Show-Me Cannabis Legalization

Efforts are currently underway to put marijuana legalization on the ballot in Missouri next year. Missouri NORML and Show-me Cannabis Regulation are working together to acquire the number of signatures required to put a Constitutional amendment proposal before Missouri voters in November 2012. Missouri now joins several other states (including California, Washington, and Colorado) that are looking to put the issue of cannabis legalization before voters next election.

If you live in Missouri, and want to get involved, MO NORML and Show-me Cannabis Regulation will be holding a strategy meeting this Saturday, November 19th. For more information see the message below from Dan Viets, Missouri NORML Coordinator.

Dear Friends and Supporters of Missouri NORML:

Missouri NORML in conjunction with Show-Me Cannabis Regulation is holding a special meeting next Saturday, November 19, 2011 from noon to 6:00 p.m. at the Arts & Science building at the University of Missouri here in Columbia. this event will be a kickoff for the campaign to place marijuana legalization on the Missouri ballot in November, 2012.

We will be brainstorming ideas for how to move this campaign forward effectively and efficiently. We will be sharing ideas with our fellow activists from the state of Missouri. We will be talking with folks who have experience in similar campaigns to get their advice on how we can gather the signatures we need as quickly as possible.

SMCR has chosen to proceed with a Constitutional amendment proposal. This means we will need to gather nearly 150,000 signatures on petitions to place this issue on the ballot before next May. We will need the help of every one of our supporters to make this happen.

Following the meeting Saturday afternoon, we will hold a Dinner/Party/Fundraising event at one of Columbia’s finest restaurants. We ask everyone who attends to please bring something, large or small, which can be auctioned to help us raise funds for the campaign.

Please join us and become part of this historic effort to end the terrible injustice of cannabis prohibition in Missouri. For more information about the proposed initiative, go to www.showmecannabis.org. There is a football game in Columbia next Saturday so hotel and motel rooms will be in short supply. If you plan to stay in Columbia, you should probably search for a room immediately. You may need to look at accommodations in towns nearby since the hotels here may be full.

Sincerely,
Dan Viets, Missouri NORML Coordinator

You can see coverage of the proposal on Missouri’s local FOX affiliate here.

Joplin NORML’s Kelly Maddy loses Missouri home to tornado; please help!

Kelly's house was obliterated

Joplin NORML’s, Kelly Maddy, wife Adriel, brother Kyle, and soon-to-be sister-in-law Kelsi’s houses were both destroyed in a devastating tornado Sunday, May 22nd.  Our thoughts and best wishes go out to all the people of the Midwest dealing with these terrible storms. Please donate to help our colleagues and friends get back on their feet and back to fighting the cause.

Joplin NORML is one of our most active Midwest chapters.  Kelly and his crew have donated thousands of hours of their time successfully passing pro-marijuana initiatives in their city and educating Missourians on the need to end prohibition.  Please give anything you can to help these tireless activists.

This is Kelly's neighborhood today

(Thanks to Tulsa NORML’s Garret Overstreet for organizing the help.  We NORMLizers stick together!)

DC police kill grandmother’s dog while serving drug warrant

Please take a moment to sign the petition at http://CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com/animals to protest the cruelty of the unnecessary killing of pet dogs by police during encounters with citizens.

Today’s story of police canicide comes to us by way of the Associated Press (click to watch the video). A 62-year-old grandmother in Washington, DC tells AP that police came to her home serving a drug warrant for her 28-year-old grandson. The grandma asks to put her dog in the back yard or the bathroom. The cops tell her the bathroom would be fine. Later, the cops open the bathroom door, claim this 13-year-old dog named “Wrinkles” attacked them, and they shoot it multiple times. By the way, the grandson hasn’t lived in the home for a dozen years and the only drugs cops found were what they claimed was “drug residue” on some baggies, which the grandma contends is the residue of fortune cookies.

There was another heartbreaking dog killing by police in Lagrange, Missouri, caught on video that you can view on our NORML Stash Blog. This incident did not involve a drug warrant, however. Instead it was a report of an aggressive dog, who on video appeared to be quite calm and friendly, shot to death by an officer after the officer had it fully restrained by chain, noose, and pole.

If we can get the signatures on the signatures on the LEAP petition over 1,000, supermodel Joanna Krupa has agreed to deliver the petition to both PETA and the Humane Society to increase the exposure of this all-too-common police procedure of killing family pets unnecessarily. (For more coverage of police dog killings in drug raids, check our Dog Shooting category at the NORML Stash Blog.)

Latest Drug War Tragedy Reemphasizes Need For Marijuana Legalization

On Friday the government’s war on marijuana consumers claimed yet another victim.

In Las Vegas, Nevada, metro police shot and killed a 21-year-old father-to-be while serving a search warrant for marijuana.

Phil Smith at StoptheDrugWar.org has detailed coverage here.

A 21-year-old father-to-be was killed last Friday night by a Las Vegas Police Department narcotics officer serving a search warrant for marijuana. Trevon Cole was shot once in the bathroom of his apartment after he made what police described as “a furtive movement.”

Police have said Cole was not armed. Police said Monday they recovered an unspecified amount of marijuana and a set of digital scales. A person identifying herself as Cole’s fiancée, Sequoia Pearce, in the comments section in the article linked to above said no drugs were found.

Pearce, who is nine months pregnant, shared the apartment with Cole and was present during the raid. “I was coming out, and they told me to get on the floor. I heard a gunshot and was trying to see what was happening and where they had shot him,” Pearce told KTNV-TV.

According to police, they arrived at about 9 p.m. Friday evening at the Mirabella Apartments on East Bonanza Road, and detectives knocked and announced their presence. Receiving no response, detectives knocked the door down and entered the apartment. They found Pearce hiding in a bedroom closet and took her into custody. They then tried to enter a bathroom where Cole was hiding. He made “a furtive movement” toward a detective, who fired a single shot, killing Cole.

… According to Pearce and family members, Cole had no criminal record, had achieved an Associate of Arts degree, and was working as an insurance adjustor while working on a political science degree at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. He was not a drug dealer, Pearce said.

“Trevon was a recreational smoker. He smoked weed, marijuana. That’s what he did,” she told KTNV-TV. “They didn’t have to kill him. We were supposed to get married next year, plan a black and white affair,” she said. “He was all I ever knew, we were gonna make it.”

In May, NORML blogged about another sickening case — that one from Columbia, Missouri (you can watch the disturbing and graphic video here) — of ‘cops gone wild’ in the war on weed. But the similarities between the two cases go beyond narcotics officers breaking down the doors of private residences and discharging their weapons.

In both instances, these tragic raids took place in regions of the country that have ‘decriminalized’ marijuana possession. That’s right. In Nevada, lawmakers in 2001 enacted statewide legislation defelonizing minor marijuana possession — making the offense a fine-only misdemeanor. (Separately, Nevada voters in 2000 decided to amend the state’s constitution to exempt medical users from arrest.) And in 2004, some 60 percent of Columbia, Missouri voters approved a local ordinance that sought to prohibit local cops from from arresting anyone for simple marijuana possession.

Yet, as the above tragedies illustrate, neither of these ‘half-a-loaf’ changes in law (decriminalization and medicalization) ultimately corrects the core problem and that is this: Police and politicians still accept the premise that this level of deadly force is appropriate to keep people from using marijuana.

That is why, while on the one hand NORML (obviously) supports cannabis medicalization and decriminalization efforts, we also recognize that these efforts fall woefully short for many Americans. After all, police in Las Vegas, Columbia, and elsewhere are not forcefully entering private homes and terrorizing families while executing search warrants for alcohol.  But they are engaging in such behavior in communities that have medicalized and/or decriminalized marijuana. And unfortunately, they will continue to do so.

In short, the only way to fully protect all our citizens from these kinds of abhorrent events is through the legalization and regulation of marijuana for all adults.

Decriminalization and medicalization are first steps — not the end game. Ultimately only legalization and regulation can bring a long overdue end to the brutal war on marijuana consumers.

Columbia Missouri Police Chief Favors Alternatives To Marijuana Prohibition

From Missouri NORML:

Missouri NORML’s and local attorney Dan Viets spoke with Columbia Police Chief Ken Burton yesterday about the need to reform cannabis laws in Missouri and to stop violent home raids (Columbia is where two dogs were recently shot in a marijuana raid that was captured on video, causing great public revulsion and concern nationwide–not only in Missouri).

In the past Chief Burton has alluded to the need for alternative policies to straight out prohibition. The exchange yesterday between Viets and Burton–where Chief Burton acknowledges the importance of NORML’s advocacy work–was recorded and transcribed below .

Columbia Police Chief Kenneth Burton Quote:
“If I had a chance to catch someone breaking into a warehouse and someone with marijuana (Dan and Chief crosstalk) I applaud your effort, I mean, if we could get out of the business I am sure there would be a lot of officers happy to do that.

You may make the argument that it is because it is illegal, and hey, you may be right.

I don’t have anything against it except it is against the law.

And as a police officer I have sworn to uphold the law. So prioritizing, when we can, you are absolutely right. We should concentrate on meth or something more serious, but we come across marijuana it is still against the law.

I am with you on the fight, and I hope you are successful at some point and we will see how that goes.”

Thanks to MO NORML and Chief Burton!

Also, more good news from MO: Mayor Francis Slay of St. Louis, who announced yesterday that another member of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen is working on a marijuana decriminalization ordinance, and Slay seems to like the idea!

He’s currently doing a poll on legalization, and reformers are winning big time!

Please make sure you’re working with your local chapter of NORML in MO or nationwide to reform our country’s antiquated cannabis laws.