Read about all your marijuana law reform.

By George Rohrbacher,

NORMLs 38th annual conference in San Francisco convened September 24-26 was the best attended ever. Held at the Grand Hyatt downtown under classic San Fran weather conditions: 78 degrees and sunny with the fog creeping up over the hills and a river of fog laying atop the water streaming in from the ocean through the Golden Gate sailboats freighters…the sun-drenched surrounding hill.all of which was to be seen from the hotels restaurant on the 36th floor. Medicating could be done, down at street level on the plaza surrounding the hotel. NORMLs annual conference was held downstairs in the grand ballroom and adjoining meeting spaces. Well my brothers and sisters in the movement to legalize marijuana we kicked ass this during this amazing weekend!
NORML09

Travel author Rick Steves publisher and comedian Ngaio Bealum and others on the Pot Parenting and Prohibition panel

The caliber of the presenters and breath of topics @ NORML 38 was just astonishing everything from martial artists using cannabis just before the fight for calming and focus to how current tax court decisions are shaping the trend toward a wider range of services delivered to patients at dispensaries to a deep and satisfying look into the science of the exceptional safety profile and utility of cannabis as a medicine. And if you couldnt have been there in San Francisco with us now for the very first time in history you can attend conference from anywhere in the world free on the Internet simply by visiting NORMLs 38th conference broadcast.

I arrived in San Francisco early enough the day before Conference started to do the NORML “walk through” with Grand Hyatt hotel staff. My morning had started at home at 4:00am doing chores before the two-hour drive to the airport then my flight to SFO and transport to the Hyatt only to find out that I was one of the 57 attendees who were being bumped to other hotel properties for one night because a nasty overbooking computer-glitch. The cynical among us made muffled comments that this “glitch” might have something to do with the US Customs Service/Homeland Security Conference in progress at the hotel the day of NORMLs arrival. The overbooking problem ruffled a few feathers, but we got over it quickly and everyone with a reservation at conference was booked onsite by the end of the first day. The Grand Hyatt staff was awesome in dealing with the mess. And after all really, how can you be in a bad mood anyway, you’re in San Francisco at a NORML Conference?

A tiny case in point: on day 1 of Conference, during our 4:20 afternoon break as several hundred of us medicated on the plaza San Franciscos Thursday Green Transportation Bike Protest with police escort pedaled by a significant number of their ranks biking buck-naked…

As I lay in bed that night, finally in my rightful hotel room, my head a-buzz with all the people Id talked to and some of the world’s finest cannabis I pondered why NORML Conference was so much fun and why I had gotten such a huge emotional lift from the days events. Sure I was seeing old friends making new ones the common struggle and all of that…but as I continued to think about it I realized that while those were all important elements of it but they did not account for the power of what I was feeling.

Then it struck me! Just three weekends before NORMLs Conference, over the Labor Day weekend my wife and I had held our daughter’s wedding on our ranch, with 70 campers and 120 guests for a sit-down dinner under a tent set up next to our home. We had the first rain in 14 weeks and rainbows the day of the ceremony. The feelings I was getting from the first day of NORMLs Conference was something very much akin to those same feelings that welled up inside that big tent during my daughter’s wedding. Yes. NORML too, was a meeting of family self-chosen family, the very tip of an iceberg, a worldwide network of people who with cannabis, are strung through the heart.

The more I thought about all the people Id talked to that first day, our wheelchair warriors our intellectual samurai our organizers at ground zero…the more I realized that almost to a person they were at NORMLs 38th annual conference because there was a truth that must be told a wrong that must be righted, sick people who must be cared for the defenseless defended…they were there in San Francisco primarily because their hearts demanded it their internal compass of right-and-wrong would accept no less. And after all the many years of losing our battles after 20 million marijuana arrests the tide has started to turn…

We are winning on many fronts now…but, it is not over, there is so much left to do, please help. Join the fight; please join NORML, if you haven’t done so already. And, I hope to see you at the 39th annual conference, next year.

Click here for the real article

in San Fransisco, California, Cannabis advocates are working hard for signatures to get up to three legalization measures on the ballot in 2010. Making what could end up being a huge step towards full legalization.
More then one poll shows voters would support lifting the pot prohibition, which would make the state of more than 38 million the first to legalize Cannabis.

This will cause the state to go into direct conflict with the U.S. government while bringing up questions about how federal law enforcement could enforce its drug laws in the face of a government-sanctioned pot industry.

The state already has a Booming Canabis trade, thanks to a 1996 vote that allowed people to use cannabis for medical purposes. Full legalization would turn medical marijuana dispensaries into all-purpose pot stores, and the open sale of Cannabis could become common to see behind the counter at liquor stores.

Legal experts and policy analysts say the government will not be able to require California to help enforce the federal marijuana ban if the state legalizes the drug.

Without assistance from the state's legions of narcotics officers, they say, federal agents could do nothing to stop the cannabis in California.

"Even though that federal ban is still in place and the federal government can enforce it, it doesn't mean the states have to follow suit," said Robert Mikos, a Vanderbilt University law professor.

Now, Can you imagine if this actually goes through? This would make a number of states change their views on cannabis, due to the fact that California will come out of debt so fast it wont even be funny. Not to mention the population boost that it will cause, thus producing even higher then expected profits from legalization. The federal government wont have a choice but to face the facts. Think about it.