Our friends at NORML have run into a weird misunderstanding with the folks at PayPal. Apparently, the company has a vague drug policy and they've chosen to interpret it rather broadly:

Paypal, the well-known internet payment company has told California NORML that it will no longer accept payments to our “type of business” because we accept listing payments from cannabis-recommending physicians.

After years of offering free listings to physicians and collectives at our website http://www.canorml.org, CaNORML began charging a yearly listing fee to cover our costs last year.

PayPal froze CaNORML’s account in June, saying that by accepting listing fees from collectives, we were violating their Acceptable Use policy, which says, “you may not use PayPal in the purchase or sale of narcotics.”  

It's absurd on so many levels:

1. It's medical marijuana, not "narcotics." It's perfectly legal under state law and even the federal dept. of justice has agreed to respect state policies.

2. California NORML isn’t buying or selling medical marijuana. They're accepting donations and listing their sponsors. In no way does this violate the terms of PayPal's acceptable use policy.

3. Even after California NORML removed listings for collectives, PayPal maintained that there was a problem with listing physicians on its site. Physicians? They don't even provide medical marijuana, so now you start to get the idea that PayPal is just being nasty. Do they want NORML to stop mentioning marijuana altogether?

But here's the really unbelievably stupid thing about all this:

4.  You can buy alcohol on PayPal. You can straight-up order booze through PayPal and have it delivered to your door, but they have a problem with NORML merely taking donations from folks in the medical marijuana industry?

There is no excuse for this. PayPal is under no legal obligation whatsoever to behave this way and their hypocrisy must not be allowed to go unnoticed. This isn’t even a question of medical access. No marijuana was even being sold through their service. This is about the freedom of PayPal clients to associate with their patrons without being subjected to false and erroneous restrictions that reek of political prejudice.

If PayPal thinks it's bad business to be associated with the medical marijuana community, let's show them how wrong they are. You can contact PayPal here:

PayPal, 2211 N 1st St, San Jose 95131 (408) 376-7400

I recommend reading the whole story from NORML first, so that your correspondence is fully informed. As always, we make the best impression by being firm, but also polite.

The ban on domestic hemp cultivation is so profoundly stupid and crazy that the drug warriors won't even talk about it. Fortunately, some farmers found a novel way to draw attention to the issue:

ARLINGTON, Va. — A half dozen people including two farmers have been arrested for trying to plant hemp seeds at the Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Virginia.
…
Hemp is related to marijuana and currently all hemp products sold in the U.S. must be imported.

The Hemp Industries Association is lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill to decriminalize hemp farming for products like clothing and rope.  [AP]

The best part is that AP's coverage of the story inadvertently makes the central point worth understanding in the debate over hemp:

Police say they had shovels in hand but did not appear to have any drugs and caused only minor damage to the lawn.

See, hemp isn’t drugs. Even the police admitted that it wasn't. So explain to us, please, why it is that American farmers can't grow hemp. Seriously, what's the problem here?

We've found many examples of police exaggerating the value of marijuana seizures, so I was interested to see this article in The Fresno Bee that debates the value of marijuana plants:

"I don't think most plants [would yield a pound] at any one time, unless it's a massive plant," [NORML's Keith Stroup] said. "What would make more sense would be to weigh the buds," which are the part of the marijuana plant where the intoxicant, a chemical called THC, is located.

Special Agent Casey McEnry of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency in San Francisco disagrees.

"We're not weighing the plants," she said. "When I give an estimate, it's based on how many pounds [a plant] is capable of producing."

No it's not, because you have no way of knowing that. Overall yield depends heavily on the strain and the growing conditions/techniques. It varies from a couple ounces to multiple pounds. Ever notice how some kinds of trees grow taller then others? Same principle.

The value of marijuana plants is hardly the biggest lie being passed around in the drug war debate, but it shouldn’t be ignored either. Every day, some poor soul gets sentenced to prison based on erroneous estimates like this. These simplistic calculations frequently serve to falsely equate personal growers with major suppliers, all because law-enforcement officials are too lazy to actually weigh the appropriate part of the plant.

Once again, the people enforcing our drug laws literally do not know what they're talking about.

the elephant in the room regarding anti user (ilicid drugs) legislation (so called war on drugs) nationwide, is religous and racial bigotry, until this issue is confronted head on, no sane approach