SAN ANTONIO - Legalize pot in Texas? One organization has been pushing for it. But just who are they and what are they doing?
Its an old non-profit organization but semi-new to San Antonio, and chances are you may have seen the founder of the San Antonio chapter driving around town.
Behind the wheels of this decked out Smart "pot" car is Karli Duran.
"'That's really a car with weed all over it?'" said Duran, talking about the reaction she gets from folks.
For the pro-marijuana activist its great advertisement.
"Its amazing to see the people that are coming out still scared to speak up," said Duran.
Which is why she's the founder of a San Antonio chapter that's pushing to legalize marijuana. It's called The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML for short. The San Antonio chapter meets once a month and Duran said, no, its not a stoners group.
"We've had people that are cancer patients show up that say they want to know more about this," said Duran.
Aside from educating the public about the medicinal effects of cannabis; San Antonio NORML aims to de-criminalize small amounts of pot.
"Say you got caught with 3 ounces, you could just get a ticket," said Duran.
Their goal is to help people who may need it to cope with an illness.
"If we had medical marijuana they could just go to a legal store and find a different route," said Duran.
In conservative Texas it may just be too taboo to see pot being dispensed at a shop around the corner any time soon, but Duran is not losing hope.
"We can do whatever we put out minds to. We're one of a kind of state," said Duran.
Under a bill that passed in 2007, Texas law enforcement officers have the option of ticketing offenders who have less than 4 ounces of marijuana instead of arresting them but Travis County is the only jurisdiction that practices the bill.
