Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-05-06

It’s Tuesday, May 6th and it’s 4:20 somewhere in the world. I’m your host, “Radical” Russ Belville.

We here at NORML would like to remind you to get involved in the cannabis civil rights movement and join us here at NORML – you can learn everything you need to know at NORML.org. Make a donation, write a letter, attend a rally, march for your rights – it all starts with you. Call your Congress at 202-224-3121 – they’ll ask your zip code and put you in touch with your elected officials. Tell them to support HR5842 and HR5843 to end DEA raids in medical marijuana states and legalize personal possession of pot. It still is a government of We the People, but you have to step up and do your part.

Tuesday is Government at Work day on the podcast, and coming up after the news, we’re going to speak with D. Paul Stanford, executive director of The Hemp & Cannabis Foundation’s chain of medical marijuana clinics in six Western states. Paul has some excellent news about the defeat of a plan to repeal Oregon’s highly-successful self-funded medical marijuana program and the launch of the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act for 2010.

After that Cannabis Karri brings us the secret agent of the counterculture, the Undercover Hippy. His new album, “They Feed on Greed” features an instant cannabis classic called “Too Stoned” that we’re playing for you today.

We’ll wrap up today with another look at the Global Marijuana March this last weekend with two activists straight from the heartland. We’ve got James Getman from Iowa NORML and Steven Eisenhauer from SW Indiana NORML here to give us a review of their events and their take on the chances for cannabis reform in the Midwest.

So sit back and relax with your favorite strain – this is the Daily Audio Stash.

Willamette Week | Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
Conservative ballot-measure supremo Kevin Mannix just told WWire he and his cohorts are dropping a proposed ballot initiative to kill the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program.

“That petition’s going to stop this week,” Mannix says. There was not enough time or money to gather the 82,769 valid signatures needed, he says.

“That’s the best news I’ve had all day,” says Paul Stanford, head of The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, a Portland-based national chain of medical marijuana clinics.

Mannix says the decision to drop the petition drive had nothing to do with lack of public support, but rather lack of resources. But Stanford says he believes Mannix ran into trouble because the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, approved by voters in 1998, is still supported by a clear majority.

Stanford says it’s good news for medical-marijuana advocates that the petition has been dropped.

“We don’t have to waste our resources encouraging people not to sign that petition,” Stanford says. “We don’t have to mount a campaign against them in the fall. It just saves us a lot of time and effort.”

The so-called Oregon Crimefighting Act would have done three things:

•Given repeat “major felony” sex offenders a minimum 25-year sentence.

•Made third-strike DUII convictions a felony.

•Replaced medical marijuana with prescription THC pills.

Stanford has called the initiative a cynical effort to tear down medical marijuana by tagging it onto slam-drunk issues like opposing drunk drivers and sex predators. He says many marijuana patients oppose the change because THC pills are too expensive and not as effective.

Mannix told WWire that the ballot initiative, which he drafted, had financial support from the Florida-based nonprofit Save Our Society From Drugs. He says backers may return with another effort to gut medical marijuana in the 2010 election.

How about Save Our Society From Ignorance? This was the most shameful attempt to repeal medical marijuana in the second state to enact such protection for serious ill and disabled people. Mannix is a well-known conservative troublemaker in this state. He’s the man behind our ill-fated Measure 11, a state-level get-tough-on-crime mandatory minimum sentencing scheme that has helped overcrowd Oregon’s prisons and led us to spending more money on prisons than colleges. He’s lost a couple attempts to become governor and is now eyeing the federal Congressional seat of the retiring Representative Darlene Hooley.