a lack of creative thinking and initiative among too many reform group leaders in taking advantage of the critical mass and new found momentum that is the topic of the essay. There seems no sense of grasping the immediacy of the momentum. Momentum continues only when fed. Momentum grows only increased initiative.

to this filibuster but there are simply too many things that I vehemently disagree with.

You have no concept of anything that I am talking about.

propose to legalize but the act of its introduction, I am sure, served to add momentum to this more favorable public opinion poll. As it added momentum to the movement across the country.

We need more actions like this across the nation.

And we have Obama to thank for pissing off reformers and getting them into a more activist mode.

Sen. Webb's S-714 could have reform of the entire drug war on the table by the next election cycle. If your senators support it write to them and thank them. If your senators don't yet support it badger, cudgel, browbeat and beg them to support it. The drug warriors are putting up their own bill to counter S-714 so the fight for ending the war on drugs is actually going on in the United States congress as we speak.

Write letters to newspapers. Participate in newspaper forums about drug related news stories. Get people together to hold street rallies at the offices of state and national legislators. And support only organizations that seem to grasp the momentum and are working with it instead of denying it.

I'll be dead of old age.

The momentum is there NOW.

vehemently disagree!

Party line to someone else. I am not a Democrat. I do not have to subscribe to their rock the boat submissive masochism.

concept of how public opinion moves. Or how democracy works.

You incessantly put the cart before the horse. Do nothing until the public opinion rises to the cause. that is both stupid and backassward.

Public opinion moves on instigation and inspiration. Motivations that are compelled by ever more visible support for something.

The reason that so many things are happening now is because reformers have been pushing the issue and forcing the Democrats to take stands. As Obama is pushed to take stands contrary to reform positions he inspires more support for reform. The louder reform is the more other politicians become conflicted between Obama's drug war crap and the growing public support.

The louder we get, the greater our show of support because more people are willing to stand up as they see larger and larger crowds.

You "claim" to not be Democrat but you are arguing a Democrat status quo position that I have heard for GENERATIONS. A status quo position that drove me out of the Democratic Party. And that is driving me away from the reform organizations of today that seem bent on following your DO NOTHING perspective.

tired of this conversation too. You have not read a word I have written. You simply repeat your tired status quo defensiveness.

Masturbation never won a revolution.

Is a majority, not a huge majority but it's still more than the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Obama. I think aahpat is right, and you are missing the point he's making.

I'm pro-choice on EVERYTHING!

Another part of this poll shows that Democrats in Congress have a 45% approval rating. the Republicans have a 30% approval rating. For the second time this year polls have come out showing that marijuana legalization is more popular than the United States Congress that prohibits the legalization of marijuana.

Get this fact into the media and the congress will turn around real fast.

Both the window of opportunity and the momentum are there and now. Not in another four years.

The Democrats are always promising reform during campaigns and then stalling, doing nothing until after the next campaign. I was a third generation Democrat. I got up with their endless stringing along bullshit back in 1996 after supporting the Democrats since the 1960's.

Fortunately, the state level NORML people are activists who are not co-opted by the Democrats like the national office appears to be.

is what will bring many status quo politicians over to reform. They perceive pot as costing society in problems. A revenue stream gives them something that they can believe will cover the costs that they fear.

Taxes are the bribe to the politician so that they know there will still be government union jobs to dole out.

Cannabis was criminalized many long years ago, prior to that it was neither legal nor illegal, it just was -- like tomatoes and carrots and basil and oregano. Returning cannabis to the position it had before it was criminalized would not be "legalizing" it, it would be "decriminalizing" it -- no fines, no confiscation, no laws governing cultivation, possession, use, or transfer.

The poster above is correct that the so-called "decriminalizing" that is going on here and there around the nation is not truly "decriminalizing" the plant.

I think it is important to know the real meaning of words and to use the correct words, otherwise confusion results, and so does bad law.

I'm pro-choice on EVERYTHING!

The polls follow the people. The people do not follow the polls.

Because there is an obvious increasing momentum the organizations should all be designing new more assertive campaigns to build on the momentum. To be doing otherwise is to throw a great opportunity out the window.

Then the congress should be eager to end the pot prohibition today.

The ABC News Washington Post poll placed pot legalization at 46% favorability. It placed the job favorability of the Democrats at 45% and the favorability of the GOP in congress at 30%.

Pot legalization is more favorable than the congress that prohibits pot legalization.

That is the poll that congress is looking at. It is the poll that we should be hammering into the media. We should be encouraged and inspired to greater action by such numbers to help people to make their decision. but noooo, your too busy kissing Democrat butt and telling reformers to wait... wait.... wait.......

The poll quoted says that 46% are opposed, as well as the 46% for the legalization. I know a heck of a lot of "old people" who are closet smokers. I would say that the poll shows that the majority is NOT against it, if you include the "don't now" on the support side. There is presently, according the the poll mentioned, NO MAJORITY on either side of the issue! What I see is now a deadlock,destined to soon change us, supporters to the majority of the voters!

First you start stalking me and harassing me for my advocacy of public protest tactics that I firmly believe will take advantage of and increase the momentum that reform has.

Now you ask what I want to do as if that has never been the starting point of this argument.

You are confused. You have no idea what I are talking about yet you attack and criticize me incessantly.

Thanks for proving what I have been saying, that you do not even read my posts you simplistically react to phrases and the occasional sentence but you really know NOTHING about what I advocate.

I think your only real objective is to pick fights with the people on these forums who appear to be trying hard to promote and escalation of reform. You just want to distract reformers from their advocacy. Make reformers less effective.

Leave me alone! I'll waste no more time on your provocations and distractions.

This month a Washington Post ABC News poll reported:

In general, do you favor or oppose legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use?

4/24/09
Favor 46
Oppose 52
No opinion 2 (margin +/-3%)

A Rassmusen poll earlier this year
"40% say it should be, while 46% disagree. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure which course is better." (margin +/-3%)

In the more recent poll the 52% opposed is weak with 2% no opinion and a 3% margin. The 14% undecided added to the 3% margin in the Rasmussen poll makes the difference of 40% for to 46 opposed trivial.

But the important point is that it is people and their political actions that help convince other people to decide and/or change their opinions. You don't sit and wait for opinion to swing around to your favor. That is stupid.

Public opinion is swinging to reform this year BECAUSE of all of the negative action from Obama combined with the increased war on the border. The momentum is increasing and that is something that advocates should take advantage of and nurture.

Public opinion is escalating against the war as the war escalates on all of its fronts. Mexico, Afghanistan and soon the streets of America. You want to sit on your thumb. I want to be out in the streets encouraging more people to express their opposition.

Its the squeaky wheel that gets the grease in American politics. NORML saw this when Obama sneered at reform. donations to them went through the roof afterward.

You do not know what you are talking about and perspectives like yours are going to cost reform a major opportunity to springboard the issue forward.

For the record. I am not talking about marijuana reform. I oppose the war on drugs. You ignore most of what I write because of your myopic pot only perspective. You cast yourself as being as much an enemy of mine as any drug warrior is.

What if one was bleeding to death in an ER from a major trauma? would you want to get all the x-rays done and permits signed before initiating treatment? Procrastination could be fatal! What if you substitute cancer for pot legalization? Would you want to wait to treat the cancer? Would you consult ten cancer specialists, to find the majority, before making a decision, taking months to do so? Or, would you go after the problem, head on, when the diagnosis was certain. It would make a difference in one's survival, so far as what decision one should make on one's road to treatment and cure. Should the doctors sit on their thumbs? That is what the present state of affairs is. It is a cancer eating at the fabric of our society. It is destroying, college kids' lives, all the while claiming to "protect the children". We should be actively educating the "I don't knows" until we are well over 50%! Waiting for a change in the polls, "for a couple of years" is not an option. Although I, sometimes, perceive aahpat as a "wild" radical I cannot disagree on this thought!

What is prohibition really doing "for the children"?

Kids get drugs at school just as easy as prisoners get them in prisons! The entire system has failed to protect the children at all! If you expect to decrease the availability of drugs to kids, you are going to have to change the present system. Right now, we have kids getting drugs, at an age where they have no sense of responsibility. I feel it is all because the kids are being victimized by a prohibition system that encourages drug dealers, who don't card, to sell to any age kid they want. Legalization and regulation would likely have a much larger positive effect on preventing childhood drug use, than the present system Look at alcohol and cigarettes. They have been decreased in availability to children because of regulation. Continue the drug prohibition and the dealers' reign and we have more kids exposed to the drugs every day! Prohibitionists are, indirectly, supporting the dealers and the drug sales to their own kids! I guess they don't' think too much of what they are really doing "for the children".

And every day that the reform movement does not do its utmost to change this policy is another day that children are exposed to more drugs and crime. Today. In real time. Not in a few years. Not when a majority agree. Today.

I have an index card that I hand out to people with the following argument on it.

In the War on Drugs: Addict dealers and gangsters don’t ‘just say no' when children come seeking drugs.

Legalized and regulated drug distribution would put responsible adult supervision in control of drug sales. Responsible licensed adults who, unlike the addict dealers and gangsters of prohibition, would “just say no” when curious children seek to buy.

when I ask drug warriors to justify their position versus the following guarantees:

"...in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.."

The drug war certainly does NOT establish justice.

The drug war does anything but insure domestic tranquility.

The drug war support our enemies to the detriment of our common defense.

The war on drugs significantly harms the general welfare.

And what the drug war does to the rule of law that secures the blessing of liberty is nothing short of rape.