“Elevators thick with pot smoke” among lies about NORML Conference in San Francisco

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.

Now that would have been the end of it, if not for an opinion column by John Diaz in today’s Chronicle:

Three letters to the editor on Tuesday, in a package headlined “Tales of life in the city,” raised questions about the competence and attentiveness of the San Francisco Police Department. One writer, a visitor from Chicago, detailed his frustration in trying to retrieve his stolen belongings. A city resident bemoaned the difficulty of finding a shopping cart at a grocery store – while homeless people seemed to steal them with impunity. A tourist from Boise, Idaho, described how her stay in the Grand Hyatt hotel seemed like a smoke-filled scene from a Cheech and Chong movie.

No, that would be my suite (bah-dum bum!)  Once again, there may have been marijuana smell, but there was definitely not marijuana smoke all throughout the Grand Hyatt.

Case three: Sandy Dalton of Boise, Idaho, took her 73-year-old mother to San Francisco to see the musical “South Pacific.” She booked a nonsmoking room at the Grand Hyatt, but when she arrived, the entire hotel seemed to be engulfed by the distinct scent of marijuana. Dalton’s visit coincided with the 38th annual conference of NORML, a group that advocates the legalization of marijuana. It seems that many of the conference attendees were lighting up as if their goal already had been achieved.

Yes, because, in fact, it has been.  Many of the conference attendees are medical marijuana patients and their goal of legal use has been achieved.

Dalton and her mother rolled wet towels under their door to stop the secondhand smoke, but it did little good. The smoke was so pervasive that her mother felt ill.

“There were a couple of guys who rode up the elevator with us at the Grand Hyatt during the marijuana love fest,” she said. “One of them mentioned that he was on probation and was worried that he wouldn’t pass a drug test, given that the elevator was honestly thick with pot smoke.”

Again with the image of the hot-boxed elevator!  As if the doors open and it looks like Spicoli’s van from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  C’mon, people, you know when you use ‘honestly’ to preface a statement it is usually an exaggeration.  Nobody is going to fail any urine screens because they rode in an elevator that smelled like marijuana.

She complained to the front desk. The hotel offered an apology and a free breakfast. It did not, apparently, ask for law enforcement’s help in controlling the party.

[San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón] acknowledged that marijuana smoking is a “low-grade event” on the scale of police priorities – as it should be – but if officers had been called, they would have started with warnings to smokers who did not have medical marijuana cards.

And wouldn’t that have been fun to sort out, with all the out-of-state, but legal in their state, medical patients and all the in-state, perfectly-legal medical patients in attendance flanked by two dozen or so of the top marijuana criminal defense attorneys in the country.  Yes, that would’ve been a compelling use of police resources.

The Grand Hyatt should not have been surprised that a NORML event turned into an abnormal smokeathon. It owes Sandy Dalton and other nonsmoking guests more than a free breakfast and an apology. They should get refunds for their exposure to the inconsiderate side of San Francisco.

From NORML CON 2009 San Francisco

OK, then let me make a complaint.  On Saturday night as we began to assemble for the bus to take us to a party, the streets were completely shut down by a mass bicycle protest called “Critical Mass”.  Our bus sat there at the intersection, unable to pick us up for twenty minutes because of people – some of them naked! and a few of them smelly! – clogging the streets.

So imagine my surprise when this inconsiderate side of San Francisco was actually being assisted by the San Francisco Police!  There they were, stopping traffic to ensure that none of these naked bike riders or anyone in traffic would be harmed.

I’m joking, of course, I thought the mass bike ride was fantastic.  But there is an activity that inconvenienced far more people than the smell of marijuana in one hotel.  More violations of the law and threats to public safety occurred during that bike ride than at the entire NORML Conference.