Mobile apps, social networks and Web-based media campaigns are being used by anti-prohibition activists in their efforts to reform cannabis laws in Canada and the United States.

Folks involved in the campaign to ‘NORML-ize’ and rationalize drug laws have now linked up with ‘Droid fans and other smartphone users in a growing campaign against the ‘war on drugs’.

NORML, or the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, has now released an Android app to follow-up on the launch of its iOS app on Apple’s iTunes.

The new mobile app, NORML on Droid, was designed by a NORML legal intern, Matthew Donigian, who’s also a student at the University of Illinois.

NORML is making as much use as it can of digital media and tech gadgets (with the two mobile apps, a major Twitter following, some 400,000 Facebook friends and a huge subscriber base on its opt-in list serve).

The organization seeks to connect cannabis consumers & activists with news & information about on-going efforts to replace what are called failed cannabis prohibition laws with more sensible alternatives public policies.

The app delivers headline news and reports from across North America about cannabis consumption, the use of medical marijuana, legislative and legal developments as well as other updates from the ‘community’.

A popular and important feature of the app, particularly for U.S. users, is a section on statutory citations and legal regulations from various jurisdictions, culled from the organizational website.

In the U.S., both state law and federal statutes (many are in a state of flux due to legislative timetables and upcoming elections) must be considered to know the legal penalties and repercussions of cannabis use or possession in different locations.

In Canada, despite some provincial appeals and legal manoeuvres to the contrary, laws covering cannabis use are a federal matter, falling under the Criminal Code of Canada; Health Canada handles matters related to medical marijuana.

It’s unfortunate, even if understandable, that the mobile app needs some updating (which has been promised by the NORML app team) in the law section, as legislative and enforcement changes can come rapidly in both the U.S. and Canada.

The app provides as much recent information about marijuana research as it can, such as a reference to an analyst with the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia, whose work shows that cannabis may be useful in the treatment of chronic pain as well as certain substance-abuse disorders, and that it poses fewer risks to health than many conventional alternatives.

So the app can connect to current information about cannabis, but somewhat ironically, early users of the ‘Droid app release found the whole thing hard to read – the text and fonts used were too small, many said; almost illegible.

Again, the dev team has promised a revision, with larger, more legible fonts in a new update.

There’s word, too, that real-time feeds (from social media networks and newswires, for example) may also be integrated into the apps in the future.

If so, the apps will be able to make even more direct connections between the community and the information it seeks, including live events and activities.

Such as the active mobilization efforts of NORML Women’s Alliance of Canada; it seeks to engage women across the country to end the prohibition of cannabis.

Members staged an anti-prohibition rally (pictured above) and cannabis information event in Montreal at the end of July, where speakers advocated for a new policy of cannabis regulation and taxation similar to that of alcohol: it’s the only way to eliminate the harms that prohibition is causing our country, they said.

And with a real-time Facebook integration, the NORML mobile apps would keep friends and followers up-to-date on a five-month long, cross-Canada cannabis awareness campaign, now winding its way across the country.

Advocate Neil Magnuson is on the 2012 Freedom Tour, looking to shed light on the costs of attempting to prohibit “drugs” and the economic, medical even social value of hemp/cannabis.

Magnuson’s tour it’s somewhat akin to Javier Sicilia’s Caravan for Peace now criss-crossing America, with an end date in Washington, D.C.

Magnuson intends to go sea to sea with his campaign, which started in June in Victoria B.C. and plans a visit to Sydney N.S., hitting all relevant points in-between and talking up local politicians, law enforcement representatives and members of the public.

The tour ends in Ottawa on November 11th, Remembrance Day.

Of course, if for some reason you forget, or you can’t make it to Ottawa, chances are Magnuson’s presentation will air on Pot TV.

Yes, Pot TV – if you didn’t know, it was launched back in 2000 by the controversial ‘Prince of Pot’, Canadian Marc Emery.

Pot TV still broadcasts on the Web, and there are related posts at YouTube, despite what’s happened to Emery (his own legal battles seem straight out of a Hollywood movie), and it produces cannabis-related video covering news, politics, medical marijuana, entertainment and live coverage of cannabis events from its studios in Vancouver.

Even though there’s a lot of ‘weed apps’ in the Apple App Store and the Android Market, it seems we’ll have to wait for an mobile app that delivers live streaming media broadcasts from Pot TV to ‘any device, anywhere, anytime’ as they say.

 

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