by Kevin Mahmalji, NORML Outreach DirectorJune 7, 2019

Every day NORML Chapters from around the country invest countless hours in advocating for meaningful marijuana law reforms on the local, state and federal level! Below is a brief rundown of some of their most recent accomplishments.

NORML Announces Plans for 2019 Conference and Lobby Day

“This September, we invite you to join NORML members from across America to learn effective strategies, hear the latest scientific and political advancements, and meet in person with influential members of Congress.”

Read more from NORML.org!

Follow NORML on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and become a member today!

NORML Leaders in the Media

Radio: Chris Morrow, Executive Director, Kansas NORML

Radio: Kiana Hughes, Educational Director, Chicago NORML

Radio: Mary Kruger, Executive Director, Rochester NORML

Radio: Mary Kruger, Executive Director, Rochester NORML

Alan Robinson, Executive Director, Wisconsin NORML

“It’s not adversarial,” Robinson said. “It’s always us trying to provide information for them, us trying to be an informational resource or us trying to help them overcome the objections that they don’t understand.”

Read more from WFRV Local 5!

Follow Wisconsin NORML on Facebook and become a member today!

Ali Nagib, Deputy Director, Illinois NORML

“To a large degree, that has been a war on cannabis, but it’s also been a war on people, it’s been disproportionately a war on certain communities,”

Read more from WTTW News!

“This would be a big deal in terms of changing our policies to follow states like Colorado, Washington, California, that we’ve seen move forward ending prohibition, not only stopping the arrests, as we’ve done significantly in Illinois with our decriminalization laws, but to open up the marketplace.”

Read more from Cheddar!

Follow Illinois NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!  

Ashley Weber, Executive Director, Colorado NORML

“This bill offers retail consumers the option to consume legally in a social setting,” said Ashley Weber, executive director of the Colorado office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “With the cannabis industry reaching a billion dollars in revenue, Coloradans understand that they cannot continue to re-criminalize the use of a legal substance.”

Read more from The Daily Sentinel!

“Adding a condition for which a physician could recommend medical marijuana instead of an opioid is a safer pain management tool that will be useful for both our doctors and patients.”

Read more from the Denver Post!

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Cameron Pinkerton, Event Coordinator, DFW NORML

“So we’re not getting our medicine from the street. And so we’re not throwing veterans into cages for trying to access a plant that grows in the soil they fought to keep free.”

Read more from CBS DFW!

Follow DFW NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Chris Goldstein, Executive Director, South Philly NORML

“Chris Goldstein, a local organizer with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the ban was bad for patients and sent a signal to the industry that it’s not wanted in Philadelphia.”

Read more from The Philadelphia Tribune!

“There shouldn’t be any neighborhood that bans medical cannabis dispensaries or makes it more difficult for them to open. They should be limited only by the patient population in Philadelphia, which is growing every day.”

Read more from WHYY!

Follow South Philly NORML on Facebook and become a member today!

Chris Morrow, Executive Director, Kansas NORML

“The biggest thing is with marijuana becoming more prevalent, more accepted, legal in a number of different ways across the country, the chances that somebody is going to get caught with a personal use amount of marijuana in their possession increases.”

Read more from Wyandotte Daily!

“We’re on an inexorable glide path towards legalization,” said Chris Morrow, the executive director of Kansas NORML. “Kansas is lagging behind.”

Read more from KMBC 9!

Follow Kansas NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Dale Geringer, Executive Director, California NORML

“More and more local governments are coming around, but progress has been slow,” says Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML.

Read more from Reason!

“The taxes are so high that there is a big incentive to avoid them,” said Dale Gieringer, director of pro-marijuana group California NORML. “The black market is presently at least as large or larger as the legal market.”

Read more from NBC Bay Area!

“This is really a Los Angeles phenomenon … I can’t tell you where there would be an unlicensed dispensary operating in Oakland or San Francisco.”

Read more from the Los Angeles Times!

Follow California NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Dan Linn, Executive Director, Illinois NORML

“It may very well end up not achieving the desired results, because of how much of a stranglehold the current medical cannabis industry will have on the adult-use market, since the current licensees will have the ability to double their current operations before any new entrants are even licensed for the new industry.”

Read more from Rolling Stone!

“People say to pass the best bill you can and come back later to try and make it better,” Linn said. “But we’ve had significant problems with the (existing) medical cannabis program that we still have not been able to fix.”

Read more from the Chicago Tribune!

“It may come as a surprise to some folks, but there’s probably already a lot of students selling or using on campus,” Linn said. “Prohibition hasn’t worked. But if we were to legalize it, these students could get jobs in this industry, and we could harness their entrepreneurial spirit.”

Read more from the Daily Chronicle!

“I’m concerned with how much of a handout this is to the current industry,” Linn said. “They crafted this legislation to give them an extreme advantage. If we have a limited amount of suppliers, prices are going to continue to be high.”

Read more from the Chicago Tribune!

“Limiting homegrow to just patients seems like too big a concession to law enforcement.”

Read more from The Center Square!

“Even after this bill passes there will still be work to do to give adults in Illinois access to cannabis without having to purchase it from a limited amount of stores and cultivators.”

Read more from Complex!

“The barriers to entry into this marketplace will only continue to expand the problems of the wealthy being able to profit from this new opportunity while others with fewer resources are unable to move from the illegal to legal marketplace in terms of growing and selling this product.”

Read more from Rolling Stone!

Follow Illinois NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Ellen Komp, Deputy Director, California NORML

“We have concerns,” Deputy Director Ellen Komp says. “If it’s state law, it [should be] state law everywhere,” she says, criticizing all the exemptions. “I think it’s a little heavy-handed. [Marijuana] is still going to have to achieve acceptance city by city, county by county. When you try to force it on a locality, it feels threatened.”

Read more from the Los Angeles Times!

Follow California NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Evan Nisson, Board Member, New Jersey NORML

“We need to make marijuana legal in New Jersey now to stop tens of thousands of unfair arrests a year and to be able to adequately compete with other states that have had legal, regulated cannabis industries for years.”

Read more from NJ Today!

Follow New Jersey NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Jax Finkle, Executive Director, Texas NORML

“Hemp has extraordinary political momentum behind it,” says Jax Finkel, executive director of Texas NORML, a cannabis law reform group. “McConnell’s now making it a campaign item for himself, and I think we’re seeing Texas legislators getting behind it for the same reason.”

Read more from The Austin Chronicle!

“With less than one percent of Texans being eligible for the current Texas Compassionate Use Program, the vast majority of Texas patients have been left behind since 2015.”

Read more from Spectrum News!

“Some of them are quite devastated because this has been a life changing medicine for them and I think that the senators recognize that,” Finkle said. “We are thankful for the expansion that we’ve gotten but there’s still a lot of work to do make sure that patients have the true medical freedom that we need in the state.”

Read more from Fox 7!

“(The bill) maintains the current .5% THC ratio. That’s concerning, because .5 THC will help some people but it will definitely not help everyone.”

Read more from the Dallas Observer!

“Many more patients are still being left behind, however, and will now have to wait until the next legislative session in 2021 for their next opportunity to find relief.”

Read more from Raw Story!

Follow Texas NORML on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and become a member today!

Jenn Michelle Pedini, Executive Director, Virginia NORML

“I think it’s an example of a Commonwealth’s Attorney leveraging what powers and discretion they are afforded to make as much of an impact on their community as possible,” said Jenn Michelle Pedini, the executive director of Virginia NORML.

Read more from WTKR News 3!

“The unfortunate thing is that investigation after investigation show that many of these products don’t contain the amount of CBD that they claim to. Or they contain adulterants like dextromethorphan, melatonin, arsenic, heavy metals, or pesticide residue.”

Read more from Fox 11!

“We have decriminalization bills filed every year and this year I was given the opportunity to provide feedback to the administration on a decriminalization bill that they proposed. It was a good bill. I loved some of the policy.”

Read more from The Virginia Pilot!

Follow Virginia NORML on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and become a member today!

Lisa Sewell, Board Member, DFW NORML

“Cannabis overall is a great alternative therapeutic option replacing opioids and other medications…there’s a lot of research to show how much cannabis can help these patients but here in Texas we were so limited and a lot of Texans were getting left behind because there wasn’t enough ailments listed.”

Read more from WBAP News!

“The more education we get to them, the better. Period,” Sewell said. She said she has seen politicians become more open to legislation that would legalize marijuana, such as recent bills that have passed in the Texas House.

Read more from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram!

Follow DFW NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Matthew Abel, Executive Director, Michigan NORML

“All of this is affecting the 50 temporary operators who applied over a year ago,” says attorney Matt Abel, executive director of MI NORML. “It’s about time they wrapped up their applications one way or another.”

Read more from Detroit Metro Times!

“A lot of people aren’t aware of their right to have a ballot initiative,” says Matt Abel, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “More people need to become aware of it. We believe that will help stimulate more ballot initiatives.”

Read more from Detroit Metro Times!

Follow Michigan NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Norm Kent, Board Member, NORML

“The student is being unlawfully treated by the school, and the only thing more offensive and unconscionable than the university expelling her is that 10,000 students have not already gathered in the administration building and smoked the damn place out until they let her back in.”

Read more from Miami New Times!

Follow NORML on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and become a member today!

Patrick Nightingale, Executive Director, Pittsburgh NORML

“It’s clear they are not ready to address this,” Nightingale said. “What we do think we have a very good chance of moving forward with is decriminalization. At the very least take the criminal component away from prohibition.”

Read more from the 90.5 WESA!

“It’s clear they are not ready to address this,” Nightingale said. “What we do think we have a very good chance of moving forward with is decriminalization. At the very least take the criminal component away from prohibition.”

Read more from WITF!

Follow Pittsburgh NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Rick Thompson, Board Member, Michigan NORML

“Drug crimes, in particular, can be really damaging to a person’s employability, their ability to enroll in school or the military and just in their personal relationships in general,” Thompson added. “If you have a drug felony and people know that, I think you can expect to be treated differently. That’s just how it is. Expungement can help.”

Read more from the Lansing City Pulse!

Follow Michigan NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

Tom McCain, Executive Director, Peachtree NORML

“If Macon-Bibb does it, they will be the 10th jurisdiction in Georgia to have initiated some type of ordinance to reduce it,” he said. “Because it’s not really decriminalizing, it’s harm reduction.”

Read more from WGXA News!

“It sends a message to the state legislature that the people of this state are starting to want this. They’re tired of seeing people get locked up.”

Read more from WGXA News!

Follow Peachtree NORML on Facebook and Twitter and become a member today!

For more than 45 years NORML chapters have been the driving force behind policy decisions on the local and state level. Have you connected with your local NORML chapter? If there isn’t one in your community, please email NORML Outreach Director Kevin Mahmalji at KevinM@NORML.org for help with starting your own!

Ready to start a NORML chapter in your hometown? Click here to find out how!

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