This is the Frequently Asked Questions for the NORML Daily Audio Stash. It is updated frequently as people ask more questions. That seems logical. If you have a question, send it to stash@norml.org.
Just what is The NORML Stash Blog and what happened to the NORML Daily Audio Stash?
In 2006, Chris Goldstein created the NORML Daily Audio Stash podcast. The podcast was hosted on an HTML page which you can still view here. In 2008, “Radical” Russ Belville took over for Goldstein and upgraded the Stash’s host to a WordPress-based blog platform.
As broadcasting technology became more affordable and the online streaming technology became easier to access, Belville created NORML SHOW LIVE , a two-hour talk radio program at http://live.norml.org. Soon it became apparent that producing a daily recorded podcast and a weekly live talk show was a bit redundant, so in 2010, Belville merged the two programs to become the current NORML SHOW LIVE, a one-hour live talk radio show airing weekdays at 4pm Eastern.
The Daily Audio Stash has now become The NORML Stash Blog, redesigned for a news-magazine feel to supplement the weekday live show.
When is the LIVE SHOW /Stash available online?
The live show goes on the air every Monday through Friday at 4:00pm Eastern. The archived podcast of the show is added to the Stash by 5:30pm Monday through Friday.
What is the programming schedule of the daily shows?
- MONDAY: (1st & 3rd Mondays) Government at Work (Legislative Interviews)
(2nd & 4th Mondays) Cannabis Conversations (Interviews)
Music: Roots Monday with Cannabis Karri - TUESDAY: California Marijuana Report with Eric Brenner (Golden State news interviews)
Music: Electric Tuesday with Sahra Kant - WEDNESDAY: Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine (latest studies, debunking marijuana myths)
Music: Irie Wednesday with Johnny Reeferseed (http://www.myspace.com/jrshighrollers) - THURSDAY: (1st & 3rd Thursdays) Southern California Scene with Tere Joyce (guests from SoCal cannabis community)
(2nd & 4th Thursdays) Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Speaks
Music: Groovin’ Thursday with John Doe (http://johndoeradio.com) - FRIDAY (1st & 3rd Fridays) CelebStoner.com Entertainment Report with Steve Bloom (cannabis in music, movies, TV, and sports)
— / (2nd Fridays) High Times Newsstand Preview with Sr. Editor David Bienenstock
— / (4th Fridays) High Times Cultivation Corner with Sr. Cultivation Editor Danny Danko
Music: Rockin’ Friday with “Radical” Russ (http://live.norml.org)
What’s the name of and who performs that one song on the live show?
You can always find the names of the songs played in the commercials and bumpers by visiting http://stash.norml.org/faq/norml-show-live-podsafe-music. For the artists who perform the Daily Toker Tunes, check the tunes archive by visiting http://stash.norml.org/media/tunes.
How do I make those cool little 
faces?
Go to stash.norml.org/smilies to find out. One caveat: You may only use the 420 smilie ( 
) if it is actually 4:20 where you are at the time you post it (within five minutes earlier or later. Of course, you are allowed to observe our fluid definition of “4:20″ in your defense.)
What’s an Anslinger?
An Anslinger is a measurement unit of the level of Reefer Madness exhibited in a prohibitionist’s text or speech. Count the number of words in the text and then divide by how many instances of false anti-marijuana propaganda are in that text. Then take the number 100 and divide it by the result of your previous division. That is the number on the Anslinger scale of Reefer Madness. Zero to two on the scale is typical Reefer Madness, between two and three you’re approaching Nixon/Reagan levels, three to four is in the Calvina Fay / Barbara Kay range, and up to five is true Harry J. Anslinger levels of Reefer Madness.
What are “Stoners”, “Tokers”, “Stashers” and “Potbots”?
- Stashers = registered readers of the Stash blog who are logged in within the last five minutes.
- Tokers = unregistered readers of the Stash blog who’ve just surfed on by within the last five minutes.
- Potbots = search engine spiders and bots crawling the Stash blog to index our content in the last five minutes.
- Stoners = the total of Stashers, Tokers, and Potbots on the Stash blog in the last five minutes.
Why “Radical” Russ?
When I was in high school, there were many Russes – wrestler Russ, science geek Russ, redhead Russ. I ran an unofficial fraternity called “The Radicals”, so I was “Radical” Russ. Once I graduated and my politics started forming, my beliefs came to be quite radical compared to the conservative environment in small town Idaho where I grew up. (You know, believing things like evolution, atheism, gay people deserve civil rights, and thinking pot should be legal – those kinds of “radical” notions.) Now that I’ve moved to Portland, Oregon, my beliefs are none too radical at all, and, actually, kind of moderate compared to the tree-loving, Birkenstock-wearing, vegan pacifists of the Pacific Northwest. Now I consider the “Radical” moniker to be a call to radical organizing and radical civil disobedience… and it flows well off the tongue (I’m a sucker for alliteration).
What are “cannadays, cannamonths, and cannayears?”
Astronomers, in order to cope with the sheer magnitude of cosmic distance, created the light-year, which is the distance that a beam of light travels in the space of a year (approx. 9.4605284 × 1015 meters or about 5,878,630,000,000 miles). The sheer magnitude of the idiocy of our government to let $41.8 billion dollars go to waste enforcing marijuana prohibition inspired me to coin the cannayear, equal to the amount we could save and reap from legalized marijuana in America (according to Jon Gettman) – $41.8 billion dollars per year. Therefore a cannamonth = $3.483 billion and a cannaday = $114.5 million. Consider it my tribute to Carl Sagan.
Why won’t my comment post?
Your first comment and any comment with a hyperlink must be approved by a moderator. If you register an account on the Stash, your comments will appear automatically.
What’s this TinyURL.com? tr.im bit.ly?
TinyURL.com tr.im bit.ly is a free service that takes really long URLs like http://stash.norml.org/will-you-enlist-in-the-war-to-end-adult-marijuana-prohibition/ and turns them into http://tinyurl.com/aubtx2 http://tr.im/jscJ. http://bit.ly/hqhtE This makes the URL fit better in your comments and especially on the Fresh Stash. (And is eight six characters shorter than TinyURL.) Personally, I liked tr.im better, because it created the shortest URLs, but they have gone out of business, so bit.ly it is.
What’s the Fresh Stash?
The Fresh Stash is in the right sidebar and is a chat window for registered Stashers to post breaking news and to gab about marijuana. It is updated about every five minutes. Every so often it overflows with comments (about 5,000) and must be replaced with a new version, thus the Roman numeral to indicate which iteration we’re on. That is known as the Fresh Stash being “cashed” and creating a new one is “loading a new bowl of Fresh Stash”.
Why are they saying “STRAAIINS!” in the Fresh Stash?
This came from a post of some letter to the editor where a cannabiphobe expressed the notion that if we legalized marijuana, our streets would be filled with “drug zombies”. We wondered what pothead zombies would actually be like, and one commenter suggested that instead of shuffling toward you droning “braaiins” (because, as everyone knows, zombies eat brains) they’d be droning “STRAAIINS! STRAAIINS!” Now we’ve adopted it as a way of expressing the frustration of going through a “dry spell” of no access to quality marijuana.
How do I get a cool little picture (avatar) next to my name?
By going to Gravatar.com and creating your account. Make sure you use the same email address as you used to register for the Stash. Then, at the Gravatar site, follow their instructions for uploading a picture to represent your account.
What’s this “saffron” you keep writing about?
Saffron, the world’s most expensive legal plant material, a spice that is primarily grown in Spain and Iran, requires far more tending and processing than any marijuana plant:
A labor intensive endeavor, when the saffron blooms (usually for 3 weeks) all the family’s attention goes to harvesting and processing, working up to 19 hours a day. Open flowers are picked and then carefully dissected to extract the stigmas. They are dried over heat and then sealed in packages for sale to international brokers. How much saffron can be obtained from the flowers? The numbers are staggering. With 3 stigmas per flower it takes 75,000 flowers (225,000 stigmas) to make one pound of saffron. It is easy to see why it is so expensive.
Saffron is currently available in the US at $119/ounce, even after 19 hours a day of hand picking three stamens apiece from 4,687 flowers and then shipping it overseas. By comparison, it takes only four cannabis plants and two hours of labor to make one pound of dried, manicured marijuana, which is cultivated and shipped completely in-state and is currently available in California dispensaries at $450/ounce.
“NORML really doesn’t want to end marijuana prohibition because they are a bunch of lawyers who get rich off of defending us on pot charges.”
Pothead, please. Of all the possible ways there are for lawyers to get rich, working on misdemeanor marijuana possession busts is probably lower on the list than public defender. This oft-repeated conspiracy theory comes from the folks who mistakenly believe NORML is some sort of multi-million dollar enterprise stocked with $5,000 Armani suit-wearing Johnny Cochrans sipping Cristal on the balcony of NORML’s posh K Street penthouse offices in Washington, DC.
Visit our main offices sometime at 1600 K Street NW in Washington DC, Suite 501. You’ll find a small office taking up a portion of one floor, with four rooms and a meeting area. Check our financial records online at http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6739, you’ll find a grassroots organization doing amazing things with a tiny budget (by Washington standards).
People get this notion because they’ll look at the NORML Legal Committee listings and think the 300 or more lawyers listed there are NORML. Yes, we are proud of our Legal Committee — they work day after day keeping you out of jail and finding cases that will set precedent to help us all — but they are no more the entirety of NORML than the US Marine Corps is the entirety of the United States.
What the entirety of NORML actually is, however, is nine paid staffers who work twelve hour days for much less pay than they’d make doing an equivalent job eight hours a day in the private sector. It is a Board of Directors and Advisory Board comprised of men and women who volunteer their time to oversee those paid staffers. But most of all, NORML is thousands of volunteer chapter leaders, members, and supporters who don’t make a dime by risking their careers and reputations to stand up for all the conspiracy theorists who won’t fight for their own liberation and spout nefarious nonsense about those of us who do.
I’m always chagrined by this notion that I and my colleagues who are working so hard to eliminate our jobs actually want to see marijuana prohibition continue. I always wonder why that standard conspiracy to protect one’s job is never applied to other social justice non-profits. Nobody ever says PETA really wants to see more factory farming so they can protect their jobs. Nobody ever imagines Greenpeace secretly wants Japanese and Norwegian whaling to continue so they can keep having fun in their boat. Nobody ever accuses the NAACP of rooting for continued racist discrimination so they can keep protesting against it. Nobody ever claims that “pro-life” activists really want to see abortions continue so they can keep fundraising. Only a few cannabis consumers seem to think that the organization most dedicated to ending their persecution for the last forty years really secretly has the opposite agenda.