40,000 rally to make pot legal

About 150 arrested on drug charges

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 09/21/97

Enjoying the hot sun of summer's last Saturday afternoon, a youthful crowd
of about 40,000 people gathered on Boston Common yesterday to rally for
legalization of marijuana, take in a free concert and smoke a lot of pot.

As of early evening, about 150 people had been arrested on drugpossession
charges at the eighth annual Freedom Rally sponsored by MassCann, the
state's marijuanalegalization lobby, according to Boston police spokesman
Jerry Vanderwood.

But visual and olfactory evidence indicated that those arrested were only a
tiny fraction of those who, despite a phalanx of uniformed and undercover
officers and park rangers, were brazenly smoking pipes and joints all over
the Public Garden side of the park.

''Smells Good Up Here" read a banner trailing from an airplane advertising
Worcester rock station WAAFFM.

''The cops haven't been messing with me or anybody else as far as I can
see,'' said a youth carrying a smoldering pipe who said his name was Bryan.

Before the rally, Police Commissioner Paul F. Evans issued a statement
warning that rally attendees would be ''seriously mistaken" if they thought
police would ignore drug violations.

Police quickly arrested more than 30 people before the rally and concert
began at noon. ''We're just trying to set the tone,'' said Superintendent
James M. Claiborne. ''We're locking up as many [violators] as logistically
as we can, particularly dealers,'' at the downtown, South End and South
Boston precinct houses. Claiborne said he heard no reports of people
scuffling with police.

But Claiborne admitted, ''When you get 50,000 people here, we're not going
to wade into them" to attempt mass arrests. Claiborne estimated attendance
at about 40,000, but thousands of other people including a number of
perplexed tourists drifted in and out of the fivehour event.

MBTA officials reported recordhigh ridership on commuter trains and
subways, and even had to add two buses for an overflow crowd of teenagers
coming in from Norwood.

An official with the T police union said there were widespread complaints
about inadequate police presence and unruly behavior on trains in Walpole,
Lynnfield, Braintree, Framingham and elsewhere. On one train from
Swampscott, ''numerous patrons complained that they were in fear for their
lives,'' said the official, who asked not to be named.

But MBTA Police Sergeant Sal Venturelli said there were ''no really serious
incidents.'' He said officers did go to Norwood ''to eject 40 to 60 unruly
youths" from a train and made two arrests at Park Street station, one for
marijuana possession and one involving a Plymouth girl who was allegedly
preparing to sell LSD.

Interspersed with acts such as Ethiopian Dred Roots of David, The Bentmen
and a fashion show featuring models wearing clothes made of hemp, a
botanical cousin of marijuana, speakers blasted laws imposing jail terms
for pot use and advocated making marijuana free to people who have glaucoma
or AIDS.

''The Libertarian Party is the only party that defends your freedom on
every issue as long as you don't harm anybody, and that includes your right
to smoke dope,'' said Carla Howell, chairwoman of the party's Massachusetts
chapter.

Howell attacked employers' use of drug tests, adding: ''Does this mean you
should go get stoned and then go operate a chainsaw or a drill press?''
Ignoring some scattered shouts of ''Yeah!'' Howell said, ''Duh no! We're
talking common sense.''

Another speaker was Florida musician Elvy Musikka, who is one of only eight
people in the United States who has a federal permit to smoke government
marijuana grown in Mississippi, in her case to ease the pain of her
glaucoma. Since she was diagnosed in 1975, the disease has left her with
limited vision.

''My glaucoma has been under control since I've been able to smoke, and now
I don't live in fear,'' Musikka said in an interview. Marinol pills
containing the psychoactive compounds in marijuana, she said, did not
provide the relief she gets from smoking 10 marijuana cigarettes each day.

Yesterday's rally was also the launch of a 40day, 450mile wheelchair ride
from Boston to Washington by a group called Cures not Wars that organizer
Dana Beale said advocates medical marijuana and more research of an
Africangrown drug called Ibogaine to break cocaine and heroin addiction.

Hoping to keep damage to the Common under control, Mayor Thomas M. Menino's
administration had sought to restrict the number of food vendors to 10,
after dropping an earlier plan to require the rally organizers to post a
$10,000 bond and restrict attendance to 10,000.

But on Wednesday, Judge John C. Cratsley of Suffolk Superior Court turned
down Menino's move and allowed 20 vendors, the same as last year. ''There
will be irreparable harm to protected free speech and association interests
of the plaintiffs in this particular case" if vendors were curbed, Cratsley
ruled.

This story ran on page B01 of the Boston Globe on 09/21/97.
© Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.