Marijuana Policy

Dear friends:

Want to take part in a groundbreaking experiment?  The background ...

Last year, the New Hampshire House of Representatives defeated — by an incredibly close 186-177 vote — a bill that would have legalized medical marijuana in the state. Just nine votes out of 400 members prevented this bill from passing.

Then, earlier this year, the New Hampshire House actually passed a bill — with a 191-143 vote — to decriminalize the personal possession of marijuana (and not just for medical use), before the state Senate snuffed the bill out.

New Hampshire is on the verge of passing medical marijuana legislation and marijuana decriminalization legislation.  With the November elections coming up in just six weeks, we need to ensure that good state legislators get reelected ... and some bad ones get unelected ... to increase our level of support in the New Hampshire Legislature.

THE EXPERIMENT

Is the marijuana policy reform community ready to become a serious player in state legislative races?

Because New Hampshire legislative districts are so small, it doesn't cost much to become a major player in these races and help good candidates win. This is a state where we could really make a difference by generating just a few dozen donations to each good candidate.

Intrigued? On this site, we've listed the supportive candidates who are in the tightest races — and whose campaigns are therefore the most crucial to passing our legislation early next year.  Our Web site also makes it easy for people to donate to their campaigns.

Other interest groups do this sort of thing all the time, in order to ensure that candidates who support their issues get elected. We're wondering if the marijuana policy reform community is interested in playing at this level, as well. (By the way, this is nonpartisan project that includes Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian candidates.)

Most candidates for the New Hampshire House raise and spend only a few thousand dollars on their entire campaign. So just a few dozen donations to each candidate from around the country will make a huge impression on the candidate — and a huge difference in the candidate's campaign.

If this experiment works and raises money to help these good candidates win their races, then MPP will likely roll this out in two or three states in the next election cycle. 

I want to thank you in advance if you choose to participate in this experiment!

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.0 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2008. This means that any donation you make to MPP today will be doubled.

Dear friends:

You might think that the people who are paid to uphold the law would also follow the law themselves. In Massachusetts, you'd be wrong.

The Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy (CSMP) — which is running the campaign to pass a marijuana decriminalization ballot initiative in Massachusetts this Election Day — has uncovered at least 15 violations of Massachusetts campaign finance and election laws committed by the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association and other opponents of the initiative. You can read media coverage of yesterday's press conference calling for charges to be filed here.

If you support forcing marijuana policy reform opponents to follow the law, please help out the campaign today.

CSMP has filed official complaints with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance and the Office of the Attorney General, charging that opponents of the initiative participated in 14 counts of raising funds illegally, as well as one count of publishing false statements relating to the initiative, which are clear violations of the law. The campaign is calling on the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance to punish them to the fullest extent of the law. Each violation carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Specifically:

• Under Massachusetts law, it is illegal to solicit, receive, or spend funds to support or oppose a ballot initiative without first forming a political committee. CSMP has from its inception followed all of these rules, but the district attorneys solicited, received, and spent donations before they were legally allowed to — blatantly ignoring state law in a cynical attempt to conceal their campaign activity for as long as they could, undermining the very laws they have sworn to uphold.
  
• Additionally, the district attorneys used public funds to post and house a statement urging voters to reject the decriminalization initiative on its Web site ... clear, indisputable violation of Massachusetts election law, which prohibits public officials from using public resources to advocate for or against a ballot initiative.
  
• What's more, this illegal statement — itself an abuse of public office and taxpayer resources — is riddled with bald-faced lies ... like the claim that the initiative would permit any person to carry and use marijuana at any time. In reality, the measure simply changes the type of penalty for possession of less than an ounce and specifically reiterates that public use remains illegal.

It's past time for prohibitionist officials to be held to the same standards and laws as everyone else. If you support these aggressive tactics to hold our opponents accountable for their lies, deception, and lawbreaking, would you please consider donating $10 or more to the campaign today?

Thank you,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

P.S. If convicted, the initiative opponents would risk more than fines and jail time. They'd also face loss of their driver's licenses, suspension of their licenses to practice law or medicine; and placement in a permanent database of offenders that employers, landlords, and schools can search and use to preclude offenders from getting jobs, housing, and school loans ... the same penalties that marijuana offenders currently face in Massachusetts and which the ballot initiative would remove.

Dear friends:

Yesterday, the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy (CSMP) released a list of prominent endorsers of the marijuana decriminalization initiative that will appear on Massachusetts' November 4 ballot — including a former first attorney general, legislators, and public health experts.

Would you please consider donating $10 or more today to CSMP today so the campaign has the resources to keep this momentum going?

Prominent endorsers of the initiative announced yesterday include:

• Tom Kiley, Massachusetts' first assistant attorney general
• Sergeant Howard Donohue, a 33-year veteran of the Boston Police Department
• Lieutenant Thomas W. Nolan, a 30-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, now a professor at Boston University
• Dr. Robert Meenan, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health
• Lester Grinspoon, M.D., associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
• Jeffrey Miron, Ph.D, senior lecturer in the Harvard University Department of Economics
• Massachusetts state Sen. Patricia Jehlen (D), chair of the Joint Committee on Elder Affairs and vice-chair of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight
• Massachusetts state Rep. Frank Smizik (D), chair of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture
• John H. Halpern, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
• Charles Barron, professor at Boston College School of Law
• ACLU of Massachusetts
• the Union of Minority Neighborhoods

Meanwhile, the opposition, which is composed of the usual suspects — district attorneys, sheriffs, and police chiefs — has made a cornerstone of its opposition the allegation that the initiative is somehow outside of the mainstream ... which these endorsements belie.

There are only seven weeks left to go until Election Day — when Massachusetts voters will have the chance to remove the threat of arrest or jail for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana, replacing it with a $100 fine — and your help is needed for this final stretch.

Would you please consider donating $10 or more today to the campaign to help push it to victory?

As always, thank you for anything you can do to help.

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

Dear friends:

I get a lot of questions about what the presidential candidates have said or done on marijuana policy.

There are a lot of rumors about what Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain, and the other candidates may or may not have said about marijuana — and MPP specializes in that.

In fact, during the presidential primary campaign, MPP helped persuade all of the Democratic candidates and three of the Republican candidates to pledge to end the arrest of patients in states with medical marijuana laws.

If you're interested in knowing what the candidates have said and done, please watch our new video:

MPP is the only organization that's systematically influencing the presidential candidates to take positive positions on medical marijuana — and punishing those who don't. Would you please consider making a donation to support our work today?

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.0 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2008. This means that your donation today will be doubled.

Dear friends:

Twenty years ago, the Drug Enforcement Administration's chief administrative law judge issued a landmark ruling on marijuana — but our government has ignored this historic decision since the day it was issued.

"Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care ... The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record."
— DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young, September 6, 1988

Judge Young had just finished holding extensive hearings, in response to a petition asking for marijuana to be moved from Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which bars medical use, to a lower schedule that would permit physician prescriptions. He heard from an array of expert witnesses, generating thousands of pages of documentation.

Young — the chief administrative law judge in the top federal agency responsible for enforcing our drug laws — laid out his findings in a detailed, 69-page ruling, walking readers through the scientific evidence in detail. He concluded that the law didn't just permit moving marijuana to Schedule II, but required it.

The response? Six years after top DEA officials rejected Judge Young's recommendation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the agency had the right to ignore its own administrative law judge.

And as a result, seriously ill medical marijuana patients continue to be arrested, terrorized, and even have their children taken away — cancer patients living in fear of arrest for using marijuana to quell their nausea and help them keep food down ... AIDS patients using medical marijuana to ease the pain and nausea that too often are side effects of the drugs that keep them alive, terrified of losing their homes if caught ... tens of thousands of people turned into criminals simply for following their own doctors' advice.

Will you help? MPP is systematically working to end this war — state by state, vote by vote. We are making progress every day, but we need your help.

Among other work, your donation will help us pass a medical marijuana initiative in Michigan this November 4, making Michigan the 13th medical marijuana state and the first in the Midwest … adding one more state to the growing number demanding a marijuana policy that works for Americans, not against them.

Won't you invest in change?

Thank you,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.0 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2008. This means that your donation today will be doubled.

Dear friends:

Sometimes it seems like the prohibitionists just can't help themselves.

In what has become a predictable routine, our opposition is once again openly lying to voters. This time, it's the members of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association (MDAA), who have posted on their Web site a statement of opposition to the Massachusetts marijuana decriminalization initiative so riddled with misleading claims, inaccuracies, and outright lies that it almost defies belief.

Among other outrageous claims, the DAs allege:

* That currently, first-time marijuana offenders are placed on probation and their records are sealed. In reality, simply getting arrested — not even convicted — for possessing a small amount of marijuana in Massachusetts generates a permanent record in a database that employers, landlords, and schools can search and use to preclude offenders from getting jobs, housing, and school loans.

* That “decriminalization of marijuana will increase its availability and use.”  In reality, both the National Research Council (in 2001) and the World Health Organization (just this year) have published studies explicitly debunking this myth.
 
* And that “there is a direct link between marijuana use and criminal activity” because a “significant number of male arrestees test positive.” In reality, this is literally a meaningless claim that doesn't show any causal relationship ... and is, in any case, entirely irrelevant to the policy change that the initiative proposes.

If you are outraged by these lies and bad faith arguments, would you please consider donating $10 or more today to the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy (CSMP), which is running the campaign?

As demonstrably false as these claims are, they are being made by a prominent and respected organization with a bully pulpit, so the campaign will need substantial resources to counter the lies.

It's not hard to understand why the opposition has been reduced to these tactics. According to an independent poll released earlier this month, a whopping 71% of Massachusetts residents support the initiative to replace the state's current criminal penalties for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana with a system of civil fines. And Massachusetts voters have passed 30 out of 30 non-binding public policy questions (PPQs) calling for such a reform since 2000 — with an average of 62% of the vote in favor.

But this public support is not in itself enough to win. Between now and November 4, we expect well-financed and powerful groups to attempt to sway voter opinion with these sorts of exaggerations, scare tactics, and lies. Would you please consider donating what you can today to CSMP, so it has the funds to fight back and pass the initiative into law on Election Day?

As always, thank you in advance for your generous support.

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.