Preparing For Colorado 4/20 Pot Smoke-Out
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 5:35 am | By: Radical Russ
NORML.ORG US CO: Preparing For 4/20 Pot Smoke-Out
Student smokers, in perhaps the cliched easy-going fashion associated with marijuana, are getting ready for the annual 4/20 celebration on the University of Colorado campus.Official smoke-out T-shirts sold online simply say: “University of Colorado. April 20. Farrand Field.”
Every year, thousands of people gather on the CU campus April 20 for the unofficial pro-pot celebration — and at 4:20 p.m. a cloud of smoke mushrooms above the crowd. The event is said to have grown from a northern California tradition.
CU police this year are bracing for a large crowd.
Alex Douglas, who does public relations for NORML’s CU chapter, said there also will be a screening of the documentary “Super High Me” in Cristol Chemistry Building, Room 140. The group plans to rally for the legalization of marijuana with signs and banners on Norlin Quad.
CU police Cmdr. Brad Wiesley said the department will likely need to pay overtime to its officers to monitor the event, given the possibility that the smoke-out could be heavily attended.
“We will obviously have a presence,” Wiesley said. “We certainly don’t condone, support or otherwise sanction this event.”
In past attempts to snuff out the event, campus police have turned sprinklers on the crowd and taken pictures of student smokers, posting them online and offering rewards to those who could identify them.
Wiesley, though, was mum on this year’s planned tactics.
“We don’t give our playbook to the other team before the game,” he said. People have the right to protest for marijuana law reforms, “but, breaking the law in order to change the law is not how our democratic society works,” he said.
Uh, Commander Wiesley, if I may enlighten you with a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
…Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Marijuana prohibition is one of those unjust laws. The power majority made our use of an intoxicant (marijuana) illegal, but keeps their use of an intoxicant (alcohol) legal. Dr. King was addressing the social and legal segregation of blacks and whites; I’m addressing the social and legal segregation of tokers and drinkers. Breaking unjust laws in an act of civil disobedience is a long tradition in this nation… even for us cannabis consumers.
