By Norman Kent, Esq. , NORML Board Member

Okay, it is only February 1st, and more people this year have already died from peanut butter than pot.

Seriously, when you think about what has crossed the pages of our nation’s conscience in the past month, you have to wonder why we are all not getting high.

With thanks to Michael Phelps, I have ten good reasons to believe drug law reform will ‘take’ this year. Here is why.

Number One: The President
First of all, we elected a President who has admitted inhaling, and whose half brother just got arrested in Kenya for possession of marijuana. Growing up in urban Chicago, and having come from Hawaii, home of ‘Maui Waui,’ we have a man in the oval office that has an herbal background.

I am therefore not intimidated that, on his third day in office, while he was working on a nationwide economic stimulus package, some renegade prosecutors raided a medical dispensary in California. Those ugly efforts will cease soon enough. I am encouraged by President Obama’s prior public statements that such raids are counterproductive and provide illusory answers to real problems.

Number Two: The Medicine
Just as I was exploring the placement of my mom into an assisted living facility for early stage Alzheimer’s patients, I see a study released by Ohio State University this month. The research is indicating that marijuana has some potential capacity to reduce brain inflammation, which plays a role in Alzheimer’s. Mom, those brownies might taste differently next week.

While evidence showing the benefits of marijuana in multiple sclerosis cases has been advancing significantly, work in Alzheimer’s disease is still in its infancy. Still, another recent study performed at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, inhibits the formation of a brain plaque that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

Number Three: The Politics
If you light up a joint while walking down High Street in Medford, Massachusetts, not much is likely to happen to you. As of Jan. 2, Massachusetts became one of 12 states that have decriminalized marijuana possession to some extent. The new civil penalties for possession of less than 1 ounce include a $100 fine and forfeiture of one’s stash for those over 18 years of age. Minors will receive the same fine and be required to attend drug education classes.

In city after city, and state after state, once silent minorities are becoming vocal majorities and voting to enact legislation freeing marijuana from unjust law enforcement. When given the chance, we are winning the war against prohibition. Legislators in Michigan, Connecticut and even Florida are starting to re-introduce bills to lower penalties for pot. The whirlwind is commencing; just ask anyone in a dorm room within a wave of the White House after the inauguration.

Number Four: The Media
Marijuana has gone mainstream. Media outlets are no longer hiding in the shadows afraid to produce honest reports about the culture of marijuana. We are less likely to see commercials of pot smokers having their brains grilled in a frying pan. We are more likely to view legitimate programming which produces truths rather than trash about your stash.

One such report was featured on NBC news last week, a snippet of an hour long production on MSNBC entitled ‘Marijuana, Inc.’ Focusing more on economics then the sociology of pot, the well-supported report inescapably concluded that marijuana commerce is here to stay and unlikely to change. As even the NY Daily News said, “When it comes to marijuana, a whole lot of people voted some time ago to just say yes.” Ask the cast of the award winning Showtime series, ‘Weeds,’ which captures a growing American spirit.

Number Five: The Public
Even the Department of Health has said that 95 million Americans have over the age of 21 have tried marijuana at least once. Everyone except Bill Clinton has inhaled. The anti drug warriors have a hard time explaining to the average adult in the 21st century that millions of Americans are wrong when they light up every day.

It is normal to smoke pot. The vast amount of marijuana users today are parents choosing to calm down instead of liquor up, not just kids, looking to get high after class. Of course, they are too, adults treating arthritis, patients using it for multiple sclerosis, or people with HIV fighting a wasting syndrome. Pot smokers cross ethnic, sociological, and economic boundaries.

Number Six: The Celebrities
There is a lot of reason to hate the celebrity culture, paparazzi, and people who get their daily pulp from finding out where Brittany Spears went shopping. As more media types get busted with pot, the less newsworthy it becomes. The public could care less. An arrest for pot is not a career-ending event. As I finish this piece and send it off for distribution, I am watching Snoop Doggy Dogg being interviewed on ESPN for the NFL Countdown to the Super Bowl. It does not seem to have hurt him. And guess what Michael Phelps got caught doing this weekend? Toking off a bong!

Macauley Culkin, Bud Bundy, Willie Nelson, Art Garfunkel, and Al Gore’s son also make the High Subscription List. So do Allen Iverson, Matthew McConaughey, Whitney Houston, Oliver Stone, and even Queen Latifah. All have posted bail for pot. They are not doing too badly for themselves. Go visit Celebstoner for more prime examples of the intersection of celebrity and cannabis.

Number Seven: The Growers
In speaking out against rescheduling marijuana so as to remove it from its classification as dangerous, the most significant point that the Office of Drug Control Policy makes is that today’s weed ‘is not your grandfather’s pot.’

Exactly! It is not, but they miss the mark when they say today’s pot is ‘stronger.’

Today’s pot is also cleaner, safer, and healthier to consume. From vaporizers to hydroponic labs, the marijuana grown and consumed today is more precisely cultivated, carefully processed, and lovingly manicured then the mold-encased, dried-out weed we grew up on decades ago. That pot was often delivered to Americans from overseas after being buried in the dark, musky cargo hulls of ships for weeks at a time.

Now that Americans grow our own marijuana at home, we do not hear stories on a daily basis about people smoking rat poison or buying oregano. We have returned to the roots of our forefathers, lest we forget that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all grew hemp. They did not turn out too bad, either. Today’s pot growers are the new revolutionary farmers.

Number Eight: The Police and Jails
Sadly, the criminal justice system in America is teeming with serious crimes and violence against Americans. A Department of Homeland Security must necessarily focus on threats from abroad. From drive-by shootings to corporate white collar crime, the jails in our country are simply not capable of housing all those who should arguably be locked up. So law enforcement has to prioritize. Building jails and keeping people in prisons costs more money than communities can afford. Pot smokers are the residual beneficiaries.

The necessities of twenty first century law enforcement have reduced pot to secondary priorities. More and more cities are encouraging cops to treat simple pot possession as a civil traffic infraction and just write a ticket. As those progressive initiatives take hold, pot prosecutions will diminish and pot users will be treated more fairly.

Number Nine: The Non Profits
The wealth of non profit organizations advocating drug law reform is growing exponentially. We are not just NORML anymore. Benefactors like Peter Lewis and George Soros have underwritten drug reform movements the way Hugh Hefner once helped NORML. The Marijuana Policy Project, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, the Drug Policy Alliance, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition are just a small sampling of honorable groups fighting to change the public perception in the way drug consumers are viewed and treated. If you enhance their efforts today, there is less of a chance that you will be bonding yourself or your child out of jail tomorrow.

Number Ten: The Internet
There is no better way to end this column then to point towards the awesome power of networking to generate partnerships for the common good. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of reformers can be linked for a specific goal, a targeted protest, or unified voice to speak out for or against a new law or proposed regulation.

The NORML blog and podcast draws hundreds of thousands of Americans daily who would otherwise never be reached but for the arm of the ‘Net. Stopthedrugwar.org, Marijuananews.com, and cannabisnews.com are amongst the target specific Internet resources drug law reformers can access instantly. There are too many more to mention.

Finally, the Internet has spawned awesome networking groups such as Facebook and MySpace, where activists, organizers, and reformers can synthesize their partnerships and causes. And there is always something new unfolding, like Twitter, which I have not figured out, but I know is catching on.

It’s Up to Us!

For too many years, pot smokers have been political prisoners, captive to repressive government and a rolling tide. 2009 represents a renewed opportunity to make the waters of justice run our way again.

*This was originally published at KentVent.com

Today America Celebrates Ben Franklin’s 303rd Birthday

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board of Directors, medical marijuana patient

Of all of America’s Founding Fathers, only Benjamin Franklin was a signer of all three of our country’s essential documents, The Declaration of Independence, the Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War and the United States Constitution. Benjamin Franklin was also the only Founding Father who actively campaigned against the institution of slavery. As a scientist, Benjamin Franklin, the man who learned to control lightning, was as revered and world-famous in his day, as Einstein was in his. Franklin, among many other things, gave us the conceptual framework we still use every time we think about things electrical. He was the first to describe electricity as having positive and negative charges. Ben Franklin’s fingerprints are everywhere one looks in 21st Century.

Ben Franklin has often been called “the first American”, because, in so many ways, he embodied the brash new nation he helped create. His talents as an inventor and scientist are legendary. Consider a few of the useful creations that Ben left us: bifocal glasses, the woodstove and the lightning rod. They were all inventions he chose not to patent because he saw they were so potentially useful to the general public. They were among his many gifts to humanity. As the statesman, Ben Franklin was as essential to creating our new nation, as was George Washington, the soldier. Franklin’s unique combination of charm, celebrity and brilliance brought France in on our side of the Revolutionary War with the troops, navy and money necessary for us to win. As a proud citizen of a free society, Ben’s genius also flourished with his social inventions like the volunteer fire department, the lending library, the community hospital and, what has become, the University of Pennsylvania. As a writer, his prime work is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, a bestseller, never out of print since it was written, nearly 250 years ago. It is the true story of a runaway printer’s apprentice who, at the age of 17, stole himself from his older brother to whom he was indentured until he was 21 years old. Franklin’s Autobiography is the original blueprint to the ‘American Dream’ of how to become a self-made man. Horatio Alger and Dale Carnegie, are simply Ben’s 19th and 20th Century adherents and proselytizers. Today in the 21st Century, self-help books cover whole walls in bookshops. Franklin was the author the world’s very first best-selling book in the self-help genre.

I made a few comments at NORML’s National Conference, this past October, about why I believe that NORML is a legitimate offspring of Ben Franklin’s social genius. On my flight home, I looked out the airplane window and I saw Ben waving back at me.

Full Story

By Norm Kent, Esq., NORML Board member

On July 1st of 2008, Florida enacted a new law which enhanced penalties for marijuana grow houses. Authorities heralded it as the ‘Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act.’ It is just another excuse to lock decent people up for longer times.

There are some provisions of the act which bring back the dark days of the draconian Rockefeller drug laws in New York, legislation which sent small marijuana growers to jail for thirty years. Some might first be getting out today.

Law enforcement argued that they needed the new law because of the increasing number of grow houses operating in the state and violent crime which tend to be associated with these operations. Sure they did.

“Grow houses are not only furthering this dangerous drug trade within our state, they are bringing violent crime into our neighborhoods,” said Attorney General McCollum. “This new law will help protect our families and communities.” No, it won’t.

Full Story

This is the last week for submissions to NORML’S VIDEO AD CONTEST. There is $10,000 in cash prize money waiting for the America’s best answers to the above question.

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board of Directors, medical marijuana patient

America has witnessed the unfolding of a series of unprecedented historic events that portend great change for war on cannabis. The federal war against the plant entered into its 71st year this fall, from the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, to Nixon’s invention of the ‘war on weed’, to Bush’s expanded war against cannabis and the sick and dying that has being playing out in the dispensaries and patient coops of our country’s medical marijuana states—for generations, our federal government has used every means short of public hangings to deter Americans from using cannabis, and it hasn’t worked.

This war on the cannabis plant and its consumers has been a complete and utter failure.

Over 100 million Americans have used cannabis in their lifetimes, including our new President-elect, and about 20 million Americans used pot just this last week. The perverse nature of ‘pot prohibition’ is that it guarantees that marijuana is easily available to our children, the very group of citizens we say we are trying hardest to protect.

In early October 2008, America made its 20-millionth marijuana arrest, topping a record 872,000 arrests in 2007, 90% of which were for the possession of a small amount of pot. Vast sums of taxpayer’s money continue to be wasted every day in America’s failed cannabis prohibition efforts. A simple, but revolutionary change to a tax and regulate posture on cannabis a from to our current “war on weed” policy could have a combined net positive effect on our increasingly strapped federal and state budgets by as much as $50 billion annually to the good. And, to top this off, America’s cannabis users want to be taxed!!! We want to be treated normal. We are pleading for it!

Full Story

Raids On Head Shops Unjust And Unfair

By Norm Kent, Esq., NORML Board Member*

“Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed. They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed. Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain. But Monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game. And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody.
Outside of a small circle of friends.”

–song by Phil Ochs

Duval Street is the epicenter of Key West, home to Sloppy Joe’s, Hemingway’s and a host of bars and hotels which have for a century captured the spark and soul of this land of the lost.

The Environmental Circus is gone, Valladares’ News Stand is history, and though La Te Da still stands, Larry Formica and his pink Cadillac have long since passed. Where a beat up wooden dock and a collage of cultures once gathered on historic Mallory Square, cruise ships now pour out thousands of tourists in flowered shirts onto the city’s main streets.

Fantasy Fest still wreaks havoc to the city every fall, but the Pirate image of this out of the way city has been lost for a long time now, to t shirt shops and condos; to name hotels and tourist traps. The heart of the city, Duval Street, has seen some of its landmarks become chain pharmacies, and cheap coffee shops like Shorty’s and Dennis Pharmacy have become convenience stores.

Walking down Duval Street in 2008 you are more likely to find a foreign exchange student from Slovakia peddling a bike for extra cash than you are to stumble upon a runaway teen from New York hustling a street corner for change. The times they are no longer changing. The times they have changed.

Full Story

NORML Advisory Board member and legendary American music man Willie Nelson demonstrates his genuine knack for self-deprecation when he joins Comedy Central’s straight man Stephen Colbert in singing ‘Let Not Mankind Bogart Love’.

Safe and hempful holidays from NORML!

By Dale Gieringer, Ph.D, Director, California NORML

California NORML has recently heard increasing reports that Marinol patients are being drug tested and denied employment for use of marijuana. In particular, we have heard from legal Prop. 215 patients who were denied jobs despite presenting Marinol prescriptions after being re-tested specifically for marijuana. Until recently, Marinol and marijuana were indistinguishable on the standard drug tests, so that patients with a Marinol prescription had a valid medical excuse under federal law for testing positive for marijuana.

However, special testing techniques have been developed that make it possible to distinguish the two by testing for non-standard cannabinoids that appear in marijuana but not Marinol. Until recently, these tests were expensive and rarely used except in high-profile criminal cases. However, it appears that they are now being routinely used by certain laboratories in cases where Marinol use is claimed. In particular, we have heard reports of such testing being used to disqualify Marinol-using Prop 215 patients by the transportation industry and by Walmart.

California NORML has accordingly altered its drug testing information to warn against relying on Marinol RXs as a screen for marijuana use: http://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/testing.tips.html

There is of course no valid scientific or health justification for allowing patients to use Marinol but not marijuana. The only purpose is to enforce compliance with the law. It is a tribute to the power and influence of the drug testing industry that they have prevailed in foisting the costs of this unnecessary and obnoxious procedure on employers.

California NORML, 2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114

(415) 563-5858 / www.canorml.org

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board Member, medical marijuana patient

By a huge margin, 3,008,980 to 1,792,870, Michigan’s voters approved a ballot measure legalizing physician directed medical marijuana, making it America’s thirteenth state to legalize medical marijuana. State medical marijuana laws now cover over 25 percent of the nation’s population. Michigan became the first Midwest state to join this growing green fraternity.

click to enlarge

Michigan Voters Pass Medical Marijuana Initiative Into Law, 83-0

A review the Michigan State Auditor’s website and their county-by-county election results proves interesting reading. Medical marijuana won in every single county! All 83 counties in the state of Michigan—urban, suburban, or rural passed the measure, and by a margin of over a million votes. It had won in farming, logging, mining, and manufacturing counties! Everywhere the question was asked in Michigan on November 4, the electorate said yes to medical marijuana. In the state’s five largest urban counties, the margins were enormous, an eye-popping 2:1 vote for marijuana.

Medical marijuana received 130,000 more votes in Michigan than even the Obama victory did.

What a vote like this means is that in every part of Michigan, in every school district and voting precinct, every family and every church, in every community, that the people, one by one, have learned the undeniable truth of the utility of marijuana as a medicine—a ‘Truth’ with no expiration date.

The publics’ first-hand knowledge on the subject (over 100 million Americans have tried pot themselves) is finally overcoming the wall of 71-years of lies and distortions about medical marijuana by our federal and state governments. The American public is slowly re-learning the truth about marijuana as a medicine, one person, one patient, one family, one neighbor and one election at a time.

When Uncle Bob uses cannabis for his MS, and Mom needed pot when she underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer, and the kid next door uses it for his migraine headaches…the government can’t continue to lie to the voters anymore that pot is used only by ‘slackers who’re faking illness just as an excuse to ‘get high’. Sorry Congress and Executive Branch, America has seen too many instances where medical marijuana works, and works well. And, there are also now 17,000 scientific studies on the subject!

The great state of Michigan, as a microcosm of America, showed November 4th we, as a country, have passed our tipping point on medical marijuana. Knowledge is tyranny’s biggest enemy. In the 2008 election, the Michigan voters showed, no matter how thick the government lays on the propaganda, nothing can cover up the truth about marijuana as medicine.

-2008 MICHIGAN ELECTION RESULTS-

MEDICAL MARIJUANA (YES)

3,008,980 63%

MEDICAL MARIJUANA (NO)

1,792,870 37%

BARACK OBAMA 2,875,308 (57%)

JOHN MC CAIN 2,050,655 (43%)

-MICHIGAN COUNTIES WON-

MEDICAL MARIJUANA (YES) = 83 (100%)

MEDICAL MARIJUANA (NO) = 0 (0%)

BARACK OBAMA 48 Counties (57%)

JOHN MC CAIN 35 Counties (43%)

In 1937, when marijuana was outlawed against the American Medical Association’s recommendation, cannabis was a component of at least 28 patent medicines made by many pharmaceutical companies still in business today. This national prohibition not only removed cannabis from use as a medicine, but has also produced the social wreckage of 20 million arrests (with an additional 2,200 arrests daily) and today’s pot prohibition bill to taxpayers approaching $25 billion annually.

With the ever-growing national realization that cannabis is one of “the safest therapeutically active substances known to man…”, the American people are taking back their rights to cannabis as medicine, one state at a time. Starting in California in 1996, thirteen states (eight states via voter initiative – five via state legislation) have now taken back their rights to marijuana as a medicine. After this week’s massive victory in Michigan, it is a clear sign that this culture war over medical marijuana is finally over, and the American people (and science) have won—the citizenry refuse to be denied the use of pot in their medicines chest any longer.

President-elect Obama immediately upon taking office should seat a national commission to update the Shafer Commission and bring forward national legislation to address this vital health care and social issue.

“It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition”
Stephen W. Dillon’s Welcome Address
To The 37th Annual NORML Conference
October 17-18, 2008
Berkeley, California
Doubletree Hotel/Marina

I. Welcome/Introduction (Cannabem liberemus!)

Good morning! I am Steve Dillon, chairman of the NORML Board of Directors. I want to welcome all of you to our 37th Annual Conference in beautiful Berkeley, California. We are very glad you are here – California is still the ground zero in the government’s war on medical marijuana.

I am honored and excited to be with you and our outstanding group of speakers and panelists. We have a great conference planned. There are lots of opportunities to learn, share, experience with each other, and recommit to ending the government’s prohibition of marijuana.

II. The theme of the conference this year is: “It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition“.

My parents were born during the government’s failed effort at alcohol prohibition (1919-1934). They learned about home-made beer and wine and even about secret stills for liquor in their basements. They shared with me some of the alcohol paraphernalia of my grandfather, Dr. John Dillon. He had a silver folding whiskey glass and a leather cigar case with fake glass cigars or containers for booze. My parents weren’t old enough to drink alcohol during the prohibition, but my grandparents did regularly. My parents didn’t think that their parents were criminals, only Al Capone and the gangsters who committed violent acts to support their illegal business enterprises.

There was an attitude of our citizens at that time that the government couldn’t really tell us that we couldn’t drink, we were Americans! It was fun to go to the speak-easy. It was a “forbidden fruit” that lead some people to drink alcohol just because we weren’t suppose to. However, people didn’t often get arrested for drinking a beer or having a glass of wine. People didn’t have their homes searched or seized or forfeited for home brew or wine. This marijuana prohibition is much worse than our parents’ prohibition. (1) unconstitutional/illegal, (2) more costly, (3) much longer/never-ending, (4) loss of freedom and property, (5) loss of opportunity, (6) loss of medicine and compassionate care of sick, (7) dishonest, (8) drug-testing.

What were the results of the American alcohol prohibition? It is undisputed that the prohibition was a complete failure. It certainly didn’t work to prohibit alcohol consumption by millions of Americans, from the very rich to the very poor. The prohibition resulted in an increase in organized crime and brutal violence. It resulted in corruption of our courts, police, and politicians. It misdirected our tax resources – it wasted millions of dollars that could have been spent to improve the lives of Americans.

The prohibition resulted in a growing disrespect for government and law enforcement. It led to countless deaths, not only from the gang violence in the streets trying to control the illegal market, but also from the deaths from tainted home-made liquor – “bathtub gin”. The prohibition made millions of American citizens “criminals” overnight, even though the vast majority had no intent to harm anyone, not even themselves. They had lost the right to choose.

Federal law enforcement officials like the FBI’s Hoover, used the prohibition as a reason to greatly increase the funding and power of their agencies; and they have never relinquished that power.

The alcohol prohibition was doomed because it was standing directly in the way of the citizens’ right to choose to use alcohol – even if it wasn’t good for them. There is a fundamental belief in America that we the people have the right to make decisions about how we live our life. That we are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – however we define it, as long as we don’t hurt others or interfere with their rights. The government’s marijuana prohibition was also doomed to fail for the same reasons.

III. The government’s 71 year prohibition of marijuana has also failed and is also counter-productive.

When the marijuana prohibition started in 1937, the government was trying to keep in place the federal law enforcement bureaucracy from the alcohol prohibition which ended just a few years before. The government picked marijuana to prohibit for a variety of reasons such as: (1) mostly blacks and Mexicans used marijuana (maybe 5000 users at the time). – racist, (2) most Americans were unaware of the benefits of marijuana, even though it was used in many patent medicines and treatments, (3) powerful lobbyists and their politicians protected the pharmaceutical industry, the paper industry, the oil industries from the competition for consumer dollars. The prohibition is still in place for all these reasons, mainly greed and control.

The marijuana prohibition has also resulted in an increase in organized, violent crime and gang warfare on our streets. It has resulted in corruption of police, politicians, and courts. It has wasted billions of our tax dollars each year; money that could be spent on education, or roads, or Social Security, or on protecting us from real crime or real terrorists. The marijuana prohibition has led to a strong disrespect for government, in general; and for school, police, and law enforcement officials, in particular.

One of the worst consequences of the marijuana prohibition is the loss of the truth about marijuana and its benefits. The government lies about marijuana. Drug Czar Walters regularly states that people aren’t getting arrested for marijuana possession. This is despite the fact that the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2007 recently stated that 872,721 citizens were arrested last year. One arrest each 37 seconds! (90% for possession only) Last week on October 10, 2008 the 20th million arrest for marijuana in this country happened. Samuel Caldwell was the first federal marijuana prisoner. He was sentenced in October 1937 to Ft. Leavenworth for four (4) years for two (2) joints. He died in prison of stomach cancer. There are now at least 33, 655 state marijuana prisoners and 10,785 federal marijuana prisoners. One out of eight (1/8) inmates are there for a marijuana offense. The marijuana arrests last year were a record, up 5% since the year before. Marijuana arrests accounted for almost ½ (47.5%) of all drug arrests in the country. Our America, sweet land of liberty has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population.

Americans will smoke pot if they want to, just like past Americans drank alcohol if they wanted to. About ½ of the adult population has tried marijuana. Over twenty (20) million regularly use it. Twelve (12) states have medical marijuana laws and dozens of cities and towns have decriminalized marijuana possession or have made it the lowest priority of law enforcement. More states are passing and considering eliminating the ban on hemp and hemp products, also.

The American public knows that marijuana isn’t’ harmful to them like alcohol or nicotine, which are legal, regulated, and taxed. The government itself has recognized and reported the truth in the past about marijuana and its effects; such as the Shafer Commission in 1972 and DEA Administrative Judge Francis Young’s decision in 1988. Many medical studies and reports from all over the world, for thousands of years, have told us about the relative safety and medical benefits of marijuana.

The American public has responded to numerous polls indicating that marijuana prohibition should end. The Zogby poll (3/22/07) found that over half of all Americans support decriminalization. The Time/CNN poll (2002) found that 72% of Americans wanted decriminalization for possession and 75% favored allowing states to provide for medical marijuana. We have come to the point where it is totally illogical and counterproductive to prohibit marijuana. About 80% of the voters in the medical marijuana states voted for change.

IV. We know prohibitions don’t work. 10 year effort/strategy (1998-2008) UN report on drug eradication concluded recently that despite the 10 year plan-drugs are cheaper, better, and more available.

This continuing, disastrous violation of our fundamental rights is destroying our land and darkening our spirits. A quote regularly attributed to President Abraham Lincoln is …..”That prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes….a prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

Our first marijuana law in 1619 was in Virginia. It mandated that each farmer must grow it. Our Founding Fathers grew it and used it. Presidents George Washington and Jefferson wrote about it. President Jefferson said “that the freedom and happiness of man are the sole objects of all legitimate government.” He also reminds us that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” They risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to defend their liberty. What will we do?

V. Conclusion

Our government must be forced to change direction and end this disastrous marijuana prohibition! We need to elect new leaders and restore our freedom to choose for ourselves. Just like the alcohol prohibition, we must recognize that the prohibition has failed and restore our liberty and freedom – end the costly damage to us, and our constitutional rights.

It is important to remember that the government needed to pass the 18th Amendment to try to regulate alcohol. There is no constitutional amendment giving the federal government the power to prohibit marijuana. The states have the right to continue to make laws regarding cannabis as long as they don’t violate our fundamental liberties contained in the bill of rights.

It is time for a change! It is time to take action to end prohibition. We are the people! We are the majority. We have the truth on our side, and we have the courage to stand up for our rights. What are we waiting for? If we wait for someone else to fight for our freedom, we will lose it.

As Simon Weisenthal, a Holocaust survivor said “Freedom is not a gift from god. If you want freedom, you must work for it every day.”

I look forward to working with you all in this battle. We are winning! And we will win! We will look back sometime soon, and be glad we spoke truth to power and to re-legalize marijuana. Thank you for attending and participating in our conference. I know you will enjoy this opportunity to rekindle the flames of liberty and justice in each of us and in our country

And let us go forth from this place, committed anew to the cause of liberty for all people, the next year we may celebrate in a world made better by our efforts..

- Senators McCain and Obama:

If elected, will you create a Presidential Commission to study marijuana—its Prohibition, Budgetary, Social, and Health effects, and to make recommendations for marijuana law reform?

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board Member

Federal law prohibiting marijuana dates from 1937. The Marijuana Tax Stamp Act was debated on the floor of the House of Representatives for just over a minute and against the wishes of organizations such as the American Medical Association. Cannabis, as it was then known, was a component of at least 28 patent medicines made by industry leaders such as Merck, Eli Lilly, and Squibb. With the passage of this law, not only did the legal sale and possession of cannabis end, but all American research into medicinal use of marijuana ground to a halt, and even the ages-old knowledge of marijuana as a medicine went into deep remission.

Today there is a whole universe of information on the subject of marijuana that is brand-new since the Shafer Commission last studied marijuana in the 1970’s. The information then available lead Nixon’s own handpicked commission come to a surprising conclusion: they recommended no legal penalties for adults possessing up 100 grams of marijuana. Nixon freaked out, flew into a rage, canceled print runs of the report, and refusing to read the document, he buried the Shafer Commission’s recommendations. Tricky Dick did exactly the opposite and started America’s full-scale War on ‘Weed’, instead. And now forty years later, the War on Pot continues to grind on, getting larger with each passing year. After hundreds of billions of dollars expended, after millions of people arrested, is it not time we studied marijuana again? Because, by every measure available, America’s current approach to marijuana has failed—and, in the words of former-President Jimmy Carter, it is “…doing more harm than good.”

Here are 8 pressing reasons why a Presidential Commission on marijuana is needed now:

1) By October 10, 2008, America will have recorded its 20-millionth marijuana arrest, with people of color and the young arrested in disproportionately large numbers. It is time for a re-assessment of marijuana policy, plain and simple.

2) In addition to the pain and suffering visited by these millions of arrests on “we-the-people”, our government expends about $25 billion annually on its pot prohibition efforts, funds that should be expended elsewhere in the budget.

3) In addition to huge costs on expense side, we lose billions in taxation revenue, as well. Because, despite all government efforts to eradicate it, America’s vast underground marijuana market continues on, just as it has for the last seventy years, creating crime where there need be none, churning out billions and billions of dollars in untaxed and unregulated commerce. A tax and regulate posture as a method of control, verses the ‘no control/out of control’ situation we have today where kids can get marijuana more easily than beer—which alternative should America choose?

4) Marijuana use and purchase has been legal for the last 30 years in The Netherlands. This is the world’s great marijuana legalization experiment—and proof positive that a modern society will not collapse when pot becomes legal. Holland’s tightly regulated cannabis sales have created enormous tax revenues, while at the same time, usage rates for Holland’s teens continues to remain at just half of the usage rates of America’s teens even under our draconian prohibition model.

5) There are more than a dozen states over the last dozen years (covering about 1/5 of the US population) that have passed medical marijuana laws, mostly by voter initiative. ‘We-The-People’ created America’s state-by-state crazy quilt of medical marijuana laws, now what have ‘we’ learned from these experiments?

6) The modern use of cannabis/cannabinoids as medicine, buttressed now by 17,000 scientific studies, validates humanity’s medicinal use of cannabis that has been going on for as long as recorded history. In any rational world, a non-toxic, useful drug like cannabis would have been re-scheduled long ago by the federal government from Schedule I, where it now resides with heroin, to Schedule III with most prescription drugs, or lower.

Why have the vested interests blocked cannabis from being rescheduled?

7) On 10/07/03 America’s own Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) received US Patent #6630507 for the use of marijuana’s active ingredients under the title, “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuro-protectants.” While HHS filed and supported this application, at the very same time, in other executive-branch Cabinet-level offices, at the ONDCP and the DEA, their legislative charters direct them to fight all use of marijuana as a medicine (the charters contain no standards to correct this prohibitionist posture if marijuana is shown scientifically to be useful as medicine). Either the HHS or the DEA/ONDCP must be wrong.

8.) A Presidential Commission hearing on the subject of marijuana law reform is a necessary exercise in government bureaucracy oversight, and is simply good government.

America, after our 20-millionth marijuana arrest—is that amount of human wreckage not enough? How much longer must our government pursue its failed policy of marijuana prohibition?

Presidential candidates McCain and Obama, show some guts, show some leadership and take the pledge: when you are elected, you will form a Presidential Commission via the National Academy of Sciences, or a like objective review body, to study marijuana.

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NOTE: Now, all you fellow voters out there in Blog-ville: Help me out with this.

Help NORML.

Help America!

The Shafer Commission needs a 21st Century update. Does anybody think we need 10 or 20-million more marijuana arrests before Congress and the White House wakes up and changes our failed marijuana policies?

The Supreme Court has told us repeatedly not to expect a judicial ruling to fix this social disaster; the change, the correction, must come legislatively. Well, 20-million marijuana arrests is enough and a Presidential Commission is what’s needed at the onset of the next president’s tenure to provide the political cover and scientific validation for members of Congress to find the guts to take the votes needed to reform this sorry mess after 70 long, shameful, and pathetic years.

America eventually found the guts to end slavery, a social institution in place for over 200 years, evil and vile in its consequences but fiercely protected by special interests, even state governments; America can find the guts to end marijuana prohibition.