Washington legislators are doing everything they can to keep marijuana users from smoking together. It’s time that stopped.
It’s time for us to come together and smoke marijuana.
Over and over, legislators at all levels in Washington state have prevented us from doing just that by hampering public marijuana use—in fact, a recent law makes providing a place for public use a Class C felony. Lawmakers are making it impossible to promote and celebrate cannabis. Thus it’s time for some civil disobedience.
As an example of how cannabis can be used to elevate our civic engagement, let’s look at a state that’s getting certain things right: Colorado. Not only is the state working with its medical-marijuana dispensaries to expand patient care, many jurisdictions have licensed, members-only marijuana clubs where adults can safely use and learn about cannabis in a social, alcohol-free environment. In Seattle? Not allowed!
Colorado is also considering various social pot-use initiatives that would allow vape lounges and cannabis cafes. Another proposal would allow adults to bring marijuana into bars, theaters and restaurants. These establishments would all have dedicated smoking areas for adults, and smoking would never be visible from within 25 feet of any public space.
Colorado’s also leap years ahead on public events involving ganja. The best one I’ve seen so far was a collaboration between Edible Events, a cannabis company, and the Colorado Symphony. Called “Classically Cannabis” in the symphony’s High Note Series, it was a Bring Your Own Bud evening, including swag tables full of lighters and rolling papers, a designated smoking patio, and a parking lot full of food trucks for when the munchies kicked in. (Don’t get mustard on your tux, man!)
We legalized weed here in Washington. That’s a fact. (So is the $70 million in tax revenue we collected in our first year, which the legislature had no problem spending.) It’s also a fact that legislative pinheads are getting in the way of the public actually using it. “Once people have the right to acquire cannabis, the next logical step forward is figuring out what do they do with it,” says Hilary Bricken, head attorney at Seattle’s Canna Law Group. “People are saying, ‘So I can have it, but where can I use it and not feel like a criminal?’ ”
A voter-approved initiative banned cigar lounges (and all indoor smoking in public places) in 2005, and the mayor is attempting to shutter all private hookah lounges as well. We’ve already discussed the city’s no-smoking ban in parks. And now, with the passage of this summer’s draconian Bill 2136, marijuana clubs can’t exist either: “ ‘Marijuana club’ means a club, association, or other business, for profit or otherwise, that conducts or maintains a premises for the primary or incidental purpose of providing a location where members or other persons may keep or consume marijuana on the premises.” While designed to kill cannabis clubs, the law is (most likely) illegal, as it makes it impossible for medical patients to provide marijuana to other patients.
Even the Seattle City Attorney’s office thinks this is overkill. “We’ve supported creating adult-only areas where people can legally consume marijuana in order to avoid the problems caused by people using marijuana in public spaces, like streets and parks,” said Deputy City Attorney John Schochet. “Unfortunately, the blanket felony ban on ‘marijuana clubs’ in HB 2136 makes that impossible under current law. We hope to get that fixed during the next legislative session.” In the meantime, you’d be a fool to risk being arrested with a felony conviction on the line.
The Evergreen State needs to get some basic elements about legalization in place so as not become a laughingstock, and because the voters demand it! We need to be able to grow marijuana for personal use. (All the other legal states have this in place.) We need to decriminalize marijuana and expunge all records of those who were arrested and imprisoned for nonviolent marijuana-related offenses. And we need to allow and accommodate the actual smoking and vaping and ingesting of cannabis in adult spaces such as vape lounges, stoned cinemas, culinary tastings, art events, and Bud & Breakfasts.
The fact is, not only do people use marijuana, but they support the legalization and taxation of the plant for recreational purposes. It’s fun! It’s social! It’s no longer taboo! You’ve seen beer gardens and cocktail classes and wine-tastings galore, right? Oktoberfest, anyone? Walla Walla wine tours? Craft-beer workshops!? Hell, Smirnoff Vodka just signed as the official sponsor of LiveNation at 25 music festivals, and Blu, an e-cigarette (owned by Imperial Tobacco) sponsors IndyCar, handing out samples of their toxic-sticks at auto races! Marijuana may be safer than alcohol, but it’s still being shunned and shamed and banned throughout the state.
Well, guess what? In order to get it right (and rolling), I’ve decided to host a series of Higher Ground Cannabis Cultural Events. It’s not a club. I won’t sell tickets, and I won’t sell weed. We also won’t pass joints around—as, shockingly, this is a felony offense (considered “possession and distribution,” with potentially five years in the slammer and a $10,000 fine!) The gig will be BYOBong—and we’ll all get along. It will be educational, instructive, and a way to exercise our rights. I’ve lined up one of Seattle’s best bands, and we’ll have a few surprise guests to elevate the dialogue. We’ll proudly and safely use cannabis in an adult-only environment, and have a damn fine time!
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The Weed Wire
A pot ad ran on TV—almost.
NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME
The first-ever recreational-marijuana ad for television was supposed to air last month duringJimmy Kimmel Live on a Denver-based ABC affiliate. At the last minute, KMGH (Channel 7) got cold feet, pulling the plug after the station’s lawyers freaked out.
The ad, for Neos, a vaporizer and cannabis-oil company, was hardly Cheech and Chong—in fact, it didn’t show marijuana at all. Instead, the spot featured young people hiking up mountain trails and enjoying themselves—weed-free. “You lead an adventurous life, always finding new ways to relax,” boomed the REI-looking advert. “Now enjoy the best effects and control with Neos portable vape pen and recreate discreetly this summer.” Blasphemous!
The station is owned by E.W. Scripps Company, which yanked the spot due to concerns the feds might revoke their broadcasting license for showcasing a substance on federal airwaves that’s illegal at the national level. “Scripps has decided not to accept marijuana advertising at this time,” said Scripps mouthpiece Valerie Miller. “We are proud to be a company of free speech and open expression, but we have concerns about the lack of clarity around federal regulations that govern broadcast involving such ads.”
The same last-minute ditch happened last week in Portland, when ABC affiliate network KATU pulled a marijuana-related commercial that was supposed to run during the six o’clock hour. Again, the ad didn’t feature fat nugs or hipsters firing up—it was for September’s Oregon Medical Marijuana Business Conference. And we’d hate for anyone to attend that, right!?
Ya can’t blame the stations, really; they’re terrified about the possibility of losing their FCC licenses. The Controlled Substances Act is serious and specific about not allowing advertising that promotes Schedule I drugs. In fact, a violation of Section 843 is a felony, kids, with prison time and a roommate who’s probably not nearly as friendly as those featured on ABC shows, includingRevenge, Scandal, American Crime, Castle, Rookie Blue, How to Get Away With Murder, et al…
Those marijuana ads may have gone up in smoke, but they’re the beginning of a move toward the mainstream. As noted, local and state laws are well and good, but issues like banking, medical coverage, insurance, and taxes—and now advertisements—are eventually going to need to be approved by Uncle Sam. (The FCC has no problem, of course, with the alcohol industry spending $2 billion a year on advertising and over $500 million on TV ads alone, much less Viagra ads galore.) Before you know it, a canna-company could be advertising alongside Bud Light in the Super Bowl. (Emphasis on the Bowl.)
CALIFORNIA 2016
The next governor of California, Gavin Newsom, spearheaded a report on legalization in his state, intended to influence the half-dozen groups crafting pro-marijuana ballot proposals for 2016. Before we get to the details, let’s note one important factor: Newsom’s an incredibly handsome bastard! Guy makes Gary Hart look downright hideous! (Sorry, Gary.)The Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy’s report emphasizes child safety, tight regulations on sales, safeguarding access for medical-marijuana users, and preventing the next “Big Tobacco.” God, he’s got great hair! (Sorry.) The 24-member panel, convened by the Brill Boy and American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, lays out 58 recommendations addressing, among other things, training standards, stoned driving, age limits, and taxes for public health programs. “We’re not arguing for a free market,” noted the beautiful Lt. Governor. “We’re arguing for a very regulated market that has real oversight, that is flexible.” (I bet he’sflexible.)
The report recommends a flexible tax structure that’s not too high (which would encourage black-market exchanges) or too low (which would encourage teenagers), and that is also union-friendly. (When you’re in Cali, ya gotta kiss up to the unions, even the ones growing ganja.) It also suggests tax revenue go toward drug education, treatment programs, and policing illegal growers who are sucking up water from streams and public parks.
One small problem with the group’s report: Though there are a shitload of pot smokers in California (almost 15 percent of all pot smokers in the U.S.), overall it’s an export state! It’s estimated that California grows almost 40 percent of the nation’s marijuana—and exports over 70 percent of that! Makes me wonder if these powerful and rich growers really are interested in a seed-to-sale tracking system that taxes, inspects, licenses, and regulates marijuana.
OUT OF SIGHT
Gov. Jay Inslee just signed a new open-container law, making it illegal for unwrapped cannabis edibles and other weed products to be visible in the cockpit of a car. House Bill 1276 is an attempt to get marijuana laws in line with those pertaining to drinking and driving. Just as open alcohol containers are illegal inside vehicles (including the glovebox!), now weed is too. So keep your bong, joints, nugs, brownies, and baggies of Blueberry Kush in the trunk. And if you happen to be driving a VW bus that has no trunk (or minivan, Mom), the law states that marijuana items must be stored behind the seat furthest from the steering wheel. Which is probably where the pot smokers are hangin’ out anyway. What a long, strange road trip this has been . . . -
The People in Prison for Pot
When I talk to my friends about the marijuana movement, most think it’s a fun idea that’s basically run its course. I mean, everyone agrees pot will eventually be legal, right? So what’s left to talk about? While folks in four states can now get high as a kite without consequences, more than 600,000 citizens are arrested each year for marijuana-related offenses, and almost 100,000 men and women currently serve sentences for drug offenses. Looking at the details of some of these cases makes your head spin—not in a hilarious hazy-fog kinda way, more in a Linda Blair-in-Exorcist kinda way. In an effort to show how lucky we are, how ridiculous federal policy is, and how much work still remains, allow me to share a few details of those affected by the War on Drugs.
Antonio Bascaró, now 80, has been imprisoned for 35 years after smuggling pot in a fishing boat from Columbia to Florida. No violence, no hard drugs, no prior offenses—just a bail of weed and some bad luck. Bascaró’s sentence does not qualify for the U.S. Sentencing Commission reform guidelines (which have shortened drug sentences for 40,000 federal prisoners), because—get this—the sentence itself is too old to be shortened. Convicted in 1980, he holds the record as the U.S.’s longest-serving marijuana prisoner—a record I’m sure he’d happily relinquish if he could enjoy as a free man a few of his remaining days. The good news? His original sentence has been chopped by 20 years due to good behavior. His new release date? June 2019.
Canadians like locking up old hippies too. 76-year-old grandpa Donald Clarkson was just sent to a slammer north of the border for growing 150 plants in his rental house. The ex-trucker told the judge he’d started the grow operation only to supplement his meager pension. Guess Gramps should have tried a different entrepreneurial effort, cuz he’ll be serving the minimum sentence, six months, under Canada’s (recently toughened) federal drug laws after pleading guilty to production of marijuana for the purposes of trafficking.
Shona Banda, 37, lost custody of her 11-year-old son on March 24 after the boy questioned some of the Reefer Madness being delivered in a drug- and alcohol-education program at his school—and mentioned the medical marijuana in his own home. School officials in Kansas then contacted the police, who went to the house on a “welfare check” and found cannabis and drug paraphernalia in the kitchen. Officers subsequently took the boy into protective custody. Banda uses cannabis oil to treat her Crohn’s disease. A fundraising website for Banda’s legal defense states that her son “disagreed with some of the anti-pot points that were being made by school officials.” After a hearing last Monday, Kansas authorities refused to give Banda her son back and placed him into protective custody. Banda, the author of Live Free or Die: Reclaim Your Life . . . Reclaim Your Country (about her medical use of cannabis oil), is generating a ton of support and publicity, and clearly will not go down without a fight. The case has been forwarded to the district attorney’s office, where possible charges include possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute and child endangerment.
In 2012, a Maryland District judge planned on letting Ronald Hammond off with a fine for his possession charge, saying there wasn’t enough weed in the case to “roll you a decent joint.” Hammond agreed to pay a $100 fine. Problem was that Hammond had then officially violated parole for a 2009 drug charge—so instead of the $100 ticket, the charge triggered a 20-year prison sentence. Like so many caught in the system, Hammond got just two strikes and he was out (for decades).
The folks at Seattle Hempfest have been advocating for those imprisoned for pot for more than two decades now; they’ve also “adopted” several men serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for cannabis-related charges. One adopted prisoner is writer George Martorano, who has been in prison 32 years. He’s serving a life sentence—the longest prison term ever imposed on a nonviolent first-time offender in American history. (USA! USA!) Martorano has written more than 30 books (including self-help books for inmates); with all that confinement, he’s certainly got the time.
“Truly my greatest fear of prison,” he wrote on his website, freegeorge.us., “is to die and no one knowing of I, prisoner 12973, thus I must write.”
I’m sure there were people in 1964 who, after passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act, felt the movement had done its job and was over. After all, the Act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Unfortunately, the cause for that movement—as well as the legalization movement—still exists. The struggle is not even close to being over. So we push on . . . and continue the dialogue. To get involved, go to hempfest.org, drugpolicy.org or clemencyreport.org.
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Higher Ground: Christian Chronic, Killer Pot, and Some Suing Sheriffs
Passing the dutchie to the right this time.
The idea of Higher Ground is to “elevate the dialogue,” and thus it’s important to remain open-minded to individuals and organizations on all sides of the marijuana-legalization conversation. With that in mind, let’s light the peace pipe and reach the roach across the aisle.WHAT WOULD JESUS DOO-BIE? Strongly opposing marijuana legislation are activists Alan Gordon and Anne Armstrong, who made headlines by bum-rushing a press conference supporting a new state legalization bill in Rhode Island. The duo aren’t against the notion of legal weed, but instead believe that taxing the plant is against the teachings of the Bible, and Satanic for putting money over patients’ rights. They take issue with the language of the law, claiming medical use of cannabis (which they believe is the Biblical plant called “kaneh-bos”) outweighs any laws, restrictions, or taxes.
“ ‘Marihuana’ is a slang term popularized by William Randolph Hearst in his ‘yellow journalism’ Reefer Madness-type propaganda,” Armstrong told Marijuana.com. “To pass laws about ‘cannabis,’ the plant specified in the Bible as essential to the Holy Anointing Oil, as ‘marijuana’ is as offensive to me as would be a law referring to ‘Equal Pay for Bimbos.’ ”
Gordon and Armstrong will be planting fields of the sacred herb in National Parks this summer, and dedicating them to religious freedom.
Praise Sativas!
CHRONIC KILLS New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is claiming that ganja is responsible for the murders, mayhem, and overall rise in crime in the Big Apple for the first three months of this year.
“In this city, people are killing each other over marijuana more so than anything we had to deal with in the ’80s and ’90s with heroin and cocaine,” Bratton stated. While murders in NYC have increased 17 percent from last year, whether pot is to blame is somewhat questionable. The overall crime rate in New York City is actually down: felony assaults have decreased 18 percent, robberies 22 percent, and crime on subways more than 25 percent.
Compare that to the largest cities that have legalized weed: In Denver, homicides are down 24 percent, but in Seattle they’ve soared—from 23 to 26. And the biggest fact-check of all: In 1990 there were 2,245 murders in New York. Last year? 383. While I’m attempting to be objective, it seems as though the marijuana plant’s not killing anyone.
SHERIFFS SUE While the Evergreen State skates, for some reason Colorado’s getting picked on, and has already been sued by neighboring states Nebraska and Oklahoma for its dope-smokin’ ways. Now a group of sheriffs from Kansas and Nebraska, and even inside Colorado, are piling on, and also filing suit.
“When these Colorado Sheriffs encounter marijuana while performing their duties,” the new lawsuit states, “each is placed in the position of having to choose between violating his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and violating his oath to uphold the Colorado Constitution.”
The reason sheriffs from Kansas and Nebraska submitted the initial lawsuit had to do with the porous borders their states share with Colorado. Apparently, it’s too damn easy for Okies to mosey over to Colorado, pick up that-there marihuana, and cruise back home with the wacky weed to share with friends and family at the annual Toothless BBQ. (Sorry, I’m really trying here, I swear.) In addition to violating federal law, officers state, legalization in Colorado jeopardizes the U.S.’s compliance with international anti-drug treaties.
As the sheriffs put it, departments are “suffering a direct and significant detrimental impact, namely the diversion of limited manpower and resources to arrest and process suspected and convicted felons involved in the increased illegal marijuana trafficking or transportation in their jurisdictions.” Maybe they should consider legalizing it.
Funded by the Florida-based Drug Free America Foundation, the suit goes on to play the Kid Card! “As a result of Amendment 64-related interdiction efforts,” it mopes, “departments have been forced to scale back on drug education and awareness programs in schools.” That hurts. (A related aside: Marijuana sales in Colorado since Jan. 1, 2014 have brought in $15.6 million in excise taxes specifically earmarked and voter-approved solely for public schools, according to the director of the office of capital construction for the state’s Education Department . . . just sayin’.)
LEGALIZE LETTUCE Finally, a pro-life, pro-gun, Tea-Partying Texas Republican has a unique and simple take on the legalization matter: Take every law that prohibits weed off the books. Representative David Simpson of Longview said his bill would increase individual liberties and decrease government control, bedrock values of the conservative movement’s libertarian wing.
“I think we’re at a tipping point,” Simpson said. “I think it’s clear the war on drugs has failed, that the war mentality has eroded individual rights, the sanctity of one’s home, the ability to travel freely with dignity. And at the root of all this is prohibition.”
The bill is as no-nonsense as the man behind it. Rather than add flowery language about taxation and registration, House Bill 2165 simply regulates marijuana . . . as a plant.
“I’m hopeful that if this bill were to pass, we could see hemp cultivated and used as ropes,” noted Simpson. “We can see the marijuana with differing levels of THC used medicinally. I think it’s the right thing to do. It’s the conservative thing to do.”
The bill allows folks to farm it and use it, like tomatoes, coffee, and corn. Untaxed. Deregulated. Done and get ’er done.
This article first appeared in the Seattle Weekly
