Why Willie Nelson Needs to Host a Benefit Concert for Pot

Willie Nelson has long been an outspoken activist, so it was no big surprise that soon after his recent arrest for marijuana possession the country music legend and pot aficionado was calling for a national movement to end the U.S. government’s destructive crusade against cannabis.

"There's the Tea Party," Nelson wrote in an email. “How about the Teapot Party? Our motto: We lean a little to the left.”

And the platform? "Tax it, regulate it and legalize it," of course. After all, "Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved."

More than 44,0000 people have since joined the Nelson-inspired Teapot Party on Facebook. And supporters are hosting their first in-person events later this month, with the goal of fielding a slate of pro-pot candidates nationwide.

But if Nelson wants to help end pot prohibition, he can do more than inspire the push for reform -- he can help lead it. And one relatively easy way he can do so is by hosting a benefit concert next year to draw attention to the evils of the drug war, using his iconic pop culture status to raise money for those organizations and people that are working to make the dream of reform a reality.

A benefit concert next year would be particularly well timed, with the question of whether to legalize pot possibly being put to Washingtonians as soon as next fall and with California and Colorado voters likely weighing in on ballot initiatives of their own in 2012. Nelson also has plenty of experience playing music and raising money for social causes: in 1985, he started Farm Aid to help struggling family farmers fight corporate agriculture and its allies in Congress. Twenty-five years later, it's going on strong.

Support for legalization is also growing nationwide, as the Marijuana Policy Project's Mike Meno tells Change.org

"More Americans than ever before support ending this country's unjust and failed prohibition on marijuana, and in these next crucial years, we'll need to make our voices heard like never before,” says Meno. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll found 46 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana. And this past November in California, more than 3.3 million voters backed Proposition 19 at the ballot box, making legalization more mainstream than the Republican candidate for governor.

“No responsible adult -- whether they're a co-worker, a relative, or a celebrity like Willie Nelson -- should be treated like a criminal simply for using a substance that's safer than alcohol,” says Meno. “This event would give Americans all over the country -- not just in California or Colorado -- a chance to show their support for changing our country's ridiculous marijuana laws, and who better than Willie Nelson to bring us all together?”

Beyond "just" the 858,000 people who were arrested for marijuana offenses in 2009, legalization would also benefit those who have long held a special place in Nelson's heart: the nation’s farmers. Despite its illegality -- the federal government treats marijuana as harshly as heroin -- cannabis is actually the U.S.’s largest cash crop, bringing in nearly $36 billion in revenues, according to a 2006 study. Pot generates revenues of more than $14 billion in California alone -- figures that could skyrocket if growers didn't have to fear federal raids and prosecution; grapes, the state’s next largest crop, bring in just $2 billion.

Legalization would also help growers of marijuana's non-psychoactive cousin, hemp. As it is now, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) refuses to recognize the distinction between the two -- that you’ll only get a headache if you smoke hemp -- costing farmers potentially billions of dollars in lost revenues, despite the fact that hemp-related goods are freely imported from the U.S.'s northerly neighbor, Canada. That absurdity spurred North Dakota’s speaker of the House, David Monson -- a conservative Republican -- to file a lawsuit against the DEA over its war on industrial hemp.

"In this time of economic hardship, American farmers should not be hamstrung by an irrational and counterproductive federal policy that preempts legitimate and rational state prerogatives to grow nondrug industrial hemp,” Monson said after filing the lawsuit along with another farmer earlier this year.

Opposition to cannabis and hemp prohibition clearly defies traditional political labels -- and if there's any musician who can unite stragglers on the left and right, and maybe even those annoying "stoners against legalization," it's Willie Nelson.

Join me and Marijuana Policy Project in politely asking him to help bring about much needed change one more time by hosting a benefit concert on behalf of marijuana legalization.

Photo Credit: whittlz