United Nations CND 66 Cannabis Team Fundraising

Fields of Green for ALL (A registered Non-Profit Company in South Africa) and our international drug policy associates are headed back to Vienna, Austria for the convening of the 66th session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), 13-17 March 2023. The CND is the policy-making body of the United Nations system with prime responsibility for drug-related matters. They meet 4 times a year in Vienna (opening, reconvene, and 2 inter-sessionals), finishing each session in December of the same year.

This team was last together in Vienna in March 2020, when the WHO announced the pandemic and the world started shutting down. That was also 4 months before Jules was murdered so this is a poignant, as well as vital, reunion.

The team is excited to be reunited and on the ground advocating for evidence-based drug policy. We hope to make a difference for the millions of Cannabis users, traders, and cultivators around the world for whom this platform is unattainable and for whom current drug policy is draconian and stuck in 20th-century prohibition. Our team wants to, most of all, make a difference for developing countries, the home to the producers of prohibited plants and the custodians of our cultural legacy.

Fields of Green for ALL was granted official consultative status by the United Nations (Economic and Social Council) in 2020 after the start of Covid. As the only Cannabis activist organization, globally, to be given this status it is important that we engage with these high-level policymakers face-to-face in order to have the most impact.

Although we could not attend in person in 2021 in 2022, Fields of Green for ALL hosted an online side event at CND 65 last year titled “Making the Case for Evidence-Based Drug Policy”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiOnJTpvfds&t=2041s

This year we have applied to host another side event that will expand the previous conversation to explore how the road towards evidence-based policy can also serve to remove many of the hurdles faced by developing countries in the attainment of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This time we will be there in person where the team is most effective and we will be inviting some impactful guests to join us.

We need your support to fund this activity. Vienna is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Accommodation is very competitive as there are delegates from 53 nations in town and many NGOs attend these policy-making events.

Our team needs to cover airfare, accommodation, meals, incidentals, ground transportation & printing.

Myrtle Clarke is the founding Director of the Fields of Green for ALL and the remaining half of The Dagga Couple, who began their international participation with the UN in 2016 at UNGASS in New York, NY 2016. https://fieldsofgreenforall.org.za/about-fga/ . She provides regular interventions as part of the Civil Society Vienna NGO’s Committee on Drugs and is an expert speaker on political progress and challenges to regulating Cannabis throughout Africa.

This year Fields of Green for ALL is excited to invite Paul-Michael Keichel, the head of our legal team at Cullinan & Assoc, South Africa’s leading environmental law firm, to join us in Vienna. Paul-Michael is an Attorney of the High Court of South Africa. In 2013 he accepted the brief on behalf of Myrtle and Jules to assist them in the re-legalization of Cannabis use, possession, and trade in South Africa. This case is ongoing. He was at the forefront of the legal teams and activists who obtained the famous “Privacy Judgment of 2018” in the Constitutional Court of SA. This judgment marked the start of meaningful drug reform in the country.

As Myrtle always says, “We are not free until we are ALL free”. The current status quo with regards to Cannabis law reform, both international and locally, requires urgent attention if we are to uphold the integrity of our commitment to evidence and human rights-based drug laws.

Myrtle & Paul-Michael will be joined by the rest of the team:

Michael Krawitz, is a disabled Air Force Veteran [Sergeant, 1981 -1986] and serves as Executive director of Veterans For Medical Cannabis Access [VMCA] Leading VMCA, Michael successfully negotiated the first-ever VA medical Cannabis policy in 2010 and has since overseen the WHO ECDD Critical Cannabis Review process in Geneva and then the United Nations process on the WHO Cannabis recommendations. The vote on 2 December 2020, United Nations - Vienna, Austria successfully removed Cannabis and Cannabis Resin from the Single Convention treaty "most dangerous drug category." He will be joining the team from Virginia USA. http://www.veteransformedicalmarijuana.org/

Kenzi Riboulet-Zemouli, a French / Algerian independent researcher and expert in UN Drug Policy is the author of thought-provoking and system-challenging papers like High Compliance, 1961 Single Convention law for adult use cannabis http://bit.ly/3wksv0O and developed and manages The Cannabis SDG 2030 toolkit website https://cannabis2030.org/en/ based on the original Cannabis & Sustainable Development: Paving the way for the next decade in Cannabis and hemp policies book http://bit.ly/3JbYTux. Kenzi was one of the authors of Fields of Green for ALL’s groundbreaking 2021 publication – Cannabis in South Africa – The People’s Plant. A Full Spectrum Manifesto for Policy Reform. He was also on the ground for the WHO ECDD Critical Cannabis Review process in Geneva and the United Nations process on the WHO Cannabis recommendations which resulted in the rescheduling in December 2020. Kenzi joins the team from Barcelona, Spain where he resides. https://kenzi.zemou.li/

Amy Case King, an American who resides in Yucatan, Mexico, began her medical Cannabis activism and therapeutic application of the plant 15 years ago to help her uncle, a Vietnam Veteran, who suffered from severe alcoholism, PTSD, COPD and a myriad of other physical ailments. Amy is a passionate Cannabis researcher. She has researched the historical use of cannabis, current scientific data of therapeutic applications and regularly attends conferences around the world. An international drug policy activist since 2013, she has focused on the international scheduling of Cannabis and the implication for drug policy in the North American Continent and in relation to developing countries around the world. She has attended and spoken on behalf of US patients at the World Health Organization, Expert Committee of Drug Dependence and has been part of the CND team since 2017. Amy is a contributing editor for Fields of Green for ALL’s Manifesto. http://holisticcannabisacademy.com/practitioner-directory/amy-king/