Paul Armentano, deputy director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said that, in part because ASD parents had anecdotal evidence about the benefits of medical marijuana, the scientific community has taken an interest in exploring these drugs.“It is because of their advocacy that the scientific community is just now beginning to substantiate the patient community’s claims,” Armentano told Healthline. “As is often the case with issues surrounding cannabis, both science and the law are playing ‘catch up.'”

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, received the NORML Rufus King Sr. Public Leadership Award for her outstanding public leadership in marijuana law reform, according to Greenentrepreneur.com.

“Making marijuana legal at the federal level is the smart thing to do, it’s the right thing to do. I know this as a former prosecutor and I know it as a senator.” (A similar statement earned her praise — and an A- rating — from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.)

In today’s hyper-partisan environment, few issues enjoy majority support among those on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. But voters’ support for marijuana law reform is bucking this trend.

Justin Strekal, political director of the pro-legalization group NORML, said in a statement that the proposal is another sign of the “growing public support for ending our failed war on cannabis consumers.”

"To have 21 licenses for the entire state of Illinois is an oligopoly," says Dan Linn, executive director of the Illinois chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. "The path of least resistance is to give a handout to current licensees—but is that the best way to bring in the most tax revenue and create the most jobs?"

NORML Political Director Justin Strekal called the new bill "a thoughtful and thorough approach to how the federal government could ultimately end prohibition." “Hailing from the first state to decriminalize marijuana back in 1973, Senator Wyden has a unique and much-needed perspective that his colleagues in the nation’s upper chamber would be wise to follow,” he said. “With 420 legislation pending in both chambers of Congress, the next logical step is for lawmakers to sit in a circle and finally hash out their differences,” NORML's Strekal joked.

"It's more worth noting what the President hasn't said when it comes to marijuana," said Justin Strekal, policy director for cannabis advocacy group NORML. "In the past, when lawmakers would make the case for the absurd policy of a border wall ... they would include marijuana in their laundry list of drug complaints, and the president chose not to do so," Strekal said.

Investigators reported that nearly 70 percent of respondents said that they substituted cannabis for prescription medications, primarily opioids. Forty-five percent of those surveyed acknowledged substituting cannabis for alcohol and 31 percent of respondents said that they used marijuana in place of tobacco.

Keith Stroup, who founded the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in 1970, says the answer is more demographic than political. “It’s not because we’ve come up with better arguments or a strategy,” he says. “It’s because we’ve outlived our opponents.” “We gradually won the hearts and minds of a majority of Americans, including nonsmokers,” he says — in part by convincing them that regulation was a better way than prohibition to prevent problems such as teenage use.

“It’s no secret that Chairman Nadler is a supporter of comprehensive reform that would end the cruel policy of federal criminalization, having previously cosponsored legislation to do so,” said Justin Strekal, political director for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “Mr. Nadler has always been receptive to his constituents and deriving evidence-based solutions, so we are looking forward to working with him and the whole Judiciary Committee to advance legislation in this Congress.”

But in recent years NORML has adopted the social justice rhetoric and priorities of newer groups. Its New York leader, David Holland, has reservations about Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act. It fails to expunge the records of those convicted under current laws, bars individuals from growing any amount of their own weed, centralizes power and discretion in the Office of Cannabis Management and leaves apparent "wiggle room" for large national and international firms to dominate the market by establishing operations that grow, distribute and sell the product.

NORML Political Director Justin Strekal said Barr is "incredibly wise to acknowledge that the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to the marijuana reform movement. Now is the time for the Department of Justice to work in good faith with the Senate Judiciary Committee on legislative solutions that address the senseless waste of law enforcement's precious time and resources due to the failed federal policy of prohibition," he said.

Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), is the co–author of “Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?,” and the author of “The Citizen’s Guide to State-By-State Marijuana Laws.” "At this point the data is clear, consistent, and convincing. When legal access to marijuana is available, you a see decline in abuse of and death from opioids. To deny that reality at this point is to deny gravity,” he told Healthline.

"Pittsburgh attorney Patrick K. Nightingale is executive director of the local chapter of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws and a member of the law firm Cannabis Legal Solutions. He said Fetterman’s tour is good news. “With the governor now taking this seriously and seeing the lieutenant governor becoming directly involved, I am very optimistic that this will keep the issue front and center and that it won’t die even if a bill is not passed immediately,” Nightingale said.

Led by the Colorado and Denver chapters of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, many pot supporters will be there all day in the hopes of meeting with elected officials. According to Colorado NORML director Ashley Weber, they're looking for a lawmaker to sponsor legislation that would change employer drug testing in Colorado from relying on blood or body-fluid draws to impairment tests.

“CBD has become the poster child for the health benefits of marijuana,” says Jenn Michelle Pedini, development director for NORML, a nonprofit advocacy group that seeks to reform marijuana laws. She’s also executive director of its Virginia affiliate.

Ohio is a medical marijuana state, whose dispensaries have only just opened. “Joyce has come really far, really fast on marijuana policy,” Justin Strekal of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws told me.

Erik Altieri, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he expects additional communities across the U.S. to follow suit "as more and more Americans are demanding that we replace our policies of incarceration and prohibition with legalization and regulation."

This shift in political support among governors bodes well for the prospects of the passage of successful legislative reforms in various states in 2019 and beyond. While to date only one state — Vermont — has moved to legalize adult marijuana use via legislation (as opposed to the passage of voter initiatives), it appears likely that as many as four to five additional states (e.g., Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Illinois and Rhode Island) may similarly do so in the near future.

"There exists now for the first-time significant political support among a majority of U.S. governors for marijuana policy reform," NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said in an email. "But this support is also more partisan than ever before—with Democratic governors in growing numbers advocating for change while Republican governors are either remaining silent on the issue or campaigning in opposition to such reforms."

“Whether it’s a school nurse, local hospital or Veterans Affairs facility, no health care provider should discriminate against patients whose physician-recommended medical regimen includes cannabis,” said NORML Political Director Justin Strekal in a statement to Newsweek Monday. “The policy response offered by Representative Blake and other lawmakers throughout the country is the correct one, because no patient should be denied in their quest to mitigate the suffering from legitimate physical or mental ailments.”

Michael Cutler, a Northampton lawyer who wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in the 2014 case, said that the “heart of these cases” is that the smell of marijuana can’t be equated with possessing an illegal amount of the substance. “In order to have probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, you’ve got to demonstrate that a greater amount of cannabis [is in a person’s possession],” he said. “You’ve got to have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, not that a civil infraction has been committed.”

Jenn Michelle Pedini, the executive director for Virginia NORML, said progress had been made in getting the state to expand access to medical cannabis.

...“In 2016, we passed a bill that let us go forth and write a regulatory program that was based on Connecticut’s then-program, which was also low-THC, extraction-based products only and served to a small set of patients,” Pedini said.

Among cannabis policy analysts and the people who report on drug policy, Armentano has a reputation for possessing an almost encyclopedic knowledge of marijuana research. When we talked in October, he expressed irritation at shady actors promoting CBD for applications that haven't been studied and for hawking CBD health products that contain so little of the active ingredient that they may as well be sugar pills.

"The idea that it's going to be in this balm or that balm, I don't know what the scientific basis for that is," Armentano says of lotions that claim to contain CBD. "The people who are talking the loudest about CBD don't have a scientific background. They are marketers and advertisers, and they have done a hell of a job."

In March 2017, Illinois State Rep. Kelly Cassidy and Sen. Heather Steans began co-drafting the Tax & Regulate Cannabis like Alcohol bill. In the nearly two years since, Chicago NORML, a local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, has encouraged Illinois legislators to prioritize social equity and criminal justice in the final version of the bill. 

"While we're encouraged by Republicans coming forward with it, we're cautiously optimistic about what it should contain," said Lee Otts with N.O.R.M.L Memphis.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) lauded the Oregon Democrat who issued a statement about bipartisan congressional efforts to legalize marijuana or create "common sense" regulation.