NORMLIZER - MAY 2007

This past fall in Washington, DC, I attended a seminar for nonprofit executives. Leaders from some of our country’s most respected and venerable public-interest groups and charitable foundations were present. As always, the inevitable moment of truth approached when the seminar facilitator turns to the participants and asks them to stand up and state their name and what organization they represent. Upon discovering that my brethren in attendance represented organizations such as the ACLU, the NAACP, the Sierra Club, So Others Might Eat (SOME) and the National Historic Trust, it was with a certain sense of pride and whimsy that I announced my representation of NORML. None of the other groups garnered applause and hoots of approval, but NORML did.

At the first bathroom break, a distinguished and much older gentleman asked over the urinal, “Where are you sitting? I want to have lunch with you.” He then wisecracked, “Do you NORML folks have free samples?”

A major business-software developer, who publishes eBest Practices program-builders for business owners and managers, contacted NORML recently to lament that in updating their employee manual, they found the section on marijuana use too restrictive and disproportionate, especially in light of the fact that alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical use off the job carried no threat of termination. They asked NORML to update the section, including how employers might best interact with their cannabis-consuming employees.

Recently, General Hospital joined the roster of major network television shows—including ER, Chicago Hope, Cybil, Murphy Brown, Whoopi and the Larry David Show—that have featured compelling medical-marijuana plots, despite the federal government’s lunacy.

But most remarkable are the advertisements found in alternative weekly papers nationwide asking for cannabis consumers to act as guinea pigs in federally funded anti-drug studies. A recent ad in the Washington City Paper caught my attention: “IT’S 4:19. GOT A MINUTE?”

The end to marijuana prohibition is drawing nigh. When the oppressor adopts the language of the oppressed, the former’s days are numbered.

—Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML in Washington, DC.

Join HIGH TIMES and NORML on 4/20 for a major activist project directed at Congress. Find out more at norml.org.