[UPDATE: Sorry, test over. It only took us a half hour to find out how bad my connection sounded. However, it was with this cheapo headset I use for Skype. I will be back tomorrow early with the full pro setup to see if it will pass. If not, we'll be back at the home studio. Thanks everyone who helped us test. -- "R"R]

I’m down here in North Portland at the World Famous Oregon NORML Cannabis Café. I’ve got the new 4G wireless connection which has been stellar in tests so far. But tonight I need to run a 2.5 hour test and I need to test multiple callers, just to put the system through a stress test.

So I’m here, at the café, testing the BlogTalkRadio platform from 7pm to 9:30pm tonight (Pacific Time, of course). It’s a test show, so nobody can hear it over the intertubes, but you can call in if you know the secret number (347-994-1810). Cannabis Karri should be along sometime as well. It won’t be a real “show”, we’ll just be hanging out and doing what you do at a cannabis café.

If you want to just sit and listen to the sounds of cannabis café and my rambling, go ahead and call in. If you want to chat, just press 1 at any time and it will signal me on the switchboard.

For extra good measure to test the wireless, I’m also streaming the gamecast of my beloved Boise State Broncos. So don’t be surprised if I suddenly yell “Touchdown!”

I’m proud to announce the affiliation of two new college chapters in the NORML network.

Andrew Ball is the founder of a new chapter at the University of Texas San Antonio.

Donald Brooks is the founder of a new chapter at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.

Welcome aboard!  And if you’re interested in starting a NORML Chapter at your college campus, send me an email with the subject College Chapter to stash@norml.org.

Cue up to 2:15 in the video… nice punchline… even better follow-up!

I am so excited to break the news that we have four new contributors to help bring you the Daily Audio Stash!  In response to my call for volunteer music editors I received a lot of applications and picked from the best of them to give you our new lineup:

These fine Stashers will be finding the best 420-friendly music on the web and bringing it to us each week.  You already know me and Cannabis Karri.  Sahra Kant joins us from Massachusetts; I met her up at the Boston Freedom Rally this year.  Johnny Reeferseed’s music has been featured on the Stash before.  And John Doe is the man behind John Doe Radio, another fine internet podcast.

But just because we have music editors that doesn’t mean you can’t still be involved.  If you have a band or have found a tune that you think should be on the Stash, just email it to me at stash@norml.org and I’ll pass it along to our editors.

Also join me in welcoming Amanda Bannon to our lienup of contributors.  Amanda is getting college credit as an intern working for me in NORML Chapter Outreach.  She will begin by reviving our dormant “Politicians on Pot” series, where you send us the replies you get from your elected officials when you write to them about ending marijuana prohibition.  If you haven’t written to your elected officials, visit our Take Action center and get started.  Now that the AMA has reversed its position on smoked cannabis as medicine, many of these congresspeople will need to update their form letter!  Write your congressperson and send that reply back to us at stash@norml.org.

Cheech & Tommy hit the road this winter!

(CheechandChongTour.com) Cheech & Chong: Get It Legal is the follow-up to their hugely successful reunion tour, Cheech & Chong: Light Up America, where they performed together for the first time in over 25 years. The pop culture duo performed for more than 100 audiences and quickly became one of the most sought after shows of 2008-2009. Additionally, their performance in San Antonio, Texas was filmed by the Weinstein Company and will be released as Cheech and Chong’s: Hey Watch This on 4/20 of next year.

“We had an amazing time last year reconnecting with each other and our fans in a way that felt like it was part of our DNA, we were meant to be together,” said Cheech Marin. “In 2010 we are looking forward to doing more classic material that people haven’t seen for years and years, performing more of our songs and introducing some new bits. We’ve had material brewing separately for the past 25 years,” said Tommy Chong.

The Cheech & Chong: Get It Legal tour is scheduled to make 17 stops across North America including Boulder, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Bellingham, Portland, Santa Barbara, Tampa, Minneapolis, Rockford, Detroit, Louisville, DC, Bakersfield, Phoenix, and Fort Worth with Canadian stops in Regina, and Saskatoon. Additional dates to be announced soon. Chong’s wife and comedy partner, Shelby Chong, will open all dates on the tour as well as DJ-Joey Mojo. Fan club members will have access to presale tickets beginning November 17th at CheechandChongTour.com.

(Washington Post) A federal survey of Americans’ drug use shows that [Joe Lee, a 62-year-old, and his friends] are not the only baby boomers approaching the age of retirement much as they departed the Age of Aquarius — with an occasional case of the munchies. The government’s most recent survey showed that the share of marijuana users ages 50 to 59 increased from 5.1 percent in 2002 to almost 10 percent in 2007.

Some of those users are empty-nesters, returning to the drug decades after their pot habits gave way to raising children and building careers. Others, like Lee, have kept using pot all along, researchers said.

[O]lder marijuana users say they are living evidence that smoking pot does not preclude a normal life, and more older smokers seem more comfortable than at any point since their teen years with going public — a tribute, they say, to a big boost in public tolerance of marijuana use.

“I don’t think more people in their 50s are smoking marijuana. I think we are just more comfortable talking about it,” said Rick Steves, who writes travel guidebooks and hosts a public TV series on travel. At 54, the clean-cut guru of mass-market European tourism has begun to present himself as the hard-working, successful face of the longtime smoker.

“Even my pastor knows I smoke pot,” said Steves, who was recently named Lutheran activist of the year for his work on international poverty relief.

One older smoker who doesn’t mind outing herself is Florence Siegel, an 88-year-old artist from New York who has been smoking regularly since her early 50s. That’s when the family’s pediatrician suggested they try marijuana together to see “what the kids were so excited about.” The pediatrician didn’t feel a thing. Siegel said she never stopped.

Now her routine is to sit in her favorite chair each evening, listen to Bach and take a few hits from one of her many pipes. Marijuana boosts her creativity and helps with joint pain that has come with aging, she said.

Siegel smokes occasionally with her daughter Loren Siegel, 64, a recently retired lawyer. But does her 93-year-old husband ever join her?

“Oh, no,” she said. “Well, only very rarely.”

I know some sixty-, seventy- and eighty-year-olds who occasionally use cannabis, and some who still drink coffee, and a few who even still use alcohol and tobacco.  I can’t say that I’ve met one yet who was an active cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine user.

There is a joke in medical marijuana circles that “after forty, all use is medical.”  There is a certain grain of truth to that, though.  Even as I approach age 42, I can feel pain in my knees and back that never used to bother me before.  When you think of the things marijuana can be used to treat – arthritis, chronic pain, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and so on – it seems to be a natural fit for many seniors who’d prefer an herbal remedy over a handful of increasingly expensive pills.

I’m excited to announce the official certification of our newest NORML chapter, Beverly Hills NORML 90210. You can check out the beginnings of their website still in development at http://norml90210.org.

NORML 90210 is headed by Cheryl Shuman, a fascinating woman I first met at the Aspen Legal Seminar.  She has been working in the entertainment field in LA for over two decades and has amassed a list of celebrity contacts and friends who we hope can be motivated to speak out for the cause.  She’s a strong successful woman who perfectly embodies that “stiletto stoner” image that has captured the public imagination this summer.  She’s dealt with media public relations on a professional and personal level in the most stressful of circumstances and will be a natural for presenting NORML’s message.

Cheryl is assisted by Jacek Lentz, an attorney in Los Angeles whom I’ve also met at NORML conferences.  Jacek is an emigrant from Poland who is fiercely dedicated to protecting and expanding freedom here in America.

With the natural brand image of Beverly Hills that suggests wealth, celebrity, and the finest things in life, I look forward to Cheryl and Beverly Hills NORML 90210 showing California and the nation that cannabis is not only becoming mainstream, but it is a symbol of fame, fortune, and success as well.

This Friday, Oregon NORML’s Cannabis Café opens in Northeast Portland. I’ll be there Saturday night with a live broadcast of NORML SHOW LIVE from the café. Meanwhile, the notion of medical marijuana patients having their own private club is generating a lot of news here:

Our FOX affiliate:

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(B) If you had asked him two weeks ago, Zach Brown would have said he didn’t think marijuana legalization would happen in his lifetime.

Things have quickly changed. Brown, the president of the University of Maryland, College Park chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, now is optimistic the country will see significant change in perhaps two decades.

“It seems up until this point, we’ve been working against the wind in a way, pushing our goals to hard opposition,” Brown said. “But there’s now a rapid growth of support. The winds have changed, and we’re riding with them now.”

It’s an exciting time for marijuana advocates, and Brown, a 19-year-old sophomore and Eagle Scout, feels even more motivated to push his cause.

I wonder if there are Boy Scout merit badges for joint rolling?    Seriously, though, what a great opening to this article in Baltimore’s alt-weekly, the B.  Good work, Zach, and all you NORML Terps, and thanks for showing that even Eagle Scouts think marijuana prohibition is wrong.