MARIJUANA RIGHTS GROUP UNITING BEHIND KERRY

Bush Administration's Drug Policies Fuel Hempfest Stance

SEATTLE -- More than 150,000 denizens of the Northwest will gather this
weekend in a waterfront park for Hempfest, billed as the largest
promarijuana gathering in the country, to listen to speeches from the
biggest names in the national drug-law reform movement between band sets
and bong hits.

But this year, attendees will hear an explicitly partisan message, too:
Organizers are pushing pot smokers to help elect Senator John F. Kerry
president.

The size of Hempfest indicates the potential power of the pro-pot vote,
particularly in the Northwest, reformers said. Organizers think that
registering even a few thousand Hempfest attendees could make the
difference in a close election. "It is essential for our crowd to
understand that there is nothing more important they can do for drug policy
reform than to go out and cast their ballots in the Democratic box in
November," said Dominic Holden, 27, a spokesman for the festival.

The decision to break with the tradition of nonpartisanship that has guided
the festival in its 12 previous incarnations was born out of the Bush
administration's aggressive policies against marijuana, Hempfest organizers
said. While many of the 1,200 volunteers working on the festival personally
adhere to political views more in line with the Green Party or of
independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, this year they think the
stakes are too high for their constituency to vote for third-party
candidates and risk throwing the election to President Bush.

"When you look at what's happening on the front lines of the drug war under
the Bush administration, the federal government has waged war against sick
and dying people who use medical marijuana and those compassionate enough
to help them," Holden said. "We need to unite and get George Bush out of
office. We need to vote for John Kerry."

Holden cited federal drug raids in recent years against medical marijuana
collectives in California that operated in accordance with state law and
the support of local officials as a motivating factor in the festival's
decision to push an anti-Bush message, as well as White House drug czar
John Walters's personal lobbying efforts last year against I-75, a Seattle
voter initiative that called for authorities to make enforcement of
marijuana laws their lowest priority. Despite Walters's opposition, I-75
passed last September with 58 percent support.

More than 20 outside groups have signed up to do voter outreach at the
event, either staffing international booths or sending more than 100
canvassers through the crowd to promote voter registration. These include
environmental, antiwar, and other activist groups, ranging from small
groups to better-known entities such as the League of Women Voters.

The Kerry campaign also will have a presence at the event, with campaign
volunteers staffing a booth and circulating among the crowd, organizers said.

Sam Rodriguez, director of Kerry's Washington state campaign, said there is
nothing surprising about the fact that the Democratic coalition includes a
broad range of ideological viewpoints, from very liberal to conservative.
"Members of one-issue organizations -- that's part of our democracy. We
look at all Americans as potential John Kerry-John Edwards voters," he
said. "We are all united to defeat George W. Bush."

The festival has always had a political, conscious-raising component
complementing the entertainment that helps draw crowds to the event. In
between pot-friendly musical acts performing on multiple stages -- the
headliners are the Kottonmouth Kings, Los Marijuanos, and Sir Mix-A-Lot --
every year Hempfest speakers urge attendees to register to vote to have
more influence on efforts to liberalize drug laws. Tying that effort to the
fortunes of a particular presidential candidate, however, is new.

Some national advocates of liberalizing drug laws slated to speak at
Hempfest said they were supportive of Kerry over Bush but were wary of
explicitly supporting the Democratic Party. While they agreed with
organizers that the Bush administration has to be ousted, they also cited
the support they have received from prominent libertarian-leaning Republicans.

"When it comes to the drug war, the Bush administration is a disaster,"
said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which
promotes harm reduction and treatment as alternatives to the current
punitive approach to drug use. While Kerry seems more sympathetic on topics
like medical marijuana, needle exchange, and reforming mandatory minimum
sentencing statutes, "we know going in he will disappoint us," Nadelmann said.

Keith Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that, "all of us recognize that there is no
question that marijuana reform policies would be better served with someone
else in office other than George Bush."

But he added that the movement is committed to reaching out to all
political parties. "It would be a terrible mistake to let the [marijuana
reform] issue be perceived as a Democratic issue," he said.

The Kerry campaign and the festival organizers seemed wary of possibly
tainting the campaign with countercultural associations that could turn off
mainstream voters. The presence of Kerry volunteers at Hempfest, or the
push by organizers to get smokers to the polls in November, should not be
seen as an implicit endorsement of the Hempfest agenda by the Kerry
campaign, Holden said.

"I wouldn't want to say that their agenda is our agenda," he said. "With
150,000 politically aware people here, they would be fools not to come out
and do voter registration."