New Year’s Eve NORML SHOW LIVE from Cannabis Café

Join us for the last show of the 2000′s! It’s our New Year’s Eve Celebration of 2009, the best year ever in marijuana law reform!

TONIGHT ALL ACROSS AMERICA – SHOW BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT EASTERN AND RUNS TO MIDNIGHT PACIFIC

NORML Director: Amazing 2009! Awesome 2010 Ahead!

Help Support NORML’s End of Year Drive – Donate Now

Dear NORML Supporter:

It is not often that I feel compelled to write to NORML’s membership and supporters regarding the day-to-day operations of America’s leading marijuana lobby group. Then again, in my tenure as Executive Director of NORML and the NORML Foundation, there’s never been a time like right now.

Over the past several months NORML’s public prominence and political influence has grown by leaps and bounds. As I write you today I’m reflecting upon two of the most significant – and productive – weeks in NORML history.  As we close the year 2009 I am proud to say that NORML has galvanized its position as the leading marijuana law reform organization. Why do I say this?  Take a look at the events of these two weeks late this fall, and decide for yourself:

• Marijuana legalization in Massachusetts? NORML testifies ‘Yes!’
  On Wednesday, October 14, NORML’s Legal Counsel Keith Stroup and NORML Advisory Board Member Dr. Lester Grinspoon testified before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Revenue in favor of House Bill 2929, ‘An Act to Regulate and Tax the Cannabis Industry.’ Members of NORML’s state affiliate, MassCann, also spoke on behalf of the measure, which was drafted by former NORML Board Member Richard Evans. The well-attended legislative hearing marked the first time that Massachusetts state legislators had ever publicly discussed legalizing marijuana, and the debate earned prominent media coverage throughout the state. 

• California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger requests marijuana legalization debate
  In May Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly called for a debate on the merits of marijuana regulation. This October NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano and CalNORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer obliged the Governor’s request, and provided his office with a comprehensive action plan for regulating marijuana production and distribution in California.

• Obama to Justice Department: Back off on medi-pot prosecutions
  On Monday, October 19, U.S. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden issued a historic memorandum to federal prosecutors advising them to no longer "focus federal resources … [on those] whose actions are in … compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana." The directive upheld a campaign promise by President Obama, who had pledged that he would not use "Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws." Ever since the President took office NORML and other drug policy reform groups had lobbied the administration to follow through, in writing, with this sensible policy. Tellingly, the administration’s decision was hailed by the mainstream media as a major step toward the enactment of marijuana liberalization in America. Not surprisingly, NORML representatives spent the days immediately following the administration’s announcement speaking with dozens of mainstream media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, The Associated Press, and The Christian Science Monitor, urging Congress to move expeditiously to make the administration’s policy changes into permanent law.

• Mainstream media just can’t get enough pot
  Over the past month NORML has fielded multiple requests from producers at mainstream media, radio, and television outlets throughout the nation and the world. Notably, NORML’s staff participated in the production of Fox Business News weeklong series on the cannabis industry (air date October 19-23), Newsweek‘s five-part series on present and past marijuana policy (published October 16), and the October 14 edition of PBS’ News Hour with Jim Leher.  NORML has also recently received prominent coverage in periodicals such as the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune Magazine. Unlike in past years – or even past months – the overall tone of all of these high profile features was favorable to marijuana law reform.  The underlying media message: marijuana is a commodity, not a moral threat, and it’s about time for America’s laws to start treating it that way.

• The Drug Czar’s office comes calling
  On Monday, October 24 – at the request of the White House – I participated in a strategic conference call with Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske to discuss the drafting of the administration’s 2010 National Drug Control Strategy. You read that right: the Office of National Drug Control Policy reached out to NORML and requested NORML’s participation in crafting the administration’s future drug reform strategies. Yes, the same office that just one year ago inflicted the cannabis community with John Walters is now making house calls to NORML.

  My friends, the times are most definitely changing.

• NORML testifies at California Assembly hearings on legalization
  Finally, to conclude two of my busiest weeks ever as NORML and NORML Foundation Director, on Wednesday, October 28, NORML’s Paul Armentano and Dale Gieringer traveled to Sacramento to testify before the California Assembly on Public Safety to urge legislators to stop arresting responsible marijuana smokers.  "The criminal prohibition of marijuana has not dissuaded anyone from using marijuana or reduced its availability; however, the strict enforcement of this policy has adversely impacted the lives and careers of millions of people who simply elected to use a substance to relax that is objectively safer than alcohol," Armentano told the Committee. "NORML believes that the state of California ought to amend criminal prohibition and replace it with a system of legalization, taxation, regulation, and education." Like in Massachusetts two weeks earlier, the day-long hearing and was the first of its kind to take place before the California legislature.

So there you have it: two weeks in the life of NORML and the NORML Foundation.  Thank you for being there for us – so we can be there for you.

As we conclude this momentous year I rest assured knowing that with your continued financial contributions, NORML and the NORML Foundation will be able to maintain its position as the most trusted and respected marijuana law reform organizations in the United States.  That remains our commitment to you – the cannabis consumer – as we look ahead to the success and victories that await us in 2010.

With your generous support, we are ending marijuana prohibition. With your continued generous support, we’ll end marijuana prohibition once and for all.

Cannabem liberemus,

Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director

P.S. Please make your tax-deductible donation to the NORML Foundation in support of our national outreach and educational programs.

If you’d rather your donation be employed for state and federal lobbying purposes, please make sure that the donation is directed to ‘NORML‘, where donations are not tax deductible.

P.P.S. Donate $50 or more to either NORML Foundation (or NORML) and receive a copy of the new book ‘Marijuana is Safer, so why are we driving people to drink?‘ co-authored by NORML deputy director Paul Armentano.

Seattle To Brazil: Marijuana Law Reformers Support Victims Of Prohibition

Like the dutiful activists in Seattle protesting cannabis laws and supporting the victims of such outside of the local jail for nine straight years of Christmas days, Brazilian cannabis law reform supporters cheer the cultivator’s release from jail, celebrating, not condemning him.

A strong social indicator of governmental laws that do not enjoy mass public support–along with jury nullification–is when supposed ‘criminals’ are embraced and heralded as heroes.

NORML salutes the activists who not only slavishly work for cannabis law reforms but who also never forget about the tens of thousands of cannabis consumers, cultivators and sellers incarcerated in the United States.

Our brothers and sisters.

Christmas protest targets marijuana laws

SEATTLE – Protesters outside the King County Jail say non-violent drug offenders should be home this Christmas.

Vivian McPeak organized the pro-marijuana vigil.

“Hopefully it lets them know that they’re not languishing in there without attention,” said McPeak.

The past nine years on Christmas day, 5th Avenue and James Street in Seattle has been at the crossroads of marijuana legalization controversy.

Check out the video here.

Protestors held signs and waved down traffic. They say those staring down from county jail cells serving time for non-violent marijuana offenses should be with family.

“We just think that otherwise law abiding American should find alternatives to incarceration for marijuana use,” said McPeak.

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Inspired By American Citizen Activism To Reform Marijuana Laws, Brazilians Start Publicly Protesting Prohibition

I recently met William Lantelme at the Drug Policy Alliance’s conference in New Mexico and he has a popular cannabis-related webpage in Brazil (growroom.net) that he is starting to convert to a non-governmental organization to rally Brazilians to reform their American-like cannabis laws. He acknowledged being blown away at how organized, active and funded law cannabis advocates are in the US.

Inspired upon his return to Brazil, William organized the first of many planned pro-reform protests and public rallies where fans of Growroom.net recently came out to support a cannabis consumer who was busted for cultivating 10 cannabis plants.

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
-Ben Franklin, In the Continental Congress just before signing the Declaration of Independence, 1776

8th Circuit Court rules industrial hemp is still marijuana

(Courthouse News Service) – Two North Dakota farmers failed to convince the 8th Circuit that cannabis grown for industrial hemp is not technically marijuana and should not be regulated under federal law.

The court in St. Louis upheld dismissal of the farmers’ lawsuit seeking a declaration that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) does not apply to industrial-use cannabis.

The appeals court pointed out that the Act defines marijuana to include all cannabis plants, regardless of the THC concentration.

“The CSA likewise makes no distinction between cannabis grown for drug use and that grown for industrial use,” Judge Pasco Bowman wrote.

The three-judge panel rejected the notion that industrial hemp is not marijuana under the Act, or that Congress has no authority to regulate their state-sanctioned cultivation of cannabis.

Judge Bowman said Congress had a “rational basis” for regulating the cultivation of all cannabis plants in order to effectively regulate marijuana.

The “rational basis” here is that North Dakota farmers can’t grow tall, reedy hemp plants that could never ever get anyone high, because that will confuse the law enforcement officials who are working to eradicate short bushy cannabis plants that are grown to get people high. Somehow, in Australia, Canada, and China to name a few countries, police who are tasked with eradicating illegal cannabis in those countries that have legal hemp have no difficulty whatsoever distinguishing the two crops, but American police are just baffled by basic agriculture.

Silly as it sounds, that’s the court’s argument. We’d never be able to “effectively regulate marijuana” if farmers were growing hemp. Not that we’re actually “effectively regulating marijuana” now. Prohibition of marijuana is the absence of regulation — no regulations on who can buy it, who can sell it, where it can be sold, what age you must be to purchase it, where it can be used, what THC potency is allowed, whether the crop can be grown with certain pesticides and fertilizers, and what penalties should be leveled for failure to follow the regulations. Yes, there are laws against marijuana that makes all of those actions a crime, but by definition you can only regulate something that is legal.

Prohibition doesn’t make those actions go away, it just makes them crimes. Therefore, those actions are occurring in an unregulated manner. So how is it, again, that growing an industrial hemp plant is preventing the government from regulating something that prohibition made unregulated?

2009: The Year In Review – NORML’s Top 10 Events That Shaped Marijuana Policy

#1 Obama Administration: Don’t Focus On Medical Marijuana Prosecutions
United States Deputy Attorney General David Ogden issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors in October directing them to not “focus federal resources … on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” The directive upheld a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, who had previously pledged that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.” Read the full story here.

#2 Public Support For Legalizing Pot Hits All-Time High
A majority of U.S. voters now support legalizing marijuana, according to a national poll of 1,004 likely voters published in December by Angus Reid. The Angus Reid Public Opinion poll results echo those of separate national polls conducted this year by Gallup, Zogby, ABC News, CBS News, Rasmussen Reports, and the California Field Poll, each of which reported greater public support for marijuana legalization than ever before. Read the full story here.

#3 Lifetime Marijuana Use Associated With Reduced Cancer Risk
The moderate long-term use of cannabis is associated with a reduced risk of head and neck cancer, according to the results of a population-based control study published in August by the journal Cancer Prevention Research. Authors reported, “After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.” Read the full story here.

#4 AMA Calls For Review Of Marijuana’s Prohibitive Status
In November, the American Medical Association resolved that marijuana should longer be classified as a Schedule I prohibited substance. Drugs classified in Schedule I are defined as possessing “no currently accepted use in treatment in the United States.” In a separate action, the AMA also determined, “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.” Read the full story here.

#5 California: Lawmakers Hold Historic Hearing On Marijuana Legalization
State lawmakers heard testimony in October in support of taxing and regulating the commercial production and distribution of cannabis for adults age 21 and older. Additional hearings, as well as a vote on Assembly Bill 390: the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, are scheduled for January 12, 2010. Read the full story here.

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