Contact your elected representatives and urge them to 'Stop Arresting Marijuana Smokers'. NORML Blog
Roger Christie
Stash for Fri, Dec 10, 2010
Sabrina Fendrick, Cheryl Shuman, and Anne Davis on NORML Women’s Allliance; California excesses harming medmj efforts elsewhere; music by God Forbid.
Roger Christie absurdly considered “danger to the community”, held without bail
This case illustrates why it is so important to legalize marijuana for all adults. The “danger to the community” angle only works if marijuana is criminal. The state feels a danger from a church because the marijuana they use as sacrament is criminal. Roger has preached a religious right to use cannabis protected by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, but even with that right, illegal cannabis for all would still result in unreasonable restrictions for religious users, just as medical users are limited in plant numbers and possession amounts, subject to evictions and firings and drug tests, and still forced to prove their legitimacy lest they face arrest like everyone else who uses cannabis.
NORML Responds to Religious Cannabis Users: Ending Prohibition Protects ALL of Us
No reasonable person wants to see Roger Christie being held in jail without bond pending trial on these non-violent marijuana charges. None of us want to see him imprisoned for his religious use of marijuana. This debate is about the current state of the law regarding the religious use of marijuana in this country and the best strategy to legalize the religious use of marijuana. It is not a debate about the legitimacy of anyone’s religious beliefs and to make it so misses the opportunity to discuss how we all best spend our time and money bringing an end to marijuana prohibition so we may all enjoy our human rights to cannabis.
Stash for Tue, Nov 16, 2010
Shane Ward, filmmaker of new doc, “Prohibition: A Modern Addiction”; 30 facts on Arizona medical marijuana; music by Big Swing Face.
On Religious Use of Cannabis
I’ve said it before to the medical users and I’ll say it to the religious users: carving out an exemption for yourselves from the criminality of cannabis prohibition is always going to lead to undue restrictions for you at best and a jail cell at worst. Only through legalization for all adults, even healthy atheists like me, can any cannabis user fully realize their medical and spiritual rights to cannabis. If a Rastafarian, a cancer victim, and I all share a joint, we are not a “believer”, a “patient”, and a “criminal”. We are all just human beings with the same inalienable right to use plants for any reason we choose so long as we harm no others doing so. Your health and your religion do not change that joint in any way.
Stash for Mon, Jul 19, 2010
Anthony Johnson from Oregon medical marijuana dispensary initiative campaign; Radical Russ deconstructs opposition to California’s Prop 19; music by Los Campos de Mexico.
Yet another member of the Church of Lighter Wallets about to lose a religious use marijuana case
So in order for Douglass to prevail, the court would have to find that ordering a $50 laminated card over the internet represents a “sincere religious belief”. If that’s true, then certainly proscribing that religion’s sacrament would create a substantial burden for the believer; however, the “compelling state interest” of maintaining cannabis prohibition for the non-religious would be impossible if all the 22 million American cannabis users only had to order a $50 card on the internet. Furthermore, the ban on cannabis is applied equally to the religious and non-religious and nothing about banning cannabis seriously impacts the practices of religion other than the sacrament.
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