It seems like not a week goes by that I don’t see something in the NORML Blog’s comments similar to this:

re; Recent legalization initiative efforts in Colorado, Nevada (twice), and Alaska have all failed at the ballot box,

in a foolish attempt to win over the people who can NEVER be won over (for whatever reason, ideology or $$$ vested interest) they put in too-low limits, (1 ounce), rediculus restrictions, way beyond what is required for alcohol or prescription drugs, no legal access, (o.k. to have, illegal to sell or grow, etc) harsher provisions for some things, (for smokers who have kids who might see, or smell, something, but are NOT being harmed in any way), causing MANY pro-pot people to vote against it.

then, next time, we seem to say, “well, we lost last time, we need to give up even more to the other side this time”
“treat pot like alcohol or tobacco” gets OVER 50%. if people feel (falsely) that they are in the minority, they will stay in the closet.

when they know they are truly in the majority, they will make their voices heard, we will legalize, and some pepole will be out of their cushy jobs.
(cops),

(prison guards),

(drug dealers),

(you).

Yes it’s the old “NORML secretly doesn’t want legalization because they would go out of business” theory. Damn! Our double-secret classified master plan to keep pot illegal so we can roll around in piles of cash in our stately penthouse suite has been discovered! I was hoping that by driving around in an eleven-year-old used car with major body damage and a rear differential that sounds like a bad shopping cart wheel, I would hide the luxurious wealth I enjoy in my cushy job moderating comments at the NORML blog. You know, I was just thinking about this last time I voted against a pro-pot initiative because it wasn’t good enough. I thought, you know, it’s a good thing 850,000 people a year have their lives upended paying $400/ounce for plant matter so I can live such an opulent lifestyle.

I thought we were alone in this kind of double-cross – promoting legalization when we really don’t want it because working in the non-profit, donation-supported political advocacy sector is so financially and materially rewarding. Turns out, though, that there are plenty of us working in advocacy non-profits that secretly don’t want what we’re fighting for because it would cost us our jobs. For example, my friends working for PETA really do want to see more puppies abused and tortured because it keeps the donations flowing. My pals at Greenpeace really do love to see more Japanese whaling because every dead cetacean is another dollar for the cause. My NAACP buddies don’t really want to see an end to racial discrimination because they’d have to find real work. Al Gore is just crossing his fingers and hoping you’ll burn some more coal so he can win another Nobel Prize. Just like we here at NORML really want marijuana to remain forbidden so we can write blog posts, answer emails, lobby politicians, appear on radio and TV, and travel across the country working 60-80-hour weeks for something we don’t believe in.

If only we were better at masking our true intentions, like the guys in the grassy knoll, the directors on the moon landing soundstage, and the explosives experts in the basement of the World Trade Center, maybe we could have gotten away with it all.

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I read thousands of words of reefer madness per day. It’s usually pretty predictable stuff – marijuana smoking will cause cancer, it’s 400 times stronger than the sixties, it’ll make you go psycho, yada yada yada. I usually chalk it up to most people’s ignorance about the plant and a government droning nearly a century of misinformation and lies about cannabis into the public’s mind.

But plenty of the people who dredge up that nonsense know better and are just using the junk science to whitewash an underlying bigotry against cannabis consumers, or at least, what they conceive cannabis consumers to be.

Every now and then, though, I get a gem of reefer madness that is just pure, unadulterated cannabiphobia. Enjoy this scribbling from the Vallejo Times-Herald entitled…

Potheads send logic up in smoke

By Malcolm Donahoo

Posted: 10/16/2009 02:00:22 AM PDT

(At least it’s nice to know I’m not the only one posting opinions about marijuana at two in the morning…)

I am not about to accuse anyone I know of being a pothead, but let’s say the species is not altogether unknown to me.

After all, potheads are not that difficult to recognize. Like the Oakland Raiders, they get blitzed almost every weekend.

They’re about the only people I know who can sit through an entire showing of “Dude, Where’s My Car?” or “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” They think of Cheech and Chong as classic actors, and their music libraries lean heavily toward The Grateful Dead and Bob Marley. Their land of enchantment isn’t New Mexico, it’s Jamaica.

Before we continue, let’s note that Harold & Kumar did $18 million in domestic box office and Dude, Where’s My Car did $46 million.  Cheech & Chong movies, combined, have grossed $160 million.  The Grateful Dead and Bob Marley make more money dead in the time it took him to write this column than he’ll see in his paycheck.

I’m sorry, I used the term “write this column” rather inappropriately, for the next seven paragraphs are just paraphrased AP accounts of Stupid Stoner Stories, including the one I told yesterday about the guy with the bag of pot on his head.  I tell those stories as warnings and to call out the few bad apples; he tells them as if they are typical of all of us.

Then his “writing” continues as he steals jokes to fill in the rest of his 502-word column.  Seriously, this “writer” devotes 41% of his column (205 words) to the paraphrased AP stories and 37% of his column (188 words) to stale jokes like this:

The difference between a drunk and a stoner behind the wheel, they say, is that the drunk will drive through the stop sign. The pothead waits for it to turn green.

I think I was more offended as a writer than as a stoner.  I left the following comment, and encourage you to leave your comments as well:

An ignorant reefer mad Vallejo opinion columnist walks into a bar. Bartender says, “Hey, you sure phoned in your column this week. Not enough original thoughts on the serious subject of cannabis prohibition, huh? Looks like you just paraphrased a couple of AP stories and then recycled some old hack Borscht-Belt one-liners and substituted ‘pothead’ for ‘blonde’ or ‘polack’! How can I get that kind of cushy job?”

The ignorant reefer mad Vallejo opinion columnist replies, “Screw you and give me a double shot of a legal liquid drug that kills tens of thousands annually, kills and maims even more from drunk driving, drunk domestic violence, and drunk assaults, and costs our society hundreds of millions in lost productivity and health costs, you punk critic!”

(OK, it’s a lousy joke and the dialogue is stilted. But at least it’s 100% original. Even written by a pothead…–”R”R)

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On September 24-25, NORML held its 38th annual national conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco.

This last Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle posts this letter to the editor complaining about the conference.  Naturally, it would take a tourist from out of state, not a native San Franciscan or Californian, to complain about the event.  But did it have to be somebody from my hometown of Boise, Idaho?

SECOND-HAND DOPE

I recently brought my mother to your beautiful city to see the play “South Pacific,” which had been one of her favorite movies.

Imagine our surprise when the hotel we stayed at, the Grand Hyatt had thick marijuana smoke in the lobby, elevators, area around the hotel and in our room.

The guest in the room next to ours smoked so heavily, my mother felt ill. She had never smelled marijuana and has no desire to ever again.

If NORML wants to convince citizens to legalize marijuana they should start by being respectful of those who do not wish to share in second hand dope.

The bellman told us that the housekeepers and all the employees who worked during the NORML convention did not feel well after being subjected to those trying to push their “unaddictive” hobby on the rest of us.

For all the claims about marijuana not being addictive, those folks sure spent a lot of hours each day smoking the stuff.

Sandy Dalton

Boise, Idaho

Well, Ms. Dalton, imagine my surprise to hear about “thick marijuana smoke in the lobby, elevators, area around the hotel and in our room”!  As Outreach Coordinator for NORML, I had visited all of those areas frequently throughout the three day conference, and never once did I catch anyone smoking marijuana in the lobby, elevator, or in your room.  There was smoking outside on the windy patio area for medical marijuana patients who aren’t allowed to use their medicine in their own hotel rooms (unlike, say, you and your mother).  Other folks who had traveled from less-tolerant places in America (like Boise, Idaho, where you can get six months for merely being high) availed themselves of an outdoor doobie as an act of personal liberation that harmed nobody.

I think what you’re complaining about, Ms. Dalton, is marijuana smell.  I won’t deny that the lobby, elevators, and some hallways would smell like people who had been smoking marijuana, though the hotel’s ubiquitous oil candles probably added to the discomfort more than it helped.  But guess what?  Sometimes freedom is smelly.  Sometimes I have to sit on an airplane on flights back to Boise next to old women who stink of perfume.  Sometimes I have to get into an elevator and ride with businessmen who reek of tobacco smoking.  Sometimes I have to stay in hotel rooms on floors where where young men are drinking and partying until 3am and the smell of stale beer permeates my room.  Sometimes I walk the streets of a big city and I smell all sorts of unpleasant things.

NORML is more than respectful of non-smokers’ rights, but not to the point where we’re going to Febreze ourselves before going out in public because you don’t like the smell of marijuana, Ms. Dalton.  The hotel had twenty rooms that our medical patients had requested and they smoked marijuana within them.  If that smell wafted toward your room, I’m sorry, but that could just as well have been a tobacco smoker in that smoking room.

And for the record, every bellman, housekeeper, banquet staff, engineer, dishwasher, front desk, and cook that I interacted with were either very happy to be working with us or upset they were at work and could not join us.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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(KETV) SAUNDERS COUNTY, Neb. — Police officers in Ashland, Neb., seized 150 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop Wednesday night on Highway 6.

The seizure was the largest in Saunders County history, said Ashland police.

He said the incident started when police stopped [a] conversion van driving erratically. When the officer approached the van and saw several bags of marijuana in plain view, he called for assistance, police said.

[Ashland Police Chief Mark] Powell said multiple agencies responded to that call. The drugs were in duffel bags found throughout the vehicle, police said.

Three men in the van were Christopher Ryan, Irvin Dana Beal and James Statzer.

All three are being held in Saunders County Jail and are suspected of drug possession with intent to deliver, officers said. They all face charges of possession with intent to deliver.

Beal is a political activist who has advocated for marijuana legalization in the U.S.

Authorities said Ryan and Statzer are being held on $100,000 bond each. Beal is being held on $500,000 bond.

Yes, it is the word of a police officer, but if indeed there were bags of marijuana “in plain view”, then add this story to our pile of Stupid Stoner Stories.

Few stories I’ve written have generated as much firestorm as this one.  Check out the coverage on CelebStoner, where I’m being called “an asshole” (three times), “Smellville”, “a fool”, and being threatened with an assault-by-pie.

I even received a phone call from a New York activist who I met at the NORML CON last week.  He was at least civil and explained to me that Beal has been providing very low-cost marijuana (”$3-$7 per gram”… that’s still $85 to $200 per ounce) for medical patients on the East Coast.  So I apologize for any insinuation that Beal was making a luxury living as a weed dealer charging prohibition profits to average pot consumers.

What I’m upset about isn’t necessarily Beal in particular, but the general issue of a “record bust” of a prominent activist returning from NORML CON.  Every day I beat back prohibitionists who say that medical marijuana, especially in California, is being abused by criminals that are hiding behind the lax statutes to cover their interstate trafficking.  The average reader doesn’t know Beal has a history of altruism and support of desperately sick people; they just see “150lbs of marijuana” being trafficked by one of our own coming back from an activist conference in California.  They see a “legalizer” and assume he’s getting rich by drug dealing and it taints the message we’re all trying to deliver.

Whatever you think about the bust and my opinion of it, let’s talk about it this Saturday on NORML SHOW LIVE.

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I have arrived in Madison, Wisconsin. I’m at the University Inn, right on the campus of University of Wisconsin (the Badgers!). Directly across my window is a large college-type bar that I’m certain will be perfect for watching Monday Night Football as the Mighty Green Bay Packers take on the Vikings and the Quarterback Formerly Known As Favre. Like Prince one did, I’ve decided that #4 isn’t really Brett Favre and that he’s changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol that looks like a cross between a ? (representing “Will he retire?”) and a 4. It’s the only way my brain can handle the cognitive dissonance of rooting for my D-linemen to sack and my secondary to intercept my hero.

Back in the day, we used to do this at parties and call it "Jungle Juice"

Of course, it wouldn’t be a “Radical” Russ travelogue without my latest peeve about airline travel in America.  I’m checking in at PDX and I’ve learned my lessons.  I’ve stripped down the studio so it fits in one double laptop bag, and it’s constructed so I can take the laptop out, clamshell the rest to expose the board and mics on one side, the cords and adapters on the other.

I also did the online boarding pass printing the night before and I took my hanging bag to the curbside check in, which the helpful lady told me I could have also done online and saved $5 off the $20 clothing tax the airlines charge (”Oh, you want to wear clothes when you get to your destination, and thought it would be logical to take a bag full of them with you?  That’ll be extra.  Our regular passengers just fly in what they’re wearing and go naked once they get where they’re going.”).  I wear sweats, no metal jewelry, and not a pot leaf to be seen.

So I’m ready to just zip through the TSA humiliation line when I see this poster (pictured above) over a large 55 gallon trash bin that seemed to be double-lined with garbage bags.  “Pour Beverages Here,” it reads, “No Liquids Through Security.”

Now does anyone remember why TSA makes us put shampoo in little 3 ounce or less bottles in clear plastic bags?  Why they won’t let you carry on a bottle of water you just bought at the airport kiosk?  Why a four ounce container of men’s gel antiperspirant that is one twist away from empty is forbidden and must be tossed (happened to me in Billings once, and I exasperatedly said, “So it’s not that I am carrying more than three ounces of a gel – there’s obviously only maybe a teaspoon left – it’s that I’m carrying too much empty volume in something that could hold a gel?”  TSA was not amused.)

They don’t let you take liquids through security because of the imminent threat of three terrorists getting on a plane and each one of them carries a pre-cursor chemical and then they put them all together to form either a violent chemical explosion or a noxious poisonous gas.

So, if you would, please, Mr. Terrorist, dump your dangerous pre-cursor chemical in the vat along with the Wendy’s sodas, baby formula, and four ounce deposits of shampoos?

Hey, what do you know?  It’s here in Wisconsin, and my gracious guests have left me with a way to ease the tension I feel examining the idiocy of the Transportation Silliness Agency.  More updates from America’s Dairyland as the week progresses.

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I love that you guys love the Stash so much that you go through withdrawals when I cannot produce them daily.  I’ve received a few emails and seen some comments to the tune of “you need more help” and “why can’t you get someone to do the Stash while you’re out of the studio”?

Really, they warm my heart, even if a couple of you get a bit demanding for your free podcast.  (You know other radio hosts require subscriptions as high at $5.95/month, right?)  It lets me know how important this part of my outreach work is.  For example, I got an email from “CMoney” who was bummed that I haven’t had many daily episodes lately and that he couldn’t catch the live shows from the conference and Boston.  Then he discovered that when he misses NORML SHOW LIVE, he doesn’t really miss it, because there is a podcast feed available through iTunes.  To date there have been 12,000+ downloads of our live feed.

More help is coming.  As we raise revenue through advertising, I will be able to bring on my LIVE co-host, Karri, to help handle some of the secretarial work of NORML Outreach to free me up for more online media work.  Please be patient and understand that we work entirely through donations and NORML’s budget is pretty tight.  Also understand that as a non-profit public advocacy organization, we can’t offer competitive salaries to acquire the talent necessary to pull off some of the stuff I’m doing; my skills would garner me twice to thrice what I’m paid now in the commercial radio / podcasting world.

I do it out of love and duty and dedication to the cause of ending adult marijuana prohibition.  I’ve made more money before but I had to be miserable to do it.  Money’s tight for your house-renting, 11-year-old-beater-car-driving podcast producer, but smiles are plentiful.

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Quick best news: I get a dedicated T-1 line for running the three hour shows on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Uploading the intros and bumpers to the server tonight so I can fire that with better sonic quality.

US Airline Industry Complaint of the Day: So after I have paid a total of $40 for the privilege of having baggage handlers destroy my hanging bag from Portland to Boston to DC, I bought a new hard case Samsonite and a new hanging bag. I was able to pack the hanging bag and some of my recording gear in the Samsonite. Sure, it was a little heavy, but it was a tough case, so I figured it would be OK.

You know where this is going…

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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I don’t mean to keep leading you on, really. I was all packed and ready to go with a podcast recording tonight. Just one last task – to create the photo wall backdrop for our NORML Conference media room. Had to be turned in tonight, so fix that up real quick…

…and of course, this would be the time my computer goes on the fritz. The studio PC, that is, which is the only machine where I have my Adobe CS3 software that includes Illustrator for making that huge 8′ x 10′ graphic. So I troubleshoot and fix the problem and get the machine booted up and build the graphic and FTP it off to San Francisco. Great. Now just sync up my BlackBerry one last time before I record the show…

…and of course, the BlackBerry Desktop Manager picks this time to crash in the middle of a sync operation, wiping out the data in my BlackBerry address book. This requires a reinstall of the program and moving my Outlook file back to its previous location. Now that’s fixed and my BlackBerry is back…

…which leaves me just enough time to schedule a NORML SHOW LIVE test so that Karri and I can practice her call screening in Astoria while I’m on the road, and then maybe get six hours of sleep before catching the 7:30am flight from PDX to Logan, during which I’ll go through my over 1,200 unread emails from the past two weeks.

But I will have to set up NORML SHOW LIVE in my hotel room in Cambridge, so that will allow me to record a podcast tomorrow for a Boston Freedom Rally preview. I’ll get some of the MassCann guys on the show to tell you all about it. Plenty of tweets, pics, and vids will show up all these next few days, so watch the sidebar.

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I’ve just added some new features to the Stash blog that will put you right in the thick of NORML’s public events and give you a peek behind the scenes.

For quite some time I’ve been using Twitter, the service that allows me to send 140-character “tweets” (i.e., “text messages”) into cyberspace where you can easily retrieve them. My latest tweet appears in the header graphic in that cloud of smoke coming off the Oregon NORML joint and the last five appear along the right sidebar. I use this to announce the latest blog posts on stash.norml.org and whenever there is an important website or breaking news to deliver.  The service uses bit.ly to compress long website addresses that you can click to follow for more information.  To catch up on all my tweets and learn how to subscribe to them for delivery on your cellphone, visit http://twitter.com/radicalruss.

Then I added TwitPic, the service that allows me to post pictures from my BlackBerry camera onto the net instantaneously.  At first I could only post the tweet of the picture’s web address, but now I’ve found code that allows me to actually display the last three pics in the right sidebar.  Click those pics to visit the full size version on TwitPic.  To follow the entire portfolio of my TwitPics, visit http://twitpic.com/photos/radicalruss.

Next with the advent of NORML SHOW LIVE I got signed up for their Cinch live audio service.  This feature lets me call in on my BlackBerry and record whatever I say or record on the speakerphone, which then becomes an MP3 file that you can receive via RSS feed.  At first, like TwitPic, the service would only allow me to display web addresses for the MP3s so you had to download the file first in order to play it.  But now I have hacked into the TwitPic display code to fix it to display Windows Media Players for the MP3s, allowing you to play the audio directly from the right sidebar.  To follow all of my Cinch Live Audio, visit http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/norml.

Finally, to complete the circle of geek, I have signed up for TwitVid.  Like TwitPic, it allows me to take video from my Blackberry and post it to the web.  The folks at TwitVid even made a handy widget for the service so I don’t have to hack away at code like I did for TwitPic and Cinch.  To follow all of my TwitVids, visit http://www.twitvid.com/videos/radicalruss.

So remember, wherever I go with my BlackBerry, I’m ready to post the next website, picture, audio, and video live on the spot and it will appear here at the Stash almost immediately.  Keep that in mind if you are a superstar Olympic athlete who wants to share a bong rip…

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I’m sorry, Stashers, there is just too much on my plate to produce today’s podcast. NORML CON and four straight weeks of being on the road are coming soon and I have speeches and presentations to update with the new 2008 NSDUH / FBI UCR numbers (thanks, gub’mint!), a Chapter Handbook to put together, a 5′x8′ photo banner to design, audio from the first two NORML SHOW LIVE episodes to remix, re-upload, and cut up for advertiser packets, audio and video from Hempstalk to edit, and literally over 1,000 unread emails to deal with. On top of that, I think I’m coming down with something (maybe it’s just exhaustion – two sixteen hour days at Hempstalk and the stress of an idol’s heart attack can do that to you). I’m also going to beg off of tomorrow’s podcast so I can try to get back on top of things before I fly out to Boston on Friday for the Freedom Rally. I hope to be ready to podcast by Wednesday, but if these items require it, I may have to just take off the whole week.

I’ll peek in occasionally on the Fresh Stash and if something huge happens I’ll post. If front-pagers wanted to pick an opportune time to write something, this week would be the time.

On the bright side, my Broncos are 2-0 after a 48-0 shellacking of Miami (OH) and my Packers are 1-0 after a fantastic performance by Mr. Rodgers and the Green Bay secondary.

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