Veteran's News

Pro-pot group draws criticism over use of VFW name, POW flag

ByLeo Shane III
Stars and Stripes

Published: January 31, 2012

WASHINGTON – The Veterans of Foreign Wars does not support and is in no way connected with Veterans For Weed, even though both are using the VFW acronym. Now, officials from the traditional VFW are warning leaders of the stoner VFW they’ll sue if they don’t stop riding their coattails.

On Monday, the real VFW (they’ve held the copyright on the acronym for more than six decades) sent the Milwaukee-based pro-marijuana group a cease-and-desist letter, calling their use of the acronym misleading and illegal. Officials said they’ll move ahead with more serious legal action if the other guys don’t drop the three-letter-name on all communications, web sites and other products.

Veterans for Weed has also drawn criticism in recent days for posting a doctored version of the POW/MIA logo, this time with the words “POT POW” and “Semper High” and a silhouette of a servicemember smoking. The logo, created for the National League of POW/MIA Families, is not copyrighted, but is revered by many in the veterans and military community.

Officials from that group have also requested the picture be taken down, calling on the pro-pot group to do “what is right and responsible.”

On their web site, organizers behind Veterans For Weed said they have been flooded with angry emails in recent days, most dealing with the “Prisoner of Weed Flag.”

The group described itself as “a means of supporting and helping people who face trouble because the fact they smoke weed occasionally” and an advocate for “the fight to legalize weed and its use.”

In a statement on the site, the group’s leaders also said they have no plans to take down the logo or stop using the altered POW/MIA logo. “The fact that you are here, angry by the message it displays, is the very reason we created this flag in the first place. The POW flag is not copyrighted and is open property. It is a gift for all Americans, to do with as they see fit.

“As regards to the POW flag, it stays. Speaking against a politician, burning a flag, or using it to make a message is one of the most American things you can do, and we believe it is the best way to honor our veterans, who have made so many sacrifices for us.”

Parsippany group helps build homes for homeless veterans

WASHINGTON — With the federal government’s approval, a Parsippany-based community service agency is working with a private developer to build 63 apartments and townhouses exclusively for former servicemen and women now living on New Jersey’s streets.

That partnership between Community Hope Inc. and Peabody Properties — approved by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — is one of many projects under way across the U.S. as the Obama administration moves toward its goal of ending homelessness among military veterans by 2015, advocates say.

The administration wants all homeless vets — there were about 67,000 on any given night in 2011 — to get mental-health treatment and move into permanent housing.

In what the administration calls an unprecedented effort, the Housing, Veterans Affairs and Labor departments and a network of federally funded community service agencies have been working together since 2010 with a focus rarely seen in the past, advocates say.

The Obama administration “deserves an awful lot of credit for staying on task and (is) well within the reach of that goal,” said John Driscoll, president and CEO of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “While I agree that any homeless veteran is one too many, we’re really on pace with that five-year plan.”

With the anti-homelessness plan approaching the halfway mark, “what we’ve done is effectively reduce the number of homeless veterans from about 137,000 to 67,000,” Driscoll said.

The population of homeless vets fell 12 percent last year — from about 76,000 in 2010 to 67,000, according to a federally sponsored annual count of homeless people, including vets, taken on a single night in January 2011. This year’s count is under way and the results will be available later this year.

According to the Congressional Research Service, homeless veterans numbered nearly 196,000 in fiscal 2006. Advocates say the homeless vet population is always undercounted.

About 1.5 million veterans are at risk of ending up on the streets because of poverty and other problems, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

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