Lest anyone think that science or reason guide modern cannabis policy, I present to you today’s announcement from British Home Secretary (and former pot smoker) Jacqui Smith calling on Parliament to increase pot penalties from a verbal warning — the current policy — to up to five years in jail.

Smith’s expected announcement (Watch the video here.) comes just days after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown — who has been afflicted with a severe case of ‘Reefer Madness’ since taking office last June — raved that consuming cannabis can be fatal, and that strict penalties on pot are necessary in order to “send a message” to young people that marijuana smoking is “unacceptable.”

Ironically, the Home Secretary’s formal announcement contradicts the official recommendations of Britain’s Advisory Panel on the Misuse of Drugs, which released its own report today finding that pot lacks the potential health risks of most other illicit drugs, and that its use is unlikely to trigger mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia.

It is the third time in six years that the Panel has demanded that legislators classify cannabis as a Class C ’soft’ drug, with minor, if any, criminal penalties. Unlike Smith or Brown, the Advisory Panel consists of experts commissioned to evaluate and determine British drug policies — hence it’s hardly surprising that their findings would be totally disregarded by British bureaucrats.

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Best wishes and happy travels to one of America’s great authors of music, masters of the performance stage and American highways.

The cannabis law reform movement has never had a better, more honest or longer-serving goodwill ambassador for cannabis consumers as well as a dedicated proponent of hemp as an industrial crop that should be within the ambit of choices for the American farmer. Even on the rare occasion that Willie has been arrested on cannabis prohibition-related charges, the arresting law enforcement officers involved have oddly been embarrassed, giddy and ultimately honored to have the opportunity to meet Willie in person.

On one occasion in Texas in 1995, Willie was arrested for possessing a couple of hand-rolled cigarettes that just happen to consist of cannabis rather than tobacco, and in a totally unlikely scenario the local sheriff was the individual who bailed him out!

To the man who once smoked a joint on the roof of the White House and has donated the proceeds from events like the 2007 Austin Freedom Festival to support cannabis law reform advocacy, on behalf of NORML’s nationwide membership and chapters, as well as the board of directors, thanks for all your help and support for too many years.

Bonus: Check out this great video from Amsterdam last week featuring Willie and Snoop Dogg. I don’t know what your grandfather is doing at the age of 75, but can you imagine how cool it would be if he invited you to his sold-out shows in Europe and on-stage jams with Snoop?!

President Ulysses S. Grant’s timeless observations on:

* An “unjust war”
* Smuggling across our border with Mexico
* “Possession of the weed” and ineffectiveness of prohibition

by George Rohrbacher, NORML Board Member

April 27th is Ulysses S. Grant’s 186th birthday. The man buried in Grant’s Tomb still has insights to share with today’s candidates hoping to serve in the White House, and for all of us who would vote for them.

Grant won an appointment to West Point so he might further his education. He detested the work at his father’s tannery. His aspirations were to become a college mathematics professor. He had no designs on the military as a profession. But as fate would have it, Grant became one of American history’s great generals, commander of all Federal forces the last year of Civil War and, at the age of 46, President of the United States.

While in excruciating pain, broke, and dying from throat cancer, Grant wrote his memoirs in an attempt to leave an income for his widow. His good friend, Mark Twain, published them after his death. They were a huge commercial and critical success, ranking today among the best military autobiographies ever written.

In September of 1845, arriving with the invading United States Army at the Mexican boarder on the Nueces River, Grant reported on the very active business of smuggling. Illegal trade was the town of Corpus Christi’s primary reason for existence. But unlike today, the flow of the 19th century smuggling was from the United States into Mexico, not the other way around! Grant says, “The price was enormously high, and made successful smuggling very profitable. The trade in tobacco was enormous considering the population supplied.” The Mexican government maintained a tax monopoly on tobacco sales, which created a huge black market economic opportunity for those who would take the initiative, break the law, and supply the demand.

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Seventy-five years after the American people and its representatives in government rejected prohibitionists’ ‘great social experiment’ by repealing alcohol prohibition with the passage of the 21st Amendment, one of the leading anti-libation organizations of that era these days espouses Reefer Madness and pseudo-science.

According to WCTU: “Perhaps the greatest tragedy in the use of marijuana is the fact that the harm is so subtle that it is not realized by the user until severe damage has taken place.”

OK….

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NORML is pleased to announced that Salient Media is offering NORML supporters and chapters 25% off of its new film, Totally Baked.

Totally Baked is a comedy that focuses on why marijuana should be legalized and features new and exclusive music from Brian Johnson of AC/DC and stars some of the country’s hottest comedians. Additionally, Salient Media will be donating 10% of all direct sales to NORML to help reform marijuana laws.

Anyone interested in purchasing the Totally Baked DVD should enter the promotion code ‘high’ at Salient Media’s website to receive their 25% discount.

NORML is pleased to bring you yet another way to celebrate cannabis culture with Totally Baked during this highly celebrated time of year.

NORML’s letter to the editor of New York Times, April 15, 2008:

The April 15, 2008 article ‘Marijuana Smokers Were Poisoned With Lead In Leipzig’ is informative and perfectly underscores the need to legally control cannabis via regulation and taxation, rather than failed prohibition policies.

Seeking even higher profits in the already lucrative, prohibition-fueled business of cannabis distribution, untaxed and unregulated cannabis sellers in Leipzig Germany apparently added lead particles to their bags of cannabis to increase the product’s weight and value. This is hardly a surprise to observers of prohibition economics.

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Join Jackie ‘the Joke Man’ Martling (from Howard Stern’s Show) for a special screening of The Wackness (starring Sir Ben Kingsley) at the Roosevelt Field Mall theater in Garden City, April 24 at 8:00PM.

RSVP mandatory: SidneyFalco@falcoink.com

Enjoy!

Ron Fisher
NORML Outreach Coordinator
Washington, DC
ron@norml.org

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With all the bleak talk in America about the economy, including record fuel and medicine prices, one would think that elected policy makers and mainstream media would gravitate towards an obvious storyline on this day, April 15—America’s dreaded Tax Day—and that is the tens of millions of Americans who’d happily trade in the government-imposed label of ‘criminal’ for ‘sales taxpayer’.

Who am I referring too? Cannabis consumers like me, and maybe you as well. In fact, tens of millions of American cannabis consumers!

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By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board member

When Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, first strode onto the public stage in 1832 and stepped into American History, he was wearing a pair of hemp pants.

From many points of view, Abraham Lincoln was America’s greatest President. Besides guiding America though the Civil War, the most troubled passage since our nation’s founding, he possessed the keenest intellect of anyone to have ever lived in the White House. He also possessed the greatest understanding of the life lived by the common man of anyone who had been or will ever be elected President. Abraham Lincoln came from the dirt, the death, the toil, and struggle of the American frontier.

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More than a whiff of pro-pot comedy will be in the air on April 20 at The Arlington Draft House as Rob Cantrell brings his ‘420 Comedy Hollidaze’ to NoVA.

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