Pubdate: Sun, 8 Jun 2008
Source: Aspen Daily News (CO)
Copyright: 2008 Aspen Daily News
Contact: http://www.aspendailynews.com/submit-letter-editor
Website: http://www.aspendailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/635
Author: Andrew Travers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/NORML (NORML)

CANNABIS CRUSADERS

There are some things higher than the laws. -- Clarence Darrow, 1920

The number of Americans arrested for marijuana-related offenses is 
inching toward 20 million. The first such arrestee, it turns out, was 
an unemployed overall-clad Colorado farmhand who sold two marijuana 
cigarettes to an undercover federal agent in a Denver hotel in 
October 1937. Sentenced to four years in prison, Samuel Caldwell died 
of stomach cancer in Leavenworth prison before he could complete the 
term -- also making him, some believe, the first unofficial medical 
marijuana patient.

But if the attorneys for the National Organization for the Reform of 
Marijuana Laws (NORML) have their way, smokers and dealers will no 
longer fill the nation's prison beds. The dope lawyers descended on 
Aspen this weekend for a legal seminar covering everything from the 
intricacies of medical marijuana laws to search-and-seizure statutes 
to high-driving standards.

Despite the skunky scent in the air this weekend at The Gant, where 
the conference was held, this is not a circle of zooded 
Funyun-munching stoners. It is an assembly of committed reformers 
fighting against what they believe are unjust drug prohibition laws.

Since its founding in 1970, the organization has lobbied legislators 
and bent local laws with vigilant persistence. And after almost four 
decades, they believe the green tide of justice is slowly turning in 
their favor.

"The federal government remains recalcitrant on every level," said 
Allen St. Pierre, NORML's head lawyer and self-proclaimed Head Head. 
"But on the city and state level we're making progress on medical and 
decrim. And look at the culture. Look at the popularity of the show 
'Weeds.' Look at this whole 4/20 phenomenon that popped up 
organically while the feds were spending millions on anti-drug ad 
campaigns. How many states will it take before the federal government 
takes action? 25? 26? The national culture and the states are going 
to push Congress into action."

NORML was founded by attorney Keith Stroup, who remains active in the 
organization. He attended the weekend conference, and is currently 
appealing a Massachusetts conviction entered against him for smoking 
pot at a rally with High Times publisher Rick Cusick last year. Two 
years after Stroup started NORML, a federal commission convened by 
President Richard Nixon concluded that marijuana use did not pose a 
threat to society and they recommended eliminating criminal penalties 
for adult users.

Nixon rejected the commission's recommendations. But NORML was 
emboldened. And Stroup's bifer army has since made inroads to 
legalization, getting medical marijuana provisions passed in 14 
states -- including Colorado -- and decriminalizing it from New York 
to California.

Their efforts have rendered the drug quasi-legal in much of the 
country, and they believe outright legalization is no longer a pipe 
dream, but an inevitability.

However, the progress has also brought some unintended and 
undesirable results. The least of which is the quality and 
availability of the drug ("When we get legalization we're going to 
have a lot of demands for the government on growing and taxation," 
Stroup said).

Overlapping and contradictory local and federal drug laws have 
ensnared hundreds of drug users in recent years. Marijuana may be 
legal to smoke when prescribed by a doctor in places such as 
California and Colorado, but transporting it is still illegal. Thus, 
as attorney William Panzer pointed out, a nurse carrying medical 
cannabis down a hospital hallway is technically a felon.

Panzer co-authored California's Proposition 215, the nation's first 
successful medical marijuana ballot initiative, and said most of the 
new laws are intrinsically flawed. In Colorado, for instance, it is 
legal for people with debilitating medical conditions to grow up to 
six marijuana plants or to possess two ounces of dried buds. But the 
number of plants is essentially meaningless, Panzer said, because of 
their varying size and harvest potential. If they yield more than two 
ounces of marijuana, for instance, the legal plants yield an illegal crop.

"Plant numbers don't make any sense," Panzer said. "That's like 
trying to guess how much 10 dogs weigh." More than 100 medical 
marijuana-prescribed patients are currently facing criminal charges 
in California, Panzer claimed.

The transforming legal landscape is also killing people, said 
Seattle-based lawyer Doug Hiatt. Hiatt gave an impassioned 
presentation at the conference Friday about ill clients of his who 
have been knocked off of organ donation lists because they tested 
positive for marijuana that had been prescribed and administered by 
their doctors.

"I don't think anybody who voted for a medical marijuana law in the 
state of Washington saw this bullshit as a result of it," Hiatt said. 
He told the story of a hepatitis patient who medically qualified as a 
top donor recipient for the liver transplant he needed. But the state 
donation board denied him the organ because he was a medical 
marijuana patient, and he died while Hiatt appealed the decision.

In addition to the legal seminars, the NORML conference provided a 
social gathering for the like-minded legalization advocates. Evening 
smokeouts were held at the Aspen home of former National Association 
of Criminal Defense Lawyers President Gerald Goldstein and at the 
Woody Creek ranch of the late writer Hunter S. Thompson.

"These conferences are the most intellectually stimulating thing I 
get to do every year," former Washington state Senator George 
Rohrbacher said over a poolside joint at The Gant. "We're not making 
any money off of this work. We just believe in an America that 
doesn't lock people up for getting high." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake