Victory -- marijuana will remain legal in Alaska!
Dear Todd Brendan Fahey:
We did it! The Marijuana Policy Project and our allies in Alaska have successfully beaten back efforts to re-criminalize marijuana in Alaska. After months of round-the-clock lobbying and grassroots organizing, marijuana will remain safe and legal in Alaska.
We couldn't have done this without the help of our 17,000 dues-paying members. We spent $45,000 in Alaska to pay for a full-time lobbyist, two radio ads, and the generation of phone calls from constituents to their state legislators. And this doesn't count the cost of MPP staffers' time and overhead in our D.C. headquarters.
If you are one of the 115,000 subscribers on this e-mail list who have not yet donated to MPP this year, would you please visit http://www.mpp.org/donate2094 to contribute $10 or more today?
As you may know, last September the Alaska Supreme Court upheld a previous ruling that allows adults aged 21 and older to use and possess up to four ounces of marijuana in the privacy of their homes -- and not just for medical use. The MPP grants program funded this litigation.
A few months ago, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) declared that re-criminalizing marijuana would be one of his top legislative priorities this year. At his urging, the state legislature introduced twin bills to impose the same penalty for the possession of four ounces of marijuana as for incest -- five years in prison!...
MPP fought back. Working with Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and Control, we funded radio ads -- which you can hear at http://regulatemarijuanainalaska.org/ads/index.html -- slamming the bills, called thousands of Alaska voters to get them to complain to their legislators, and, with the help of the Alaska Civil Liberties Union, lined up experts to testify before key committees. And we succeeded at ensuring that all newspapers in the state covered this public outcry.
At the start of this campaign, political observers said we wouldn't even be able to amend the legislation. But we did better than that -- we killed the bills completely.
After four months of hand-to-hand combat, the state legislature adjourned for the year without even coming close to passing the legislation. And, when the governor called the legislature back into session for the summer, he decided against putting the bad marijuana legislation on the legislature's docket.
We won, against all odds, because MPP, Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and Control, and the ACLU have been focused, aggressive, and professional -- and because we had the money to fight the fight that needed fighting.
Would you please show your support for our work by visiting http://www.mpp.org/donate2094 to make a donation to MPP? We need supporters like you to stand with us in our fight -- and, as our victory in Alaska shows, it's a fight that we can win.
Sincerely,
Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
We did it! The Marijuana Policy Project and our allies in Alaska have successfully beaten back efforts to re-criminalize marijuana in Alaska. After months of round-the-clock lobbying and grassroots organizing, marijuana will remain safe and legal in Alaska.
We couldn't have done this without the help of our 17,000 dues-paying members. We spent $45,000 in Alaska to pay for a full-time lobbyist, two radio ads, and the generation of phone calls from constituents to their state legislators. And this doesn't count the cost of MPP staffers' time and overhead in our D.C. headquarters.
If you are one of the 115,000 subscribers on this e-mail list who have not yet donated to MPP this year, would you please visit http://www.mpp.org/donate2094 to contribute $10 or more today?
As you may know, last September the Alaska Supreme Court upheld a previous ruling that allows adults aged 21 and older to use and possess up to four ounces of marijuana in the privacy of their homes -- and not just for medical use. The MPP grants program funded this litigation.
A few months ago, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) declared that re-criminalizing marijuana would be one of his top legislative priorities this year. At his urging, the state legislature introduced twin bills to impose the same penalty for the possession of four ounces of marijuana as for incest -- five years in prison!...
MPP fought back. Working with Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and Control, we funded radio ads -- which you can hear at http://regulatemarijuanainalaska.org/ads/index.html -- slamming the bills, called thousands of Alaska voters to get them to complain to their legislators, and, with the help of the Alaska Civil Liberties Union, lined up experts to testify before key committees. And we succeeded at ensuring that all newspapers in the state covered this public outcry.
At the start of this campaign, political observers said we wouldn't even be able to amend the legislation. But we did better than that -- we killed the bills completely.
After four months of hand-to-hand combat, the state legislature adjourned for the year without even coming close to passing the legislation. And, when the governor called the legislature back into session for the summer, he decided against putting the bad marijuana legislation on the legislature's docket.
We won, against all odds, because MPP, Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and Control, and the ACLU have been focused, aggressive, and professional -- and because we had the money to fight the fight that needed fighting.
Would you please show your support for our work by visiting http://www.mpp.org/donate2094 to make a donation to MPP? We need supporters like you to stand with us in our fight -- and, as our victory in Alaska shows, it's a fight that we can win.
Sincerely,
Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.