A MOTHER'S DAY PRO-MARIJUANA TEA PARTY

Most Americans think of Mother's Day as a day of rest for our nation's
moms. This year, however, I'm excited to be part of a new movement
that is capitalizing on the holiday to encourage mothers nationwide to
take a stand for ending federal marijuana prohibition and the
devastating consequences it has brought to our families, our
communities, and our nation.

For the past several years, I've been an active voice in the
pro-legalization movement. I was initially greeted with skepticism by
the movement's left-leaning activists and tokenized as the "pro-pot
Republican mom." Over the years, I've devoted too many column inches
to lamenting the fact that more conservative women wouldn't join me in
this cause. Just last July, in a column I wrote for the Colorado
Daily, my lead read: "As a Republican mother committed to legalizing
marijuana, political life can be lonely. But while many in my party
whisper about the Drug War's insanity, we should shout it from the
rooftop: the time to legalize is now."

Fortunately, on this Mother's Day, I'm anything but
alone.

While the national media frequently highlights polls showing that
nearly half of all Americans now support ending the federal war
against marijuana--nearly doubling the support demonstrated just two
decades ago--reporters miss the bigger story all too often.

Women have been the key to this jump. Within hours of the
aforementioned column's publication, I was inundated with supportive
e-mails and calls--and not just from liberals. Republican moms and
dads from across the nation responded positively. After the Washington
Post's Kathleen Parker, a fellow Republican mom, penned an October
column highlighting Colorado's pro-pot mom movement, messages from
likeminded moms took over my inbox. And after a series of national
news appearances where I made the case for legalization late last
year, the emails grew into the thousands.

The tide has turned.

This Thursday, I will have my daughters by my side as I help launch a
new organization called the Women's Marijuana Movement. We'll be
speaking to our fellow moms--and dads--knowing that if we convince
just one in 10 of them to rethink this issue, we will succeed.

Joining me will be other mother-daughter teams, including Mari and
Ashlee Clauss. My fellow Republican, Mari, has spent most of her adult
life fighting back against lupus and other chronic conditions. Ashlee,
my fellow diabetic, has such a serious form of the disease that she
was forced to be home schooled due to a series of hospital stays left
her unable to manage a traditional school schedule. As medical
marijuana patients, they see medical marijuana as one small part of
their overall health treatment strategy--one that has freed from a
lifetime of dependency on conventional narcotic medications.

But Thursday isn't just about medical marijuana. Or even about
Republican moms. Participants will span the ideological spectrum, each
speaking of their own moment of awakening--when they chose to stop
blindly accepting government talking points proclaiming the alleged
harms posed by marijuana use.

For younger moms, we reflect on our college days, comparing the impact
of marijuana versus alcohol on our lives as students. Impartial
analysis reveals that alcohol had a far more harmful impact on our
bodies, our relationships, and our safety than pot ever could. Every
year we hear more tragic stories of college kids dying from alcohol
overdoses, whereas there has never been a single marijuana overdose
death in history. In a perfect world, my kids would never experiment
with marijuana or alcohol, but as a realist, I also fear the pain
alcohol could cause in their later lives far more than I fear any
detrimental consequences of marijuana use.

As organizers, we question aloud how we could ever defend to our
children the fact that America spends $30,000 a year to put
non-violent drug offenders behind bars at the same time we issue a
$45,000 bill to each baby born today as his or her share of the
national debt. One of several small business owners who take part in
the event, I'm downright angry that this insane tax burden will
inevitably mean more hours spent away from my children.

In 2010, we must rethink every budget line item. Anything less is
generational child abuse. Across ideologies, we resent government
bureaucrats insisting on parenting our children. We need to reclaim
responsibility. Just as pot prohibition failed to stop our generations
from using marijuana, it is failing to stop today's students too, with
an estimated half of all high school seniors admitting to past or
current marijuana use.

Anti-marijuana extremists will inevitably slander us as bad moms or
pot-smoking hippies, but we will remain undeterred. Our stance isn't
just about endorsing the behavior of 95 million Americans who have
used pot, and it's not even about endorsing the medical use of
marijuana by the hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients
across the nation. This is about something so much greater.

We are coming together to reclaim our country. For our children. For
our pocketbooks. And for the long forgotten American ideal that in the
absence of harm to others, government should not interfere in our
personal lives.

While we face challenges ahead, we also have some pretty amazing role
models--the thousands of women who organized to end alcohol
prohibition. As I wrote in 2009: "In 1929, it was the Women's
Organization for National Prohibition Reform successfully leading the
charge to end America's decade-long experiment with alcohol
prohibition. While many of these same activists fought just years
earlier to forbid booze, they quickly witnessed prohibition's
devastating consequences, including increased violence....Just four
years into the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform's
repeal efforts, prohibition was over."

California voters will be asked to support legalization on this
November's ballot. Polling promises a close contest, with supporters
appearing to hold a slight edge. Regardless of the outcome, other
states, such as Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, will be following
suit. In 2006, when Colorado voters were asked to support legalization
for adult recreational use, more than 41 percent said yes--a total
greater than that received by the GOP's gubernatorial candidate.

The bottom line: We need only convince one more person in every ten to
end the nightmare of marijuana prohibition. We will show our faces
proudly and publicly, inspired by the countless couragous Americans
who have gone before us, including those who organized the Boston Tea
Party.

Seeing this as own little tea party moment, we'll hope to make our
voices heard above the chaos of kids running around and cell phones
ringing with calls from clients who will just have to wait until tomorrow.

And here is what we'll say. Marijuana prohibition has failed. Our
nation is beyond broke. Let's make the future better for our kids.