CULTIVATING COMPASSION PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #289 Sunday, 25 April 2004 Today the Salt Lake Tribune printed the editorial, below, 'Cultivating Compassion' which slams the U.S. Justice Department over last week's round of medical cannabis legal actions. The editorial, and others like it, are worthy of your letters to the editor. Friday, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin printed a similar editorial, 'Let Patients Grow Their Own Pakalolo' on line at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n619/a08.html And there have been a number of other articles published about Judge Jeremy Fogel's decision, all worthy of letters to the editor, which can be found at http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jeremy+Fogel Need More Facts for Your Letters? See: Medical Marijuana http://www.drugwarfacts.org/medicalm.htm Distortion 9: Cannabis As Medicine http://www.drugwardistortions.org/distortion9.htm Making Medical Marijuana Legally Available http://www.mpp.org/med_mj.html Medical Use http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3376 Medical Marijuana http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/medical/ ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE: Write a LTEs to the papers in your state about this issue. This is a good example of a topic that may result in a printed letter without the need to tie it to any other specific item the papers may have printed. To find your state/local newspapers, go to MAP's media links page at: http://www.mapinc.org/media.htm Using the 'List by Area" dropdown find and bring up the list of newspapers in your state and their LTE contact. Note those with the higher numbers of Clippings or Excerpts as this tends to indicate a higher interest by the paper in our issues, and thus should be your first targets. Also consider sending the editorials to your local newspapers. Ask your papers to please print similar editorial page items. Let your members of congress know about how you feel about this issue. If you can, visit with the members, or visit their state/local offices, as telling them or their staff directly always shows a deep concern, stronger than any other message. Or give them a phone call. You can use MPP's Take Action page to send your concern to your Senators. Just go to this link, personalize the message with your own thoughts and facts, and send. It is easy and fast: http://www.mpp.org/USA/index.html NORML also has related action pages at: http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=2204601&type=CO Last, but not least, cannabis is a topic before the legislators, or an initiative issue, in a number of states and cities. Please make the appropriate contacts for your states. It does not take many folks like you to make a real difference! See: http://actioncenter.drugpolicy.org/action/moreactions.asp http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/ http://www.mpp.org/campaigns/index.html Thanks for your effort and support. It's not what others do it's what YOU do PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER OR TELL US WHAT YOU DID (Letter, email messages, etc.) Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent letter list () if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others can learn from your efforts and be motivated to follow suit. This is _Very_ Important as it is one very effective way of gauging our impact and effectiveness. Subscribing to the Sent LTE list () will help you to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing efforts. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm and/or http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form The Editorial: Pubdate: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT) Copyright: 2004 The Salt Lake Tribune Contact: Website: http://www.sltrib.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383 CULTIVATING COMPASSION Whenever folks over at the U.S. Justice Department were feeling blue about anti-American terrorists, uppity librarians or naked statues standing behind the attorney general, they could always take a deep drag on the anti-drug drug by busting a few terminal cancer patients in California. But now some derned activist federal judge has taken that simple pleasure away from them. Some days it just doesn't pay to be a jack-booted thug. It will be of great comfort to a few people, at least for awhile, to be members of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz, Calif. That's because a federal judge Wednesday ordered the feds to stay away while the dispute over California's medical marijuana law plays out in the courts. The co-op's garden was shut down 18 months ago by a federal raid, surely one of the ugliest acts of governmental bullying on record. But U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, echoing an earlier appeals court ruling, found that the Wo/Men's Alliance was protected by a state law that allows people with a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana to ease the suffering attendant to cancer, cancer treatment, glaucoma or other ills that, many believe, are eased by the drug. The case is wending its way up to the Supreme Court. But, for now, California co-ops run on volunteer labor and donated funds that do not engage in anything resembling interstate commerce, may grow and distribute free pot to suffering people. Even if the medicinal benefits are oversold, medical marijuana laws in California and eight other states are clearly motivated by the desire to ease human suffering. The administration's actions seem motivated by baser instincts including, perhaps, fear that someone might win relief from a substance they can grow themselves rather than being at the mercy of the price-gouging pharmaceutical industry. The Wo/Men's Alliance grows the marijuana, but the Justice Department is full of weeds. ADDITIONAL INFO to help you in your letter writing efforts, Please See: Writer's Resources http://www.mapinc.org/resource/ TO SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, OR UPDATE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS: Please utilize the following URLs http://www.drugsense.org/hurry.htm http://www.drugsense.org/unsub.htm We wish to thank all our contributors, editors, Newshawks and letter writing activists. Prepared by: Richard Lake, Focus Alert Specialist

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