At Large Hotel California
posted by on October 12 at 18:40 PM
I’m in L.A. for the annual NORML conference. Hundreds of pot activists from around the country are jammed into the Universal City Sheraton, which has a stack of these notices at the front desk.
Welcome to the Sheraton Universal Hotel and the 36th Annual NORML Conference!Please recognize that the Sheraton Universal Hotel is a 95% non-smoking environment… Should your accommodations be non-smoking and feedback is received that smoking is taking place in the room, we will be obliged to bring the complaint to your attention and charge the standard $250 cleaning fee.
We have been asked to make special arrangements for delegates with medical conditions that need to be addressed, and we ask that you contact out on-duty front desk manager for information in this regard.
Which means: Smoke all the pot you want in the smoking rooms. And if you’re sick, we’ll look the other way.
It smells like a Foghat concert.
We’re in Southern California because this is ground zero for marijuana. Over the past year, the DEA has repeatedly raided the area’s 250 medical-marijuana dispensaries, which are allowed under state law and enjoy popular support but are loathed by the feds. The clash became a spectacle last night. Activists and sick folks held a rally in front of Schwarzenegger’s office, pressuring him to rebuff the raids. But then a SWAT team of LAPD officers and DEA agents, carrying automatic weapons, stormed a post-rally party in a Downtown LA pot dispensary. Agents didn’t arrest anyone, but they seized all the dope and cash.
Anyway, despite popular support, a lot of folks at this conference feel pretty strongly that the wheelchair weed is a political box canyon. The big question on folks’ minds is, how to change the law for the 50 million healthy pot smokers? I’ll try to answer that question tomorrow night when I give the conference’s closing address. Obviously, they could begin by immolating their tie-dyes.
Thanks for inviting us.
Go, Domi!
And enjoy the Universal Sheraton. That's a bit of old '50s and '60s Hollywood glamour, you know. It's where The Tonight Show guests were housed for a long while after Johnny moved out to California presumably because it was the nicest hotel in the Valley and Burbank, where the NBC studios are, in those days was a laughing stock - little more than small Mom & Pop liquor stores, dusty dime stores, and old ladies' clothing stores.
@2 It seems they've redecorated in that "I'd Like to Be Bored to Death at a Starwood Hotel" look.
Sigh.
As for Mr. Holden, I'm toking up as I type, purely in solidarity.
I had to look up what "immolating" meant. I need to get out more. Sigh.
Pot is the devil's work. I stick with liquor.
Pot is God's work. Liquor is man's.
Doesn't pot prevent a number of diseases/disorders? There you have it: preventive medicine.
@6. I was trying to make a joke re: pot being illegal and liquor not being so. Or was that obvious? Curse you internets! I'm all for pot.
I was trying to be funny too. I use both, but rarely at the same time.
So how did your talk go? Are you going to post a text of it or what?
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