared in most major Oregon newspapers and television stations. Martinez appeared on OPB’s Think Out Loud talk show and attended the local neighborhood association meeting to reassure the public that the café will be operated at the highest of standards and strives to be a positive addition to the area.
Members must be registrants of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) and members of Oregon NORML to gain entrance to the café. Please contact Oregon NORML for more information on the message line 503-239-6110. Details and information will also be available at www.ornorml.org as they become available.
