“The situation has become untenable for our states and others. The solution lies with the federal government.”

Both Governors Lincoln Chafee and Christine Gregoire of Rhode Island and Washington respectively were, ironically, two state governors who chose to heed to the warnings issued by the federal government in a Department of Justice memo (known as the ‘Cole memo‘) and not move forward with otherwise popular medical cannabis law reforms in their states. 

However, no more! These two governors’ action today is a very important turning point in the history of cannabis law reform in America.

Contrastingly, the governors of Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico and the city council of D.C. all largely ignored the federal government and moved forward with their states’ respective medical cannabis programs.

NORML began the entire legal and political debate about ‘medical marijuana’ in 1972 when it launched a 24-year re-scheduling effort, that is still laboring on all these years.

Therefore to finally witness governors so frustrated with the absurdly mis-scheduled cannabis plant as being dangerous, addictive and possessing no medical utility (wrongly grouped with heroin and LSD) that they are reaching out to the president to fix this clear injustice and warping of science is a clear demonstration that the friction between the federal government’s recalcitrance on accepting medical cannabis (or for that matter ending Cannabis Prohibition in total) and state politicians who can no longer justify towing the fed’s ridiculous ban on physician-prescribed cannabis to sick, dying and sense-threatened medical patients is coming to a dramatic conclusion in a government showdown, one that may bode well for the larger Cannabis Prohibition reforms needed, festering just below the surface of the public’s mass acceptance of medical access to cannabis.

The Olympian reports:

The Thurston County Narcotics Task Force served search warrants at five medicinal marijuana dispensaries Tuesday morning and shut them down, according to a police spokesman.

The News-Tribune reports:

Five dispensaries were targeted in Thurston County and five in Pierce County, law enforcement officials reported. So far, no arrests have been reported from the searches in Pierce and Thurston counties.

The warrants targeted locations that are suspected of not complying with state law on medical marijuana, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.

“The places we hit are not compliant with state law so we initiated enforcement,” he said. “There are facilities and people that are in compliance with the law that we did not hit.”

KOMO reports:

Medical marijuana activist group ‘Sensible Washington’ tells KOMO News searches have been conducted so far at Seattle Cannabis Co-op, Game Collective, Tacoma Cross, Lacey Cross and Seattle Cross among others.

KOMO News asked DEA spokeswoman Jodie Underwood if agents were serving search warrants on dispensaries in other counties as well and she acknowledged agents were serving several search warrants locally.

Remember, these raids are taking place in Tacoma, which just had an election last week on this very issue of marijuana law enforcement:

(Seattle Times) Tacoma voters easily passed citywide ballot Initiative No. 1 — the measure seeking to make “marijuana or cannabis offenses … the lowest enforcement priority” of the city.

After Tuesday night’s count, 65 percent of voters favored the measure, while 35 percent cast no votes.

And Seattle, which had made marijuana law enforcement its cops’ lowest priority in 2003 by a 58% vote:

(Seattle P-I) Since Seattle voters famously made the Emerald City a bit greener by mandating that cops mellow out when it comes to marijuana possession busts, a funny thing has happened.

Nothing. Nada. Nil. No crazy hopheads running amok with “reefer madness.” No groundswell of support to legalize the drug (at least no more than usual), and no discernible protest by law enforcement that a pro-drug message effectively has been sent — or received.

“I’d say it’s had little to no effect,” said [former] City Attorney Tom Carr, an outspoken opponent of Initiative 75, the 2003 ballot measure that directed Seattle police to make low-level pot busts their lowest priority. “And that’s good. It hasn’t been a problem. You can tell by the numbers.”

Seattle is so accepting of marijuana that the new city attorney, Pete Holmes, won’t even prosecute you for personal possession and believes marijuana should be legalized, as does the mayor, Mike McGinn.  Even the Seattle City Council is unanimous in their support for medical marijuana dispensaries.

The people of Washington State don’t seem to have as much problem with marijuana as the people of Washington, D.C.

Market for these patients in sixteen states and D.C. estimated at between $2 – $6 billion annually

MAY 31, 2011 - We don’t know his or her name, but somewhere in one of sixteen states and the District of Columbia is America’s 1,000,000th legal medical marijuana patient. We estimate the United States reached the million-patients mark sometime between the beginning of the year to when Arizona began issuing patient registry identification cards online in April 2011.

16 states, the Capitol, and ONE MILLION legal marijuana users.

Between one to one-and-a-half million people are legally authorized by their state to use marijuana in the United States, according to data compiled by NORML from state medical marijuana registries and patient estimates.  Assuming usage of one-half to one gram of cannabis medicine per day per patient and an average retail price of $320 per ounce, these legal consumers represent a $2.3 to $6.2 billion dollar market annually.

Based on state medical marijuana laws, the amounts of cannabis these legal marijuana users are entitled to possess means there is between 566 – 803 thousand pounds of legal usable cannabis allowed under state law in America.  These patients are allowed to cultivate between 17 – 24 million legal cannabis plants.  There may possibly be more, as California and New Mexico “limits” may be exceeded with doctor’s permission and some California counties explicitly allow greater amounts, so there may be as much as 1 million pounds of state-legal cannabis allowed under state law in America.

Yet after fifteen years, one million patients, and a million pounds of legal marijuana, few if any of the dire predictions by opponents of medical marijuana have come to fruition.  Medical marijuana states like Oregon are experiencing their lowest-ever rates of workplace fatalities, injuries, and accidents.  States like Colorado are experiencing their lowest rates in three decades of fatal crashes per million miles driven.  In medical marijuana states for which we have data (through Michigan in 2008), use by minor teenagers is down in all but Maine and down by at least 10% in states with the greatest proportion of their population using medical cannabis.

Fourteen of the seventeen medical marijuana jurisdictions have mandatory registries while two (California and Colorado) offer optional registries and one (Washington) has no registry system.  Estimating California’s patient numbers is hampered by its registry system being on a county-by-county basis.  California NORML’s Dale Gieringer estimates between 2% – 3% of the state’s population are holding medical marijuana recommendations – meaning possibly over one million medical marijuana patients in California alone.

California’s patient population can be estimated from data from other medical marijuana states where patients are required to register, shown in the table below. The top two of these are Colorado and Montana, which, like California, have a well developed network of cannabis clinics and dispensaries, and which report usage rates of 2.5% and 3.0%, respectively. Other states, where medical marijuana is less developed, report lower rates of 1% and less. However, California is likely to be on the high side because it has the oldest and most liberal law in the nation. Significantly, California is the only state that permits marijuana to be used for any condition for which it provides relief – in particular, psychiatric disorders, such as PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADD, anxiety and depression, which account for some 20%-25% of the total patient population. Adjusting for this, usage in California could be as much as 25% to 33% higher than in Colorado and Montana, which would put it well over 3% of the population (1,125,000).

A 2%+ patient population estimate is supported by data from the Oakland Patient ID Center, which has been issuing patient identification cards to its members since 1996. The OPIDC serves patients from all over the state, but especially the greater Oakland-East Bay area of Northern California, where its cards are honored by law enforcement. As of 2010, the OPIDC had issued ID’s to 19,805 members from five East Bay cities (Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Hayward and Richmond), amounting to 2.4% of the local population.Because the cards were issued over a period of 14 years, they include numerous patients who have lapsed, moved, or deceased. On the other hand, they do not include many other local patients who have current recommendations but never registered with the OPIDC.

We have made a similar estimate for Washington State’s patients, who are the only ones in the nation with no registry system in place (Gov. Gregoire recently signed a bill that initiates a voluntary registry).  With a law very similar to Oregon’s concerning qualifying conditions, applying Oregon’s 1.04% patient population figure gives us about 69,000 patients in Washington. However, Washington State’s larger urban centers (Seattle and Spokane), combined with a more liberal law than Oregon’s regarding who can sign recommendations (osteopaths, naturopaths, and nurse practitioners can recommend in Washington) and the lack of a state registry’s burden to patient compliance with the program suggests a higher estimate of 1.5% – 2% may be appropriate.  Numbers like Colorado’s 2.5% and Montana’s 3% are improbable as Washington lacks the greater patient access to dispensaries seen in those states.

Delaware, New Jersey, and D.C.’s programs are not operational yet, so they are not shown in our data table.  Most of the other state’s programs produce reports of patient registry numbers.  With Arizona signing up over 3,600 patients since mid-April, when it’s online-only registration went into effect, Arizona is on track to register over 30,000 patients this year.

Quick Facts about Medical Marijuana States:

• The 1.1 – 1.5 million estimated and registered medical marijuana patients in America are legally entitled to cultivate 17 – 24 million cannabis plants and possess 283 –  402 tons of harvested buds.
• The seventeen jurisdictions with medical marijuana encompass over 90 million Americans and 162 votes in the 2012 Electoral College.
• Patients make up over 3% of the population of Montana, almost 2.5% of Colorado, over 2% of California. and over 1% of Oregon, and Washington.
• After Michigan at 0.76% of population, every other medical marijuana state has less than 3 in 1,000 (0.3%) patients in its population.
• California, Colorado, Washington, Michigan, Oregon, and Montana comprise over 98% of the legal medical marijuana patients in America.
• More than 3 out of four (77% – 83%) of all medical marijuana patients live on the West Coast.
• Rhode Island and Vermont, two states where over 10% of the adult population uses marijuana monthly, have patient populations of 0.29% and 0.05%, respectively.
• Monthly teen use of marijuana is down in every medical marijuana state except Maine.
• Annual highway fatalities are down in every medical marijuana state except Rhode Island.
• Incidents of workplace injuries and illnesses are down in every medical marijuana state.

Best-selling Travel Author, TV Host and NORML Advisory Board Member Rick Steves Addresses Over 100,000 Cannabis Law Reform Supporters At The 2008 Seattle Hempfest

The serious challenge in the next 5-7 days: Gather and verify 100,000 more signatures before the looming deadline at month’s end.

Reformers in Washington State are seeking to join California with a legalization ballot this fall; medical cannabis-related ballot initiatives are happening in states such as Arizona, South Dakota and very possibly Oregon.

While the challenge here is great to be sure, I’m heartened to learn that in a last minute push for signatures, the organizers at Sensible Washington have partnered with a popular alternative weekly, The Stranger, to distribute 80,000 signature forms in this week’s run of papers.

Please, if you live in Washington, get a copy of The Stranger ASAP or download the necessary signature forms here, follow the basic instructions, get 5-10 or more of your like-minded friends, family and co-workers to sign the forms, and rush the forms back to the organizers for verification and submission before the deadline.

The organizers are imploring supporters to get the forms back to them no later than June 28 if possible to avoid a crush before the July 1^st filing date.

If you live outside of Washington State, 1) please contact friends and loved ones and encourage them to do a little something for personal freedom and liberty before the end of the weekend and 2) make a financial donation in support of a genuinely grassroots efforts in Washington State to place it among the 3-4 other states this fall with pro-reform measures being placed directly before citizens for ‘up or down’ votes.

Thanks for caring and sharing!

Cannabem liberemus,

Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director                                                                                NORML                                                                                                                          Washington, D.C.

One Week Left, We Can Get This Done

Written by Philip Dawdy,

We’ve got one left in I-1068’s signature gathering campaign. In 1999, the all-volunteer I-695 campaign got 250,000 signatures in the campaign’s final two weeks. The people of this state were angry at high car taxes and an initiative that offered to replace onerous taxes with a flat $30 car tab was so appealing that in that campaign’s final weeks thousands of volunteers hit the streets to make sure the initiative got on the ballot. How’d they do that?

“It’s not rocket science,” Tim Eyman once told me about making I-695’s final weeks successful.

We just need to get as many people as possible in front of as many of their fellow citizens as possible. That’s all.

With I-1068, I’m pretty sure we’ve got an issue that rings the public’s bells as hard as car taxes did in 1999. I-1068 offers marijuana legalization and subsequent re-regulation by the State Legislature instead of the continuance of onerous and wasteful criminal penalties for adult use, possession and cultivation. There’s plenty of polling at this point to suggest that the public embraces the concept. We’ve just got to get the signatures.

Right now, we need to get about two-thirds of the 250,000 signatures I-695 got in 1999 to make sure I-1068 gets on the ballot. If they could do it in 1999, we can do it in 2010. We just have to stay on the job.

And to do that we need you to continue collecting signatures and to help us find new volunteers. You should also take a look at this instant volunteer kit created by one of our Bellingham coordinators Matthew Scott.

If you need copies of the initiative, you can contact your area coordinator. A list of coordinators statewide is here. We’ve got many thousands of copies of I-1068 available statewide. And you can always fill out our volunteer form right here.

Please only have it reproduced on 11×17 paper, double-sided, black and white. You’ll need to go to a professional print shop to do it–sorry, but the rules in this state are so archaic–but you can handle most of that exchange via email with most shops. Or you can upload it to a website such as Fedex Office allows and place your order electronically and pick it soon after at one of their local outlets.

You can keep on top of events we’re covering by keeping in touch with us on Facebook.

So let’s get out there and get this done. We need every signed petition in the state sent our way each ASAP, no later than June 28 if possible. Our mailing address is on the petition.

* * *

80,000 Copies Of I-1068 Will Be In The Stranger June 23

You read that right. Sensible Washington–thanks to our many supporters’ contributions–is paying to have I-1068 inserted into each copy of The Stranger’s 80,000 print run this Wednesday June 23rd. We’ll also have a full page ad explaining to people how they can sign the initiative, get their friends and family to sign it, and send it on into us by the end of June 28th.

We’re doing this because the weather has been awful all spring (June is already at 200+ percent of normal precipitation for the month) and it’s been very difficult to intersect with the voting public in the Seattle Metro area to get their signatures on I-1068. So tell all your friends and neighbors to get a copy of this week’s Stranger and to get us a bunch of signatures and mail them in by the end of June 28th to the address on the petition.

In America since 1965, there have been 21 million arrests for marijuana, 9 out of 10 for quantities of an ounce or less. Over 800,000 were arrested for pot last year, with people of color and the young being arrested and incarcerated in hugely disproportionate numbers. Under current Washington State law, if arrested for possession of even the tiniest amount of cannabis, a person faces a mandatory night in jail, handcuffs, mugshots, fingerprints, and a criminal record that, thanks to the internet and data-mining, might follow a person for the rest of their life.

The Mexican Cartels have murdered tens of thousands of people in their own country and now their violence is spilling over the boarder into America. Sales of marijuana in the US are estimated to account for half of the Cartels’ revenue stream. By simply legalizing pot, by taking the business and the profits of marijuana out of the hands of these criminals, taxing and regulating cannabis would be a devastating blow to organized crime. And at the same time, regulation would ensure our citizens that standards of purity and potency had been met.

California, Oregon and Washington have all had marijuana legalization initiatives filed this year. California’s initiative already has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, and recent polling of likely voters found that 56% plan to vote, “Yes”, on the measure come November. California’s Board of Tax Equalization has estimated that the legalization of cannabis will bring $1.4 billion in new tax revenues to the state’s cash-strapped municipalities.

This month, a Pew Charitable Trust poll found that 73% of all Americans are in favor of legal access to marijuana as medicine. Used as medicine for over 4,500 years, the DEA’s own Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young ruled: “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man…” Without even holding a hearing, and over the objections of the American Medical Association, all uses of cannabis were outlawed by Congress in 1937. Since California’s passage of Prop 215 in 1996, 14 states have now taken back their medical marijuana rights from the Feds. Much safer than aspirin (gastric bleeding, death) or Tylenol (liver damage, death), marijuana is safer than virtually every other over-the-counter and prescription medicine for sale in America. Cannabis is also far safer, as a recreational drug, than either the very speedily deadly alcohol or the slowly lethal tobacco. Marijuana is not only safer for the individual, but it is safer for the society, too. A Seattle Police Sgt. patrolling Seattle Hempfest’s cannabis-imbibing 100,000 person crowd told me, “…compared to the crowds coming out of Safeco or Quest field after a game, patrolling Hempfest is like patrolling a Girl Scout picnic.”

Through my own recreational use, I discovered marijuana the all-natural non-toxic pain medicine with far less severe side-effects than the prescription alternatives. I believe cannabis should be legal for medical, recreational, food and fiber uses. Cannabis should be legal for American farmers to grow. If cannabis is legal for all, sick people will be able to get it. Ending this prohibition, America must also wean law enforcement from its 70-year-old marijuana arrest addiction. Cannabis use didn’t turn either Michael Phelps or Barack Obama into a couch potato or a loser. It’s time to legalize it. Tax and regulate marijuana…Now.

George Rohrbacher is a retired cattle rancher, former WA state senator (R), former Commissioner of Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, currently serving on the NORML Board of Directors (For additional information please review the titles of two of the blogs I’ve written for the NORML blog: “Confessions of a Medical Marijuana Patient” and “Marijuana Prohibition and Fatherhood”)

This essay was originally published in the Peninsula Daily News on May 4th.

Time for Washington state to decriminalize marijuana

By Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Toby Nixon
Special to The Times

Once again, the Seattle Hempfest drew tens of thousands to parks along the waterfront this weekend. In its mission statement, the all-volunteer organization that produces the event says, “The public is better served when citizens and public officials work cooperatively in order to successfully accomplish common goals.”

We agree. That is why we, as a Democratic state senator and former Republican state representative, support state Senate Bill 5615. This bill would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime carrying a mandatory day in jail to a civil infraction imposing a $100 penalty payable by mail. The bill was voted out of committee with a bipartisan “do pass” recommendation and will be considered by legislators in 2010.

The bill makes a lot of sense, especially in this time of severely strapped budgets. Our state Office of Financial Management reported annual savings of $16 million and $1 million in new revenue if SB 5615 passes. Of that $1 million, $590,000 would be earmarked for the Washington State Criminal Justice Treatment Account to increase support of our underfunded drug-treatment and drug-prevention services.

The idea of decriminalizing marijuana is far from new. In 1970, Congress created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. A bipartisan body with 13 members — nine appointed by President Nixon and four by Congress — the commission was tasked with conducting a yearlong, authoritative study of marijuana. When the commission issued its report, “Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding,” in1972, it surprised many by recommending decriminalization:

Possession of marijuana in private for personal use would no longer be an offense; and distribution of small amounts of marijuana for no remuneration or insignificant remuneration not involving profit would no longer be an offense.

Twelve states took action and decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s. Nevada decriminalized in 2001, and Massachusetts did so in 2008. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, states where marijuana possession is decriminalized represent more than 35 percent of our nation’s population.

These states have not seen a corresponding increase in use. Nor have the 14 states that have adopted legal protections for patients whose doctors recommend the medical use of marijuana. Nor the several cities and counties that have adopted “lowest law enforcement priority” ordinances like Seattle’s Initiative 75, which made adult marijuana use the city’s lowest law enforcement priority in 2003.

On the flip side of the coin, escalating law enforcement against marijuana users has not achieved its intended goals. From 1991 to 2007, marijuana arrests nationwide tripled from 287,900 to a record 872,720, comprising 47 percent of all drug arrests combined. Of those, 89 percent were for possession only. Nevertheless, according to a study released earlier this year by two University of Washington faculty members:

• The price of marijuana has dropped;

• Its average potency has increased;

• It has become more readily available; and

• Use rates have often increased during times of escalating enforcement.

We now have decades of proof that treating marijuana use as a crime is a failed strategy. It continues to damage the credibility of our public health officials and compromise our public safety. At a fundamental level, it has eroded our respect for the law and what it means to be charged with a criminal offense: 40 percent of Americans have tried marijuana at some point in their lives. It cannot be that 40 percent of Americans truly are criminals.

We hope that the citizens of this state will work with us to help pass SB 5615, the right step for Washington to take toward a more effective, less costly and fairer approach to marijuana use.

State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Seattle, left, chairs the Senate Labor, Commerce & Consumer Protection Committee. Toby Nixon was state representative for the 45th legislative district, 2002-2006, and served as vice-chair of the House Republican Caucus and ranking member of the House Committee on State Government Operations and Accountability.

George and Ann Rohrbacher with family in 1988. This photo captures the mid-point in George’s 40 years of cannabis use.

Fatherhood.

It was the fall of 1969, about six weeks after Woodstock, my senior year at the University of Denver. I had just moved into an apartment two blocks off campus. Tuesday, my first day in the new apartment, I’d borrowed a frying pan from the next-door neighbor, a young woman, tall and shapely with long honey-brown hair. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I’d stood out on her porch for several minutes with the borrowed frying pan in hand, stunned.

The next day, on Wednesday evening, I looked up to see someone knocking on my un-curtained living room window—a short guy with wild eyes and a goatee. There was a big, big smile on his face. He held up a nice fat joint pinched between his thumb and forefinger. With the other forefinger he pointed next door. My gorgeous new next-door neighbor had sent him. She wanted to meet me! Did I go? Hell yes!! No one need ask me twice after such inducements.

Minutes later, in her apartment, we fired up that doobie. We had an unbelievably fun time together. Ann, my new neighbor, was not only good looking, but she was smart, interesting, and friendly, too—as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. To my eyes, Ann glowed like a homing beacon. I walked her to class on Thursday and wrote her a poem. On Friday, we flew to Seattle to meet her parents. A little over a week later, I asked her to marry me—that was 38 years and many pounds of pot ago.

We were married in June of 1970, standing on a hill watching a sailboat race in Puget Sound. Six years later, the first of our four children was born and with him came the start of decades of parental responsibilities. I found Fatherhood to be one of the very best things to ever happen in my life, except perhaps for Grand fatherhood. The marathon challenge of raising children was exactly what Ann and I were on this earth to do. Our three sons and daughter are now 25-to-33-years old. They are the recent graduates of Yale, Lafayette, Colgate, and Cornell. Three of our four children also competed in Division I athletics; and all have graduated from the college they started at, and within four years, too. Two are married and currently Ann and I have four grandchildren.

rohrbacher-family-copy.jpg

Regardless that our marriage was a product of the ‘60’s—flower power and all that—I turned out to be a strict and loving parent. We farm and are in the cattle business. We live on a ranch three miles from our next-door neighbors. When our kids were growing up with no TV, or cable, or Internet to sop up time and attention—we were like families of an earlier era, we talked to each other instead. Our children all learned to read long before they went off to school—because in our family, you read a book if you were bored—or went out to play, or invented a game. Zero time was spent hanging out at the Mall. No school grade lower than a “B” was ever acceptable at our house. And, of course, while living on a farm, there were always plenty of chores to do. Mealtimes at our house were always together. My wife, Ann, and I saw chief among our many jobs as parents was the gradual hand-off, to our kids, of the reigns that controlled their own lives—and we tried to make that hand-off at the very earliest time possible. We were here on this planet to be their parents, not their friends; our job was to prepare them to fly away. We pushed plenty of extra curricular activities: 4-H, sports, etc. Burning off childhood’s energy properly builds strong kids and is the key to every parent’s sanity. At least two sports each per child was our prescription. If not sports then, theater or band. Our simple policy with kids and drugs: NONE. No Beer, Booze, or Wine. NONE. No prescription drugs, no Pot, no Pop—and of course, no Tobacco. The one thing that sets us off from most other parents was we never allowed our kids Caffeine in any form, none. We’ve never let soda pop into our home, though, we do keep tea and coffee to re-supply visiting adult addicts. And, surprise—our four kids, as adults, aren’t addicted to caffeine today. This was our parental drug program: Leave all drugs alone. Be a kid when you are a kid, you are going to have plenty of time to be an adult for the rest of your life.

Another word about the ubiquitous CAFFEINE, America’s one and only true “gateway drug”(if there is such a thing): Caffeine is now available in caffeinated candy and so-called “energy drinks” that are really nothing but sweetened “drug drinks.” Espresso shops are on every corner for a shot of “mini-meth”. Children don’t need any damn caffeine, ever. And kids sure don’t need the 12 teaspoons of sugar and/or corn syrup per glass or the swirl of industrial chemicals that pop is made from—wake up America, this isn’t food for young growing bodies. Young brains and psyches have plenty of internal challenges without “getting a buzz on” in the process. The maturation of the human neurology is a slow and delicate process and psychoactive drugs have no business there. Getting high, in any form, should be treated just like driving a semi-truck or skydiving; it is a potentially hazardous undertaking reserved ONLY FOR ADULTS.

The majority of the people I know who have had real problems with alcohol and drugs got started young—usually sneaking their folk’s booze or prescription drugs when they were 13 or 14 years old. Really bad habits easily get started then, before the competing good habits are firmly rooted. My wife and I were very frank and open with our kids, from the very earliest ages, about the dangers of drugs—about the heroin, cocaine, and alcohol induced nightmares of two of Ann’s youngest siblings, the DWIs that Grandpa got, or the Uncle that had to be lead, in an alcoholic stupor, off to bed every night, or the another Uncle arrested for drunk and disorderly who also got picked up for a DWI and had to call cross-country from jail to arrange for babysitting for his child that he’d left home alone.

As an example of the prophylactic effects of this straight-forward approach had on our children, this metered but raw, unfiltered family reality—one of our sons, because of the alcoholic problems within our large extended family, made a secret pledge to himself not to drink alcohol until he was 21—a promise he kept, while his peers, America’s under-aged college kids, slurped up over 1/5th of our nation’s annual booze consumption. A toxically drunk roommate at Yale pleaded to our son, “Please, don’t let me die…please, don’t let me die…” That roomie lived, but several of our daughter’s schoolmates didn’t, in an alcohol-related disaster at Colgate. My parental observation after seeing our kids go through a total of 16 years of undergraduate education is that ALCOHOL is by far the most dangerous drug on American college campuses—nothing else is even close. At the same time, the evidence continues to show that the worst danger of using pot is simply being arrested for it.

Ann and I both come from large families. Our combined siblings and their spouses (first and second choices) total 29 people, baby-boomers all. We all grew up in the ‘60’s, and, as a group, more than any other previous generation of Americans, we sampled from the full menu of drugs and alcohol. Well, now 38 years later, which substance has proved to be the most dangerous drug for this sample group of 29 baby-boomers? BOOZE wins, hands down, as America’s most dangerous drug! What was our family’s drug wreckage caused by alcohol over the last four decades? Eight of my brother-in-laws and sister-in-laws, nearly 1/3 of our group, have ended up with severe alcohol problems requiring intervention of some type. No one in this entire group of 29, my children’s baby-boomer aunts and uncles, had similar problems with marijuana.

As part of the larger effort to protect our kids while they were growing up in a very rural area (and I do mean rural, until two years ago there wasn’t a single traffic light in our entire county), it was best for all concerned that I be extremely quiet and stealthy about my marijuana use—it was for my children’s safety, so the state or local cops didn’t rob them of a parent by arrest. Our kids are grown and gone now. But today, my primary parental job of protecting my children has changed. Now to best protect my grown children and grandchildren; I must get loud and active and help to change America’s insane, destructive, and counter-productive marijuana laws before one of my offspring or their friends gets caught in this legal meat grinder.

My wife, Ann, during all her child-bearing and rearing years, for our children’s safety used no drugs whatsoever, I mean, rarely even an aspirin—while at the same time, I evolved, leaving alcohol behind entirely, I evolved into a cannabis-only man.

As they were growing up, with all this frankness over the drug problems of aunts and uncles, did my kids know their Dad was using marijuana? Sure, you bet they did—but it wasn’t until they figured it out on their own when they were older. I didn’t use pot in front of them.

Every day I went out to check the cows or hiked into the woods to get high—very much like the millions of middle-aged suburban moms and dads who will be out willfully walking their dogs tonight, walking along, feeling their cannabis in private. But inside families there are very few real secrets that can stay covered for long. So, no matter how secretive I was being about my marijuana use, the kids eventually knew it—plus, come on, they’d seen pictures of their Dad during the ‘60s in the family photo album, and they also could probably could smell it occasionally on my breath. As for my own views on the subject of marijuana—I was silent about them, completely unlike my openness in any other area of my life.

Here I was, an honest, ethical man, devoted to his wife and children, a tax-paying involved citizen, law-abiding in every way, every way except for one—I absolutely refused to let the government tell me I couldn’t use cannabis. But as my kids grew up, I never defended marijuana to them, I just stood quietly by and let the state propaganda machine do its worst, and I trusted that my kids would be able sort out the truth when they got older.

By 1980, the government started confiscating farms and homes all over the country for the growing even small amounts of pot. I stopped raising my own marijuana for the safety of our farm and my family. I’d practically killed myself during very tough economic times during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s holding on to our family farm of 1,100 acres. I wasn’t about to let some over-zealous cop steal our farm over a couple ounces of weed! I started buying my marijuana on the black-market like everyone else and paying that black-market price. For the last 30 years, I’ve been a farmer too cautious to grow his own.
I love the wonderful feeling of well being that the ingestion or inhalation of cannabis vapors gives to me. The active ingredients, the cannabinoids, lubricate my brain in some marvelous and non-toxic way, releasing torrents of thoughts from which I get to dipnet the most interesting. Getting high, sitting on a rock or tree stump out in the woods, communing with the natural world, is a form of sublime and holy meditation for me—something I have done joyously and reverently for nearly forty years now and something I hope to continue doing for the next forty years. Humanity has been cultivating marijuana for its psychoactive effects since the dawn of agriculture. For many thousands of years the Hindus have used the psychoactive properties of cannabis in seeking the spiritual side of life on this earth. They believe cannabis to be a holy sacrament, expressly given to humanity for our use—a similar view can be found in the Bible, on page one, Genesis: 1:29-31: God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is on the face of all the earth…To you it will be meat”(cannabis seeds are 33% protein)…and God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”

But what about the Partnership for a Drug Free America, etc.? What a sad sick joke these self-righteous, government-funded groups are in our over-caffeinated, pill-popping, alcohol-addled society. America’s athletes and racehorses are on steroids, our society is saturated, dripping with drugs of every description, prescription and otherwise, with more coming on line every day (there are reportedly 400,000 prescription and over-the-counter ‘drugs’ available in America). Every trip to the family doctor is expected to end with a prescription written for some magic substance.

Well, in this environment, what should you tell your kids?

My universal drug safety rule of thumb: 1) avoid all drugs that are toxic and have an easily achievable poisonous dose, 2) also avoid all drugs that give you a hangover and/or withdrawal symptoms. (Cannabis, of course, causes neither; it is truly nature’s gift to humanity, the safest of all psychoactive and therapeutic substances), and 3) Stick to non-toxic natural psychoactive substances.

With our kids all grown up now, all gone from the nest, what about my marijuana-aided walks from years ago? Do I still do them? You bet, every chance I get—at least 5-times a week. I learned something during all those trips out to the woods to get high when the kids were at home: Those walks are very good for my heart, very good for my chronic back pain and bum leg, and very very good for my spirits. Hiking up Badger Mountain to see the mists rising out of Swale Canyon and to hear a red-tailed hawk calling out to me…Or, to see the Sunrise, or Sunset…For some reason, walking, and stretching just works better for me on ganja. I enjoy it more. I appreciate it more. I do it more often. Now, as a farmer pushing 60-years old, I still find myself doing a lot of the very same physical labor I was doing when I was 25-years old. Luckily for me, I live in Washington State; a medical marijuana state after the voters (by a wide margin) trumped our state’s politicians by voter referendum in 1998.

As I see it, the prime ingredients of a long and happy life are good-loving, exercise outdoors, whole grains, fruit, and vegetables, beef and seafood, fresh air, pure spring water, and marijuana.

Our children have all now grown into fine young adults, what do I have to say to them now about marijuana? What will I say to my grandchildren, when they are old enough to have this conversation?

Here it is:

Father’s Day 2008My Dear Ones,

Marijuana has been proven one of the safest therapeutically active drugs known to mankind. I have used it with little or no harm for 40 years. My mind still finds cannabis fun and enlightening after decades of inter-cranial adventures, and, as an adult, should you choose to employ a drug for such purposes, marijuana is the only drug I would recommend. For me, pot is fun and is very easy to walk away from, if need be. Also, cannabis possesses healing properties I’d ever dreamed or suspected possible. And as I continue to age, and I require more healing from my sports and work-related injuries, trusty cannabis helps me maintain my quality and love of life.

Much Love,

Dad (and now Grandpa)

15 years ago my daughter asked me for the truth, the whole truth on this subject. I avoided giving her an answer then, and have been ashamed of myself ever since. Here it is Sweetheart, better late than never.

Since Nixon was president, there have been 20 million Americans arrested for marijuana, casualties of our government’s war on weed. It’s time for America to wake up and fix this problem, it’s time to tax and regulate marijuana. Stop the pot war now! Support NORML & contribute.