"Counter-culture" activists for NORML (L-R) Keith Stroup, Assem. Tom Ammiano, PBS Host Rick Steves... crazy hippies!

From time to time on blogs I read a complaint about NORML, like this one:

NORML hasn’t accomplish­ed anything since the disco era!  They haven’t done a damn thing in the last 30 years!  Paul A is the only good thing NORML has going; aside from him, this movement wouldn’t even notice if NORML ceased existing.

I will concur that Paul Armentano is an MVP All-Star in marijuana law reform.  You cannot find a person better educated on the science of marijuana.

But to conclude Paul is the “only good thing NORML has going” is to disparage the incredible work being done by hundreds of grassroots activists working in the NORML chapter network.  To wit:

More "counter-culture" activists with NORML

Chris Goldstein, Anne Davis, & NORML NJ – instrumental in negotiations with New Jersey lawmakers to bring about Gov. Corzine’s signature on the law making it the nation’s 15th medical marijuana state.

Derek Rosenzweig & PhillyNORML – uncovered and published research on Philadelphia’s racial bias in marijuana enforcement leading to a change in policy to end arrests of low level marijuana consumers in the city.

Another couple of "hippies"

Michigan NORML and MassCann/NORML laid the groundwork for 2008′s medical marijuana and decriminalization, respectively, in Michigan and Massachusetts by passing numerous municipal measures in support of marijuana.

Madeline Martinez and Oregon NORML led negotiations with lawmakers to set medical marijuana limits to 24 ounces and 24 plants, the highest statewide statutory limits in the nation (along with Washington State).

The "grass" in "grassroots" - so counter-culture!

Dale Gieringer, Bill Panzer, and California NORML helped co-author Prop 215 in California, worked for the clarifications found in SB420, worked with Assem. Ammiano to produce the first legalization bill in decades, helped shepherd the latest California decrim measure to Schwarzenegger’s desk, and are organizing with Prop 19′s leaders for a new legalization initiative in 2012.

Kandice Hawes and Orange County NORML held the nation’s first medical marijuana conference specifically for seniors… across the street from Disneyland!

No wonder "normal" people won't join... look at these two!

Mary Mackenzie (apologies for the original name misspell – I sure know what that’s like!), AZ4NORML, and Phoenix NORML were the foot soldiers gathering the signatures that got MPP’s Arizona Prop 203 on the ballot.

Kelly Maddy, Joplin NORML, Dan Viets, Missouri NORML, all worked in Missouri to pass lowest-law-enforcement and other municipal initiatives.

These guys have done nothing since the disco era...

Ben Masel, Gary Storck, Madison NORML all have lobbied intensively for the Jackie Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, moving it farther along in the legislative process every year.

Colorado NORML, Mile High NORML, have worked with SAFER on their initiatives, gathering signatures that lead to Denver’s legalization and other low-priority initiatives.

Obviously too tie-dyed and love-beaded to make any difference

Isaias Valdez and Idaho NORML are beginning the grassroots education and activism in one of the most anti-marijuana states in the nation; the state currently has a medical marijuana bill in the legislature and the group is following up with a citizen’s initiative.

John & Heather Masterson in Montana NORML, battling to mitigate the perception of abuse of medical marijuana created by unethical “ganjapreneurs” and most recenlty providing live coverage of the DEA raids in Montana.

Sure, they're doctors... but they're "pot" doctors!

Then there are the hundreds of attorneys who make up the NORML Legal Committee, who have donated thousands of hours of pro bono time helping average cannabis consumers avoid jail and retain voting rights, also working on new laws.  For example:

Jeff Blackburn, who kept an AIDS patient out of a Texas prison with an affirmative defense that a jury agreed with in only 11 minutes of deliberation.  The patients’ original public defender only offered a plea deal that would have meant six months of drug testing that would’ve left the patient without his medicine, wasting away.

And that whole "boobs and buds" issue turns women off to the cause...

Doug Hiatt, who fought for the life of Hep C patient Tim Garon, denied a liver transplant because his legal medical marijuana use in Washington State made him a “drug addict” in the eyes of the hospital.  Hiatt is now behind the Sensible Washington effort to fully legalize by citizen initiative.

Let’s not forget the national staff (like me) who constantly educate, advocate, interview, debate, advertise, litigate, lobby, and keep the conversation on marijuana legalization moving forward.

No wonder nobody wants to legalize pot - look at these people!

I’ve already written way too much for a comment and that is just reviewing my own memory of NORML Activism within the four years I’ve worked for NORML.  And remember, aside from the lawyers (sometimes), NONE of these activists made a single dime for performing these heroic acts.

As far as I’m concerned, all of the groups involved in marijuana law reform have an important role to play.  It’s like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard – we have different jobs and different specializations in service of the same goal.  Sure, we have internecine grudges and rivalries.  Just as jarheads goad sailors, just as grunts tease flyboys, drug war reform groups may also grouse about each other, but when the rubber hits the road, we’re all fighting for the good ol’ U S of A.

For me personally, there are some important differences.  DPA is about drug policy – they think drug prohibition sucks.  MPP is about marijuana policy – they think marijuana prohibition sucks.  SAFER is about offering choice – they think alcohol sucks compared to marijuana.  ASA is about medical marijuana – they are silent on healthy people’s use.  LEAP is about cops’ expression of drug war failure – they think drug prohibition sucks.

NORML, of all the groups, is the one that doesn’t just think marijuana prohibition sucks, but that cannabis use is a positive.  We’re not just anti-prohibition, we’re pro-cannabis!

Finally, to the disparagement of the counter-culture you believe NORML represents: in actuality, most of our NORML Affiliate and Chapter leaders are far from what anyone would consider “hippie”.  Anne Davis, head of NORML NJ, is a successful attorney and mother of two.  Tonya Davis, head of Central Ohio NORML, is a disabled patient in a wheelchair.  Clif Deuvall, head of NORML of Waco Texas, is a disabled veteran.  Isaias Valdez, head of Idaho NORML, is a clean-cut college student.  I can’t speak to what you may have seen from NORML in the 1980′s or 90′s, but I know since my involvement I have never met a better representative group of average cannabis consumers.  In my tenure, we have instituted sixty new state, local, and college affiliates, so it seems to me plenty of people are eager to organize under the NORML banner.

There is a drug reform group for everyone.  I don’t care what acronym you want to associate with so long as you’re on this side of the battle over prohibition.  But to dismiss and disparage NORML’s role in the war is to vilify the most committed activists in the battle – the ones not doing it for some billionaire’s largess.  If you think someone might not support ending prohibition because someone in a NORML T-shirt might have long hair, piercings, or tattoos, then you aren’t very good at illustrating the need to end the drug war.

Russ Belville

NORML Outreach Coordinator

P.S. If you really want to know what is going on in grassroots reform, check out the podcasts from all around the nation and even England at The NORML Network – http://live.norml.org

RIP Tim Garon (AP Photo)

I was stunned this morning as I scanned the marijuana news headlines.  Seattle-area musician Tim Garon had died following a lengthy battle with Hepatitis C, denied a liver transplant because of his status as a medical marijuana patient.

Stunned, not because of the shock that a transplant was cruelly denied because of some reefer madness justifications by hospitals that claim medical marijuana patients are nothing but drug addicts.

No, stunned because Tim Garon died on May 1, 2008.

I spoke with Tim’s friend and attorney, Douglas Hiatt, this evening by telephone.  ”I don’t know what kinda fuckin’ glitch happened in some AP computer, but I’ve been getting calls on this all day.”  Doug was audibly shaken by the whole experience.  ”It was almost three years ago that I sat there, not two feet from him, and held his hand while he died.  It’s something that kinda leaves its mark on a guy.”

Still, as mistakes go, perhaps there is a silver lining.  How many more people learned about this absurd and tragic cruelty today?  And it didn’t take another needless transplant death to generate the headline.  And in 2011, the story can be shared much more virally through Facebook and Twitter.

kboi2.com A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

The case has highlighted a new ethical consideration for those allocating organs for transplant, especially in the dozen states that have medical marijuana laws: When dying patients need a transplant, should it be held against them if they’ve used pot with a doctor’s blessing?

He had been in the hospice for two months and previously was rejected for a transplant at Swedish Medical Center for the same reason he later got from the university hospital.

Swedish said he would be considered if he avoided pot for six months and the university hospital offered to reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug treatment program, but doctors said his liver disease was too advanced for him to last that long. The university hospital committee agreed to reconsider anyway, then denied him again.

RIP Tim Garon.  Your death did not need to happen.  Your death is an indictment of the cruel legacy of Harry J. Anslinger and every reefer mad prohibitionist who ever demonized the herb, the only remedy that brought you relief in your last months.  I personally will not rest until no person ever need to choose between healing cannabis and life-saving trasnplant.

Oregon Health & Science University Transplant Program (no medical marijuana patients need apply...)

I have been covering the cruelty of denying organ transplants to medical marijuana patients since the unfortunate story of Tim Garon.  He was a Seattle musician who was using cannabis with a doctor’s recommendation legally under Washington law to cope with his severe pain and nausea.  He was given two weeks to live when he was next to receive a life-saving liver transplant.  He was then found to have THC metabolites in his urine and told he must demonstrate 60 days of clean urine tests before he’d be given the organ.  Tim Garon died days later.

(Portland Tribune) Jim Klahr needs a new liver. And he wants to take medical marijuana to help with the nausea he fights every morning as he battles hepatitis and cirrhosis. He says his body can’t tolerate most drugs that physicians have prescribed for his symptoms, but pot does the trick.

Southeast Portland resident Klahr has a medical marijuana card, but he hasn’t smoked since 2004, because Oregon Health & Science University, the state’s only liver transplant center, won’t provide organs for people with marijuana compounds in their blood, even if the patients are medical marijuana cardholders. Klahr is on the OHSU transplant waiting list.

The tragic irony is that the drugs other than cannabis that doctors would prescribe for symptoms of liver failure are often hepatoxic – harmful in long-term doses to the liver – or, as in Klahr’s case, ineffective.  Cannabis is non-toxic to healthy cells and organs and has not been found to be damaging to diseased ones.  The acetaminophen we get over-the-counter in pain relievers is more damaging to the liver than cannabis.

Mike Seely, OHSU’s director of transplant and procurement services, cites two reasons for the transplant policy. First, he says, federal rules trump state law. OHSU is part of a consortium with the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and federal law does not recognize medicinal marijuana. OHSU could be in danger with federal authorities if it allowed marijuana users to receive organs.

This doesn’t seem to jibe with the Veteran’s Administration’s recent change in policy to no longer void “pain contracts” with veterans in states where they have a valid doctor’s recommendation to use cannabis medicinally.  See, the VA had been forcing vets to sign contracts to receive their opioid prescription painkillers (think: oxycontin and such) that required urine screening and if they found cannabis metabolites, no pills for you!  It forced vets to give up the medical cannabis that relieved the PTSD and cut their addictive hepatoxic opioid painkiller dosages if they wanted to have any pain medication at all.

That same federal law that finds Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Act to be null and void, that Seely uses to defend discrimination against cannabis patients, still applies to these veterans, yet the federal government is looking the other way now.  Is the government that allows medical marijuana-using vets to get liver-killing opioids really going to step in and force OHSU to deny that same vet a life saving liver transplant?  (Well, probably. In five years on the front lines of the drug war, nothing the government would do surprises me.  But shouldn’t doctors and hospitals be fighting for the lives of patients, not cowering before the government?)

Seely says that, in addition, transplant doctors are afraid of a fungal infection occurring in patients who smoke marijuana.

This is the tired old Aspergillus argument.  This is a mold that can occur when someone cures harvested cannabis improperly.  How much of a real risk is that?  As I wrote back in March:

That deadly mold which causes 0.88255 deaths per 1 million people in the United States, with 261 deaths in 2004, is something we’re supposed to fear more than “accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed” (327 deaths), “acute appendicitis” (371 deaths), and “acid reflux disease” (721 deaths) (and that’s just the “A’s”).

Aspergillus is something the community should be aware of, just as people should know eating undercooked eggs, shellfish, and meat can lead to salmonella or e coli poisoning.  But the way we protect diners from these diseases (which, by the way, kill 5,000 a year) is with warnings about undercooked food on menus and rules for food preparation and sanitization for workers.

If we’re denying livers to cannabis consumers because of the tiny risk of Aspergillus, we should be denying livers to all but vegetarians for fear of the risk of salmonella and e coli.

John Niemitz, manager of transplant services for Legacy Health System, Oregon’s other transplant center, says Legacy maintains a similar policy. Niemitz cites the infection risk and adds that “there is a risk of altered consciousness,” which might interfere with a patient’s ability to follow a rigorous post-transplant regimen of medications and appointments.

Really, your fear is that a medical marijuana patient post-transplant is going to be too stoned to remember to take his medications or show up for the appointments that improve his chances of surviving with that new organ?  But then you’re going to prescribe to him blood-pressure meds as part of that “regimen”, like Clonidine and Norvasc*, that sap energy and cause depression, and painkillers in the first weeks after transplant that fog the mind.

Niemitz doesn’t think Legacy’s transplant policy is costing lives, as marijuana activists claim. He says that as far as he knows, every cardholder Legacy has dealt with has been willing to give up their medical marijuana as the price of getting a transplanted organ.

“People have found that pretty reasonable,” Niemtiz says.

Kind of like when you hold a gun to someone’s head they suddenly find your request for their wallet pretty reasonable.

Fears of rare Aspergillus and patients too medicated to take care of their new organ aside, what is the actual science on the issue of medical marijuana and organ transplants?  There’s this 2009 study in the American Journal of Transplant entitled “Marijuana use in potential liver transplant candidates” that looked at almost 1,500 cannabis-using and non-cannabis-using liver transplant patients over an eight-year span and concluded “patients who did and did not use marijuana had similar survival rates.”

So the only possible reason Legacy and OHSU have to deny transplants to medical marijuana patients is simply institutional bias against medical marijuana patients.  Every day Jim Klahr and others have to do without their medical marijuana is a day they’ve been blackmailed not to use “the safest therapeutically active substance known to man”, which Oregon law says is to be “treated like other medicines”.  Some won’t live long enough to get their transplant, which, to be fair to Niemitz (a courtesy he won’t give us) doesn’t mean the no-transplant-for-medical-marijuana-patients policy cost their lives.

It just means Mike Seely and John Niemitz would rather people suffer unnecessarily than give an organ to a “pothead”.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Alaskan court denies religious use defense to couple for use of cannabis
2. Mexican authorities battle drug gangs by banning songs about them
3. Officer Brad Jardis in New Hampshire dropped by LEAP for anti-arrest stance on medical cannabis users

Daily Toker Tunes

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• Henry Butlet – “Dock of the Bay”

Behind the Headlines with NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano

• Paul discusses the latest studies on cannabis and cancer

Cannabis Conversations

• Seattle Attorney Douglas Hiatt discusses the case of Tim Garon, a Seattle man kicked off the liver transplant list because of his legal use of medical marijuana

Great discussion in the comments on Going to Pot: Weed and Testicular Cancer and Could smoking pot raise testicular cancer risk?  We should point out that as cannabis consumers, we welcome legit research into cannabis and its potential harms.  If cannabis does cause an increased risk for testicular cancer, so be it.  But when you report that, point out that testicular cancer risk is incredibly low, so an increased risk is still incredibly low.  When you report “70% increase of risk”, it’s like saying buying two lotto tickets doubles your chances of winning — it’s true, but statistically meaningless.  Also point out that risk for lung cancer for smokers or colorectal cancer for drinkers is incredibly high, yet nobody proposes arresting smokers or drinkers for their own good.

But is it paranoid for me to believe in some “Dr. Evil / P.A.I.N.” conspiracy that works to keep drug-war-damaging stories out of the headlines and reefer madness scaremongering in the headlines?

You be the judge.  There are two brand new studies out on marijuana, published this month.  The first one, as you know, is this study showing an increased risk of testicular cancer for heavy marijuana smokers.

Go to news.google.com and click onto the Health section.  You’ll find (as of this moment):

Just Say No … or Else You Get Cancer?
ABC News - 9 hours ago
By RADHA CHITALE Internet photos of swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps, 23, possibly indulging in an Olympian lungful of marijuana smoke scandalized many and may have caused him to lose face and the faith of some of his fans — not to mention a …
Could smoking pot raise testicular cancer risk? CNN
all 181 news articles »

181 news articles on smoking pot giving you nut cancer, very few with any perspective on the rarity of nut cancer and the admittedly tentative results of the study.

Now while you’re on the Health section, search for the other study, published this month in the American Journal of Transplantation.  This study shows that “Patients who tested positive for marijuana prior to liver transplant have survival similar to patients who did not.”  Maybe not as sexy as story as impending testicular doom for stoners, but relevant considering that the news media did cover the story of Tim Garon being rejected for a life-saving liver transplant due to his medical marijuana usage.

What, no hits for “marijuana liver transplant”?  Try just “transplant” at news.google.com.  Don’t even limit yourself to the Health section.

Not 181 hits.  Not 18 hits.  Not even 1 hit.  Bad news conjecture about marijuana = 181 stories.  Good news fact about marijuana = 0 stories.  Am I paranoid?

Willamette Week | “Organ Failure” | May 21st, 2008

Garon, a 56-year-old professional musician who had hepatitis C, died after a University of Washington Medical Center committee denied him a spot on a liver-transplant list. Part of their reason: Garon used medical marijuana—which is legal under Washington law.

Garon wouldn’t have fared any better in Oregon, where medical marijuana has been legal since 1999. Hospitals here refuse to perform transplants on patients who treat their severe pain, nausea and other symptoms under the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program.

The state’s largest transplant program, run jointly by Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland VA Medical Center, turns away patients who use marijuana. Legacy Health System also performs kidney transplants and refuses marijuana users.

Those are the only two transplant programs in the state, leaving Oregon’s medical marijuana patients completely out in the cold.

It’s impossible to say anyone died just because they didn’t get a transplant. But at least 30 Oregonians who use medical weed have died in the past 10 years after hospitals denied them new organs, says Paul Stanford, head of the THC Foundation, a chain of medical-marijuana clinics based in Portland.

“It’s a death sentence,” says Madeline Martinez, head of the Oregon branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “Most of the people have already expired because they didn’t have the transplant.”

Those affected include Jim Klahr, a 56-year-old professional musician from Brookings. He suffers from cirrhosis and hepatitis C, and quit taking medical marijuana in 2004 to qualify for a new liver.

Meanwhile, he lives with crippling nausea that used to vanish with a single puff of smoke. “I’ve capitulated because basically I don’t have much of a choice,” says Klahr, who sits on the 11-member state Advisory Committee on Medical Marijuana.

OHSU doctors also bar marijuana users because of medical concerns, including a higher risk of infection and pulmonary problems. Users of other illegal drugs, drinkers and even tobacco smokers are also barred from getting transplants, but anyone can join once they pass a drug test and meet other requirements.

Dr. William Bennett, head of kidney transplants at Legacy, says those are the same reasons his program bars marijuana users. He and Seely also say patients on mind-altering drugs are less likely to stick with their treatment in the long run, leading to a higher rate of transplant failure.

It amazes me when I read quotes from medical professionals that are so ignorant about cannabis.  Take that line “Users of other illegal drugs, drinkers and even tobacco smokers are also barred from getting transplants”.  Because those medical marijuana patients are just more “illegal drug users”?  They’re just people looking to get high recreationally, like smokers and drinkers?

“Anyone can join once they pass a drug test?”  What other legal, doctor-recommended medicines will you be testing for?  Lipitor?  Xanax?  OxyContin?  Percocet?  Viagra?  No, you’ll be testing for coke, meth, heroin, and of course, marijuana.

“Patients on mind-altering drugs are less likely to stick with their treatment?”  What, you don’t think OxyContin is mind-altering?  Have you ever listened to Rush Limbaugh?

“Risk of infection and pulmonary problems?”  Once again, cannabis can be grown organically and taken orally or in vapor form – no infections or lung problems to speak of!

They can wrap it in as many excuses as they want, but these transplant programs simply want to discriminate against cannabis users because they have a moral issue with cannabis.

Medical marijuana and organ transplants don’t mix – Los Angeles Times

SEATTLE — This month, Timothy Garon, 56, a Seattle musician, died after being turned down for a liver transplant. He was rejected partly because he had used medical marijuana.

Now, a second critically ill patient in Washington state says he has been denied a spot in two organ transplant programs because he uses doctor-prescribed marijuana.

Jonathon Simchen, 33, of Fife, a town south of Seattle, is a diabetic whose kidneys and pancreas have failed.

He said he was removed from the transplant program at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle because he admitted using medical marijuana. Later, he said, University of Washington Medical Center transplant officials refused to accept him because of the medical marijuana issue.

The lawyer who represented Garon has taken on Simchen’s case.

Douglas Hiatt argues that his clients are the victims of a loosely defined transplant policy, one not based on science.

University of Washington officials, citing privacy laws, declined to discuss specifics of individual cases, but issued a statement acknowledging that they took marijuana use into consideration.

“Although medical marijuana may be an issue in rare cases, it is never the sole determinant in arriving at medical decisions about candidates for organ transplants,” the statement said.

A spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Hospital said smoking of any kind could “lead to patient-safety and transplant-effectiveness issues” and was precluded. She said the hospital’s transplant committee would also weigh a patient’s use of medical marijuana in pill form.

At the University of Washington, the transplant committee said it reviewed “behavioral concerns such as a history of substance abuse or dependency. If such a history exists, then the committee looks at the period of abstinence the candidate has demonstrated to date,” as well as the patient’s efforts to maintain abstinence and potential to abuse again.

Asked why the committee considered marijuana use under a doctor’s supervision “a history of substance abuse,” a hospital spokesman cited the federal law categorizing marijuana as an illegal drug.

Peggy Stewart, a clinical social worker with the liver transplant program at UCLA Medical Center, said bias existed in the medical community against marijuana because of the federal law.

Some transplant committee members see it as an illegal substance and as grounds for automatic rejection.

She said many other addictive prescriptions, particularly pain medications, did not automatically disqualify patients from transplant lists because they were not illegal substances under federal law.

It’s bad because it’s illegal because it’s bad because it’s illegal because it’s bad because it’s illegal…

It is simply beyond my ability to process the outrage of this ignorant cowardice!  Medical professionals will knowingly divert the frailest patients from the safe non-toxic herb and onto the dangerous addictive pharmaceuticals, and then hide behind the government’s skirts?  Ooh, it’s against federal law?  Your state doesn’t think so, members of your profession are recommending it, and your oath is to first do no harm!

Furthermore, that one official says they’d even “weigh” use of medical marijuana in pill form.  That’s called Marinol, and it isn’t against federal law.

As for the “patient safety and transplant-effectiveness” issues, you don’t have any evidence to back that up.  Vaporization or edibles eliminate the problems with smoking.  Post transplant there is no “addictiveness” in the serious physical sense of the word to jeopardize transplant-effectiveness.

This is nothing more than institutionalized discrimination against a disliked minority, only this isn’t about the color of their skin but rather the color of their medicine.

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It’s Friday, May 2nd and it’s 4:20 somewhere in the world! I’m your host, “Radical” Russ Belville and this is your NORML Daily Audio Stash.

Tomorrow is the Global Marijuana March, taking place in over 200 cities worldwide. Check out GlobalMarijuanaMarch.org for more details on the march in your area. Take to the streets and demand respect. We are not criminals, we are cannabis consumers. We are no more criminals for smoking pot in private than citizens who take a drink in private. We can end adult marijuana prohibition, but the world needs to see us standing up for our rights! It starts with you – take the time to get involved.

Friday is Cannabis Community day on the Stash, and coming up after the news, we’re speaking with our regular guest Steve Bloom, the webmaster at CelebStoner.com. Steve’s got the details for New York City’s Marijuana March, along with a New York native’s look at how the Big Apple became the marijuana arrest capital of the world. We also break down the role of weed in the NFL draft and great box-office weekends for Harold & Kumar and CelebStoner Amy Poehler’s movie, Baby Mama.

Next, Cannabis Karri brings back Freedom People with a perfect song for a protest weekend, “New (R)evolution”. Let’s all start a new revolution and get hemp re-legalized in this country.

Then we wrap things up with Tim Smith, a criminal defense attorney in Cincinnati, Ohio. Tim’s here to tell us about the Marijuana March event this weekend in Cincy and the threats by law enforcement to shut them down by threatening the venue owner’s liquor license.

Finally, don’t forget that every Saturday we’re now posting the NORML Weekend Music Stash, where you can get all of the last ten songs from our daily musical breaks in one podcast, suitable for your weekend party pleasure. If you have a band that would like to be featured on our podcast, please send us an email at stash ‘at’ norml.org.

So sit back and relax with your favorite strain and enjoy your NORML Daily Audio Stash…

Finally today, a personal note. This year’s Global Marijuana March marks the third year of my involvement with NORML through my local chapter, Oregon NORML.

We want to invite everyone in the Portland / Vancouver area to enjoy the huge festivities we have planned. We have Pioneer Courthouse Square reserved in the heart of Downtown Portland for the entire day. Vendors and bands will begin at 10am.

Then we leave for the march at High Noon, led by Ma, our Cannabis Dragon – a forty-foot-long hemp-cloth dragon like you might see at a Chinese New Year, with a four-foot head made completely from cannabis stalks.

We return to the Square for more of the festival, with special guest speakers, including myself, educating the public about marijuana in-between band sets.

We’re kicking off our PR campaign for OCTA 2010, the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, an initiative for 2010 that will legalize, tax, and regulate the sales of cannabis in Oregon through state-run liquor stores.

The outdoor festival ends at 5pm, but then we’re off to the Mt. Tabor Legacy Theater at SE 39th & Hawthorne at 8pm to enjoy the Marijuana March After Party, a concert featuring The Martyrs and Marquee, with special guest Chief Greenbud and our headliners, Las Vegas hemp-hop superstars, Los Marijuanos.

Then the after after party is at my place, I suppose, since the DJ, his girlfriend, a visiting Sacramento NORML board member, and two vendors are crashing there for the weekend. Ah, you know what? I have the greatest job in the world.