Richard C. Cowan

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Richard C. Cowan, a former executive director of NORML, National Organization of the Reform of Marijuana Laws.Co-Founder and Chairman of Freedom Leaf, Inc. (OTCQB:FRLF) and Editor-in-Chief of Freedom Leaf Magazine

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1940, to fortunate circumstances. Graduated from high school there in 1958. Received a degree in Economics from Yale University in 1962 and later held executive positions in various companies involved in manufacturing and natural resources, including publicly owned firms.

While at Yale, Cowan got involved in campus politics and became Chairman of the Party of the Right in the Yale Political Union. That's where he discovered that he love to argue.

Cowan was also a founding member of Young Americans for Freedom, the national Conservative student group founded in 1960 by the late William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the most influential Conservative thinkers of the 20th century. Buckley's friendship had a major impact on Cowan's life.

Five years later, in 1972, Cowan went to his tenth class reunion where some old friends who were active in the Republican Party suggested that he should go to Washington where they were sure he could get a job with the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (Nixon), appropriately called CREEP.

This was only Cowan's second trip to DC and having had terrible timing, Cowan's first trip was on November 21, 1963, the day before the Kennedy assassination, this time he arrived just before the Watergate burglary.

At his arrival to the CREEP offices they were actually changing the locks. The coverup had begun, but Cowan rented a small apartment and waited for things to calm down.

About this time, Cowan saw a story in Playboy magazine, which I only bought for the cartoons, about a young man whose life had been ruined by being arrested for a small amount of marijuana. I saw that there was something called the National Organization for the Reform of the Marijuana Laws, NORML.ORG, that had an office nearby, so he walked over to join for $15, still about the price of a lid.

Keith Stroup, the founder of NORML, understandably thought that Richard C. Cowan was a Narc, but when he asked Stroup if he had any more horror stories like the one in Playboy, Stroup pointed to a room with filing cabinets full of them. After reading as much as Cowan could stand, he told Stroup that he wanted to volunteer, and then Cowan called up his Republican friends and told them to stop looking, because he was going to be working for NORML, which he had to spell out for them.

Later that summer, NORML had its first conference, called The First People's Pot Conference, and for the first time in his life, Cowan actually saw someone get arrested.

After that, Cowan decided to write to Buckley, with the draft of a brief article, "Why Conservatives Should Support the Legalization of Marijuana". Cowan had never written anything for publication before. Cowan's note began "Dear Bill, guess who's gone to pot."

To his amazement, he responded a couple of weeks later with pure Buckley, "My inclination is to run it, and National Review has a way of indulging my inclinations."

Buckley wanted to wait until after the elections ("not to embarrass our friends".) So Cowan headed back to Texas to wait, but on December 6, 1972, National Review really did publish his article as a cover story.

In his book Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure], the late Dan Baum wrote that it "opened a second front in the War on Drugs."

Time Magazine and The New York Times covered the piece, surprised that a conservative voice would take such a stance.

In early 1973, Cowan got a few hundred extra copies of National Review and moved to Austin to work with activists to reform Texas's brutal marijuana laws.

At the time, over 800 people were in prison in Texas for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. Thirty were actually serving life sentences.

A few months later, in May, the final day of the legislative session, with just five votes to spare, they passed a bill that reduced the penalty to six months—and 800 people were released. Cowan walked outside the Capitol, sat on the steps, and wept. That was his introduction to the real world.

With an odd coincidence fourteen years later, on December 5, 1986, National Review published another article as a cover story: "How the Narcs Created Crack."

That article has since been cited in various scholarly journals for introducing the economic principle now known as "The Iron Law of Prohibition"

"The harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs."

In 1986, Cowan became a founding board member of the Drug Policy Foundation with his friend, the late American University law professor Arnold Trebach, a wonderful and brilliant man. The DPF conferences had guests from The Netherlands, so Cowan got to meet several brilliant Dutch activists, academics and lawyers, who became great friends of his.

Richard C. Cowan's father died in 1991, and he had no further commitments to Texas, so in 1992 he moved to D. C. and served as Executive Director of NORML until the fall of 1995.

While Cowan was NORML's Executive Director, the board included the late Dr. Lester Grinspoon, Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis, Ann Druyan (co-producer of Cosmos with her late husband, Carl Sagan, a truly amazing couple), the late David Boaz of the Cato Institute, and others. Cowan has stated that it was a great honor that he owed to Dr. Grinspoon.

One of the greatest joys of Cowan's life in a very difficult time was serving with Allen St. Pierre, the Assistant National Director, who did all the real work. However, it was emotionally exhausting, so Cowan resigned in the Fall of 1995, and in early 1996, he moved to Amsterdam.

Later that year, Buckley once again changed Cowan's life by introducing me to his friend Peter McWilliams, passed.

Peter thought the Los Angeles Medical Marijuana Buyers Club was overcharging patients, so he brought in Cowan's friend Todd McCormick, a childhood cancer survivor and talented cannabis gardener, to start a large "garden."

They believed it was safe, based on the precedent set by the Buyers Club. But the federal government, which had ignored the Buyers Club, went after Peter and Todd. Todd was sentenced to five years in federal prison, and Peter died.

KILLING IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE? The Story of Todd McCormick and Peter McWilliams

On Buckley's recommendation, Peter had hired Richard C. Cowan to launch a new website called MarijuanaMagazine.com. After Peter's arrest, he encouraged Cowan to keep it going under a different domain name to avoid federal scrutiny. So he moved back to Texas and launched MarijuanaNews.com in late 1997. It's been called one of the first true "blogs" of any kind.

From 2000 to 2005, Cowan was invited to do the 420 MarijuanaNews video series on Marc Emory's Pot.TV in Vancouver—one of the earliest Internet video "podcasts", before the term even existed.

In 2005, Cowan had to move back to the US, and Marc was sentenced to five years in the US Federal prison for the crime of shipping cannabis seeds to the US. That was the only such prosecution ever.

And the U.S. government continued trying to kill American medical marijuana patients, Steve Tuck and Steve Kubby, who had fled to Canada.

In the meantime, I wrote intermittently and in 2014 I was invited to debate at the Oxford Union and in 2013 I spoke before a congressional committee in Mexico. Viva Mexico!

Richard C. Cowan has lived in Fort Worth and Dallas, Vancouver, Amsterdam, Washington, D.C., Irvine and Palm Springs, and Madrid. Now, Cowan lives in Valencia, Spain, where he work as an economics consultant for a private international investment firm.

In May 2024, Cowan became CEO of WEED.DE, a German site that helps Germans and other EU citizens access newly legalized cannabis for medical and recreational use under Germany's new law.

References

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