NORML’s 38th annual conference in San Francisco, convened September 24-26, was the best attended, ever. Held at the Grand Hyatt, downtown, under classic San Fran weather conditions: 78 degrees and sunny, with the fog creeping up over the hills and a river of fog laying atop the water, streaming in from the ocean through the Golden Gate, sailboats, freighters…the sun-drenched surrounding hill…all of which was to be seen from the hotel’s restaurant on the 36th floor. Medicating could be done, down at street level, on the plaza surrounding the hotel. NORML’s annual conference was held downstairs in the grand ballroom and adjoining meeting spaces. Well, my brothers and sisters in the movement to legalize marijuana, we kicked ass this during this amazing weekend!
Travel author Rick Steves, publisher and comedian Ngaio Bealum and others on the 'Pot, Parenting and Prohibition' panel
The caliber of the presenters and breath of topics @ NORML 38.0 was just astonishing; everything from martial artists using cannabis just before the fight for calming and focus, to how current tax court decisions are shaping the trend toward a wider range of services delivered to patients at dispensaries, to a deep and satisfying look into the science of the exceptional safety profile and utility of cannabis as a medicine. And, if you couldn’t have been there in San Francisco with us, now for the very first time in history, you can attend conference from anywhere in the world, free, on the Internet, simply by visiting NORML’s 38th conference broadcast.
I arrived in San Francisco early enough the day before Conference started to do the NORML “walk through” with Grand Hyatt hotel staff. My morning had started at home at 4:00am doing chores before the two-hour drive to the airport, then my flight to SFO and transport to the Hyatt, only to find out that I was one of the 57 attendees who were being bumped to other hotel properties for one night, because a nasty overbooking computer-glitch. The cynical among us made muffled comments that this “glitch” might have something to do with the US Customs Service/Homeland Security Conference in progress at the hotel the day of NORML’s arrival. The overbooking problem ruffled a few feathers, but we got over it quickly and everyone with a reservation at conference was booked onsite by the end of the first day. The Grand Hyatt staff was awesome in dealing with the mess. And after all, really, how can you be in a bad mood anyway, you’re in San Francisco at a NORML Conference???
A tiny case in point: on day 1 of Conference, during our 4:20 afternoon break, as several hundred of us medicated on the plaza, San Francisco’s Thursday Green-Transportation Bike Protest, with police escort, pedaled by, a significant number of their ranks biking buck-naked…
As I lay in bed that night, finally in my rightful hotel room, my head a-buzz with all the people I’d talked to and some of the world’s finest cannabis, I pondered why NORML Conference was so much fun, and why I had gotten such a huge emotional lift from the day’s events. Sure, I was seeing old friends, making new ones, the common struggle and all of that…but as I continued to think about it, I realized that while those were all important elements of it, but they did not account for the power of what I was feeling.
Then it struck me! Just three weekends before NORML’s Conference, over the Labor Day weekend, my wife and I had held our daughter’s wedding on our ranch, with 70 campers and 120 guests for a sit-down dinner under a tent set up next to our home. We had the first rain in 14 weeks and rainbows the day of the ceremony. The feelings I was getting from the first day of NORML’s Conference was something very much akin to those same feelings that welled up inside that big tent during my daughter’s wedding. Yes. NORML, too, was a meeting of family, self-chosen family, the very tip of an iceberg, a worldwide network of people who, with cannabis, are strung through the heart.
The more I thought about all the people I’d talked to that first day, our wheelchair warriors, our intellectual samurai, our organizers at ground zero…the more I realized that almost to a person, they were at NORML’s 38th annual conference because there was a truth that must be told, a wrong that must be righted, sick people who must be cared for, the defenseless defended…they were there in San Francisco primarily because their hearts demanded it, their internal compass of right-and-wrong would accept no less. And, after all the many years of losing our battles, after 20 million marijuana arrests, the tide has started to turn…
We are winning on many fronts now…but, it is not over, there is so much left to do, please help. Join the fight; please join NORML, if you haven’t done so already. And, I hope to see you at the 39th annual conference, next year.
Check it out on http://live.norml.org – Rick Steves coming up soon, plus discussions from the founder of Oaksterdam, Richard Lee; Dr. Harry Levine on race and marijuana arrests; and California NORML’s Dale Gieringer on the current legal landscape there.
Three hours of live audio from Thursday’s panels at NORML National Conference are now available at our archive of NORML SHOW LIVE. You’ll hear NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano on the science and medicine of marijuana, followed by a panel on patients, caregivers, and small patient collectives moderated by William Panzer, one of the co-authors of Prop 215.
Chris Goldstein and Russ Belville are collecting all the photos, audio, and video from the conference for upload as the day continues.
NORML’s new talk radio program, NORML SHOW LIVE, will be streaming for three days at the 2009 NORML National Conference, “Yes We Cannabis”, live from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco. These special three-hour episodes will be available at live.norml.org at the following special times and archived for download later just fifteen minutes after broadcast:
Thursday, September 24
11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
Friday, September 25
11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
Saturday, September 26
3:00pm – 6:00pm Pacific Time
The show will be hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, but with very limited commercial interruption and the occasional narration. After the shows broadcast remotely in the difficult wireless environment of Portland’s Kelley Point Park and the noisy backstage of the Boston Freedom Rally, Russ is excited to present an indoor event that will take its audio directly from the conference PA system.
NORML is proud to confirm that Dr. Lester Grinspoon will be delivering the luncheon remarks (via skype) at the 2009 National Conference in San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Grinspoon is Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and served for 40 years as Senior Psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. A Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychiatric Association, he was the founding editor of both the Annual Review of Psychiatry and the Harvard Mental Health Letter.
He is the author or co-author of over 160 journal articles, including his 1995 commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Marihuana as Medicine: A Plea for Reconsideration.” His first book, Marihuana Reconsidered, originally published in 1971 by Harvard University Press, was recently republished as a classic. His latest book, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine, co-authored with James B. Bakalar, was published by Yale University Press in 1993 (revised and expanded edition, 1997) and has now been translated into ten languages. Dr. Grinspoon was also a reviewer of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base.”
In 1990 Dr. Grinspoon received the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship and Writing from the Drug Policy Foundation (now Alliance) in Washington, DC. He presently serves on NORML’s Advisory Board and maintains www.marijuana-uses.com, which chronicles real life stories of people who have had positive “non-medical” experiences with marijuana.
“When I first began to study marijuana in 1967, I naïvely believed that its only use was as a recreational drug,” says Grinspoon. “I soon came to understand that it also had a second important utility, as a medicine, and I published (along with James B. Bakalar) Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine. Just as penicillin, after its discovery as an antibiotic in 1941, was soon hailed as a wonder drug because of its limited toxicity, its versatility in treating a number of different kinds of symptoms and syndromes, and its limited cost, we believe that marijuana, for the same three reasons, will eventually be hailed as a wonder medicine. Over the last decade and a half I have come to believe that there is a third category of marijuana use –enhancement.”
Lester Grinspoon says, “Yes we cannabis” and so should you! Register for NORML’s 38th annual conference, taking place September 24-26 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown San Francisco. For registration information, please visit: http://www.norml.org/conference.
Iowa, America’s breadbasket, home to liberal scion Tom Harkin and conservative contrarian Charles Grassley, is vetting the issue of medical marijuana politically like no other previous state has by conducting a series of public testimonies, convened by the Iowa Pharmacy Board (who was ordered by a Polk County judge to do so in April in response to lawsuits brought by medical marijuana patients in Iowa against the IPB).
Two of the first four public hearings have already happened (August 19 in Des Moines and Sept. 2 in Mason City); the next hearings are:
October 7 in Iowa City and November 4, Council Bluffs
At the Mason City hearing on September 2, eight speakers, all but one in favor of medical marijuana law reforms, spoke out against the prohibition of medical marijuana in Iowa.
Des Moines resident and multiple sclerosis patient Ray Lakers, 42, who was jailed for possessing less than a gram of medical marijuana in 2005, spoke of medical marijuana’s utility and benefit to his life. Conversely, Maedene Sappenfield of Mason City spoke out against it in the Globe Gazette, “I have a son-in-law in North Carolina who has MS and he functions without marijuana very well, so it is possible.”
The IPB does not have the authority to legalize marijuana for medical use, but it could suggest to lawmakers to move marijuana to a schedule lower than I. In turn, Iowa lawmakers would have to pass amending legislation. An AP article indicates an interesting legislative challenge (some would say ‘poison pill’): “the [IPB] said that the drug [marijuana] would have to be used as treatment in all states for Iowa to reclassify it.”
If you’re confused over the term ‘jury nullification’, a prime example of such emerged from a courtroom in Boulder, Colorado last week. Many legal and sociology experts recognize a significant change in society by whether or not juries, made up of one’s local peers, will continue to enforce what many in a society have come to believe are bad and/or antiquated laws.
Throughout America’s relatively short history, when elected policymakers and bureaucrats are not responsive to the will of the citizens or pass laws not supported by society, citizens sitting on a jury have an absolute right to vote their conscience, which also means in effect nullifying the law by not voting for conviction.
The effect of this becomes abundantly clear when jurors consistently refuse to convict so-called ‘criminal offenders’, and numerous examples abound from prior civil rights movements in America: Abolitionists, Women’s Sufferage, Minority Rights and Access To The Vote and Gay/Lesbian.
In time, and NORML is observing this right now around the country in ever-increasing amounts, prosecutors are having an increasingly harder time winning criminal convictions for ‘crimes’ a majority of the citizens do not in fact believe is a crime.
Want to know more about the awesome power each of us possess as jurors to stop ‘bad’ laws from their continued enforcement? Check out FIJA!
I want to personally thank ‘D. Walters, Erie, CO’ for both voting their conscience while sitting in judgment of a fellow cannabis consumer, and for letting their fellow citizens in the Boulder area know via a letter-to-the-editor what a waste of time and valuable social resources cannabis prohibition enforcement is for the criminal justice system.
Medical marijuana case a waste of resources
Posted by Camera staff in Tuesday, August 11th 2009
I was a member of the jury on the medical marijuana case and beg to differ with Mr. Garnett’s assessment as presented in this Open Forum on Tuesday.
This case was both a waste of taxpayer money and a travesty of justice that the charges against this man were ever brought in the first place. First of all, Mr. Garnett’s assertion that the jury found “that the amount of marijuana in Mr. Lauve’s home was medically necessary” is an inaccurate statement. The job of the prosecution was to prove that the amount in possession was NOT medically necessary and that Mr. Lauve was aware that he was in violation of the law. The prosecution presented absolutely NO EVIDENCE regarding either point of law. They brought no witnesses to show that the amount was not medically necessary. They did not even assert that the amount was not medically necessary. In fact, they prevented the defense from offering evidence regarding medical necessity. The prosecution did not even attempt to assert that Mr. Lauve knew the amount was excessive or suggest that he was doing anything inappropriate with the ‘excess’.
This jury admired Jason Lauve for standing up to an unfair prosecution. The physical, emotional and legal costs to Jason Lauve of defending himself do not seem to be of concern of Mr. Garnett.
And the cost to taxpayers? 4 full days spent by a judge, two prosecutors, a bailiff, a clerk, a detective, assorted police officers and 12 jurors! Plus laboratory time and expense to prove that it was ‘real’ marijuana. All of us could have spent these 4 days doing something that actually involved prosecuting a crime.
While states like Michigan, New Mexico and Rhode Island have recipriocity for out-of-state medical cannabis patients, to date NORML was not aware of a AUSA recognizing such (though, on occasion, we’ve seen the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) not act upon medical cannabis patients caught with small amounts of their medicine). This may well be another change under the current Obama administration as both the Clinton and Bush 2.0 administrations prosecuted state authorized medical cannabis patients caught up in federal arrests.
PRESS RELEASE – AUGUST 2, 2009 – FROM JOHN MCCALL, ATTORNEY
On June 30, 2009 in the Federal District Court of New Mexico, Assistant US Attorney John Anderson agreed, on the record, to Honor the Medical Marijuana Recommendation of Charles Smith of Shasta Lake, California. Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Lorenzo Garcia further agreed to accept the State’s proposed recommendation of a Conditional Discharge upon provision of Mr. Smith’s Medical Marijuana Recommendation to the US Attorney’s office. This historic moment occurred during the federal Government’s prosecution of cases related to the Annual Rainbow Gathering that occurs in different states around the country and involves a large Federal Law Enforcement presence. The cases were prosecuted as civil collateral forfeitures and the records have been transferred to the Central Violations Bureau for the Federal Government. Five Medical marijuana recommendations were honored including those from Wyoming, California, Hawaii and Washington State. This is the first time in modern history, in which it is known that the US Attorney and the Federal District Court agreed to accept medical marijuana recommendations and licenses in order to dismiss marijuana possession charges.
This historic series of events followed the filing of a law suit by Bryan Krumm of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use in New Mexico Federal District Court in 2008. During those proceedings members of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use were able to speak to Justice Department representatives about the statements in March of 2009 by Eric Holder, US Attorney General, that medical marijuana would no longer be prosecuted. After this conversation in May of 2009, Attorney General Holder came to New Mexico in June of 2009 and again gave a public presentation on the matter stating that legally established medical marijuana distribution operations and legally sanctioned medical marijuana users (all under state laws), would not be prosecuted by the Federal Government. During the proceedings it was revealed that the AUSA’s prosecuting the cases in New Mexico told Defendants that they were not returning the medicine and that they would be prosecuted if they were caught with Marijuana in the National Forest again. During discussions with the US Attorney and his Assistants at the Court, long time Federal Criminal Defense Attorney Judy Rosenstein discovered that the US Attorney for New Mexico, Gregory J. Fouratt, was not involved in that decision to impose conditions on the Defendants.
Contact Attorney John McCall for more information on this case. Charles Smith has given permission for this information to be released to the public and is available, somewhere in the woods around Shasta Lake, if you want to find him and talk to him about his experience.
You can go to Youtube Lisa Law for video of the Rainbow Gathering and Law Enforcement activities.
While the government contract to date has been pro forma–the University of Mississippi/Oxford has won the contract every year since the late 1960s and MAPS’ and Prof. Lyle Craker’s successful lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to effectively break Ol’ Miss’ monopoly on cultivating cannabis for research and approximately five Compassionate IND patients, and allow the University of Massachusetts/Amherst to cultivate research and therapeutic grade cannabis, is being appealed by DEA–competition can only help science, and the free market place of ideas and research.
Production, Analysis, & Distribution of Cannabis & Marijuana Cigarettes
Solicitation Number: N01DA-10-7773
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Office: National Institutes of Health
Location: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Synopsis:
Added: Aug 05, 2009 9:03 am
The National Institute on Drug Abuse is soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to (1) grow, harvest, analyze, store and distribute GMP grade cannabis (marijuana) on large and small scales; (2) extract cannabis to obtain purified phytocannabinoids including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC), analyze, and store; (3) prepare marijuana cigarettes and related products; and (4) distribute marijuana, marijuana cigarettes and cannabinoids, and other related products for research and other Government programs upon NIDA authorization.
Offerors must possess suitable and secure DEA approved outdoor and indoor growing facilities, research laboratory with appropriate analytical instruments, and experienced personnel to conduct the project tasks. Appropriate DEA approved secure facility for manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes, and their storage, and DEA Schedule I registration for marijuana and THC are essential. NIDA anticipates a 1-year with four 1 year options cost reimbursement type contract will be awarded. Additional quantity options for manufacturing cigarettes may also be required. In order to handle substances under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, it is mandatory that offerors possess a DEA Research Registration for Schedules II to V and demonstrate the capability to obtain a DEA registration for Schedule I controlled substances. All studies must be carried out under pertinent FDA regulations, such as current Good Clinical Practice (cGCP) and current Good Laboratory Practice (cGLP) regulations. The pertinent FDA’s guidelines/guidance shall be followed. RFP No. N01DA-10-7773 will be available electronically on or about August 25, 2009. You can access the RFP through the FedBizOpps:
The electronic RFP contains all information needed to submit a proposal. No printed version of the solicitation document or source list is available. NIDA will consider proposals submitted by any responsible offeror. Proposals will be due on or about October 9, 2009. This advertisement does not commit the Government to award a contract. Based upon market research, the Government is not using the policies contained in Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items, in its solicitation for the described supplies or services. However, interested persons may identify to the contracting officer their interest and capability to satisfy the Government’s requirement with a commercial item within 15 days of this notice.
In an attempt to clarify an apparent gaffe made a few weeks ago to California media stating that “marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal value”, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske in a new interview with his hometown media in Seattle has only slightly, almost imperceptibly, modified his remarks by now implying that somehow how ‘smoked‘ medical cannabis is not a legitimate and effective drug delivery method:
When asked about his comments a few weeks ago Kerlikowske told KOMO news “I certainly said that legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary nor is it in mine. But the other question was in reference to smoked marijuana. And as we know, the FDA has not determined that smoked marijuana has a value, and this is clearly a medical question that should be answered by the medical community.”
KOMO also reports:
Kerlikowske’s stand on legalizing marijuana for everyone is more clear-cut. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, by law, actively works against legalizing drugs.
Kerlikowske takes on last jab at cannabis by continuing his predecessor’s proclivity to mislead the media and public by claiming “You know from the University of Washington, the number one call from young people for treatment here, after alcohol, is marijuana. So I’m not seeing the benefit to society with legalization here.”
Number one, cannabis is not legal in Washington state, or anywhere in the US, 2) youth in Washington, and all around the US, after being ensnared by the hundreds of thousands per year by cannabis prohibition laws enforced by the criminal justice system (or university police), are provided with the Hobson’s Choice of either going to jail or so-called ‘treatment’.
Mr. Kerlikowske should cease employing this rhetorical straw man as he is intelligent enough to know its inaccuracy, but continues to adopt the failed rhetoric of prior hardliner drug czars Gen. Barry McCaffrey and John Walters, who consistently made the same claims during their tenure, and lost credibility every time they continued to propound such obviously misleading propaganda.
Kerlikowske’s latest unfortunate remarks affirm cannabis law reformers have much work left to do! Maybe our good drug czar should call actor Patrick Swayze and ask him ‘if he is benefiting from smoked medical cannabis?’
Patrick Swayze, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer over a year ago, is using medical marijuana to relieve the pain of his last days of chemotherapy.
According to a family insider, Swayze, 56, has found that smoking marijuana helps with his nausea, inability to sleep, and anxiety. The insider noted on the actor’s slight weight gain as well as adding that he (Swayze) feels more “normal than he has in months.”
Pictures have surfaced of Swayze out with his brother Donnie looking much healthier than he had weeks before.
“Patrick was rapidly losing weight because he couldn’t keep good down. He was so weak, he needed help getting around,” the source told the magazine.
“Marijuana works extremely well for many cancer patients. It helps fight nausea from chemotherapy treatments and may alleviate anorexia or loss of appetite,” Dr. Ron Kennedy of Santa Rosa, CA, said of the situation.
