We stand on the precipice of change. Cannabis legalization is becoming an inevitable reality and every one of us has Lester Grinspoon to thank for his hard work in laying the foundation for our movement, and for being an outspoken supporter of drug law reform and NORML for many decades. His insight was greatly appreciated and provided some of the most memorable aspects of this year’s conference.

Easing His Son’s Pain from Cancer Treatments with Marijuana

On Hanging Out with John Lennon and His First High

Previous NORMLCON 2011 Coverage:
Mayoral Debate Feat. Montel Williams – Ziggy Marley: ‘Three Little Birds’
High Times Activist Awards – Day 1 Floor Report – Day 2 Recap – Day 3 Recap

Stay tuned in to NORMLtv by subscribing to our channel or following us on Twitter.

Musical performance from reggae music legend Ziggy Marley

Opening remarks reflecting on NORML’s forty years of law reform advocacy from public interest lawyer and founder Keith Stroup; Closing remarks in a rare public appearance from legendary marijuana researcher and author Lester Grinspoon, M.D.

The 40^th annual conference of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana  Laws (NORML) is going to convene next Thursday, April 21 – Saturday, 23 at the Grand Hyatt in Denver, Colorado.

The theme for this year’s annual conference is Coming of Age: Cannabis and Commerce. A complete conference agenda and speakers’ bios are now online.

Why Colorado?
Colorado has emerged as the geographic center of legal medical cannabis in America—the state has licensed hundreds of medical cannabis dispensaries, cultivation centers and medical edible manufacturers thereby creating the legislative impetus recently for the state to further adopt laws that regulate, tax and control the cultivation, sale and use of medical cannabis.

U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-CO), the conference’s keynote speaker, who publicly endorses legalizing cannabis for responsible adult use and regulated sales, will articulate this point.

His public remarks are in advance of anticipated federal legislation to be introduced in this session of Congress to have the federal government acknowledge the failure of 75 years of Cannabis Prohibition and that the states—like his state of Colorado—can craft functional policy alternatives to prohibition laws that don’t compromise public safety, collect needed (and otherwise uncollected) tax revenue and licensing fees; respecting both the public’s will for reform and the Constitution.

Millions of dollars of taxes and fees have already been collected by the state of Colorado, future state budgets now include the anticipated revenues and state bureaucracies are being created for (and funded by) these cannabis-related businesses.

Cannabis commerce has come of age during the country’s longest and steepest recession, Colorado is at the center of this public discussion and positive changes in laws. The nation’s leading cannabis law reformers, researchers, legal advocates and cannabusiness owners will all be front and center at NORML’s 40^th annual conference.

Register Now, Seats Going Fast
The host hotel’s rooms are already sold out. All of the conference vending and sponsorship opportunities have also been snatched up as well! However, there are still some registration tickets available (including day passes). Please register now to insure a spot at the most important cannabis law reform conference in years.

Please register now before both 1.) the conference registrations and NORML socials tickets sell out and 2.) pricing increases next week for those attendees who don’t pre-register online or by calling 202-483-5500.

Hope to see you and yours…one mile high next week on Colorado’s front range!

‘NORML@40′ is a retrospective video series that documents the trials, tribulations, and accomplishments of America’s marijuana consumer lobby from those who kept the movement going for the past four decades.

In this episode, founder and legal counsel Keith Stroup looks back on the first years of NORML and how the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse provided him with a clear mission.

Subscribe to NORMLtv, visit NORML’s Facebook page, and follow NORMLtv on Twitter for announcements and polls regarding future NORMLtv programming. Click here to vote for which ‘Ask NORML’ topic you want to see premiere this Friday.

Get active; get NORML!

Well, all right…

Looks like a lot of folks want to convene and talk up cannabis law reform in Denver!

With no further ado…

Please check out the current schedule, which features three confirmed and prominent speakers:

• NORML founder Keith Stroup commenting on NORML at 40-years-old
• Marijuana maverick and Harvard Medical School’s Lester Grinspoon, MD
• Congressman and supporter of legalization Jared Polis (D-CO)

Some equally notable and popular speakers will be announced soon! Check out the conference agenda here.

Register online for the conference here (there are discount rates for senior citizens and students).

Want to stay at the Grand Hyatt, the conference’s host hotel? You’ll have to move fast to snap up the last of these steeply discounted hotel rooms here.

Conference sponsorship packages and vending table opportunities for cannabis-related businesses, services or organizations are still available, though, these too have nearly sold out this year as well. Contact Kim for more information!

Socials and NORML fundraiser: A La Carte
Lastly, this year’s conference planning committee is still working on procuring top-notch musical acts and performers for some of the event’s awesome socials and fundraisers. At this time, the online registration does not have options to sign up for these events, but, the information will be posted online ASAP and directly marketed via email to all conference attendees.

This year’s national conference convenes in the wake of the most important political effort to date to legalize cannabis in the narrow defeat of Prop. 19 in California this past November and in advance of 2012—a year that by all accounts will be the busiest ever regarding legalization initiatives and legislation in a number of states and in the United States Congress.

If you’re concerned with reforming cannabis laws in your lifetime, please make the necessary arrangements to join the cannabis legalization movement’s most important conference—the annual NORML national conference—this April 21-23 in the beautiful and amazingly cannabis-friendly city of Denver, Colorado.

Cannabem liberemus,

Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
NORML

With unmistakable juxtaposition, Politico’s printed tabloid available in Washington, D.C. featured two informative items married together. First, a column from constitutional scholar and salon.com contributor Glenn Greenwald underscoring the political significance, public health benefits and taxpayer savings if Prop 19 is passed by California voters in a few weeks based on his recent research paper for the Cato Institute examining the benefits of Portugal decriminalizing all drugs in 2000.

Additionally, Politico wickedly notes that 28-years-ago today President Ronald Reagan declared a ‘war on drugs’, yet these days, the current drug czar is uncomfortable employing the now broadly derided term, deeming it “counter-productive”.

RIP David Musto, MD

Today’s New York Times does justice in honoring the recent death of Dr. David Musto, a well respected professor at Yale Medical School, an author of many notable books and expert in the history of drug control policy.

Before there was an Internet…from 1991 to 1993, David and I frequently corresponded about cannabis use, policy making and law enforcement via letters and faxes. His books (notably for me, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotics Control, along with other very important scholarly works researched and penned by Drs. Lester Grinspoon, Norman Zinberg, Andrew Weil and Consumer Union’s Edward Brecher; along with the writings of law professors Charles Whitebread and Richard Bonnie) quite definitely helped form my political and sociological views about cannabis.

I note from the Times’ obituary that David passed away in China whilst visiting to deliver his academic papers to Shanghai University. I trust somewhere in what must be an immense collection of papers and correspondences will be our exchanges, and a rare conceit from David in a correspondence to me, replying to my frustration that he was not more of an advocate for reforms rather than a genuine ‘Ivy League’ academician, he noted, I recall, something like: I seem best equipped to point out the history of drug use and government’s efforts to control for such…and let the public and elected policymakers make of my work what they will…I’m not an activist or a solutions person  per se.

As noted by NYT book reviewer James Markham correctly predicted that The American Disease would “probably become mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got into this mess”.

True then. True now. You can purchase a copy @ Amazon, or you can get the flavor of David’s writing from his 1972 essay, The History of the Marihuana Act of 1937 at druglibrary.org.

Inhaled cannabis reduces pain and improves sleep compared to placebo, and is well tolerated by patients with chronic neuropathy, according to clinical trial data published this week in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association (CMAJ).

Investigators at McGill University in Montreal assessed the efficacy of inhaled cannabis on pain intensity in 23 subjects with chronic post-traumatic or post-surgical neuropathic pain in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Participants in the study received a single inhalation of 25 mg of 9.4 percent herbal cannabis or placebo three times daily. All of the volunteers in the study suffered from refractory pain for which conventional therapies had proven ineffective.

Researchers reported: “[H]erbal cannabis … significantly reduced average pain scores compared with … cannabis placebo in adult participants. … We found significant improvement in measures of sleep quality and anxiety. … Our results support the claim that smoked cannabis reduces pain, improves mood, and helps sleep.”

Speaking to Web MD online, the study’s lead researcher Mark Ware said: “We’ve shown again that cannabis is an analgesic. Clearly it has medical value.”

In February, investigators from the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research summarized the results of four separate FDA ‘gold standard’ designed clinical trials demonstrating that inhaled marijuana was safe and effective for the treatment of neuropathy.

An estimated one to two percent of the population suffers from some form of neuropathic pain, which typically goes untreated by standard analgesics.

Listen to NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre and NORML Advisory Board member Lester Grinspoon discuss this trial, and other subjects related to the medical use of cannabis, on NPR’s The Diane Rehm show here.

REMINDER — On Wednesday, October 14, Massachusetts state lawmakers will hear testimony in support of taxing and regulating the commercial production and distribution of marijuana for adults age 21 and older.

Members of the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Revenue are scheduled to hear House Bill 2929, ‘An Act to Regulate and Tax the Cannabis Industry,’ on Wednesday at 10 am in Room B2 of the State House. House Bill 2929, along with its companion bill SB 1801, were introduced by request in March.

NORML founder and Legal Counsel Keith Stroup will testify in favor of the measures [Editor's note: Read Keith's written testimony here.] — along with NORML Advisory Board member Dr. Lester Grinspoon (Harvard Medical School emeritus) and members of NORML’s state affiliate, the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition.

This hearing is historic because it is the first time the state legislature has ever debated legalizing the adult use of marijuana.

If you live in Massachusetts, please show your support for these measures by contacting your state elected officials and urging them to support these common sense proposals. If your elected officials are members of the Joint Committee on Revenue or the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, then it is especially important that they hear from you. For your convenience, a pre-written letter will be e-mailed to your state senator and representative when you enter you go here. The Joint Committee on Revenue may also be contacted at:

House Staff Telephone: (617) 722-2320
Senate Staff Telephone: (617) 722-1625

For additional information about tomorrow’s hearing, please visit the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition/NORML at: http://www.masscann.org or visit: http://www.cantaxreg.com.

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

For the past 7 years the Louisville Late Night TV Show has been celebrating the past, present and ongoing profound contributions of Harvard Medical School Professor Dr. Lester Grinspoon, M.D, (retired) to stop the arrest of responsible marijuana smokers and advance the use of marijuana as a medicine with their annual Louisville “Lester Grinspoon Day.”This year Patrick Moore, the producer of Louisville Late Night, would like to expand this celebration of the life and work of Dr. Grinspoon by involving a wider coalition of groups and individuals in this process.

You can listen to interview from Sunday on Louisville Public Radio station 89.3 WFPL | This week on Studio 619.

Please mark your calendar for June 24, the date we will be celebrating the life of Lester Grinspoon, and join us by coming up with a creative way to show our respect and appreciation for this man who has for nearly 40 years been perhaps the single most influential proponent for legalizing marijuana in America.

Patrick Moore on this annual celebration:
“Here in Louisville recent “Lester Grinspoon Day” celebrations have included: discussion and revelry with the Libertarian Party of Kentucky at their annual Kentucky State Convention and interviews with Dr. Grinspoon on the Louisville Late Night TV Show (including last year’s excellent show created by filmmaker Danielle Franco).”

Moore cordially invites citizens who consume cannabis and/or who’re interested in its reform, to join the good folk of Louisville “in making this June 24, 2008, “Lester Grinspoon Day,” a time of celebration, reflection & resolve to continue our efforts until we achieve our political goals.”

Dr. Grinspoon maintains two fascinating and informative webpages:

http://www.marijuana-uses.com

http://www.rxmarijuana.com