• Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Just Say Now! – NORML Conference 2010 Footage Now Available

    The leaves are starting to change color, harvest season is upon us, and fall has officially begun. As the days grow shorter and the temperature gets a bit cooler it is a good time to reflect on the year that was in cannabis law reform.

    2010 turned the steady momentum we had built in previous years and amplified it to a near unstoppable force. Nowhere was the enthusiastic spirit more prevalent than at this years annual NORML Conference in Portland, OR. The theme, “Just Say Now!”, was perfectly encapsulated in both the mood and tone of speakers and attendees. With the addition of states such as New Jersey and the District of Columbia to the list of localities legalizing some form of medical use and Proposition 19 only five weeks from the polling booth, there is much to be optimistic about.

    NORML invites to you visit our site at www.youtube.com/natlnorml and experience some of the conference’s best moments. For now, treat yourself to speeches from show stealers Alice Huffman and Greta Gaines, as well as a recap of the first day of the conference. More will continue to be posted in the coming days.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Federalism and Medical Marijuana

    Let the states serve as experimental laboratories.

    By Patri Friedman

    Since medical marijuana was legalized in California in 1996, use has been widespread. And once the Obama administration reduced the harassment, the number of dispensaries has grown rapidly. Not that pot was ever that hard to get out West, but it is now fair to say that the “medical” qualification is close to irrelevant.

    So marijuana is now de facto legal in California, requiring only a couple hundred bucks and a short doctor’s visit to become a qualified purchaser. Perhaps as a result, a ballot initiative to fully legalize marijuana is polling at about even odds in the Golden State, and marijuana initiatives are in the pipeline elsewhere.

    Now, any libertarian must raise a cup, pipe, vaporizer (or whatever) to finally seeing a little bit of progress in the demented War On People Who Use Some Kinds Of Drugs. Combined with the resurgence in research on medical uses of psychedelics—which often find positive benefits—it looks like this may be the beginning of a positive shift in America’s drug policy. Slow, partial, and late, but in the right direction.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Public Forum: Where is Marijuana Reform Heading?

    The ACLU-WA presented a discussion on the history, current status, and future of marijuana-law reform in Washington and the United States. Local and national panelists included travel writer Rick Steves; Keith Stroup, founder of, and legal counsel to, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; Washington state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles; Rob Kampia, co-founder and executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project; and Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Moderated by ACLU-WA Drug Policy Director Alison Holcomb.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    License Cannabis Sales, Expert Says

    Policymakers should consider allowing the licensed sale of cannabis for recreational use, says one of the UK’s leading researchers of the drug.

    Professor Roger Pertwee is to make the call in a speech at the British Science Association festival in Birmingham.

    He is expected to say radical solutions have to be considered because he believes the current policy of criminalising cannabis is ineffective.

    But the government insists decriminalisation would not work.

    The dismissal last year of Professor David Nutt as the previous government’s leading drugs adviser showed it was in no mood to consider relaxing the status of cannabis as an illegal class B drug.

    It is a view shared by the current government, but Prof Pertwee, an expert on cannabis-like chemicals, is to tell scientists that he, like Professor Nutt, believes it is a policy that is doing more harm than good

    “I’m talking about harm minimisation,” he told BBC News.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    The Next Frontier Of Drug Policy Reform

    by Ethan Nadelmann

    Ethan Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

    For those of us who fought long and hard to reform the notorious 100-to-one crack/powder cocaine disparity in federal law, the Fair Sentencing Act, signed by President Obama on August 3, is at once a historic victory and a major disappointment. It’s both too little, too late and a big step forward.

    The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which punished the sale of five grams of crack cocaine the same as 500 grams of powder cocaine, reflected the bipartisan drug war hysteria of the day and was approved with virtually no consideration of scientific evidence or the fiscal and human consequences. The argument for reform has always been twofold: sending someone to federal prison for five years for selling the equivalent of a few sugar packets of cocaine is unreasonably harsh, and it disproportionately affects minorities (almost 80 percent of those sentenced are African-Americans, even though most users and sellers of crack are not black).