POT BUST LIGHTS FIRE UNDER STATE CANDIDATE

Marijuana Party Founder Running for Governor

Loretta Nall smokes pot, and she wants to be your governor.

While speaking to 14 people at Wednesday night's Huntsville Area
Libertarian Supper Club, the 31-year-old Alexander City mother of two
said smoking marijuana could be considered a sin but not a crime,
"and punishing sin should not be the role of the state."

Nall, who is vying for the Libertarian Party's nomination, was
arrested for pot possession in 2002, not long after she wrote The
Birmingham News a letter to the editor. In it, she encouraged
citizens who don't support Alabama's tough marijuana laws to get
involved in changing them.

She said police soon got a warrant and raided her home. They said
they were tipped by an anonymous phone call and an alleged statement
made by her 5-year-old to a DARE officer at school.

"They claim to have found 0.87 of a gram of pot in an envelope,
addressed to me, lying on top of my printer," she told the gathering
at Shoney's at University Drive and Memorial Parkway.

She was convicted of the misdemeanor charge but won on appeal and is
awaiting another trial.

"Thus began my counterattack and what has become a life-consuming,
all-out frontal assault on the U.S. drug policy," she said.

Nall is a housewife who has also been a burger flipper, an office
manager, an apartment manager, a car salesman and a writer for
Cannabis Culture magazine. Those aren't the professions of mainstream
gubernatorial candidates - which she thinks makes her perfect for the job.

Even though she is the founder of the U.S. Marijuana Party, she said
she doesn't advocate marijuana use.

"I'm pro-sanity," she said. "I advocate an adult's choice to select
marijuana or alcohol. Look, the government already takes 48 percent
of our paychecks. Is it too much to ask to let us relax the way that we want?

"If I don't care if my neighbor smokes a joint - and I find that most
people don't care - why should I pay $12,000 a year to keep someone
in prison for doing that?"