<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Courtesy of the Seattle Times at:</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020969066_saturdaypotxml.html">http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020969066_saturdaypotxml.html</a></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "> </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">-------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><h1 class="hed6" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 31px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; line-height: 1.2em; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-align: left; ">Seattle’s top cop joins rally for ‘cannabis freedom’</h1></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Interim Police Chief Jim Pugel was one of several establishment officials to address an elated crowd of pot proponents</span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto; "><span style="text-align: left; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto; "><span style="text-align: left; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a sign of how far and how fast mainstream attitudes about pot have shifted in Washington state, Seattle’s top cop drew cheers Saturday when he addressed a crowd of several hundred people at the annual Cannabis Freedom March at Westlake Center.</span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto; "><span style="text-align: left; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Interim Police Chief Jim Pugel chose his words carefully.</span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We are not here to condemn it. We are not here to endorse it,” he said of marijuana use. “The police are here to make sure it is all done legally.”</span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But after he left the stage, Pugel laughed when asked if he could have imagined addressing such a gathering early in his career.</span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); "><br></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); ">“Hell, no,” he said.</span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Working undercover, Pugel used to bust people for buying pot — an offense that carried a one- to three-year sentence in the 1980s. “That’s what the law said we should do back then,” he said.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Washington residents changed all that last November, when they voted to legalize the sale and possession of marijuana for recreational use by adults.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Just feet from where Pugel stood, dozens of people were lighting up and munching on cannabis-infused snacks inside a 40-foot-long “smoking tent.” Though it’s still forbidden to use pot in public, it’s now legal in the privacy of your own home — or tent, said Kris Vincel, who was checking IDs at the entrance to ensure that only people over 21 were partaking.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Pugel thanked the crowd for mostly keeping their weed out of sight.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Please respect your police officers and don’t use it in front of them,” he said.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Obligingly, a group of men who had been puffing on cigar-sized spliffs and mugging for cameras melted out of sight while Pugel was on the stage.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">After he exited, though, another group began conspicuously packing pipes and lighting up in front of the stage.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In another twist that would have been unheard of not long ago, one elected law-enforcement official used the rally to stump for support for a second term. Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes reminded some of his most loyal constituents that when he ran for office four years ago — advocating decriminalization of marijuana — people could still be sent to jail for having a joint in their pocket.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We’ve got to stop and pinch ourselves,” he said. “We’ve made amazing, amazing progress.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Pot remains illegal under federal laws, and Holmes and other speakers called for those rules to be rewritten.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some of the afternoon’s biggest applause was reserved for an unlikely crowd-pleaser: the chair of the Washington State Liquor Control Board.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sharon Foster got a hero’s reception because the body she leads is charged with setting up a system to license and regulate marijuana growers, processors and stores.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“You set us on a journey that’s never, ever been tried in the world as we are trying it today,” she said. “Give yourselves a big hand.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--------------------</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seattle Police Department's Interim Chief Jim Pugel spoke at the Cannabis Freedom March at Westlake Park on Saturday.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><img src="cid:DE3E2503-6FB4-4CA0-A007-5DFB292FB66E" alt="2020969456.jpg" id="DE3E2503-6FB4-4CA0-A007-5DFB292FB66E" width="608" height="414"></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><br></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; ">--------------------</p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">John The Freak,” who wouldn’t give his real name, takes a hit on a cigar-sized marijuana blunt after the Cannabis Freedom March.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 8px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; "><img src="cid:1CDF2914-95F4-4F6B-A83F-E157B09FB2D1" alt="2020969461.jpg" id="1CDF2914-95F4-4F6B-A83F-E157B09FB2D1" width="608" height="405"></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">-------------------------------------<br><br><div>Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .</div><div><br></div><div>"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a></div><div> </div><div><div>Tom Hansen</div><div>Moscow, Idaho</div><div><br></div><div>"<span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">There's room at the top they are telling you still</span><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "> </span></div><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill </span><br style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">- John Lennon<br></span></font><div> </div></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>