MILLION MARIJUANA MARCH HAVING TROUBLE WITH PERMITS

The creators of the Greenville Million Marijuana March Facebook event,
which over 7,000 ECU students and Greenville locals have been invited
to, are having troubles getting the permits required for the event.

The Greenville Million Marijuana March is scheduled for Sunday, May 2,
from "high noon to 4:20 p.m." at the Mendenhall Brickyard and will
have a picnic, T-shirts and variety of live music from alternative
rock to experimental death metal to hip-hop. Bands include An Eternity
Incognito, Consume the Stars, HNL, Jakeleg, En Serenade and many others.

Since anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand students can
come out to the event, permits to march and to solicit funds are
needed, but were not granted.

According to Associate Vice Chancellor of Environmental Health,
Safety, and Parking and Transportation, Bill Koch, their permit wasn't
granted because the ECU Police Department "doesn't have a mechanism
for approving marches. We have done some quiet marches, but no
protest marches. My concern
with the march is for safety of the marchers and impeding
traffic/operations. Although the event occurs on a weekend, it also
occurs during exam week and we need to be respectful of those students
who are studying."

In a phone interview with Koch, he said that ECU PD
was contacting N.C. State's and Chapel Hill's Police Departments to
try to get the protocol for protest marches.

The solicitation of funds permit was not granted on the grounds that
the funds would not be collected by a charitable organization. This
came only a few days before the city denied permits for the Riverwalk
Block Party. The event's creators, ECU junior communication major
Chelsea Burdette and sophomore marketing major David Price, aren't
laying down lightly though. Price said that other marches have
happened on campus before.

He also said that since PayPal donations aren't regulated by the city,
he doesn't need a funds solicitation permit to take donations on his
Web site, davidsdogma.com. The donated money goes to renting
equipment, buying food and T-shirts and getting permits so the live
music they have scheduled can play. Burdette and Price, who both
identify themselves as Libertarians and are active members of College
Libertarians, which is the campus organization hosting the event.

Although the libertarians are hosting the event, the Greenville
Medicinal Marijuana March is a part of a worldwide movement called the
Global Marijuana March, which has 279 marches organized in almost
every country around the world for the weekend of the May 1 and 2.

Tuesday, April 13 was the one-year anniversary of the Medicinal
Marijuana Act bill getting stopped in the Health Committee of the
North Carolina General Assembly. Burdette and Price's event was aimed
at educating the public about the legalization of marijuana so that
the next time a marijuana legalization bill gets introduced, it will
have more popular support.

Physician and chair of the Health Committee, Rep. Bob England, said,
"It certainly was a well written
and exceptionally researched document. I am a physician as well as a
legislator, so I understand the subject
of medicinal use; therefore, I accept the discussion to continue to
explore the medicinal purposes. We will now have to wait to see the
next step taken by Rep. Jones."

The bill that failed would have allowed patients with a variety of
serious health issues with symptoms
that include "severe pain, severe nausea, anorexia, seizures or severe
and persistent muscle spasms" to have up to 24 ounces of "usable
plant."

This bill wouldn't have been enough for Burdette or Price, who
seek universal legalization and authority to grow personal marijuana
instead of having to purchasing from a dispensary, which is a company
that would purchase usable marijuana from people with a
government-issued marijuana production license and sell it to people
with a prescription. North Carolina would have been the 15th state to
legalize medicinal marijuana.

The bill would have provided protection for students by stating that
no school or employer may refuse to enroll or employ a person based on
medical marijuana use, but would still ban marijuana use in public
places in the state, including schools.

The UNC school system would have created the Medicinal Cannabis
Research Program under the provisions in the bill, which would study
the usefulness and safety of medical marijuana, as well as quality
control, purity and labeling standards.

According to the 2009 ECU Police Safety report, over the last three
years, the ECU Police Department has arrested 200 people and issued
152 citations for drug law violations.