ANOTHER DRUG WAR

Loretta Nall could have done a lot of things when the helicopters started
to target her. She could have gotten scared. She could have moved to
another house or into an apartment. She could have just tried to ignore
them and prayed that they'd go away.

Instead, when police helicopters began hovering over her rural Tallapoosa
County home, whipping the trees with high-speed winds and deafening her
with thunderous noise, she got organized. "I think they were looking for
marijuana, but I don't know why they thought that I was growing it," she
said. "I wasn't."

On Sept. 19, the cat and mouse games with the drug helicopters came to a head.

"They came over and were just sitting over my house and it was so loud. So
I went outside with my video camera and pointed it up at them. That must
have set them off, because within minutes, there were seven different law
enforcement agencies on my front lawn," she said.

"They told me that they were looking for marijuana and they thought they
had seen a plant. They asked me if they could search and I told them that
would be fine because I knew I didn't have anything. I walked them around
the property. Then, I told them that they should have spent all of that
surveillance money to buy some glasses for their helicopter pilots and that
I was going back inside to get a video camera to film their search. As soon
as I went back inside, they all started to scramble to get back into their
vehicles and peel out of there," she said.

Unsatisfied with her video footage of retreating officers as a souvenir of
the police helicopter raid, Nall decided to take things a step further. She
decided to set up a network designed to publicize the effects of the war on
drugs and to promote reforms in American drug policy. Thus, the Alabama
Marijuana Party was born.

"I started off asking some questions about the budgets of the area drug
task forces and then I met some activists and then some politicians and
now, we've got a web page -- -- an e-mail
listserv and a mailing list," she said.

The organization is now one of the most visible elements of the political
struggle to craft fair and effective drug laws in Alabama and throughout
the nation. Nall said that she has met with politicians from the Alabama
Libertarian Party and hopes to spread word of the destructive consequences
of the war on drugs to as many people as will listen.

The fact that Alabama now has an organization devoted to pushing reform of
state and federal drug laws comes as a huge surprise to many political
observers. In a conservative state not known for progressive or
experimental stances on social policy, a movement to legalize drugs could
be about as popular as a group of atheists or an Osama bin Laden fan club.

In fact, as this article was being compiled, Nall was arrested for
possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

"On Nov. 13, investigators with the Tallapoosa County Narcotics Task Force,
Tallapoosa County Sheriff's Department, Alexander City Police Department
and Newsite Police Department executed a search warrant at 4633 Pearson
Chapel Road, Alexander City, Alabama," said a press release from the
Tallapoosa County Sheriff's Department.

"Recovered at the residence was approximately 5 grams of marijuana, rolling
paper and a set of triple beam scales," the release said.

Nall was arrested at the residence and charged with Possession of
Marijuana, 2nd Degree and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.

Now free on bond, Nall said she was set up by police officers who are
unhappy with her activism.

"We didn't have any marijuana here and the scales were used by my husband
to measure legal herbs, like catnip," she said.

Nall said she plans to fight the charges. Her trial is currently scheduled
for Feb. 11, and Nall said she intends to plead not guilty.

Nall traces the history of opposing the drug war back to Biblical times.

"If apples were the first controlled substance, then the first activist
would have to be Eve. She and Adam got busted and had their assets seized
and they had to emigrate. Not much different from today, huh?"

From ancient times, it's a short leap for Nall to trace the history of
pioneers in drug policy reform through Harvard professor and LSD guru
Timothy Leary and writers such as Aldous Huxley and William S. Burroughs.

"Each one of them became active in promoting drug responsibility and peace
with journalism, with protest, with cultural and academic activities," she
said.

The federal government maintains that marijuana is a dangerous substance
and conducted a major public relations effort this fall to convince the
public that its legal status is good public policy.

The DEA targeted Alabama for a new anti-drug program, launching the
Integrated Drug Enforcement Assistance (IDEA) Summit in Mobile and
Pritchard last week.

According to Nall, Alabama is one of the 13 states without a branch of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. So she decided to
start her own organization.

According to Kris Krane, affiliate coordinator for NORML, Alabama has not
traditionally been fertile group for grassroots organizing against drug laws.

"We haven't had anybody come up to us and identify themselves as willing to
start a chapter. We only have a five person staff in the D.C. office," he
said. "Generally, a chapter will start when somebody approaches us and says
that they want to start one. Then, we'll follow up on that, but nobody in
Alabama has done that - at least, not in the two and a half years I've
worked here. Maybe an e-mail, but no follow up."

Nall said that her personal history of drug policy activism began at an
early age.

"I first realized that smoking pot had a political side in 1990 at the age
of 15 when the Gulf War started. I had recently read Jack Herers' The
Emperor Wears No Clothes and realized that if hemp were legalized, no one
would need to fight over petroleum-based oil. I understood then that it
wasn't because people can get high off of marijuana that hemp isn't legal,"
she said.

With a court battle ahead of her, a relatively apathetic general public and
no death of hostility from the law enforcement establishment, Nall has her
hands full as a grassroots organizer for an unpopular cause. Yet, with the
Canadian Senate issuing a report recommending a full legalization of
marijuana, sentiments may be shifting. For now, Alabama jails grow more and
more crowded with non-violent drug offenders, possibly, depending on the
results of her upcoming trial, including Nall herself.