NORML Board's George Rohrbacher speaks from Main Stage at Seattle Hempfest

(Seattle Times) ONCE again, the Seattle Hempfest drew tens of thousands to parks along the waterfront this weekend. In its mission statement, the all-volunteer organization that produces the event says, “The public is better served when citizens and public officials work cooperatively in order to successfully accomplish common goals.”

We agree. That is why we, as a Democratic state senator and former Republican state representative, support state Senate Bill 5615. This bill would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime carrying a mandatory day in jail to a civil infraction imposing a $100 penalty payable by mail. The bill was voted out of committee with a bipartisan “do pass” recommendation and will be considered by legislators in 2010.

The bill makes a lot of sense, especially in this time of severely strapped budgets. Our state Office of Financial Management reported annual savings of $16 million and $1 million in new revenue if SB 5615 passes. Of that $1 million, $590,000 would be earmarked for the Washington State Criminal Justice Treatment Account to increase support of our underfunded drug-treatment and drug-prevention services….

What?  Two politicians are mentioning Hempfest in their opening to support marijuana decriminalization?  I thought all those tie-dyes onstage turned those kinds of people off.

Still, decriminalization must be just an incremental step toward full legalization.  With decrim, you are just legalizing the end consumer, but not the producer and distributor of the marijuana.  While law enforcement and court resources may be saved from no longer busting personal use, there will still be raids on those who grow and sell, which still keeps the prices high, still keeps the Mexican cartels in business, still promotes clandestine grows on public land, and still promotes violence.

A few clips from Eric Sterling’s interminable rant against hemp rallies…

About sixteen or seventeen years ago, I was a featured speaker at some hemp rallies. I even had my name silk-screened on a rally T-shirt.

Of course, these rallies are not a debate, at all. Even as a “political” rally or protest, the hemp rally is a hodge-podge of bands, speakers, and clouds of smoke. I am deeply troubled that for much of the public the most common face of the politics of drug policy reform is teenager smoking a pipe at a pot rally. Does it need to be said that this is profoundly counter-productive? Well-meaning and passionate, but immature strategies and tactics keep holding back our movement.

350,000 people gather in a park, smoke marijuana, and nothing bad happens. How in the world is that not by some measure a political success?

We are told that marijuana smoking will make you lazy, yet the pot smokers who put on Hempfest organize a world-class NASCAR-sized event with no major incidents.

We are told that marijuana smoking leads to anti-social behavior, yet even when standing shoulder-to-shoulder in an 8,000 person traffic jam (as happened on Saturday), everyone is calm, polite, and respectful.

The drug policy reform movement has many organizational problems. In this paper I suggest that one of our reform movement’s most serious image and organizing problems are “hemp rallies.” I am using this term to describe any marijuana legalization or hemp legalization rally or festival at which marijuana is smoked, encouraged, or justified and at which persons college age or younger predominate.

A hemp rally is rarely a call to specific political action. It is a festival of marijuana use. It is an entertainment with excitement — being an outlaw and hoping to get away with it. The job of the speakers is to entertain the crowd. Inevitably, speakers extol the pleasure of pot smoking. We hear from the stage “Let’s get high!” “Let’s party!” We rarely hear calls to “Register to vote here. Join a political campaign here.” No one is here for a reasoned analysis or education. The repetition of cliches is always dependable.

Then you’re not listening to me speak at these rallies, Eric.  I both entertain and inform.  Thousands of young people now have the White House and Congressional comment lines programmed into their cell phones because of my speeches.  Thousands now know the holy trinity of police encounter replies — “I do not consent to a search”, “I wish to speak with my attorney”, “Am I being detained or am I free to go?” — and more about their Fourth & Fifth Amendment rights than they were ever taught in high school.  Thousands now know through my retelling of news stories the horrors of prohibition.

But “reasoned analysis” is the point of a drug policy conference, not a public rally.  I’ve heard those speeches at Hempfest and watched as the crowd fell asleep.  I’ll take 1,000 cliché-spouting young people to the polls over 1 middle-aged guy full of “reasoned analysis” any day.

Let’s face it, hemp rallies are not only a fraud as serious political events go, they are worse — they are advertisements of irresponsible drug use. Prohibitionists are on the mark when they describe hemp rallies as “pro-drug” events. We do not know that they contribute to the increase in juvenile drug use, but we do not know that they don’t.

The old “what about the children?!?” cliché is something I expect from prohibitionists; it hurts to hear it used by a supposed ally.  What about the children?  Sure, I saw lots of young people probably under age 18 at Hempfest.  I didn’t see them fighting or being anti-social.  I didn’t see them puking from alcohol overdoses.  Chances are the vast majority of them are good kids and will grow up to be good adults.  I counsel them onstage and in person to wait until they are eighteen, but you and I both know that many young people aged 12-17 will smoke pot anyway – so should that happen in secluded places with no adult supervision or in public where they are surrounded by adults, police, and medical staff?

Compare our events to the newsreel footage of political rallies of the 1930s and 40s. When serious political organizations staged an event, the male participants came in neckties; women wore dresses. People came to listen and to make a point with their presence. Drinking was unthinkable. The events were organized. People trained to be political organizers — not wannabe show business producers.

During the civil rights era, it was inconceivable that people would drink at a march or at a rally. The Civil Rights Marches were undertaken with sober reflection — they were led by preachers and were undertaken prayerfully. Look at the photographs of the 1963 great civil rights march on Washington.

I think all these button-down, I-used-to-speak-at-rallies-but-now-I’m-above-that critics ought to but together the 1930’s-style shirt-and-tie or 1960’s-style preacher-led rallies about which the author reminisces. I’ll be glad to speak there, too.

But I’ll bet ya 350,000 people won’t show up. I’ll bet ya you’re lucky if you get 350.

Those who organize fundraising concerts and parties to support drug policy reform (and those who attend) will need guidance about responsible drug use behavior. I commend MPP and DPA for leaving behind the rock concert model as the paradigm for drug policy reform fundraisers.

Yes, because a fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion priced well beyond the range of the average reformer is a far better model.  Nothing gets your average conservative Christian soccer mom on board for marijuana law reform than pictures of celebrities cavorting with “bunnies” at a pornographer’s house.

Personally, I’m tired of the “I’m not pro-pot, I’m pro-control” people denigrating the summer festival circuit. I am pro-pot. Many of these organizers and attendees are pro-pot. When you know that cannabis can stave off head and neck cancer, kills prostate cancer, doesn’t lead to lung damage, safely elevates mood, is a superior pain killer (among many medicinal uses), doesn’t lead to hard drugs, and can provide us a sustainable fuel source, nature’s best protein source, a carbon “sink” for greenhouse gases, and so much more, why would you moderate that stance because a few people (the smallest rate of any recreational drug) have problems with it or lying D.A.R.E. cops don’t like it?  How can you expect the undecided public to think pot legalization is OK when the button-down marijuana policy reform supporters like you are doing everything you can to divorce yourself from any inference that cannabis use is acceptable and cannabis is a wonderful thing?

I’m fully aware that the vast majority of attendees are at Hempfest for the party. In that respect I liken it to events like the Oregon Brewers Festival, an event one fifth the size that runs twice as long. (I have a request in with the Portland Police Bureau for a log of arrests from that fest, anybody want to bet it had more arrests for violent behavior than Hempfest?)  But nobody says that Teens Against Drugs & Alcohol should boycott the festival because it provides a pro-alcohol celebration; TADA shows up and uses the event to help educate about responsible use and “We Card” ID programs.  If my speaking at Hempfest educated just 1% of the attendees and motivated just 0.1% to register to vote and drove just 0.01% to become actively involved in marijuana law reform, I just educated 3,500; registered 350; and enlisted 35 new activists.

I call upon serious drug policy reformers to reform hemp rallies or end them. To associate our movement with hemp rallies makes our movement repellent to the most important constituencies we claim we are trying to reach.

Who?  The police?  The politicians?  Mom & Pop?  Evangelical Christians?  They believed all the bad things you claim Hempfest propagates before Hempfest existed and would still believe it even if Martin Luther King Jr. himself reincarnated on the Main Stage to lead a clean-cut tie-wearing audience in a chorus of “We Shall Overcome”.  To them, you’re just a dirty stinky hippie gone incognito.  No, Hempfest is about rallying our side to realize their power in numbers, not to try to convince the squares we’re something we’re not.  From the once-a-year-at-Hempfest toker to the daily pothead, there are 22,000,000 of us of voting age in America.  That’s more voting power than Texas or African-Americans (another point Hempfesters learned from my speeches).  The regular users – once a month or more – number 12.7 million adults; that’s greater than the memberships of the NRA, ACLU, NARAL, NOW, NAACP, Greenpeace, PETA, the Elks, and the John Birch Society COMBINED.  The true stoners – once a week or more – number 8.1 million adults; that’s greater than the US membership of the Mormon church.

But I never read about a Texan telling Texans to lose the cowboy hats and drawls because the dumb redneck image hurts the chances their bill will pass in Congress.  Nobody from NAACP tells the Million Man Marches to tone down the blackness a bit because it scares away the white folks they are trying to reach.  PETA doesn’t try to position themselves as “anti-cruelty” instead of “pro-animal” and the NRA will hold a pro-gun rally right after a deadly school shooting in the same town.  The Mormon Church, with only 5.5 million, managed to help invalidate the marriage rights of hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians in California; they didn’t tell their members they needed to cut back on the Jell-O and stop knocking on my door Saturday mornings to get it done.

I really believe that a lot of this criticism is just bigotry, plain and simple.  “I’m a clean-cut, employed, well-educated, middle-class guy who likes to smoke pot,” I imagine they think, “and dammit, those dirty stinky tie-dyed patchouli-smellin’ reggae-lovin’ dreadlocked hippie kids are making me look bad for supporting  marijuana legalization!”  Well, guess what, Eric?  Without those hippies there would be no NORML (thus no MPP or DPA, since they were formed by former NORML staffers), no 13 decrim states, and no 13 medical marijuana states.  And how did those medical laws pass from 1996-2008 while Hempfest, Freedom Rally, and Harvest Fest were in full swing if nobody could “take seriously a rally that purports to be for medical marijuana when 99.9% of the marijuana smoked is done so recreationally, and with indifference to use by children?”

It’s a bit much to ask the hippies who’ve been driving the marijuana law reform bus for forty years to get under it because you want to smoke pot, too.  You might say, yeah, but maybe that’s why it’s taken 40 years and hasn’t happened… well, except for 13 decrim states and 13 medmj states and public support for medmj pushing 80%, decrim pushing 70%, and outright legalization pushing 50%.  I’d say it’s tilting at windmills; you’re never going to change the hippies, the hempfests, or the people who hate hippies and hempfests.  Go ahead and organize Squarefest, let’s see how that goes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More videos from Pot Princess Amber at her Veoh channel.

You call that a joint? Now THIS is a joint!

My friend L.K. dropped by with over 1200 Hempfest photos to drop off onto my computer’s hard drive. I’ve picked out about fifty of them and added them to my public gallery. I don’t know everybody in every picture, so if you do, leave some names in the comments section so I can properly credit these folks.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Seattle Stranger writer kicked out of Hempfest backstage

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• How to stay healthy at summer festivals
• Cannabis and cancer – how THC may be the prevention, if not the cure
• Cannabis and lung function – new data shows tokers to have the same lungs as non-smokers

NORML Newsmakers

• My appearance at the Laughs Comedy Stage at Seattle Hempfest

Click here to view the embedded video.

Amber is one of many Cannababes at http://cannababes.net and will join us on a future edition of NORML SHOW LIVE.

P.S. No, I’m not embarrassed.  I’m sunburned!

(The Stranger’s SLOG) I got kicked out of Hempfest’s backstage yesterday, apparently for suggesting in The Stranger that the event should lose the tie-dyes on the stages and go for a broader appeal. …After listening to a few speakers and consuming one gigantic veggie burrito with pickled jalapeños, I went behind the main stage. I was talking to a friend when a member of the Hempfest board, John Davis, whom I’ve known for about 15 years, approached me and said, “You can’t be back here. You have to go.” …Davis snatched the pass out of my hand, and as the security guy escorted me out, he said that it’s because I’m a “member of the media.”

Uh, I’ve been a member of the media in past years, and I’ve always been allowed backstage. And before I was a reporter—back when I was the spokesman for Hempfest—several times we’d have reporters walk freely backstage. So what gives? Hempfest director Vivian McPeak reportedly told a staffer, who went to ask what the fuck was going on, that I had “proverbially stabbed [him] in the back.” But, Vivian, I thought you were omnipotent. About 10 minutes earlier, he was on the main stage mic referring to himself as “the great Vivian McPeak.”

The issue, clearly, is that Hempfest organizers are outraged that anyone would dare critique their event. They cannot separate themselves from their culture from their politics. So any commentary of their political strategy (simply saying they should take down the cheesy tie-dyes) is apparently a personal backstabbing. That’s a tragically self-centered perspective for any organization, political cause, or leader—especially one that is “great.”

Dominic, you must have been ousted shortly after I had a chance to say hi to you and your brother backstage. I had my media people nearly kicked out of backstage at Main Stage as well, as Hempfest had a “backstage escort” requirement this year. Any folks with media passes without an accompanying speaker or musical performer were kicked out, I was told. Too many people trying to relax backstage didn’t want any photos or stories about what they were doing, I guess.

I appreciated the back-and-forth we had on this topic over at the Stash. I’m still of the opinion that 200,000 people gathered peacefully in a park for a weekend openly smoking marijuana while an all-volunteer crew wrangles hundreds of vendors and six stages is enough of a political statement as it is.

I also understand the “that ain’t me” reaction from many pot smokers. It’s the same reaction my wife gives when she sees bud-covered naked women in High Times Magazine. To that I say, great, please, form a new magazine or present a new Hempfest for all the cannabis-closeted squares to come enjoy. If there are so many who are so uncomfortable with hippie tie-dye patchouli-stained ghettoes, there surely should be a huge audience for the new Short-Haired Respectable Polos & Dockers Hempfest with special guest Kenny G, and there must be plenty of ad revenue available for the new Cannabis Connoisseur Magazine.
Many have brought up the Hempfest “Objective and Purpose”. 200,000 people openly smoking pot equaling no disaster is a huge example of “educat[ing] the public” “through example”. Panels on hemp, media, medicine, politics, and law at Hemposium are nothing but educating the public. NORML, Oregon NORML, SAFER, and other non-profits are educating the public. Vendors selling everything you can make from hemp are educating the public.

Personally, my walking an estimated seven miles through wall-to-wall people to speak on four stages was educating the public. I guarantee you hundreds of people now have the Congressional Switchboard (202-224-3121) and the White House Comment Line (202-456-1111) programmed in their cell phones now from speeches by me and Madeline Martinez. Hundreds of people now know the prohibition stories of GA Rep. Tommy “Caning for Potheads” Benton, Michigan student Derek Copp, and Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo. I spent 25 minutes at Laughs Comedy Stage educating a growing crowd about police tactics in drug busts, marijuana health statistics, marijuana usage statistics, Constitutional rights, and state and federal legislation.

Hempfest is what it is and is the most successful one of its kind. The criticisms you leveled at Hempfest were taken culturally by people who consider themselves hippies and represent themselves with tie-dye and other counter-cultural attire. Don’t be surprised they took it like organizers of a pro-Israel rally might take it if you suggested more mainstream people would be attracted to their cause if they got rid of all the Hebrew writing, offered some pork dishes, and kept those guys dressed in all black with the funny hats and curly-q sideburns off the stage.

I know that’s not how you intended it; you intended constructive criticism for a huge public event to be more effective. I also know you didn’t mean it personally; I’ve hung out with you at Hempfest and other events before and I know you to not be abrasive or insulting. But in this case, Dom, you may have just been a bit culturally insensitive. The people pouring their heart into Hempfest are hippies, so “lose the hippie vibe” sounds like “you people bring us all down” to them, and that’s a helluva thing to read when you’re dedicating a large part of your life to something.

And, in fact, the hippies go out of their way to make Hempfest as diverse as possible. I heard a 1930’s style old timey band, hardcore gangsta rap, a bitchin’ jazz acoustic guitar player, and an Ozzy Osbourne cover all on the same Main Stage (not all at once, of course). I saw Boca, Veggie, and Beef burgers served for the backstage VIPs. There was a Dancesafe stage playing the most unhippie electronica possible. I saw more guylinered multi-chained-droopy-drawers Goth kids than I did hippies.

Finally, as one commenter above made the point of “white folks don’t need a month”, Hempfest is for the freaky, the counter-cultural, the hippie to celebrate marijuana. The conservative-looking minivan-driving couple with the house in the hills who smoke pot in the garage when the kids are away don’t need a Hempfest; they’re not the ones getting harassed by police and busted for marijuana. (It’s a bit of a chicken and egg, isn’t it? The squares don’t want to be busted like hippies, so only the hippies are left to agitate for marijuana legalization, which the squares would support if only if weren’t so hippified. I say the hippies have done their share. I am ready and willing to give speeches at Squarefest whenever it comes to fruition.)

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Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-08-18.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. Chronic marijuana smokers’ lungs no worse than non-smokers’ lungs
2. Marijuana use may help prevent osteoporosis in older people
3. Using drug-sniffing dogs on London Underground is wrong and ineffective
4. Brad Pitt: I’m no longer a pothead because “I’m a dad now”

California Marijuana Report with Eric Brenner

• Donna Lambert facing 7 marijuana felony charges–another Operation Green RX victim
• Music by Neil Young

Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards . com

• Variety Tuesday – “Go Green” by The Wiley One

“Radical” Russ’ Saturday at Hempfest

At Hempfest Main Stage this year a band called “The Wiley One” played 4:20 on Saturday.  I was approached by Jason, the bass player from the band, who wanted to compliment me on my bass playing earlier in the day Sunday.  We chatted a bit and he agreed to let us play one of their tunes for the podcast.

The Wiley One are a funky band out of Phoenix, Arizona.  Their music has been featured on the X Games and The Wiley One works to be a carbon-neutral band as best they can.  “We also have a plan in place to offset our C02 emissions,” says Sam Wiley, “by using clean-burning domestically made biodiesel fuel to power any tour buses or trucks while on tour.” Well, we can suggest a perfect source for that biodiesel fuel, can’t we?

Enjoy this environmentally conscious song from The Wiley One, it’s called “Go Green’.

Download audio file (The%20Wiley%20One%20-%20Go%20Green.mp3)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Egads! Did I say AARP? That wasn’t in the script. There are 40,000,000 people in the AARP! I apologize for the error. Here’s the rest of the info:

“…people above the age of 18, 95.9 million of them have tried marijuana… age group 18 to 50, it’s more than 50% of them…” from “Who Are You” post. I just crunched the numbers using the SAMHDA tables and got 95,916,972. Aha, that’s how I’ll use it: “more people have smoked pot than are in the AARP (40,000,000) and Republican Party (55,000,000) combined!”

“…25 million Americans will smoke marijuana once per year…” Well, it’s actually 22 million.  Perhaps we can give some latitude for margin of error, based on the theory that we’re talking about adults who’ll admit to a stranger on the phone that they smoked pot last year.

“…that’s more tokers than Texans…” 2008 Census Population Estimate for Texas: 24,326,974

“…that’s more tokers than adult African Americans…” 2000 Census breakdown by race: 23,772,494 African Americans*

“…that’s more tokers than diabetics…” 21 million Americans according to the American Diabetes Association.

“…14 million Americans, adults above 18, will smoke marijuana this month…” Rates of marijuana use have dropped so that only 12,693,122 are monthly smokers, according to SAMHDA.

“…more marijuana smokers once a month than factory workers…” 14,197,300 manufacturing jobs in 2006.

“…Asian Americans…” 13,366,154 Asian Americans* in Census 2007 estimate.

“…or people that watch 60 Minutes…” 9.5 million viewers last week… we’re even close to America’s Got Talent.

“…more people will smoke pot this month than the combined memberships of the NRA, the ACLU, NARAL  Pro-Choice America, the National Organization for Women, AARP, and the John Birch Society.” OK, now I’ve found my little notecard that I failed to bring with me to Seattle, sitting here in my office.  It wasn’t supposed to be the AARP (40,000,000!), but the NAACP.  Hey, two A’s and a P in common and it was approaching 4:20 on the Main Stage of Day Two of Seattle Hempfest.  I think I did quite well.  Alas, I forgot Greenpeace, PETA, and the Elks Club

• NRA = 4.3 million members
• ACLU = 500,000 members
• NARAL = 1 million members (though current pages won’t give numbers)
• NOW = 500,000 members
• NAACP = 185,000 – 500,000 members
• Greenpeace = 2.9 million members
• PETA = 2 million members
• Elks = 1,000,000 members
• JBS = 55,000 members
• TOTAL = 12.755 million vs. 12.693 million monthly smokers, and that’s giving high estimates to the NAACP and JBS.

“…3.6 million adults will smoke marijuana at least once per day…” Tough number to come by.  8.1 million used marijuana more than 100 days in the past year, and a 2004 NSDUH said there were 3.1 million daily users aged 12 and older.  I don’t think 3.6 million is far off.  In the future, I’ll call these people “at least once per week” marijuana smokers.

“…more daily smokers than Red Sox fans…” 3,048,250 based on 2008 attendance figures.

“…more daily smokers than new cancer cases…” 1,437,180 according to the American Cancer Society.

“…more daily smokers that the US membership of the Mormon church…” Another tough number. Adherents.org cites 2,697,000 Adult Mormons in 2001, but also cites a 2004 membership of 5,599,177, which I’m guessing counts children and teenagers and I don’t think is fair, partially because I’m referencing adult marijuana smokers and partially because I think only adults should count for church memberships because kids often don’t get to choose.

*These Census figures only count people who answered by choosing one race and doesn’t count many multi-racial people.