NORML’s Weekly Legislative Round Up

It’s January 2010, and that means it is time once again for NORML’s Weekly Legislative Round Up — your one-stop guide to pending marijuana law reform legislation around the country, along with tips for influencing the policies of your state.

** A note to first time readers: NORML can not introduce legislation in your state. Nor can any other non-profit advocacy organization. Only your state representatives, or in some cases an individual constituent (by way of their representative; this is known as introducing legislation ‘by request’) can do so.  NORML can — and does — work closely with like-minded politicians and citizens to reform marijuana laws, and lobbies on behalf of these efforts. But ultimately the most effective way — and the only way — to successfully achieve statewide marijuana law reform is for local stakeholders and citizens to become involved in the political process and make the changes they want to see. We can’t do it without you.

California: Reminder — On Tuesday, January 12, members of the California Assembly will decide on Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, which seeks to regulate and control the production, distribution, and personal use of marijuana for adults age 21 and older. Tuesday’s vote will mark the first time since 1913, when California became one of the first states in the nation to enact cannabis prohibition, that lawmakers have reassessed this failed policy. You can read NORML’s prepared testimony here, and if you live in California it is pertinent that you call or fax your Assembly member this week by going here.

New Hampshire: A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers today introduced the state’s first ever bill to legalize and “regulate the purchase and use of marijuana” for adults. As introduced, House Bill 1652 “allows [for] the purchase and use of marijuana by adults (age 21 or older), regulates the purchase and use of marijuana, and imposes taxes on the wholesale and retail sale of marijuana.” Personal possession of up to one ounce of cannabis and/or non-commercial cultivation of up to three marijuana plants would not be subject to tax and regulation under this act. You can read the full text of the measure here, and you can urge your politicians to support HB 1652 by going here. (FYI: A separate bill seeking to decriminalize minor marijuana possession, HB 1653, is also pending in the New Hampshire legislature.)

Washington: [UPDATE!!! Members of the House Committee on Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness will hear testimony in favor of both marijuana legalization and decriminalization bills on Wednesday, January 13, at 1:30pm. Please see NORML's 'Current Action Alerts page here for more info.] Legislators have pre-filed House Bill 2401, which seeks to “remove all existing civil and criminal penalties for adults 21 years of age or older who cultivate, possess, transport, sell, or use marijuana.” You can read the full text of the proposal here, and you can show your support for the measure by going to NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here. (FYI: Separate decriminalization legislation also remains pending, and may be supported by going here.)

New Jersey: Time is running out to make New Jersey the fourteenth state to legalize the therapeutic use of marijuana for qualified patients. Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act on Monday, January 11. This is the final day that lawmakers will be voting on issues from the 2008-2009 legislative session. This means that the bill must pass the Assembly floor, and then be rectified with the Senate version of the bill, before it can be sent to outgoing Gov. John Corzine for his approval. If you reside in New Jersey then it is vital that you take action this week by going here.

For information on additional state and federal marijuana law reform legislation, please visit NORML’s ‘Take Action Center’ here.

California: Historic Vote On Cannabis Regulation To Take Place On Tuesday, January 12

On Tuesday, January 12, members of the California Assembly will hold a historic vote on statewide marijuana policy. Members of the Public Safety Committee will decide on Assembly Bill 390, the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, which seeks to regulate and control the production, distribution, and personal use of marijuana for adults age 21 and older.

[UPDATE from Russ Belville: NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano and MPP's California director Aaron Smith join me this afternoon's NORML SHOW LIVE, airing at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern, to discuss this historic vote in California.  Call in with your questions to 347-994-1810]

Tuesday’s vote will mark the first time since 1913, when California became one of the first states in the nation to enact cannabis prohibition, that lawmakers have reassessed this failed policy.

If a majority of the Public Safety Committee votes ‘yes’ on AB 390, the bill will immediately face a separate vote in the California State Assembly Committee on Health. (I have been tentatively invited to testify before this committee; you can read my prepared testimony here.) In short, members of both committees will likely be voting on this historic measure next week. That is why we need your support in contacting the members of these legislative committees today!

To date, over 8,000 of you have contacted your California Assemblymembers via NORML’s Capwiz ‘Take Action’ Center. This is a tremendous outpouring of public support, but we need to ramp up our advocacy before next week’s vote.

If you reside in California please click here to find a list of Assembly members who sit on the key committees overseeing AB 390. Constituents in their districts are urged to phone or fax support their for AB 390 today. Lawmakers’ district phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail contact information appears here.

If your member of the Assembly does not appear on this list, please take a moment this week to call and leave a polite, concise phone message voicing your support for AB 390 with the Assembly Committees of Public Safety and Health. You can find the direct line for these committees, as well as for their Chair and Vice-Chairs, here and here.

Finally, Californians can also send a letter of support directly to their individual member of the Assembly by using NORML’s pre-written letter service here.

Let’s begin 2010 by letting California’s politicians know that the time to end the state’s nearly 100-year failed experiment with marijuana prohibition is now!

NORML SHOW LIVE now Every Weekday at 4pm Eastern

Join us over at the new-look NORML Stash Blog to listen to our live internet talk radio show, NORML SHOW LIVE. The show airs every Monday-Friday for one hour at http://stash.norml.org.

Ken Wolski from Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey joins us to discuss trying to get medical marijuana passed before Gov. Corzine leaves office next week.

Call in with your comments and questions to 347-994-1810

NORML Board Member: I’ve Seen A Better Alternative To Marijuana Prohibition

THE FUTURE IS OURS FOR THE MAKING

NORML’s Cannabis Café

By George Rohrbacher, NORML board of directors, medical marijuana patient

The first time I met Madeline Martinez, the executive director of Oregon NORML, she told me about her dream…a meeting place for medical marijuana patients, some space to hold classes, a very different vision of healthcare. I took a drive to Portland last week to see this dream come true; to Oregon NORML’s World Famous-Cannabis Café, a trip to a Future of our own making.

Set in an older blue-collar neighborhood in North East Portland, NORML’s Cannabis Café, occupies a building that was reputed to be a ‘speakeasy’ during Prohibition, alcohol Prohibition, that is. It includes a meeting/concert space upstairs for about 200+ people, in addition to the Café downstairs. Oregon NORML signed a lease this fall with the onsite restaurant operator and took over the business in November. NORML volunteers have been working there non-stop ever since, turning the building into the Cannabis Café. Its opening last month became a world-wide press event…apparently a lot more people than Madeline thought the NORML’s Cannabis Café was an idea whose time had come.

America is currently a crazy-quilt of regulation with the 13 states and counting that have legal medical marijuana. Think what it will look like when all 50 states finally have it! In July, a front page article in the Wall Street Journal announced to the world that the Feds were standing down from enforcement in states with medical marijuana laws, and that MEDICAL MARIJUANA IS NOW OPEN FOR BUSINESS. As I read this, I could imagine entrepreneurs from coast to coast starting to draft their own plans for the medical marijuana businesses, the Next New Thing.

Stephen DeAngelo, the founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the Bay Area’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, gave one of the most thought provoking speeches at NORML’s 2009 Annual Conference on this very important topic: When marijuana is finally legalized (and new polls indicate America has finally reached the tipping point on this political issue) and the dust has settled, what will the business end of marijuana eventually come to look like? Remember, we are talking about taking an underground multi-billion dollar business and bringing it above ground. This is BIG. There will be huge long-term societal consequences of legalization far beyond the river of tax revenues it will create, many of which will be determined by what physical form legalization takes. So, what will the legal marijuana business in America come to look like? Something big and corporate? Something along the lines of Pepsi, RJ Reynolds, Starbucks, Pfizer, or Budweiser companies that market similar kinds of products??? Big profits, huge advertising budgets and lots of political cash….OR…should legal marijuana be something very different?

Stephen challenged his listeners to see that right now we have the opportunity to shape that marijuana business future, to get something different than the standard corporate outcome …right now, we have the opportunity to create a different cannabis delivery system that isn’t just about the performance on the quarterly bottom line, like it is in the ‘Pepsi’ paradigm, we can create a system that serves the public while at the same time it provides community service…something more along the business lines of Newman’s Own Salad Dressings from whose revenues have come donations of  almost $300 million to charities… Just think of that! The outcome for legal cannabis America could be vastly different, if we choose it…

Pain management is one of the places where the rubber truly meets the road in healthcare, a multi-billion dollar business. Non-toxic cannabinoid therapy has a very real place there. And non-toxic is good, as the very first rule of medicine should always be ‘to do no harm’. So, shouldn’t cannabis, from the get-go, do it differently than the Vicodin/Oxycodone ‘take these pills by yourself’ delivery model? After all, cannabis and all its users, medicinal or not, have been long defined by society as ‘counterculture’, so shouldn’t we be expected to do it differently, when we got our turn to create legal marijuana??? How about creating a non-profit medical cannabis delivery system whose central focus was on the patients, not profits for starters? Patients will have better results in chronic pain relief in the social setting of a Cannabis Café, where having people to talk to makes one’s problems feel lighter and one’s pain (medicated or not) easier to bear. Classes will be starting soon at the Cannabis Café on everything from aerobics, yoga, and weight management to plant propagation. Figuring out ways to provide free medicine to the indigent has been part of the design of the Oregon NORML’s Cannabis Café since its very inception. (Imagine that, the poor thought of first in the NORML model, not dead-last like in the standard corporate model.)  Perhaps a “Buds on Wheels” program for shut-in medical marijuana patients, too…A hemp products emporium, you get it, a place for everything cannabis, and you, too.

At NORML’s Cannabis Café, feel better…get better And then…What if… patients could meet at NORML Cannabis Cafés all over the country and the revenues generated driving a host of programs, in the area of healthcare and post drug war reparations, like freeing the thousands in jail today on pot charges? Think about it. Is that the kind of future you want? We can have it.

About two years ago, to better understand medical marijuana from the patient’s viewpoint, I interviewed the first 45 people waiting to get into one of the bi-monthly Oregon NORML Medical Marijuana meetings. Virtually everyone I asked that morning willingly volunteered his or her medical history. I heard a long litany of construction, car, and motorcycle accidents, of broken bones, dislocated joints, failed surgeries, and cancer… people who made me wonder, “How in the world does this guy/gal sleep at night?” Then it would occur to me, “Oh yes, of course, the cannabis.” For them NORML’s Cannabis Café puts dealing with serious medical issues in social setting…and shows it can be fun, as well. No wonder it’s a raging success.

NORML’s Cannabis Café is getting better by the day, as this new evolving healthcare paradigm kicks in. America can definitely learn something from the good folks who are blazing the Oregon Trail with medical marijuana; the future IS ours for the molding.

I’ve seen it.

Victims Of Marijuana Prohibition: A Soldier’s Wry Observations

NORML introduces a few new regular blog items for 2010:

-Letters From The Victims Of Marijuana Prohibition

-NORML’s Reefer Madness Du Jour

-Who Do I Want To Smoke A Joint With And Why?

NORML is in constant contact with thousands of victims of cannabis prohibition on a weekly basis. The organization is flooded with calls, letters and emails from citizens ill-effected by cannabis prohibition laws, from getting arrested and going to prison to civil forfeiture, child custody, revocation of drivers license, removal of student loans and workplace drug testing.

Below is a prime, firsthand account of how what appears to be a minor cannabis offense can seriously impair a person’s ability to live the most productive and prosperous life possible because they chose to relax with cannabis, as compared to alcohol.

The soldier below, who got busted in what is technically speaking a decriminalized state for cannabis possession, aptly points out the hypocrisy of the government to hire him into the National Guard and Army, but, because of a minor cannabis bust years ago, he still can’t get a minimum wage job in corporate retail big box stores. These same corporate brand names often claim to support and honor the men and women who serve in the military.

It would be one thing if the government’s war on cannabis consumers was actually effective, or that when citizens were busted in the prohibition they’d repent, defer to the government’s rationale for the prohibition laws and necessarily feel good about the taxing and stressful experience. There is no correlation to greater number of arrests equating to less cannabis use. Instead, since 1965, 20 million citizens in America come out on the backside of an interaction with prohibition laws and typically develop less respect for authority and the government, and perceive police as adversaries rather than public servants. It makes them jaded about the words and promise of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It makes some citizens on the fringes developing an anti-government attitude so strident that they advocate violent revolt.

Why is any of this good in a democracy that relies on trust, respect and fidelity to basic institutions, institutions founded in America’s basic values, largely rationality and reason?

NORML thanks SPC Hunt, and hundreds of thousands of men and women in America’s armed forces, for making great sacrifice and taking risks to keep the country as safe as it can be.

Cannabem liberemus and godspeed Specialist Hunt!

To whom it may concern:

My name is SPC L. D. Hunt.  I am 28 years old, a loving husband, and very proud father of an amazingly smart little boy.  I am also currently in Iraq.  I am writing to you in hopes that maybe my story can help motivate some of you to continue the fight you are bravely acting out in on behalf of the American people.

In May 2002 I was arrested in Brunswick county, NC for possession of less than one half ounce of marijuana.  At the time I was in my care in a private area but I was unaware of laws at the time dealing with search warrants, etc.  The police officer who arrested me drilled the hell out of me. Questioning me and making subtle threats against myself and my occupants, I agreed for him to search me personally. I told him of the bags and the bowl in my pockets and he promptly put me in cuffs and began to tear my car apart.  After the search I was taken to the magistrates office and booked.  I was given a court date and told to return.  The cute part about that was when I was getting out of the police car, the bags were on the center console and when the officer got out, his elbow knocked one of the bags down into the floor between the seat and the console.  When I informed him of what happened, he told me “not to worry about it”…

A few weeks later came my court date.  I went to court to represent myself, ready to accept whatever punishment they were going to give me.  I told the judge in a very professional manner of my mistake and my willingness to go along with the sentencing.  I was given a $100.00 fine and 1 year of unsupervised probation.  When I received the judgement I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that the worst part was over, when in fact, it was just beginning.

I consider myself a good worker, especially in terms of customer relations in sales positions.  I was also working on getting back into college and moving on with my life.  But it became quickly apparent that nearly all employers would not hire me. Target, Walmart, and many other places wanted nothing to do with me, all while I watched them hire people with felonies and much harsher police records on them.  I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how minding my own business and using such a small amount of plant material could cost me worse treatment than a car thief or someone with an assault record.  To this day I still can’t figure the logic in it. Needless to say this affected my finances very quickly.

The next few years proved to be extremely trying as the only work I could get were at construction and jobs I had no experience in and I was not good in.  I felt like I was forced into a position that made me constantly searching for new work as with that industry in NC the amount of work available was dependent on my employer’s success at acquiring new contracts.  This did not bode well for trying to pay bills, go to college, and keep a healthy relationship with my wife.

In 2005 things came to an extremely bad climax and I was without work, none was available, and there was nowhere among the dozens of job applications I put in that would give me a second thought due to my conviction.  All but one.  And it was the one place I laughed at the thought of being hired:  The North Carolina National Guard.  The decision to join wasn’t very hard when I found out that with a simple letter I could be approved to put my life at risk for my country. Once again I wondered about the ethical and moral stance that places like Walmart, Target, and the other giant companies took when it came to hiring.  How could I be rejected at a Walmart or a McDonalds and be hired in an instant by the US government?  When the paperwork was over I was among the newest of the NCNG’s medics.  I chose that job since I figured it would be a great career path and it allowed me to help stop my brothers and sisters from dying.  As a medic I knew I could make a difference.

After I completed my training and returned home I was immediately put on the Katrina relief duty and worked extremely hard, trying to earn the respect of my fellow soldiers, which I can proudly say I did. I recieved an award for my service there and I still work with that ethic in mind.  I thought once again that due to my hard efforts to make myself into a better person, those put in a position to judge me would see those efforts and be proud to hire a US soldier.  I was wrong.  Very wrong. (more…)