High Times’ SMOKE THE VOTE In NYC On October 26: A Benefit For NORML

Event: HIGH TIMES presents…

SMOKE THE VOTE: A Benefit Concert for NORML

Date: Sunday, Oct. 26th
Time: Doors open at 7pm
Location: Don Hill’s, NYC

511 Greenwich St. at Spring St.
New York City
212-219-2850

Host: comedian Rob Cantrell
Performers: Schram-8pm, The Stoned-9pm, Black Water Rising-10pm, Warrior Soul-11pm

Tickets: $12

C’mon out to Don Hill’s this Sunday for a smokin’ night of fun, music and pot-n-politics– all in support NORML’s cannabis law reform advocacy work in New York and nationwide.

Many thanks and praises to longtime supporters High Times, Bobby Black, Rob Cantrell and all the great bands.

NORML 2008 Conference: “The War on Pot Is a War on Young People”

The War on Pot Is a War on Young People
via Alternet

NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano delivered this speech at NORML’s 2008 National Conference, “It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition” in Berkeley, California.

According to a 2005 study commissioned by the NORML Foundation, 74 percent of all Americans busted for pot are under age 30, and 1 out of 4 are age 18 or younger. That’s nearly a quarter of a million teenagers arrested for marijuana violations each year.

To put this bluntly, we now have an entire generation that has been alienated to believe that the police and their civic leaders are instruments of their oppression rather than their protection.

And the sad fact is: They’re right!

Why is this the case? And why, as a community, don’t we talk about it?

(Text of full remarks after the jump.)

(more…)

Last Chance To Register For NORML’s 2008 National Conference

NORML’s 37th annual national conference, “It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition,” takes place this week – on Friday, October 17 and Saturday, October 18 – at the Doubletree Hotel & Executive Meeting Center in Berkeley, California. Join NORML’s staff and Board of Directors – and nearly 500 policy activists, medical patients, cultivators, doctors, politicians, and clinical investigators – as we congregate and celebrate in one of America’s most ‘pot friendly’ cities.

Detailed conference agenda, speakers list, and information on conference social events – including Saturday night’s ‘can’t miss’ 2008 Extravaganja party at the Oasis Nightclub (which will feature fire dancers, live performances by from Los Marijuanos and the Extra Action Marching Band, and a laser light show) – are available here.

Rooms at the Doubletree Hotel are sold out, but alternative hotel accommodations are still available here. On site registration will available throughout the conference. Discounted day passes will also be available for purchase at the registration desk.

Featured guests at this year’s conference include longtime Democrat Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington, Doors keyboardist and author Ray Manzarek, and Saturday Keynote Luncheon Speaker, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

Plenary sessions at this year’s conference include:

• Getting the Story Wrong: How the Media Lie About Cannabis

• The Legal Marijuana Generation: Growing Up and Raising Children in the Age of Legal Pot

• The War on Pot Is a War on Young People

• What If We Arrested 20 Million Americans and Nobody Noticed?

• The Politics of Marijuana and Health

• Drug Testing and Cannabis: The Case Against Legally Sanctioned Discrimination Via Forensics

• Pot Culture: A Round Table Discussion of Cannabis in Society, Entertainment, Music and American Culture

In addition, on Sunday, October 19, NORML’s Legal Committee and the faculty of Oaksterdam University will co-sponsor a special, third-day session, entitled “Everything You Wanted To Know About Medical Cannabis, But Knew Better Than To Ask John Walters.”

This unique, one-day seminar will guide attendees through the maze of conflicting federal, state, and local medical cannabis laws and regulations, and will offer step-by-step instruction regarding how to establish a legal medical marijuana business in the state of California.

Learn from the nation’s top experts on cannabis and cannabis policy. Strategize with the country’s leading marijuana activists and reformers. See what cognitive freedom and tolerance looks like in Oaksterdam, the most cannabis-friendly neighborhood in North America.

Don’t delay; register today and join us this week for an unforgettable three days of pot, policy, and politics at the 37th annual national NORML Conference.

America Desperately Needs A 21st Century Update Of The Shafer Commission

- Senators McCain and Obama:

If elected, will you create a Presidential Commission to study marijuana—its Prohibition, Budgetary, Social, and Health effects, and to make recommendations for marijuana law reform?

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board Member

Federal law prohibiting marijuana dates from 1937. The Marijuana Tax Stamp Act was debated on the floor of the House of Representatives for just over a minute and against the wishes of organizations such as the American Medical Association. Cannabis, as it was then known, was a component of at least 28 patent medicines made by industry leaders such as Merck, Eli Lilly, and Squibb. With the passage of this law, not only did the legal sale and possession of cannabis end, but all American research into medicinal use of marijuana ground to a halt, and even the ages-old knowledge of marijuana as a medicine went into deep remission.

Today there is a whole universe of information on the subject of marijuana that is brand-new since the Shafer Commission last studied marijuana in the 1970’s. The information then available lead Nixon’s own handpicked commission come to a surprising conclusion: they recommended no legal penalties for adults possessing up 100 grams of marijuana. Nixon freaked out, flew into a rage, canceled print runs of the report, and refusing to read the document, he buried the Shafer Commission’s recommendations. Tricky Dick did exactly the opposite and started America’s full-scale War on ‘Weed’, instead. And now forty years later, the War on Pot continues to grind on, getting larger with each passing year. After hundreds of billions of dollars expended, after millions of people arrested, is it not time we studied marijuana again? Because, by every measure available, America’s current approach to marijuana has failed—and, in the words of former-President Jimmy Carter, it is “…doing more harm than good.”

Here are 8 pressing reasons why a Presidential Commission on marijuana is needed now:

1) By October 10, 2008, America will have recorded its 20-millionth marijuana arrest, with people of color and the young arrested in disproportionately large numbers. It is time for a re-assessment of marijuana policy, plain and simple.

2) In addition to the pain and suffering visited by these millions of arrests on “we-the-people”, our government expends about $25 billion annually on its pot prohibition efforts, funds that should be expended elsewhere in the budget.

3) In addition to huge costs on expense side, we lose billions in taxation revenue, as well. Because, despite all government efforts to eradicate it, America’s vast underground marijuana market continues on, just as it has for the last seventy years, creating crime where there need be none, churning out billions and billions of dollars in untaxed and unregulated commerce. A tax and regulate posture as a method of control, verses the ‘no control/out of control’ situation we have today where kids can get marijuana more easily than beer—which alternative should America choose?

4) Marijuana use and purchase has been legal for the last 30 years in The Netherlands. This is the world’s great marijuana legalization experiment—and proof positive that a modern society will not collapse when pot becomes legal. Holland’s tightly regulated cannabis sales have created enormous tax revenues, while at the same time, usage rates for Holland’s teens continues to remain at just half of the usage rates of America’s teens even under our draconian prohibition model.

5) There are more than a dozen states over the last dozen years (covering about 1/5 of the US population) that have passed medical marijuana laws, mostly by voter initiative. ‘We-The-People’ created America’s state-by-state crazy quilt of medical marijuana laws, now what have ‘we’ learned from these experiments?

6) The modern use of cannabis/cannabinoids as medicine, buttressed now by 17,000 scientific studies, validates humanity’s medicinal use of cannabis that has been going on for as long as recorded history. In any rational world, a non-toxic, useful drug like cannabis would have been re-scheduled long ago by the federal government from Schedule I, where it now resides with heroin, to Schedule III with most prescription drugs, or lower.

Why have the vested interests blocked cannabis from being rescheduled?

7) On 10/07/03 America’s own Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) received US Patent #6630507 for the use of marijuana’s active ingredients under the title, “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuro-protectants.” While HHS filed and supported this application, at the very same time, in other executive-branch Cabinet-level offices, at the ONDCP and the DEA, their legislative charters direct them to fight all use of marijuana as a medicine (the charters contain no standards to correct this prohibitionist posture if marijuana is shown scientifically to be useful as medicine). Either the HHS or the DEA/ONDCP must be wrong.

8.) A Presidential Commission hearing on the subject of marijuana law reform is a necessary exercise in government bureaucracy oversight, and is simply good government.

America, after our 20-millionth marijuana arrest—is that amount of human wreckage not enough? How much longer must our government pursue its failed policy of marijuana prohibition?

Presidential candidates McCain and Obama, show some guts, show some leadership and take the pledge: when you are elected, you will form a Presidential Commission via the National Academy of Sciences, or a like objective review body, to study marijuana.

************************************

NOTE: Now, all you fellow voters out there in Blog-ville: Help me out with this.

Help NORML.

Help America!

The Shafer Commission needs a 21st Century update. Does anybody think we need 10 or 20-million more marijuana arrests before Congress and the White House wakes up and changes our failed marijuana policies?

The Supreme Court has told us repeatedly not to expect a judicial ruling to fix this social disaster; the change, the correction, must come legislatively. Well, 20-million marijuana arrests is enough and a Presidential Commission is what’s needed at the onset of the next president’s tenure to provide the political cover and scientific validation for members of Congress to find the guts to take the votes needed to reform this sorry mess after 70 long, shameful, and pathetic years.

America eventually found the guts to end slavery, a social institution in place for over 200 years, evil and vile in its consequences but fiercely protected by special interests, even state governments; America can find the guts to end marijuana prohibition.

NORML’s 2008 Pro-Marijuana Law Reform Ad Contest

Get ‘Graphic’ To Express Your Outrage About Prohibition!
$10,000 in Cash Prizes!!

Washington, DC: The NORML Foundation today launched its 2008 cash contest for the best pro-marijuana public service advertisement in favor of marijuana law reform.

Today, the 20-millionth person in America was arrested on cannabis charges!

How mad and frustrated does that make you? Want to turn that frustration into a positive direction?

College and art students, graphic designers, animators, cartoonists, flash animators, filmmakers, documentary-makers, activists, NORML chapters, senior citizens, medical marijuana patients, victims of marijuana prohibition laws, concerned citizens and cannabis consumers in general—the five decade-old movement to reform marijuana laws is calling for your time and talents, and you maybe the winner of some serious holiday cash for your stash.

Contest winners’ videos and animations will be prominently featured on NORML’s popular webpages, blogs and social networks (i.e., Facebook/MySpace, etc…, with over 500,000 supporters). Also, ‘Radical’ Russ Belville of NORML’s daily podcast, the Daily Audio Stash, will interview top winners of the contest.

The winning entry will be featured in any NORML public service announcement campaign on television in 2009.

Check out last year’s contest winners here.

Get Concerned – Get Creative – Get Graphic About 20 Million Marijuana Arrests!