NORML CONFERENCE BRINGS STATE AND NATIONAL SPEAKERS TO MU

The Missouri chapter of The National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML) held its 2010 Fall State Conference on
Saturday and Sunday on campus.

The purpose of the conference was to give activists from around the
state a chance to come together and learn from regional and national
speakers about what's going on regarding the "war on marijuana," said
Sean Randall, a law student at UM -- Kansas City and a member of the
Missouri Affiliate of NORML.

Randall said, in general, NORML works on three different issues of
marijuana law reform: medical marijuana, responsible recreational use
by adults and industrial hemp.

MU NORML Chapter President Spencer Pearson, who's also a Maneater
staff member, said medical marijuana is the most urgent reason for the reform.

"People who are dying or going through intense chronic pain, or going
through a number of disorders that affect their daily life or lower
the quality of their life could be helped out tremendously by this
just one, simple plant," Pearson said. "Even if you don't believe
anyone should be able to get high, there is no excuse that those
people shouldn't have cheap, easy, safe access to that plant."

David Huddlestonsmith, a physician and a guest speaker, talked about
recent medical research. He said cannabis might especially help the
cure of cancer and Alzheimer's patients.

He said one study suggests cannabis might slow down tumor growth.

"One of the cannabinoids is able to go ahead and stop blood vessels
from proliferating," he said. "So, instead of the tumor being able to
grow, when you don't have any new blood vessels, it starts to shrink
down. It doesn't cure it, but it makes the tumor come down more and
more. It can end up shrinking the tumor down into a more manageable size."

The conference's keynote speech was given by Radley Balko, a senior
editor of Reason Magazine. His speech was entitled "Dog Shooting and
Other Marijuana Law Enforcement Tactics."

Balko said the war on drugs has allowed for mass militarization of
police forces.

"We're up to 50,000 SWAT deployments per year in the country, from
two to 300 per year," Balko said.

He said the vast majority of those 50,000 deployments were
drug-related, and of those, the vast majority were specifically for marijuana.

"One hundred fifty times a day in this country, a team of police
officers dressed like soldiers breaks into someone's home in the
middle of night basically to enforce potential crimes," he said.

Medical marijuana is legal in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
In the state of Missouri, possession of any marijuana up to
thirty-five grams is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in
jail and a fine of up to $1,000. Possession of more than 35 grams is
a felony and is punishable by up to seven years in prison and a fine
of up to $5,000.