|
MistaUNGA
green crack GREEN CRACK!!
Registered: 10/01/06
Posts: 1,519
Loc: Kalifornien, im Süden...
|
Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc
#7142094 - 07/07/07 01:02 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc By Norman Kent, AlterNet Posted on July 6, 2007, Printed on July 6, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/55830/
Editor's Note: The following is a letter addressed to Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman -- a strong advocate of the brutal federal drug laws on the books -- reminding him that he used to be a happy, safe, fun-loving pot smoker.
My friend Norman,
Years ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of marijuana. Years ago, in our dorm rooms at Hofstra University, you, me, Billy, your future brother-in-law, Ivan, Jonathan, Peter, Janet, Nancy and a wealth of other students smoked dope.
Sure, we had to tape the doors shut, burn incense and open the windows, but we got high, and yet we grew up okay, without the help of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's advice.
We grew up to become lawyers. Our other friends, as you go down the list, are doctors, professors, parents, political consultants and professionals. No one ever got cancer from smoking pot or diabetes from using a joint. And the days of our youth we look back fondly upon as years where we stood up, were counted and made a difference, from Earth Day in 1970 to helping bring down a president and end a war in Southeast Asia a few years later. We smoked pot when we took over Weller Hall to protest administrative abuses of students' rights. You smoked pot as you stood on the roof of the University Senate protesting faculty exclusivity. As the President of the Student Senate in 1969, you condemned the raid by Nassau County police on our dormitories, busting scores of students for pot possession.
You never said then that pot was dangerous. What was scary then, and is as frightening now, is when national leaders become voices of hypocrisy, harbingers of the status quo, and protect their own position instead of the public good. Welcome to the crowd of those who have become a likeness of which they despised. Welcome to the mindless myriad of legislators who gather in cocktail lounges to manhandle their martinis while passing laws against drunk driving.
We have seen more people die last year from spinach then pot. We have endured generations of drug addicts overdosing on a multitude of drugs, from heroin to crystal methamphetamine. In your public life, as an attorney general, mayor and United States senator, you have been in the forefront of speaking out against abuses which are harmful. You have been a noble and honorable public servant. How about not being such a dope on dope?
How about admitting that if the Rockefeller drug laws were applied to Norman Bruce Coleman on Long Island in 1968, or to me, or to our friends, and fellow students, you, I and others we knew and loved might just be getting out of jail now? How about recognizing that for too long too many have been wrongly arrested, unjustly prosecuted and illegally incarcerated for unconscionable periods of time?
How about recognizing that you have peers who have smoked pot for 25 years or more and they are successful record producers, businessmen and parents?
How about standing up and saying you have heard and witnessed countless stories of persons who have used pot medicinally, as I have, to endure the effects of chemotherapy?
You who have travelled to Africa and seen the face of AIDS so up close and personal would deny medicinal marijuana relief to those souls wasting away from malnutrition, nausea and no access to fundamental medicines?
How about not adopting the sad and sorry archaic path of our office of drug control, which this week suggested pot smokers are more likely to become gang members than others?
How about standing up and saying: "I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969." That "I am not a gang member, a drug addict or a criminal."
How about saying: "I was able to responsibly integrate my prior pot use into my life, and still succeed on my own merits."
How about standing up not only for who you are, but who you were?
How about it, Norm?
I will always love, admire and cherish what you have achieved and accomplished and the goals you have met. I will always fondly look at the remarkable success of your present.
How about you looking back at your past and saying: "What I did was not so wrong and not so bad and not so hurtful that generations of Americans should still, decades later, be going to jail for smoking pot -- nearly one million arrests for possession last year."
Can't Norm Coleman come out of the closet in 2007 and say "These arrests are wrong -- that there is a better way, and we need to find it."
You might find more integrity and honor in that then adopting the sad and sorry policy of our Office of National Drug Control Policy.
You might find the person you were.
Norm Kent
Norm Kent is an attorney based in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, who specializes in criminal defense and appeals, media law and First Amendment issues. He serves on the Board of Directors for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
-------------------- Madtowntripper said:Or just give her a cloroform soaked rag and tell her it's ether!
|
OneMoreRobot3021
Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: MistaUNGA]
#7142113 - 07/07/07 01:07 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Wow. That was terrific.
-------------------- Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake. -Erik Davis
|
Drewwyann
Slayer of ticks
Registered: 10/30/06
Posts: 4,077
Loc: Atlantis
Last seen: 10 years, 5 months
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: MistaUNGA]
#7142170 - 07/07/07 01:28 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
why doesnt every politician have an old friend like this? this letter is great.:)
-------------------- Anyone need a glass pipe? : http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002435158931 Love powerfully
|
MiddleFinger
Is cooler thanyou
Registered: 02/12/06
Posts: 1,402
Last seen: 14 years, 9 months
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: Drewwyann]
#7142753 - 07/07/07 04:16 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
How about not adopting the sad and sorry archaic path of our office of drug control, which this week suggested pot smokers are more likely to become gang members than others?
How about standing up and saying: "I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969." That "I am not a gang member, a drug addict or a criminal."
How about saying: "I was able to responsibly integrate my prior pot use into my life, and still succeed on my own merits."
How about standing up not only for who you are, but who you were?
How about it, Norm?
Good stuff.
-------------------- History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.
|
DAVID_ALLAN_CEO
Resident Gambler
Registered: 10/29/06
Posts: 398
Loc: Grand Casino Tunica
Last seen: 4 years, 14 days
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: MiddleFinger]
#7142810 - 07/07/07 04:36 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Man, don t we need everyone we can in government to stand up like that
|
collegeshroom
Your LocalCollege Shroomer
Registered: 10/25/04
Posts: 430
Loc: Great North
Last seen: 12 years, 8 months
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: DAVID_ALLAN_CEO]
#7145991 - 07/08/07 11:03 AM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
I had no idea this is great
-------------------- Mycobag Specialist
|
weephar
The Consultant
Registered: 05/03/05
Posts: 695
Loc: USA
Last seen: 21 days, 3 hours
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: MistaUNGA]
#7146387 - 07/08/07 12:47 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
Great letter...any chance this can be published in more main stream publications (i doubt it, but it might get people to open up their eyes).
I hope I never become a sell-out like it sounds like Senator Coleman has...but he still has a chance to redeem himself, so Senator, how about it...will you go back to what you truly believe in...it is probably how you got into politics in the first place...
-------------------- Life is good! (and it is also a journey) Free Rudd!
|
discombobulate
Stranger
Registered: 06/18/07
Posts: 89
Last seen: 13 years, 3 months
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: weephar]
#7146556 - 07/08/07 01:38 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
That's really cool
-------------------- This reminds me of the ludicrous account he gave Mr. Langton, of the despicable state of a young gentleman of good family. “Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats.” And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favorite cat, and said, “But Hodge shan’t be shot: no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.”
|
emit
Trippy 70'sSci-Fi Movie
Registered: 06/20/07
Posts: 131
Loc: my place ;)
Last seen: 1 year, 7 months
|
Re: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc [Re: discombobulate]
#7147863 - 07/08/07 07:17 PM (16 years, 8 months ago) |
|
|
-------------------- yes...
|
|