<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><img src="cid:71B3D8AD-8A38-47B4-9138-9200A167739D" alt="image.jpeg" id="71B3D8AD-8A38-47B4-9138-9200A167739D" width="640" height="190"></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of today's (January 19, 2014)</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div><h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both; overflow: visible !important; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; line-height: 1.2; font-size: 28px; font-family: Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif;">Pot backers all abuzz about Super Bowl link</h1><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">WASHINGTON – If oddsmakers are correct, the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos will win today’s National Football League conference championship games, advancing to a truly historic Super Bowl on Feb. 2:</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Marijuana Bowl? A return of the Bud Bowl?</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The teams represent the biggest cities in Colorado and Washington, the only states that have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana.</span></p></div><div><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Shortly after those voters made their decisions in November 2012, travel guide Arthur Frommer said both cities should brace for “a torrent of new tourism.” Now the two cities might face off in one of the world’s biggest sporting extravaganzas, giving the media a fresh story hook for the next two weeks.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Pot backers are tickled.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It’s something that those of us in the movement have had an eye on for a long time,” said Steve Fox, who works for a marijuana-industry law firm in Denver.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If the matchup does materialize, said Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, it will feature “the two most pro-cannabis- legalization cities in the U.S.” He jokingly suggested that the game be renamed “The Super Oobie Doobie Bowl.”</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is a more serious side to all this.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since Jan. 1, when Colorado opened its retail pot shops, it’s been legal to purchase and use the drug, at least under state law. But it’s still illegal for NFL players who live in the state to use marijuana because it’s banned under the league’s collective bargaining agreement. That will be true in Washington, as well, when the state opens its own shops this spring.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Lobbyists are pushing the NFL to stop punishing players who fail drug tests for smoking pot, saying the drug could help them deal with concussions and other injuries.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And they want to call attention to the league’s cozy relationship with the alcohol industry: Anheuser-Busch, for example, pitches its Bud Light as the “proud sponsor of the NFL” and once aired ads showing Budweiser and Bud Light beer bottles competing in a halftime “Bud Bowl” football game.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Hopefully there will be a break in the beer commercials for some discussion about marijuana laws,” said Mason Tvert, spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project in Denver.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In September, the organization put up a 48-foot-wide billboard next to Denver’s Sports Authority Field at Mile High, urging the NFL to “stop driving players to drink” and saying that pot represented “a safer choice” for the athletes. And the group launched a petition to pressure NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to change the league’s marijuana policy.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Fox, the marijuana industry lawyer, pointed out that the Broncos and Seahawks both lost key players this season for violating the NFL drug policy, reportedly because of marijuana use.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He said the NFL should follow the National Hockey League, which tests only for performance-enhancing drugs.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And he noted that the World Anti-Doping Agency responded to more lax drug laws in many countries last summer by loosening the marijuana standard for Olympic athletes.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Goodell caused a stir last week during an interview with <a href="http://espn.com/" style="text-decoration: none; outline: invert none medium; font-weight: 700; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(38, 70, 93); overflow: visible !important;">ESPN.com</a>when he left open the possibility of the league allowing players to use medical marijuana in the future.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">With the commissioner even talking about marijuana during the playoffs, St. Pierre said the public could expect to hear plenty about pot in the next two weeks, even if Seattle and Denver don’t win their games.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I think there will be more references to pot going into the Super Bowl week media hype than any previous NFL game in history,” he said.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Comedian Jay Leno jumped in Tuesday night during his monologue on NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” saying a Denver-Seattle matchup would give “a whole new meaning to the term Super Bowl.”</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Fox and Tvert boasted that even the visiting teams in Sunday’s games – the San Francisco 49ers will travel to Seattle, while the New England Patriots go to Denver – represent regions of the country where marijuana use is allowed for medical purposes.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It won’t be long before it’s unique to have two teams in the Super Bowl that haven’t made marijuana legal,” Tvert said.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For this year, at least, it’s been a tough season for NFL teams from states where all pot use is outlawed.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Among the losers in the playoffs this month: the Carolina Panthers, Indianapolis Colts, Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Packers, Philadelphia Eagles, New Orleans Saints and Cincinnati Bengals.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“If you noticed, the more marijuana-friendly localities really kicked butt,” Fox said. “I don’t know what it really means in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a nice bit of karma if nothing else.”</span></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"There's room at the top they are telling you still.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But first you must learn to smile as you kill,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- John Lennon</span></div></div></div></body></html>