Posted on 10/09/2006 5:52:07 PM PDT by SJackson
The skies were clear but a haze hung over hundreds of marijuana activists as they paraded up State Street to the Capitol for the 36th Annual Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival.
Some who marched advocated marijuana for medicinal purposes, while others championed hemp as an answer to the state's agricultural woes.
And more than a few undoubtedly toked up for the sheer pleasure of smoking a doobie on a sunny afternoon on State Street.
"The sky didn't fall, nothing happened, nobody got hurt, and we went all the way down the road in full public view and nothing went wrong," activist Jim Miller from New Jersey said.
"It makes no sense that if this is the way it works, why are people going to jail for doing that, when nothing happened?"
Miller is part of the "Commando Squad" that has fought for the legalization of medical marijuana and carries on the battle in memory of his wife, Cheryl.
Cheryl had lobbied for medicinal marijuana to ease her pain from multiple sclerosis before her death in 2003, and Miller played a tape of her agonized screams during physical therapy treatments without benefit of the drug.
Marijuana proponents have been fighting to legalize cannabis for decades since its criminalization in 1937, and local activist and Harvest Festival organizer Ben Masel believes they are slowly making headway.
"We've gotten a lot better, at least at the political level, at stopping new bad legislation," Masel said. "A lot of progress is happening on hemp agriculture."
Masel lost the U.S. Senate Democratic primary to incumbent Herb Kohl last month but secured more than 51,000 votes, more than half of which he attributes to marijuana supporters.
Masel also lost a Republican primary to Tommy Thompson in the 1990 governor's race when he ran on a platform advocating the use of hemp in agriculture.
Gary Storck, cofounder of the Madison branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), lamented the death of the medical marijuana bill during the past congressional session and pointed to the Capitol building behind him when he spoke at the rally.
"The people in this building are responsible for that bill dying in committee," he said. "It's time to turn these mothers out. We need you to vote, and we need to get your friends to vote."
Storck, Miller and other activists will be traveling throughout the state before the Nov. 7 election in an attempt to get candidates' positions on record regarding the legalization of cannabis for medicinal purposes.
Storck cited a 2002 poll conducted by his activist group "Is my medicine legal yet?" (IMMLY) that reported over 80 percent of Wisconsin residents support legalized medical marijuana.
"No candidate should be able to run for office and get elected without stating their position on medical marijuana," Storck said. "Why won't they just do the people's will?"
Joann Price of Verona suffers from spinal muscular atrophy and also questioned why her medicine of choice isn't legal.
"I don't see why something that is a gift from God, a herb, made in the ground. . .can't be legalized," Price said from a wheelchair. "You've never heard of anybody getting into a fist fight or beating their spouse after they smoked a joint."
Proponents like Price say cannabis provides pain relief and alleviates a host of other medical conditions without the harmful side effects or high costs of many prescription drugs.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a statement in April 2006 that the FDA, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy "do not support the use of smoked marijuana for medical purposes" because of a lack of sound scientific studies required for the FDA drug approval process.
Plenty of patients continue to self-medicate with marijuana, however, often as an alternative to prescription drugs. Cassius, a 23-year-old veteran who served in the Airborne Rangers, returned home from Baghdad with bottled up rage and a hand-rolled remedy to ease the pain.
"I smoke weed, and I'm going to die smoking weed," he said, declining to give his last name. "If I want to smoke marijuana, I can be judged, but I can fight and die for the country, and see my battle buddies blown up on land mines in Fallujah."
Cassius, a Gary, Indiana native, says he never used drugs before joining the military but now smokes pot on a daily basis to "mellow out" since he came home to a life of unemployment and disillusionment.
"A lot of rich guys, Caucasians, like to pull out their scotch with two ice cubes," he said. "War gives you a gift, because when you come back, you look at things differently."
Published: October 9, 2006
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if pot was legal we wouldn't have mexican drug cartels turning all of California's national parks into armed pot farms. such a waste of time and money that gets the wrong people rich.
Pot needs to be decriminalized.
it ain't exactly like illegal means unavailable. it's a joke. the biggest lobbying group for keeping non-violent drug offenders in prison is the state correctional officers' union. talk about a vested interest.
Do what, now?
Gotcha, and concur completely. I missed it the first time; sorry.
This article is full of cr@p.
"...as an answer to the state's agricultural woes."
Oh, Woe Is Me! They just harvested 500 acres of soybean around my little farm in the past week. According to our Ag Report, it's been one of the BEST soybean crops ever! Everyone made money this year.
And please...when you grow a crop like hemp how much productivity can you really bank on up here in the North? "Bank" being the profitable word here. Change the mindset of Americans, then change the laws, then make yourself a legal livelihood growing the stuff...if you can in this climate, Global Warming or not. If it was that marketable up here, it would already be mainstream, would it not? Like Wheat or Corn or Soybean.
http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,959,00.html
Hippies. You know, I, too, don't care if people NEED to get high...but for Pete's Sake. Clean up your reputation as being lazy slackers and Woody Harrelson-wanna-bes! Get yourself some decent PR people and make me actually BELIEVE that growing pot is the salvo to all of my Ag-realted problems. Then maybe I'll grow it. Yeesh.
But good luck with that...The Smoke Gnatzies are p*ssed that Wisconsin is becoming a Tobacco State once again, as she was in the past. Get past the Smoke Gnatzies and it'll be Smooth Inhaling for all the Midwest Potheads out there, LOL!
"...and Miller played a tape of her agonized screams during physical therapy treatments without benefit of the drug."
What an ass. My StepMom died of Bone Cancer last fall. It truly is like being eaten alive from the inside out. She had Darvon to ease her pain and a wonderful (I can't thank them enough) Hospice Care worker who was on her game. For all of her problems, my Mom suffered little, comparatively.
If this moron couldn't find a legal way to help end his wife's painful suffering, then he's just evil.
And to then EXPLOIT her suffering after her death? Worse than evil, IMHO.
Bump!
"I personally know five "recreational" pot smokers who are very successful business owners. Their combined net worth is over $25M. "
What did they start with, nothing? I doubt it. I have been self employed since age 25(27 years) and I never met a doper I could trust, or who wasn't a slacker.
B T T T
Bill Gates?
Carl Sagan?
George Bush?
Bill Gates?
Carl Sagan?
George Bush?
Bill Gates made his initial money through his Judge(moms) connections at IBM. It was mom who arranged that the Windows system ownership be retained by Bill, and thus licensed to IBM. He ran with 2 billion, and turned it into 54 billion, and I doubt he smokes dope!
Carl Sagan is a pop culture flake. Nuff said
Bush made 14 million on the backend blow because his daddy had friends at Crowell,Whedon, and they got him the gig with the baseball team. I doubt he smokes dope, either. When it comes to finance, you are way, way out of your league, sonny. Step aside : )
Sperling was born in a log cabin and parlayed his $25,000 life savings into a multi million dollar company, and Lewis came from a fairly middle class background. Sperling went to Cambridge, and Lewis went to Princeton. Hardly the slacker types.
Easy for you to say, given your obvious obliviousness to the suffering of others. By the way, objectively speaking, Darvon (propoxyphene) is a much more dangerous substance than marijuana. Its side effects include physical addiction, confusion, convulsions, dizziness, low blood pressure, and weakness, and it has caused thousands of overdose deaths.
If this moron couldn't find a legal way to help end his wife's painful suffering, then he's just evil.
I'm sure she could have taken enough legally prescribed narcotics to kill her pain, but she was getting physical therapy at the time, which requires the patient to be an active participant rather than a decaying vegetable. Marijuana is a rae type of substance which lessens pain while allowing the patient to remain active.
"This from a wanna-be tobacco grower?"
Still a LEGAL crop to grow last time I looked., LOL! You hate smoking? Work on a local ban and take it from there. I don't smoke, but I'll fight you every step of the way. :)
It's very lucrative, too. When I was in HS, farm kids were given a few acres to grow what they wanted. It taught them about how to tend a crop for a season, commitment, hard work...you know, all those USELESS values one learns on a farm. ;)
Most planted tobacco and came to school the next year in a sports car or shiney new Chevy pick--em-up truck.
If tobacco is so horrible, why isn't it just flat-out banned? Oh, that's right. The Government can't live without the extorted tax revenue that tobacco offers!
"Easy for you to say, given your obvious obliviousness to the suffering of others."
WTF? There aren't enough drugs in the world to solve your problem, LOL!
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