Changing Government Priorities PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #222 Wednesday, 19 September 2001 As people in the United States and around the world reflect on the tragic events of last week and wonder how their governments could have so failed to protect us all, the demand to evaluate priorities escalates. How the drug policy reform community can contribute to this demand for changes in priorities without causing a backlash is being debated by many reformers now. Daniel Solano of Police Officers for Drug Law Reform has suggested a step we can take, by contacting both the media and our elected officials to request the transfer of federal agents from drug war duties to being sky marshals. Dan points out that these agents would require little training before being placed on the job. But new hires for sky marshals require months to qualify and train. "There is a commitment to try to get more sky marshals in the air as soon as possible," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation aviation subcommittee. Plus there must be many tasks suited for law enforcement at all levels of government who are currently engaged in fighting the War on Drugs but who could be working on tasks designed to reduce the threat from terrorists. How well have we been served by our government - what threat analysis - placed such a premium on the arrest of cannabis users that they became a focus for the large majority of the $40 billion spent on the war on drugs each year - all while as dozens, if not hundreds, of terrorists lived among us, making and training for their evil plans? Thus we encourage you to take up Dan's suggestions. The elected officials who are with us on this have repeatedly emphasized that contacts with them by their electorate by means personal visits, phone calls, fax and mail generally carry much more weight than email. Please also write careful letters to the editor suggesting a need for a change in priorities in the use of our law enforcement assets now. Elected officials read the newspapers, and those of the area they are elected to serve most carefully. Readers of your published letters react - and may well contribute to the contacts with those elected officials. PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER OR TELL US WHAT YOU DID (Letter, Phone, fax etc.) Please post a copy your letter or report your action to the sent letter list () if you are subscribed. You may subscribe to this list at http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form If you choose not to subscribed to the list, please E-mail a copy of your letter directly to . Your letter will then be forwarded to the list with so others can learn from your efforts and be motivated to follow suit This is VERY IMPORTANT as knowing how many letters have been sent is one of the only ways we have of gauging our impact and effectiveness. Contact Info Today we are not asking you to write to a specific newspaper in response to a specific article or opinion item. Instead we are asking that you write to your local and state newspapers, as well as those newspapers which consider themselves as having a national market. The easy way to obtain newspaper contact information is to use MAP's new Source Directory at http://www.mapinc.org/media.htm There you can click on the word 'contact' to obtain the contact information for over a thousand newspapers. By using the List by Area drop down you may focus on your state. Note that the counts of drug and drug policy related news clips in the MAP archives gives a very rough idea of the publication's level of interest in the subject. If you wish to see the general nature, and lengths, of letters published by a newspaper go to http://www.mapinc.org/lte/ and use the search feature to find the newspaper. When you find the first published letter from a newspaper, note that there is a link at the bottom along with a count of the published letters for the newspaper. This link is easy to use to find more examples. SAMPLE LETTER To the Editor; I read that many DEA agents were pulled off of their task of watching the sick going in and out of west coast medical marijuana buyers clubs last week and rushed to take part in the investigation of terrorists. To help secure our travel safety, sky marshals are now to be found, FBI background checks conducted, and then trained, and put our commercial airlines - a task that will take many months if new persons are hired. But already well qualified DEA, FBI and other federal agents busy watching or busting marijuana users could be moved quickly, with the same pay and status, to permanent jobs anti-terrorist tasks, including being sky marshals. Let us ask our elected officials to use these well qualified personnel against what is now clearly the greatest threat. If the forty billion dollars a year being wasted at all levels of government in this never ending war on drugs had been - and could easily now be - invested in making us all more secure from real threats we may well not have been caught off guard. It is past time for our leaders to get the priorities in order. Sincerely, Richard Lake contact info IMPORTANT Always include your address and telephone number Please note If you choose to use this letter as a model please modify it at least somewhat so that the paper does not receive numerous copies of the same letter and so that the original author receives credit for his/her work. ADDITIONAL INFO to help you in your letter writing efforts Letter Writers Resources: http://www.mapinc.org/resource/ TO SUBSCRIBE, DONATE, VOLUNTEER TO HELP, OR UPDATE YOUR EMAIL SEE http://www.drugsense.org/hurry.htm TO UNSUBSCRIBE SEE http://www.drugsense.org/unsub.htm Prepared by Richard Lake - Focus Alert Specialist

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