WE'RE HERE. WE'RE HIGH. GET USED TO US.

Jeff Jarvis and Tracy Johnson couldn't have planned it better.
Increasingly frustrated by the stigma of what they see as a harmless
and popular activity, they decided to take to the radio waves.

The couple, who moved from Aloha to Bend earlier this year,
approached Portland's KUFO-FM in May with a proposed script for a
30-second radio ad. The station turned them down.

KUFO wasn't alone in such thinking. Jeff and Tracy, both 39, have
also been turned down by Portland's KNRK-FM, KGON-FM, KKRZ-FM,
KKCW-FM and KEX-AM, and by stations in Seattle and Bend. Plan B--bus
and Max banners--was nixed by Obie Media, which handles advertising
on Tri-Met. A proposed ad in the Sunday Oregonian was found by the
paper to be "unsuitable for publication."

What offensive message do these two deviants propose? In short, it's
this: A lot of normal (rather than NORML) people use marijuana, so be
wary of stereotypes.

Jarvis, a self-employed software engineer, says that although he's
contributed to the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act crowd and once volunteered
at a NORML table at the state fair, he doesn't consider himself a
marijuana activist. Rather, he and Johnson say they became
increasingly aware of how bizarre it is that such a common activity
has to be done in secret.

"I'm looking around saying, 'This is crazy,'" says Jarvis. "It's
2001, and we're running around like it's the dark ages."

"I got tired of the fear factor," says Johnson. "I don't like the
intimidation. We're not a threat to society."

They say they never expected to be banned from radio. "We understood
that we'd be controversial," says Johnson. "We didn't expect that
we'd have trouble getting air time."

Eventually the couple found some folks willing to take their money,
here at WW (their full-page ad, which cost $2,555, appears elsewhere
in this issue). And they may yet hit the airwaves: On Friday, KDBZ-AM
620 (appropriately known as The Buzz) reviewed the script and said
the staion would consider running it.