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6/23/2011 – Guest blog by Rob Robinson and Jen Rog – New York has had a good week when it comes to drug policy reform. A 911 Good Samaritan Law passed easily in the Assembly, where we have gotten some results. Working directly with NY state senators, the Drug Policy Alliance and New York Cannabis Alliance influenced the Senate version of the bill, which passed this Monday June 20th. Governor Cuomo is expected to sign it into law. The phone calls, emails and communications that came through to the Senate when we asked for them really moved this bill forward. The public support also insured we got a strong law and not a watered-down version.

Let’s keep up the momentum before the legislative session ends, which will be anyday now. By calling the Speaker of the Assembly and asking him to schedule bill A. 7620 to a floor vote, we will be asking them to add this important job to their workload before they break for the summer. If passed, this bill will accomplish what legislators originally intended when they decriminalized marijuana in 1977: keeping people out of the criminal justice system for posessing small amounts of marijuana. It will also ingnite our support to bring the fight to the NY Senate and pass the bill there next session.

Please call Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office at 518-455-3791 and ask him to schedule bill A. 7620 for a floor vote before the session ends. Getting it passed this session will make it more likely it will gain movement in the Senate next session. New York residents:  Please contact your Assembly member and ask them to support this bill and for them to pressure leadership (Speaker Silver) to put it up for a vote.

The NYPD has made Cannabis arrests their top enforcement priority. In 2010 alone, 50,383 people were arrested for low-level marijuana offenses—more than the total number marijuana possession arrests between 1978–1997 combined! More than 80% of those arrested are black and Latino, even though studies consistently show that blacks and Latinos are no more likely to use or sell drugs than whites. This new bi-partisan law will close the “public display” loophole and protect New Yorkers from marijuana arrest while saving the state roughly $75 million a year.

It has been a good week in NY for drug law reform. It could get even better – Join us in the struggle!

http://www.damnsam.com/

http://www.facebook.com/nycannalliance

Guest blog by Rob Robinson and Jen Rog at the NY Cannabis Alliance

Philadelphia Weekly cover art 3/2/2011

The Philadelphia Weekly has published a groundbreaking feature article looking at the racial disparity of the city’s marijuana arrests. Blunt Assessment: The Need for Legal Weed in Philadelphia explores the issue from the streets to the courts.

Journalist Nina Hoffmann interviewed hip-hop artists, retired law enforcement, marijuana policy experts (including this author) and most revealing; black Philly residents as they go though Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) program.

Each year PhillyNORML compiles the arrests statistics for the state of Pennsylvania using the annual Uniform Crime report. PA’s crime datatbase is actually easily accessible by the public, unlike other states like New Jersey.

Read the numbers in the following articles:

2008 city stats – Philly: White women rarely arrested for pot

2009 city stats – Philadelphia: Marijuana arrests remain high

2009 PA statewide – Pennsylvania saw 25,635 marijuana arrests last year

In 2009 and 2010 PhillyNORML urged city officials to change local marijuana procedures.

Last year Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams and the State Supreme Court created a diversion process called the Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) Program. The tangibly eases the penalties for the over 4,700 adults caught with small amounts of pot each year. The successful and publicly popular shift will save the city about $3 million annually.

Unfortunately, Philly still requires the custodial arrest of citizens caught with any amount of marijuana before they go into the SAM program. Most counties in Pennsylvania issue a summary violation: A ticket with no arrest.

Take a moment to read Blunt Assessment: The Need for Legal Weed in Philadelphia

Quotes are kinda like quick and easy snack food for the brain. Here’s some mental potato chips for your mind munching, thanks to the good folks at Baked Life.

1. “Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”- William F. Buckley Jr.

2. “Forty million Americans smoked marijuana; the only ones who didn’t like it were Judge Ginsberg, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton.” – Jay Leno

3. “I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast” – Ronald Reagan

4. “The drug is really quite a remarkably safe one for humans, although it is really quite a dangerous one for mice and they should not use it.” – J.W.D Henderson Director of the Bureau of Human Drugs, Health and Welfare, Canada

5. “Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.” – Darryl Gates Head of Los Angeles Police Department, United States Senate Judiciary Committee

6. “When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale and never tried it again.” –Bill Clinton

7. “When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point.” – Barack Obama

8. “Now, like, I’m President. It would be pretty hard for some drug guy to come into the White House and start offering it up, you know? I bet if they did, I hope I would say, ‘Hey, get lost. We don’t want any of that.” – George W. Bush

9. “I think pot should be legal. I don’t smoke it, but I like the smell of it.” – Andy Warhol

10. “I used to smoke marijuana. But I’ll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening – or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early midafternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . . But never at dusk.” – Steve Martin

BONUS QUOTES!!!  BONUS QUOTES!!! BONUS QUOTES!!!  BONUS QUOTES!!!

“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I use to, too.” -Mitch Hedberg

“Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.” – Thomas Jefferson

Editor’s Note – The TJ quote was unattributed – LINK. The following however is fully attributed.

“Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!”
George Washington in a note to his gardener at Mount Vernon (1794), The Writings of George Washington, Volume 33, page 270 (Library of Congress)