Regarding NORML, well, I am not unbiased.

When people ask me about how NORML is doing, my general response is "overwhelmed." If they are slow getting back to you, it is not because they are stoned. (They are not.) Rather they are just buried. It is a tiny organization with an enormous task that is generally not understood by its friends and generally misrepresented by its enemies.

NORML is -- first and foremost -- a media relations office for the marijuana reform movement. This is something that Allen St. Pierre does very well. Most of what little good stuff appears in the media resulted from Allen’s work. It is almost never credited, however.

I can think of many examples of very important articles whose writers relied very heavily on Allen for their content. But they could not acknowledge this -- or they would not have been printed. This creates a problem for NORML -- and for good people like you. You seldom see the results of your support and naturally wonder why you should continue to contribute.

Perhaps even more important is the bad stuff that does not get run because a journalist did something very strange, check his "facts" about marijuana before writing. (It does happen, to the annoyance of editors and publishers, who do not have to submit their stuff to fact checkers. Most notably, Steve Forbes.) 

The other really important thing that NORML does is to act as the umbrella organization for the marijuana movement. There are some who resent this, but it is essential. Because Keith Stroup is widely and rightly respected, he is able to represent marijuana reform with his peers in the over all anti-prohibitionist movement. It is very important that he does this so the anti-prohibitionist movement does not simply absorb marijuana reform under its utilitarian "harm-reduction" – "prohibition is a failure" banner.

Their cause is not at all a bad cause, but their absorbing marijuana reform would do irreparable harm in a variety of ways. First, marijuana prohibition is not just a failure but a fraud. This must be understood. Second, marijuana really is different, and the Dutch have proven that the separation of marijuana from the other drugs is the foundation of any successful "drugs" policy.