Toad Hall: Drug Policy Reform resources

Support Ed Rosenthal and medical marijuana patients!

"Drug prisoners are the Japanese-Americans of the War on Drugs."

In World War II, the United States imprisoned thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent, simply because of their Japanese heritage. In the drug war, the United States is currently imprisoning more than a million citizens, solely because they choose to alter their own or their customers' state of mind with physical substances. This policy not only violates common sense, but also violates the freedom of thought that underlies all of our basic freedoms, such as free speech, press, religion, association, and democratic voting.

I believe that within fifty years we will stand shamed, in our own opinion and in world opinion, for this travesty of justice and civil rights. We will offer recompense to our citizens unjustly deprived of their liberties due to this spasm of paranoia. Whether we can ever repair the Bill of Rights, or restore public trust in honest government, is a much harder problem.

  • Decision denying preliminary injunction to Angel McClary Raich and Diane Monson
  • DEA's Feb 2002 attack on medical marijuana
  • My opinion of a better way to handle drugs.
  • Amicus brief of Pebbles Trippet in the Supreme Court case of the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Club
  • Plain Text version of Amicus brief of Pebbles Trippet
  • OCBC's brief in the 9th Circuit following their loss in the Supreme Court. It argues that the federal drug laws cannot constitutionally be applied to deny intrastate medical care to individuals, largely because that's a state, not federal, power.
  • John Gilmore's comments on the Emergency Re-Sentencing of Ecstacy
  • Legal documents from NORML court cases, scanned in for easier public access

    • Some of my favorite Drug Policy Reform Organizations

    This is only a partial list of the many worthwhile drug policy reform organizations. I wholeheartedly recommend that you give your charitable donations, your volunteer time, and/or your support to any of these good folks. They all have interesting web sites, too, which will lead you to further understanding of the problems and potential solutions posed by the illegality of drugs.
  • American Civil Liberties Union. One of the premier civil rights groups in America, which has a serious drug policy reform effort aimed at upholding civil rights and reducing the harms caused by making war on drug users.
  • Americans for Safe Access seeks to provide medical patients with safe access to medical marijuana, when and as recommended by their doctors.
  • Angel Wings Patient OutReach seeks to protect medical patients who have a legal right to use marijuana to alleviate their medical conditions. Its founder, Angel McClary Raich, is suing the Federal Government over their raids on medical marijuana patients and providers -- and winning.
  • California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (CA-NORML). Reforming California's marijuana laws.
  • Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. Preserving the integrity of the mind, despite government attempts to control what modes of thought are available to all of us. Educating the public. Fighting in the courts for freedom of thought.
  • Change the Climate. Advertising to make people think about what's wrong with the drug war.
  • Civil Liberties Monitoring Project watches over civil rights and law enforcement abuses in Humboldt County, California, one of the major fronts for federal, state, and local harassment of locals and visitors under the antidrug laws.
  • DanceSafe. Saving lives and educating ravers about Ecstacy and other drugs.
  • Drug Reform Coordination Network, a national network of more than 21,000 activists and concerned citizens. Also sponsoring international conferences on drug policy reform in Europe and Latin America.
  • Drug Policy Alliance. Working on all frontiers of drug policy reform. Reducing the combined harms caused by drugs and by the laws against drugs.
  • Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund. Legal aid and public relations for rave promoters and club owners, The cops are trying to imprison and seize the property of clubs, promoters, and landlords, merely for holding events or renting out spaces where other people come and take drugs.
  • Erowid. A vast library of educational information "Documenting the Complex Relationship between Humans and Psychoactives". Continually updated with the latest information, including personal experience stories and scientific results.
  • Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Ending the system that prevents judges from having the discretion to serve justice, while giving politicians incentives to grandstand at public expense.
  • Green Aid. Defending medical marijuana patients, growers, and dispensaries. Particularly from attacks by uniformed thugs of the US Federal Government.
  • Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. "Ideas Defining a Free Society." A conservative organization whose top opinion leaders, Milton Friedman and George Schultz, both support serious reform of drug policy.
  • We're Jeff and Tracy. We're your good neighbors. We're Republicans. We smoke pot.
  • Libertarian Party. The political party for people who don't want to run other peoples' lives.
  • Media Awareness Project. Media coverage of drug-related events. A hundred thousand press clippings and links to newspaper stories, all relating to illegal drugs.
  • Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse. Drug policy reform the way Mama would've done it.
  • Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Real medical research with psychedelics and marijuana. FDA-approved clinical trials for AIDS, nausea, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Helping doctors successfully navigate the maze of Federal bureacracy that's designed to prevent medical research with certain substances.
  • Marijuana Policy Project works to minimize the harm associated with marijuana -- both the consumption of marijuana, and the laws that are intended to prohibit such use. MPP believes that the greatest harm associated with marijuana is prison.
  • NarcoNews. Uncensored news from Mexico and Latin America about what's happening in the Drug War from the local Latino point of view. Translated into English and Spanish.
  • National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Legal reform of marijuana policy. See some of the legal documents they've generated.
  • November Coalition is educating the public about the destructive increase in prison population in the United States due to our current drug laws.
  • Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative makes medical marijuana available to patients who qualify under California's Compassionate Use Act, and fights the US federal government as it tries to restrain or imprison patients and their caregivers.
  • ReconsiDer. Speaking all over New York State about alternatives to the war on drugs. Looking for a speaker for your local university, church, Rotary, or other group?
  • Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. Students working on drug policy reforms that affect college and high school students, including scholarship denial, Federally coerced punitive campus policies, urine testing, replacing the useless DARE training, fatuous distinctions between alcohol and other "drugs", and Plan Colombia. Chapters on campuses all over.
  • Unitarian Universalists for Drug Policy Reform. One of the more forward-thinking religious denominations has adopted a statement of conscience opposing the drug war. Find out why.