He co-founded the D.A.R.E. program on the premise that it is too dangerous to tell children the truth about cannabis because it is not scary enough, so the cur- riculum was based instead on lies.

“The Ravin decision in 1975 was then, and remains still today, 35 years later, the most significant constitutional ruling ever handed down in this country regarding the marijuana laws,” said NORML founder Keith Stroup.

Ravin gave up law and spent his latter years driving a cab in Homer, AK, supposedly because in the remote area of Alaska he lived in he always knew both parties of the lawsuit so it was just too complex. He opted for the simplicity of driving a taxi and telling tourists stories about the area (sometimes pulling their legs).

“Irwin was kind of like one of the patriarchs in Homer,” said longtime friend Sallie Dodd Butters. “He was one that was around when Hobo Jim and I came into town. He will be terribly missed.” He passed away in the company of friends from a heart attack. — Mickey Martin

Hitchens writes, “He preferred, like many another marijuana enthusiast, to take his dope in the form of large handfuls of cookies and brownies.”

This information bolsters that in Edward Klein’s book The Truth About Hillary, which says our Secretary of State met her future husband at a commune called Cozy Beach, where her Yale Journal of Law and Social Action co-editor Kris Olson lived. According to Klein, Cozy Beach was affiliated with Ken Kesey’s Oregon Hog Farm, and the Magic Bus riders were said to be regular visitors. “Bill and Hillary often grooved the night away at Cozy Beach, spinning the latest Jefferson Airplane platters and eating Kris Olson’s hashish brownies,” wrote Miriam Horn in Rebels in White Gloves.

“There’s Cy in Here,” shouts an enor- mous banner currently flying from the top of AT&T Park in San Francisco. Pictured is a lanky, stony-looking pitcher named Tim Lincecum, who earned his second consecu- tive Cy Young award last year. The 25-year- old Washington native has signed a $23 million dollar contract, which many specu- lated wouldn’t happen because of his bust last fall for marijuana. Lincecum paid a $513 fine in January after being caught with 3.3 grams of pot and a pipe while driving in his home state. Will money ruin what a cannabis bust couldn’t? Catch the Giants this year to find out.

Meanwhile, Santonio Holmes, the MVP of last year’s Superbowl, has been traded by the Pittsburgh Steelers for a fifth-round draft pick from the New York Jets. Holmes is facing a four-game suspension for violat- ing the NFL’s substance abuse policy, fol- lowing a pre-Superbowl incident when he was caught with herb in his car. Apparently Holmes has turned to a harder drug (liquor), leading to an incident last month when he allegedly threw a drink at a woman in a Florida bar. He could be sus- pended for an entire season if he violates league policy again.

Acknowledging to Sports Illustrated that as many as one third of potential draft picks have tried cannabis, the NFL is no longer disqualifying players who test posi- tive for pot, but rather is evaluating them on a case-by-case basis. “If you knocked everyone off your [draft] board who has experimented with weed, you’d lose about 20 percent of your board, not to mention disqualify a few recent presidents,” one NFL head coach said.

Dr. Frank Lucido, a medical marijuana specialist practicing in Berkeley, told the Wall Street Journal that two former NFL players with chronic orthopedic pain are his patients. “I say marijuana should not be a banned substance [in the NFL]. It has too many medical benefits,” Lucido told WSJ.

The Simpsons, Family Guy, Parks and Recreation, SNL, Parenthood, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, Gossip Girl and Glee have all joined the discussion. No longer is it neces- sary for networks to impose the negative consequence of police action.

Cable TV has ramped up its support as well. Stalwarts like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart have expanded their conversations with guests. In Maher’s interview with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong they dis- cussed toking. Jesse Ventura and Maher were candid in their support of changes in the law to allow legal access. Ventura blast- ed the Drug War as a failure and blight. Not a week goes by without a supportive nod from Stewart or one of his guests. Nurse Jackie focused on the inherent med- ical contradictions in its episode, `Apple Bong,’ where her character supplied a patient herbal medication behind the backs of hospital officials.

The real change is in network reaction to recreational use. In Plain Sight, a show about people in the federal witness protec- tion program, has gone from portraying smokers as losers to just normal folks loos- ening up with a little puff.

So much attention has been focused on the subject that Fox News weighed in with a discussion between Melissa Henson of the Parents Television Council and Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

St. Pierre cut to the point, “An adult who uses it responsibly should not be arrested.” Henson wants to protect chil- dren from ideas by keeping the discussion within a law-and-order framework, end- lessly forcing viewers to watch the legal penalties of prohibition.

With cannabis recognized as a $100 bil- lion a year industry, it’s impossible to ban it from the air or convince consumers it’s dangerous when used responsibly.

April saw the return to film of Cheech and Chong with the release of Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS Evil. Meanwhile, independ- ent films like Green Goddess and the re-edit- ed classic, The Moneytree, are searching for distribution deals with studios that now seek to exploit the viewers they once spurned — us.

One day may even see a return of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

Now the media is beginning to recog- nize what millions have long known: Things go better with grass.

Even more astounding, this is an elec- tion year in Alabama. The entire house and senate are up for re-election. To even take this bill up, much less pass it, shows that attitudes are changing in the state. It is the only Southern state to have a medical use bill in committee now, and it could be the first state in the South to have such a law. “As a former police officer I can tell you that [people driving with a high]

For the last six years Alabamians for Compassionate Care (ACC) has partnered with the Drug Policy Alliance, drugpolicy.org, to make this happen.

They had expected the bill to pass out of committee but were unprepared for the amazing things said in the hearing.

The most surprising moment came when Rep. John Robinson (D- Scottsboro), with a background in law enforcement, told the committee that in the rural area he has represented for 25 years, it has been common practice for someone suffering from cancer or other serious medical condi- tions to go with their physician to the local sheriff, DA and Judge and obtain cannabis from the evidence room.

He said he understands the need to control marijuana and prevent people from abusing the system, but he supports this legislation, believes that cannabis helps people and believes the state has an obliga- tion to pass HB642 and protect patients. After he finished, ACC members burst into loud applause and a lot of “Amens!”

Another amazing moment came when Rep. Spencer Collier (R- Mobile), former police officer and staunch opponent of medical marijuana, said, in response to comments about driving under the influ- ence, that, “As a former police officer I can tell you that someone with a blood alcohol content of 2.57 will drive 100 miles an hour down the road and are much more danger- ous than someone who has consumed mar- ijuana and only drives about two miles- per-hour.”

Rep. Cam Ward prevented the entire Republican caucus from taking a public stance opposing the bill and kept the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee from killing the bill.

Since the bill was passed out of com- mittee near the end of the session, it didn’t make it any further. However, its sponsor Rep. Patricia Todd (D- Birmingham) has committed to sponsoring it again next ses- sion and those who oppose the bill agreed to work with ACC between sessions to find common ground.

Montana’s patient advocates celebrated in 2004, when the state’s voters legalized medical marijuana with a then-national record of 62 percent support. They celebrated again in 2008, when it first allowed people on probation to be eligible for legal patient status.

But advocates were not celebrating in April, 2010, when Montana earned the dubious distinction of being the only medical use state to experience terrorists fire- bombing a dispensary — twice in the same week. In the dead of night, two nights in a row, unknown vandals threw a crude, homemade Molotov cocktail through the front windows of two different facilities in Billings, causing minor property damage and no human injuries.

The domestic terrorists added insult and sad irony to their attack by painting “Not in Our Town” on the buildings, a slo- gan previously used in a more high-minded way by a Billings group that had organized to oppose hate crimes that targeted Jews. Now their message of tolerance had been twisted backwards in a hate crime targeting cannabis patients.

The fire-bombing attacks only underscored the explosiveness of controversies that were already growing steadily. Even before the violence, it had been apparent that the law will be amended in major ways during the legislative session scheduled to begin in January 2011.

Much of the controversy began when the Montana Caregivers Network began to hold `clinics’ in hotels and warehouses around the state in mid-2009, at which physicians operating in other states on webcams, gave recommendations to as many as 1,000 patients in a single day. The state’s patient registry ballooned from around 3,000 to over 17,000 in roughly a year’s time.

When it became clear that many recommendations involved no review of medical records and no physical exam, the general public and the Board of Medical Examiners began questioning the medical validity of the entire program.

Simultaneously, a profusion of so-called dispensaries had sprouted visibly and sometimes ostentatiously in cities around the state, augmenting public backlash and controversy. By the time of the fire-bombings, more than 80 cannabis business licenses had been granted in Billings alone. In town after town around the state, city officials adopted temporary or permanent bans on commercial `caregiver’ operations and stores.

Over the summer, the Legislature’s interim committee on health issues held a series of meetings with patient rights groups, law enforcement officials and other constituencies in order to identify as much consensus as possible on a proposal to “fix” the Montana law.

Patient rights activists, led by Patients & Families United, and caregivers, led by the recently formed Montana Medical Growers Assn., expect to face a battery of bills at the Legislature next winter. It will probably include a proposal to repeal the medical use law completely.

Patient advocates hope that rational but strict regulatory licensing and over-sight of production and distribution will quell the controversies and carry the day.

AZ4norml.org Arizona activists are entering the home- stretch of a yearlong campaign to put med- ical marijuana on the ballot.

A truck arrived in Phoenix April 14 with 203 boxes of petitions, bearing 252,000 signatures in favor of putting the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA) initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot.

The initiative kicked off in May 2009, with the Marijuana Policy Project funding a small army of petitioners to gather 153,365 valid signatures and put medical use on the state ballot for the third time.

Campaign manager for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Project Andrew Myers put together a motivated group of profes- sional petition passers, volunteers and activists to get the signatures by July 1, and beat the clock by two months.

Unlike most other states in the West, Arizona is still not a recognized medical- use state, although its citizens have twice voted to pass ballot measures.

Executive Director of AZ4NORML Jon Gettel explains, “Our politicians at the time felt that the voters did not know what they were voting for, and they invalidated our law. Soon after, voters passed a new initia- tive which will no longer allow our state government to change or cancel a voter- approved initiative.”

The AMMA would allow doctors to “recommend” via a written certification to allow seriously ill patients to purchase from a non-profit dispensary up to 2.5 ounces every two weeks. Cultivation of up to 12 plants would be allowed by patients and their caregivers only if they live more than 25 miles from a dispensary.

Members of the ASA national staff led activists through a series of trainings and discussions on everything from strategic planning to lobbying and media training, all focused on building a much stronger national grassroots base.

Small groups discussed anticipating and resolving issues around safe access. Activists from Maryland, Michigan, California, New Jersey and Maine dis- cussed what is and is not working with each other and with representatives from states lacking patient protections, such as Tennessee and Florida.

The guided process — facilitated by Executive Director Steph Sherer, Legal Coordinator Lauren Payne, and Elizabeth Mewhiney and Caren Woodson from ASA’s Government Affairs office — helped activists identify specific goals and create local action plans for their area.

“Having patients and activists from so many parts of the country helped everyone gain a better sense of what’s possible and what’s difficult,” said Woodson. “ASA’s national strategy for mobilizing the grass- roots is providing them with key support. They know they’re not alone.”

The ASA strategy is to focus on the spe- cific needs and constraints of individual states within a framework of national impact. Workshop participants learned how their work toward passing meaning- ful medical use legislation in more states and successfully implementing local laws links to the passage of federal initiatives to grant access to all Americans who need it. ASA staff explained that increasing the nationwide grassroots base creates con- stant local pressure to pass federal legisla- tion, as does effectively implementing the medical marijuana laws in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

“Criticizing another state as either too permissive or too restrictive is easy from the outside,” said Woodson. “But after hearing the local truth from activists on the ground, people were able to keep a more open mind about the big picture — achiev- ing national access.”

ASA’s legal and government affairs staff also unveiled its momentum with the Obama Administration and Congress to fix harmful federal policies on asset forfeiture, drug classification, and cannabis research. Meanwhile, its legal team is pursuing piv- otal medical marijuana litigation to attain safe access nationwide, including ASA’s Data Quality Act petition and another to “reschedule” cannabis to a classification that would remove barriers to research and medical use.

“What’s most exciting about this is see- ing the grassroots take ownership of the process,” said Woodson. “Medical cannabis patients are realizing how to move forward together as a community to accomplish safe access for everyone.” ASA’s three-year national strategy plan can be seen online at AmericansForSafeAccess.org/Strategy2010.

By Derrick Bergman G0NZ0 Media The second edi- tion of the Cannabis Tri- bunal brought together promi- nent politicians and top experts to discuss the future of the Dutch cannabis policy.

Former prime minister Dries van Agt told the audi- ence not to despair: Despite the zero-toler- ance political climate, “legalization is inevitable and therefore will happen.”

The Tribunal was organized by the Assn. for the Abolition of Cannabis Prohibition (VOC), an independent umbrella group combining the forces of pro-cannabis organizations and individu- als. It was founded after the first Cannabis Tribunal in December 2008.

The 2010 event took place May 3 in The Hague and was streamed live via the Internet and is set to be released later this year on DVD. Its most prominent speaker was Dries Van Agt (79) of the Christian CDA Party. As minister of justice and later prime minister, he was responsible for introducing the liberal Dutch cannabis pol- icy in the 1970s.

Van Agt made it very clear that this pol- icy was meant as a first step towards full legalization. He expressed his concern and grief over the conservative course of his party, that aims to close all the coffeeshops. He made an appeal to the world to “finally rescue cannabis from the claws of the penal system.”

Another prominent CDA dissident, Gerd Leers (59), former mayor of border city Maastricht, has for years been calling for regulation of growers and wholesales to coffeeshops. He called for a European con- ference on cannabis policies, to be based on facts rather than moral judgments.

The day ended with a debate among five members of parliament from the biggest political parties. The debate high- lighted the great divide in Dutch politics, with all left-wing parties favoring further normalization and all right-wing parties favoring more repression.

The outcome of the June 9 general elec- tion is crucial for the future of coffeeshops and the tolerant Dutch cannabis policy.

Voters are split almost exactly in half between left and right. Based on the Tribunal, VOC developed a voting advice poster that was distributed to the 700 cof- feeshops that remain in the country.

This year, the `cannabis consumer vote’ might just make a crucial difference in the election’s outcome. www.cannabistribunaal.nl / voc-nederland.org

More than 54 percent of Nederland vot- ers supported the measure in what Town Clerk Christi Icenogle said was a high turn- out election. Voters also ousted incumbent Mayor Martin Cheshes, who had vocally opposed the measure and referred to it as “foolish,” replacing him with Trustee Sumaya Abu-Haidar.

Prior to the announcement of the vote, the Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett told The Daily Camera: “I’ll pay attention if it passes. Marijuana enforcement is a sensi- tive issue, and it’s important to gauge pub- lic sentiment.

Durango, which voted largely in sup- port of the statewide initiative to legalize cannabis in 2006, will likely vote on a simi- lar local initiative this November.

A recent poll of likely Colorado voters found that 50 percent now support making marijuana legal for adults and regulating it like alcohol.

Voters passed a medical marijuana ini- tiative in Montana in 2004 with a vote of 62 percent, the highest level of public support recorded at the time. The law requires patients to register with the state and they may optionally designate a caregiver to grow cannabis on their behalf for “reason- able compensation.”

The law was implemented without much fanfare for several years, but in late 2009, with Obama’s memo on medical marijuana, the number of registered patients exploded. As of April 2010, the number of registered patients in Montana stood at over 12,081, about 1.6 percent of the adult population.

The rapid increase in patient numbers is due in part to traveling `clinics’ that reg- ister hundreds of people in a single day, leading some officials to label the clinics and those attending them as `illegitimate.’

Adding to the controversy is the fact that some caregivers grow for dozens of patients, requiring extensive indoor gar- dens. Some have opened storefront dispen- saries, which were not contemplated in the law, with ads in local papers.

In April, a legislative committee took up the medical marijuana issue, and heard from police chiefs, city attorneys, care- givers, and the public about how to amend the law when the Montana legislature meets in 2011. It appears inevitable that medical use will be more closely controlled and regulated in the next year.

The legislature may take up another cannabis issue: taxation and regulation for all adults. Montana has a culture and tradi- tion of personal privacy and individual lib- erty, established in its constitution. Montana NORML activists are currently working to find a sponsor for the bill.

Voters in 2600-square-mile Missoula County passed a “lowest law enforcement priority” initiative in 2006 with highest support in the urban core and university district of the city of Missoula.

The initiative requires a nine-member volunteer panel to review its effects every six months. Citations have not decreased since its passage — about one per day in the county of 100,000 residents. Misde- meanor possession draws up to six months in jail and a $500 fine in Montana. Info: mtnorml.org. Patients, Families United mtpfu.org, Missoula Initiative co.missoula.mt.us/initiative2, State law dphhs.mt.gov/medicalmarijuana/

“Some things should no longer be con- sidered a crime, like minor marijuana pos- session,” said Beck. He believes it is a good time to put the issue up, as California will be voting on legalizing cannabis for adults and there is a nationwide debate taking place on the subject. Beck believes that it is important to begin addressing the major budget issues in Detroit, and that wasting money prosecuting and jailing marijuana offenders is a major waste and distraction for the city.

Legalizing possession in Detroit would not mean that it would stop a person from being prosecuted under State law, nor would it change the rules against driving under the influence. “We’re hopeful the city would honor the people’s wishes and not go after someone possessing a small amount,” Beck said. Michigan Attorney General Michael Cox declared that the pro- posal would change nothing about how drug laws should be enforced in Detroit.

State Rep. LaMar Lemmons, one of the authors of the proposal stated, “I’d like our police to concentrate on violent crimes.”

Former state Rep. Leon Drolet of Macomb Township, a Libertarian Republican agrees. “We all make decisions about our health, whether it’s drinking alcohol or having a slice of cake. There’s lots of things people choose to do because they feel, in some way, it enhances their quality of life,” he said. “And unless they’re infringing on anybody else’s life or liberty, I can’t imagine why we would prosecute them.”

If passed, Detroit would follow Denver’s I-100 initiative that legalized pos- session in 2005 and other cities that have voted to make cannabis possession law enforcement’s lowest priority. The argu- ments that cannabis is a safer alternative to alcohol, and that strained city budgets can no longer afford to waste resources on cannabis users seems to be resonating with the public. Petition signature gatherer, Fritzel Stanley, 59, who gathered thou- sands of signatures for the proposal said, “Once I explain this to people, they’re in agreement with it, overwhelmingly.