MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACROSS AMERICA PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE 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 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 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. 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. Please Send Us a Copy of Your Letter Please post a copy of your letter to the sent letter list () if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy to 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 Prepared by: The Media Activism Teamwww.mapinc.org/resource =.

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