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.

Author, Harvard academician, NORML Advisory Board member and respected physician, Lester Grinspoon, recently updated his webpage and is seeking cannabis consumers to contribute essays to his newly launched blog devoted to furthering understanding and appreciation of the way in which cannabis enhances a variety of human experiences.

An awesome essay submitted to Dr. Grinspoon’s definitively written Marihuana Reconsidered by a mysterious Mr. X originally inspired this ‘Uses’ project, later to be revealed as the late, great Dr. Carl Sagan.

Dr. Grinspoon is looking for material for a new book examining the myriad and compelling reasons why so many people use cannabis.

Essays can be anonymously submitted…or not.

The ‘Uses’ webpage is companion to Dr. Grinspoon’s comprehensive medical cannabis-related webpage: www.rxmarijuana.com

I don’t think it hyperbolic to observe that the prohibition of marijuana appears to be in serious question as a public policy in the United States these days.

Consider for just a moment the major changes promised by the Obama administration to end the federal law enforcement raids in states with legal protections for medical marijuana providers and patients; the mass questioning of marijuana prohibition via the outing of 14-time gold medal winner Michael Phelps; the crushing economy that apparently is disabusing many state legislators that the costs of prohibition can no longer be sustained and lastly, the graying of the Baby Boom generation (who, in the 1960s and 1970s scoffed at their parent’s Reefer Madness).

What did today’s ‘mail’ deliver to my inbox that just makes my eyes roll:

The Associated Press ran a story entitled ‘Lawmakers Across Nation Look To Booze for Revenues: Governors and lawmakers faced with budget deficits are advocating loosening laws that restrict alcohol consumption so that the state can increase its tax base.’

– In Georgia, Connecticut, Indiana, Texas, Alabama and Minnesota, lawmakers are considering legislation this year that would end the ban on Sunday liquor sales. All but 15 states sell booze on Sundays.

– In Nebraska, a state lawmaker has proposed allowing beer to be consumed in state parks as a way to boost tourism.

– Other states, including Utah, are considering allowing the sale of liquor on Election Day.

Drinkers shouldn’t break out the bubbly just yet: Two dozen states, including California, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Virginia, are looking to help their budgets by raising alcohol taxes.

Meanwhile, some states are trying to eliminate much less onerous hassles associated with buying alcohol.

–In Colorado and Kansas, grocery stores are fighting for the right to sell full-strength beer. Most of the opposition in those states isn’t coming from morality groups, but instead from liquor stores who like having a corner on the market.

–A similar effort is occurring in Tennessee, where lawmakers are considering allowing the sale of wine in supermarkets.

–In Alabama, a proposal to raise the amount of alcohol allowed in beer from 6 percent alcohol by volume to 13.9 percent is being considered, although some church groups fear it would result in people getting drunker quicker.

Gee, I wonder where else balance budget strapped states could take in billions in unrealized taxes? Hmmm…

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DEA has 106 planes, so why did it charter private jet for chief?

McClatchy Newspapers reports that, in these belt-tightening times, especially for the federal government, that 1) the DEA has 106 airplanes that cost the taxpayers $76 million annually and 2) Even with this mini-Air Force, the DEA’s Acting Administrator Michelle Leonhart still chartered a private jet for over $128,000?

Ugh!

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Laguna Woods’ retirees still await medical pot dispensary –

Responding to some residents’ quality-of-life pleas, the city last year agreed to let a marijuana facility set up shop. But so far no landlord has been willing to risk the wrath of Uncle Sam. LA Times

As more and more senior citizens and Baby Boomers turn to the non-toxic, safe and affordable cannabis plant as a medicine, media stories about senior citizens being denied viable access to medical cannabis in retirement communities and hospices is only going to increase in the near term as the federal government’s strict prohibition against medical cannabis continues to loose both credibility and the weight of law in the American mind.

***

State lawmakers looking to increase revenues by increasing public access to a dangerous and addictive drug (ethyl alcohol products), DEA getting long deserved public scrutiny for wasting tax dollars and senior citizens in California complain in the state’s largest paper about the need for greater retail access to medicinal cannabis…

Yep, America’s cannabis prohibition laws really are primed now more than ever for substantive reform!

Or, how the Barr Amendment killed a paraplegic over a single lousy joint…

Happy Valentine’s Day, Jonathan—We have not forgotten you!

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

I love my own children beyond all measure. They range from 33-to-26 years old, three sons and a daughter who’ve returned to me a lifetime of love and four grandkids, with three more on the way. It is from this perspective that I first heard of the death of Jonathan Magbie and continue to think about him today.

In October of 2004, I arrived in Washington DC for a NORML Board of Directors meeting, having just flown in from the west coast. It was late Friday afternoon. In NORML’s office, Allen St. Pierre, our Executive Director, slid the second section of that day’s Washington Post across the desk to me. There, above the fold, was a news story that made me sick to my stomach.

The article was about the death of Jonathan Magbie, a 28-year old black wheelchair-bound paraplegic, a first offender who died while serving a ten-day jail sentence for the possession of one single lousy joint! The year was 2004, it happened right in our nation’s capitol, Washington DC. At the epicenter of the “Land of the Free”, the cops and courts had put a paralyzed man in jail for pot! He died of respiratory collapse on day-four of his ten-day sentence in the custody of our government.

Judge Retchin’s sentence, ‘ten-days-in-the-hole’ was a cruel response to Jonathan’s honest and forthright answers that he used marijuana to help ease his pain and that he intended to use marijuana again, after he was released. After all, the people of Washington DC had voted overwhelmingly for medical marijuana in 1998—it passed with a 69% yes vote! But then, the marijuana prohibitionists in Congress constructed the Barr Amendment, a federal appropriations rider that blocked the implementation of the will of Washington DC’s voters: So, District of Columbia, if you want your operating money from the federal government, to hell with the voters’ say on medical marijuana.

A victim of alcohol, one of America’s lethal but legal drugs, Jonathan Magbie was struck and paralyzed for life by a drunk driver. Shown here with President Ronald Regan, Jonathan Magbie was a national poster boy for MADD, at the age of 8.

Before Judge Retchin was a young man who had been in a wheelchair for 24-years, ever since, as a four-year old child, Jonathan had been hit, with tragic irony, by a drunk driver and paralyzed for life. For two and a half decades, Jonathan was imprisoned inside his own body, a punishment so cruel that no judge’s sentence could ever come close to matching it—until the application of Washington DC “justice”.

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The pressure continues to mount, from round the world, for America to rescind its Reefer Madness policies with three former presidents from Brazil, Mexico and Colombia now urging President Barack Obama to formally decriminalize cannabis!

-AStP

Cardoso, Gaviria, Zedillo Urge Obama to Decriminalize Marijuana

By Joshua Goodman (jgoodman19@bloomberg.net)

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) — Former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia said the U.S.-led war on drugs has failed and urged President Barack Obama to consider new policies, including decriminalizing marijuana, and to treat drug use as a public health problem.

The recommendations by former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, along with Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, were made in a report today by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.

Among the group’s proposals ahead of a special United Nations ministerial meeting in Vienna to evaluate global drug policy is a call to decriminalize the possession of cannabis for personal use.

“We need to break the taboo that’s blocking an honest debate,” Cardoso said at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro to present the report. “Numerous scientific studies show that the damage caused by marijuana is similar to that of alcohol or tobacco.”

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