POT ADVOCATES THINK LEGALIZATION IS NEARER

Is the smell of revolution in the air at Union Square?

Or just a whiff of reefer madness?

The 38th annual national convention for the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws wraps up today at the downtown Grand
Hyatt, and groups of medical marijuana users have been casually
passing joints on the outdoor patio. It's probably what some visitors
from Des Moines were afraid would happen when they landed in the
marquee city of the Left Coast.

But NORML delegates, basking in the glow of their Barack Obama
themed-convention motto - "Yes We Can-nabis" - are convinced this
isn't a fringe issue any more.

"There is no doubt that today, Sept. 25, 2009, is the moment of
genuine zeitgeist to decriminalizing marijuana in America," said
Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of NORML. "This conference
represents that we are at that tipping point."

Maybe in the Bay Area, but I doubt voters in conservative Orange
County will be thrilled to vote for the Regulate, Control, and Tax
Cannabis Act of 2010.

The cannabis act was endorsed Friday by Oakland mayoral candidate and
former Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. Perata was supposed to
appear at the conference, but was ill and was not available for comment.

The act would make it lawful for anyone over the age of 21 to
"possess, share, or transport not more than one ounce of cannabis."
The act is currently gaining signatures in a petition drive to make
the ballot, but it seems more like a first step than a popular vote winner.

The same can be said about State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's bill, the
Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, which he says could
raise as much as $1 billion. Ammiano insists that even right-wingers
will see the benefits of legal pot.

"It's not the wedge issue it once was," he said after speaking to
hundreds of delegates at the NORML morning session. "When they see
that the sales of pot to adults is financing a health clinic, they
will see why it will work."

But until NORML can get a ballot measure passed or can even hold
their national convention in someplace other than a liberal
stronghold (their last two conventions have been in the Bay Area),
it's a stretch to say they've reached a tipping point. NORML might
need to see what's "normal" outside of San Francisco.

Because in Oakland, San Francisco and other Bay Area communities,
medical marijuana facilities are a fact of life. Oakland has begun
taxing marijuana sales at medical dispensaries, and there are
estimates that between $400,000 and $500,000 will be raised in the first year.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, says
open-ended Bay Area pot programs are making the case for decriminalizing.

"People realize the sky has not fallen," Nadelmann said.

It all sounds logical until you leave the haze of the Hyatt (the
hotel had scented candles burning all around the lobby, presumably to
take the edge off the aroma of burning bud.)

I asked Dale Clare, executive director of Oaksterdam University, an
Oakland school for those who want to work in the medical marijuana
industry, if she really thought they could make a case for
decriminalizing pot in Fresno.

"Fresno?" she said. "Not so much. We are probably not going to spend
our resources there. But we are going to have conversations with
concerned groups, and by that I mean Christian groups and
conservative groups. I think they will agree that our current drug
policy has failed."

That was the theme through the conference. A rising tide of
acceptance of marijuana is sweeping the country. It is just that
California is leading the way. Consider, they say, Perata's
endorsement of the pot bill on the ballot.

"Isn't that something?" said Ammiano. "He probably thinks it's good
for his mayor's race."

A few years ago that would have been political suicide. But in the
lobby of the Hyatt this week, it seems mainstream. Dude.