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.
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.
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.
Pro MMA fighter and NORML supporter Toby ‘Tigerheart’ Grear has challenged the California State Athletic Commission on their prohibition of medical cannabis use by sanctioned competitors.
Toby spoke at this year’s national conference on a panel that examined cannabis use among professional athletes.
Every year dozens of professional athletes are arrested or negatively impacted by drug testing rules. This week’s example is from Washington where recent National League Cy Young winner, pitcher Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, became one of America’s approximately 750,000 annual cannabis possession arrest cases. Little known is that in Washington there is an automatic one day in jail penalty for getting caught with any amount of cannabis.
Next time a prohibitionist from law enforcement, an anti-drug bureaucracy or media pundit claims that ‘no one goes to jail for using or possessing cannabis’ you can rightly let them know that they’re misinformed, as the state of Washington, along with numerous other state and county governments, routinely incarcerate cannabis consumers caught on little more than personal possession charges. President Bush’s drug czar, John Walters, claimed that no gets arrested or goes to jail for cannabis. That such is as rare as unicorns.
However, Mr. Lincecum apparently has already copped a plea that will allow him to skip the one day incarceration. Lucky him!
Will a cannabis consumer and accomplished professional athlete like Tim Lincecum step up like Toby, Mark and Rob have? The reform of cannabis laws is certainly made easier when accomplished, professional athletes step to the fore with their self-interested advocacy.
Former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey “Lies” To Beat The Band About Cannabis…Then Again, What Else Is New?
In the media rush to cover the DOJ memo on the Obama administration’s redirecting federal law enforcement efforts away from arresting and prosecuting state compliant medical cannabis providers CNN’s Lou Dobbs interviewed former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey and Cato Institute’s Tim Lynch…
Any long time observer of Mr. Caffrey’s m.o. when being interviewed is to tell some whoppers to an unquestioning media, but in these recent videos McCaffrey, again, wrongly claims that no one gets arrested for cannabis; no one goes to jail or prison for cannabis-related offenses; that he didn’t lose in the seminal case Conant vs McCaffrey; cannabis is de facto legal in the United States, etc…Geesh! I guess when the hundreds of cannabis consumers who call the toll-free number (888-67-NORML) or email NORML this week post arrest looking for legal information and assistance, we”ll just inform them, ‘Don’t you know, according to Barry McCaffrey, cannabis is de facto legal, and that you didn’t really get arrested.’
Makes one wonder how honest and credible McCaffrey has been for the last nine years as a paid, on-air military consultant for NBC News when his track record for anti-pot prevarications (I’m in DC…and therefore not suppose to use the word ‘lie’) are so obviously refuted. If he’d so obviously twist the truth about cannabis, would he mislead an audience or interviewer about America’s military and defense contractors?
We’re back in studio this Saturday for our special Halloweed show! Our guest is ROBERT PLATSHORN, a.k.a. “The Black Tuna”. We’ll be discussing his life as America’s longest-imprisoned (30 years) non-violent marijuana offender, once referred to by President Carter’s attorney general as one of the “slickest, most sophisticated pot smugglers of the 70’s.” Read all about it in Platshorn’s book, “The Black Tuna Diaries”.
We’re also broadcasting from the site of NORML’s West Coast Media HQ Halloweed party, with guests such as Oregon NORML’s Madeline Martinez and UrbAge Designs‘ Scott Gordon. Plus your calls about the scariest marijuana moments in your life. It’s live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
A quick review from this week’s avalanche of cannabis-related news, comes a stark contrast that reveals: Four Prohibition Pragmatists And A Drug War Whore
Prohibition Pragmaticism
Wisconsin – When asked by the media about a recently introduced medical cannabis bill in his state, as well as to comment on the Obama administration’s new policies on medical cannabis, Governor Jim Doyle said he has no problem with the use of cannabis to treat severe pain and other medical conditions by way of a physician’s recommendation, and that restricting the use of medical cannabis makes no sense when doctors can already prescribe more dangerous drugs like morphine.
British Columbia – Stephen Gamble, president of the Fire Chiefs’ Association of B.C., recently came out in favor of fire department inspections of the home gardens of federal medical cannabis patients and caregivers in BC, to make sure the cannabis grow operations are safe, and not creating fire hazards. However, numerous medical cannabis patients and advocates in B.C. have spoken out against the proposal citing special federal privacy protections for medical patients.
Washington, D.C. – The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA), in numerous media reports, acknowledged another major departure from prior administrations regarding federal medical cannabis policies: State-compliant medical cannabis patients may not be harassed or arrested for their medical cannabis whilst traveling in federally-controlled airports.
Oakland NLC member Robert Raich, for years, has been pursuing the TSA to allow medical cannabis patients flying out of Oakland International Airport to lawfully possess their medicine in compliance with TSA rules, which are to concentrate on terrorism and public safety concerns, (i.e., weapons, explosives, knives, etc…), and that pilots and the airline crew are not liable for the presence of lawfully possessed medical cannabis.
New Hampshire – New Hampshire’s new US attorney, John Kacavas, told the media that he will not prosecute medical cannabis patients. [The new policy from Obama]…”is saying in a smarter battle against drugs, people who use it to improve their appetite, people who use it to alleviate their pain probably ought not to be prosecuted federally.”
Then…The Drug War Whoring
Washington, D.C. – In one of the grossest, most gratuitous, desperate attempts to get media attention I’ve ever seen (which says a lot…), former public relations flack for the infamous House Select Narcotics Committee (sui generis of many bad, failed and constitutional-warping anti-drug legislation of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thankfully this congressional committee no longer exists, and these days the once leaders of the group, like powerful New York democrat Charlie Rangel, now support decriminalizing cannabis) and former drug czar Barry McCaffrey’s in-house anti-pot propagandist Bob Weiner employs PRNewswire to hump his absurd press release attacking President Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s clarification of their ‘hands off’ policies regarding the use of federal law enforcement in states with medical cannabis laws (and presumably in states without state protections for medical cannabis patients).
In a country where approximately 75% of the population support medical access to cannabis, one has to wonder what is wrong with people like Bob Weiner. What does he not get? Or, is the only source for his revenue and self-being these days–almost eight years after taxpayers stopped funding his anti-cannabis propaganda when Weiner, a Democratic political appointee, lost his job when the Bushies took over in 2000–is to whore himself out to the media and anti-drug groups as some kind of anti-cannabis zealot, one that mocks science with his ignorance and drips contempt for the compassion that others seem to possess.
Weiner, a self-proclaimed expert on cannabis, does not seem to understand that 1) cannabis is not prescribed anywhere in the US, 2) the DOJ memo only impacts federal, not state attorneys, 3) Weiner claims, relying on unnamed law enforcement agents, that 9 out of 10 medical cannabis patients are frauds, citizens ‘faking’ a medical need ‘just to get high’, 4) Weiner oddly compares a non-toxic and therapeutic substance like cannabis to laetrile, therein invoking the late Senator Kennedy to supposedly prove the “false hope” of medical cannabis, when, in fact, Senator Kennedy supported both patient access to medical cannabis and active cannabis medical research at the University of Massachusetts @ Amherst, and 5) Weiner whines that politics, not science is the controlling factor; feigns there is a dearth of science regarding cannabis (when there are over 17,500 studies relating to cannabis and/or cannabinoids).
Watch Weiner and the so-called war on drugs get rightly ridiculed by Penn and Teller…or the entire episode here.
Feast your eyes on Weiner’s Wednesday PRNewswire release to see what a real drug war whore looks like seeking the media and public spotlight:
Medical Marijuana: ‘Be Careful,’ ‘Ex-White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Tells DOJ About ‘New Lax Enforcement’ Policy; ‘Use May Explode in Healthy People’
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — “Be careful about the new lax enforcement policy for medical marijuana,” former White House Drug Policy Spokesman Bob Weiner is telling the Department of Justice and the Obama Administration.
“You may get way more than you bargained for”, Weiner cautions of the new policy barring states attorneys from busting and prosecuting users and caregivers of so-called “medical” marijuana who act “in accordance with state law.”
“Prescription marijuana use may explode for healthy people.”
Unfortunately, as many as 90% of purchases at clinical distribution centers are “false defenses”, some law enforcement agents report – “which means individuals are not really sick but simply want the pot,” Weiner asserts.
“Medical marijuana is not as effective as other healing mechanisms for many illnesses such as glaucoma, pain, or nausea that users try it for because of false hype leading to false hope. Just as laetrile was legalized in the 1970’s in 27 states to cure cancer but was found to be useless apricot pits, leading Senator Kennedy in a Senate hearing to decry the ‘false hope’ delaying true treatment, ‘medical’ marijuana today could be a placebo delaying far better treatments,” according to Weiner.
“Many medical marijuana advocates press its use for pain killing and appetite enhancement,” Weiner asserted, “but you might feel just as good after a shot of gin. Science, not politics, must drive what is determined to be safe and effective medicine in America. The medical marijuana advocates never mention the potentially better applications of THC in marijuana from suppositories, jells, aerosols, or the already approved pill Marinol — they just want the high from the smoked version.
“There is a real danger that if marijuana is made essentially a prescription drug, its abuse and usage explosion could parallel other prescription drugs over the last decade, such as OxyContin, which have tripled nationally and quintupled in many locations because of the ease of availability.”
“No one wants to deny a dying cancer patient a hit of grass, if that’s what he or she wants. But to announce and implement a policy of broad-brush non-enforcement when there is so much loose about usage of medical marijuana and its distribution is a dangerous policy.”
“The new policy, a three-page DOJ memo anyone can download, does not only say leave the users alone. It also says leave the ‘caregivers’ alone if they comply with state law. The distribution centers, which are suppliers, and the staff could well be considered ‘caregivers’. DOJ would have serious problems discerning between illicit dealers and distributors.”
Weiner served as White House Drug Policy Office spokesman for 6-1/2 years and communications director of the House Select Narcotics Committee for five years.
Contact: Bob Weiner/Rebecca Vander Linde 301-283-0821/202-306-1200
Saturday Night’s episode of NORML SHOW LIVE will be at a special time – 4:00pm Pacific / 7:00pm Eastern – to take advantage of the lineup here at the Cypress Hill Smokeout in San Bernardino, California. Cheech & Chong are playing a “4:20″ set, so I will be there live, bringing you the comedy from NORML’s favorite comedy team.
Following Cheech & Chong in the lineup are the newly re-formed band Sublime, which many will remember for their cover of “Smoke 2 Joints” among many others. We’ll bring you some of their set as well. I’ve also got an interview with “My Fair Brady’s” Adrianne Curry, Steve Bloom from Celebstoner discussing the celebrity panel, and PonyBoy from Los Marijuanos from Friday’s festivities. Calling in to the show are Kottonmouth Kings and responding to her Jay Leno snub, 2006 Miss New Jersey Georgine DiMaria. (All subject to change due to the chaotic nature of a festival!)
Interspersed with the live audio will be my interviews with many of the artists, celebrities, and just normal folks attending this two day outdoor festival. Join us live at http://live.norml.org, where you can also participate in our online chat and speak live to the host and guests – dial in to 347-994-1810 to participate.
This Saturday night at 9pm Eastern (6pm Pacific), “Radical” Russ takes on all the top lies told by prohibitionists for a two-hour “Reefer Madness” special on NORML SHOW LIVE! From the idea that today’s pot “is not your father’s Woodstock Weed” to claims of schizophrenia, psychosis, cancer, lung disease, birth defects, and even “man boobs” being caused by marijuana use, to the latest scare that taxes from legalized marijuana would not cover the public health costs of marijuana, “Radical” Russ breaks them all down and gives you the simple replies you need to easily win the debate. We’re taking your calls all show long at 347-994-1810; ask us your reefer madness questions and we’ll give you the science that debunks it.
You can listen to the show LIVE Saturday at 9pm using the player on the right, which will also give you access to our archived shows from Madison Harvest Fest and NORML CON in San Francisco, or just by visiting http://live.norml.org. You can also subscribe to the archived shows as a podcast through iTunes.
Next week on NORML SHOW LIVE we’ll bring you exclusive live access to the Cypress Hill Smokeout in San Bernadino, California, featuring Cypress Hill, the DefTones, SlipKnot, Kottonmouth Kings, and the first ever reunion of the band Sublime with their new lead singer. Steve Bloom and I will be on hand, as well as Ed Rosenthal, Adrienne Curry, Ngaio Bealum, Tommy Chong, Alison Margolin, and many others, plus surprise guests I’m not allowed to mention.
Please check out the show every Saturday night and mark as us a favorite on BlogTalkRadio.
This week we’ve seen three usually staid mainstream media outlets – Newsweek Magazine, the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and FOX Business News – examining the growing movement in California and nationwide to discuss the inevitable re-legalization of cannabis in America. [UPDATE:Apparently the FOX Business Channel (not FOX News) will have a series called "High Noon" beginning Monday at Noon ET / 9am PT.]
We begin with the PBS NewsHour and their fine report featuring the Honorable Rebecca Kaplan from the Oakland City Council and Richard Lee, the founder of Oaksterdam University. For balance (I suppose) they also interview the police chief of El Cerrito, California, who provides the obligatory doses of “reefer madness” at around the 5:00 mark.
Once again, I have to ask the cop at the end of the piece: How many people who don’t smoke pot now are going to start smoking pot once it is legal, and how much is that going to cost? Whatever it is, make the tax on pot equal to that amount, minus the expenditures we’ll save on not arresting people and sending helicopters on weeding missions, and we’ve covered the costs! (Actually, since Miron estimates that we’d reap in revenues and savings around $14 billion annually from legalized pot nationally, you have to convince us that the brand new legal pot smokers who aren’t already smoking now would cost society more than that.)
We’re still trying to figure out how you inject marijuana (from Newsweek photo essay on pot propaganda)
That stupid retort that legal weed will cost society more than the taxes only works if you believe that nobody is smoking weed now and suddenly when it’s legal, everyone will smoke weed. 22,000,000 PEOPLE ARE SMOKING WEED THIS YEAR ALREADY! Whatever that costs us as a society, we’re already paying NOW without taking in any tax money!
Cannabis does not “add another vice” to tobacco and alcohol that costs our society so much more than their taxes bring in. Alcohol and tobacco use create huge medical bills and death. Cannabis does not. With three legal choices and cannabis being obviously safest, we’ll cut costs as people choose it over alcohol and tobacco, and raise tax revenues that are currently going to black marketeers.
Read more about Newsweek and FOX Business News after the break…
NORML SHOW LIVE provides you with exclusive access to Oregon’s world-famous Cannabis Café, this Saturday Night from 6pm-8pm Pacific.
