Exciting times for medical marijuana in Rhode Island!

Dear friend, Since 2003, the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition (RIPAC) has led the Rhode Island’s medical marijuana movement. This past year has been monumental with the passage of the compassion center legislation which will allow three state-regulated, not-for-profit, retail dispensaries in RI. This victory will help to ensure that RI patients will have safe and affordable access to their medicine and make the RI Medical Marijuana Act the best in the country. Even before this success in June 2009, RI and RIPAC have been receiving amazing press coverage and recently we were even featured in The New York Times. We have been responding to the national medical marijuana developments with such actions as my interview on WPRI/Fox Providence and press statement in response to the Obama Administration’s announcement last month protecting patients in medical marijuana states. This is AMAZING progress and we need your continued support! http://ripatients.org/Donate/ RIPAC has expanded our services and we are now conducting orientations to provide patients and caregivers with the skills they need to make the most of the program. We continue to hold multiple meetings every month to educate patients, caregivers and community members. These meetings have gotten bigger and our monthly cardholder meetings now consistently include more than 10% of the state’s population of medical marijuana patients. None of this could have been possible without your continuous support. As a very small nonprofit, RIPAC relies heavily on private donors like you. With your generous support we can continue our work to advocate for patients, help educate them to navigate the program and help them retain a better quality of life. Your contribution, of any size, is crucial for us to continue our work to preserve the rights of patients. http://ripatients.org/Donate/ We are reaching much of the community, but now more than ever, we still have more work to do. We need to continue educating medical professionals and RIPAC, along with Patients Out of Time, is accomplishing this by hosting an international Continuing Medical Education “Clinical Conference on Cannabis” at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Warwick, RI from April 15-17, 2010. We also need to educate law enforcement personnel to protect our patients and we need to make sure that the compassion centers have the patients’ best interests in mind. In this season of giving, founding executive director Jesse Stout and I ask you to contribute $50, $100, $250 today with a check or credit card or become a member of our “Advocacy Circle” with monthly donations of $50, $40, $25 or whatever you can afford. Our goal is to raise $30,000! You can help with your gift, which is tax-deductible, and you can conveniently give by visiting our website and donating in the upper right hand corner. http://ripatients.org/Donate/ Happy Holiday Season to all! Sincerely, Stephen Hogan Jr. & Jesse Stout