Ballot Measures

[Courtesy of MPP] 

I am excited to announce that yesterday the Michigan government officially certified that MPP's Michigan campaign committee — the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care (MCCC) — collected enough signatures to qualify a medical marijuana initiative for the statewide November ballot. You can read more about this milestone here.

The roughly half a million signatures counted by the state had a whopping 80.2% validity rate, far exceeding what was needed to qualify for the ballot. I hope you’ll consider making a donation to MCCC today so that we can run a robust campaign the rest of the year and ensure that the measure passes in November.

The official word that we gathered enough signatures to send the initiative to the voters in November culminates a monumental effort in the state. Thanks to the hard work of MPP and MCCC staffers, local activists, volunteers, and supporters for the past nine months, Michigan is close to becoming the 13^th medical marijuana state — and the first in the Midwest.

The initiative will now be transmitted to the Michigan Legislature, which has 40 days either to pass it into law or to send it to voters in November. Because the legislature has considered multiple medical marijuana bills in recent years and none has ever gained traction, Michiganders — who support protecting patients from arrest by a nearly 2 to 1 margin — are all but certain to vote on the issue at the polls later this year.

Most importantly, Michigan patients are now one enormous step closer to being able to use medical marijuana without the fear of arrest and jail. If passed by a majority of voters on Election Day, the initiative will allow Michigan patients to use, possess, and grow their own marijuana for medical purposes with their doctors’ approval.

The most recent polling shows that 61% of Michigan voters support medical marijuana access, and we’ve hired a top-notch consulting firm and a full-time campaign manager to translate that public sentiment into a new law that protects patients. But we need your financial support to succeed, so please make a donation to the campaign today.

I’m grateful for your support.

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 monthly pledge to MPP will be doubled.

[Courtesy of Marijuana Policy Project] 

“Different lipstick, same old pig.”

That was the title of a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial on Monday, referring to a quote by MPP’s Neal Levine, who was artfully characterizing the unconstitutional ballot initiative law in Nevada that we’re going to overturn.

Last week, MPP and the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Nevada government to overturn its unconstitutional law, which requires signatures from voters in all of the state’s 17 counties in order to qualify a measure for the statewide ballot.

This is the second time MPP has sued the Nevada state government over the very same issue. We won in 2004, and we’re going to win this time, too, and the Nevada government is going to have to pay our legal fees in full — again.

In addition to the editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, one of the state’s biggest newspapers, a columnist for the Las Vegas Sun also weighed in on the situation.

Because MPP plans to run another ballot initiative campaign to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol in Nevada in a few years, it’s vitally important that Nevada’s ballot initiative law not be overly burdensome.

The previous law we overturned in 2004 — which required signatures from voters in 13 of Nevada’s 17 counties — was correctly thrown out by a federal court as a violation of the “one man, one vote” rule. And the new law — which MPP’s Neal Levine told the Las Vegas Review-Journal was “a different shade of lipstick on the same old pig” — also violates the “one man, one vote” rule.

We’re so sure we’re going to win this lawsuit — and get our legal fees reimbursed by the incompetent Nevada government — that I’m not even going to ask you to donate money to help pay for it.

However, I hope you’ll consider joining our monthly credit card pledge program — even with just $5 or $10 per month — in order to support our other 2008 projects.

Thank you, as always, for supporting MPP’s work.

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 monthly pledge will be doubled.

[Courtesy of MPP] 

As I wrote you at the end of last month, the Marijuana Policy Project needs your help to place a landmark medical marijuana initiative on the Michigan ballot.

Landmark? Yes, because if Michigan voters are given the opportunity to pass the initiative in November of next year, Michigan will become the first state in the Midwest where patients will be able to use, possess, and grow marijuana legally for medical purposes.

And we can pass the initiative, because the only two public opinion polls that have been conducted in recent years show that between 59% and 61% of Michigan voters support the initiative. And this polling is accurate, because five out of five Michigan cities have passed local medical marijuana initiatives with an average of 64% of the vote since 2004.

I want to thank the 44 generous supporters who made a financial donation after my last message about this campaign. But now I need your help, too.

Would you please donate $10 or more today, so that we can afford to pay our hard-working petitioners who are working furiously to collect the remaining signatures that are needed to place the initiative on the November 2008 ballot?

Our petitioners have done a great job since we kicked off the drive on May 23. But, we still have work ahead of us: In the next month, we need to collect the final 100,000 signatures that are needed to place the initiative on the ballot.

Please donate $10 or more today, so that Michigan voters will have the chance to protect marijuana-using patients who have cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other medical conditions from arrest.

Fully 10.1 million people live in Michigan, so making Michigan the 13^th medical marijuana state would provide a huge boost to change federal law to end our government’s persecution of medical marijuana patients nationwide.

If our hard-working petitioners fail to collect 100,000 signatures over the next month, the initiative will not appear on the ballot, and all the work we’ve done — and all the money we’ve spent — in Michigan will have been in vain.

If you live in Michigan, please volunteer to collect 100, 500, or even 1,000 signatures from registered voters over the course of the next month. Or, if you’re unable to do so, please donate $10 or more so that we can pay others to do so.

If you do not live in Michigan, please reach out across state lines to help make medical marijuana legal in the first Midwestern state by donating $10 or more today.

Please lend your support today — and do not delay. I’ll be grateful for anything you can do to help. Thank you for considering this request ...

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 2007. This means that your donation today will be doubled.

MPP’s campaign to pass a medical marijuana initiative in Michigan urgently needs your help.

In May, the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care (MCCC) began gathering signatures to place a statewide medical marijuana initiative on the November 2008 ballot.

If you live in Michigan, MCCC needs you to collect signatures or to make a sizable donation to ensure the initiative gets on the ballot. If you don’t live in Michigan, MCCC needs you to donate money to support the signature-gathering effort.?

Four months into the signature drive, MCCC has collected half the signatures that are needed. And since the signature drive must be completed by mid-November — which is just two months away — your help is needed now.

Michigan law requires MCCC to collect 304,101 valid signatures in order to place the medical marijuana initiative on the November 2008 ballot. Because the validity rate for the signatures that are being collected is hovering around 60%, this means we actually need to collect about 500,000 raw signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot. So far, we have about 250,000 raw signatures in-hand, so we’re halfway there.

It’s going to cost about $500,000 to obtain the remaining 250,000 raw signatures that are needed — or about $2 apiece. This means we need to spend more than $8,000 per day — every day, including Saturdays and Sundays — between now and the middle of November to qualify the initiative for the statewide ballot.

Would you please visit www.StopArrestingPatients.org to donate $10 or more today?  If everyone on this e-mail list were to donate just $10, we’d have literally twice as much money ($1,000,000) as will be needed to complete the signature drive.

Making Michigan the 13^th state to protect medical marijuana patients from arrest is crucial to our national strategy: Michigan is the country's eighth largest state and would be the first medical marijuana state in the Midwest.

Would you please lend your support today?

I’ll be grateful for anything you can do to help.

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 2007. This means that your donation today will be doubled.