Supporters for marijuana law reform rallied outside the Athens-Clarke County City Hall on Monday.
“Marijuana is a popular issue around the country right now, and we are here to basically bring public attention to the fact that we are not criminals and people who use marijuana are no more criminal than a person who drinks wine,” said James Bell, director of the Georgia Campaign for Access Reform and Education Project.
The rally was facilitated by the Georgia CARE Project.
Bell said he expected up to 50 people, from different areas of Georgia and other states, to attend the event.
One study found approximately 60 percent of likely voters support marijuana reform, Bell said.
“Public sentiment has changed,” he said. “We believe there is support on our side, and we want to convince our lawmakers that we have got to change these laws.”
By 2015, the organization hopes that legislation will have passed to increase the amount of marijuana a person must have in his or her possession before being charged with a felony, which can allow a person to be sentenced up to ten years in prison in Georgia.
The rally was led by Josh Wayne, the founder and president of the Athens branch of Georgia CARE.
“I was really involved in the issue and I had a lot of friends who had been getting arrested for marijuana and I just wanted to see some regulation happen,” Wayne, who is also a freshman psychology major from Dunwoody, said.
Wayne said that he felt like students on campus were an untapped resource that would be helpful to the cause.
“The best way to do that was to get involved on campus and to get the students involved because we are so inactive,” he said.
Ed Wilson, a criminal defense lawyer and rally participant, said he no longer wants to see people be sentenced to prison for small amounts a marijuana or for growing a small plant.
“There are people who need to be prosecuted and people using marijuana do not fall in that category,” he said.
Wilson also said that he was disappointed the marijuana reform bill that would have allowed for some use of medical marijuana failed and that its failure was due to political maneuvering and was not the result of resistance to the bill.
Wilson’s son, Ben Wilson, said he needed to smoke marijuana because it remedies his epileptic seizures and the drug should be more widely available.
“There are a lot of people who have that or other conditions who really need the plant and cannot get it,” he said.
Ron Williams, of the Georgia Taxpayer Alliance and a speaker at the rally, explained why the organization was involved with this issue.
“If we approach it as a taxpayer’s rights issue, we think that money would be far better spent on additional law enforcement and teachers instead of arresting and incarcerating people,” Williams said.
Sharon Revert, the executive director of Peachtree N.O.R.M.L., The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, spoke at the rally supporting the pending medical amnesty bill in Georgia.
The bill will allow people to call law enforcement in the case of an emergency without fear of getting prosecuted for the presence of alcohol or drugs at certain amounts.
“We have children dying for years because they were scared to call the cops,” Revert said.
At noon, the rally participants made their way down College Avenue, descending upon another rally at the Arch that was supporting the elimination of the ban against undocumented students before walking through some parts of North Campus.
Marijuana legalization supporters rally at Athens City Hall
No comments:
Post a Comment