Marijuana Prohibition—America’s Most Tragically Failed Social Policy Since Slavery—20-million Arrested, Countless Lives Destroyed

Which American political leader has the guts and foresight to become “the William Wilberforce” of the great campaign to end marijuana prohibition?? Your place in history is waiting.

By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board Member, medical marijuana patient

The inauguration of President Barack Obama is a historic event; both personal conversations and world media coverage are pregnant with its significance. That our new president came to Congress representing Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, is a sweet and wonderful irony. Abraham Lincoln came up from obscurity and poverty by the full employment of his wits and ambition. Revered throughout the world, Lincoln personified America is at its core, America is at its best; a meritocracy passionate about the welfare of its people.

The world has heard the term “historic” applied to the Obama Inauguration so often over these last few months, it is easy to lose sight just what “historic” means in this case: 150 years ago this half-black man would not been feted in Washington DC and sworn in to occupy the most important job on planet Earth; but no, Barack Obama could have been bought and sold like cattle just six miles down the road in Alexandria, Virginia. For more than the first 200 years of America’s history, slavery was defended from both the pulpit and the state house. The South saw the Emancipation Proclamation as “fiendish”, a “triumph of fanaticism.” Lincoln saw it as “the one thing that will make people remember I ever lived.” (more…)

Abraham Lincoln, Hempster!

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. (more…)