Save Bernie's Farm Benefit

--$100 ticket, patrons will receive reserved "best" seats, admission to a pre-event gathering to meet the speakers and performers and a commemorative benefit shirt. --$45 ticket purchasers will receive reserved seats near the stage. --$20 tickets will be the remainder of the auditorium. Tickets can be purchased at http://tickets.belcourt.org/. The "Save Bernie's Farm" benefit is sponsored by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Bernie Ellis, a middle Tennessee public health epidemiologist and farmer, is one of the more visible medical marijuana activists on the national scene. His case has been discussed widely within the medical marijuana movement. At the time of the 2002 raid on his farm, Bernie was providing medical marijuana (at no charge) to four patients, all of whom died shortly thereafter. Because of the considerable outpouring of support for Bernie, the federal judge in his case sentenced Bernie only to four years probation (though he was facing up to forty years in prison). However, the federal government is still attempting to confiscate his 190 acre farm for an amount of cannabis equivalent to what the government still provides each year to each one of its remaining "approved" patients. (More information on Bernie's case is available at www.saveberniesfarm.com). The benefit will star Jonell Mosser, the Mike Henderson Band and other notable Nashville musicians in an effort to help defray Bernie's legal expenses and to raise money to offer the federal government so they will drop their effort to confiscate Bernie's farm. The show will be broadcast in its entirety on WRFN-FM (98.9 FM), both on the air and on the Internet (www.radiofreenashville.org). A number of nationally prominent medical marijuana speakers will also appear at the benefit, as well as some of Bernie's neighbors, friends and physicians and patients that he helped. You will want to attend this great evening of music and mobilization to help save Bernie's farm and to help re-establish Tennessee's medical marijuana program (two bills are now before our state legislature to do just that.)