Pubdate: Sun, 09 Jan 2005
Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Anderson Valley Advertiser
Contact:  http://www.theava.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667
Author: Fred Gardner
Referenced: the Washington Post article 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n017/a04.html
Referenced: the LA Times reprint 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n057/a06.html
Referenced: What Color Is Montana? 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n014/a03.html
Referenced: The Brain's Own Marijuana 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1742/a03.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Keith+Stroup (Keith Stroup)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

SITUATION NORML

Allen St. Pierre, NORML's longtime second-in-command, has succeeded
Keith Stroup as national director. The Washington Post devoted a long
article Jan. 4 to Stroup's departure. Reporter Peter Carlson and his
editors didn't spare the lame puns we've come to expect when the
subject is cannabis.

"Exhale, Stage Left," was the inane headline. ("Left" means you want
the working class to have power. Neither Keith Stroup nor NORML ever
pursued such a goal.)

The subhead was misleading: "At 61, Longtime Marijuana Lobby Leader
Keith Stroup Is Finally Leaving the Joint." (Stroup is not giving up
his drug of choice.)

Carlson visited Stroup at the NORML office in Washington. He remarks
the irony of Stroup using Tylenol for a cold, but misses the
significance (even the longtime head of NORML isn't hip to the liver
damage Tylenol causes).

"Stroup got the idea to form a pro-marijuana lobbying group in 1968,"
writes Carlson. "It was the kind of pipe dream that floated through
the heads of countless pot smokers during long nights of deep
inhaling, but Stroup actually did it -hustling $5,000 in seed money
from the Playboy Foundation..." (Was it really common for people to
hallucinate business plans for non-profits?)

Worse than the Post's dopey double-entendres is the bourgeois history:
"In 1972, Stroup got unexpected help from an unlikely source: The
National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, appointed by
President Nixon, issued its final report, concluding that marijuana is
relatively harmless and that possession of less than an ounce should
be legal. Nixon rejected the report, but Stroup used it as a lobbying
tool in his increasingly successful campaign to reduce penalties for
pot. In 1975, five states -Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine and
Ohio-removed criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of
the weed."

The National Commission on Marijuana was formed in response to an
authentic mass movement. By the end of the 1960s, millions of young
Americans in the military and on the campuses were smoking marijuana
and/or calling for an end to U.S. intervention in Vietnam and social
and economic injustices at home.  It was the movement that provided
NORML with help -momentum, credibility; the Commission was part of the
containment process (although some of its well-meaning members didn't
realize it). Led by Pennsylvania Governor Ray Shafer, the Commission
conducted a year of hearings and concluded that possession of less
than an ounce should be decriminalized -not "should be legal," as per
the Post story. "Decrim," as the policy wonks call it, means that the
citizen caught with a baggie of mj gets a ticket and pays a fine; he
or she could be arrested and face criminal charges if caught again, or
even on the first encounter if the cop doesn't like the cut of his or
her jib. The basic relationship between citizen and cop is unchanged.
The citizen remains fearful and illegitimate.

NORML hailed the Commission's support for decriminalization as a "win"
and zealously pushed "decrim" measures at the state and city level,
claiming credit for more and more wins. Movement bureaucrats assume
that wins lead to donations and are forever taking credit for them.
It's amazing that things keep getting worse despite all those wins.

Stroup and others in the NORML leadership did not attack the Shafer
Commission for remaining silent on a matter that it had been expected
to address, a matter of utmost importance: marijuana's "Schedule 1"
status (potential for abuse and no medical use) under the new federal
Controlled Substances Act. Instead, NORML petitioned the Drug
Enforcement Administration to reschedule marijuana, a gentlemanly
process that dragged on for more than 20 years before a federal judge
uttered the final "No." At some point in the 1980s (when Stroup was
temporarily out of the leadership), NORML stipulated that marijuana
does indeed have a high potential for abuse! Their lawyers advised
that medical use could be established easily, and dropping the safety
question would speed the petition process to a successful conclusion.
"Too clever by half," the English might say. In Brooklyn they'd say,
"Fuckin' jackasses!"

Carlson casually slanders George Soros and Peter Lewis as he gets
Stroup and Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project hissing at one
another. "In the'90s, two new groups arose to advocate drug-law
reform, each bankrolled by an eccentric billionaire. The Drug Policy
Alliance is funded by financier George Soros. The Marijuana Policy
Project, founded by former NORML staffer Rob Kampia, is funded by
insurance mogul Peter Lewis. Both groups have spent millions on state
referendums to legalize medical marijuana -many successful, some not.
But Stroup has failed to find an eccentric billionaire sugar daddy for
NORML.

"'I wish we had that kind of funding,' he says. 'If I had the kind of
funding that Kampia has, I think I could have done a lot more with it
than he has.'" This is sour grapes (not to mention elitism, as if only
the top honchos determine what an organization achieves).

Carlson continues: "Now NORML limps by on about $750,000 a year, most
of it raised from dues paid by about 12,000 members. It's not enough
money to do much politicking, so NORML is now largely a service
organization for pot smokers, providing tips on beating drug tests and
legal advice for arrested smokers.

"Over the past year money was so tight that Stroup laid off two
staffers and stopped collecting his $75,000-a-year salary for two months.

"'I view NORML as a small and shrinking dinosaur,' says Kampia.
'NORML's time has come and gone.'" Gracious in victory, isn't he? The
MPP budget for 2004 exceeded $7 million. Peter Lewis of Progressive
Insurance gave $4.65 million and most of the rest came in donations of
$1,000 or more. MPP's systematic dunning netted $426,000 in small
donations ($25 or less) from suckers like you.

There's not enough ideological difference between NORML and MPP to
call this a faction fight. It's been about money and private power.
Maybe Allen St. Pierre and the NORML crew can change that by finding a
way out of the single-issue trap.

p.s. The L.A. Times ran Carlson's story Sunday 1/9 under the headline
"Turning a New Leaf," which implies that NORML will be taking a
different approach under Stroup's successor (a subject the story
didn't address at all). Some of these headline writers are so addicted
to puns that they'll abandon meaning, clarity, relevance, everything
just so they can get their fix.

- -----

"WHAT COLOR IS MONTANA?"

That's the title of the lead essay in the New York Times Sunday
Magazine by a writer named Walter Kirn, who seeks to explain why
Montanans voted for President Bush in November, 2004, and also passed
a medical marijuana initiative (by a 62-38 margin). "My guess," writes
Kirn, "is that they had lots of little private reasons -Grandpa just
won't eat since he got lung cancer; the Beatles smoked dope, but they
sure did write great songs; the stuff can't be any worse for you than
Vioxx- and a handful of larger, more thoughtful reasons linked to
concerns about personal liberty, prescription-drug costs and states'
rights."

Kirn's guess is correct, for sure, but the reasons he lists second are
not "larger, more thoughtful" than the reasons he lists first. A
person can be "thoughtful," a reason can't.  (A reason can be
"abstract." The Times used to pay people to catch these things.)

Too bad Senator Kerry didn't realize he had a winning issue. It's not
entirely his fault. In mid-October Kerry told an interviewer for an
Oregon TV station that, if elected, he would not allow DEA raids on
people growing and distributing marijuana under state law. But the
corporate media ignored the bold pledge to reverse Bush Administration
policy, and MPP and other movement publicists did almost nothing to
amplify or bring it to national attention.

- -----

GOOD OLD SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

"Marijuana has clear medicinal benefits," Roger A. Nicoll and Bradley
N. Alger state unambiguously in an article in the December 2004
Scientific American. "Marijuana alleviates pain and anxiety. It can
prevent the death of injured neurons. It suppresses vomiting and
enhances appetite-useful features for patients suffering the severe
weight loss that can result from chemotherapy."

Nicoll is a professor of pharmacology at UC San Francisco, Alger a
professor of physiology and psychiatry at the University of Maryland
School of Medicine. Their article, entitled "The Brain's Own
Marijuana," focuses on how the endocannabinoid system was discovered
and how it works. An accompanying editorial calls on the federal
government "to make it easier for American researchers to at least
examine marijuana for possible medical benefits." 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake