Pot Smokers See the Rainbow

Pot Smokers Finally See the Rainbow

By Norm Kent

When 64 % of the voters in Miami Beach in a straw ballot said they would support medical marijuana last week, it was no surprise.

Pot smokers may not wear rainbow flags, but they have finally come out of the closet.

For forty years, since early in the 1970’s, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has been fighting to change repressive and regressive laws against the responsible use of cannabis by consenting adults.

The truth is that the ‘war on drugs’ was never a war on drugs. It was a war on good and decent people, whose only crime was smoking a joint at the end of the day.

Most Americans have always known that the horror stories about pot consumption were delusional hallucinations thrown upon us by cowardly politicians who were afraid to be seen as ‘soft on dope.’ Today, though, cannabis consumers realize they can trust their own experiences more than the government’s forked tongues.

In 20 states where citizens have been asked if they want pot to be decriminalized, they have resoundingly said ‘yes.’ Current Gallop polls in fact have showed that a majority of nearly 60% of Americans wants pot legalized.

It isn’t because we are all stoners, though many of us are. It is because we as Americans are fed up and disgusted with the lies and laws our legislators have passed and prosecuted. Over four decades, we have empowered our government to enact draconian measures that have compromised our civil liberties and sacrificed common sense. We are fighting back, against spying, surveillance and stupidity.

While we were too complacent or silent, our leaders have ratified statutes allowing for our sons and daughters to be jailed, our cars to be seized, and our scholarships to be forfeited. In certain places, moms and dads can still lose custody of their kids because they are caught smoking pot. It is an outrage and injustice Americans can no longer endure or countenance.

Today, from Miami Beach to Maine, from Seattle to South Florida, we are saying ‘Free the Leaf.’  It’s not just to get high. There are valid medical and curative reasons to support normalizing marijuana.

Thousands of Americans who were living with HIV learned years ago that medical cannabis inhibited a ‘wasting away’ syndrome and enhanced their appetite. Others, like Elvy Mussika, a grandmother from Hollywood, Florida, found out smoking marijuana can alleviate her blinding glaucoma. She now actually gets pot monthly from the DEA, cultivated at a government-controlled grow house in Mississippi.

Scientists in Israel have discovered cannabis can control muscular spasticity and arthritic conditions amongst the elderly. One housewife in Manatee County, Cathy Jordan, has grown and used cannabis for a quarter of a century to combat Lou Gehrig’s disease. Acknowledging her use is a ‘life-saving condition,’ an enlightened prosecutor has declined to prosecute her.

Those of us who smoked joints watching Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in the 1960’s are now in our 60’s. We have seen pharmaceutical companies overdose us with a sea of prescription pills that have led to unanticipated consequences and multi-million dollar class action lawsuits. None of us has ever died from weed, but we have all been victims of the war against it.

As we approach an age of decriminalization and even legalization, let me just say ‘welcome.’  If you support reform now, and you have not before, thanks for joining a good cause.

In Florida, an effort has been launched to place medical marijuana on next year’s ballot as a constitutional amendment. If the signature requirements are met, you will get to vote on it. Like every other state where people vote on cannabis, it will pass overwhelmingly, with bipartisan support in both red and blue counties. Pot has only one party.

Support those communities that want to legalize and medicalize cannabis, and you will be on the right side of history, part of a community wrongfully denied a voice and now, finally, after all these years, rightfully being recognized.

A Vision for the New NORML

NORML is the pioneer, the grand patron and founder of the marijuana policy reform movement in America. We are still here and by your side, and we are needed now, more than ever. 

Some have said that as our nation moves towards medicalization, decriminalization, or legalization, our tasks will be diminished, our duties lessened, our essence threatened.

The truth is that it is just the opposite. 

Now, with cannabis reforms about to blossom in city after city, from small communities to large counties, our nation needs a respected consumer advocacy group more than ever. 

Our nation needs a lobby such as the new NORML, firmly planted, and nationally respected, which will protect the rights of cannabis consumers, as no one else has in the past or can in the future.

Our nation needs a new NORML, which ensures that the distribution of cannabis to anyone is universally safe, readily accessible and fairly affordable to everyone.

Our nation needs a new NORML that ensures that the laws which legislatures pass favor freedom and fairness, not moneymakers or mercenaries.

Our nation needs a new NORML that ensures patients have access to safe medicine, consumers acquire healthy products, and distribution mechanisms protect gender, age, and race, available not just to corporate conglomerates but individual entrepreneurs.

The new NORML today contains a NORML Women’s Alliance representing the power of feminism and professionalism, bringing passion and gender diversity to the cause of personal freedom and individual choice.

The new NORML brings vast youth advocacy to the table, with hundreds of chapters in 50 states, young men and women fighting with their heart and soul to ensure scholarships are not revoked, driving privileges are not taken away, and jobs are not lost because they make legal decisions to use cannabis responsibly.

The new NORML will bring activists and academicians, economists and entrepreneurs, to political forums, explaining how justly taxing cannabis legally today can stop the bleeding of state, city and village budgets tomorrow.

The new NORML will still need and provide the national canvas with a network of criminal defense attorneys to represent clients who are wrongly arrested and unjustly prosecuted, from patients with medical conditions to adult drivers illegally stopped.

The new NORML needs to remind Americans that decriminalization in 18 states means we still have a ways to go in 32 others, where nearly a million Americans a year still go to jail for consuming cannabis. 

Thus, the new NORML needs to remind everyone that apathy and inertia has no room for intrusion; that our advocacy must still be engaged, that our voices still be heard.

The new NORML thus needs to blend innovative social media tools to drive activists with initiatives from coast to coast and in community after community. With hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook, and millions of cannabis consumers living and supporting our cause all across America, our word must be spread on the web and throughout the country. 

We must remind Americans everywhere that it is unjust and unfair for adults consuming cannabis privately and personally to get arrested anywhere, anytime, or in any place.

The new NORML needs to be advocates not just for patients who want access to safe medicine and fair distribution systems, but adults who demand the right to responsible use along with just access for righteous, recreational use, needing no apologies for exercising their individual sovereignty openly and freely.

The new NORML also needs to be advocates who rectify the injustices of past decades, for individuals whose futures were destroyed by a drug war that failed to do anything but ruin good lives with bad laws.

The new NORML needs to marshal public policy so that the laws are changed everywhere not in the next few decades, but in the next few years. To achieve national reform, we need to harness the energy and network of drug policy reform organizations throughout this country. We need to speak with a common voice and universal message.

The message to be shared and the story to be told is not just that prohibition was wrong all along, or that the drug war has been a financial and moral failure. That is a past we have learned all too well.

The message for the new NORML is to state that Americans citizens have always come to support equal civil liberties for all, from women to African Americans, to our friends in the gay and lesbian community. After decades of pain, that morning has come for cannabis consumers. The new NORML will celebrate the future, not condemn the past.

For 40 years, NORML has been on the side of those who embraced individual choice and the responsible use of cannabis, as an extension of personal freedom. 

Now, more than ever, the new NORML will remain by your side in order to ensure that as cannabis is distributed and disseminated to consumers from state to state, or coast to coast, it becomes readily accessible, equitably affordable and universally safe.

Thank you,

Norm Kent

Chair, NORML Board of Directors 

NORML Blog

• A Vision for a New NORML

  by Erik Altieri, NORML Communications Director February 28, 2013 A Message from the Chair of NORML’s Board of Directors, Norm Kent:
  
  NORML is the pioneer, the grand patron and founder of the marijuana policy reform movement in America. We are still here and by your side, and we are needed now, more than ever.
  Some have said that as our nation moves towards medicalization, decriminalization, or legalization, our tasks will be diminished, our duties lessened, our essence threatened.
  The truth is that it is just the opposite.
  Now, with cannabis reforms about to blossom in city after city, from small communities to large counties, our nation needs a respected consumer advocacy group more than ever.
  Our nation needs a lobby such as the new NORML, firmly planted, and nationally respected, which will protect the rights of cannabis consumers, as no one else has in the past or can in the future.
  Our nation needs a new NORML, which ensures that the distribution of cannabis to anyone is universally safe, readily accessible and fairly affordable to everyone.
  Our nation needs a new NORML that ensures that the laws which legislatures pass favor freedom and fairness, not moneymakers or mercenaries.
  Our nation needs a new NORML that ensures patients have access to safe medicine, consumers acquire healthy products, and distribution mechanisms protect gender, age, and race, available not just to corporate conglomerates but individual entrepreneurs.
  The new NORML today contains a NORML Women’s Alliance representing the power of feminism and professionalism, bringing passion and gender diversity to the cause of personal freedom and individual choice.
  The new NORML brings vast youth advocacy to the table, with hundreds of chapters in 50 states, young men and women fighting with their heart and soul to ensure scholarships are not revoked, driving privileges are not taken away, and jobs are not lost because they make legal decisions to use cannabis responsibly.
  The new NORML will bring activists and academicians, economists and entrepreneurs, to political forums, explaining how justly taxing cannabis legally today can stop the bleeding of state, city and village budgets tomorrow.
  The new NORML will still need and provide the national canvas with a network of criminal defense attorneys to represent clients who are wrongly arrested and unjustly prosecuted, from patients with medical conditions to adult drivers illegally stopped.
  The new NORML needs to remind Americans that decriminalization in 18 states means we still have a ways to go in 32 others, where nearly a million Americans a year still go to jail for consuming cannabis.
  Thus, the new NORML needs to remind everyone that apathy and inertia has no room for intrusion; that our advocacy must still be engaged, that our voices still be heard.
  The new NORML thus needs to blend innovative social media tools to drive activists with initiatives from coast to coast and in community after community. With hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook, and millions of cannabis consumers living and supporting our cause all across America, our word must be spread on the web and throughout the country. We must remind Americans everywhere that it is unjust and unfair for adults consuming cannabis privately and personally to get arrested anywhere, anytime, or in any place.
  The new NORML needs to be advocates not just for patients who want access to safe medicine and fair distribution systems, but adults who demand the right to responsible use along with just access for righteous, recreational use, needing no apologies for exercising their individual sovereignty openly and freely.
  The new NORML also needs to be advocates who rectify the injustices of past decades, for individuals whose futures were destroyed by a drug war that failed to do anything but ruin good lives with bad laws.
  The new NORML needs to marshal public policy so that the laws are changed everywhere not in the next few decades, but in the next few years. To achieve national reform, we need to harness the energy and network of drug policy reform organizations throughout this country. We need to speak with a common voice and universal message.
  The message to be shared and the story to be told is not just that prohibition was wrong all along, or that the drug war has been a financial and moral failure. That is a past we have learned all too well.
  The message for the new NORML is to state that Americans citizens have always come to support equal civil liberties for all, from women to African Americans, to our friends in the gay and lesbian community. After decades of pain, that morning has come for cannabis consumers. The new NORML will celebrate the future, not condemn the past.
  For 40 years, NORML has been on the side of those who embraced individual choice and the responsible use of cannabis, as an extension of personal freedom.
  Now, more than ever, the new NORML will remain by your side in order to ensure that as cannabis is distributed and disseminated to consumers from state to state, or coast to coast, it becomes readily accessible, equitably affordable and universally safe.
  Thank you,
  Norm Kent
  Chair, NORML Board of Directors

- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/#sthash.fYauLtL1.dpuf

All We Are Saying is 'Give Pot a Chance'

By Norm Kent

More and more prudent politicians, thoughtful columnists, and fiscally responsible legislators are re-thinking outdated marijuana laws. It is long overdue, and thoroughly welcome.

The mainstream view is to now decriminalize marijuana entirely, or allow for its distribution to adults legally. In fact, more than 70 percent of Americans support, at the very least, legalizing medical marijuana. Last year, citizens both in Colorado and the state of Washington voted for legalization. It is amazing what can happen when you close the curtain in that voting booth. We are developing a national recognition the ‘drug war’ has been a failure.

For decades, politicians running on ‘law and order’ campaigns were afraid to speak out about unjust drug laws, for fear of being perceived as ‘soft on crime.’ Consequently, they supported sending people to the joint for smoking joints. Florida is one of the more archaic states. Just a little more than a half an ounce of marijuana is still a felony, which can cost you not just your freedom, but expose you to losing a job, college scholarships and having your car forfeited. That is ludicrous.

In Florida this year, though, medical marijuana initiatives will be presented to the state legislature for consideration. Last week, in the Sun Sentinel, even conservative columnist Kingsley Guy suggested our nation’s drug laws be reconsidered. Leonard Pitts did so last year in the Herald. Encouraging and responsible voices for decriminalization are emerging everywhere. Across the nation, legislators or citizens in over 18 states have now voted for decriminalization or medical use. The wave has arrived. Let's all ride it.

Statistics for national marijuana arrests are kept by the FBI. In its last report, for 2011, 757,969 arrests for marijuana were reported nationwide- and over 663,000 of them were for simple possession. But in progressive states, where dispensaries are allowed and decriminalization has been advanced, arrests are down and society is not compromised. The trains still run on time and the world has not crumbled. In fact, new cottage industries are springing up for 'medibles,' herbal uses, and natural homeopathic uses for cannabis.

Three decades of harsh drug laws have done little more than institutionalize racism into our justice system. Statistically, minorities have always been incarcerated at a drastically higher rate than their Caucasian counterparts. But if you think Americans love guns, we love jails more. In fact, we put people in jail at 5 to 10 times the rate of most countries in the world, including all the democracies in Western Europe. But locking people up for smoking a joint is asinine, and must come to an end.

Last week, an appellate court stupidly refused to reschedule marijuana, maintaining its classification as a harmful drug with no respected medical uses. The decision employed strained logic and lacked common sense. It ignored documented studies establishing the medicinal uses of cannabis historically and presently. It will be used as a tool for continued repression and arrest. Hopefully, a higher appellate court will vaporize that ruling.  It was forty years ago that a Presidential commission had the foresight to recommend decriminalizing marijuana. Instead, our nation launched an unconscionable drug war against innocent citizens. That war is not against drugs. That war is against people, and it has inexcusably compromised our civil liberties.

None of this makes any sense in terms of public safety, health or fiscal policy. Federal crackdowns have not curtailed the ever-growing and omnipresent trade in marijuana. However, legalizing marijuana, or even allowing for medical dispensaries, will enhance urban and rural tax bases, and provide medical marijuana to those who need it. The federal government should defer to those states now doing so, allowing them a chance to see if this new approach won’t work successfully. If it can save lives, cut prison costs, generate tax revenues, and expand our essential freedoms, we ought to ‘give pot a chance.’

It is time for courageous community leaders and politicians to speak out against unjust marijuana laws, especially since most of them have smoked pot themselves. And look- they have grown up to become respected realtors, entrepreneurs and even educators. Let’s get real about pot. If you are a member of a local city commission, you should be directing your police agency to make pot arrests their lowest priority.

If Republicans really want to espouse core values such as individual liberty and states’ rights, along with economic opportunity, they should join in the emerging common sense approach to decriminalizing marijuana. If Democrats want to stand up for equality for all classes of citizens, and ending social injustice, they should also be proposing laws for responsible adult use of marijuana.

The decriminalization and legalization of marijuana is and has always been a cultural and political struggle. The laws against public legal consumption were never in the public interest. They have been tools to silence dissidents, minorities, and young people living outside the mainstream.  The federal government has always been the bully. Well, it is time we started passing anti-bullying laws.

The gay community should be especially concerned as well. Informal polling in the LGBT community shows not only 80 percent support decriminalization, but routine use and social acceptance, from age 22 to 82. Less than a month ago in an emerging gay-centric community in South Florida, Wilton Manors, a 75-year-old retired Harvard professor was taken to jail for smoking a joint in his living room. The laws would be a joke if they did not fashion such an injustice from coast to coast.

If pot smokers had come out of the closet with the courage and numbers that gay and lesbians have, we would be further along the path to legalization. But maybe the LGBT community can do for cannabis activists what they have done for themselves- stand up and be counted. Gay men and women should actively support and join the growing nationwide movement for marijuana legalization.

You ought to be able to put into your body what you want, whether it’s a partner’s private part or a joint you rolled. As the Supreme Court justices wrote in the landmark case defining gay rights in Texas just a few years ago,  there is a sphere of civil liberties beyond government control. That is the fundamental premise of our constitution, and it is one we should always fight for. It is not about the pot. It is about your right to choose. As gay men and women, we should always choose free choice as our governor. As American citizens, we should embrace those who do so as well.