Pubdate: Fri, 03 May 2002
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2002 Independent Media Institute
Contact:  http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Don Hazen, Executive Editor

MAHER URGES CROWD AT NORML CONVENTION TO TRY AND KILL HIM

Speaking at the annual NORML Convention at the downtown Crown Plaza Hotel 
in San Francisco, talk-show celebrity Bill Maher told an appreciative crowd 
that "the only way marijuana will be legalized is if it becomes a killer 
like cigarettes, alcohol, or incompetent doctors." Maher's point obviously 
is that unlike other legal substances, marijuana never killed.

Although Maher was kidding about getting himself killed, he was dead 
serious on the topic of drug reform.

He admonished the crowd to get practical and operate in the real world. 
"We're in a war," he said, "and it's not like the war on terrorism where 
you win just by putting a flag on your car." He reminded people that the 
world has changed and our methods must change with it: " We have to devise 
tactics to make people benefit or think they benefit from drug reform.

We have to put a human face on this campaign.

Long gone is the time when people did things because they are right," Maher 
suggested that votes and money are the only incentives likely to motivate 
policymakers and elected officials to change the laws.

The overwhelming irrationality of a drug war that targets someone whose 
only crime is smoking a joint continues to astound many Americans, who 
disagree with the policy.

But according to Maher, they remain a huge, mostly silent majority. 
Unfortunately, the toll of pot-smoking victims continues to mount. There 
are currently more than half a million people in American jails because of 
drug possession, most of them for pot-related offenses.

In New york, the Guiliani Administration arrested 50,000 pot smokers 
annually -- a humongous 2500% increase from the period under the previous 
Dinkins administration when the annual total was around 2,000.

All that would change if Bill Maher gets his way. The fiesty, whippet-like 
Maher is perhaps the most visible advocate of drug policy sanity, and pot 
decriminalization in the U.S. "We suffer from complacency.we ignore and or 
deny the people who are in jail," he said. "Those half a million (arrested) 
for drug possession -- if that were a disease it would be an epidemic.

And these people aren't even foreigners, they are Americans who are in 
jail. We should be intolerant of this injustice," Maher railed. "I want to 
see more anger. We shouldn't have to crawl into alleyways to smoke a joint.

It is the triumph of the few and the ignorant.

I'm tired of being treated as a criminal and a second class citizen," he said.

Maher offered some strategies for possible success: "We should pursue this 
as a case of equal protection. I'm not kidding.

Equal protection -- there needs to be equal protection with the guy who 
drinks six scotches ... Maybe we need to call pot a religion -- the 
Catholics get away with fucking kids and no cop knocked on the door of the 
rectory, all because it's a religion."

Maher's performance at NORML gave the audience some insights into why his 
endangered TV show Politically Incorrect is a lightening rod. The Masher 
hopes Maher will stay on the tube because his voice is truly unique in our 
political culture.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens