Please join me, NORML’s board of directors and the best and brightest speakers in the world about cannabis this October, right on San Francisco Bay, to review the past year’s law reform efforts, strategize about future reforms and celebrate cannabis’ unique place in culture, medicine and humanity.
The California Court of Appeals, Fourth District, ruled yesterday that the state law requiring counties to issue identification cards to authorized medical marijuana patients is constitutional and must be implemented by the counties.
Rob Kampia from the Marijuana Policy Project discussed the broader implications of the federal government passing decriminalization legislation and how it could affect state efforts to reform cannabis laws, notably this November’s decriminalization initiative on the ballot in Massachusetts.
Ask any seasoned drug policy reformer about one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in reforming cannabis laws and they’ll quickly acknowledge that to be the lack of both outreach to and participation from minorities (and women).
In the seminal legal case challenging the US government’s mis-scheduling of cannabis under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act (CSA), NORML vs. DEA, at a crucial junction in 1988, which would have readily ended most administrative law challenges, NORML, et al (Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, Drug Policy Foundation, etc…) won the re-scheduling argument before Drug Enforcement Administration Law Judge Francis Young.
It is becoming increasingly more difficult for America’s Office Of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to continue to claim that cannabis is not a valuable and acceptable medicine.
A few months ago it was Iowa’s Democratic Senator Tom Harkin that was replying to his constituents claiming cannabis “use often has fatal consequences” and that cannabis users may actually sell their children for ‘drug’ money.
Now, Senator Charles Grassley (R) in a letter to constituents, oddly equates cannabis use to genocide, murder and child rape.
Bloom & Halperin’s Pot Culture profoundly demonstrates the resiliency of cannabis consumers in the face of a historically alcohol-dominant culture and so-called stoners’ abilities to create a nurturing and sustained pot culture.