ellison for medical marijuana new jersey the mission of our organization is to educate the public about the benefits of marijuana marijuana is a safe active and inexpensive therapeutic agents for a wide variety of diseases symptoms and condition no patient should suffer needlessly without it and no patient should ever go to jail for following the advice of a doctor joining us and learn more about the exciting science of medical marijuana welcome to say a moment j t v m can waltz executive director of the coalition for medical marijuana new jersey i'm here in the princeton community t v studios today with a board one of the pioneers of drug policy reform on the internet dave thank you so much for coming thanks for inviting me can so dave your adults had had internet that but it was a commercial early days of the commercial internet and it was an invasive thing to do at that time organizing and we were the first concerted effort on line to get the movement organized and communicating it was around the same time that the surgeon general the first surgeon general in the bill clinton administration joycelyn elders had made a remark actually just responding to a question saying that drug legalization is something that should be studied might reduce crime and she wasn't sure what the ramifications where and she took a great deal of heat for that it was arguably the beginning of the end of her tenure as surgeon general although a few other things happened but i thought it was time to jump in and step things up that's great  referring to drug legalization in general or just marijuana legalization at the time the question was about drug legalization in general that she has state support and this lantern name to some efforts relating  to certainly the merong legalization since that time she supported syringe exchange efforts and you actually started with the it was called the drug dealer seen that drug reform coordination network and now it's called stop the drug war debt or most of the credit and fails pay not staff since two thousand i was going to ask you how big a staff you have your base in washington d c where we're based in washington and we have just two of us on staff right now and  and probably moving into the students for sensible drug policy office actually and fill works remotely most of the time from california and you were instrumental in starting us probably are aware that there's a lot that takes financial aid for college away from students because of drug convictions it's a federal law it's been narrowed that was one of  victories of the campaign that it's currently they made it to people who are in school at the time of their drug convictions it's not always a permanent ineligibility it can be a year or two years or indefinite depending on what types of convictions and how many it almost got scaled back again in two thousand and ten the house actually passed language to limit it to sales convictions but that got stripped out and never taken up by the senate to to the congressional chocking on the health care reform law and the student aid package that this was part of they got combined when the democrats are trying to pass both and the section that this reform was part of doesn't fit there's actually a bill now in the senate co sponsored by orrin hatch of all people to completely me about twenty years to figure out if there's a connection between all these things and i'll tell you what i've come up with that and maybe there will be some viewer feedback whether it really works or not  a science background i'm able to set aside popular assumptions and the emotional impact that some issues have and at least try to think about issues based on facts and  that's terrific absolutely terrific but what happened in terms of my life is i had just been feeling for a while that i wanted to do something to save the world like a lot of us feel like  and not the earliest ones but fairly early ones and people signed up for a list and had the makings became an organization and funding happened to become available in the issue a short time later well i think it's certainly to me it's to me it's the central issue in america today is our drug policy and and how much harm it does not only to individuals but to societies in general and i think even when when a drug offense is and see direct cause of that it it's a real contributor at so many stages there providing  financial economic reason for people to get involved in crime as you pointed out and you know too when people have that point on their record contract or laws that require incarceration or that influence judges negatively or that just make it hard to get other jobs because i have a record that may be the most widespread impact of things  right so i see here in your report you refused to report for jury service as a protest of the drug war you know we've been encouraging people to report to jury service in terms we should be sparing as we can in terms of involving people in the criminal justice system whatever one thinks gun policy should be in a larger sense and so the prosecutor and the judge  particularly wanted to know what i strictly follow the law and and if the facts say this person possessed a gun illegally in the district even if it was just in his car trunk  whatever i thought where is he even if i thought he just carried that to protect himself if he needed it what i bought strictly with the law to convict regardless of my views and i had to tell them  you know i need to see the full set of fasts of a case before i really know can know what is right and they asked the same thing about twelve different ways not using the word going to put me on a jury i didn't think it was likely and it just seemed like going through the motions nonsense and you know i dislike what the criminal justice system is a do i not not everything by any means but much of it so i decided to make a statement and you know in my open letter to the chief judge rufus caring whose father was one of the early great drug reform activists rufus king jr who i knew i made up my critique of the justice system advocate for that and so it's and david gardner our associate director at the time he's he's one of the operators of the handful of medical marijuana dispensaries in the so it transpired over a long period of time the judicial system and civil system in this case and so we were called before judge what he did was he and this was a friday he gave us until monday to comply with this order at which point he said that we would each be subject to a one hundred dollar fine print day each day that we held out as long for as long as we did now he also signaled to our attorney a pro bono very good  kind of secret code that they communicate use to communicate things like that with each other and so two weeks later we went back and our attorney  proposed that as an alternative to jury service that we each do some community service for in a number of hours that would be sufficient to deter other people from using at the time and we did that for a couple of weeks but it was a very positive experience being there but eight hours a week when you're busy your own didn't get through the selection process for a jury either then and then i moved to maryland a couple of years later and i got a jury summons from d c they didn't have that information so i sent a final letter to judge king telling him that i i would have to create a report this time but the idea was to maryland one more thing that i got an email from ed fortune at the  time who was less concerned because as you pointed out we want people to get on juries and i wrote back explained what we were doing how my situation was unique and we got an article in situation and outweighed the other concern was adam i think or was he was was he part of your organization at one time and him as a close ally and partner he's employed by th follow so many issues tell me about some of the big drug policy reform issues that are going on right here in america now i see in new england there are some very exciting things happening a lot of several states are discussing legalization of marijuana correct that's correct and in fact that vermont senate is the first state legislative chamber in the united states to pass a legalization and so hopefully that through the house and be signed by the governor the governor supporting it i don't know the details of where that that's that rhode island rhode island is a good candidate for the statehouse route claim that the notary's signature on that did not match the signature they have on file which i haven't looked at the signatures i've heard that they do look pretty similar and that's being contest  state officials overturned it really sounds like a wrongful decision coffee at that i haven't looked at documents or details myself what we don't know is whether the  california right now i think it looks good i mean there's a lot of money that needs to go into this to do it right it sounds like the money's likely there are there's a coalition of  and we've heard the figure twenty million throw it out for its budget it sounds like a lot but california is a very expensive large state and i think it looks pretty good course  the most brutal parts of our drug policy and where we're at a time that which the politics have more or less reversed from what i first got into this after the last congressional and fourteen there was a whole set of articles you could find saying that one of the few issues if not the only issue that the two parties in congress  could be able to come together on into something is sentencing reform and there are a number of bills one in particular they go through everything we'd like by any means but  support in both chambers now in the senate there are some regressive republicans who are opposing this and slowing it down and we hope they won't succeed in blocking it there are other republicans who  because he says because he doesn't have a united caucus and we think that's wrong and that he should allow this to move forward and people to vote up or down so there's  resistance but also rather strong bipartisan support for moving forward you know on the first steps toward sentencing reform it's great doing away with some of the mandatory minimums i suppose and yeah at least t it's the highest level u n drug policy meeting in almost twenty years and we've been working on this since two thousand and fourteen organized a primarily u s coalition to press for some good policy countries from adopting medical laws and secondly the three un track conventions which have treaty language that's problematic not necessarily for medical but for legalization and we want to see the u n take up the treaty reform and the u s to champion that this year is on gas was something that happened later at the request of colombia mexico and guatemala when you talk about changes in new directions for drug policy what's happening in twenty nineteen has been specified for the agenda since two thousand and nine it's a review of a declaration and strategy that the u n adopted in two thousand and nine so beyond the sun gas you know if we don't get what we want and you know we always knew it would be hard this year we're  a new three year timetable to influence things for the next un session at that level now that we're waiting three years there are major annual sessions of a body called the commission on their conduct drugs a subset of the u n member states that sets international drug policy or does work on it and they're small their meetings throughout the year and then we want to get more u n agencies and the u s agencies involved in global drug policy or more involved we'd like to see the standing of you know say una adds the u n office of the high commission on human rights human development  policy we'd like to see even more of that we'd like to see the decision making diversified a part of a set of agencies working with equal  as the enemy thank you so much for coming to see him and for more information about the coalition for medical marijuana new jersey join us at our free public meetings on the second tuesday of every month at the lawrence township library in mercer county new jersey from seven to nine p m snacks are served and or welcome every forty two seconds someone is arrested for marijuana might be one every forty two seconds somebody is arrested every forty two seconds someone is arrested for marijuana could be you