Most of New York City’s millions of citizens, notably elected policymakers and the media from New York City, have no blooming idea that The Big Apple nearly tops the nation’s metropolitan areas in both per capita arrest rates for marijuana and racial disparity in enforcing cannabis prohibition laws. In supposedly ‘liberal’ and ‘tolerant’ NYC for every white person arrested, nine minorities are arrested.

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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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April 7, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fulfilled a campaign promise to hasten an end to alcohol Prohibition when he signed a modification to the Volstead Act, allowing the sale of 3.2 percent beer in advance of the formal end to the 21st Amendment being ratified.

His reward? The first case of beer delivered directly to the White House.

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NORML members have an opportunity to be part of history by hosting and attending special screenings of the comedic documentary Super High Me this April 20th. As you may have guessed from the title, this is a takeoff on the film Super Size Me—only in this case, Hollywood funnyman (and NORML supporter) Doug Benson replaces eating McDonalds with ingesting marijuana. He literally smokes, vaporizes, and eats medical marijuana around the clock for thirty days, all the while undergoing a number of tests to show exactly what the effect of marijuana on the human body is.

Most everyone has read or seen government-funded propaganda or questionable science regarding the health effects of cannabis, so enjoy the humorous exploration therein found in Super High Me (check out a clip).

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Best selling author, TV travel guru and NORML Advisory Board member Rick Steves continues to advance in both mainstream print and radio the common sense notion that cannabis prohibition does not work at all well and that Europe is doing a better job with overall drug policy because most of their governments don’t harass and arrest cannabis consumers—and they incarcerate hardly any offenders.

Compare that to the United States where a consumer is arrested every 38 seconds on cannabis-related charges (830,000 cannabis arrests in 2006), and, as of 2004, there were over 69,000 ‘offenders’ in jail or prison.

Update: Continued kudos in the New York Times today for Steves’ honesty and foresight regarding the urgent need for America to re-evaluate federal cannabis policies.

When the court clerk finally called our case, the judge almost immediately called the attorneys to a bench conference, where he quickly indicated he would not have the time to hold this evidentiary hearing, but that he would refer the case to another judge in another courtroom, and we would have our evidentiary hearing that very day.

Attorney Matt Feinberg; law student Brendan Hickey; Co-Defendant Rick Cusick; Lester Grinspoon, M.D.; Co-Defendant Keith Stroup; Professor Charles Nesson; and Keith Saunders, Ph.D.

We had actually filed a motion to dismiss the case, based on our allegation that the marijuana laws are unconstitutional, and we had requested a full evidentiary hearing where we could call a number of witnesses to make our case. We had expected that the 30-page affidavit from Lester Grinspoon, M.D., would be sufficient to convince a judge to schedule an evidentiary hearing in 30 or 45 days. We were certainly not anticipating holding a hearing that very day, nor would we expect the government would be ready to hold such a hearing without some time to prepare their case.

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