I had a really weird couple of experiences yesterday.
First, I met a new technician at the TV studio where I broadcast my Oregon NORML cable access show. I introduced myself as Russ, he asked, “Russ?”, and I said yes, and he said, “‘Radical’ Russ?” and I said yes, and then he started talking about how he listens to my radio show and loves the show and how I handled a caller and so on.
Then my wife tells me how she was talking with a fellow student and she mentioned that I have this cable access show and he says, “You mean ‘Radical’ Russ? Oh my god, my roommates and I watch his show all the time! He’s like a hero to us!”
And so now I may never again be able to buy a hat that fits. 
But “hero?” Dude, I’m just a guy who can’t shut up in front of a computer, a microphone, or a camera when I am 100% convinced that I am right, the government is wrong, and people are needlessly suffering. Everybody can be that kind of hero in one way or another.
In that context, I’d like to recognize my hero of the day, Joe Boyett of Montgomery, Alabama. He’s another First Amendment hero, using his free speech to petition his government for a redress of grievances, namely that prohibition of marijuana is a wasteful fraud. The following is his Letter to the Editor that appeared in the Montgomery Advertiser:
montgomeryadvertiser.com | Montgomery Advertiser
Chief Baylor said the Montgomery Crime Reduction Team over the past year seized about 40 pounds of marijuana.Nationwide, the war on drugs has spawned paramilitary police forces using automatic rifles, concussion grenades, armored personnel vehicles and no-knock warrants to seize assets from nonviolent criminals under forfeiture laws that flagrantly violate the Fourth Amendment.
All that to seize marijuana and put a few recreational pot smokers behind bars, costing taxpayers $30 to $50 a day.
I have nothing but praise for Chief Baylor and his officers who are doing their jobs. I have nothing but disgust for a society nearly $10 trillion in debt with violent crime threatening people in their homes wasting scarce police resources on pot smokers enjoying themselves and harming no one. Don’t forget that Slick Willie, Dubya and Obama admit having used marijuana.
President Bush should surrender in our war on marijuana. He owes that to his fellow pot smokers who didn’t have well-connected daddies to get their drug violations expunged from police records so they could be elected president.
Joe Boyett
Montgomery, AL
Sometimes at the summer hemp festivals people tell me they want to know how to become an activist. A letter to the editor in your local paper is a tremendously easy way to start. The only way we lose the marijuana argument is by not talking about it. When your community sees in their own paper that there are locals who reject prohibition, they are more apt to reject it as well. Or you bring out the hateful armchair drug warrior responses, which are usually so over the top they help us by undermining prohibition’s credibility with the public.
If you get your letter to the editor published, send me a link by email to stash ‘at’ norml.org. I’ll stay on the “series of tubes” checking “the Google” watching for all the activists out there telling the growing truth about cannabis. — “R”R
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