try raising your own money so you can survive.

That's how grassroots campaigning tends to work, rather than sitting back till others have paid enough membership dues (would it be clear to them their dues go to fund a worker?!).

" I can no longer sit back and wait for someone else to do this."

Hold on - maybe they want to campaign too; maybe they don't want to sit back. If you start with this hierarchy, you'll need a lot of members joining, and more to the point, it'll remain that they are members of your organisation, and that their money is primary over their involvement.

It will remain your trip.

Hey Niall - sounds like a good project, apart from the bit about it making you a living - that would never work and would lose you a lot of support anyway if it did!

You might want to contact Fraser Clark and advertise your initiative in his e-newsletter which loads of people whi think like you read every week all over the world - try subscribing to it first perhaps and see what you think...

write to  fraser@parallel-youniversity.com with "I WANNA GET UP!" in the SUBJECT box.

"Hey Niall - sounds like a good project, apart from the bit about it making you a living - that would never work and would lose you a lot of support anyway if it did!

You might want to contact Fraser Clark "

that has got to be one of the funniest things i ever read!

In a country with a free supply of magic mushrooms every autumn, complaining about their illegal status seems like navel gazing in the extreme. Your post does make me laugh, I remember the confused hippies when there was a peace march in Glasgow on the same day as a Love parade - which side are you on boys !.

Yeah, the government should legalise it just to keep the druggies at home away from the activists - plus, they can use the taxes to buy a few more warplanes.


I believe I'm gonna
Shut down my chakras, shift Shiva offa my shelf
Take down my tie dyes, my Tibetan bells
Cool down my carma with a can of O.P.T.
Ain't no call for Casteneda in my frontline library.

There's one thing I know, Lord above,
I ain't gonna go,
I ain't goin' to Goa, Ain't goin' to Goa now
Ain't goin' to Goa, Ain't gonna Goa now.

Ain't dancin' trance, no thanx, no chance to t-t-tranquilise me.
Ain't sippin' no smart bar drinks, you, that don't satisfy me.
Dosing up my dharma, with a drop of gasoline,
I ain't down with Mr. McKenna, tantric mantra talkin' don't move me.

I don'tn need no freaky, deeky, fractal geometry, crystal silicon chip.
I ain't walking on lay lines, reading no High Times put me on another bad trip.
Timothy Leary, just check out this theory,
he sold acid for the F.B.I.
Well, he ain't no website wonder, the guru just went under,
you can keep your California Sunshine.

'Cos the righteous truth is, there ain't nothing worse than
some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing
spandex, psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope
pretending he gettin' consciousness expansion. I want
consciousness expansion, I go to my local tabernacle
an' I sing with the brothers and sisters

Personally I find LSD to be the most rewarding of all drugs experiences. You should campaign on this if you feel strongly, maybe you could start with prison support for Casey Hardison, LSD prisoner.

 http://www.lsd25.20m.com/

But I think expecting people to pay you for this is a bit rich. There is a lot of important and unglamorous work to be done in the world and most of it is unpaid.

Nice try Niall trying to get some cash simply for being a freak, but you really got to dance and sing too. I don't blame you though, when I was 8 I bought a book about UFOs by 'the worlds leading expert on UFOs Dr JA Hynek'. I realised by the end of the book I had been ripped off, so I wrote the author a letter saying I believed everything he said, and could he send me a few hundred dollars to set-up my own UFO club. He was nice enough to write and decline. (Dr JA Hynek, if you are reading this, I went on to see a UFO - and I still don't believe in alien visitors ! Military hardware my man).

Niall, I would suggest you just go and stare at some curtains for a while, there are probably some amazing colours to see there. Erowid has a list of forums and chatrooms that are more applicable for your post though.
 http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/links/links_psychoactives.shtml

As for 20 years in prison for Casey Hardison, wow, I never knew that and it is appalling, Sim1 snatched this thread from the jaws of mundanity. That is three quarters of a million pounds of tax payers money ! I can't believe even credit-card-carrying-capitalists want their tax money spent locking up hippies, why not just buy them a tropical island and exile them, it would be cheaper. If you leave them alone they eventually all wander off to the country anyway and they have a very low environmental footprint. Nobody should be locked up for any drugs offence ever, all drugs should be legal and we don't need cops to rule us, all societies self-regulate regardless.

Sending one person to prison for one year £37,500
 http://www.rethinking.org.uk/facts/rethink/cost.html




It costs a lot to send someone to prison for a year.

In itself that is not an argument for less use of prison. The health, education and personal social services all cost money and there is a strong case for greater spending. Yet because of the disadvantages of prison, we need to be aware of the costs and compare them with alternatives. Here are the rough costs.

Imprisonment

* Sending one person to prison for one year £37,500
* Sending one person to a young offenders' institution for one year £42,000

Community Punishment

* One year Community Rehabilitation Order £3,000
* One year Community Punishment Order £2,000
* One year Community Punishment and Rehab. £4000
* One year Drug Treatment and Testing Order £8,000
* Six month ISSP £6,000

The average annual unit cost of a prison place is more than twelve times as much as the cost of a Probation or community service order. Community punishment deals with nearly four times as many people as prisons, for only 40% of the cost. And there is little difference in the overall re-offending rates, although alternatives can be more effective.

What else could the money be spent on?

Sir David Ramsbotham, the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, argued that if you removed from prison children, the elderly, the mentally ill, asylum seekers and those imprisoned for lesser offences such as shoplifting and personal drug use, the number of prisoners could be reduced by 20,000. Replacing 20,000 prison places with alternative sentences would save in the region of £690 million.
For that money, you could buy:

* 276 new, completley furnished primary schools (at £2.5 million each)
* 86 new, completely furnished secondary schools (at £8 million each)
* Just under 3 new hospitals (£250 million each)

Even a reduction in the prison population of 5% - around 3500 places - would save £120 million.
Tip: if you are going to prison for any reason, take in some LSD even if you don't use it. It is easy to conceal, and useful both as currency and as a weapon.