“This was the most innovative signature drive I’ve ever seen,” Matthew Schweich, deputy director at the Marijuana Policy Project, which helped coordinate the effort, told Marijuana Moment. “The campaign used mailings, online ads, phone calls, and texting. Signature gatherers travelled all across the state collecting signatures every day while strictly adhering to internal health protocols.”
For what it’s worth, Meadows can’t plead ignorance on cannabis issues, Marijuana Policy Project’s Don Murphy told Marijuana Moment. “There’s no way he’s unaware. There’s just no way. I have talked to Mark Meadows dozens of times about this issue. We have had real conversations,” Murphy said. “I can’t imagine that he doesn’t know. Meadows has been around long enough to know that the president does what the president does.”
“Cannabis is used as a pretext for thousands of police stops that happen daily in communities of color,” Karen O’Keefe, state policies director for the Marijuana Policy Project, told Marijuana Moment. “Removing cannabis as a justification for police interaction is a reform urgently needed to address systemic racism and abusive policing.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said on Wednesday that Congress should federally legalize marijuana as another step toward enacting policing reform and addressing racial injustices.
“New Jersey is being really progressive in starting this conversation,” said DeVaughn Ward of the Marijuana Policy Project. “At two ounces, it would still be progress for the region. The reality is that for every increase is another life that could potentially be saved; somebody that could not be forced to encounter law enforcement.”
“It’s been busy!” Jared Moffat, campaigns coordinator with the Marijuana Policy Project working with Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, told Cannabis Wire regarding the revamped campaign. “We’ve been directing all circulators to follow safety measures (e.g. distancing, hand sanitizer, face covering, etc) to keep people safe. It seems the momentum has picked back up, though.”
DeVaughn Ward, senior legislative council for the Marijuana Policy Project, said on average, police in New Jersey arrest someone on marijuana charges once every 22 minutes. “This means that unless the Legislature enacts decriminalization between now and Election Day, thousands of New Jerseyans will have their lives turned upside-down by cannabis possession arrests,” Ward said.
If the legislature fails to enact decriminalization, more than 30,000 individuals in New Jersey will face traumatic arrests and prosecutions while voters wait for Election Day.
The Library of Congress (LOC) is documenting racist depictions of marijuana in early 20th century news coverage that helped to drive the criminalization of cannabis, highlighting sensationalized articles about the plant that the federal research body says effectively served as “anti-Mexican propaganda.”
Evidence of MPP's effectiveness? Of the 11 states with some form of legalization law on the books, the organization led the political campaigns for eight.