cannabisnews.com: The Bong Show





The Bong Show
Posted by CN Staff on February 13, 2008 at 17:59:38 PT
By Dominic Holden
Source: The Stranger
Seattle, WA -- In the last decade, when pot-law reform advocates have faced off with the status quo on equal footing, pot reform has won. Initiative backers in a dozen states, for instance, have spent big bucks passing medical-marijuana measures despite fierce opposition from federal officials. Nevertheless, the adult recreational use of pot (as opposed to medical use) doesn't have majority support to pass in any state. Before voters will ever approve that sort of proposal, pot advocates must first change attitudes toward the drug by going toe to toe with the White House's multimillion-dollar antidrug media campaign.
The national ACLU has decided to fund a pilot effort. Beginning on Valentine's Day, television viewers in the Seattle media market will begin seeing a slick, 30-minute pot-reform infomercial.Hosted by television travel guru Rick Steves, Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation will initially be available on Comcast On Demand cable, says Alison Holcomb, director of the ACLU of Washington's Marijuana Education Project, which produced the show. Holcomb says the ACLU plans to spend at least $20,000 per week airing the program around the state. Three local network affiliates (KOMO, KING, and KIRO) have already received and approved copies of the script, she says. However, none of the station's advertising managers could be reached for comment. "We're working with the stations to figure out what times are available," Holcomb says. By the end of 2008, she expects the program to begin airing in more conservative regions, including Pierce County, Clark County, and greater Spokane."It's good to be in a corner of the country where we can test-market for this," said Steves at an advanced screening. The national ACLU, which opposes punitive marijuana laws they believe chip away at civil liberties, chose Washington because polls suggest reforming marijuana laws is most feasible here. (Disclosure: I used to work for the ACLU of Washington.)The program makes its case against pot prohibition by chronicling the racial hysteria behind the drug's criminalization in the 1930s and examining the impact of modern-day pot laws, under which about 800,000 people are arrested in the U.S. each year.The format—an infomercial with the requisite gregarious host and an audience that robotically claps on cue—is clearly geared to strike a chord with its target demographic: moms, a group traditionally wary of marijuana but proven to buy products sold on TV.But, to fit within cable and station programming guidelines, the show cannot advocate for any specific legal reforms. It must settle for encouraging viewers to start a discussion on the issue and prompting them to visit -- http://www.MarijuanaConversation.org -- for more information.The absence of overt advocacy actually makes the program compelling—it encourages the viewer to hang on and find out what he or she is supposed to do. Although, the potential for backlash does exist. When the program wraps up without defining its goals, moms may wonder what exactly the ACLU wants. Does the civil-liberties organization want to allow adults to smoke pot in the privacy of their bedrooms, or is this part of a nebulous liberalization agenda that would make drugs more available?Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen, the state's leading critic of drug-reform efforts, worries that the infomercial turns pot smokers into politically sympathetic characters. "When you start running ads and say, 'Golly, gee whiz, look at all the things happening to people who get [unfairly] arrested,' you start putting out a story saying there is no problem with marijuana," says Owen. These messages lower the perception of pot's harm, he adds, thus increasing the rate of marijuana use, especially by kids."The show doesn't encourage anyone to use marijuana," Holcomb responds. "This show acknowledges risks associated with heavy marijuana use, and no one is saying that marijuana use is a good thing.""The question we are positing is this: Is criminalizing marijuana use actually increasing public safety and decreasing health risks," Holcomb says, "or is it hurting us on both counts?" Note: Pot Legalization Goes Prime Time.Source: Stranger, The (Seattle, WA)Author: Dominic HoldenPublished: February 13, 2008Copyright: 2008 The StrangerEmail: editor thestranger.comWebsite: http://www.thestranger.com/CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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Comment #8 posted by museman on February 15, 2008 at 10:26:59 PT
no redeeming qualities
Every aspect of our government, our economic system, and every person who compromises the obvious truth with equally obvious BS (apparent to anyone with intelligence who bothers to look) is wrong. They are evil, even if every hair is in place and their appearance is immaculate. They are not to be trusted, even if they appear to make small concessions to dissent in order to keep their power.They are the scourge of health, sanity, and well-being on planet earth. They are the scum that rises to the top and cuts off the oxygen supply to all that is under them. They are the reason for war, destruction, and misery. It is their choices of power and manipulation, compromise and subterfuge, obfuscation and propaganda that is the ACTIVE source of error in the world.Every cop is a criminal until they surrender their badge and admit their evil. Every politician EVERY POLITICIAN serves the bank first, themselves second, the status quo third, and if there is anything left they throw it at the people like the king throwing pennies in a procession.This country, as it is, is doomed. They may be able to keep applying patches to the failure for a few years yet, especially when Americans continue to uphold the farce with their time, energy, and lives, but it is declining, leaning very far over, ready to fall flat with a much much louder crash than 911. I am absolutely tired of the consistent service to a failed state, the usurpation of natural reality by this contrived crap known as politics, law, and the status quo.So my 'opinion' can easily be deemed 'fanatical', easily dismissed by those who are comfortable in their little niche that has been provided for them by this sick, sick society, but guess what? My opinion can be dismissed, but the source, the truth of it, cannot. It is a rock upon which some of us stand, and all the wishy washy BS you can come up with will not affect that rock, or the outcome in any way.There is a wave, a movement happening that is very similar, and directly related to the spiritual awakening of the '60's, and it is not secular, exclusive, or dependent on any one set of ideas. What it is not is accepting any elements of the failed system it will ultimately replace. There is no room in that tomorrow for the suits and ties of this pretense of power and authority that seems to prevail today. Posession-the current emphasis, and overinflated values attached to it-is a childish error, compounded by social orders of feigned, false superiority, and funded by the very essence of 'lesser peoples' lives.The concrete, blacktop, steel and glass that poisons, kills, and replaces reality with the ancient pyramid of power is going to go away, and everyone who attaches themselves to it's false parameters, defends it and compromises truth for half-truth, is going to go away with it. The denials can be loud, they can be televised, they can be backed up by all the statistics that half-truth narrow-mindedness can selectively assemble from the data bases of beaurocracy, but no matter how many people vote for stupidity, it will not be real.America the state, has no redeeming qualities, and the land should be returned to the people. If the people need guidance as to how to live without the status quo, a little research into the ways of the original sovereign caretakers of this country reveals much.
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Comment #7 posted by augustwest on February 14, 2008 at 11:52:33 PT:
brad owen
"When you start running ads and say, 'Golly, gee whiz, look at all the things happening to people who get [unfairly] arrested,' you start putting out a story saying there is no problem with marijuana," 
No, you start a conversation, hence the title.
pohibs hate a rational intelligent conversation because it makes them look really bad. If I were a prohib I imagine I would have to be in denial also and wouldn't want to talk about it. It's time for everybody to get thier heads out of the sand. Maybe this will help.
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Comment #6 posted by museman on February 14, 2008 at 08:36:52 PT
ACLU
American Club (for) Lawyers (who are) Useless.These fair weather, followers of the status quo, serve money, not the people, and after years of their denying any kind of validity towards cannabis use, suddenly we are supposed to trust their seeming shift of loyalties?They are only there to keep the balance of law and economic power in place. Their entire system of values, quantitative judgements and 'law' is flawed beyond redemption, yet the foolish people continue to stroke the invisible weave of the emporers illusory cloth, and converse with each other on the intricacies of the fine colors they claim they can see.When the adversarial forces saw that Yashua's message would not die, they did what every politician has done since; "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," and we got xtianity at a horrendous price and cost of freedom, lives, right knowledge, and truth,...nearly a thousand years of spiritual and intellectuial darkness- that we are only now beginning to rise out of.Nearly every politician is a lawyer. Every practicing lawyer is upholding corruption as viable alternatives to common sense, logic, and reason.If we continue to let the lawyers decide and dictate the parameters of 'acceptable reality' reality will remain outside of our grasp, and the future will be even darker than the past- except for the elite, who will continue to thrive on the gullibility of the slave populace, and the peasant mentality.When are some people who aren't tied to the banks, the corporate feudal lords, and the contrived system of false values driving the juggernaught, going to step up and fill the places currently held by despots, gluttons, mongers, and downright evil humans? Well of course they can't. Unless they join the club. Or unless they deny the club it's false power by taking initiative in their local communities. Of course as long as the communities believe that there is no escape from the bondage of the false status quo, then there isn't. Mass education is the key of course, but compromised information carefully crafted to keep the current power elite in power, so that the people don't really get it together to govern themselves with logic, reason, and common sense, (the supposed original parameters of the US Constitution) is no answer at all, and if people continue give their power to these pretenders, change will be nothing more than whispered, fearful, hope of some distant future event we will never see.
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Comment #5 posted by ripit on February 14, 2008 at 07:30:08 PT:
i believe
this is exactly what we need. how can we get them to air this in my state?or even better nation wide?the more ppl who learn the truth the better! 
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Comment #4 posted by Yanxor on February 13, 2008 at 21:29:32 PT
LoL   lieutenant governor
Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen, the state's leading critic of drug-reform efforts, worries that the infomercial turns pot smokers into politically sympathetic characters. "When you start running ads and say, 'Golly, gee whiz, look at all the things happening to people who get [unfairly] arrested,' you start putting out a story saying there is no problem with marijuana," says Owen. These messages lower the perception of pot's harm, he adds, thus increasing the rate of marijuana use, especially by kids.Because we all know that pot smokers are not politically sympathetic characters - see Reefer Madness.Oh my, all those pot smokers getting arrested...its not like america has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Reefer Madness.These perceptions that its wrong to arrest people because they choose to use a reletively benign substance in the confines of their home cause Reefer Madness.Your kids will kill, crash and steal - and worst of all, there will be no ice cream in your fridge...reefer madness.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on February 13, 2008 at 20:39:59 PT
Related Article From The Associated Press
ACLU of Wash. Launches Marijuana Campaign _ With Rick StevesFebruary 13, 2008SEATTLE -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state is launching a new campaign to get people talking about changing marijuana laws, and it's enlisted travel writer Rick Steves in the effort.Steves filmed a 30-minute video for the ACLU, in which he says he has traveled all over Europe, and he's learned that it makes more sense to treat marijuana use as a public health issue than it does to arrest people for using it.The ACLU says it is trying to start a national conversation about whether American drug laws are working with regard to marijuana. The organization says nearly 830,000 people are arrested on marijuana charges every year - 90 percent of them for possession - and that the U.S. spends far more money arresting, prosecuting and jailing people than it's worth.Copyright: 2008 Associated Presshttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_aclu_marijuana.html
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Comment #2 posted by John Tyler on February 13, 2008 at 19:17:48 PT
another point of view
Sounds like a good idea to me. I would guess that most of people don’t know why cannabis was prohibited in the first place. They only hear one sided propaganda and never get a chance to hear another point of view, i.e. the truth.
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Comment #1 posted by runruff on February 13, 2008 at 19:02:18 PT:
Thank you FDA.
Just for being there and acting as a shill for the drug companies. LEOS can always point to you and say,"these guys are keeping America safe and they say cannabis is dangerous"!The FDA is currenty managed by Mr. Chicken Little.Here is another FDA approved drug:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23070759/ 
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