ACTION ALERT OF THE COALITION OF LATINAMERICAN ACTIVISTS FOR CANNABIS AND THE DRUGS PEACE INSTITUTE

25 april 2013

Friends of Marihuana, we write to inform you that the Coalition of Latin-American Activists for Cannabis will be marching this year in support of Jose Mujica, the president of Uruguay.

Even though our marches have always been to protest the War on Drugs, until this year they were mainly playful events that lacked a precisely defined purpose. But since Jose Mujica, the president of Uruguay has stood up and said “Enough!” we have a leader who will take the fight for marihuana legalization to the battlefield, there where the Dragon of Prohibition must die at the Organization of the United Nations.

Mujica is the only president of a sovereign nation to have stood up against the War on Drugs. On August 9th, 2012, his government presented a bill in the Uruguayan parliament, proposing the regulation of marihuana cultivation, sale and consumption. Because of a lack of popular support, even though he had a majority in parliament, Mujica decided to postpone a vote on the bill, but said that he would present it again, only after thoroughly informing the Uruguayan electorate of the benefits of the proposal.

Alison Holcomb and Rick Ridder who led the legalization campaigns in Washington and Colorado were invited to Montevideo to inform the national government on strategy. Also invited were representatives of the Drugs Policy Alliance, WOLA, the Open Society Foundation, the Trans National Institute and the Spanish Cannabis Social Clubs, among others. With all the information thus obtained the Uruguayan government hopes to be able to sway national public opinion by the middle of this year.

But the fight is not won. Opposition is organizing also, inside the country and abroad, in the first place at the International Narcotics Control Board in Vienna. That’s why we support Mujica, because his fight is ours. It is our global fight to kill the Dragon of Prohibition.

When Mujica is able to breach a hole in the UN drugs conventions, all other national governments dreaming of an end to the War on Drugs will follow. Therefore we ask your support and participation this year under the battle cry ‘With Mujica we slay the Dragon of Prohibition’.

The march is the starting point for the campaign for the nomination of Mujica’s candidacy for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize (www.drugspeaceinstitute.org).

It’s not for the prize, but for the campaign, a mind-altering effort to drive home the essential point that we consider the end to the War on Drugs of primordial importance, so we might be able to enjoy the medicine for our soul without contempt for a forbidding world.

Long live Mujica! Long live Marihuana!

Luis Gavancho, CLAC – Frans Bronkhorst, DPI

Republish