2008 - A RETROSPECTIVE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #391 - Sunday, 11 January 2009 2008 saw 11,442 new news clippings added to the Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/ archives. Of these about six thousand were about marijuana or hemp. Over a half million different readers from about 125 countries accessed the clippings during the year. Selections of the 600 most read clippings by area of the world can be found at the following links: http://mapinc.org/find?369 2008 in Review - Australasia http://mapinc.org/find?370 2008 in Review - Asia http://mapinc.org/find?366 2008 in Review - Canada http://mapinc.org/find?368 2008 in Review - South America http://mapinc.org/find?367 2008 in Review - United Kingdom http://mapinc.org/find?365 2008 in Review - United States During the 2008 National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Conference the Hunter S. Thompson NORML Media Award http://mapinc.org/pix/norml_award3.jpg was presented to the Media Awareness Project in memory of Derek Rea. The year 2008 was good for our Letter to The Editor writing activists - even though wars, the election, and the economy tended to push reform issues off the pages of newspapers - with 1,862 letters printed that we know of as shown at http://mapinc.org/lte/ . DrugSense recognizes the accomplishments of letter writers at http://www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm . The Media Contact On Demand database now contains 31,147 records and is being continuously updated. More reform organizations are using this amazing free resource http://www.mapinc.org/mcod/ . Thirty-three Focus Alerts http://www.mapinc.org/focus/ and four DrugSense Insider Newsletters http://drugsense.org/insider/ were produced covering a wide range of topics. It has also been a busy year for the Drug Policy Central http://www.drugpolicycentral.com/ webmastering/website hosting team supporting 124 reform websites and over 200 email lists and forums. An Acceptable Use Policy http://www.drugsense.org/aup.htm was introduced. The Acceptable Use Policy is designed to help protect Drug Policy Central, its clients, and the Internet community from irresponsible or illegal activities. DrugSense introduced a new activist Board of Directors composed of Don E. Wirtshafter, J.D., Chair; Mark Greer, President and Executive Director; Mary Jane Borden, MBA, APR, Secretary and Business Manager; Matt Elrod, Webmaster and Senior Tech Support; and Tom Angell, Media Relations Director for LEAP http://www.drugsense.org/pages/whoweare . We have probably left out something we did during the past year that is important to you, but it is hard to keep on top of all that happens at DrugSense. DrugSense thanks you all, our friends and supporters, for all you have done to support the effort in this past year. Because the economy, and the stock market, has hit some major DrugSense funders hard we know that some will decrease funding during 2009. Thus DrugSense asks for your financial support to help us keep doing what we do. Please visit http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm . Thank You Prepared by: The MAP/DrugSense Family of Activists =.

Focus Alert Archive