Letter to Senator Norm Coleman (R, MN)

AlterNet: Senator, You Used to Be a Pot Head -- Now You're Talking Like a Narc

Editor's Note: The following is a letter addressed to Minnesota Republican
Senator Norm Coleman -- a strong advocate of the brutal federal drug laws on the
books -- reminding him that he used to be a happy, safe, fun-loving pot smoker.

My friend Norman,
Years ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of
marijuana. Years ago, in our dorm rooms at Hofstra University, you, me, Billy,
your future brother-in-law, Ivan, Jonathan, Peter, Janet, Nancy and a wealth of
other students smoked dope.
Sure, we had to tape the doors shut, burn incense and open the windows, but we
got high, and yet we grew up okay, without the help of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy's advice.
We grew up to become lawyers. Our other friends, as you go down the list, are
doctors, professors, parents, political consultants and professionals. No one
ever got cancer from smoking pot or diabetes from using a joint. And the days of
our youth we look back fondly upon as years where we stood up, were counted and
made a difference, from Earth Day in 1970 to helping bring down a president and
end a war in Southeast Asia a few years later. We smoked pot when we took over
Weller Hall to protest administrative abuses of students' rights. You smoked pot
as you stood on the roof of the University Senate protesting faculty
exclusivity. As the President of the Student Senate in 1969, you condemned the
raid by Nassau County police on our dormitories, busting scores of students for
pot possession.
You never said then that pot was dangerous. What was scary then, and is as
frightening now, is when national leaders become voices of hypocrisy, harbingers
of the status quo, and protect their own position instead of the public good.
Welcome to the crowd of those who have become a likeness of which they despised.
Welcome to the mindless myriad of legislators who gather in cocktail lounges to
manhandle their martinis while passing laws against drunk driving.
We have seen more people die last year from spinach then pot. We have endured
generations of drug addicts overdosing on a multitude of drugs, from heroin to
crystal methamphetamine. In your public life, as an attorney general, mayor and
United States senator, you have been in the forefront of speaking out against
abuses which are harmful. You have been a noble and honorable public servant.
How about not being such a dope on dope?
How about admitting that if the Rockefeller drug laws were applied to Norman
Bruce Coleman on Long Island in 1968, or to me, or to our friends, and fellow
students, you, I and others we knew and loved might just be getting out of jail
now? How about recognizing that for too long too many have been wrongly
arrested, unjustly prosecuted and illegally incarcerated for unconscionable
periods of time?
How about recognizing that you have peers who have smoked pot for 25 years or
more and they are successful record producers, businessmen and parents?
How about standing up and saying you have heard and witnessed countless stories
of persons who have used pot medicinally, as I have, to endure the effects of
chemotherapy?
You who have travelled to Africa and seen the face of AIDS so up close and
personal would deny medicinal marijuana relief to those souls wasting away from
malnutrition, nausea and no access to fundamental medicines?
How about not adopting the sad and sorry archaic path of our office of drug
control, which this week suggested pot smokers are more likely to become gang
members than others?
How about standing up and saying: "I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969." That "I
am not a gang member, a drug addict or a criminal."
How about saying: "I was able to responsibly integrate my prior pot use into my
life, and still succeed on my own merits."
How about standing up not only for who you are, but who you were?
How about it, Norm?
I will always love, admire and cherish what you have achieved and accomplished
and the goals you have met. I will always fondly look at the remarkable success
of your present.
How about you looking back at your past and saying: "What I did was not so wrong
and not so bad and not so hurtful that generations of Americans should still,
decades later, be going to jail for smoking pot -- nearly one million arrests
for possession last year."
Can't Norm Coleman come out of the closet in 2007 and say "These arrests are
wrong -- that there is a better way, and we need to find it."
You might find more integrity and honor in that then adopting the sad and sorry
policy of our Office of National Drug Control Policy.
You might find the person you were.
Norm Kent


Norm Kent is an attorney based in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, who specializes in
criminal defense and appeals, media law and First Amendment issues. He serves on
the Board of Directors for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws.

Let's see how many copies of this can make it to his mail box?? What more can I add?
Doctor G

Already sent:thumbsup: see the internet works, you tell 10 people they in turn will tell another ten...well its should work like that