The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) is beginning the New Year by coordinating the nomination of the Netherlands for a Nobel Prize for its achievements in minimizing drug use in its citizens, while at the same time restricting imprisonment.
On Friday, January 16, the venerable NBC news show Dateline has scheduled an hour-long profile of the tragic death of Florida college student Rachel Hoffman. Ms. Hoffman was arrested with cannabis and unfortunately trusted local police to become an undercover informant, which ultimately led to her murder.
Since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, despite the government’s best, but utterly feckless efforts to suppress cannabis culture and use in America, the ‘buzz’ in Washington D.C. and nationwide these days about alternatives to cannabis prohibition is palpable.
If these are Mr. Goddard’s genuine concerns then he should consider joining NORML’s staff on a ‘fact finding’ mission to Amsterdam to see how readily cannabis can be distributed to adults for responsible use and his staff should download and read NORML’s drugged driving information and recommendations.
It brings me no joy to point out that some of the leaders of the law enforcement community in my home state of Massachusetts have apparently lost their minds in anticipation of a minor change in criminal law that will soon formalize the decriminalization of a small amount of cannabis.
Nevertheless, the marijuana community is guardedly optimistic. “Reformers will probably be disappointed that Obama is not going to go as far as they want, but we’re probably not going to continue this mindless path of prohibition,” NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre tells me.
Some of Obama’s biggest financial donors are friends of the legalization movement, St. Pierre notes.
With the entire cabinet nominated (save for US Ambassador to the United Nations and director of the Central Intelligence Agency), who is President–elect Obama going to nominate as director of the Office Of National Drug Control Policy (a.k.a. ‘Drug Czar’).
According to the ministry of justice ‘coffee shops’ in The Netherlands where cannabis is sold fell from 729 in 2005 to 702 in 2007.
Dutch drug policy expert Peter Cohen tells NORML that the efforts of the anti-cannabis Christian Democratics “maybe no more than a prelude to some sort of regulation of cannabis production for recreational use. Every one is ready for it.”