Newsweek Magazine, PBS NewsHour, FOX Business News all look at mainstreaming of marijuana legalization

This week we’ve seen three usually staid mainstream media outlets – Newsweek Magazine, the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and FOX Business News – examining the growing movement in California and nationwide to discuss the inevitable re-legalization of cannabis in America.  [UPDATE:Apparently the FOX Business Channel (not FOX News) will have a series called "High Noon" beginning Monday at Noon ET / 9am PT.]

We begin with the PBS NewsHour and their fine report featuring the Honorable Rebecca Kaplan from the Oakland City Council and Richard Lee, the founder of Oaksterdam University. For balance (I suppose) they also interview the police chief of El Cerrito, California, who provides the obligatory doses of “reefer madness” at around the 5:00 mark.

Once again, I have to ask the cop at the end of the piece: How many people who don’t smoke pot now are going to start smoking pot once it is legal, and how much is that going to cost? Whatever it is, make the tax on pot equal to that amount, minus the expenditures we’ll save on not arresting people and sending helicopters on weeding missions, and we’ve covered the costs! (Actually, since Miron estimates that we’d reap in revenues and savings around $14 billion annually from legalized pot nationally, you have to convince us that the brand new legal pot smokers who aren’t already smoking now would cost society more than that.)

We’re still trying to figure out how you inject marijuana (from Newsweek photo essay on pot propaganda)

That stupid retort that legal weed will cost society more than the taxes only works if you believe that nobody is smoking weed now and suddenly when it’s legal, everyone will smoke weed. 22,000,000 PEOPLE ARE SMOKING WEED THIS YEAR ALREADY! Whatever that costs us as a society, we’re already paying NOW without taking in any tax money!

Cannabis does not “add another vice” to tobacco and alcohol that costs our society so much more than their taxes bring in. Alcohol and tobacco use create huge medical bills and death. Cannabis does not. With three legal choices and cannabis being obviously safest, we’ll cut costs as people choose it over alcohol and tobacco, and raise tax revenues that are currently going to black marketeers.

Read more about Newsweek and FOX Business News after the break…
(more…)

Profiles in Cannabis: Richard Lee

NORML is proud to confirm that Richard Lee, the self-professed ‘Mayor of Oaksterdam’ will be speaking at the 2009 NORML National Conference in San Francisco, CA.

Richard Lee has been working to end cannabis prohibition for nearly two decades. In 1992 he co-founded Legal Marijuana – The Hemp Store in Houston, Texas, one of the first hemp products retail outlets in the United States. In 1997, Richard relocated to Oakland, California, where he co-founded the Hemp Research Company, which supplied medical cannabis to the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Club, and promoted efficient and environmentally friendly methods of cannabis horticulture. Two years later he opened the Bulldog Coffeeshop, the second retail cannabis outlet in "Oaksterdam." In 2003, Richard founded the Oakland Civil Liberties Alliance, the political action committee that passed Oakland’s Measure Z — making private sales, cultivation, and possession of cannabis the lowest law enforcement priority and mandating that Oakland tax and regulate cannabis as soon as possible under state law. More recently, he founded the first-ever cannabis college in the United States, Oaksterdam University, which seeks to provide students with the highest quality training for the cannabis industry.

Richard was one of the driving forces behind the recent passage of Oakland’s Measure F, which imposes the nation’s first ever business tax on retail marijuana sales, and is presently spearheading The Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, which seeks to allow California adults 21 years of age and older to possess and consume, cultivate, and possess small amounts of cannabis. Richard will be discussing and debating various aspects of both of these reform endeavors, and what they mean for the cannabis community, at NORML’s 2009 conference.

Richard Lee says, "Yes we cannabis" and so should you! Meet the Mayor of
Oaksterdam and hundreds of other likeminded people at NORML’s 38th annual conference, taking place September 24-26 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown San Francisco. For registration information, please visit: http://www.norml.org/conference.

More about Richard Lee:

San Francisco Examiner: Pro-Pot Activists Take Step Toward Putting Legalization On Ballot

Sacramento Bee: Oakland pot tax adds fuel to legalization fire

CNBC’s Marijuana Inc profiles Oaksterdam University

Last Chance To Register For NORML’s 2008 National Conference

NORML’s 37th annual national conference, “It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition,” takes place this week – on Friday, October 17 and Saturday, October 18 – at the Doubletree Hotel & Executive Meeting Center in Berkeley, California. Join NORML’s staff and Board of Directors – and nearly 500 policy activists, medical patients, cultivators, doctors, politicians, and clinical investigators – as we congregate and celebrate in one of America’s most ‘pot friendly’ cities.

Detailed conference agenda, speakers list, and information on conference social events – including Saturday night’s ‘can’t miss’ 2008 Extravaganja party at the Oasis Nightclub (which will feature fire dancers, live performances by from Los Marijuanos and the Extra Action Marching Band, and a laser light show) – are available here.

Rooms at the Doubletree Hotel are sold out, but alternative hotel accommodations are still available here. On site registration will available throughout the conference. Discounted day passes will also be available for purchase at the registration desk.

Featured guests at this year’s conference include longtime Democrat Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington, Doors keyboardist and author Ray Manzarek, and Saturday Keynote Luncheon Speaker, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).

Plenary sessions at this year’s conference include:

• Getting the Story Wrong: How the Media Lie About Cannabis

• The Legal Marijuana Generation: Growing Up and Raising Children in the Age of Legal Pot

• The War on Pot Is a War on Young People

• What If We Arrested 20 Million Americans and Nobody Noticed?

• The Politics of Marijuana and Health

• Drug Testing and Cannabis: The Case Against Legally Sanctioned Discrimination Via Forensics

• Pot Culture: A Round Table Discussion of Cannabis in Society, Entertainment, Music and American Culture

In addition, on Sunday, October 19, NORML’s Legal Committee and the faculty of Oaksterdam University will co-sponsor a special, third-day session, entitled “Everything You Wanted To Know About Medical Cannabis, But Knew Better Than To Ask John Walters.”

This unique, one-day seminar will guide attendees through the maze of conflicting federal, state, and local medical cannabis laws and regulations, and will offer step-by-step instruction regarding how to establish a legal medical marijuana business in the state of California.

Learn from the nation’s top experts on cannabis and cannabis policy. Strategize with the country’s leading marijuana activists and reformers. See what cognitive freedom and tolerance looks like in Oaksterdam, the most cannabis-friendly neighborhood in North America.

Don’t delay; register today and join us this week for an unforgettable three days of pot, policy, and politics at the 37th annual national NORML Conference.