NORML CONFERENCE 2002

They ran out of beer early at the jammed, raucous,
spit-and-baling-wire emergency party that closed this April's National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws annual conference in San
Francisco. Thirsty guests found thirstful ways to compensate for the
suds, and if you ignored the computers and filing cabinets, it was
easy to forget you were violating fire codes at an ad hoc shindig at a
hotshot law office. The wife and I decamped around midnight, not content with the five cases of water trucked in to replenish the sweat the crowd had been
shaking on each other jitterbugging to a 40-piece (stationary)
marching band. We landed in a little North Beach boite. At one point, my New Yorker was aghast to see a purse all by its lonesome on the floor by the jukebox. Voicing her alarm, she was told don't be silly, woman - this is San
Francisco.

NORML convened this year in America's most tolerant city, its chief
prosecutor an acknowledged inhaler, he told HIGH TIMES. During breaks
in the demanding schedule (presentations started well before 9 AM. and
ran 'til evening), at times 40 or more smokers spilled from the
hotel's side entrance out on to the busy, tourist-trap sidewalk.
And not a one, patient or head a like, peered timorously over his
shoulder. There were masses of billowing, very public smoke, with tourists and
their kids who as a class, are generally coddled by authoritiesgaping
from passing trolley cars. Still, police action, even short of arrest,
was somehow unthinkable in San Francisco, and not just because the
record 560 participants (up from 400 last year in DC) were spending
aplenty.

And yet, a specter gripped the gathering despite the easy-going gloss
lent by geography and numbers. No wraith, it was a federal fist that has struck often to smash, grab and incarcerate. Candidate Bush's empty promise in 1999 that medical use is a states' issue ("I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose.") and his administration's avowed federalism have
proved equally hollow.

Launching proceedings, NORML Board chair Steve Dillon admitted, "I
love America, but I fear my government I'm ashamed to say." Former
big-time police chief Joseph McNamara, now with the Hoover Institute,
warned of the faux drug/terrorism nexus "Don't underestimate that.
When they mix in patriotism with the war on drugs, almost anything can
happen."

The specter grew on the second day as grim news filtered out from
federal district court where Judge Charles R. Breyer pondered the fate
of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative (OCBC). Wayne Justmann,
director of the SF Patients Cooperative, told HT a negative ruling
from Breyer is a "done deal," with cease and desist injunctions served
on the 50 clubs that operate openly in California the likely
consequence.

The frayed DEA leash soon to be further loosened, the local medical
marijuana dispensary honchos grinned through their fears, their
gallows' humor growing thin. The numerous patients in attendance,
including often the honchos themselves, were just plain frightened.
The HIV-positive Justmann, who suffers from neuropathy's nerve damage
and pain, will be forced to turn to debilitating opiates without his
normal medicine. Whatever the Feds do, his "pretty continual pain"
isn't going away. Said Debby Goldsberry, director of both Cannabis
Action Network and the Berkeley Patients Group, "I don't want to say
we're in crisis, but boy do we need help." She added, "But we're not
so scared we can't organize."

Patient or not, people who to some degree have been running scared all
their lives are getting awfully sick of it. As Politically Incorrect's
Bill Maher complained, "We still have to crawl in the alleyway like
criminals, and those are the lucky ones who aren't in prison."

Fear falls on all combatants in this grim, decades-old culture war of
attrition, no end in sight.

Said Michael Aldrich of CHAMP, "Once marijuana is introduced into a
culture, it's never eradicated." California state senator John
Vasconcellos noted that the Feds are supporting research for
administering medicine in pill or aerosol form "so there's no joint,
which is symbolic of freedom in the 1960s." He declared that free
expression and emotional openness and sexuality all "threaten people
with no sense of themselves. They challenge the hierarchy."

Knowing it well themselves, fear is a prime component of the zealots'
arsenal, be they bonafide true believers or motivated by money, jobs
or the joy of sheer jack-boot power.

You see it in their scared, rabbity eyes, clutching at composure on
TV, certainly not least in the figurehead-in-chief struggling to
recite his assigned shibboleths.

Concern for medical marijuana's short-term future was the gathering's
palpable undercurrent. That concern mixed with frustration over its
often unworkable present. As John Sajo, head of Oregon's Voter Power, said flat-out that medical marijuana had failed in his state. Then, of course, there's still the majority of the country where medical cannabis enjoys no legal protection.

But, to cite two of many examples, as Maher's cutting speech and local
attorney Tony Serra's erudite theatrics indicated, defiance also
cascaded round the hall and laughter. Noel Coward said it well in Private Lives "All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them…. Laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths."

The Washington, DC-based NORML crew flew west on the wings of their
recent PR coup at New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's expense.
Last summer, Bloomberg the candidate striving to be a regular Joe
despite his billions had cracked to a reporter asking about using pot
"You bet I did, and I enjoyed it." No temporizing, no blaming youthful
"experimentation," just a flat-out, past-tense embrace.
The press had a field day, and big posters of the mayor graced the
conference stage. But NORML maintained that Bloomberg outed himself, its Executive Director Keith Stroup, declaring, "We weren't playing 'gotcha' with
the Mayor." As Drug Policy Alliance Director Ethan Nadelmann observed,
"If we had a billion dollars to spend on advertising, we wouldn't need
to embarrass a potential ally."

Though it's a mite tough to tell how much of substance is heard over
the tittering at the mayor's expense, NORML is hoping for its money's
worth of political debate on the 52,000 marijuana arrests a year in
New York under the Giuliani administration. For his part, freighted
now with the hypocritical weight of office, Bloomberg said after the
NORML ad hit that such levels of enforcement will continue.

Justifiably a bit gleeful at all the salutary attention, Stroup said
the fact that Bloomberg "could concede the obvious, that he enjoyed
itit's fun!is new territory for a politician." In fact, this as of now
$500,000 ad campaign voiced one of the conference's main themes.
If it won't cost you a job, or your kids, and you got the guts, then
stand up on your hind feet and tell the world Damn straight you
inhale, and you know why? Because pot can make music and food and sex
and maybe even sitting and picking at your toes just a bit better.
Plus it helps you cope with being the only animal that knows it's
going to die.

Confronting the naked power unleashed by all levels of government,
attendees conjured ways to beckon the public under their tent. Noting
that everything in America is about marketing and image, Maher
applauded the Bloomberg ad as a "fantastic start" in winning the
hearts and minds of the American people.

A late November Zogby poll was much cited.
It found thatpost 9/11 only a third of voters nationwide support
"arresting and jailing nonviolent marijuana smokers," while
three-fifths oppose doing so. And two-thirds of the public oppose "the
use of federal law enforcement agencies to close patient cooperatives"
that operate legally under state law; only one in four voters support
it.

Stroup called for the movement to, "Make it clear that never again
will we vote for a candidate who wants to treat us like criminals.
We have our asses on the line - no one else is doing the heavy lifting
for us." Echoing that theme, Cato Institute Executive Vice President
David Boaz charged his audience "Make sure political candidates answer
the question Where in the Constitution do you find your power to tell
adult Americans what to smoke." What part of the Constitution, the
"pursuit-of-happiness" Declaration of Independence, do you not
understand, anyway?

But Stroup noted the difficulty of winning over the American people,
and that it's a lot easier to stop a bill than actually pass
legislation. He was exhausted ("crawling here to the finish line") and
exhilarated closing the conference down on Saturday, 4/20, as he
predicted eventual victory. Still, he acknowledged, "It's hard - we get
beat down most of the time." And he emphasized the point that author
and NORML director Barbara Ehrenreich made about drug reform being
part of a broader human rights movement; that activists in other
struggles are realizing it's more than just whether people can smoke
or not.

Taking a page from the civil rights struggle to emphasize the raw
political power that applies, California's Dr. Mollie Fry (a patient
advocate who suffered a DEA raid last year), called for annual
economic boycotts on the telling dates of both 2/15 and 4/20. "We have
to declare days when we refuse to spend money," she said.

Coming out of the closet was seen as the surest route to widespread
conversion among the public and their "leaders." Speaker after speaker
termed such declarations - whether publicly or, daunting enough in many
cases, just to family, friends and peers - as the way to marshal
political power and combat the negative stereotypes the government has
been promulgating for the past 65 years.

Attorney, publisher and NORML board member Norm Kent, who's offered to
smoke on camera for TV reporters, said that the "PR battle right now
is being won by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. We must learn
from the gay community and present ourselves as normal people leading
normal lives."

A few speakers did so present themselves. In a private interview, San
Francisco mayoral candidate and current DA Terence Hallinan told HIGH
TIMES. "Sure, I've used." This ex-paramour of Janis Joplin added,
after all, "I was there during the Summer of Love."

Maher deserves credit for his torching-the-barricades of prohibition
stance. That's particularly true given that he risked his very
rewarding job for daring to ponder on-air last September the relative
cojones of the hijackers versus those of the US military - which was then
proposing, as indeed turned out to be the case, to bomb from aloft and
have others, mercenaries included, do the heavy fighting in
Afghanistan. Maher thus sincerely praised - though he asked people to
shower him with pot that evening and pot use was implicit in all he
said. I didn't hear a stark declaration from him. Perhaps I missed it as
I scribbled.

NORML board member Ehrenreich slyly stuck at least her foot out of the
closet, saying we could refer to her book, Nickel and Dimed On (Not)
Getting By in America, to learn how as a minimum wage worker, she beat
drug tests.

Computer millionaire John Gilmore, who has pledged $1 million annually
over the next 10 years to end prohibition, did make a stark
declaration. Along with pot, he said he's taken "mushrooms and LSD and
various other things, and they changed my world view and informed me
how to be in the world." He said that drugs allowed him to question
the fixed reality he encountered, which led to the computer
breakthroughs that made him a wealthy man. And, he added, "I'm a
better person in the world because I took drugs."

Gilmore acknowledged that coming out entails "high risks." But, "You
can advocate breaking the law as long as there's not an immediate
connection to the law being broken." Don't then pull some weed out of
your pocket, in other words.

He noted also that many marijuana foes have never met a responsible,
uncloseted smoker, someone in their life who they respect.

Declaring that protecting patients' rights is "our highest priority,"
Stroup nonetheless said, "We have to move beyond medical use…. There
are 19 million people just like me who are smoking for the fun of it."

There were frequent analogies to the gay rights movement, which became
a powerful political constituency only when gays emerged from their
closet. That power helped bar the once common media references to gays
as perverts and such. Ethan Nadelmann pointed out that 40 years ago,
before the gay closet door swung open, "Everyone knew homosexuals,
they just didn't know they did." The only ones they heard of were in
the news, busted for solicitation. These days, he said, the only high
school kids smoking pot that people hear of are "the long-hairs
getting in trouble, not the kids getting scholarships."

One speaker offered to help smash the closet door. Practical and
publishing oriented, long-time activist and co-author Shattered Lives,
Mikki Norris called for people to join her Cannabis Consumers Campaign.

Asking people from all walks of life to be photographed and named, she
intends to "put a human face on the people who are being scapegoated
to let people see that it's people just like them." Saying that the
media portrays users as losers, thus allowing the drug war to
continue, Norris admitted the need for an "image upgrade." To that end
and as part of her larger project, she wants to publish the names and
photos of 100 well-known individuals in an eventual newspaper ad she
has funding commitments for. Anyone vulnerable to an involuntary
"gotcha!" sign on and shed those fears forever.

She has a few commitments from celebrities, mostly television
personalities, and is seeking more. Among the 46 questions on the
survey she gave participants at NORML is, "Which high profile people
have you smoked pot with?"

Acknowledging the risks, primarily to one's job and perhaps even
custody of children, Norris's survey releases her campaign from any
liability associated with the "release, dissemination and publication
of [these] statements…."

Three dozen attendees posed for her Internet-ready digital camera.
That she got a relative few from the over 500 delegates shows Norris
has taken on a tough project.

But, having documented prisoners' plight, she said it's a welcome
change dealing with non-victims and their rightful place in society.
Paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King, Norris said, "I'd love to see the
time when we're not judged on the content of our urine, but the
content of our character."

Inevitably, perhaps, at a political confab, the wider world kept
intruding, events demanding attention.

Day one featured almost hourly updates on whether Steve Kubby, an
adrenal cancer patient whose life is placed at imminent risk when in
jail, had been sprung from his Canadian cell or not where he'd landed
on a supposed immigration violation.

Richard Cowan of MarijuanaNews com, was one of several folks who
surfaced periodically with a dramatic update, yeah or nay, on whether
Kubby had made bail.

After his eventual release, Kubby, a prominent activist and former
Libertarian candidate for governor of California, told , "I was
having vomiting and diarrhea and lost 20 pounds in three days. If I
had had to stay in jail another day, I might have been dead."

People got a lift from Americans for Safe Access's (ASA) inaugural
action. Two climbers draped a defiant banner high on a vacant billboard.
CAN's Debby Goldsberry, told HT they stayed up there for hours until
arrested, and that they were charged with both trespassing and
"mischivousness."

There was also delight at federal judge Robert Jones' ruling that
the Feds couldn't mess with Oregon's voter-approved assisted suicide
law. Jones ruled that, "the Ashcroft directive is not entitled to
deference under any standard and is invalid." Roll that one around on
your tongue. Such is the antipathy to Ashcroft, the announcement got the biggest
single ovation of the conference. Forget that single, marble breast
he's ordered cloaked, perhaps Ashcroft should worry about the few
independent judges out there.

Patient advocate Dr. Tod Mikuriya (who estimated his legal fees have
averaged $25,000 annually in recent years) calls it "toxic
federalism." One manifestation is the expected federal court ruling on
medical marijuana's Achilles' heel distribution. NORML board chairman
Steve Dillon pointed out that DEA chief Asa Hutchinson, confidentially
flying blind in the face of reams of evidence, recently declared that
cannabis offers no medical benefit.

On Day Two, 4/19, federal judge Charles Breyer of the Northern
District of California, heard arguments in the Justice Department's
attack on the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative. The case sent back
to Breyer by the Supreme Court for a ruling on OCBC's distribution
rights, many observers agreed that his questions seemed to pave the
way for granting an injunction against OCBC and other California clubs.

Though Breyer seemed uninterested, OCBC argues that the federal
government can't ban intrastate medical use in California, plus that
three of the first 10 Amendments provide for patients' due process
rights and that "sovereignty in this matter is specifically accorded
to individuals and the states," according to California NORML.

Jeff Jones, OCBC's director and fellow defendant, told HT that
whatever Breyer rules, appeals will probably tie up the case for the
balance of the Bush Administration. A negative ruling, Jones figured,
does afford the DEA "a blank check to roll out against the California
clubs." There's little to stop them, Jones said, since "Ashcroft and
Hutchinson are not afraid of the media." But they are afraid of what
Jones, a "young Republican," indicates about the future.

Injunctions, of course, invariably lead to law enforcement
intervention to justify all that cool cop gear, all those neat
health-care-and-pensions-jobs. And the public can rest easier with
cancer patients prevented from keeping their food down. Dale
Gieringer, Director of California NORML, told the conference that most
patients either can't grow their own medicine or are afraid to. And
while 25,000 patients in California are supplied by the clubs, of
the 51 identified patient groups in California, only half provide any
marijuana.

The clubs do provide a model of distribution that works - no selling to
minors, no selling on the street. The public sees they're like any
other business, which authority figures like Hutchinson find so
disturbing, he said. "The clubs are an important step in the
socialization of drug use, and that's what they're afraid of,"
Gieringer added. "We're in a real showdown, the final battle in the
war on drugs, an epic battle involving the courts, Congress and the
presidential election."

Pointing to the nationwide fierce struggle over control of the House
of Representatives, Wayne Justmann, director of the SF Patients
Cooperative, told HT, "Do they want to roll the dice in an election
year with the House up for grabs?" Despite a political cost he intends
to help extract, as mentioned, he believes cease-and-desist
injunctions will be served on the 50 clubs that operate openly in
California. Should Breyer rule negatively, Justmann declared that any
jurisdictions that have issued ID cards have also assumed the
obligation to set up grows and dispensaries. "We're going to have to
challenge the City and County of San Francisco to respond.
We appreciate the moral support from politicians on the steps of City
Hall, but where will patients go to get cannabis? Prop. 215 says the state must set up programs. If you can get a card from the health department, you need a site to get your medicine."

Gieringer assumes that anywhere from a half-dozen to as many as 35
California clubs and their caregivers will be served with an
injunction or even raided within a week to a month after Breyer's ruling.
To that end, he said the DEA has been focusing on tracing clones going
in and out of the clubs. "It's about the manufacturing," he said. Law
enforcement has also been tailing people home from the clubs,
Gieringer charged. "There have been multiple, credible reports of
people being tailed as far as fifty miles to their homes," he said. He
also knows of at least two unpublicized arrests of "smallish patient
grows."

Prominent SF attorney Bill Panzer believes the Feds have obtained
evidence against all the Bay Area clubs, in many cases infiltrating
them with tales of migraine headaches.

Panzer thinks the government will raid six of the largest clubs and
the others will close voluntarily. Another observer anticipates around
ten raids.

Robert Raich, who represents OCBC, knows of one raid where he believes
agents followed a patient home from a club and hauled off the princely
amount of one plant and one ounce of medicine.

Jones, who at age 14 watched his cancer and chemo-stricken father
waste away to 100 pounds before dying, assumes that a "cold-hearted"
government will eventually drive patients to protest in the streets.
Reform philanthropist John Gilmore told HT that thousands of patients
will be forced to act, "So new clubs will occur, but not necessarily
with the same people."

DEA actions occur without cooperation from one of the reform
movement's main bulwarks, radical former defense attorney and current
mayoral candidate and San Francisco District Attorney Terence
Hallinan. From a long line of radicals, and arrested sixteen times for
political protest as a law student during the 1960s, in a half-hour
opening address, Hallinan said "my background is wrapped up in
marijuana." He traced that back to 1966, "an exciting, dangerous time"
when possession of "one seed" was a felony that sent thousands to prison.
He told war stories of what he termed the "greatest defense bar" in
the country, one that wouldn't tolerate repression or unfairness.
Hallinan himself helped the ex-manager of the Kingston Trio escape a
bust for 600 pounds of pot with the claim that it was essential to his
religious beliefs.

As the prosecutor said, "That's a lot of religion." But the defense
brought in Tommy Smothers and Alan Watts, among others, to discuss
mysticism. (Watts' son, Richard Watts, executive director of the Sixth
Street Harm Reduction Center, was one of four medicine providers
arrested in February.) And the judge took it from the jury and
administered "a slap on the wrist."

As Hallinan said, "I knew marijuana was not the simple drug its
opponents depicted it as, that it was many things to many people." He
added, "There is no question in my mind that for some people marijuana
is an essential part of their religious experience."

Hallinan spoke of his work, while still a city Supervisor, with Dennis
Peron back in 1991 to craft a deal with the chief of police and Mayor
Frank Jordan to ensure that "if it was clearly a medical situation,
the police officer could turn his back and walk away." He got a huge
ovation telling of going to Sonoma County to testify for Ken Hayes, "a
wonderful marijuana activist," who was being prosecuted for 880 plants.
Hallinan testified that Hayes was a "legitimate care giver in San
Francisco, supplying those with AIDS and cancer and the dying." It
took a mere six hours for the jury to acquit. With Hallinan backing
his opponent, the Sonoma County DA was defeated last November.

Another keynote speaker was introduced by Keith Stroup as "our drug
czar." Drug Policy Alliance director Ethan Nadelmann was a bit more
subdued than I've previously seen him. The ratiocination was present
as usual, but he seemed miffed to now be confronting the "banality" of
the troika of Ashcroft, Hutchinson and Drug Czar John Walters, who he
termed "William Bennett's Mini-Me". Citing candidate Bush's campaign
promise on states' rights, Nadelmann declared that Bush "doesn't seem
to know what he's saying." The reform movement seized on Bush's
promise, and we all know what's happened since. "They throw a few
million dollars at treatment, but then pile on the interdiction,"
Nadelmann complained, declaring Walters most comfortable with
treatment occurring within a prison or church setting.

Noting that marijuana is the drug warriors' "great bugbear," Nadelmann
cited the public's wide approval for medical pot and pointed to the
political hay to be made when "the Birchers of the drug war" go to
"the stupidest place imaginable."

As to the government's "insidious" linking of drugs and terrorism,
Nadelmann quipped "Bin Laden was into marijuana - I didn't catch that."
He wondered about tee shirts reading "Support the war on terrorism - Grow
your own."

The nation's 10 or 20 million convictions for petty drug offenses,
Nadelmann said, are manifestation of the "totalitarian, dark side of
America." At the street level, a big part of enforcement is sheer
bureaucratic gaming.

He reported that a high-level New York cop told him, it's all about
meeting his quota, and "the easiest busts are marijuana arrests."
That's one reason New York's marijuana arrests leaped to 52,000 a year
(up from 2,000) when Giuliani started massaging statistics at the
precinct level. Showing high arrest figures, the police source told Nadelmann, serves to cover his butt when something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong.

Meanwhile, a recent Daily News poll indicated that New Yorkers are
more concerned with car alarms and other noise; marijuana didn't even
make the Top 10 list of concerns.

The Drug Policy Alliance will soon be opening an office in New Jersey,
whose drug policy, Nadelmann said, is akin to civil rights-era
Mississippi on race. With the nation's highest proportion of new
inmates incarcerated for drugs, plus its status as the only state
without access to clean, legal syringes despite its third-highest
pediatric AIDS rate, it's ripe for attention. And while marijuana is a
pivotal issue, he said it moves on a "parallel track" with sentencing
reform and other attempts to ameliorate prohibition's "New Jim Crowism."

Exhortations to come out of the closet aside, attendees, especially
high school students, were warned they might be ripped from it
involuntarily thanks in part to the Supreme Court. Kevin Zeese of
Common Sense for Drug Policy said that drug testing is the next big
battleground, especially for kids. The federal government's repression
of patients notwithstanding, he believes the drug reform movement,
long back on its heels, is on the offensive for the first time in years.
This momentum is grounded, said Zeeze, "in the integrity of our bodies
and the right to control our consciousness."

Yet the recently signed federal education bill provides funds for
school drug testing.

Given the hostile nature of the Supreme Court's questioning (including
comments on "druggie schools") of the ACLU's Graham Boyd arguing a
school drug-test case before it, Zeese expects the court to uphold
testing for students participating in all extracurricular
activities - even the nerds in the Chemistry Club who face no athletic
danger and are role models for nobody.

Zeese wasn't the first speaker to note the absurdity here after-school
activities are a prime way of keeping kids from taking drugs.
But it meshes with the clever trend since the late 1970s of going
after the individuals with the least rights - prisoners, military
personnel and now students.

He noted that in the mid-'80s, the Supreme Court upheld the "special
needs" test for federal workers in safety-sensitive positions, voiding
the Fourth Amendment's probable cause requirement.

Zeese said private sector testing is plateauing and actually now
declining, not least because new hires in sophisticated fields might
take up to two years to add to the bottom line. Government - in part to
prop up what Dr. John Morgan of the CUNY Medical School and NORML
Foundation chairman terms a $2.5 billion a year industry - seems more
than willing to pick up the slack. The Supreme Court is poised to
buffalo the nation with a strategy of, in effect, declaring
adolescence itself a "special needs" situation.

Zeese figured that "kids coming up will have been trained to urinate
on demand; some sheep will acquiesce." But he also hoped that "other
kids will do urine drops in the hallways." There's a move afoot in
some states to test teenagers before they get their first driver's
license.

The ground broken with this weak link prepares the way for testing
anyone renewing his or her license.

Indicating that two-tiered testing is essential for accuracy, but that
it's not required in the private sector, Dr. Morgan cited some 30,000
tests performed daily for that $2.5 billion a year.

Nadelmann admitted the movement has yet to conjure the "natural
defense" against the slippery slope of drug testing, a slope the
"Supreme Court is greasing up and down the line." Noting that Bush's
deputy solicitor general has advocated testing every child in America,
he admitted the lack of a "short-term, tangible, nuts and bolts
response." And Nadelmann bemoaned "the tens of thousands of jobs
victimized - a huge number."

Tongue presumably in cheek, Norm Kent told HT that Office Depot, which
proudly proclaims it tests its employees, should move to testing its
customers instead and refusing to take money from anyone who fails.
Others advocated that everyone everywhere turn in a dirty test all the
time.

Common Sense for a Drug Policy's research director Doug McVay told HT
it's "humiliating and embarrassing, pissing on demand.
It doesn't stop anything, it's symbolic." The juggernaut of testing
will produce a radical backlash he predicted, adding, "The drug
warriors are helping us build the reform movement."

The bottom line is workers kept ever fearful for their jobs are less
willing to risk calling a pee test down on their heads by asking for
more money or messing with a union.

Cultivation specialist Ed Rosenthal gave a brief, moving
speech. Arrested in February, Rosenthal faces federal charges for cultivating
more than 100 plants, which carry a sentence of five to 40 years.
Though he "didn't volunteer" for his role, the issues are clear, he
maintained. Possessed of the technical expertise to help patients, he
just couldn't commit the "sin of omission - where you knew you could and
should help, and yet you didn't." After decrying what he termed the
deaths of scores of people killed by cops enforcing marijuana laws,
Rosenthal advised his listeners to follow the money. "They felonize
and terrorize marijuana users, and then they live off that." He
observed, "There's no popular anti-marijuana movement - it's all being
paid for." As to his upcoming trial, he said his co-defendants are
being pressured to turn state's evidence.

About his case, he said, "There are no extenuating circumstances, no
guns, no money laundering, indeed no money, no other drugs." Rosenthal
remains confident, given the 60-80 percent support locally for medical
marijuana. He asserted, "I look forward to being with you this time next year to
tell you how we won this case." It's a case he figures will cost well
over $500,000.

The conference's highlight was a speech by Politically Incorrect's
Bill Maher on 4/20. Stroup introduced him as "a one-man life-line to
Todd McCormick." After an ovation, a droll and polished Maher said,
"You're very kind, and very stoned." He, on the other hand, was very
serious.

He observed that "the problem with this drug is complacency. It's not
too hard to get, it's too easy." An ineffective government lulls
smokers into complacency despite the hundreds of thousands of arrests.
And then he launched into a small, controlled tirade about McCormick's
imprisonment.

He celebrated, then rejected the pot community's tolerance and
understanding, calling for anger and intolerance. Sick and tired of
hiding, he said, "How about zero tolerance for the ridiculous notion
that sobriety is the time-tested route to mind expansion?"

Maher then reminded us that fighting prohibition is not akin to
fighting terrorism "You can't win just by putting a flag on your car."
He took hope from the fact that if George Bush during the campaign
could convince voters he was a reformer and a Washington outsider,
then the public can be convinced of anything.

He called for the vast, silent majority of smokers to flee the closet
and stand up in this battle, including "prominent people," though he
continued with a sly smile, "I'm not going to mention any
names…Harrison Ford, Ted Turner." Perhaps Maher's diction left them
that crucial whisker of deniability, perhaps not.

He noted that the "two shameless beasts" of media and politicians care
for nothing but ratings and votes.

And he urged Americans to make politicians fear a sizable vote against
them "if they try to do what Bush and Gore did ignore the issue
despite their own involvement back when drugs were fun and not the
greatest evil in America." He could forgive Bob Dole, "who was like my
father 'Now don't be shooting no pot, son.' " But given their "immense
drug histories," Maher declared Bush and Gore beyond
forgiveness.

He called for a smokeless Million Marijuana March on the Mall in
Washington, not a joint in sight to show that potheads have the
requisite discipline to change public policy.

Finally, asserting that no one ever died from pot "the worst thing that
happens is it makes you eat cookie dough" he called for "someone to try
to kill me tonight."

A doctor begged somewhat to differ with Maher on this last
point. Dr. Morgan has studied the controversy over Harvard's Dr. Murray
Middleman's report regarding pot use leading to sudden heart attacks.
Morgan noted that smoking anything clearly raises heart rates. "It
increases the heart rate and carbon monoxide in the bloodstream," he
said. The bottom line, said Morgan, is that "in men with compromised
atherosclerosis, it might precipitate a heart attack or angina."
(Atherosclerosis is fat deposits inside blood vessels.)

As to Middleman's findings, Morgan said, "If you torture the data long
enough, it'll confess." Noting that Middleman found of 4,000 heart
attack patients interviewed, 2.4 percent had smoked pot in the prior
year; only 37 individuals (1 percent) had smoked the day before the
attack, and nine (0.2 percent) had smoked an hour before.
Declaring that these nine folks were male, overweight and sedentary,
Morgan concluded, so perhaps "0.2 percent of smokers over age 50 may
get a heart attack." Morgan later told HT that, yes, his warnings,
however qualified, about chest pain associated with smoking and any
subsequent heart attacks did flirt with heresy.

He said, "There's a tendency in the pot movement to believe that it's
all good. My job as a scientist is to look at instances where that's
not true."

Houston attorney Clay Conrad got the crowd's attention with his
opening statement that "half the rapes in America occur against male
inmates." Conrad's topic was jury nullification. He quoted
Massachusetts' first chief justice to the effect that "the people
themselves have it in their power to resist usurpation without
requiring recourse to legislation." In short, the founders gave that
power to juries, in part because one cause of the Revolution was
England denying the right to trial by jury.

To be done "to judge the law itself and vote on the verdict according
to conscience" (as Conrad's handout put it)it must be done covertly,
he advised. After all, he said, sometimes a little subversion is
necessary on the part of the people, the source of political power.
To get on a jury without lying, Conrad recommended resigning from any
organizations prior to being called; indicate your questioning
neutrality about the drug laws, but that your decision can be made
independent of that. Oh, and get a hair cut and look neat, "which may
give you a chance to express yourself in the jury room where it
counts." Don't give any political speech unless you're sure you're not
being picked.

Then it might be advisable to stand up and say "I could not convict
this young man for his harmless act. It could ruin his life, and it's
immoral." In California and federal courts, watch out for the "snitch
rule," which allows fellow jury members to tell the judge, who can
then remove from the jury anyone that "refuses to deliberate or follow
the law." Finally, if by voting your conscience you end up hanging the
jury, then "hang with pride." He directed listeners to the Fully
Informed Jury Association (FIJA) for guidance.

Pillar of the San Francisco defense bar, Tony Serra orated mightily on
the current desecration of the Bill of Rights that has yielded "the
first smackings of fundamental, totalitarian, law enforcement-dominated
political control." Of patients' battles with cops obstructing the
law, Serra said they're "the canaries down in the coal mine as to
whether we'll have a democratic society and constitutional
government."

The foremost flower in our "bouquet of rights" that Serra said has
been decimated is the Fourth Amendment. With the lack of judicially
approved search warrants, electronic surveillance, overflights,
"wiretaps increasing like a disease," he said it's "a shadow of what
it was years ago." Similarly, the presumption of innocence no longer
applies.

With defendants now increasingly declared a flight risk and/or a
danger to the community or subject to preventive detention, bail
doesn't apply in the federal system and increasingly not in the states
as a matter of right, Serra charged.

The "psychological torture" of an abusive grand jury system with no
discovery, no documents, defendants not present, one that turns family
members against one another is also wildly out of control.
In days past, informants were tested and needed a track record.
They used to be "despised by the populace and the defense bar,
scrutinized by judges and not welcomed by prosecutors." But now, with
informants threatened with 20-years-to-life and neither corroborated
nor debriefed - plus the use of unsworn statements from alleged
co-conspirators in this "Orwellian spy society - "we're left "swimming in
a sea of snitches." Given the use of RICO and Continuing Criminal
Enterprise statutes, "we're all co-conspirators in the eyes of the
government." Perhaps even worse, Serra said, with the independent
judiciary cowed before "the all-powerful executive branch, judges are
powerless before the war on drugs." And the requirement for a
unanimous jury verdict is falling away. The misnamed dissident rule
shreds the power of the dissident, creative mind. "If you hang a jury,
you can renegotiate or retry with an enhanced view of the evidence,"
he said.

Facing this amalgamation of state power is the increasing respect for
medical marijuana, "a symbol that equalizes the opposing forces.
It tears down this ugly wall that law enforcement draws around us. So
let this flower grow and fructify and prevail." The crowd bathed in it
all a bit and then leapt to its feet.

Not on the formal program, but very much a presence at the conference,
Bob Newland, the head of South Dakota NORML, was pushing the Common
Sense Justice amendment to his state's constitution. Already qualified
for the ballot, it aims to allow defendants "to argue the merits,
validity and applicability of the law, including sentencing laws."
Newland pointed out that enforcement of both the Fugitive Slave Act
and alcohol prohibition crumpled when juries would no longer convict.
His amendment will allow defendants, he said, to argue Yeah, I did it,
I didn't hurt anyone, and it's stupid that this is against the law.
"People need to be allowed to tell the story of their offense and why
it's a bad law, and then let the jury decide if it is a bad law," he
said.

Newland's group has already raised $70,000 for the effort, in part,
because "South Dakota is a cheap state to see if this kite will fly."
Since the conference, Newland said he's been approached by five or six
organizations, including the Cato Institute, to potentially fuel the
campaign. Though he hasn't done any polling, Newland believes if the election
were held today, he'd "win in a squeaker." (No one wants to back the
wrong horse, so he naturally touts his chance of victory.)

Neither Newland's ballot effort nor Clay Conrad's FIJA link their
crusades to the War on Drugs. FIJA's fascinating, dense pamphlet only
hints at drugs when it declares that prisons "are filling up with
people whose only 'crime' was to displease the government 'master,'
not to victimize anyone."

Voter Power's John Sajo was less than pleased with raising no money in
San Francisco to help pass an amendment that would "expand and
clarify" Oregon's 1998 medical marijuana bill. Sajo told HT that the
movement's big funders and "hired gunslinger" political consultants
have made it clear they've moved on from medical marijuana ballot measures.
This despite the fact that implementation of Prop 215 in California,
he told me, is little more than a "box of rough rocks." In his speech
to the conference, he said the law in Oregon plain doesn't work. Sure
it was great to win an election, but there's been four years of
suffering since.

With doctors so unwilling to sign patients' applications, most
patients can't meet Oregon's qualifying requirementsonly 2000 have
done so. What's more, sick and dying people are expected to grow their
own medicine. Finally, even qualified patients are still getting arrested and
convicted due to snafus in applying the law.

So Oregonians are trying to qualify for the ballot and then pass a
second initiative that will create state Department of Health
dispensaries for registered patients, which is favored by four-fifths
of Oregon's voters. These will distribute free medicine to the
indigent; boost the currently small amounts patients can grow and
possess; allow caregivers to be compensated; and lower the patient's
application fee.

Figuring the time to pass the hat is when people are fired up by the
presentations and in a check-writing mood, Sajo decried the fact that
fund-raising for his fix-it amendment wasn't on NORML's agenda.
Believing he needs to raise between $50,000 and $150,000 more than he
has to both qualify for and win the election, Sajo is currently
limping along raising some $25,000 a month.

In response, Stroup told HT that lots of attendees are already
stretched thin by the hotel and travel costs of attending the
conference. Feeling that overt fund-raising might lessen the level of
discourse - and pointing out that NORML loses around $25 per
attendee - Stroup said, "I wouldn't want people to get the impression
we're here to make money off them."

Following the event, the voterpower.org site noted that its "requests
for funding went unmet" at the pre-conference NORML board meeting.
Citing its modest projected war chest, Voter Power complained that
"much of the NORML board meeting involved mutual congratulations" for
the Bloomberg ad. The site opined that the ad will serve to embarrass
and antagonize Bloomberg, and that NORML hasn't articulated how the
ads will help it achieve its goals, its follow-up efforts or how
activists can build on them.

A panel examining Richard Nixon's "marihuana" commission, the now
30-year-old Shafer report, afforded a sad historical perspective.
Entitled, "Marihuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding," the report called
for decriminalization of personal use amounts.
And, said former NORML director Gordon Brownwell, that was back in the
era when a single joint might lead to a life sentence in Texas and up
to ten years in California.

The commission was mandated by Congress in the Comprehensive Drug
Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, charged with advising
lawmakers on how to schedule pot for enforcement. Formed a year later,
it delivered its report in early 1972 much to Nixon's disgust though
he had appointed most of the members

The commission's decrim conclusion was particularly tough on Nixon
given that its Executive Director, Michael R. Sonnenreich, had, as a
senior attorney with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the
DEA's predecessor), played a key role writing the 1970 Act. Still the
law of the land, it ruled marijuana a Schedule I drug along with LSD
and heroin.

A source close to Sonnenreich told HT that, pending medical study and
evaluation, Sonnenreich assumed pot would drop from Schedule I and
probably even Schedule II upon proof of its medical utility.
A catalyst for the damning Schedule I designation, he assumed his
contingent handiwork would be rectified by Congress once the doctors
weighed in. Though numerous medical authorities have endorsed pot's
medical utility, one of the Act's fathers has not spoken out publicly
to denounce a law built on a now eviscerated foundation. And we're all
shocked to learn that there's gambling in Casablanca.

Oddly enough, declassified Oval Office tapes of Nixon and former
Pennsylvania governor Raymond Shafer's conversation quote Nixon as
saying, "To take somebody that's smoked some of this stuff, put him
into a jail with a bunch of hardened criminals - that's absurd."
Shafer agreed and Nixon added, "There must be different ways than
jail." Truth from power aside, marijuana arrests rose from 292,000 in
1972 to 735,000 in 2000, according to the FBI. Nixon also told Shafer
he wanted "a report that is totally oblivious to some obvious
differences between marijuana and other drugs, other dangerous drugs,
there are differences."

More Nixonian truth "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference what we
say about drugs, if people want them, they think it's all proper,
they're going to use them, they're going to find ways to get it."

A last Nixonian gem "A person does not drink to get drunk…. A person
drinks to have fun." Whereas with pot, Nixon opined, "You want to get
a charge, and float, and this and that and the other thing."
Personally, I wish staunch marijuana opponent Nixon had offered more
insight on "the other thing," but unfortunately the transcript
indicates "34-second portion withdrawn as personal."

A couple of historical footnotes - Raymond Shafer was denied a promised
federal judgeship for helping to produce an honest report.
And Michael Aldrich entertained listeners with the tale of Allen
Ginsberg - cleaned up and unrecognizable in a pork pie hat - joining him in
his testimony before the commission.

Finally, why in the world did they hold the party at Tony Serra's law
firm? Studio Z, the nightclub NORML, Cannabis Action Network and HIGH
TIMES had rented out for a multi-room party starting with several
bands that afternoon was just too compromised. There'd been a shooting
at the club the week before and an Ecstasy bust the night before.
When Studio Z told CAN's Debby Goldsberry that a raid by the state
liquor license authorities was likely - leading to trouble since smoking
of any sort is forbidden in California bars, she decided to pull the
plug. She told HT that patients needed to medicate at a 12-hour event.
She didn't blame the club, saying they we're victimized too since the
authorities "just don't want to see people dance." Though CAN
desperately needs the money, some 800 of its ticket buyers, at $22 a
pop, were turned away.

That afternoon, Stroup had told me no way in hell he was letting the
government keep NORML from celebrating the conference. Afterwards, he
said about impromptu party at Serra's office, "Although it was far too
crowded, it was a wonderfully weird San Francisco party." He thanked
Goldsberry for pulling it off on only a couple of hours notice "under
extremely difficult circumstances." Personally, I hate to think of the
mayhem that would have ensued if it'd been hundreds of boozers crammed
into that office for hours on end.

Cited: National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
http://www.norml.org/

Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative http://www.rxcbc.org/

Cannabis Action Network http://www.cannabisaction.net/

Voter Power http://www.voterpower.org/

Drug Policy Alliance http://www.drugpolicy.org/

Common Sense for Drug Policy http://www.csdp.org/
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/ http://www.narcoterror.org/

ACLU http://www.aclu.org/issues/drugpolicy/hmdrugpolicy.html

Fully Informed Jury Association http://www.fija.org/

Americans for Safe Access http://www.safeaccessnow.org/

Cannabis Consumers Campaign http://www.cannabisconsumers.org/

Related: Conference Reports, Pictures, and Video files

NORML Conference Report: Ready to Take It to a Higher Level
http://drcnet.org/wol/234.html#normlconference

NORML Conference Highlights
http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2002/ds02.n248.html#sec5

NORML's photos of the conference http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5254

Conference photos taken by MAPsters http://www.drugsense.org/pix/norml2002/

NORML's video files of the conference
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5282

[Note: If we have missed any conference photos or audio/video files on the
web please send a note to rlake@mapinc.org