Friday, June 19, 2009

Tonight on Nic@Night

It's Friday, so we'll wrap up the week with some fun. Actually, last night was a lot of fun too, so if you didn't have a chance to listen, head over to the podcast and check out my interviews with Jack Tempchin and John Fugelsang.

We talked a bit about marijuana prohibition last night. Earlier in the day, I found two bills that Barney Frank quietly introduced in the House. The first one, introduced last Friday (6/12) is HR 2835, the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act. This bill would would change marijuana from a Schedule I drug, classified as having no medical value, to a Schedule II drug, which would recognize marijuana's medical efficacy and create a regulatory framework for the FDA to begin a drug approval process for marijuana. The act would also prevent interference by the federal government in any local or state run medical marijuana program.

Then yesterday, Frank introduced HR 2943, the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009! Seriously. This bill would remove penalties for possession of up to 3.5 ounces of marijuana and the not-for-profit transfer of 1 ounce.

When I hit the air last night, I didn't see a peep about either of these bills anywhere in the mainstream media. I found them while doing show prep. Knowing we were going to talk about prohibition, I checked out the Marijuana Policy Project's website, where I found notices about both of them.

This morning, I called Barney Frank's office, and lined up an interview with him today. I'll start the show with it tonight at 11pm ET.

That'll be followed by an interview with Robert Kenner, director of the new film Food Inc., which opens nationally today. The line they use to promote the film, "You'll never look at dinner the same way" is definitely true!

And, since it's Friday, we'll have some fun too... I did rock radio in Los Angeles for almost 15 years. An old friend of mine from those days is one of the premier music/celebrity photographers working today. Jeff Kravitz is NOT a paparazzi. He's hired to photograph the biggest stars and events.

He's been at the Bonnaroo Music Festival for the past eight years, and this year was no different. His pictures and the stories he told from last weekend's festival are amazing, so he'll join us for a bit in the second hour tonight. You can check out his Bonnaroo highlights here and see his spread from the festival in Rolling Stone magazine by clicking here!

1 comments:

Snorky2k said...

I lost two family members to cancer who would have lived months longer if they had access to marijuana