CANNABIS CRUSADERS

There are some things higher than the laws. -- Clarence Darrow, 1920

The number of Americans arrested for marijuana-related offenses is
inching toward 20 million. The first such arrestee, it turns out, was
an unemployed overall-clad Colorado farmhand who sold two marijuana
cigarettes to an undercover federal agent in a Denver hotel in
October 1937. Sentenced to four years in prison, Samuel Caldwell died
of stomach cancer in Leavenworth prison before he could complete the
term -- also making him, some believe, the first unofficial medical
marijuana patient.

But if the attorneys for the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML) have their way, smokers and dealers will no
longer fill the nation's prison beds. The dope lawyers descended on
Aspen this weekend for a legal seminar covering everything from the
intricacies of medical marijuana laws to search-and-seizure statutes
to high-driving standards.

Despite the skunky scent in the air this weekend at The Gant, where
the conference was held, this is not a circle of zooded
Funyun-munching stoners. It is an assembly of committed reformers
fighting against what they believe are unjust drug prohibition laws.

Since its founding in 1970, the organization has lobbied legislators
and bent local laws with vigilant persistence. And after almost four
decades, they believe the green tide of justice is slowly turning in
their favor.

"The federal government remains recalcitrant on every level," said
Allen St. Pierre, NORML's head lawyer and self-proclaimed Head Head.
"But on the city and state level we're making progress on medical and
decrim. And look at the culture. Look at the popularity of the show
'Weeds.' Look at this whole 4/20 phenomenon that popped up
organically while the feds were spending millions on anti-drug ad
campaigns. How many states will it take before the federal government
takes action? 25? 26? The national culture and the states are going
to push Congress into action."

NORML was founded by attorney Keith Stroup, who remains active in the
organization. He attended the weekend conference, and is currently
appealing a Massachusetts conviction entered against him for smoking
pot at a rally with High Times publisher Rick Cusick last year. Two
years after Stroup started NORML, a federal commission convened by
President Richard Nixon concluded that marijuana use did not pose a
threat to society and they recommended eliminating criminal penalties
for adult users.

Nixon rejected the commission's recommendations. But NORML was
emboldened. And Stroup's bifer army has since made inroads to
legalization, getting medical marijuana provisions passed in 14
states -- including Colorado -- and decriminalizing it from New York
to California.

Their efforts have rendered the drug quasi-legal in much of the
country, and they believe outright legalization is no longer a pipe
dream, but an inevitability.

However, the progress has also brought some unintended and
undesirable results. The least of which is the quality and
availability of the drug ("When we get legalization we're going to
have a lot of demands for the government on growing and taxation,"
Stroup said).

Overlapping and contradictory local and federal drug laws have
ensnared hundreds of drug users in recent years. Marijuana may be
legal to smoke when prescribed by a doctor in places such as
California and Colorado, but transporting it is still illegal. Thus,
as attorney William Panzer pointed out, a nurse carrying medical
cannabis down a hospital hallway is technically a felon.

Panzer co-authored California's Proposition 215, the nation's first
successful medical marijuana ballot initiative, and said most of the
new laws are intrinsically flawed. In Colorado, for instance, it is
legal for people with debilitating medical conditions to grow up to
six marijuana plants or to possess two ounces of dried buds. But the
number of plants is essentially meaningless, Panzer said, because of
their varying size and harvest potential. If they yield more than two
ounces of marijuana, for instance, the legal plants yield an illegal crop.

"Plant numbers don't make any sense," Panzer said. "That's like
trying to guess how much 10 dogs weigh." More than 100 medical
marijuana-prescribed patients are currently facing criminal charges
in California, Panzer claimed.

The transforming legal landscape is also killing people, said
Seattle-based lawyer Doug Hiatt. Hiatt gave an impassioned
presentation at the conference Friday about ill clients of his who
have been knocked off of organ donation lists because they tested
positive for marijuana that had been prescribed and administered by
their doctors.

"I don't think anybody who voted for a medical marijuana law in the
state of Washington saw this bullshit as a result of it," Hiatt said.
He told the story of a hepatitis patient who medically qualified as a
top donor recipient for the liver transplant he needed. But the state
donation board denied him the organ because he was a medical
marijuana patient, and he died while Hiatt appealed the decision.

In addition to the legal seminars, the NORML conference provided a
social gathering for the like-minded legalization advocates. Evening
smokeouts were held at the Aspen home of former National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers President Gerald Goldstein and at the
Woody Creek ranch of the late writer Hunter S. Thompson.

"These conferences are the most intellectually stimulating thing I
get to do every year," former Washington state Senator George
Rohrbacher said over a poolside joint at The Gant. "We're not making
any money off of this work. We just believe in an America that
doesn't lock people up for getting high."