NORMLizer – Weed Warriors

By Allen St. Pierre

When I was first hired at NORML in the early 1990s, I’d occasionally pick up the phone and hear a victim of cannabis-prohibition laws sarcastically asking if he’d reached “the National Organization for Marijuana Lawyers.” Additionally, a number of mainstream publications back then profiled some of the more flamboyant members of our National Legal Committee (NLC) and used their legal representation of a cocaine-cartel leader or a major heroin smuggler as a means of discrediting the organization, picturing it as little more than a front for shady defense lawyers and hard-drug dealers.

Needless to say, neither characterization was at all accurate. Since the mid-1970s, the hundreds of lawyer-members of NORML’s NLC have played a crucial role representing individuals at trial and in the appellate courts, struggling tirelessly to defend personal freedoms and civil liberties.

When you get busted for possession of even a small amount of cannabis (including cultivation and/or sales) anywhere in the country except where cannabis-prohibition laws have been reformed to the degree of “decriminalization” or “medicalization,” you will almost always need to hire a lawyer—or work with a public defender—to shepherd your case through the trials and tribulations of the American criminal-justice system. For this reason, and to assist the thousands of victims of cannabis prohibition annually, NORML’s legal seminars educate lawyers on how best to fight for personal freedoms while minimizing the harm to individuals busted on cannabis charges.

Further—and there hasn’t been sufficient public attention to this—NLC members actively support NORML’s mission to end cannabis prohibition, even though it means effectively killing off a ready source of their own future income. To this end, numerous NLC members engage in the act of tithing, donating a portion of each cannabis client’s legal fees to NORML for a new membership. This clearly shows that NLC members would rather have their clients involved in their own liberation than just pile up the legal fees.

Seriously: When was the last time you heard about a group of lawyers trying to put itself out of business? One could surmise that NLC members are blessedly crazy, or impressively forward-thinking—or both!

Currently, there are over 550 NLC members nationwide, and nearly all of them will provide a free consultation to any citizen who has recently been busted. They’re also usually the best legal counsel to hire regionally on a cannabis- or drug-related charge. You can view a listing of NLC members exclusively each month in the High Times Legal Directory, or at www.norml.org.

Allen St. Pierre is the executive director of NORML in Washington, DC. You can contact NORML at www.norml.org or 888-67-NORML.

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN THE MAY 2009 ISSUE OF HIGH TIMES