By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board of Directors, medical marijuana patient.

The Rohrbachers, farming family feeding America since 1972.

It is said that almost everyone in the marijuana law reform movement has a seminal moment they can point to when their public activism started. My moment was in the fall, six years ago.

I’m a past president of our local Kiwanis Club. I’ve been a member for years; we meet for breakfast at 6:30am, every Wednesday morning. My fateful “activism moment” was meeting face-to-face with one morning’s Kiwanis Club program, our town’s newly acquired dope dog. Some rock-ribbed citizen had left money in his will for the city to buy a dope dog for our town of 3,000, in a county of 18,000 people. The dog’s handler and the police chief were up at the speaker’s table. I had to fight back the urge to turn around and run.

As I sat down at my usual spot, ordered breakfast and clipped on my Kiwanis Club nametag, my heart was just racing! Thank God, my neck pain had not been severe enough that morning that it had required some marijuana medication, because, I imagined, triggered by the smell of freshly consumed ganja, that huge German Shepard would have leaped from the podium to pin me down to the floor, the dog’s sharp white teeth snarling and snapping at my throat.

As we went through club business about our kid’s reading program, ate breakfast and conducted the normal chit-chat that makes Kiwanis Club so enjoyable, I slowly calmed myself. I had not been found out as a marijuana user, yet. There was no need for me to panic, because the likelihood that I would be found out now by this agent of the state, was growing smaller and smaller by the moment. But, as the primal fear drained away, it started to piss me off; this dope dog was invading my space.

The dog handler got up and spoke glowingly about his charge, the alpha male of his litter. This dog had been born of a long and impressive pedigree in Baden-something, formerly East Germany. Looking at me from across the room was the pride of the jack-booted police state, the purebred German Shepard—smart, vicious, relentless.

The dog handler went chirping on, to mostly nodding heads, about what a fantastic dog he had and how many pot busts he had already made with it. Suddenly, all I could think was: This dog was born in East Germany, it’s father could have pulled someone down off the Berlin Wall…this dog’s great-grandfather would have marched the Jews or Gypsies to the ovens at Buchenwald or Auschwitz… And now, my own little town had a new resident from the same police dog gene pool that serviced the two most brutal totalitarian regimes in the history of the mankind!

Scenes from my childhood of when German Shepards attacked the Civil Rights marchers at Selma floated before my eyes… This well-groomed dog was a tool of the modern police state in all its scariest manifestations. The more I thought about it, the madder and madder I got.

I paid my breakfast bill and left in the first wave. I drove back out to the ranch and fed our cows their daily ration of hay, all the while mulling over my close brush with the dope dog. By the time I got done with my chores and back to the house, I absolutely had to do something! I picked up my telephone and called NORML, and I volunteered for the fight that very day…our fight for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”

Marijuana prohibition is a corrupt and evil social institution, just like the Berlin Wall was. For generations both have been symbols of the ruthless and relentless oppression of the state. Then, one day, by the sheer weight of internal political rot and thousands of little hammers, the Berlin Wall came down, and it came down virtually overnight! Marijuana Prohibition is just as corrupt and evil as the Wall, and it, also, is rotting internally from seven decades of injustice. It, too, is ready for collapse.

Help NORML take down Marijuana Prohibition…throw down some cash, send out our warriors/winners of the NORML Pro-Pot Ad Campaign for a national cable advertising campaign for as little as $.08 per 30-second ad! Please help us roll public opinion past the tipping point to legalization. The time for us to strike is now! Marijuana issues are before two-dozen state legislatures, at this very moment, California just introduced the nation’s first bill to tax and regulate pot like alcohol! Cable ad pricing has never been better than it is at this moment. We’ve now got NORML’s awesome winning video ads…you’ve got a few bucks…let’s put ‘em together and cover America with NORML ads.

Get into the Fight! Help NORML kick electronic ass!

Examples of NORML cable TV buys:

-Cable Cannabis Blitz-

33,000, 30-second TV ads, broadcast 6AM-Midnight on cable packages during programming from ESPN, CNN, CNBC, Weather Channel, MSNBC, MTV, VH-1, BET, Animal Planet, E!, Bravo and 10 other major cable programmers for the cost of…$2,750…or approximately 8 cents/per ad! This ad package will reach an estimated 1.6 million households in 187 markets.

That is right! NORML can now purchase TV spots for only 8 cents.

-Women and Weed-

Approximately 1,500, 30-second TV ads, targeting women’s programming (Oxygen, Soap, Lifetime, Style, WE, etc…) for $1,200. This ad package will reach an estimated 27.5 million households in 90 major markets. What is the cost per ad in this package?

80 cents per TV ad!

-Men and Marijuana-

Approximately 2,600, 30-second TV ads, 27.5 million households targeting men’s programming (Comedy Central, ESPN, Speed, Versus, Sci-Fi, Golf Channel, etc…) for $4,900, which boils down to $1.88/per ad.

Get out your friggin’ wallets and purses people. Get in the fight and please help us!!! NOW!

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