#343 Medical Marijuana Across America

Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007
Subject: #343 Medical Marijuana Across America

MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACROSS AMERICA

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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #343 – Thursday, 15 March 2007

This week is an exciting week for news of medical marijuana from
around the United States. Some of the news is very encouraging,
while a couple of other stories are disturbing. All of them merit
activists helping make the media more aware of how the vast majority
of Americans support legal access to medical marijuana.

On the downside, the DEA during the past week has reinvigorated raids
on state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California. The
DEA’s primary public complaint is that the “businesses are making
huge, unregulated profits” while ignoring the will of California
voters who want legal access to medical marijuana and are working to
create regulated systems of distribution at the state and local
levels.

A second disappointing news story released Wednesday and tells of the
latest federal appeals court ruling which deemed that federal
prosecutors retain the right to prosecute Angel Raich for her state-
legal use of medical marijuana.

On the plus side, the state of New Mexico senate voted on Tuesday to
allow legal access to medical marijuana for residents who meet
defined guidelines. It earlier passed the state House with the
strong support of Governor Bill Richardson.

Additionally, bills to legalize medical marijuana have again been
introduced and are proceeding in both Connecticut and Illinois.

Finally, on Wednesday,. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer dismissed
tax and money laundering charges that the government had tacked on
after marijuana guru Ed Rosenthal won an appeal and had his case sent
back for a new trial. Breyer agreed with defense lawyers that the
new charges looked like vindictive prosecution, and the U.S. Attorney
hadn’t proved otherwise.

The above story lines will continue to receive coverage for at least
the next few days in newspapers across the country. MAP will be
receiving and archiving clippings steadily during that time. We
invite you to send a letter to the editors of the newspapers nearest
to your hometown. And if possible, consider sending additional
succinct letters to other newspapers carrying coverage of breaking
medical marijuana news.

We invite special LTE attention to coverage which is Opinion-based –
either Editorials, OPEDs, Columns or printed letters which discuss
this important topic during the coming week.

Updated MAP clippings covering these stories and all things medical
marijuana can be seen at anytime here:

http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana – Medicinal)

Letters of 200 words or less have the best chance for publication.
If you elect to write to more than one newspaper, we suggest
different messages or modified messages to avoid undue duplication.

Thanks for your effort and support.

It’s not what others do it’s what YOU do

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Continuing information on both medical marijuana-related news and
ways that citizens can best help move the efforts forward may be
found by visiting Americans For Safe Access
http://www.safeaccessnow.org

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Suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:

http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides

Or contact MAP Media Activism Facilitator Steve Heath for personal
tips on how to write LTEs that get printed.

heath@mapinc.org

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Don’t Miss MAP’s New & Improved Online Media Activism Conferences

Join Steve and other LTE writing friends Tuesday evenings at 9 p.m.
Eastern, 8 p.m. Central, or 7 p.m. Pacific for a roundtable discussion
of how to write LTEs that are likely to be printed.

See http://mapinc.org/resource/teamspeak/ for easy directions on how
to download, install and use the free TeamSpeak software. The
TeamSpeak software is easy to download and install. It runs on
Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Discussion is conducted with live Voice (microphone and speakers are
all that is needed) and also via text messaging.

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Please Send Us a Copy of Your Letter

Please post a copy of your letter to the sent letter list
(sentlte@mapinc.org) if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy to
heath@mapinc.org if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be
forwarded to the list so others may learn from your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent
LTEs for new ideas or approaches. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing
list see

http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form

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Prepared by: The Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource

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