Just look at the reaction of law-enforcement:
SANTA CRUZ -- For those who arrest people who use, abuse or sell drugs, Sunday's pot-smoking festival at UC Santa Cruz was "a moral slap in the face to the cause," said Rich Westphal, task force commander with the Santa Cruz County Narcotics Enforcement Team. [Santa Cruz Sentinel]
Here's how it went down:
Police may find all of this embarrassing, but it's not really their fault. Marijuana shouldn't be illegal. Any law targeting this many Americans is just flawed on its face. These gratuitous events are a symptom of the bunker mentality of our marijuana culture, which now erupts into a public free-for-all every year on April 20.
It is marijuana prohibition that glamorizes these events and makes them fun. That is just a fact, and one which shouldn't be lost on law-enforcement. These are anti-prohibition pot riots and they are the safest riots you'll ever find. You'd have to call the national guard if any other type of criminal gathered in such numbers.
So if you can't catch them all on the highways or in their homes, and you can't even catch them when they're all together in one place, maybe it's time to stop trying to catch them.
The police had their chance to make a big marijuana bust....
... but they decided public safety should be the priority. What good are they? What kind of a message are they sending to kids around world?
the message?
The message is that this plant is a wonderful gift from God. No plant should be illegal, period. Doing so is saying God made a mistake. I was an agnostic until I was intoduced to God through visionary plants. Before that, my life was miserarble and I didn't want to live anymore. Now my life has turned around in wonderful ways that I could not have imagined before.
Nice
Vancouver and Santa Cruz on 4/20 - what a great site.
The message...
That seems to be lost on so many deaf ears...
It's the year 2008... Prohibition was a crime fueling disaster, it didn't work 80 years ago, and it still doesn't...
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, (LEAP) agrees... LAW ENFORCEMENT...
It takes brains, and a free American heart to live "Above the Influence" of crooked greedy politicians.
Whose only goal is to sway public opinion into alignment with their ulterior motives.
I'm a veteran, and I fought for our privilege to be free. Even though we're falling like Rome did.
I commend all these people for clutching onto what few scraps of the constitution we have left.
God bless America, and the freedoms we still have...
That is, if you can forgive God for making such a huge "mistake"
for creating this plant to grow like a weed virtually everywhere on this planet.
Please free Utah
I've lived in Denver where they had a simular get together at city park. Living in Utah to finish college but I'm dying inside. There is no tolerance here and if you did that get together anywhere here they would not hesitate to arrest, fine, make you take drug reform classes, and genuinely make your life very difficult overall until you conform to the republican values they hold dear.
Thank you for exercising your freedom as American citizens. We're going to make that have some worth again.
Free Utah NOW!
You are not alone in Utah.I have been fighting here for 20 years.Although Utah will be one of the last places on earth to legalize we have to keep the pressure on.Try checking out the drum circle in Liberty Park on sundays and listen to KRCL 90.9 FM...they are doing an interview with Alex White Plume in May.
Don't be discouraged,your fellow puffers are here alive and well!
Generational Control?
Cannabis-smoking Thomas Jefferson wrote:
FAVORITE JEFFERSON QUOTES -- Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-jeffquot?specfile=/web/data/jeff...
The war on drugs is the product of earlier generations. It has acquired the status of a religious orthodoxy, imposed with all the vigor and intensity of an Inquisition.
The older generation doesn't want its orthodoxy challenged. Congress wants to preserve its orthodoxy based on ignorance and incarceration.
Hence, Congress refuses to allow American universities to grow, research, test and market hemp products -- whether they be for foods, fuels, fibers, medicines or recreation. To suggest such a thing is tantamount to religious heresy.
Presidential contender John McCain (R-AZ) flatly rejected the notion that cannabis (THC) has any medical value. McCain's hell-bent on preserving the older generation's orthodoxy.
In 1787, Jefferson wrote to his cannabis-smoking buddy, James Madison
FAVORITE JEFFERSON QUOTES
Such 420 events are necessary to the "sound health of government." In the natural world, storms come more often than once a year. Perhaps it would be good for the "sound health of government" if such events were more often.
— Thomas Jefferson
I hope John McCain becomes President
It will make it easier to end the war on drugs. I wanna see how a president who comes to power on green bills of the booze industry can continue the war on marijuana. It will be a pleasure to expose his hypocrisy. That's when the real fight will get going.
drug war futility
the bottom line is that it will get worse before it gets better. the only way to end prohibition is to put the hardest of the hardliners in there to arrest millions of cannabis consumers and break the criminal justice system. that is where we are headed isn,t it? by breaking the system, the issue of prohibition will be thrust into public debate and the futility of the drug war will be exposed.unfortunately, many good and kind people will be banished to a living hell behind bars and will never be the same when, and IF, they get out. it wil then be the responsibility of all cannabis consumers nationwide to provide support to all of those whom have been burned at the steak in this modern day witch hunt. why isn,t there a fund for drug war prisoners to fall back on in their time of need? maybe if one was started and highly publicized the general public would begin to realize just how horrifying the drug war has become.
I say we rekindle an old holiday. on one day of the year if every one of us that regularly enjoy cannabis lit a joint and walked into the local state police post and turned ourselves in, the law enforcement community (along with the court system) woul be turned on it's ear. and this will be our new battle cry... prohibition funds terrorism stop arresting us and save our chldren from holy war!!!!!!
5,000 gather for peaceful, sharing event
The University of Santa Cruz, California reacted to this year's 2008 420 event by locking down the campus. The West entrance was closed completely and the mini-bus system that runs across campus was shut down. At the main entrance, carloads of people planning on entering the huge, public university were turned away. Yet despite massive police repression, the participants hiked over hill and dale to gather at the Porter College meadow to partake of the now ritual 420 celebration. No one was arrested. No one was assaulted. 5,000 people, mostly college students, gathered and committed mass civil disobedience by openly sharing an herb together that the University, the courts, the legislature, and the past three presidents have sought to make criminal anyone who partakes it.
They brought guitars, spliffs, joints, pipes, and one man had a 5 foot bong. It was roughly the same size crowd as Jesus addressed with his sermon on the mount. That event was not sanctioned by the local authorities either, but was peaceful and emphasized sharing too.
See fabulous photos at: www.indybay.org/santacruz
100,000 people in 420 DC!!!!
What if we had 5000 spliff users from every major city across the country at an annual 420 DC March?
420...it works!
If only all 25 million current smokers would do the same...blow smoke in the oppressors (incarceration enforcers) faces...freedom and liberty would truely ring forth. Overgrow the corrupt government! Prohibition2...it's almost over.
Smoke-Ins WORK!
This is a major disagreement I have had with NORML for 20 years.In the 80's it seemed that NORML turned against smoke-ins as a way to show the public that not only does law enforcement not have the means to arrest every pot smoker...they have no intention of doing so.Smoke-ins are a public display of unequal justice under the law and major smoke-ins should be organized by the largest reform group in the country.All marijuana users are not suit wearing yuppies and we shouldn't try to fool the public into believing so,the public is not that dumb.I know NORML is trying to dispell the stereotype of Cheech and Chong but the message should be You Can't Stop Us.
non violence
How can anyone in their right mind consider these peaceful people to be criminals?
Imagine the same number of people had gathered and only drank the legal drug alcohol. Not only would it have required ambulance because of over intoxication in more than a few cases, but also police because of brawls breaking out.
Your government...
thinks peace is a crime.The logic seems to be...if war cannot be a crime ,when the USA initiates it, then ipso facto ,peace must be criminal!. Therefore, peaceniks should be rounded up and put in camps.Absurd? Just you wait and see. War on this,war on that, it's all war ,all the time ,in the good ole USA.
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