From: [c--o--n] at [dsmnet.com] (Carl E. Olsen)
Newsgroups: alt.hemp,alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: NORML's new look
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 1994 10:23:37

NORML's new look: 
Tie-dyes out, suits in 
 
By Dennis Cauchon 
USA TODAY 
 
   In an effort to shed its image as a fringe group, the National 
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has recruited an 
all-star group of scientists -- including a Nobel Prize winner -- 
for its board. 
   NORML hopes the move to the mainstream will restore the 
influence the group had in the 1970s. 
   "This board will get people to take the issue seriously, which 
is our biggest problem," says Richard Cowan, NORML's national 
director. 
   The new board was recruited only after a bitter fight in NORML 
that often pitted mainstream members against counterculture 
activists. 
   "The people in suits have taken over.  The tie-dyes aren't 
welcome anymore," complains dissident Jeanne Lange, who was 
forced off the board.  "They're mainstreaming a counterculture 
group and that's a tragedy." 
   On the new board: 
   * Kary Mullis, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry. 
   * Harvard Medical School professor Lester Grinspoon, author of 
Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine. 
   * Louis Lasagna, dean of Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences 
at Tufts University and chairman of the National Academy of 
Sciences committee that studied marijuana. 
   * Ann Druyan, secretary of the Federation of American 
Scientists and co-producer, with husband Carl Sagan, of the PBS 
series Cosmos. 
   * Medical professor John Morgan, author of the drug-abuse 
section in the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. 
   New York University medical professor Gabriel Nahas, a NORML 
opponent, says the board has impressive names, but "none of these 
scientists have done any work on the clinical effect of 
marijuana." 
   Says physician Eric Voth, another outspoken NORML critic: 
"These are prestigious individuals, but they are not experts on 
drug abuse or the drug issue." 
   Mullis, for example, won the Nobel Prize for inventing a quick 
and accurate way to replicate DNA.  His discovery -- called a PCR 
test -- will be used in the O.J. Simpson case.  It also allows 
scientists to find genes that cause disease and trace human 
evolution. 
   Cowan dismisses the criticism, saying several of the 
scientists have written extensively on marijuana. 
   "It's irrelevant anyway," he says.  "Were selling freedom, not 
marijuana.  We're trying to stop 400,000 arrests each year, not 
tell people to smoke pot." 
   Cowan, 54, a libertarian oil man from Texas, has reshaped 
NORML over the last two years.  When he took over, NORML was down 
to one employee, heavily in debt and in trouble with the Internal 
Revenue Service. 
   NORML now has eight employees.  Its annual budget has doubled 
to $400,000 and paid membership has tripled to 6,000.  A tax 
lawyer and accountant help with the books. 
   But Cowan, a Yale-educated friend of conservative writer 
William Buckley, rubbed some members of the board the wrong way.  
They accused him of mismanagement in July and tried to take 
control of the group's daily finances. 
   Cowan supporters prevailed. 
   "Dick Cowan is the best thing to happen to NORML in a long 
time," says Grinspoon, the Harvard professor who led the effort 
to recruit the new board.  "The idiots before him had nearly 
destroyed NORML." 
   Grinspoon says the scientists were enthusiastic about joining 
a new NORML board. 
   Drug war advocates "like to perpetuate the idea that being on 
the NORML board is something nasty, a mark of shame," Grinspoon 
says.  "That's ridiculous.  The group's reputation has sunk, but 
we're going to elevate, and picking these people for the board is 
a good start. 
   USA TODAY, Friday, November 25, 1994, page 7A.