Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 5:57 pm | By: Radical Russ
(KOIN 6) PORTLAND, Ore. – A café set to open next week in northeast Portland will be serving up more than your morning latte.
Café Rumpspankers (yep, that’s the name) will open next week serving coffee and sampling different types of marijuana for Oregon Medical Marijuana Cardholders to try.
Per state law, only members of Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Program are allowed in.
The Oregon chapter of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) will run the café which will open November 13th on Northeast Dekum.
The café will be the first of its kind in Oregon and will be similar to those found in Europe.
Flock to the website of KOIN (ABC affiliate) in Portland, my minions, for they have an online poll asking whether you support this “type of business.” It’s barely a “Yes” at this point – 50.4% when I first voted!
Whoa. I just tweeted it before I wrote this post and now it’s up to 54.6%. Correlation ain’t causation; maybe they just aired it on the news and more people clicked in. Or maybe, just maybe, I have the power to sway online polls in 140 characters or less! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha!
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Part one of Chris Goldstein in medical marijuana debate against Terrence Farley, a former county prosecutor and the now head of the NJ Narcotics Task Force Commanders Association.
Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm | By: Radical Russ
While most Portlanders are all too familiar with cafés of the coffee-serving variety, there’s a new café coming to town worth noting.
It’s Oregon’s first cannabis café (a concept common elsewhere around the globe) and it will be run by Oregon NORML
It’s scheduled to open Friday, Nov. 13, naturally at 4:20pm.
Sadly, only members both of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program and NORML can partake in the experience (the café is legal under the guidelines of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act), but maybe they’re accepting applications for servers. Snacks and items from sellers like Stoned Made will be available, along with a full range of pot to sample. The café will be a resource for the medical marijuana community, and Oregon NORML also hopes to provide seminars and classes there.
Friday, Nov. 13, 4:20pm. Rumpspankers, 700 NE Dekum St, Portland. For the Grand Opening, the entry fee will be $25, which covers the first month of membership and an all-day entry pass.
This new cannabusiness operates under two premises from the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act. One, cardholders are allowed to freely exchange marijuana with each other for “no consideration” – that is, no buying, selling, trading, favors, gifts, or exchanges. Its the reason you’ve never heard of much federal interference with Oregon’s medical marijuana program: there’s no commerce involved. (Isn’t interesting how dangerous marijuana is to the authorities when people are making money off of it, but when it’s exchanged freely by over 25,000 cardholders, there’s not enough danger to the public for the feds to be interested?
Two, patients are allowed to medicate so long as they are not “in public view”. A private club for a membership-based organization in a building with its windows covered by drapes is out of public view. Oregon NORML will be strictly carding all entrants o the café to verify cardholder status.
We discussed the café with Madeline Martinez, director of Oregon NORML, on the last NORML SHOW LIVE. She tells us, “It’s exciting because there are so many of our most vulnerable patients who have no real social outlets. They can’t really go to concerts or clubs because they can’t medicate and nobody can really enjoy themselves if they are forced to sit in pain. At our café patients can relax and meet others, learn about the program, sample different strains of medicine to find what might work best for them, they can get some snacks and drinks and even purchase some great stuff from Urb Age and Stoned Made and others that helps support the community.”
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 10:31 am | By: Radical Russ
America's longest serving non-violent marijuana offender, Robert Platshorn, a.k.a. The Black Tuna, served 29 years in prison for marijuana smuggling
We’re back in studio this Saturday for our special Halloweed show! Our guest is ROBERT PLATSHORN, a.k.a. “The Black Tuna”. We’ll be discussing his life as America’s longest-imprisoned (30 years) non-violent marijuana offender, once referred to by President Carter’s attorney general as one of the “slickest, most sophisticated pot smugglers of the 70’s.” Read all about it in Platshorn’s book, “The Black Tuna Diaries”.
The original High Times cover of the Black Tuna story in 1981
We’re also broadcasting from the site of NORML’s West Coast Media HQ Halloweed party, with guests such as Oregon NORML’s Madeline Martinez and UrbAge Designs‘ Scott Gordon. Plus your calls about the scariest marijuana moments in your life. It’s live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 8:27 am | By: Radical Russ
Does it seem like everybody is talking about marijuana these days? Following yesterday’s announcement of the new Obama Administration DOJ memo outlining a “hands off” approach to states with medical marijuana laws, every local news reporter in a medical marijuana state scrambled to get interviews with local NORML activists for reaction. Even I was contacted by local radio station KPAM when it couldn’t get through to Oregon NORML’s Madeline Martinez, because she was already on the phone with another local radio station!
Mel from Southern Oregon NORML send me this video where their local TV station visited their headquarters for reaction:
Madeline from Oregon NORML was also featured in this Bloomberg coverage:
Madeline Martinez is in constant pain from a disease that is destroying her joints and the discs in her back. Marijuana relieves her discomfort, she said, and the Obama administration has ended her worries that she may someday be jailed for using the drug.
Martinez, 58, of Portland, Oregon, had previously been given Abbott Laboratories’ Vicodin and codeine for her pain. Use of those drugs led to stomach problems, and now she takes marijuana prescribed for her by a doctor. Medicinal marijuana is legal in Oregon, one of 14 states to allow so-called compassionate-care use.
The U.S. Department of Justice yesterday advised federal prosecutors not to seek criminal charges against those who use medical marijuana in accordance with state laws, reversing a Bush administration approach. Along with chronic pain, the American College of Physicians, the second-largest U.S. doctors group, has said marijuana can be used to treat glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and nausea.
“Having disabled people jailed for no reason, that’s terrifying,” said Martinez, who mostly uses a tincture of the drug rather than smoking it. “As a medical marijuana patient, it’s always good to have some stress and anxiety alleviated.”
Martinez, who struggles with chronic pain from degenerative disc and joint disease, grows her own marijuana because Oregon doesn’t have official dispensaries, she said. She also participates in a collective to give away cuttings and medicine.
“We struggle with access,” Martinez said. “The black market mostly controls the marijuana in the country, and we need to grab it away from him and use it for our own economy, and to make it a priority for patients.”
If you’ve gotten local newspaper, radio, or television coverage of yesterday’s news where a local NORML chapter is prominently featured, please send it my way at stash@norml.org.
By the way, NORML’s Allen St. Pierre will be on MSNBC around 12:10PM today debating former GOP congressman Ernest Istook, and NORML’s Keith Stroup will be on CNN around the same time. According to St. Pierre, “I think NORML’s staff did 25-35 interviews yesterday with national and large regional media outlets yesterday, from 5AM to 1AM….and starting again today at 6AM with, so far, 5 more live radio shows…”
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 3:07 pm | By: Radical Russ
Oakland-based activists have filed a ballot initiative with the Attorney General that would legalize marijuana in California and allow counties to establish local systems to tax and regulate the plant and its products. Activists have 150 days from filing to gather 434,000 signatures to qualify for the statewide ballot in November 2010. The initiative is being spearheaded by medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee, founder of Oaksterdam University.
Within the last several months, California Assembly Member Tom Ammiano introduced a bill to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said marijuana legalization should be considered and debated, Oakland voters overwhelmingly adopted an initiative to tax medical marijuana, and for the first time ever in a statewide Field Poll, a majority of California voters – 56 percent – expressed support for legalizing and taxing marijuana. Outside the state, New York Gov. David Paterson joined Schwarzenegger’s call, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard suggested national policymakers debate marijuana legalization as a way to cripple both Mexican and U.S. gangs, and an ABC News/Washington Post poll found 46 percent of Americans nationwide now favor legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use, more than double its level 12 years ago.
The state Board of Equalization concluded that California would generate $1.4 billion dollars in new annual revenue if Assembly Member Ammiano’s bill to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol (AB 390) were adopted. According to the Attorney General, 74,119 Californians were arrested for marijuana offenses in 2007 (nearly 17,000 under the age of 18). 78 percent of all arrests were misdemeanors. Marijuana arrests in California increased nearly 25 percent since 2005 while arrests for all other controlled substances, and most violent crimes, fell. The Drug Policy Alliance estimates the costs incurred by California’s criminal justice system as a result of current marijuana prohibition laws to be nearly $260 million a year.
Richard Lee’s “Tax Cannabis 2010″ proposal is available online at http://taxcannabis2010.org. There’s another California initiative called “California Cannabis Initiative 2010″, spearheaded by lifetime NORML Legal Committee member Omar Figueroa and Joe Rogoway, available at http://californiacannabisinitiative.org.
Meanwhile, farther north in Oregon, NORML Board Member and Oregon NORML Executive Director Madeline Martinez has filed the Oregon Cannabis Tolerance Act of 2010, a measure to legalize marijuana and distribute it through a state cannabis-store system, not unlike (but separate from) liquor stores, while the THC Foundation’s Paul Stanford has filed the revised Oregon Cannabis Tax Act of 2010 (http://cannabistaxact.org or http://octa2010.org) that seeks a similar solution but also adds specific definitions of hemp industry. Both OCTAs leave the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act intact and preserve the right of citizens to maintain personal non-commercial grows without taxation.
[UPDATE: Madeline's Tolerance Act is actually going to be presented to the Oregon Legislature to be filed as a citizen referendum. Paul's OCTA is going to be presented to the citizens as an initiative. Both are currently gathering the 1,000 signatures necessary to file the measures. I regret the errors. -- "R"R]
Drug Policy Alliance and others admit they’d rather see this sort of push in 2012 when there would be more support. Some feel to push in 2010 is too soon and a loss at the polls will set the movement back. I disagree. I always say, when we’re talking about it, we’re winning. Well, when we’re voting on it, we’re getting exactly what we want – a chance to have our voices heard! I don’t think it is ever too soon or inadvisable to vote for our freedom. The last legalization proposals in Nevada got 39% and 44% of the vote, so I would see any legalization proposal that clears 40% in California and Oregon as a success.
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(LA Times) More than 100 people lined up outside a marijuana dispensary in the San Fernando Valley this morning, lured by the offer of free cannabis for the first 100 patients.
The nonprofit dispensary in Canoga Park, Roscoe’s Compassionate Collective, advertised the offer last week in Kush L.A., a monthly cannabis magazine, with a pull-out coupon for patients with marijuana medical cards and updated prescriptions. Since then, the collective has fielded hundreds of calls from people essentially asking the same question: Is this for real?
JT Wiegman, 37, the owner’s son, said it is indeed for real and as of 11 a.m., they began giving 3.5 grams of marijuana, worth $55, to each recipient. The shop has been open only three months, and though Wiegman admitted the giveaway was in part a promotion, he said that wasn’t the main point.
Through the pot promotion, the dispensary hopes to draw attention to collectives that overcharge and lack compassion, Wiegman said. He said there are too many people in the industry looking to make a fast buck. “I’m showing what true compassion is for this industry, for all the patients that really need the medicine,” he said. “I think collectives in general have not done a good job of taking this professional, we are a pharmacy and we have medicines that are legal.”
While I admire this dispensary owner, it seems to me the giveaway isn’t so much about showing “true compassion” as it is trying to open a new dispensary in a market that is already flooded with dispensaries. An eighth of marijuana is worth $55? Is that what he’s going to sell it for once the first 100 free samples have gone out? Can you find for me any other agricultural product that retails for $15.71 per gram? Even saffron only trades at $4.25 per gram!
Of course the eighth costs $55 in the dispensary because it costs $55 on the street. There is a legal, or “white” market, if you will, in dispensary cannabis for the 5% of tokers who are medical, and a parallel black market in street cannabis for the 95% of tokers deemed too healthy not to arrest for toking. A white market cannot run alongside a black market without both becoming a bit grayer. Until cannabis is legal for all who want it, patients will be charged these ridiculous prices for plant matter, because it can’t be grown in huge open fields, sown and harvested with modern agribusiness techniques, and sold in bulk at vastly reduced prices thanks to prohibition. That prohibition is the engine that wrecks 872,721 lives per year as well as powering the dispensary’s combination of drug-dealer profits with a farmer’s market lifestyle
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad dispensaries exist and that desperate patients can get legal medicine regardless of cost. If I’m a cancer patient, I don’t care if the dispensary eighth costs what Vinnie the Weed Dealer in the park charges; I just want to stop vomiting from chemo. However, I’ve got to wonder how many of these dispensary owners would still be in the business of “compassion” if marijuana were completely legal and the profit margins dropped from drug-dealer levels to farmer’s market levels.
By the way, I’d also like to note that Oregon NORML gives away free medicine to twice as many patients twice a month for the past four years.
Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 8:20 am | By: Radical Russ
All week long CNN’s Anderson Cooper focuses on the popularity of marijuana legalization. Oregon NORML and NORML Board’s Madeline Martinez and the Oregon NORML Cardholders Meeting should be on Wednesday night, as well as THCF’s Paul Stanford and his outdoor medical garden.
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Oregon NORML's cleaning up Highway 26, milepost 14-16
I just got this photo from Madeline Martinez at Oregon NORML. The chapter has joined the “Adopt A Highway” program that puts volunteers on the roadside to clean up garbage along our roadsides. Oregon NORML adopted Highway 26, the busy route from Portland to the skiing and camping destinations at Mt. Hood, from milepost 14 to 16. They’re working on adopting another stretch of road that passes right by the residence of one particularly weed-hating state representative (the Yiddish word is “chutzpah”, I believe).
Other NORML chapters, like Oklahoma NORML, have done this and it is one of the coolest ways to make your chapter known. It helps to show society that we cannabis consumers care about the same things everyone else does, like clean roads. It takes only a couple of hours every few months to fulfill the requirements. It can be a fun activity for your volunteers to feel like they are part of a worthwhile activity that generates positive public relations for the movement.
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Tere’s encounter with feds over pot on Indian Reservation lands; Degé Coutee from Patients Advocacy Network with details on Bakersfield Raid and San Francisco resolution to Obama Administration to clearly end DEA raids.
bullbog: Hawkeyes you had a good run...this toke is for you.
Track Snack: Mornin Stashers! Tokin on the Mean Green Martian for breakfast.
MrSpof: Maybe Dr Mitch could comment on the efficacy of reasonable amount of weed like that consumed (smoked) quickly mitigating migraine effects. I know the lowering of blood pressure would be [...]
MrSpof: Had the onset of a migraine yesterday. Immediately took 8 , moist cool washcloth on eyes, heating pad on neck and upper back, turned off lights. Migraine gone in [...]
MrSpof: As you personal non-accredited doctor, I advise the rest of you to smoke/vape/eat heavily
slash5city: frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
MrSpof: Risen and roasted How the hell are you?
RevRayGreen: always Fidget......always.
Adam: Maybe in WA, judges are starting to think about the true cost of a Drug charge...
Adam: Tim Lincecum, pitcher for the San Francisco Giants will pea to a paraphernalia charge/ Possession charges DROPPED
Adam: Add some cottage cheese to your pancake batter, replace the maple with a fruit syrup! f-ing killer, YES I was stoned...
Fidget Truittelli: Good morning from beautiful Arizona! I hope you all have a happy, fun day. Remember to 'pay-it' forward. Do something nice for someone.
BenJaMin: Go NORML!!!
BenJaMin: Russ Is Tha BEst! :smokin:
SneakerPimp: oh there it is thanx russ
SneakerPimp: so whats up with today stash?
RevRayGreen: Barney Frank Present When Partner Arrested for pot-- http://bit.ly/1XpM2R
RevRayGreen: KMK 11/17/09 VAL AIR ballroom DSM
bullbog: that's crazy. I had a NORML black t-shirt on. It was hell of a show
RevRayGreen: dude I was probably 4-5 seats from you then
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Maine: Voters To Decide Next Week On Medical Marijuana Expansion Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters To Decide Next Week On Eliminating Pot Penalties; California: Lawmakers Hold Historic Hearing On Marijuana Legalization; New Hampshire: Senate Fails To Override Medical Marijuana Veto. […]
Gallup: Majority Of West Coast Voters Back Marijuana Legalization; Pot Arrests Responsible For Majority Of Marijuana Treatment Referrals; DOJ To Federal Prosecutors: Do Not Focus Resources On Medical Marijuana. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Cannabis with that cappuccino? Local coverage of Oregon NORML’s Cannabis Café
and adam 
frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
and roasted 
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