jct74
04-02-2016, 08:35 PM
Hundreds Inhale Pot at Surreal White House Protest
President Obama was urged to take immediate action on marijuana reform as protesters lit up. All avoided arrest.
By Steven Nelson
April 2, 2016, at 7:32 p.m.
When the smoke cleared, nobody was arrested for participating in a large and blatantly illegal marijuana smoke-in outside the White House.
Attendees of the Saturday event, billed as “Reschedule 420” by the D.C. Cannabis Campaign, urged President Barack Obama to take action in his remaining months in office to reschedule marijuana -- to allow greater research into its medicinal value -- and to pardon jailed pot offenders.
Though many were willing to get arrested, it appeared that just two people, seemingly chosen at random from a smoke-filled crowd, were detained by police. One of them, Lauren Dove, who recently moved to the nation’s capital from Colorado, said both received $25 public consumption tickets.
Dove says the police, who were from the local Metropolitan Police Department, not the also on-site U.S. Secret Service or U.S. Park Police, emptied her ceramic bowl of marijuana, which she says they took as evidence. But they allowed her to keep the bowl.
A light-handed approach to protesters is characteristic of police in the nation’s capital, but Saturday’s restraint surprised attendees well-aware that nearly one million Americans are arrested every year for marijuana.
...
read more:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-02/hundreds-inhale-pot-at-surreal-white-house-protest
Cannabis Activists Get High In Front Of The White House In Dramatic Drug Law Protest
A “green energy” revolution?
Daniel Marans
04/02/2016 08:34 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of people who support marijuana legalization got high in front of the White House on Saturday in a demonstration aimed at getting cannabis removed from the federal government’s most serious category of illegal drugs.
The mass protest, led by DCMJ, a D.C.-based marijuana group whose activists could be spotted wearing distinctive red, smurf-like ski hats, called for President Barack Obama to take marijuana off the list of Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The federal government classification given to the “most dangerous drugs” lumps marijuana in with more serious drugs like heroin, bath salts and LSD, allowing it to be prosecuted aggressively.
At around 4:20 p.m. Eastern time, which was chosen because of the number 420’s association with weed, the protesters lit their joints, fired up their bowls and pulled on their vaporizers in unison with little disruption from the Secret Service or the local police. They even inflated a 51-foot plastic inflatable joint with the message “Obama, deschedule cannabis now” that was made by artists especially for the occasion.
Adam Eidinger, a founder of DCMJ and leader of the 2014 campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in the District of Columbia, said that law enforcement initially refused to let the massive inflatable joint into Lafayette Square Park, but they were able to circumvent them by smuggling it in deflated and inflating it in the park.
“Just like good stoners everywhere, we snuck in a 51-foot joint, past the Secret Service,” Eidinger joked.
...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-house-cannabis-protest_us_57005b38e4b083f5c607de1e
President Obama was urged to take immediate action on marijuana reform as protesters lit up. All avoided arrest.
By Steven Nelson
April 2, 2016, at 7:32 p.m.
When the smoke cleared, nobody was arrested for participating in a large and blatantly illegal marijuana smoke-in outside the White House.
Attendees of the Saturday event, billed as “Reschedule 420” by the D.C. Cannabis Campaign, urged President Barack Obama to take action in his remaining months in office to reschedule marijuana -- to allow greater research into its medicinal value -- and to pardon jailed pot offenders.
Though many were willing to get arrested, it appeared that just two people, seemingly chosen at random from a smoke-filled crowd, were detained by police. One of them, Lauren Dove, who recently moved to the nation’s capital from Colorado, said both received $25 public consumption tickets.
Dove says the police, who were from the local Metropolitan Police Department, not the also on-site U.S. Secret Service or U.S. Park Police, emptied her ceramic bowl of marijuana, which she says they took as evidence. But they allowed her to keep the bowl.
A light-handed approach to protesters is characteristic of police in the nation’s capital, but Saturday’s restraint surprised attendees well-aware that nearly one million Americans are arrested every year for marijuana.
...
read more:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-02/hundreds-inhale-pot-at-surreal-white-house-protest
Cannabis Activists Get High In Front Of The White House In Dramatic Drug Law Protest
A “green energy” revolution?
Daniel Marans
04/02/2016 08:34 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of people who support marijuana legalization got high in front of the White House on Saturday in a demonstration aimed at getting cannabis removed from the federal government’s most serious category of illegal drugs.
The mass protest, led by DCMJ, a D.C.-based marijuana group whose activists could be spotted wearing distinctive red, smurf-like ski hats, called for President Barack Obama to take marijuana off the list of Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The federal government classification given to the “most dangerous drugs” lumps marijuana in with more serious drugs like heroin, bath salts and LSD, allowing it to be prosecuted aggressively.
At around 4:20 p.m. Eastern time, which was chosen because of the number 420’s association with weed, the protesters lit their joints, fired up their bowls and pulled on their vaporizers in unison with little disruption from the Secret Service or the local police. They even inflated a 51-foot plastic inflatable joint with the message “Obama, deschedule cannabis now” that was made by artists especially for the occasion.
Adam Eidinger, a founder of DCMJ and leader of the 2014 campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in the District of Columbia, said that law enforcement initially refused to let the massive inflatable joint into Lafayette Square Park, but they were able to circumvent them by smuggling it in deflated and inflating it in the park.
“Just like good stoners everywhere, we snuck in a 51-foot joint, past the Secret Service,” Eidinger joked.
...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-house-cannabis-protest_us_57005b38e4b083f5c607de1e