2005 - THE YEAR IN REVIEW PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #319 - Monday, 2 January 2006 As we enter a new year, the staff and supporters of DrugSense and MAP thank the many friends and community activists who have used our resources during 2005. Together, we have successfully made the print, radio and television media more aware of both the failures in public drug policy and of alternatives to status-quo drug war strategies. Here are links to the most read news clippings for 2005: Australasia http://www.mapinc.org/find?369 Canada: http://www.mapinc.org/find?366 South America http://www.mapinc.org/find?368 United Kingdom http://www.mapinc.org/find?367 United States http://www.mapinc.org/find?365 2005 saw DrugSense and it's Media Awareness Project grow in many ways: January saw the launch of our Media Activism Facilitator Project http://www.mapinc.org/resource/ with a goal of providing more assistance and training for local activists in topics like How To Get Drug Policy On the Air in Your Community, How to write a Press Release, Preparing For TV and Radio Interviews, and how to write OPEDs and Letters to the Editor for publication. Using the MAP Virtual Conference Room http://www.mapinc.org/resource/paltalk.htm numerous voice/text training sessions were completed. Current training session dates and times are found at http://www.mapinc.org/resource/pal_sched.php As a part of the project, The Drug Policy Writers Group http://mapinc.org/resource/dpwg/index.php was formed in the Fall to help folks who wish to write OPEDs market them to newspapers. As many drug policy reform activists are discovering, the highest and most direct level of democracy often takes place at the lowest levels of government. This is reflected in the many successful municipal audits and initiatives that have taken place over the last few years. From Seattle's I-75, to Oakland's Measure Z, to Syracuse's Plan B, these important local actions can expose and erode the faulty presumptions that underpin the war on drugs, and they often resonate well beyond their geographical boundaries. Although each municipality has a different social and bureaucratic make-up, we believe that future initiatives can benefit from reviewing the tactics of those that have successfully passed before them. It is with this in mind that DrugSense developed during the Summer the "Community Audits and Initiatives" webpages http://www.drugsense.org/caip The Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action was awarded to DrugSense in November. See the award and listen to audio excerpts of Mark Greer's and Matt Elrod's acceptance speech at http://drugsense.org/awards/randall.htm At the year's end Drug Policy Central, the web design, hosting and internet services wing of DrugSense http://www.drugpolicycentral.com was hosting 122 websites and numerous email lists and threaded discussion forums for the drug policy reform community worldwide. The DrugSense http://www.drugsense.org website continued to grow, but perhaps the best kept secret in reform is what is available to users that actually register at the website. Many pages do not require registration. For those who do register, for free - over 2,300 by the end of 2005 - access is provided to audio-visual clips, blogs, downloads, forums, music and other content not available to those who do not register. MAP's Published Letters Archive http://www.mapinc.org/lte/ saw almost a 25% increase in pro-reform published letters in 1995, despite war, floods, famine and a wide variety of national and local issues that tended to push our issues off of the editorial pages of newspapers. Our 10th anniversary occurred in November, when, ten years earlier, Mark Greer founded this ground breaking organization http://www.drugsense.org/pages/history We will be celebrating this milestone throughout 2006. Not mentioned above are a variety of other services to the reform community, like our DrugSense Weekly, our 25,000 listings media contact database, and our news clipping feeds to over two hundred websites worldwide. All of the above was supported by generous donations and grants from the reform community. But with all the calls to give from various other good causes, fund raising is difficult. If we are to survive through this year financial support from users like you must increase. Due to the generosity of a long time DrugSense funder, we have secured a matching funds grant! This means that anything you contribute to DrugSense and the Media Awareness Project will be matched, thus doubling the effective amount of your contribution. Please, please, visit our donations page http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm and give! "It's not what others do, it's what YOU do!" Prepared by: Staff http://www.drugsense.org/pages/whoweare =.

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