Madison & Dane County have basically been doing this for decades. The new policy makes it official.

In fact, the 30th anniversary of the passage by Madison voters of Madison Ord. 23.20 is this April 5. Ord. 23.20 is the second oldest decrim ordinance in the US, as well as the oldest mmj law in the world still on on the books.

Madison NORML is having a celebration and commemoration of this historic date on April 5, 2007.

For more on this and other WI cannabis news, visit the Madison NORML website and blog at www.madisonnorml.org.

Gary Storck
Madisonm NORML/IMMLY

Excellent. Madison has always surprised me with its liberalness towards marijuana - it's the "Berkeley of the Midwest" in more than one way.

I think the strongest piece of Blanchard's statement is "I think we have a much larger alcohol problem than we have a marijuana problem." Madison is an alcoholic city - it is not perceived as a problem, because alcohol is socially acceptable, but it is an enormous problem.

Still, I hope we can eventually come to address adress alcohol, heroin, crack, and marijuana abuse as personal ills that require treatment, not jail time.

Don't get too excited about Madison. This is a budgetary matter - not a moral one. And let's not forget that three years runnning Madison threw a massive halloween party with about 80,000 of its closest friends. The city's response to this was to lock down the city with stadium lights, tear gas, cops on horseback - altogether about $250,000 worth of tax money.

Kids would take to the streets as the barrels dried up at the house parties and the bars closed at 2. All they had to do was let the bars stay open until 4 or 5 (I live in chicago now - the 4 o clock bars fill up at 2 and are mostly clear by 3:30. That would have brought MORE money in to the tax base via the bars. But the city decided they would spend a massive amount of taxpayer money killing people's hampsters (yes that happened) with massive amounts of tear gas that infiltrated building's ventilation systems.

Not to mention the proliferation of crooked and aggressive cops in Madison that have nothing to stimluate their hunger for oppression in such a moneyed and liberal city so they make a habit of warrentless searches and treating simple graffitti cases like CSI Miami.

Madison has rampant homelessness, 3 police departments to serve ONE downtown area, a party line about "diversity" with just as much segragation as any other city in the USA, a mayoral conference where corporations make undemocratic bids to the nation's mayors without any press coverage or checks and balances, oppressive police response to assembly, the list goes on.

In chicago the gang task forces would let me go at the drop of a dime (no pun intended) with a bag of weed in my pocket for the same reasons the DA's office in Madison is just beginning to wake up and realize they don't have the resources to prosecute Marijuana offenses anymore. It's becoming a big city up there. With big city problems like rapists in the streets, people getting jumped walking home because someone's trying to get in to a gang, heroin and crack epidemics, and all of the social ills that come with social stratification. Madison is no Berkley. It's a city with a Big Ten school known for partying and all of the "alternative" ideas that come with a proliferation of drug culture. The implementation is as lacking in Madison as anywhere else.

Oh yeah. I know some people through people of people etc. This gentleman was busted with about $100,000 and something like 100 lbs. of pot in madison. His friends sold him out. He's still in prison. And his lawyer who comes highly recommended by Madison NORML is recommending that he narc out some more people to get himself out of prison in a timely fashion. So much for a hardlined response to the drug war.

Madison NORML was founded in 2004. I am unaware of the episode you claim happened with your friend and his attorney. Sounds like you are grouching about something that happened years ago. Let it go!

100 pounds will get you a long time in jail just about anywhere, and the best atty., NORML or not, usually is not going to be of much help. In general though, Madison is an oasis of sanity when it comes to marijuana prohibition.

37th Annual Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival is October 6 & 7, 2007 in Madison!
http://www.myspace.com/madisonhempfest

i'll find some flame in mad city. this dro is insane no joke. oregon's notorious weight pushers are supply of madison, stoughton, verona, and mcfarland. dro get grown.

i hope that if your a madison cop reading this that you burn in hell,you all are a bunch of pricks and i hate this city,iv lived here for 20 years and i can say with pride madison cops are scumbags with hate filled ballons for brains,fuck off pricks

Born and bred in Stoughton, WI and been smoking since i was 12. No tickets no hassle. We regularly would cruise around the good old country roads when we were kids until we realized that if we cruised around in town (especially after gas got expensive) that no one really cared, short of puffing a blunt next to a cop car. I went to school in Milwaukee and when we were driving back to stoughton on the interstate we would count the miles until we were back in dane county and bust out the pipe and light up. Although i would have to disagree on where it comes from (not Chicago either), i have never had to smoke shwag because there has always been dro. I am spoiled.

medical bliss in CA. legalized and fightin the DEA. dispenseries all over the state. please USA join the sensibility and decriminalize us all. liberty and tokes for all