Cannabis activists march with 51-foot blow-up joint at DNC

Activists who want their cause to be seen and heard know that political conventions are one of the best places to spread the word. In the case of cannabis, activists went to Philadelphia to protest at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on July 25—with a giant inflatable joint.

The joint was 51 feet in length and required at least a dozen volunteers carry it from Philadelphia City Hall to the Wells Fargo Center on a three-and-a-half-mile journey. The organizer from Philly NORML commented that they used the same fan that is used in dancing inflatable characters found outside of businesses and car dealerships, but on a horizontal scale, in order to keep it fully inflated during the march. This wasn’t the cannabis joints’ first appearances though, as it was reported by Philly Voice that it also appeared at cannabis events at the White House and in New York City previously.

The Democratic Party recently announced its call for a “reasoned pathway to future legalization” of cannabis, stating that the substance should be downgraded to a Schedule II substance, according to The Washington Post. The party’s official section on cannabis is as follows: “We believe that the states should be laboratories of democracy on the issue of marijuana, and those states that want to decriminalize marijuana should be able to do so. We support policies that will allow more research to be done on marijuana, as well as reforming our laws to allow legal marijuana businesses to exist without uncertainty. And we recognize our current marijuana laws have had an unacceptable disparate impact, with arrest rates for marijuana possession among African-Americans far outstripping arrest rates among whites despite similar usage rates.”

The Democratic Party has shown monumental support of cannabis recently. Although party’s choice presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton, has not yet stated her stance on cannabis legalization, she has called for more research on the substance.