Effectively Framing Marijuana Reform To Any Audience Presenter: Russ Belville

1. Effectively Framing Marijuana
Reform To Any Audience
Russ Belville
Executive Director
Portland NORML

2.  I’ve got a medical need
 You’ve suffered a debilitating illness or injury
 I’ve been busted
 You’ve been arrested for violating marijuana laws
 I’ve lost something
 You’ve missed a job, a scholarship, an opportunity
 Your reasons are intensely personal
 What could I say to change your mind?
What Makes You Passionate About
Marijuana Law Reform?

3.  Framing is about the concepts and contexts we use to
shape our viewpoints
 Concepts (not what it is, but what it means)
 What is an elephant? More than just a pachyderm
 You can’t negate a frame without invoking it
 Contexts (why we see same things differently)
 political, ideological, religious, occupational, geographical,
sexual, cultural, and more
 Knowing your audience’s frame helps you re-frame the
debate to match their values
Framing 101

4.  Marijuana is not a racist word
 …but it was used by racists for racist purposes
 Cannabis is not always more accurate
 …I no more smoke cannabis than I eat cow
 Marijuana may be a very loaded frame, but cannabis is a
very empty frame and it can seem like fig-leafing that will
evoke marijuana anyway
 Marijuana laws ban the cultivation of cannabis plants for the
smoking of sinsemilla and consumption of cannabinoids
Marijuana vs. Cannabis

5.  Medical Marijuana (The Box Canyon)
 Supports third party arbitrating intent of use
 Implies non-medical use is abuse or irrelevant
(“We’re Patients, Not Criminals” / “All Use is Medical”)
 Becomes more restrictive to maintain separation
 Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol
 Attaches negatives about booze to marijuana
 Where’s the marijuana breathalyzer?
 Cannabis is Sacramental
 Immediately turns off mainstream religious types
 Also supports third party arbitrating intent of use
Our Frames to Date

6.  Prohibition’s the Problem
 Promising the good that might come from legalization isn’t as
compelling as showing the evil prohibition is creating right
now
 Prohibition’s Personal
 We must show this evil is harming the audience directly (your
son busted at college is more compelling that 700,000
faceless arrest stats.)
 Prohibition’s Ineffective
 We must show that whatever evils might be imagined for
marijuana, prohibition does nothing to prevent them and in
some cases aggravates them.
Re-Framing the Debate

7.  My redneck uncle is a God-fearin’, huntin’, fishin’,
NASCAR-watchin’ Republican who hates “hippies,
welfare queens, and gub’mint”
 So forget “cannabis cures cancer, hemp can save the
planet, prohibition is racist” talk
 Instead, jiu jitsu his hatred against his frame
 “Gee, Redneck Uncle, then why do you let the hippie get
away with the tax-free, food stamp, sleep-til-noon,
weed-slinging lifestyle?”
Example: Redneck Uncle

8.  People are heroically motivated to either do good or
prevent evil
 Prohibition presented no evil to Uncle; in fact, it was a
good that oppressed hippies
 My good frames for legalization won’t outweigh his
good frames for prohibition
 Shifting focus to how prohibition exacerbates the evil
he thinks it solves creates dissonance
Giving Uncle a Problem to Solve

9.  True Believer is on our side – but he opposes legalization
because it’s not True Legalization™
 Here, prohibition’s not as evil as The Man controlling the
marijuana markets
 So make legalization a lesser evil…
 “Yeah, man, I want better legalization, too. But some
legalization makes it easier for us to do what we’ve always
been doing by killing the probable cause cops use to arrest
and imprison us. Then we become consumers fighting for
equal cannabis rights rather than criminals fighting to get
high legally. I know the cops don’t want this legalization; that
makes me want it!”
Example: True Believer

10.  True Believer sees himself as the hero who’s fighting
for the good of True Legalization™
 Legalization is a wolf in sheep’s clothing
 Prohibition is a tolerable evil for now
 Redirect the hatred for the “baby steps” into “being
a sitting duck for the cops”
 Show how “their legalization” doesn’t change his
operation, rather, it improves it
Giving True Believer a Bogeyman

11.  The Addict has used pot, maybe other drugs, had an issue,
now sobriety’s her identity
 Drugs are evil per se and legalization is approving of evil
 She needs to see a good from legalization
 “My dad was an alcoholic, and thank God it wasn’t drugs,
because he’d have been in prison and unable to get the rehab
that saved his life. How many addicts don’t call for help
because their use is a crime? How many can’t get a bed
because a drug court put some pot smoker there instead?
How much tax money from pot could go to fund drug
treatment and prevention?”
Example: The Addict

12.  The Addict is on a crusade to help others avoid the
evils she suffered
 She thinks prohibition helps to suppress those evils,
so we show how it exacerbates them
 Leverage her compassion for drug addicts by showing
how legalization can help them
 Separate and minimize “smoking pot” compared to
“doing drugs”
Giving the Addict a Cause

13.  The Parent may or may not have smoked pot, but he really
doesn’t want his kids to do it
 Prohibition is a good that allows him to dismiss the issue
with “it’s illegal, don’t do it”
 Prohibition needs to threaten his kids more
 “Kids deal weed to other kids because there is big profit in it.
You don’t see high school tequila dealers, because liquor
stores have that market and the profit margins are low. And if
your kid or his friends get caught with a little weed, would
you rather ground him in his room, or have a court ground
him to a jail cell while you pay off a lawyer?”
Example: The Parent

14.  The Parent is only thinking of his kids, anything that
threatens them is evil
 The Parent worries that endorsing legalization means
encouraging kids to use marijuana
 Pit that worry against the frame of “forbidden fruit”
encouraging kids to rebel and “be adult”
 Paint prohibition as intruding on the parent / child
relationship
Giving the Parent a Scare

15.  “Taxing Marijuana Will Fix Our Schools!”
 “Legalization Will End the Black Market!”
 “Medical Marijuana Will Be Unaffected!”
 “Cops Will Have More Time For Real Crime!”
 When these claims prove untrue, selling the good of
future legalization in the next states becomes more
difficult
 Stating evils of current prohibition are much more
reliable
Don’t Oversell Legalization

16. “Radical” Russ Belville
russ@portlandnorml.org
 @RadicalRuss
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