Without marijuana there would be no marijuana smokers and without marijuana smokers there would be no marijuana legalization movement.
Tag: Keith Stroup
Jimmy Carter was the first US President ever to endorse the decriminalization of marijuana, first during his 1976 campaign and again in 1977 in a statement to Congress — which I helped to draft
That enormous challenge of reversing marijuana prohibition would not have been possible without the earlier work of LeMar, Amorphia and those pot-head jazz musicians and hip poets.
One of the more pleasant personal benefits of spending much of my professional life working at NORML has been the opportunity to meet and work with a number of interesting celebrities who were equally motivated to speak out against marijuana prohibition.
When I started NORML in late 1970 I realized that our movement would need the support of some courageous doctors and other health experts to overcome the widely-held perception that existed at that time that marijuana must remain a crime to protect the public health. I found that support in Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Dr. Norman Zinberg, and others.
Few people contributed more to NORML and our efforts to assist the victims of marijuana prohibition during our early years than Gerry Goldstein.
High Times founder Tom Forcade and Legal Counsel Michael J. Kennedy assured the magazine remained a major NORML financial supporter, until it was recently sold to corporate greedheads!
Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Foundation ended up providing NORML’s initial funding in early 1971 and subsequently became our primary funder throughout the 1970s.