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The makers of Cocaine Cowboys and The U are teaming up
with a leading pro-marijuana activist to get Miami Beach Police to issue
tickets to people caught with a small amount of marijuana in lieu of
sending them to jail.
During an interview at the documentary
company's new HQ off Arthur Godfrey Road, Rakontur honcho Alfred
Spellman and Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy chairman Ford
Banister laid out their plans to make it somewhat legal to smoke cheeba
in the land Carl Fisher built.
The committee will mount a
petition drive to amend the Miami Beach city charter to allow
police to issue a $100 civil fine for individuals caught with less than
20
grams of marijuana instead of criminal misdemeanor charges. Rakontur is
helping with logistics and the lay of the land. In order to put the
initiative on the November ballot, 4,240 signed petitions from
Miami Beach residents must be collected by the end of August.
"If
it succeeds, Miami Beach would be the first city in the south to
decriminalize marijuana," Banister says. "This is the way to do it." I'm not going to regurgitate the many
reasons the prohibition against pot is so dumb. The American public is
beginning to come around, as evidenced by the upcoming vote to make
recreational marijuana use completely legal in California and recent
ballot initiatives in Michigan and New Jersey that opened the door for
medical weed use.
I've always argued that if the New Testament
contained passages of Jesus Christ turning a shrub into a bushel of some
mad O.G. Hollywood Kush, then marijuana would be absolutely legal in
America. But we can thank the right-wing elements and those God-fearing
politicians beholden to the pharmaceutical industry for keeping people
from growing and smoking the fine herb without fear of police
harrassment.
It won't be easy for the committee and Rakontur. As
Banister noted, $1.9 billion a year is spent on drug law enforcement in
Florida. You can bet a sizable chunk comes from efforts to eradicate
marijuana grow houses in Miami-Dade County, which ranks number one in
pot labs in the state. So I wouldn't be surprised if the police unions
mount an aggressive counter-campaign.
The petition drive begins
tonight after a 7 p.m. news conference in front of Miami Beach City
Hall.
On Friday, SAFER's Mason Tvert announced that he would lead a march at Town Center of Aurora to protest
the treatment of John Gailey a week earlier.
Back then, Gailey was cited for trespassing and banned from the mall
for a year because he wore a "Yes We Cannabis" T-shirt, and refused to remove it.
Approximately thirty marchers participated in the event, and none of
them were hassled by mall security -- which is the way it should be,
Tvert says.
"The mall was very hands off, and didn't
stop a single person wearing a marijuana T-shirt," Tvert notes. "And we
hope they'll continue that policy in the future."
Wearing T-shirts spouting a variety of pro-marijuana messages, a
group of about 40 marijuana advocates quietly strolled into Town Center
at Aurora on Saturday in support of a man banned from the mall last week
after wearing a similar shirt.
Unlike the man banned last week,
28-year-old John Gailey, Saturday’s group wasn’t asked to leave the mall
or change their attire.
Instead, the group walked from store to
store like any other shoppers.
Mason Tvert, executive director of
Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation, which organized the event,
said his group hoped the event would make it easier for other marijuana
advocates to wear pro-marijuana shirts without problems.
A man banned from the Aurora Mall for wearing a cannabis t-shirt is
thinking about filing a lawsuit.
Two dozen pro-marijuana demonstrators dared the Aurora Mall to stop them
like had Jake Gailey when he entered the mall wearing a shirt that
features a play on Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" campaign slogan and
graphics, but instead features the message "YES WE CANNABIS" and
displays a marijuana leaf.
They marched into the mall wearing t-shirts promoting marijuana.
For parents with soon-to-be high school graduates about to head off to
college this fall, the weeks ahead are fraught with danger. Graduation
night itself, lazy summer months, and that first year away at college
are alcohol-soaked minefields for students and the stuff of nightmares
for parents.
Kids 18 to 20 years of age (do we still call them kids when they can
vote, enter into legally binding contracts, marry, adopt children and
enlist in the armed forces?) are prohibited from legally drinking
alcohol in this country. States set their own legal drinking age until
1984 when President Ronald Reagan authorized the National Minimum
Drinking Age Act, which effectively established a minimum drinking age
of 21.
At the same time Colorado
legislators were approving a bill to impose new restrictions on medical
marijuana dispensaries, a near majority of Colorado voters were telling
the Rasmussen Report poll they favor legalizing and
taxing pot. Some 49% of respondents said it should be taxed and
legalized, while 39% disagreed and 13% were undecided.
As well-known Colorado marijuana activist Mason Tvert of SAFER noted in
the Huffington Post this week, legal weed is polling
higher than any of the state's contenders for the governorship or the US
Senate. No senatorial candidate is polling higher than 48% and no
gubernatorial candidate is polling higher than 47%.
