Potheads for Kerry
Festival celebrates hemp, also stirs political pot - By Tan Vinh
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002012173_hempfest22m.html
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Amid the bong sales, the drug-reform speeches and a certain aroma that permeated the annual pro-marijuana festival yesterday, Hempfest was also a venue for another cause: getting John Kerry to the White House. Regulars who attend the two-day festival to hear the usual cry of "legalize marijuana" also found organizers campaigning to get pot users to vote for Kerry. About 100 Democratic activists passed out Kerry/Edwards buttons and stickers and tried to register voters yesterday at the 13th annual gathering at Myrtle Edwards Park along Seattle's waterfront. With an expected 150,000 visitors over two days, Hempfest is billed as one of the world's largest pro-marijuana rallies. As organizers see it, that's a gold mine for Kerry, since the crowd is largely anti-President Bush. Said Hempfest spokesman Dominic Holden, "Bush has had a disastrous drug policy — criminalizing sick and dying people who need medical marijuana and campaigning against citizen initiatives to implement drug-law reforms." Organizers set a goal of signing up thousands of new voters. Some Kerry supporters also were recruiting campaign volunteers. A Kerry campaign spokesman said the efforts were orchestrated by independent groups that are not associated with the official Kerry campaign. Walter Duncan, a 32-year-old graduate student and a Kerry supporter, decided to pick up a clipboard and sign up voters because "this is going to be a close election ... and this would be a good place to find" Kerry supporters. Chris Martino, 35, a Kerry volunteer from Seattle, signed up 15 new voters within an hour. "It's not exactly an evangelical Christian group. It's a left-leaning crowd," he said. Hempfest's milelong stretch of booths features vendors selling anti-Bush T-shirts, bumper stickers and signs reading "Smoke Bush." The event also drew campaigns for Ralph Nader and the Libertarian ticket. Hempfest organizers said the event's political overtone underscores the clout that pot smokers have, as evidenced by the passage of I-75, the initiative that made marijuana the city's lowest law-enforcement priority. The initiative was approved by 58 percent of Seattle voters last September.
Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or [email protected]
PolMach Forums
funny stuff.. If pot smoker support Kerry it is not because he will make the laws any easier. In fact look at his record as DA, he put away a lot of tokers. 
Medical reasons this is one wonderful plant. Only reason it is illegal anyways is because Dupont, and other petrochemical companines, many of them, made sure to pay a government offical to create the marijuana tax act in 1937. Just after someone invented a machine that would harvest Hemo curds quickly just like what the cotton gin did for cotton this would have made it much more available. Fact is you can produce so many different things it scares the hell out of the big companies. Make a wood product that is almost as strong as steel, paint products, plastics, clothing that last for many years, paper for bibles are made out of due to it lasting some 1500-3000 years. Pulp paper lasts only 100-250 years.