Medical marijuana has certainly been part of the trend. We’ll visit with Dr. Julie Holland, author of the New York Times bestseller “Weekends at Bellevue”, her tale of nine years working in the psychiatric emergency room of the famous New York Hospital. Dr. Holland has been an effective advocate for medical marijuana recently on the NBC Today show.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then we speak to Mieko Hester-Perez, a recent guest of Diane Sawyer’s on Good Morning America. Ms. Hester-Perez talks about the miracle medical marijuana has provided for her severely autistic son and the complications of treating him with a very controversial medicine.

We continue the discussions, looking beyond medical marijuana and into the so-called “Stiletto Stoner” phenomenon of young professional women who prefer marijuana over martinis when it comes to socializing and relaxing. We also cover the increasing number of mothers who are calling for an end to prohibition as a means of protecting their children from the harms of an unregulated black market.

Our panel of NORML Women from coast to coast includes:

• Tonya Davis – NORML’s 2009 Pauline Sabin Award Winner and Executive Director of Miami Valley NORML in Ohio
• Anne Davis – NORML Legal Committee Attorney and NORML NJ Boardmember
• Cheryl Shuman – Executive Director of Beverly Hills NORML 90210
• Linda Adler – Executive Director of US Virgin Islands NORML
• Tanya Burgess – Georgia NORML Boardmember

These accomplished women will tell us why they’ve decided to join NORML and why other women should, too.

(Elle Magazine) A thimbleful is all it takes. After a day’s work, I pinch off a small amount of marijuana and put it in a steel-tooth grinder. The flowers, covered in tiny white diamonds of THC, release a piney scent when crushed. I turn on the TV, and instead of taking a glass of wine with my evening news, I take out my vaporizer and set it on the coffee table.

One could say I diagnosed myself in high school, when I recognized my symptoms in a psychology textbook. Finally, I had “generalized anxiety disorder” to describe the dread I felt of some future event that was overtaking my present. I usually sensed the panic attacks first in my chest. Then my vision would start to go to static, and my body would crumple to the floor. There I’d ride it out until the adrenaline ran its course.

Soon after I started to suffer several of these episodes a day (and so often that fear of another one kept me indoors), I sought out a psychiatrist. I told her about the times I’d be driving and convince myself that I was about to spin off the road—the looping, invented terrors. A little talk therapy and a prescription later, I discovered that Zoloft only exacerbated my panic and depression. I stopped taking the little white pills and cut out caffeine instead; I exercised and practiced meditation. For years I abstained from medication, and aside from the occasional pot smoking with friends, I swore off drugs entirely.

About four years ago, another psychiatrist put me on lithium for what he described as my “Paxil-induced hypomania.” When it made me violently sick, I decided I needed to replace pills altogether and turn to a regimen that relied on what was, to me, the only proven drug. I headed down to the five-block stretch of marijuana advocacy groups known as “Oaksterdam.” There, I explained to an understanding doctor, wearing Lennon glasses and cargo shorts, that marijuana eased the symptoms of what studies showed and I knew to be a genetic disorder. (My two younger brothers have been diagnosed as bipolar, and my grandmother suffered from anxiety and depression.)

The writer continues by explaining how she is able to keep her job and be productive thanks to marijuana, and that her friends that use marijuana are all successful productive people she’s proud to know. She worries about the legal complexities, especially how the California Ragingwire decision still allows employers to fire people for their medical use.

From a media standpoint, I believe when you’re having women speak favorably of marijuana in Marie Claire, the Today Show, and Elle Magazine, you’re winning the hearts and minds.

By Sabrina Fendrick , Executive Assistant, NORML/NORML Foundation

I have never been more proud to be a part of the marijuana movement as I was after reading an article in the October issue of Marie Claire titled “Stiletto Stoners”.  The feedback and comments in relation to this have been fast and overwhelming.

The woman cited in the article is quoted as saying, “‘I hate the term pothead—it connotes that I’m high 24/7, which I’m not,’ Jennifer Pelham says, wincing. ‘I don’t need it to get through my day. I just enjoy it when my day is over.’ Her nightly ritual costs only $50 a month.  It never induces a post-happy-hour hangover and, unlike the Xanax a doctor once prescribed for her anxiety, never leaves her groggy or numb… ‘It’s really not a big deal’.”

The normalizing of recreational cannabis consumption is not just happening with men, which is what most people think of when they think of pot smokers.  Women, who are not necessarily left out of the movement, are rarely recognized as a major demographic that is essential for the reform effort to push forward in a truly legitimate fashion.

This underreported phenomenon is now spreading across the mainstream media.  From Matt Lauer and the Today show,

To the Los Angeles Times…

This story is spreading like wildfire across the Internet and I am willing to bet, it will only get bigger.

To be honest, I didn’t even realize the extent of this closet practice among my female cohorts.  Perhaps it’s just that they’re not as outspoken as the men?  Or maybe it’s because they have more at risk?  Whatever it is, the fact that more and more women are admitting to smoking cannabis (or marijuana or pot) is truly inspiring.

As a side note, I posted this article to the NORML Facebook page and within an hour there were already more comments on this post than almost any other on NORML’s facebook page!  Here are just a few from some NORML women:

-“ Finally, Female stoners who aren’t classified with dreads and no make up.  It’s definitely been around for a while but now there is recognition! Successful Stoner Ladies Unite!”

-“Hell yeah! Finally some coverage of us smart, sexy pot smokers.”

-“That’d be me!”

-“I am a successful Optician by day, and a happy pothead by night!”

-“And some of us run three business’s and support a household too!”

-“Exactly!”

-“Wooo! Thanks for the shout out guys!!”

-“This is so great…I actually read this in a salon the other day…”

-“I know a dentist, a lawyer, a paralegal and a few managers who all smoke and they are brilliant women who just like to relax after making all that $$…lol”

-“I’m a stay at home mother during the day and at night i have a job and go to school, and i rather smoke a joint once I’m home from work and the kids are passed out then have a glass of wine.”

-“Agreed everybody!! Don’t know what I would do without this option!”

This is a major response that reinforces my belief that women need to get on the bandwagon and start to fight for an end to these archaic marijuana laws.  When was the last time you saw this many comments, from women about women and their marijuana use? What does that say??  Let’s go ladies!  It’s time to get vocal and become an active participant in your own liberation.

Like one person commented on my wall earlier, “Blaze on Stiletto stoners.  I am proud to be one of you!”

]]> http://blog.norml.org/2009/10/04/because-women-are-norml-too/feed/ 65 http://blog.norml.org/2008/04/01/today-show%e2%80%99s-al-roker-plugs-his-new-tv-series-%e2%80%98dea%e2%80%99-on%e2%80%a6of-course-the-today-show/ http://blog.norml.org/2008/04/01/today-show%e2%80%99s-al-roker-plugs-his-new-tv-series-%e2%80%98dea%e2%80%99-on%e2%80%a6of-course-the-today-show/#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:53:50 +0000 Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director http://blog.norml.org/2008/04/01/today-show%e2%80%99s-al-roker-plugs-his-new-tv-series-%e2%80%98dea%e2%80%99-on%e2%80%a6of-course-the-today-show/ In what I believe is a classic example of a commercial conflict of interest, TV weatherman for the Today Show, Al Roker, sat down this morning on the Today Show couch to plug his new ‘reality’ show DEA.

DEA, set to premiere tonight, April 2, on Spike TV (which is owned by MTV) follows in the footsteps of the long-running video-verite show COPS. The show is co-owned by Al Roker Entertainment.

Seems unlikely to me that DEA will be as commercially successful and long-lived as the COPS franchise has been for a couple of reasons, including that the federal agency to be championed (and therein unduly glorified) is hardly a sympathetic character, the federal agents look and act like COPS-on-steroids and their Herculean (and largely thankless) task to make America drug-free is a sad and ugly reminder of the expensive failure cannabis prohibition has wrought over 70 years.

One wonders, are Roker and his partners at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) going to feature the law enforcement bureaucracy raiding state-sanctioned medical cannabis dispensaries? Will the harassment and prosecution of sick, dying or sense-threatened medical patients become entertainment for American households? Will the American public be keen to watch the DEA oversee the eradication annually of hundreds of millions of domestically grown cannabis plants, 90 percent of which are feral, industrial hemp plants?

I bet not.

How about these other DEA-related doozies?

-The DEA’s flunking grade with the Office of Management and Budget;

-DEA officers who shot themselves in front of school children while attempting to demonstrate gun safety;

-DEA’s current problem accounting for all of its issued firearms;

-Since October 2007, the DEA is a headless agency with no permanent administrator—a rarity among Washington’s federal bureaucracies (and likely will remain so until the next presidential administration takes over in early 2009);

Believe it or not I encourage citizens concerned with reforming cannabis and drug laws to watch COPS-like ‘reality’ shows occasionally, while paying close attention to observe the inherent policy flaws and contradictions, wasted police resources and what should be an obvious affront to civil liberties that emerge with most every encounter between illicit drug consumers and law enforcement agents.

Example: In the trailer for the show, DEA agents encourage a crack cocaine user to become their informant vis-a-vis a controlled purchase of “an ounce or so” of crack…and that if she does so, “this will all be behind her.”

Can a narc in the middle of making a drug bust make such a promise? If the woman cooperates and flips other users she knows, will the incident really be behind her? Are not prosecutors the ones who decide who gets deals and who does not for defendant cooperation? Is the narc concerned with making more drug busts than he is helping the apparent drug addict with her treatable health problem?

Public servants? Protect and to serve?

Bottom-line: Are the DEA narcs lying to the woman?

Answer: Yes, and this is one of the reasons I believe the show will likely fail, because, hopefully, there is no audience in the US television market for a show about lying, uncaring narcs.

However, who knows? Spike TV’s DEA might just become an unintended version of Reno 911. Which might just make it worth watching, as long as one has ready access to a strong, non-toxic and naturally occurring anti-emetic.