DENVER — Prosecutions for private adult marijuana possession plunged more than 21 percent in 2008, reaching the lowest rate since 2005, according to the Denver City Attorney’s Office.

Director of Prosecution Vince DiCroce presented the 2008 statistics to the Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel at its meeting Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. in the Denver City-County Building. The Denver City Attorney’s Office is required to provide the Panel with marijuana possession statistics every six months.

Prosecutions fell from 2,105 in 2007, to 1,658 in 2008, the year following voters’ adoption of a city ordinance designating adult possession the city’s “lowest law enforcement priority” and Mayor John Hickenlooper’s subsequent appointment of the Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel. The Panel was established to implement, monitor and report on the new ordinance. In May 2008, it recommended the city halt prosecutions for adult marijuana possession, and in August it called on city police to refrain from citing adults during the Democratic National Convention.

The new trend in marijuana prosecutions is NOT the result of fewer arrests for other offenses, according to DiCroce, who speculated that the number of charges filed for all offenses in Denver likely increased or held steady in 2008.

“Our city punished far fewer adults for marijuana possession this year, yet the sky did not fall,” said Mason Tvert, a member of the Panel and the executive director of Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), the organization behind the successful marijuana initiative campaign. “Hopefully this is just the beginning of Denver’s shift toward a more rational approach to marijuana.”

“There are still far too many adults in Denver being needlessly punished simply for using a substance that is far less harmful than alcohol,” Tvert said. “It’s time to stop these prosecutions altogether and start allowing adults to make the safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol, if that’s what they prefer.”

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-09-02

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2008-09-02.mp3)

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for!  No, not the re-legalization of weed.  Less than that.  No, not the introduction of industrial hemp.  No, not even federal medical marijuana recognition.

It’s the return of the Daily Audio Stash after a two-week vacation!

(I know.  Anti-climactic.)

But hey, I’m back in your headphones, bringing you the latest news and info for the cannabis community.  Education – that’s how we bring about the real moments we’re all waiting for.

Today I catch up with Mason Tvert of SAFER.  I was rather harsh on the Democratic Convention and what I perceived to be a lack of cannabis representation at the most political event of the decade.  But Mason contends that it’s earned media, not public protests, that are the goldmine of marijuana law reform.  We talk about Speaker Pelosi’s handling of a surprise medical marijuana question as well.

Then I present my interview with the director of the new documentary, “Hempsters: Plant the Seed”.  Michael Henning talks about the activists this movie profiles, including the story of Alex White Plume, whose fight with the federal government over sovereign Oglala Sioux treaty rights to farm hemp is told in the movie.

Only four more days until the closing festival of the Pacific Northwest’s cannabis community, the Portland Hempstalk.  I’ll be speaking and presenting there; stop on by and say “high”.

NORML.  Marijuana Policy Project.  Americans for Safe Access.  Drug Policy Alliance.  These and many other groups raise a whole lot of money to affect marijuana policy in the United States.

Democratic National Convention 2008 in Denver.  Tens of thousands of the most politically-aware activists, bloggers, and citizens are packing the streets, along with convention delegates and politicians, the very movers and shakers of the upcoming Obama administration who could be the people who help us overturn adult marijuana prohibition.

Guess how many panels, presentations, flyers, posters, brochures, tables, booths, kiosks, protests, and speeches I have seen in three days of wandering two miles worth of citizen / non-profit displays outside the Colorado Convention Center, the Pepsi Center, the city park, and the eighteen block span of open-air market known as the 16th Street Mall?

Probably thousands.  PETA is there with people in pink pig suits.  Falun Gong was there with large dioramas.  The pro life government-enforced-procreation forces were out with three blocks worth of 25 square foot graphic photos of aborted fetuses.  Vendors of everything-Obama were out there.

Guess how many panels, presentations, flyers, posters, brochures, tables, booths, kiosks, protests, and speeches I have seen here regarding ending the drug war or marijuana policy?

To be fair, Mason Tvert and SAFER had a booth up in the park and I did run into Mason and Aaron Houston of MPP at the blogger’s tent.  However, I am stunned that none of the big drug policy organizations have any visible presence here at the Democratic Convention.

Last week, I was at Hempfest, where many drug policy organizations pour a lot of time and effort.  That’s great, I love Hempfest, but it is a lot of preaching to the choir.  If two days of tie-dye, patchouli, and glass sales is our big exposure event and we are noticable by our abscence at the premiere big event in progressive politics, then it’s not at all unfair for our opponents to paint us as less-than-serious about our political aims.

I have been blogging here for Pam’s House Blend, an award-winning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender blog (hey, I’m all about civil rights and personal freedom… I don’t care what you smoke, I don’t care who you sleep with, and no government should treat you differently for those choices).  We could learn so much about political activism from the LGBT community.

There are similarities.  Like gays, many of us stay in the closet and hide our true nature to save our careers and families.  Like gays, we are reviled by the Republicans and only barely tolerated by the Democrats.  Like gays, politicians want our support and secretly support our agenda (few politicians really think that we should lock people up for weed) but won’t openly speak up in full support of us.  Like gays, Democrats use us like an ATM to get campaign cash with lip service toward reform, knowing they can always say, “what are you going to do, vote Republican?”

And yet, at the Democratic Convention there are about a dozen panels on LGBT issues, there are openly gay and lesbian delegates, there was a gay congressman (Barney Frank) and a lesbian congresswoman (Tammy Baldwin), and at the LGBT luncheon, Michelle Obama even came to address the crowd.

Am I asking to much for there to be one booth supporting an end to the Drug War?  At a convention nominating the first African-American president, who admits to using cocaine and marijuana, there couldn’t be one big sign asking, “Should Barack Obama have been arrested and sentenced to a mandatory minimum for his admitted cocaine and marijuana use in the past?” or “If he’d been caught with marijuana as a young man, Barack Obama today would be Barry the Janitor.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stashers, here I am in Denver, Colorado, for the Democratic Convention.

Dress shirt?  Serious political blogging?  Is this the same guy as the guy below?

Apparently my work with NORML is followed in other areas of the non-cannabis blogosphere.  A fellow blogger from Indiana whom I know indirectly called me up and said, “Hey, Russ, you drove up here, right?  Uh, well, uh, I flew, and, uh, well, uh, I’m, like, NORML-friendly…”

Say no more.  I’m making new friends, indeed.

Today I am in full Au Gratin Cheesehead mode to attend the Packers/Broncos pre-season game.  I’m staying with friends who used to live in Phoenix, and in 2000 we all attended a Packers/Cardinals pre-season game (see pic at left… I was thinner then!).  I guess this is out once-every-eight-years tradition.

Thanks to all of you Stashers who have been leaving comments and sending emails during this two-week Stash break.  I’m going to have so much audio and video for you from the Dem Convention and Seattle Hempfest, and then the very next weekend is Portland Hempstalk.

If you said “laptop computer”, sorry, that’s incorrect.  I may be a stoner, but I’m not a complete idiot.

If you said “power cord for that laptop computer”, you’re a winner!

I had packed the laptop in the thin laptop case when I had the bright idea of using my mondo-huge laptop case to also carry along my radio show studio gear.  It’s freakin’ amazing we have the technology to put on a studio-quality radio show on the road over a telephone line up to a satellite across the continent.  Equally amazing is me typing this blog post on I-84 between Boise and Mountain Home, Idaho, connecting with a cellular modem.  Absolutely astonishing that I can fit the whole thing in a carry-on bag.  You younger folks have it good; I recall connecting to a bulletin board system at 2400 baud!  (cue cranky old man music…)

Anyway, I transfered everything over to the mondo-huge case… except the power cord.  Just bought a replacement cable for ninety bucks!  Egads!

I’m dialing into the home studio system (free plug alert: GoToMyPC.com rocks!) to fetch some Hempfest audio, so stay tuned!

So if you’re wondering where the new Stash is… it isn’t.  I’m so slammed busy with these trips that my posts will be few and far between this week.

I have captured all my digital photos, video, and audio from Hempfest and I’ll do what I can to get some of that online this week from my laptop, using the cell modem as I travel the 24-hour drive.  Ah, technology!