Tonight is an important and potentially exciting night. Keystone Cannabis Coalition has written two resolutions that will be voted on tonight. One is a hemp resolution and it will be voted on by the Bernville Grange in Berks County. The other, is a resolution of support for statewide decriminalization of cannabis and it will be voted on by Lancaster City Council in Lancaster County. It was difficult for Erica and I to decide which of the two meetings to attend tonight. We may have a representative make it to the Grange meeting, Luke Schultz, who accompanied us and in fact arranged the first meeting for us last month. We have submitted the resolution to them and heard nothing but positive response since then so we expect the Bernville Hemp Resolution to pass tonight. The next step, comes on September 6, when the Berks County (Pomona) Grange meets and will take up the resolution as well. They will decide on that night whether to take the resolution to the Pennsylvania State Grange meeting to be voted on at the state meeting in October. We have gotten positive response from Pomona as well so we believe that it will pass in Bernville tonight and then in Bernville again on Saturday and it will pass on the state level. The Pa. Grange passed a pro-hemp resolution in 2006 but this resolution will be more timely as a hemp bill will be introduced to Pennsylvania in just four months or so. I have been in touch with the president of the state grange, Carl Meiss, and he is all in favor of hemp. He had previously told me that the Grange is a grassroots organization so all policy must come from the ground up, not top down. He said that before the State Grange could take up the issue it had to first be passed at any one of the many local grange chapters. Turns out Luke Schultz is a member of the Bernville Grange and they know him there so he told them about what we were trying to do and arranged for us to make a presentation to them, which we did last month. We believe that the support from the Grange will help us to pass the hemp bill that will be introduced next year. We are hoping to also see if we can get the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Federation to adopt another pro-hemp resolution at their state meeting in November but we will have to do the same local grassroots effort that we did for the Grange. It is almost too late for it but not quite too late so if we act quickly we may still be able to get it done. The Farm Bureau has many more members that the Grange. The PFBF passed a hemp resolution in November of 2000 but it had a 10 year sunset and they must take up the issue again. It should be a cinch because the National Farm Bureau passed a pro-hemp resolution earlier this year. We need the PFBF though and we will direct our attention there. The other resolution that will be voted on is the resolution of support for statewide decriminalization by the Lancaster City Council. Several months ago, KCC decided to direct our attention to various city councils to see if we could pass either laws or resolutions of support. We developed a plan for how we would go about it and following that plan, Albert Taylor, who is a member of both Keystone Cannabis Coalition and Lancaster NORML, initiated contact with city councilman, Tim Roschell. Albert invited Roschell to a Lancaster NORML meeting and it was attended by Albert, Julia Vinkavich, Deb Guy, Connie Guy, myself, Erica McBride and several guests. I gave Tim a copy of my book and talked his ear off for about 45 minutes. All of us participated in the discussion and filled his head with lots of great information. He was all for it. He not only supports decriminalization but he supports full legalization. Tim told us though that he doubts that council would have the heart to pass a law, concerned that it would conflict with state law. He said however, that they may be much more receptive to passing a resolution of support, which we believe will help us. Four days after our meeting a coincidental (or perhaps not) editorial came out in the Lancaster newspaper proposing statewide decriminalization saying that activist had made a convincing case. A couple weeks later Albert got us on the agenda and we got to make a presentation to Lancaster City Council last month and to propose the resolution. We got a lot of favorable support and it seemed that no one there was against decriminalization and a few even supported full legalization, including the mayor. They told us to go ahead and write the resolution, so we did. Erica, Albert and I met at the home of our good friend, Attorney Richard B. MacDonald and the four of us put our heads together and decided how to go about writing the resolution. We wrote it up over the week and the four of us met again and worked on it further. After that we tried to perfect it a bit and then we went the resolution out to all members of city council. I think it was four of them, including the leader, who said that the resolution that we wrote was not what they were asking for, that it was too broad. We had included in the resolution support for full legalization, and we believe that is why they didnt like it. We narrowed it a bit and got more feedback and tonight the resolution is on the agenda. We expect it to pass. This will help us when statewide decriminalization is re-introduced next year. It also advances the discussion on the best way to handle cannabis. Through that discussion we will hasten the day when cannabis is fully legalized in Pa. Below, is the resolution that the Bernville Grange will be voting on. In the comments I will post the Lancaster City Council Resolution... https://attachment.fbsbx/file_download.php?id=946798048680752&eid=ASv69ukFRCx6W6IHc8t2bTgbDuB2WTRYm_fvhRCDq4wtqpf0Q9hXmRnqAoS4YYAcQEw&inline=1&ext=1409683216&hash=ASuy2O9gXHg6Qqi4
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 19:23:31 +0000
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