Thanks to the Concord Monitor’s Ray Duckler for this report:
Rich Paul smokes pot. So do dozens of his new friends. Each day lately, in Central Square, right in the middle of Keene.
They huff and they puff and they blow the smoke out, daring the police to arrest them while they make their point. Smoking pot, they believe, should be legal, because smoking pot is their constitutional right. The war on drugs creates violence and unnecessarily jams our prisons, they say.
And Paul alluded to these points yesterday, telling about 100 people through a bullhorn. His voice was measured yet confident. The rally started in the afternoon, at 4:20, the insider’s term for pot smoking. No one seems to know why. Nobody seems to care, either. (more…)
Advocates for the decriminalization of marijuana gathered in Keene, New Hampshire on Monday in Central Square to try and get their message heard. The crowd has grown from about 20 people to about 100 since the group began gathering on Tuesday. Many of them are smoking pot right out in the open.
They’ve gathered at 4:20 p.m. every day, a significant time in the cannabis culture. “We want to bring this message of freedom to as many people around the world as possible,” said Ian Freeman, who is a blogger on FreeKeene.com.
“We’re actually gonna come out here in public and make it known how we feel and put pressure on the politicians,” says Andrew Carroll, another protester who plans to run for office in 2010.
Local businesses owners have been watching (more…)
They arrested our friend, so the cannabis celebration was brought inside the Keene police lobby yesterday, as the Sentinel’s Anika Clark reports:
Supporters of marijuana legalization took their fight with a law directly to the law Sunday as they lit up in the Keene Police Station lobby.
They puffed. They cheered and laughed. They left. But not before one of them yelled at a department employee who was working behind a front window.
One of the rally-goers had just been released without being charged, after being arrested for smoking what he said was nothing more than mint leaves. But activist Sam A. Miller said, “What they smoked inside the police station today, that was real. … I could tell from the smell.” (more…)
Thanks to the Concord Monitor’s Ray Duckler for this report:
