City & State Law-abiding vs. Law-breaking Legal-hemp advocate finds tax stamps don’t stop drug charges/1D Tuesday November 24, 1992

by Bud Norman

Stamp of disapproval Paying marijuana taxes just isn’t enough for the law

Picture of Debby Moore seated at a table holding a copy of “The Emperor Wears No Clothes, with a collection of US Department of Agriculture Documents from the turn of the century displayed on the table. Behind Debby is clothes racks full of empty hangers. The caption over the picture is: “Hemp trouble”. Beneath the photograph the statement, “Debby Moore, who was arrested on drug charges, shows some of the literature she has in her store arguing for the benefits of marijuana.

Debby Moore considers herself a respectable, law-abiding citizen. That’s why she always bought the proper number of tax stamps, she says, whenever she bought or sold marijuana.

Such behavior is not quite law-abiding enough for the Wichita Police Department or the Sedgwick County district attorney’s office, however, and Moore will be charged in District Court today with one count of possession of marijuana with intent to sell and one count of possession of marijuana with a tax stamp.

The forth something seamstress and political activists admits that she enjoys marijuana - “I’ve been a smoker all my life” - and has occasionally sold the drug to a small circle of users.

Moore does not consider these acts antisocial however, and says she will fight the charges as part of her ongoing political campaign against marijuana prohibition.

She predicted a large group of supports would be at the courthouse today for her 1:30 p.m. hearing and said they plan to use the case to publicize her argument for the economic and environmental advantages of legal hemp.

“It’s time we started building schools,” Moore said, “instead of using our money to keep people incarcerated for smoking marijuana.”

Despite her admissions, Moore insists she does not fit any of the negative sterotypes associated with drug dealers. She does not” push” the drug onto young people for large profits, she said, but restricts her business dealings to a small circle of adult friends. ] She presents herself as an unlikely candidate to commit a drive-by shooting

See Hemp, Page 3 D

Hemp Woman honored by city in 1984 From Page 1D or any other act of violence, pointing out that the city of Wichita honored her in 1984 for her 20 year entrepreneurial career in the tailoring business. She has bought more than $10,000 worth of tax stamps for her marijuana since 1991, she says, “because I believe in being law-abiding.”

Moore recently opened a shop called Kansas Environmentalists for Commerce in Hemp, selling “clothing, jewelry and accessories made of 100 percent cannabis sativa hemp.”

Wichita Police Lt. Tom Stolz said his office had received “intelligence reports” that smokable marijuana was also being sold at the business, and that on November 16 narcotics agents searched Moore’s home and “confiscated 10 to 15 pounds of marijuana in plastic bags.”

In a written statement to the public, Moore said that “I was sitting right in front of the door working on an art project when the police tapped on the door, less than 24 inches from the door handle, and I had to rollout of the way of the door, they entered so fast.

“Upon entry, my first statement was, I have Marijuana Tax Stamps, and where my product was. Of course, all who have watched “Top Cops” and “Most Wanted” know this did not prevent the police from destroying my home, and taking my personal clothing, jewelry and decade-old keepsakes.”

Moore added that the police also confiscated several copies of “The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” a book advocating the legalization of marijuana.