There have been NORML supporters in Saskatchewan since the early 1970's when NORML and NORML Canada started. The Saskatchewan chapter itself didn't come along until 1997, and it wasn't a chapter of NORML Canada.
Umberto Iorfida of NORML Canada with Sebastian Bach of Skid Row
You might not know this, but not that long ago, 1988 to be exact, the Mulroney Canadian Government made it illegal even to advocate legalization. You also might not know that "Morality Bureaus" existed in Canada to enforce these sorts of things.
For a short version of the story of NORML Canada and Umberto Iorfida's historic fight just to fight for our rights, it's here in an old issue of Cannabis Canada (now Cannabis Culture).
More thorough documentation can be found here from efc.ca
There's also a "time capsule" of the old NORML Canada website.
Plus an even older NORML Canada website.
Right after that was over, Ernie Rogalsky started NORML Saskatchewan in 1997. He was almost immediately targetted with a set up "investigation" designed to destroy his life and NORML Saskatchewan's viability as an organization. It sort of worked.
He passed the torch to his wife, Marie Johnson, who passed it on to Timothy Hampton, who later passed it on to the current director Daniel Johnson
In 2001 the Federal government introduced the first medical marijuana legislation. This allowed the patient to designate a grower, so NORML Saskatchewan started an initiative called "Grower Patient Connection" to connect patients with growers. It got a lot of media attention but fizzled out because the rules were so strict very few people were approved in the first 2 years. Rules later loosened, but now there are other groups doing the same thing so the Grower Patient Connection initiative was never revived.
Timothy Hampton gave a moving presentation on behalf of NORML Saskatchewan when testifying before the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs in Regina on Monday, May 13, 2002.
From Timothy Hampton's presentation:
"What we have to do is stop it from going across the border. I will be really blunt here. There is lots of pot grown in B.C. that is going across the border, and it is causing a lot of trouble. There are a lot of guns and a lot of big money. The Yankees are not happy, and it is dangerous. Americans are bringing big money to Canada. They are bringing guns. They are bringing cocaine and heroin and trading it for our pot. That has to be stopped. "
"You have to get people in line. You need a contract that we, as cannabis users, agree with, because you need our help to stop that traffic. Without us, you will never stop it. To get our help, there has to be a mutually agreeable contract."
"Once we are on side, I will be the first guy to stand up and take a marijuana policeman's badge, and I will be out there policing my people. We have said to our people that we have to be prepared to police our own folks."
In September 2002, after hearing from experts all over Canada was " the Committee concludes that the state of knowledge supports the belief that, for the vast majority of recreational users, cannabis use presents no harmful consequences for physical, psychological or social well-being in either the short or the long term."
In another section they say "The social and economic costs of illegal drugs affect many aspects of society through lower productivity and business loss, hours of hospitalization and medical treatment of all kinds, police time and prison time, and broken or lost lives. Even if no one can pinpoint the exact figures, a portion of these costs arise, not from the substances themselves, but from the fact that they are criminalized. The drug most frequently associated with violence and criminal offences, including impaired driving, is in fact legal, alcohol.
Cannabis, the criminal organizations that control part of the production and distribution chain aside, neither leads to crime nor compromises safety. Even its social and health costs are relatively small compared to those of alcohol and tobacco. In fact, more than for any other illegal drug, we can safely state that its criminalization is the principal source of social and economic costs."
Everyone should read the Senate's full report
On the first Saturday of May every year since 2001, NORML Saskatchewan has organized the Regina component of the Global Marijuana March, with help from local headshops and others, and also organized the Saskatoon component, with some difficulties, in 2001 and 2002.
One NORMLSask activist got a bit more directly involved in the Regina Smokeout tour event.
We also organized a fundraiser for Grant Krieger at The Easy Alibi (a.k.a. Cafe Ultimate, used to be on Scarth Street Mall), featuring a mix of performers including rappers like Burden from Dogg's Life,and 2 Dimes, folk singer/songwriter Carla McEwen, crooner LJ Wilkinson and others.
NORML Saskatchewan has also been behind the "Sick Of Syringes" needle pick up program, the first organized needle pickup program, other than the overworked fire department, in Canada's worst neighborhood, North Central Regina. Started by a NORMLSask volunteer and North Central resident in 1998, after his then 2 year old daughter almost fell on a needle, it was used to draw attention to the growing hard drug crisis. In the summer of 2005, community centers and eventually the Regina Health Region began training volunteers for needle pickups. Coincidently, at the annual GMM event in May 2005, NORML Saskatchewan supporters and S.O.S. volunteers presented a big box of dirty needles to the Regina Police department with an award certificate addressing the fact that, despite a growing hard drug crisis, 60% of drug arrests in Regina the year before were for marijuana offences.