What You Need to Know About Hash Bash List of Speakers

His bill would follow Ann Arbor's model and brand it a civil infraction — instead of a offense — to possess an ounce or less for personal use.

"Make sure you pick up the telephone, write an email, and encourage your friends to do the aforementioned," Irwin said, calling on the ralliers to get active and reach out to lawmakers.

Irwin pointed to the successful 2012 entrada to legalize marijuana in Colorado and said he wants to see Michigan follow Colorado's lead to finish the war on marijuana.

Law estimated about 3,000 people attended the rally on the University of Michigan Diag, which they said was a little smaller than information technology'due south been the last couple of years.

Just as many or more were out at the festivities surrounding the Monroe Street Off-white afterwards virtually the law quad area, saidDiane Brown, spokeswoman for the U-M Department of Public Safe.

Brownish said campus police made sixteen marijuana arrests and issued v alcohol possession citations, i MIP, and two trespassing citations. She said a few people were cited for selling items they shouldn't have, such every bit bumper stickers.

Police reported no major incidents, though Brown said 5 people had to be taken away by ambulance for seizures nearly likely as a result of synthetic marijuana.

The 90-minute rally at the 42nd almanac Hash Bash in Ann Arbor featured a long list of speakers who repeated calls for marijuana reform.

Hash Bash organizer and Michigan Moms United founderCharmie Gholson called for an end to what she described every bit a "ridiculous ongoing civil war against marijuana."

"The feds still hate yous and want you in prison, my friends," she told the crowd. "They're hunting u.s. and putting us in cages."

Speakers said they continue to face attacks on their freedom, just they're hopeful they'll continue to brand progress in getting lawmakers to listen to them.

They said in that location's never been a more than heady time for marijuana reform and they're slowly simply surely winning the fight, city by metropolis and state by country.

"This is a whole new era of marijuana. We're starting to be taken seriously," saidMarking Passerini, a University of Michigan graduate and co-founder of the OM of Medicine marijuana dispensary on Main Street in Ann Arbor.

Passerini said he's seen marijuana help people with everything from stress relief to PTSD, muscle spasms, joint pain and arthritis.

"We love cannabis for all these reasons," he said, cartoon applause from the oversupply.

Channeling John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 inaugural address, Passerini issued a call to activity: "Ask non what marijuana tin can do for you — enquire what you tin practise for the marijuana movement."

Marijuana reform activistTim Beck, described past some every bit the "godfather" of the marijuana movement in Michigan, highlighted the results of a new Pew Enquiry Center survey that shows 52 percent of Americans say the apply of marijuana should exist made legal.

Beck said those in the minority who want to continue hassling people for using marijuana "don't get the picture" and need to get a life.

"It helps me physically feel amend every day of my life,"Chuck Ream, president of the Arborside medical marijuana dispensary in Ann Arbor, said of what cannabis has done for him.

Gholson said the state of war on marijuana is destroying families. She said she'southward tired of police "tasing kids for pot" and leaving them with arrest records that create barriers to education, employment and housing.

She said she's building a example for a lawsuit against police force brutality and working with Irwin on an "asset forfeiture bill" and then police tin can't seize people'southward assets before getting a conviction.

"I am perfectly capable of making my own health care choices," Gholson said, adding cannabis helps her bargain with chronic pain, inflammation and even PMS.

"It does not make me a pharmaceutical drugged-out zombie," she said.

The mostly male person crowd included a mix of young and old, many of whom lit upward a joint during the rally, which spilled over into the Monroe Street Fair afterward. Some said they were at that place for the first time. Others said they've been coming to the annual outcome since the 1970s.

U-M graduate and Flint nativeDan Skye, editorial managing director for High Times magazine, told the oversupply the last Hash Bash he attended was in 1975.

He said he came over

to the Diag that day, smoked a articulation, didn't think he got high, but later realized he was high while he was in a conference with his educatee advisor.

Skye said he'll probably never see marijuana completely legalized in the United States during his lifetime, but he issued a call to the next generation of activists to carry the torch.

"This is a dangerous institute?" he asked. "I mean, outlaw poisonous substance ivy first."

Matt Abel , a Detroit-based cannabis lawyer, urged ralliers to call state lawmakers to push for hearings on House Neb 4271.

Country Rep.Mike Callton, R-Nashville, introduced the beak in February to let local communities decide whether to allow medical marijuana dispensaries subsequently the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that dispensaries handling patient-to-patient sales are not protected nether country police.

The bill has 16 co-sponsors, a mix of Republicans and Democrats, including Irwin, simply hasn't moved frontward in the Judiciary Committee.

Jamie Lowell, co-founder of tertiary Coast Compassion Center in Ypsilanti, said he'southward been told by those working directly on information technology that the neb is expected to get a committee hearing soon.

"It's time to alter the laws. Marijuana is not wrong," Abel said.

City Quango MemberSabra Briere, D-1st Ward, spoke just before Irwin. She talked virtually efforts by her and her colleagues on the City Council to craft regulations for medical marijuana dispensaries in Ann Arbor in response to what she called a badly written country law.

"This was non my outcome," Briere stressed, but she said it was a problem that needed to exist stock-still. "If we could just go the people in Lansing to heed, we'd be so much further alee."

Briere said the people of Michigan, including marijuana users, deserve to accept laws that they tin can obey and that respect their individual rights. She said information technology's not to anyone'due south advantage to be "cluttering upwards jails" with marijuana users when there are more serous crimes to worry near.

"We're all hung up considering the state Legislature hasn't passed laws that make dispensaries legal," she said, urging ralliers to convey the "man demand" to their representatives.

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