On November 2nd, I was walking through Oaksterdam with Steve Silverman, when we happened across a group of misguided young pot-grower types clad in "No on 19" t-shirts flyering the neighborhood with anti-legalization propaganda. "Are you seriously out here defending marijuana prohibition?" Steve asked, to which their spokesman replied, "I like things the way they are now." I suggested that if he really cares about medical marijuana, maybe he should stop worrying about Prop 19 and put his time and energy into defeating Steve Cooley. His response was classic: "Who the hell is Steve Cooley?"
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Dear friends, To have a shot at removing the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana, we need at least 26 states to legalize medical marijuana. This will give us a clear path to victory in Congress and/or the federal courts. As of today, medical marijuana is legal in 14 states and the District of Columbia. To get to 26 states, we need to run ballot initiatives in some tough states in November 2012 – Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. And to get on these five ballots in November 2012, we need to start the signature drives soon, with the first being in Arkansas. Please help MPP succeed with a new experiment: I want to see if we can fund the entire signature drive in Arkansas through monthly credit card donations from you and others on this e-mail list. Please start donating $10 or more on your credit card today. As soon as we get up to $10,000 in monthly donations, we'll start funding the signature drive in Arkansas. Public opinion polling shows that 58% of Arkansans would vote for a medical marijuana initiative there, so the key is to put such a question on the ballot for them to approve. Assuming a typical validity rate of 60% for signatures collected, we'll need to collect 110,000 gross signatures in order to end up with the required 65,000 valid signatures. It costs about $1.50 to collect and verify each signature, so here's the cost of the campaign:
The signature drive will take about 18 months to complete, so as soon as you and other allies begin monthly credit card donations totaling $10,000, we'll start the signature drive, and then you can sit back and watch us win in Arkansas, and hopefully other states, too. In a couple weeks, I'll update you on how much money we're receiving in new monthly donations for the Arkansas campaign. Please help me show that this experiment can work — that fewer than 1,000 people across the entire country can join together to help the first state in the deep south to legalize medical marijuana. We need to do this if we want to get to 26 states. Please donate $10 or more on your credit card today so that we can start the signature drive in Arkansas.Thank you. Sincerely,
| Help us meet our mission Raised in ’10:$2,721,628 MPP will be able to tackle all of the projects in our 2010 strategic plan if you help us meet this challenge. | ||||||
To contact MPP, please click here or reply to this e-mail. Our mailing address is Marijuana Policy Project, 236 Massachusetts Ave. NE, Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20002. Any donations you make to MPP may be used for political purposes, such as supporting or opposing candidates for federal office. | |||||||
St. Joseph’s University is hosting the discussion “Should it be legalized?” on medical marijuana by the Catholic Bio-Ethics Institute. The panel is open to the public.
Speakers include:
Representative Mark B. Cohen (PA) (Has proposed a bill to legalize Marijuana for Medical use in PA)
For seven years Mark Cohen served as chairman of the Pennsylvania House Labor Relations Committee.
Sr. Patricia Talone, RSM, Ph.D., Vice President, Mission Services, Catholic Health Association
Patricia Talone, RSM, PhD Sr. Patricia Talone is a Sister of Mercy of the Mid-Atlantic Community. She holds a BA from Gwynedd-Mercy College, an MA from St. Charles Seminary, Philadelphia and a PhD in theological ethics from Marquette University, Milwaukee
Dr. Marie Hasson, Chair, Department of Psychiatry, AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center
Marie Elena has been Chairman of Atlantic Regional Medical Center for 2 years, as well as a Fellow in the APA. Marie Elena is also the Medical Director, Atlantic Behavioral Health since 2008.
Advocate for Medical Marijuana – Chris Goldstein from PhillyNorml
Chris Goldstein is a writer and marijuana reform advocate based in New Jersey. He works on state legislation, municipal issues and national reform though local non-profits including PhillyNORML and PA4MMJ. He serves as a media spokesperson for marijuana related issues and publishes a popular blog at Examiner.com.
CONTACT: Chris Goldstein [email protected] or Theresa O’Doherty [email protected]
With all the recent discussion of marijuana legalization, it's easy to forget how many other ways the drug war is ruining innocent lives. This disturbing story from Pennsylvania is another example of how inaccurate and irresponsible drug testing practices are creating nightmares for innocent families.
Rob Kampia