how to legalise pot?

[white_cluster]

what do you people reckon we can all do to help legalisation along?? and make the thought of it more appealing to the general public??

[Ferre]

Being open and honest about it I guess. "The general public" is you and me, just don't hide your using The Herb for any one and people will get used to the fact there's a lot of us out there and we're not stereotype longhaired lazy stoners but the average you and me with families, kids that do well and normal jobs.

[wassily]

It's funny, cause I was thinking about this today. It's a bit sad, but the reality is a bunch of professional 'upstanding' people in society need to come forward in such large numbers that people start to realise it is ordinary people that use it. Unlikely. We need like one truly publicly respected person to come out and support it, but not in a tye dye t shirt.

Not that there is anything wrong with them, but we're dealing with public perception. The main problem is the disassociation that people feel from the herb itself. It has a 'PR' problem. Ordinary people don't even know what it looks like. It's quite a beautiful flower. Everyday people who don't take drugs need to find some way to associate it as ok. A herbal tea would be good. I dunno, I'm just rambling now, but maybe there are some answers in the ways other public misconceptions were overcome - aparthied, (I'm not saying they're the same by the way).

or maybe we need to be studying the career of John Howard. How the fuck was he marketed? But what are the main things? Like to any consumer you need to educate and somehow connect them with the product. 'The pot like Nanna used to make". I'll think some more.

I'd be really interested to see what a good creative shop would do with a product like this. Hmmmm

[Guest Field_of_Light]

Normalise it.......

 

Let everyday people who have grown up with anti mj messages see successful people representing the move to legalise it...

 

If John Howard pulled out a big phat blunt and smoked it up on the Sunday program it would be the single most important move in legislative making history...

 

Whether ya like him or not he has led a party for 2 elections and cant be replaced...he has respect...and someone with a lot of respect needs to lead the campaign....

 

Ive got family memebrs that think mj smokers are scum....primarily because of the media....if kerry packer smoked pot and influenced the media to NOt negatise pot usage he'd do a shit load more than any govt campaign against it...

 

find us a credible leader....

[white_cluster]

Being open and honest about it I guess. "The general public" is you and me, just don't hide your using The Herb for any one and people will get used to the fact there's a lot of us out there and we're not stereotype longhaired lazy stoners but the average you and me with families, kids that do well and normal jobs.

 

Thats all well and good Tboat, we know you got the balls to stand up for your right to smoke pot, But I dont think many here would. Unless there was safety in numbers. A few people going out in public and saying they smoke and grow pot is just gonna end up in police investigations and no real effect.

If that was the way to go about things it would need to be organised, like a couple of 1000 people showing up at a police station to be arrested would be good, but not one person.

For instance I live in a heavily backwards redneck/catholic town, admitting I smoked pot would be like admitting to being a witch in Salem. It would be a race between the cops and aborigines to get to my place first.

 

I dunno, Pot was always kinda legal in Holland since you woulda been a boy right, like people were always fairly open towards pot there werent they???

 

I think it needs to be discussed and planned alot more, by people smarter than I.

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

I asked prof. Hall this one a couple years back. He was the guy that made the reccomendations to the NSW gov. on pot law reforms for medical use. He's presently trying to make ground in Qld. on the same things.

 

He told me that we need a person to front the movement ( I told him I was talking about states apart from NSW, where he had already made inroads). He said this person should be as respected in the community as possible, and a family man with children doing well would be a bonus. If the person had a legit medical use this would be in our favour aswell. The person doesn't have to be a doctor or anything, a person on a pension or even on the dole wouldn't be a problem, so long as they have a clean history and are community involved in some way I suppose.

 

He said do all that, and then get a media person on side. Any one. I guess the "bigger" the media person the better, but without a media peronaliity on side, he said we would have a very hard job. We need that voice into society. Without media support, you're left with preaching to the converted.

 

Anyway, like someone said before, I have nothing against tie dyed shirts, long hair and so on. I spent my life looking like that to one extent or another, and still have plenty of friends that look that way. But I take Prof. Hall's point for what he meant it as, a tip for taking away the fright of the issue. To show people who they're dealing with. Normal peoples.

 

cheers

rob

[Ferre]

find us a credible leader....

 

I gues it comes down to this. I also think we need many of them.

[WantDaChronic]

www.daweedking.com

 

this dude had the idea, he stood up and helped ontario (canada) get marijuana legalised...sad thing is the laws have been revoked since then for some reason :angry: have a look threw his site and u'll find the link...

 

there are issues such as the pot today is 15x stronger than it was in the 70's and shit like that. but to every question the is an answer like beer has 5% alc and bourbon has 37%, smoking a more potent bud means i smoke less than i would with a low thc plant...

 

so basically we need an extremely informed, well spoken member of the cummunity to step forward and then have as many people as possible to follow the cause...if we all step behind this person we will have our freedom...

 

or we could all just plant thousands of seeds each, put all the plants outdoors EVERYWHERE and the govt would be beside itself trying to eradicate the herb ...if 1 plant can produce 10k seeds it would only be a matter of years b4 australia was 1 big ganja islnad ::

[Luke Skywalker]

wantdachronic Posted on Sep 8 2003, 09:54 AM

or we could all just plant thousands of seeds each, put all the plants outdoors EVERYWHERE and the govt would be beside itself trying to eradicate the herb ...if 1 plant can produce 10k seeds it would only be a matter of years b4 australia was 1 big ganja islnad

 

I thought that's what we'd already done. I mean, they can arrest individuals, but the plant is a living thing... and humans have cultivated and spread the seed for thousands of years. It would take a lot more than what they could ever throw at us to eradicate cannabis in all it's forms.

 

Oh, and I don't know how relevant this is, and whilst I'm not knocking his contribution, for some reason daweedking thinks ph adjustment has something to do with phosphorus levels.... weird that.

 

I think t-boat has hit the nail on the head here, we need to open up our use, but I do agree that there needs to be media support and leadership on the issue. Why is it so hard to found a single organisation which aims for australia wide reformation of drug laws. I know the greens have that as a policy, but there's so little co-ordination of resources between reform organisations in the country. We need national level drug summits, education has to be the key, debate the issue. As soon as people see what has been done to them they will quickly turn on those who did it. And I feel the time is right for a serious challenge to the U.S. imperialism on this issue. Let's face it, its not because we have research that says cannabis is harmful, or not useful, it's because zealots in the us and certain business and political interests decided to scapegoat the black and hispanic minorities in America in the early 20th century, and cannabis was a convenient patsy.... They used simple right wing rhetoric to sway the public into the single biggest waste of human resources in history. Think of all the money that's spent... wasted on the "war on drugs"... it's staggering... BILLIONS and billions of dollars.... all to persecute those who think a herb should not be illegal...

 

I don't pretend to have the be-all answers, I know that the issues are a lot more complex than what I've written here, but I feel that if we can at the least agree to sit down and talk, and have a realistic public debate.... then maybe we can acheive our goal, and free the weed.

 

We do need a leader, but they need to lead something.

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

We did have huge australian wide drug summits a couple years back ,and it looked very promising. But that was when the yanks stepped up pressure on us all, and all the actions were shelved as "suggestions" and nothing much has been done since. It was very exciting, each day you could read over the 'net, what went on at the summit, but it dwindled.

 

I know the greens are supposed to have great policies, but on the few occassions I contacted them as an organiser of this site, a couple years back again; they answered my requests for them to expound their policies, with retoric about it being illegal, and don't want to get involved. So who do you turn to?

 

I invited the HEMP Embasy, the greens, even labour, and a few others besides. I told them we had a decent membership, and with an upcoming (then) election, they had an interested audience to swing us to their vote.

 

Not one responded, not even HEMP.

 

It's been the hope of this site that someone might rise up from within this membership, and lead us all to exodus. Well that's a bit dramatic sounding, but when ozstoner first put this site together, we hoped some political activity might happen from the inertia of the site.

 

I haven't given up the hope, there's breath, there's hope. All we need is the right people, the right circumstances. We just have to keep being ready, and take any opportunities that come our way. We had hoped on doing some street work, but the old problem still exsists in this country, and itisn't laziness, or anything like that, it's just the expanse of the country. There might be quiet a few members, but we're strung across the country as a thin line.

 

Something will break through but.

 

cheers.

rob