While 4/20 has become an national phenomenon of sorts, and is the launch date these days for numerous commercial products and services directed at America’s cannabis consumers, this remarkable day in my view has lacked a certain degree of needed gravitas– with ‘4/20′ looking more like a ‘party in the park’ than genuinely organic socio-political events that elected policymakers and the media should take seriously.

However, I’d like to highlight the Colorado University chapter of NORML for not only holding the largest organized annual ‘4/20′ event in the world–but for recognizing this year, a year marked so far by an ever-growing voter sentiment about the need to legalize cannabis–that ‘4/20′ provides cannabis law reform advocates a prime annual opportunity to do far more than just protest in the park by convening a day-long, substantive conference in advance of ‘celebrating cannabis’ the next day by exploring logical and effective alternatives to cannabis prohibition.

NORML encourages college chapters of NORML and SSDP to follow CU NORML’s lead by organizing ‘marijuana forums’ on their campuses next week, as college students are disproportionately arrested at higher rates than most other subgroups of Americans for cannabis possession charges and can be denied access to federal loans for college if convicted of a single cannabis possession offense.

Despite President Obama’s unfortunate inability to take Americans’ current calls for cannabis law reforms seriously, there is nothing funny about cannabis prohibition in America. Next weekend at The University of Colorado at Boulder, students, activists, professors, lawyers and doctors, as well as proponents of cannabis prohibition will engage in serious-minded discussion and symposiums about how to move forward into the near future by crafting functional cannabis policies at the state and federal level.

National Marijuana Forum
April 18-20, 2009
University of Colorado, Boulder

For a complete schedule, check out NORML@CU!

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Colorado NORML is pleased to announce the second annual Hunter S. Thompson Scholarship to attend the NORML Aspen Legal Seminar!

The NORML Legal Committee’s Annual Aspen Conference (which is a continuing legal education seminar for practicing lawyers) is scheduled for June 4th and 5th, 2009, at The Gant. Colorado NORML, is presenting the scholarship, which covers three nights lodging and the conference registration fee, to an attorney or cannabis law reform activist who, by written submission, demonstrates 1) a desire to improve public advocacy and/or trial skills related to representing cannabis consumers in the courts (criminal, medical, and more), 2) a demonstrated need for financial assistance to attend this year’s Aspen Legal Seminar.

The value of the scholarship is approximately $1000.00.

Some of the finest defense attorneys (and cannabis law reform activists) in the United States have been coming to NORML’s Aspen seminar for many years to learn, enjoy the inspired environs of beautiful Aspen in early summer–and to do so at VERY reasonable rates. This year’s seminar focuses on state and federal medical marijuana laws, and is a MUST educational opportunity for medical marijuana patients, providers, cultivators, as well as for criminal defense attorneys (and public defenders, who receive a discount to attend).

Check out this year’s informative and interesting schedule here. The social events, including a great, private dinner catered by Cache Cache’s Chris Lanter, are included with the scholarship.

Criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, cannabis law reform activists, medical marijuana patients and their providers from the 13 states with medical cannabis laws are strongly encouraged to attend (HI, AK, WA, OR, CA, NV, NM, CO, MT, MI, RI, VT and ME).

Submission for this year’s Hunter Thompson Scholarship is by fax, mail or email. The scholarship is awarded by the CONORML board of directors, please direct your submissions ‘Attn: Steve Wells’ at: swells@conorml.org,  (303) 725-0774 (f) by April 15, midnight Rocky Mountain High time–and we hope to announce the recipient of the scholarship on April 20th, 2009.

Colorado NORML
PO Box 492
Longmont, CO 80502

The submission word count rule will be strictly enforced. Submissions may be of any length…

by Norm Stamper, NORML Advisory Board Member

Anyone blind to the irony? Gil Kerlikowske, my successor, is on his way to the other Washington to assume the mantle of “drug czar.” I am, on the other hand, a proud and vocal member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Gil will have a national, indeed international platform from which to make his case for a continuation of the nation’s drug laws. I’ll use this space, at least for this initial post, to make the argument that our drug policies don’t work, and that the “War on Drugs” has caused far more harm than good.

Since Richard Nixon pronounced drugs “Public Enemy Number One” and declared all-out war on them in 1971, we have spent over $1 trillion prosecuting that war. We’ve incarcerated tens of millions of our fellow citizens for nonviolent drug offenses, arresting wildly disproportionate numbers of young people, poor people, people of color–most for simple possession of marijuana. Wrenched from their families, these folks have lost jobs, forfeited school loans, been booted out of public housing. And to what end?

Drugs are more readily available today, at lower prices and higher levels of potency than in the history of the drug war. Prices fluctuate, use levels ebb and flow but one thing remains constant: the unrepealable law of supply and demand. If people want mood or mind-altering drugs, suppliers will make sure they get them. And, as long as those drugs remain illegal, the illicit, untaxed profits associated with them will continue to grow. As will the violence associated with their commerce.

Prohibition, as we learned during the 1920s, breeds lawlessness. In fact, it guarantees it. Yesterday’s bootleggers and today’s drug traffickers must arm themselves in order to protect or expand their markets. For years we’ve struggled with open-air drug markets, drive-by/drug-related killings, the police in one city or another occasionally shooting up the wrong house in a drug raid.

Americans wised up to the folly of alcohol prohibition, repealing the Volstead Act in 1933 and putting a virtual end to that era’s drive-bys (picture Al Calpone’s minions firing Thompsons from the back seat of a ‘29 Model A), drug overdose deaths (think bad bathtub gin), property values shot to hell, entire neighborhoods rundown if not abandoned altogether.

Replacing alcohol prohibition with a regulatory model worked. Not perfectly, of course, but well enough that it drove the bootleggers out of business. And it produced a formidable barrier between kids and products they ought not to be taking. (When’s the last time you heard of a street drug dealer carding a 14-year-old?) Regulation and control of alcohol made our communities healthier, our children safer.

Seattle and the state of Washington are poised to take a strong leadership position in the campaign for sane and sensible drug laws. We’ve passed a medical marijuana law, and Seattleites have made simple, adult marijuana possession cases the lowest law enforcement priority in the city. University of Washington researchers Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert just last week issued a report that concluded that “penalizing doesn’t reduce use of marijuana and lessening or removing penalties doesn’t increase it.”

Think of the money we’d save if we focused our law enforcement resources on people who drive under the influence of any drug, including alcohol. Or who furnish drugs to kids. Or who, under the influence of booze or other drugs, jealousy, insecurity or greed, steal a car, batter a spouse, abuse a child, rob a bank…

And think of the lives we’d save if we invested not in a futile drug war but in prevention, education and treatment.

I doubt our new drug czar will favor an end to prohibition. For one thing, it would put him out of a job. But perhaps, unlike former drug czar John Walters, he’ll be willing to listen to the argument. Or debate its merits.
This article was originally published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

I received a late Friday afternoon call from one of Larry King’s producers in Los Angeles seeking some cannabis-related factoids and related information for an apparent debate tonight on CNN’s Larry King between libertarian Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul, M.D. and, well, actor Steven Baldwin.

Ouch!

Watch the video of the debate here.

Well, some of the much vaunted and promised ‘change’ under a President Obama appears to be coming true in the formal nomination yesterday of Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, and the mainstream media certainly seems to be picking up on all of the positive and salient points about Chief Kerlikowske that drug policy reform advocates have been touting since his name was first floated almost a month ago. Listen to the coverage of the announcement at National Public Radio.

Unlike the prior Drug Czar, John ‘Unicorn’ Walters, a moral crusader (aptly dubbed Bill Bennett’s ‘Mini-Me’ by the DPA’s Ethan Nadelmann), Chief Kerlikowske crafted pragmatic public policies and law enforcement practices that immediately distinguish him from his predecessors such as Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Walters.

To wit:

-200,000 pro-reform cannabis law supporters converge on the waterfront in Seattle in mid-August for the world famous Hempfest, where adults openly consume cannabis and the hundreds of police present make few to no arrests (and where, ironically, alcohol use is strictly forbidden).

-Local law enforcement in Seattle apparently does not harass the artisans who craft and market the remarkable glass paraphernalia (AKA, medical delivery devices) for which Seattle is famous.

Compare that with Walters’ and former Attorney General Ashcroft’s zealous pursuit and culture-smashing symbolism of arresting, prosecuting and actually incarcerating NORML Advisory Board member Tommy Chong for nine months in a federal prison for the ‘crime’ of selling high-end artisan, Chong Bongs.

-Seattle police have a generally good track record working with medical cannabis providers, physicians and patients—including Chief Kerlikowske meeting with medical cannabis stakeholders about how to best implement Washington State’s 2000 medical cannabis laws. Compare this with Walters and McCaffrey who collectively spent 14 years insisting that there is no such thing at all as medical cannabis (often comparing it to crack cocaine), patients who claim efficacy or relief from cannabis as ‘fakers’, recommending physicians as ‘kooks’ and the majority of citizens who’ve voted for medical cannabis law reform as ‘easily duped by legalizers’.

-Rumor has it that Chief Kerlikowske has actually employed the term ‘harm reduction‘ in a sentence without employing foul language! In fact, under his leadership (and that of former Seattle Police Chief and NORML Advisory Board member Norm Stamper before him) Seattle police both recognize and practice the increasingly popular, European-inspired police/public health doctrine known as harm reduction. Two of the important tenets of harm reduction are concentrating police resources on so-called ‘hard’ drugs rather than cannabis consumers and needle exchange to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases–both championed by Chief Kerlikowske, and totally dismissed as ‘tools for legalization’ by McCaffrey and Walters.

-Despite publicly opposing a reform effort in 2003 in Seattle to make adult cannabis possession a low law enforcement priority, once I-75 was passed by a majority of voters, Chief Kerlikowske shrugged off the lost, embraced the public-health centric arguments advanced by reform advocates, and met with law reformers in the Seattle-area like I-75 campaigner and NORML board member Dominic Holden, defense attorney and NORML Board member Jeff Steinborn, popular travel author/TV host and NORML advisory board member Rick Steves.

John Walters on the otherhand would not even appear in the same green room with me backstage on TV news show, let alone debate live on the same sound stage.

Looks to me like Chief Kerlikowske is a real man…not a moralistic, lie-to-beat-the-band bureaucrat.

-Chief Kerlikowske’s former colleagues on the police force, cannabis law reform activists, medical patients, civil rights lawyers and public health officials all seem to recognize that science and ‘smart on crime’ (as compared to ‘tough on crime’ and ineffective platitudes like ‘just say no’ or ‘drug-free America’) drive his policing—not ideology and a twisted sense of personal morality.

With the recent report from a pair of WA researchers affirming that the ONDCP under McCaffrey and Walters obsessed too much on cannabis prohibition, and not enough on meth, crack, heroin…a decided change in leadership at ONDCP can’t happen fast enough.

Lastly, it was also announced yesterday by the 1980s congressional author of the ONDCP charter, no less and with sweet karmic irony, Vice President Joe Biden, that despite the best intentions of placing the ONDCP into the President’s cabinet in 1988, from this point forward the ONDCP is no longer going to be a cabinet-level office.

Whoa. Now that is change NORML and taxpayers can believe in!

By Norm Kent, Esq., NORML Board of Directors

Today I am going to come out of the closet as a Bi-Coastal pot consumer. I lead two lives; one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.

In Fort Lauderdale, I own a townhouse where I have resided for over a quarter of a century. In this community, I am a lawyer and a spokesman for NORML, very active in drug law reform. But I cannot practice what I preach. That would be illegal.

In California, however, I found a small town near Berkeley, east of San Francisco Bay, where I may retire. It is Walnut Creek, a hamlet, I understand, that has more open public spaces than any other village in America. There, I may eventually choose to grow my own pot. I am allowed to do so.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where I practice law, and get people out of trouble for growing pot, I have to defend people who do what I am entitled to do in California legally. You see, the rules are different here. Life can thus be a bit conflicted.

In early 2006, my Florida roommate, after learning he was HIV positive, decided to move back to his hometown of San Francisco. As a pot consumer, he realized he could now get a medicinal recommendation for marijuana and grow pot legally under California law. The Florida laws are not so kind or generous. Cultivation of any amount is a second degree felony.

We went to San Francisco together, to a community I have visited and loved since the early 1970’s, from my first spectacular drive up the Pacific Coast highway. We found and rented a small apartment in the Haight.

It has been thirteen years since California voters enacted Proposition 215, which allowed citizens to utilize marijuana for medical purposes if a person had a legitimate need. As a recovering cancer patient, I more than qualified for a medical marijuana recommendation.

I sought out a legitimate physician, not one running a medical marijuana mill. I came with a full set of medical records tracking my unenviable medical past, including recent spinal surgery. The doctor thoughtfully reviewed with me the medical risks associated with the use of cannabis. Not that I did not have a little experience. I mean, I am 60 years old this year. My friends’ kids go to Bonnaroo. I lived through Woodstock.

After the screening, my physician then appropriately certified me as an individual who could benefit from the medical use of cannabis. Just like that, I became patient number 380206011. I then proceeded to a medical dispensary, proudly armed with a State of California Medical Marijuana Identification Card.

As a California patient, I am empowered to acquire cannabis lawfully at medical dispensaries. Under the California Health and Safety Code, I am also entitled to grow up to six plants of my own in my little apartment on the bay. I do not have to hide them from the authorities.

I joined the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, and was issued a Growers Certificate. It affirms that any herbs I cultivate at home would be grown for my personal medical use. I was now at liberty to grow my own medicine. It is still called pot in Florida. We call it medicine in California.

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Want to participate in an anonymous survey that can help advance scientific understanding regarding marijuana use?

Want to possibly win a $250 Amazon gift card? How about a free iPod?

This survey from NORML advisory board member and university researcher Dr. Mitch Earleywine assesses a number of attitudes and personal preferences.

Some questions are directly about marijuana and some are more general beliefs and opinions. the survey also takes a close look at drug and alcohol use, some symptoms of anxiety and depression, and personality characteristics.

It’s markedly shorter than surveys in the past NORML’s highlighted and should intrigue most folks in the NORML community.

As usual, the survey is completely anonymous, and there’s a chance to win prizes. Registration for prizes comes via a code number generated at the end that participants send to a separate email address, so there’s no way to connect your responses to your email or your identity.

Take the survey here.

by Norm Kent, NORML Board of Directors

The morning after the Academy Awards a band of protestors gathered in Los Angeles on the corner of Main Street and Temple St outside the federal courthouse. They were not there for the Oscars. But one day someone will make a movie about the person they were there for. It may be called ‘Inherit the Wind: the Sequel.’

The protestors were marijuana patients and medical use advocates gathering in behalf of one Charles C. Lynch (photo below of Lynch’s medical cannabis dispensary opening), who was convicted in a United States court last summer of operating a medical marijuana dispensary in violation of federal laws. The organizers have no red carpet. They just wanted to draw public attention to Lynch’s case hoping that the 46-year old man does not spend decades in prison for giving medicine to sick people.

California is one of thirteen states in which medical marijuana is legal, but federal law prohibits its use under any circumstances. That means that though Mr. Lynch obeyed local and state laws, he nevertheless became a federal prisoner. That means he is a victim of American injustice at its worst.

Mr. Lynch was convicted at trial, denied under the Federal Rules of Evidence from presenting any testimony whatsoever about medical marijuana, his own city business license, or the California state law he dutifully and righteously obeyed. A jury thus only heard that some man was selling marijuana to line his pockets, and they convicted him, as a San Francisco jury once convicted Ed Rosenthal.

We had another trial like that in America. It was called the Scopes trial, and as I recall, a schoolteacher was prosecuted for teaching science in his class and then denied the right to present testimony regarding evolution at his trial.

On February 4, a White House Spokesman named Nick Shapiro said that President Obama did not want to waste federal law enforcement resources circumventing state medical marijuana laws. Mr. Shapiro opined that he expected the President’s new appointees to consider this when setting policy for their agencies. How about having one of them show up at the sentencing for Mr. Lynch? How about directing the US Attorney to stand down? I am available if they want to send me.

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Speaking at a landmark press conference today, California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) introduced comprehensive legislation to tax and regulate the commercial production and sale of cannabis in a manner similar to alcohol.

“With the state in the midst of an historic economic crisis, the move towards regulating and taxing marijuana is simply common sense. This legislation would generate much needed revenue for the state, restrict access to only those over 21, end the environmental damage to our public lands from illicit crops, and improve public safety by redirecting law enforcement efforts to more serious crimes”, Assemblyman Ammiano said. “California has the opportunity to be the first state in the nation to enact a smart, responsible public policy for the control and regulation of marijuana.”

The proposal is the first marijuana legalization bill ever introduced in California.

“It’s time for California taxpayers to stop wasting money trying to enforce marijuana prohibition, and to realize the tax benefits from a legal, regulated market instead,” said Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, a sponsor of the bill.

As introduced, Ammiano’s measure would allow for the licensed production and sale of cannabis to consumers age 21 and over. Licensed cultivators would pay an excise tax of $50 per ounce of cannabis. In addition, the proposal would impose a sales tax on commercial sales. (Ammiano’s proposal would not affect the state’s medical marijuana law, allowing patients and caregivers to grow their own medicine.)

If enacted, the measure would raise over $1 billion per year in state revenue, according to an economic analysis by California NORML, available online here.

Ammiano’s bill comes at a time of growing public support for legalizing marijuana. A recent Zogby poll reported that nearly six in ten west coast voters support taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol.

Faced with a $40 billion budget deficit, other public officials have joined in endorsing Ammiano’s bill, including San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessy and Betty Yee, a member of the State Board of Equalization, which oversees collection of sales taxes.

Currently, tens of millions of dollars are paid annually in state and local taxes by licensed distributors of medical marijuana. However, these sales only represent a fraction of the overall statewide marijuana market. “The millions of dollars raised each year on the sales of medicinal cannabis is only the tip of the iceberg,” Gieringer said. “Kudos to Assemblyman Ammiano for proposing a path-breaking bill that would benefit our economy, safety and freedom by making marijuana a winning proposition for California.”

Over 6,000 online voters cast their single ballots for top three NORML ad contest submissions.

Cave Art: Humanity’s First Pro-Cannabis Ad?

Checkout the winners of NORML’s $10,000 cash prize contest for best pro-cannabis law reform ads here.

‘Got to get over the hump!’
NORML’s survey and polling work indicate that a strong majority of Americans support both decriminalization and patient access to medicinal cannabis, but, frustratingly as exampled in the latest Zogby polling, only a strong plurality (44%) of Americans currently support actually taxing and controlling cannabis like alcohol and tobacco products.

The change in presidential administrations, cannabis’ popularity in the country, the outing of Michael Phelps, the record number of reform bills introduced in the states and the crushing economic crisis facing the country have collectively cast a great deal of focus on the question of ending cannabis prohibition portend that now is the best time in 30 years to widely broadcast NORML’s longstanding message of cannabis law reform for responsible adult use.

What will it take to finally move public opinion sufficiently from tacit support for legalization to majority support?

For decades some law reform advocates and communication experts have argued that advertising could be the likely missing component.

Let’s find out!

We can all afford to kick down $10 to purchase 125 TV ads, or $50 for 625 ads!

Please make a tax-deductible donation to the NORML Foundation today in support of this important project.

Let’s start a nationwide ‘cannabis conversation’, please donate in support of placing NORML’s ads on TV and the Internet, let’s get over the hump and achieve real cannabis law reforms as soon as possible.