Women from all age groups and from all walks of life came out to Colorado’s State Capitol in Denver to help launch the Women’s Marijuana Movement.

Women’s Marijuana Movement

Jessica Corry is a mother, wife, lawyer, a conservative political activist, and co-founder of the Women’s Marijuana Movement. She is not a marijuana user; she is a proponent of common sense. Corry feels the marijuana laws are unjust.

Mason Tvert, founder of SAFER, has worked with Corry on these issues for some time and they decided that the time is right. “Mason and I have talked about doing this for a long time and SAFER provided the critical infrastructure support to make it happen,” says Corry. SAFER is a national organization based in Denver that promotes marijuana as being a safer alternative to alcohol and prescription drugs.

Women's Marijuana Movement Launched

A diverse group of women and men were at Colorado’s State Capitol in Denver on May 6, 2010, to witness the official launch of the Women's Marijuana Movement on the eve of Mother’s Day. Many educated women spoke about the harm marijuana prohibition has brought to countless families across the country.

These mothers for marijuana are active in educating the public, with the support of SAFER, that alcohol and prescription drug abuse has inflicted more chaos into the lives of families than marijuana.

Joni Handren is a substance abuse counselor and she conveyed, “If a person is arrested or ticketed for marijuana they can lose their children to social services, they can lose all of their financial aid.”

Eva Enns, Outreach Director for SAFER and Project Coordinator for the Women's Marijuana Movement expressed, “In a society that condones and often promotes the use of alcohol, we have all experienced or witnessed first-hand alcohol's potential harms, while every objective study on marijuana concludes that it is far safer than alcohol.”

“(We need to) do away with the hippies and the Cheech and Chong stoner image and start putting these new faces to it,” said Crystal Guess. “The only way we can do it is to just come out of the closet and stop being so afraid to talk about it.”

Marijuana Laws

“Marijuana laws are insane,” asserts Corry. This lawyer/activist cites statistics that 850,000 Americans are incarcerated every year at a cost of $30,000 per incarcerated individual because they smoked cannabis. She predicates that it costs taxpayers three times more to keep a person incarcerated for smoking marijuana than educating an average child every year.

Corry adds, "Our nation's multi-billion dollar failed war against marijuana continues to rob them (families) of important public resources, also imposing criminal sanctions for any association with marijuana, a substance proven far less devastating in every way than alcohol. I will no longer stand for the proposition that bureaucrats with guns should parent my children."

Mothers, grandmothers and daughters who attended the launch say it is time to stop wasting government money fighting marijuana.

Marijuana is Safer than Alcohol

One of the messages that Jessica Corry and the Women's Marijuana Movement asserted at the launch is that marijuana is much safer than alcohol.

Statistics have indicated that alcohol has torn apart families not just in North America, but worldwide. In Domestic Violence Linked to Abusing Alcohol, a quote from Noam Chomsky states that when the war against drugs was declared in the U.S., 300,000 people were losing their lives to tobacco, 100,000 to alcohol and fewer than 3,500 deaths per year from all illegal drugs combined.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, more than 97,000 students have been victims of alcohol-related sex assault and date rape each year. University of Denver student Sarah Groten says, “I’m much more comfortable and safer around guys who are stoned instead of drunk.”

"I am a full believer that women are the smarter species, if you will," says Tvert of SAFER. "And when women confront the issue I think there will be a groundswell of support."