SAN BERNARDINO — Get out in the community and work with others to legalize marijuana was the message at Saturday’s Spring Gathering, a music festival and medical marijuana expo featuring such artists as Snoop Dog and Cypress Hill. The event also featured a panel discussion where speakers urged those attending to get involved politically and tell nonsmoking friends about the benefits of marijuana, Wes Woods II reports in the San Bernardino Sun. “Everything you can do,” said Stephen Gutwillig, state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, including supporting cannabis movement organizations, sympathetic elected officials, giving [...]
George Mull opposed Proposition 19. Steve DeAngelo campaigned for it. Which made it all the more interesting at the recent CalNORML conference in Berkeley, where both said that medical cannabis distribution in California is — and I’m paraphrasing here — a total fucking mess. Mull is a Sacramento attorney who represents several NorCal collectives, and their struggles in assorted cities and counties have convinced him that statewide regulation is necessary. To that end, he co-founded the California Cannabis Association and actively campaigned against Prop. 19, which he feared would erode patient rights under Prop. 215 [...]
The Drug Policy Alliance gets top billing today in our belated video coverage of CalNORML’s marijuana reform conference in Berkeley. Ethan Nadelmann, DPA’s founder and executive director, and California director Stephen Gutwillig both possess a keen understanding of the political process, and their thoughts on legalization in 2012 deserve special attention. First and foremost is understanding that political compromises will be necessary to craft a winning initiative. Politics is a contact sport, after all, and purists can only watch from the sidelines. “It’s what’s winnable that goes as far as possible,” Nadelmann told the CalNORML [...]
Feb 132011
One of the joys of having your own blog is setting your own deadlines. Sure, it’s been a couple of weeks since the California NORML reform conference in Berkeley, but it’s taken that long to figure out my new video-editing software. So the game plan is to play catch-up over the next week or so with fresh videos from that uber-important conference; contact me if you like what you see and/or think I should stick to writing. ;o) Today’s selection features Joe Rogoway, a criminal defense attorney who’s involved with the California Cannabis Initiative, which [...]
Bud’s note: From across the pond, writer and “proud Welshman” Peter Reynolds offers this fascinating perspective on the challenges that cannabis users face in the U.K. Take note of how “cannabis” has negative connotations in the British media, even though the term is becoming the preferred alternative to “marijuana” in the U.S. =============== Cannabis is a political issue. Make no mistake about it. The scientific, moral, medical and health arguments have all been won. What we need to do now is find a way to make change happen. It’s in the prohibitionists’ interests to keep [...]
Feb 012011
This weekend’s CalNORML reform conference in Berkeley sold out, prompting organizers to promise a larger venue next time. Their agenda was plenty big enough already, with complex issues facing medical cannabis advocates and proponents of legal, non-medical use. (Click here for CalNORML video coverage.) Steph Sherer, the national director of Americans for Safe Access, called for more civil discourse after Prop. 19 launched a war of words online. But she didn’t mince words when she targeted “outrageous” cannabis taxes, like the ones passed by conference host Berkeley and nine other California cities in November. “As [...]
California, whose initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use drew national headlines this year, is notoriously tolerant of a drug considered an evil weed in some parts of the country, the Los Angeles Times notes in this editorial. But is our lax attitude creating a school system full of Jeff Spicolis, the iconic California stoner from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”? R. Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama administration’s drug czar, suspects that it is. After an annual survey of teen drug use nationwide found that marijuana smoking is on the rise among eighth- through 12th-graders, Kerlikowske attributed [...]
Dec 012010
Title: Marijuana Reform Conference – BerkeleyLocation: David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, BerkeleyLink out: Click hereDescription: Join with leaders of the marijuana reform movement, pubic officials, medical cannabis providers, patients and advocates for a post-Prop. 19 conference. Registration is $30 per person (includes lunch). Sponsored by California NORML. For sponsorship information, write to conference@canorml.org or call 415-563-5858.Start Time: 09:30Date: 2011-01-29End Time: 17:30
So it’s not exactly the Nobel Peace Prize. But then again, when it comes to weed activism, maybe it is. Veteran California marijuana author and advocate Dale Gieringer was honored in Amsterdam Nov. 25 as the High Times magazine “Freedom Fighter of the Year.” Gieringer has been the California director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws since 1987, Peter Hecht reports in “Weed Wars.” He is a co-author of the Marijuana Medical Handbook, billed as a “practical guide to the therapeutic uses of marijuana.” He was also a leading supporter of the [...]
Who killed Proposition 19? It’s a question that cannabis legalization proponents will be asking themselves for weeks to come, Robert Gammon observes in the East Bay Express. Was it the Tea Partiers who came out in droves this year? Was it apathetic young voters who stayed away from the polls? Or was it the marijuana-producing counties of Northern California, which feared losing market share of their main cash crop? Each of those story lines have already received plenty of attention. But a closer look at election results and exit polling data points to a different [...]
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