NORML CONFERENCE 2002

By Daniel Forbes- for High Times

May, 2002

They ran out of beer early at the jammed, raucous, spit-and-baling-wire emergency party that closed this April’s National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws annual conference in San Francisco. Thirsty guests found thirstful ways to compensate for the suds, and if you ignored the computers and filing cabinets, it was easy to forget you were violating fire codes at an ad hoc shindig at a hotshot law office. The wife and I decamped around midnight, not content with the five cases of water trucked in to replenish the sweat the crowd had been shaking on each other jitterbugging to a 40-piece (stationary) marching band. We landed in a little North Beach boite. At one point, my New Yorker was aghast to see a purse all by its lonesome on the floor by the jukebox. Voicing her alarm, she was told don’t be silly, woman–this is San Francisco.

NORML convened this year in America’s most tolerant city, its chief prosecutor an acknowledged inhaler, he told HIGH TIMES. During breaks in the demanding schedule (presentations started well before 9 AM. and ran ’til evening), at times 40 or more smokers spilled from the hotel’s side entrance out on to the busy, tourist-trap sidewalk. And not a one, patient or head a like, peered timorously over his shoulder. There were masses of billowing, very public smoke, with tourists and their kids–who as a class, are generally coddled by authorities–gaping from passing trolley cars. Still, police action, even short of arrest, was somehow unthinkable in San Francisco, and not just because the record 560 participants (up from 400 last year in DC) were spending aplenty.

And yet, a specter gripped the gathering despite the easy-going gloss lent by geography and numbers. No wraith, it was a federal fist that has struck often to smash, grab and incarcerate. Candidate Bush’s empty promise in 1999 that medical use is a states’ issue (“I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose.”) and his administration’s avowed federalism have proved equally hollow. Launching proceedings, NORML Board chair Steve Dillon admitted, “I love America, but I fear my government I’m ashamed to say.” Former big-time police chief Joseph McNamara, now with the Hoover Institute, warned of the faux drug/terrorism nexus: “Don’t underestimate that. When they mix in patriotism with the war on drugs, almost anything can happen.”

The specter grew on the second day as grim news filtered out from federal district court where Judge Charles R. Breyer pondered the fate of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative (OCBC). Wayne Justmann, director of the SF Patients Cooperative, told HT a negative ruling from Breyer is a “done deal,” with cease and desist injunctions served on the 50 clubs that operate openly in California the likely consequence.

The frayed DEA leash soon to be further loosened, the local medical marijuana dispensary honchos grinned through their fears, their gallows’ humor growing thin. The numerous patients in attendance, including often the honchos themselves, were just plain frightened. The HIV-positive Justmann, who suffers from neuropathy’s nerve damage and pain, will be forced to turn to debilitating opiates without his normal medicine. Whatever the Feds do, his “pretty continual pain” isn’t going away. Said Debby Goldsberry, director of both Cannabis Action Network and the Berkeley Patients Group, “I don’t want to say we’re in crisis, but boy do we need help.” She added, “But we’re not so scared we can’t organize.”

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