Marijuana – by Keith StroupI’m sometimes asked how a midwestern farm-boy ended up starting a marijuana smokers’ lobby. I had been raised in the 1950s in southern Illinois by southern Baptist parents, and there was nothing in that environment that would cause one to challenge authority or attempt to change the prevailing cultural values.
But then came the Vietnam war. Like many young men of my generation who came of age during that war, I had been radicalized by the war, or more specifically, by the threat of being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam, a war few of us understood and even fewer wanted to die for (58,000 Americans eventually died in Vietnam). My primary focus at the time was avoiding the war in any way possible – a “draft dodger” was the derogatory term used for those of us who did not wish to serve.
Back then, before the draft lottery had even been established, all young men, by the time they were 18 years of age, were required to register for the draft, and unless they were a full-time student, were promptly inducted. So many of us stayed in school for as long as possible, but we remained subject to the draft until we turned 27 years of age. So when I graduated law school in 1968 at 25, I immediately received my draft notice, passed my physical, and was only two weeks away from my report date, when, with the help of some dedicated lawyers working with the National Lawyers’ Guild, I managed to get what was called a critical-skills deferment, that allowed me to spend my two years working at a presidential commission in Washington, DC, instead of getting shot in Vietnam.
The commission was called the National Commission on Product Safety, and it had been created by Congress, largely as a result of the work of Ralph Nader, a public-interest lawyer who had earlier published an influencial book entitled Unsafe At Any Speed, documenting the many safety problems associated with the Chevrolet Corvair, that had resulted in an alarming number of accidents and fatalities. Nader subsequently expanded his work to focus on identifying all unsafe consumer products, culminating in the product safety commission
At the time, the American public did not know they could direct their complaints about unsafe products to the new product safety commission, but they were by then aware of Ralph Nader and they were flooding his offices each week with hundreds of letters identifying unsafe products. At the commission, we would stop by Nader’s office a couple of times each week to read his mail, so we could identify unsafe products that we could focus attention on with public hearings, thereby increasing the interest in Congress about tightening up some of the safety requirements (e.g., dangerous baby cribs; exploding soft drink bottles, etc.).
In addition, Nader had started bringing in groups of four or five graduate students each year, mostly recent law graduates, who devoted a few years of their lives to the cause of advancing product safety. They were generally called “Nader’s Raiders” in the press, a name that helped position them as brave crusaders willing to take on the establishment, both corporate and government. Because of my frequent visits to the Nader offices, I soon became friends with several of the first two groups of Raiders and was impressed with their willingness to spend a few years of their lives trying to impact public policy, instead of just trying to make money.
At the end of those two years (the commission expired after two years; and by then I was 27 years old and could no longer be drafted), I was captivated by the concept of public-interest law – using one’s law degree to try to impact public policy, instead of representing the interest of individual clients — but auto safety was not the issue that was at the top of my list of important issues when I graduated; legalizing marijuana was. I had first smoked marijuana when I was a freshman at Georgetown Law School, and by then I had become a regular smoker.
So I started NORML, and from the earliest days it was conceived as a consumer lobby – a marijuana smokers lobby. We wanted to represent the interests of responsible marijuana smokers.
The other major influence on my decision to start NORML was former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a most unexpected advocate of legalizing marijuana, first articulated in his 1970 book Crime In America. Clark, a compassionate criminal justice expert, values person freedom and opposes wasting law-enforcement resources on victimless crimes.
Mr. Clark is a highly principled man whose father was US Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, and he had recently retired as US Attorney General (appointed by fellow Texan, President Lyndon Johnson) and almost immediately became a leading spokesperson for ending the Vietnam war and bringing our troops home. Because of his anti-war work, especially a trip to Hanoi he took with anti-war actress Jane Fonda, Clark had also become a despised figure by those who supported the war. (Clark continues that tradition today as a human-rights lawyer, representing the interests of groups and individuals who otherwise might not be represented, such as former Iraq President, the late Saddam Hussein.)
But of course, for me, a successful draft dodger, Clark was the American I most admired at that time, and I wanted his blessing. I knew I was about to make a decision that could well impact my entire life, and I wanted someone whom I respected, who was wiser than me, to tell me it was the right thing to do.
I was somewhat nervous when I went to see him, and much of the details of the meeting are now lost to my fuzzy memory, but of the key points I remain very clear. I explained to Mr. Clark what I was proposing to do with NORML, and admitted that it frightened me a bit, because I was married and had a young daughter, and if the project did not work out, I might find my career permanently scarred.
Clark said without hesitation that it was an important project; that it was the right thing to do; and that I should move forward with it now, while I was young, and could still afford to take professional risks. “It will only get more difficult as you get older and have more responsibilities,” he said, “so follow your heart now and do it.”
Clark also advised me to change the name of NORML from the National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws, a name that I had insisted on when others had made name-change suggestions, to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, to make it sound less threatening to the establishment. But hearing it from Ramsey Clark was more persuasive and I immediately agreed to the change.
I left his office after this first meeting with my feet barely touching the ground, I felt so reinforced by his approval and advice. I met with him several additional times over the coming weeks and months, as I was trying to figure out how best to get NORML off the ground, and where to get some funding. Eventually Clark joined the NORML Advisory Board where he remained for a decade, serving as the lead counsel in a major constitutional challenge to the marijuana laws NORML filed in 1972, and as a featured speaker at several of the early NORML conferences. Ramsey Clark brought enormous credibility to NORML during our early years, and played a huge role in giving me the courage to make the leap.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The military draft, which I so loathed when I was facing conscription, ironically became a crucial factor as it shaped my political beliefs, and influenced my decision to want to start NORML in 1970. Yet another unintended consequence of that terrible war.
http://marijuana.com/news/2014/07/the-origins-of-norml-how-marijuana-reform-was-born/