PRA News:

So, for a cool million they could guarantee us a place on the 2002 ballot and possibly make Michigan the first state to make Marijuana (3 Plants and 3 ounces) legal for a adults over the age of 21.  C'mon guys, help us make some history here before the world passes you by!!!

On 08/01/01 I sent a e-mail to Ethan Nadelman of the Lindesmith Center begging him to put us in contact with these three.  I also copied every Drug Policy Foundation Contact asking that they get in contact with me ASAP.  24 hours later . . . absolutely nothing.  I will keep you updated.  In the meantime let's spend the weekend at either the Mexican Fest (Hart Plaza) or the Dearborn Homecoming (Dearborn).  Send me an e-mail if you are planning on working the Homecoming and I will help their.  If no one is planning on working the Homecoming, in Dearborn, I will be at Hart Plaza Saturday . . . and possibly Sunday as well.

Overview of Progress 07/14/01:

They are no longer writing tickets for Marijuana possession in parts of England.  What I think this reflects is a building global movement, on the  part of regular people, to demand sensible change in our policies towards
Cannabis.  As I had predicted, while publishing New Age Patriot (1989-1997),  the Drug War will ultimately end similarly to the fall of the Berlin Wall.   It will be unexpected and it will usher in dramatic social change.

But it is people like you and I that will precipitate the change.  It isn't gonna happen all by itself.  It will take far more than a handful of petitioners at the larger events around Metro Detroit.

PRA is our vehicle and we need to drive this sucker successfully to the finish line before October 3rd. I just talked to Gregg today and he says he has a pile of petitions 3.5 feet high but has not been able to count them as of yet.  To arrive at the 07/14/01 figure I did the following extrapolation:

I found the 1/4" stack of petitions that I am turning in contains 68 pages and 453 signatures. On this basis I made the following extrapolation:
3.5 ft * 12 in/ft * 1800 sigs/in = 75,600 signatures
Of course this assumes an average of 6.66 sigs/petition (453 sigs/68 petitions)
The graph data is lowballed to 50,000 vs 75,600 because I don't want to overestimate our progress

And we are actually a little further behind our goal of a 33% margin which really requires that we collect 450,000 signitures (33% of 450,000 is 150,000).  Our current goal of 400,000 only gives us a 25% margin which may suffice but is certainly more shakey than the envisioned goal of 33% (25% of 400,000 is 100,000).  But the next month should offer plenty of opportunity and it is up to each of us to do all that we can do as well as getting our friends off their butts to pitch in as well.  I know we can do this!

It would be a shame to see our efforts be in vain . . .  again.  To succeed we need to collect signatures at over twice the rate we have been collecting them so far, for the duration (about 90 days) of this campaign.   We must reach out and demand more support from our fellow smokers and civil libertarians.  We must get the unregistered registered and on our petitions.

To help get the word out, on PRA, I am asking my fellow activists to send me listings of the e-mail addresses of as many Michigan activists, libertarians and smokers as you can come up with.  Just paste them in the body of an email and send them to Professor Hemp by clicking here.  I will compile these e-mails into a huge list and use it to mass mail updates an hopefully get the additional petitioners that we need to achieve our goal.

Overview of Progress 07/01/01:

I have been curious about the dimensions of our task in collecting the 400,000 signatures for PRA.  How many registered voters are there in the state of Michigan and what percentage of these registered voters do we need to get sign the PRA petition.  I found a great source of information to answer this question in the Michigan Electronic Library and here are some important figures:

This means that in order to collect 400,000 signatures we need to reach 5.8% of the registered voters which amount to collecting a signature from 1 in 17.28 of the registered voters.  That is not as bad as originally thought as I had assumed that far fewer of the total population was above 18 years of age and registered.  So there is still much hope but also much work ahead.  You might use these facts to help get your apathetic friends involved with the PRA initiative. 

Overview of Progress 06/25/01:

PRA author Gregg Schmidt reported that we just passed the 100,000 signature mark in the PRA petition drive during a NORML meeting at Hemp Heaven in Wyandotte (06/25/01).  This is great news but it is no reason to slack off.  It  means that we have reached 25% of our 400,000 goal and requires that we collect roughly 3,000 signatures each day for the remaining 100 days of the petition drive.  This IS an attainable goal but we need to redouble our efforts immediately.  Consider the following:

* Gregg says we have nearly 3,000 volunteer petitioners but only a handful are bringing in significant numbers of signatures.
* July through mid-August are going to be the best opportunities to collect signatures due to many large venues and good whether.  Mid-August through September offer fewer events and late August can be very challenging due to the heat (e.g., "the dog days of August").

The only way we are going to get PRA on the 2002 ballot is through a lot of hard work.  Here are my suggestions:

* Get as many of your friends down to the Detroit Fireworks tomorrow (06/27/01) to collect signatures from the expected crowd of 1 million plus.
* Always carry a few petitions with you so that signatures can effortlessly be gathered as you go about your everyday activities (parties, concerts, lunch with friends/employees . . . ).  
* Take a look at New Age Citizens list of petitioning venues and make the extra effort to attend and collect signatures. If you know of other "big" events please submit them using the form at the bottom of the event page.

The way we are going to get PRA on the 2002 ballot is by placing on petitioners in the stream of large number of registered voters.  That means we need to be at all of the big festivals in Detroit and elsewhere through the month of September.

Overview of Progress 06/05/01:

We have set our goal to collect 400,000 signatures in the 180-day period between April 6th and October 3rd, 2001.  This represents 33% more signatures, above the 302,711 required signatures, so that we have a healthy margin of error to account for invalid signatures.    Gregg Schmidt reports that we had about 67,000 signatures as of 06/05/2001.  From this data we can make a few observations:

* When the initiative began, 04/06/01, we needed to be collecting an average exceeding 2,223 signatures each day in order to collect 400,000 signatures by 10/03/2001.

* We should have collected 133,380 signatures by 06/05/2001, the 60th day of the petition drive, but have actually collected 67,000 signatures.

These figures show that we are presently collecting signatures at about half the rate that we need to be in order to reach our 400,000-signature goal by 10/03/2001.  In order to make up this deficit we need to collect approximately 2,775 signatures each day, (or 19,425 signatures each week) for the duration of the PRA petition drive. 

I believe we can make the 400,000-signature goal by 10/03/2001; however, it is imperative that we work both harder and smarter.  Some of the obvious aids would include:

* Finding many more petitioners to aid in the collection

* Further promoting PRA so more registered voters are aware and motivated to sign the petition.

* Possibly find business establishments that would have petitions available for signing.

* Convince George Soros, backer of the 1996 Medical Marijuana Initiative in California, to put up monies to employ professional canvassing services to supplement the voluntary petition drive.

Please let me know if you have any additional ideas that would help us achieve of 400,000-signature goal.