Marijuana: Calling Florida for New Amendment.

Yari-Professor Fun-Der-Full Lawrence's Legalization of Marijuana Committee proposes that the 26th amendment of the Florida constitution should guarantee citizens the rights to harvest, use, and sell marijuana. Among the 52 petitions currently in the Florida Department Division of Elections, this one is the shortest. Presented in a grammatically amateur form, it calls and end to the injustice of imprisoning marijuana users while forgetting to mention as to how the law should be applied in our domestic policy.

Chairman of the committee and journalist of the Tallahassee Democrat, European Yari Lawrence in a private phone conversation claims the petition was proposed and "thrown out there" in a haste fashion to "get the idea going." When asked about stipulations to his petition, he said, "There weren't any." He sounded serious about his cause but his lack of resources called his credibility into question. Lawrence's committee needs 48,869 signatures for his petition to reach the Attorney General.

English: NORML members protest in Lafayette Park d...

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I saw this bus in the main street of Kaitaia (Nort...

It will still require 488,722 signatures to have the initiative reach the ballot. It should not come as a surprise that this petition has yet to receive one endorsing signature since it was proposed and approved in June 2002. When asked if he could send me a formal report or mission statement, he replied that as of now, he "has not gotten around to putting much on paper." It was a short and disappointing conversation.

Even though Lawrence's committee has, up to this point, failed to politically charge the pro-marijuana movement in Florida, two drug reform lobbyist groups in the United States already have. Sponsors like NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and the MPP (Marijuana Policy Project) in recent years have been receiving much more political attention and re-evaluation. Ideally, both NORML and MPP, "support the removal of...