NORML started in the 1970s, when a much more relaxed attitude about pot pervaded. MPP formed when some individuals split from NORML in 95. I think that in the beginning NORML received massive amounts of money from High Times founder and former Yippie Tom Forcade, both from magazine sales and proceeds from smuggling weed and hash into NY. Forcade, like many of the former Yippies, was under constant surveillance from the FBI, a pressure that some say led him to commit suicide. Unfortunately, if this is an issue you want to take a stand on, more often than not that stand means being arrested or persecuted. For me, it was getting arrested for weed that got me into activism on this issue to begin with. As far as public scrutiny goes, despite the decades of misinformation campaigns, at this point most Americans have firsthand experience with smoking weed or with people who smoke weed in all professions, geographical locations, and socioeconomic classes, and have a reasonable attitude towards pot. Meth is truly the biggest drug problem in this country. Where I grew up it was heroin and where I live now it's crack. A lot of people have a good perspective on weed, although the powers that be are doing all they can to erode that even as we are making great strides in the right direction.