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NORMLizer – Pot Can't Kill You, But Prohibition Can

Thu, Jun 18, 2009 4:31 pm

more: norml, normlizer, activism, august 2009

Even in these heady days—when 75 percent of the public supports medical access to cannabis, 73 percent supports decriminalizing possession for adult use, and nearly 42 percent supports legalizing, regulating, and taxing cannabis like alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical products—the cannabis community still needs continual reminding that, while marijuana will never kill you, prohibition can.

Sound a bit hyperbolic? Not when you consider a few brief examples from just the past few months:

In Pennsylvania, two corrupt judges in the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre were convicted of receiving at least $2.6 million in kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities in return for sentencing young people for minor crimes—most notably cannabis offenses.

Three former Atlanta cops pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges for planting baggies of cannabis on 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston after killing her in a hail of bullets during a search for drugs on a “no-knock” warrant. The cops received sentences ranging from five to 10 years.

Sam Lindsay-Brown, a 24-year-old world-class mountain biker and trail architect who’d never run afoul of the law, ended up hanging himself in a Spokane County, WA, jail cell after getting caught red-handed in the midst of a bold plan to helicopter 430 pounds of cannabis across the Canadian border. Tempted by the hyper-quick profits provided by cannabis prohibition, Sam got popped by the DEA and, confronted with a mandatory 10 years to life in jail, chose to kill himself instead. (Had he been caught on the Canadian side of the border—or in most any country in Europe—he’d likely have faced a multi-month sentence, not 10 years to life.)

Finally, as the experience of our current Freedom Fighter of the Month, Derek Copp, proves (see August 2009 issue), even in the United States with Barack Obama as president and the highest percentage of Americans supporting cannabis-law reform ever recorded, a college student can still be “chillin’ at home” one minute and shot in the chest by police the next—for no greater “crime” than the possession of a few grams of dried vegetable matter with mild psychoactive properties (and, ironically, terrific untapped therapeutic effects and industrial uses).

Does all of this make you sick and tired of cannabis prohibition after 70 years? Are you ready to come out of your smoke-filled closet? Did you ever want to attend a huge, fun and informative conference with like-minded cannabis consumers? Then make your plans ASAP to attend the 38th annual NORML conference this September in San Francisco, so that America—in our lifetime—will finally stop shooting peaceful, pot-smoking college students, framing little old ladies as drug dealers after they’re killed by police, and allowing corrupt judges to send our youth to private, for-profit prisons on minor cannabis charges.

Allen St. Pierre is the executive director of NORML. Details about NORML’s national conference in San Francisco can be found at www.norml.org or by calling 888-67-NORML.

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

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hotstuff

Sep 16 2009, 3:35 pm

I think we should go to the White house and get them all high and buy some pizza and discuss the benefits of Marijuana! I do feel like we are not in a free country... when it comes to the high price people pay for trying to feel better. People don't die from Pot... I've never heard of anyone smoking so much they get behind the wheel of a car and hurt or kill... now alcohol on the hand has taken many lives and makes people mean and wacked. Pot Happy and Hungry! Hello Wake up! I think the pharmaceutical companies are scared of it being legal cause they wouldn't be making Billions on the shit they make anymore. When people realize the many benefits of Cannabis!!!!!

Tom

Aug 23 2009, 1:54 pm

To get the law to change on marijuana its gonna take another woodstock or mole lake festival but its gotta be at the right time.. when theres some clear headed officials in office.. i was hoping Obama would support it but no he just said the right things to make it seem like he supported legalization. Usually how it goes and its been working for em for years.

someONE

Aug 22 2009, 3:21 pm

Your all right. We need to do someting about this soon. the world is falling deeper into an abise I feel and this is our job to save it...no matter the cost. Thank about it

dianna.

Aug 10 2009, 4:53 am

right now i'm paying off just under 1,000 dollers in lawyer fees alone..
i still have court and rehab fees.
i had to spend 2 months in jail and then attend a in house stay rehab for one failed UA on house arrest.
i live in MO but my probation is in Kansas
they tried to put me in rehab in MO but MO wouldn't except me because they realize that Marijuana is NOT a drug probably.
i mean rehab for smoking weed when its proven to not be addictive.. i find that a little ridiculous.

isitjustice

Aug 2 2009, 10:41 pm

I guess from all the chatter it is the US food and drug people fault Sam linsey-brown was ab for breaking the law.
Certainly not the people he was working for and actually not his own. He was just taking a risky chance.

And it is true pot doesn't kill nor do guns.. It is always people that kill.

3 months ago my lovely wife of 46 years was shot with a gun -- the gun was in the hands of a person. A young person wanting what little money she had in her purse. He needed to have money to purchase "pot" for a party he was going to.
She had between 15 and 20 dollars - "what is the worth of but one person?

Pot doesn't kill????????????

Thanks to all the Sam Linsey-Jones in this world.

iRsm0key

Jul 17 2009, 11:31 pm

I'm starting to think that the only way we will ever see marijuana become legal is if we all start killing each other by the thousands like they did in the 20's and 30's. You cant lock up everyone and you're never going to get rid of the plant. Stop the madness!

iRsm0key

Jul 17 2009, 11:21 pm

Obviously, the 18th Amendment cost the United States thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of tax revenue annually. Although this is something that the government realized would happen when it made alcohol illegal, it is something that hurt the country by the time of the Great Depression. Indeed, one of the reasons for the repeal of Prohibition was the government's need to generate additional tax revenue and create jobs in the wake of the great Depression.

Ironically, beginning a few years into Prohibition, more people died of alcohol related deaths than had died when alcohol was legal. The reason for this was two fold. First, alcohol being illegal encouraged those who sold bootlegged alcohol to make strong alcohol like gin and whisky instead of beer or wine. The stronger the alcohol, the easier it was to distribute and conceal. Thus, many people got turned onto hard liquor by Prohibition. At the same time, because this alcohol was being made illegally, it was often dangerous for consumption. It was often made in bathtubs and other similar non-professional places by non-professionals. Thousands of people died every year from consuming moonshine or bootlegged liquor.

Prohibition also provided organized crime with a great source of income. Gangsters like Al Capone made millions of dollars selling bootlegged liquor to the public in one of the numerous speakeasies that sprang up across the country. As a natural consequence of the large profits that could be made in bootlegging, gangs fought violent turf wars with each other that killed thousands. By the end of Prohibition, the Federal population had increased more than 300% as had crime in virtually all categories, especially violent crime.

Sound at all familiar???

Legalize it!!!

KEVIN

Jul 13 2009, 2:49 pm

All I gotta say is..... When have you ever turned on the news and heard of someone being stoned and killing someone,ect.... when I get high my driving slows down to the correct speed,always in a better mood, I mean come on there is alot worse stuff out there.... The only thing my friends fight over when we get stoned is, "WHAT TOPPINGS WE WANT ON OUR PIZZA".......... TAX IT AND BE DONE

JAS from NY

Jul 13 2009, 5:36 am

After the last few months I have been keeping up with the war on drugs and it seems to me that there is a basic fix stop focusing on arresting every tom dick and Harry who go out to pick up a few grams of this stuff and go after the dudes bringing in pounds of it, I am a heavy believer in Legalization for one major reason, We are US citizens we have the right to seek out our own happiness without worry about government or other people harassing us, by all means if someone decides to use a substance to alter their state of being and commit a crime against another person or someone else’s property put em in jail, rehab, purgatory whatever floats your boat, not for using the substance but for being an idiot and hurting someone or destroying something, it won’t work I have heard if you go and drink yourself stupid you wont go to jail until you try to drive or start acting like an idiot? If that works then why can’t it work for any substance? This way all the money stays in the US, Mexico will then have to find another border to destroy, and all trafficking into the US will come to an end if we make the product and offer it for sale to our citizens. Once it is on the open regulated market prices will drop, everyone and their mothers will be trying to make a profit on it and only way to make profit is to sell the stuff at better prices than the guy down the street.

We are loosing our families in this war and I would rather see a family member in rehab than loose the ability to get scholarships, loose all hope of getting any licensed job, ( yeh Billy smoked some dope he cant cut hair ) Loose housing benefits and theoretically loose their lives at the range of 16 – 20 because of an arrest record, not to mention the law and military forces we loose when they actually find a real dealer or trafficker and aren’t breaking into an 72 yr old woman’s home giving her a heart attack and having her death on their hands.

Common Sense is the number one thing needed in this country, we are spending trillions not only in our nation but in others as well fighting the same war and the only difference that it has honestly made is instead of the dealers selling the weak stuff now they have a whole new grade of stuff to sell. Come on America please just open your eyes for an hour enough to read the basic facts.

Suck it Trebek

Jul 8 2009, 1:56 am

Prohibition is extremely dangerous. We didn't have cartel problems in the US until we outlawed liquor sales and thats easy to see. I urge everyone to join NORML and stop the violence. The fact is within even the next year were going to see an escalation from the Mexican cartels with their atrocities. They're going to protect their investments, and you wanna talk about how much money they're making go look on Forbes.com and check out who's up there these days...And thats even with buying their own armies that rival the mexican army in both numbers and equipment.

Who likes smoking that mexican brick weed crap anyways? Its always so dry and tastes horrible.

The only way to make a change is to tell your congressman and senator you want change. We all know were scared to speak out for fear of getting popped and put in jail over some bull but unless we change it, nothing will change. Weve got a president thats open to it, whether he says so openly or not. Weve even got a fillbuster-proof senate, nows the time for change if there ever was one. Donate to NORML.org and write emails to your respective representatives. Change won't happen until we get a real sense of how much of the US public actually smokes.

Ben F.

Jul 7 2009, 4:28 pm

we as human beings have the right to consume whatever the fuck we want so fuck the what the government says you cant do!!

treehugger

Jul 1 2009, 3:38 pm

PotPrice - "the buy" is the result of trying to patent a plant, or otherwise telling a citizen, "you can't do that". Human nature would alude to 20% automatically saying, "ah, but I can".

Violence is the result of policing.
Taxation is the result of responsible governing.

anonymous

Jun 29 2009, 3:20 pm

hey king of pot thats people killing people not pot killing people.

HEYMAN

Jun 27 2009, 11:14 pm

Hey,man.Stoned dup an'rarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrin' tah go.BOOP.

BANG you're STUPID

Jun 27 2009, 11:11 pm

I like how that stoner kid had to go back and add a cramped letter 'G' on his sign honoring his dead friend.What a TOTAL FUCK-UP.

King ofPop blew thePrince of Pot

Jun 27 2009, 11:08 pm

Pot never killed anyone? What about those people getting killed in Vancouver when they try to hook up w/ the supposed 'street dealers', only to be robbed and occasionally killed?
Don't give me that "pot is peaceful" horseshit either!

treehuger

Jun 25 2009, 5:03 pm

I'm not much of a planner, or saver, but hopefully by September I will have relocated to the west coast and can start growing my own.

Tired of that nasty shit from Mexico, tired of "hydro" swimmin in sugar leaves, still wet cuz stems just bend in half. Yah, that shit's worth $350.

Now, if lab3 got a license, and would ship to me here in FL....otherwise westcoast here I come.

treehugger

Jun 25 2009, 4:56 pm

WTF? How much longer can congress pretend they're doing their jobs?

Do we have to hit 'em with a sledgehammer?

Burn the fucking capital? It hasn't been moved lately...

gstlab3

Jun 25 2009, 3:40 pm

PROHIBITION CREATES THE THUG CLASS!!! AND DESTROYS FREEDOM!!! AND KILLS OUR YOUTH!!!!! FUCK THE DRUG WAR FUCK THE POLICE!!!

Butcher Bob

Jun 21 2009, 1:26 am

Fuck Yes

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