“Steve’s vision helped to transform the mainstream narrative surrounding cannabis,” said NORML’s Paul Armentano. “That transformation played a major role in the policy successes we enjoy today, and it will continue to pay dividends going forward. His efforts and his prescience will be sorely missed.”
In a milestone that will no doubt go largely unnoticed by the mainstream media, today…
Health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers than they are for those who use cannabis, and are more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers, according to a report published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal.
This week we’ve seen three usually staid mainstream media outlets – Newsweek Magazine, the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and FOX Business News – examining the growing movement in California and nationwide to discuss the inevitable re-legalization of cannabis in America.
Former Seattle Police Chief (and present NORML Advisory Board Member) Norm Stamper voices his views that marijuana is objectively safer than alcohol in today’s Huffington Post.
In a society awash in alcohol, he dares to ask the pivotal question:
Why do our laws embrace and celebrate the use of alcohol, an intoxicant that directly contributes to tens of thousands of deaths annually and countless social problems, while stigmatizing and criminalizing the use of cannabis, a substance that is incapable of causing lethal overdose and is associated with far fewer societal costs?