[UPDATE: Sorry, test over. It only took us a half hour to find out how bad my connection sounded. However, it was with this cheapo headset I use for Skype. I will be back tomorrow early with the full pro setup to see if it will pass. If not, we'll be back at the home studio. Thanks everyone who helped us test. -- "R"R]

I’m down here in North Portland at the World Famous Oregon NORML Cannabis Café. I’ve got the new 4G wireless connection which has been stellar in tests so far. But tonight I need to run a 2.5 hour test and I need to test multiple callers, just to put the system through a stress test.

So I’m here, at the café, testing the BlogTalkRadio platform from 7pm to 9:30pm tonight (Pacific Time, of course). It’s a test show, so nobody can hear it over the intertubes, but you can call in if you know the secret number (347-994-1810). Cannabis Karri should be along sometime as well. It won’t be a real “show”, we’ll just be hanging out and doing what you do at a cannabis café.

If you want to just sit and listen to the sounds of cannabis café and my rambling, go ahead and call in. If you want to chat, just press 1 at any time and it will signal me on the switchboard.

For extra good measure to test the wireless, I’m also streaming the gamecast of my beloved Boise State Broncos. So don’t be surprised if I suddenly yell “Touchdown!”

NORML SHOW LIVE provides you with exclusive access to Oregon’s world-famous Cannabis Café, this Saturday Night from 6pm-8pm Pacific.

You’ve read about it on the Reuters wire, New York Times, the Times of London, and even Al Jazeera, USA Today, and the Associated Press will be bringing you the story soon, but only “Radical” Russ can get you inside the first café exclusively for Oregon’s 21,000 medical marijuana cardholders.

Madeline Martinez from Oregon NORML and the NORML Board joins us to describe how her vision of a cannabis café has become a reality. We also speak to the patients in the café enjoying cannabis liberty in a way few outside Amsterdam enjoy.

We’ve upgraded to the latest 4G WiMax wireless technology to bring you the best remote audio possible from the café. Cannabis Karri will be screening your calls from back in the studio and Cousin Kenny will take your questions online via our live chat window.

It’s two hours of live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, NORML SHOW LIVE features a recap of the week’s top stories in medical marijuana, consumer cannabis, and industrial hemp; interviews with the top cannabis activists, politicians, scientists, doctors, actors, musicians, and comedians; and your calls live at 347-994-1810.

Cue up to 2:15 in the video… nice punchline… even better follow-up!

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Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-11-16.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. Groups threaten to sue Los Angeles if medical marijuana dispensaries are banned
2. Cheech & Chong confirm “Get It Legal” 2010 Tour
3. Washington Post examines baby boomers and marijuana

Daily Toker Tunes

• Roots Monday: The Jon Weiss Trio – “Ridin’ High”

High Times Magazine preview with Senior Editor Dave Bienenstock, author of The Official Pot Smoker’s Handbook

• Indoor Grow Special
• Rick Simpson Cannabis Oil as cancer cure
• Alanis Morissette

NORML Newsmakers

• Madeline Martinez at the Oregon NORML Cannabis Café, live from Saturday night.

Show 012 This Saturday, 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific

My deepest apologies to those of you who tried listening last Saturday to Show 011, the Grand Opening of the Oregon NORML Cannabis Café. We were beset by technical difficulties and could not complete the show.

I will solve the technical issues and return this weekend to Oregon’s first Cannabis Café. Oregon’s law does not allow for marijuana sales, but does allow patients to medicate “out of public view”. Any cardholder may freely exchange medicine with any other. So Madeline Martinez and Oregon NORML have created a private, members-only club for the social benefit of medical marijuana patients.

However, this is not a medical marijuana dispensary with a café; this is a café for medical marijuana patients. Patients can visit the smoke-free vapor bar where a budtender will load up one of six Volcano Vaporizers, fill the bag with the vapor of any one of more than twenty of the strains available, and cap it with a sterilized mouthpiece. Others bring their own pipes or papers and request a small ceramic bowl filled with their choice of freshly-ground cannabis strain and roll a joint as they play pool or smoke a bowl as they join in a card game. All sorts of café food and drink are available, though not alcoholic beverages (the owner surrendered his liquor license rather than fight with the commission over the use of cannabis in the café.) Many have questioned how this café can operate due to Oregon’s smoke-free laws, but the actual statutes in question specifically reference “tobacco smoke”. Thus, no tobacco smoking is allowed in the café.

Most amazingly, all the cannabis is provided free through the donations of local area medical marijuana growers. Oregon’s law provides for six mature plants, eighteen seedlings, but only twenty-four ounces of dried, cured marijuana. I say “only” and people’s jaws drop, wishing they could possess 24 grams, much less a pound and a half of marijuana. But that works out to four ounces per mature plant, which some growers are able to surpass, so they donate their excess to Oregon NORML for distribution to patients. In fact, on the day of the Grand Opening, the café had more marijuana at the end of the day then they had started with, thanks to generous donations.

While I attended on Saturday night, two officers from the Portland Police Bureau stopped by to investigate the operations. They were very friendly and just wanted to know where the medicating was taking place and how Oregon NORML was controlling the situation. They were pleased to learn how relentlessly ID’s and medical cards were being checked and that the front entrance was closed as a measure to help control the smell from permeating the public area. The police let everyone know that they had no intention of harassing the club or its patrons and that absent any complaints from neighbors the Cannabis Café would be free to operate.

Annual membership in Oregon NORML is required, since it is a private club, as well as monthly club dues, which go to support Oregon NORML’s lobbying and outreach efforts and pay the overhead of running the club, respectively. This Saturday, November 21, we’ll return to the café and speak to Madeline Martinez and these patients and hear their medical marijuana stories, as well as taking questions about the café from the live audience and our callers. It’s live talk radio from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, NORML SHOW LIVE features a recap of the week’s top stories in medical marijuana, consumer cannabis, and industrial hemp; interviews with the top cannabis activists, politicians, scientists, doctors, actors, musicians, and comedians; and your calls live at 347-994-1810. Join us every Saturday Night, live, at http://live.norml.org from 9-11pm Eastern / 6-8pm Pacific.

This Friday, Oregon NORML’s Cannabis Café opens in Northeast Portland. I’ll be there Saturday night with a live broadcast of NORML SHOW LIVE from the café. Meanwhile, the notion of medical marijuana patients having their own private club is generating a lot of news here:

Our FOX affiliate:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(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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Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-11-02.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. Oregon NORML set to open first patient’s Cannabis Café
2. Michigan medical marijuana workplace rights considered
3. Passed out publicly pantsless in a puddle of piss in the Peach State preferable to a pocketful of pot

Daily Toker Tunes

• Mia Muze – “Dr Chronic”

NORML Newsmakers

• 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.

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.”

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.

The show runs from 6pm-8pm Pacific Time (9-11pm Eastern) streaming live at http://live.norml.org.  You can call in with your questions and comments at 347-994-1810.  Archived episodes of NORML SHOW LIVE are available for download from our site or by subscribing through iTunes.