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The Marijuana Policy Project is
sending this message to you as part of
a message exchange agreement with the Libertarian Party. MPP will
never share or sell your e-mail address to anyone, but we occasionally
exchange messages with other organizations that are working for
marijuana policy reform.
Dear Friend of Freedom,
Would you like to see Bob Barr -- the most fanatical Drug Warrior in
Congress -- out of Congress next year?
Would you like to see him lose specifically because he is waging the
Drug War against the most helpless in our society -- medical marijuana
patients?
Can you imagine the effect of him saying to his former congressional
colleagues, "I lost because of those drug reformers?"
Would you like to fire a warning shot across the bow of every
congressional Drug Warrior, that they could be next to lose their
election, if they don't come around on medical marijuana?
We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to bump Bob Barr out of Congress
on August 20, but to do so, we'll need the help of marijuana policy
reformers all over the country.
Why once-in-a-lifetime? Because redistricting has put Bob Barr in a
very tight race against another Republican incumbent. The local
political pundits say the race is too close to call. A recent poll
puts Barr behind -- but with a large number of voters still undecided.
The new district is so strongly Republican, that if Barr wins the
August 20th Republican primary, he will have a safe seat for as long
as he wants it.
If we don't take out Bob Barr right now, he'll be around to torture
medical marijuana patients and block medical marijuana initiatives for
decades to come.
How fanatical is Bob Barr on medical marijuana? Keep reading this
message, and I'll tell you about a Barr proposal so frightening that
even then Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey called it "chilling."
It's so unbelievable, I'll tell you how you can verify it yourself.
I'll also tell you about the great candidate the Libertarian Party has
in the race, Carole Ann Rand, and how we plan to fire the final salvo
that will unseat this monster of a Congressman, Bob Barr, who believes
in murdering the critically ill in their wheelchairs.
And that is no exaggeration. As the member in Congress who is most
viscerally and energetically in support of the war on medical
marijuana users, his policies are responsible for the death of author,
activist, and AIDS sufferer Peter McWilliams, and the torture of
thousands of patients who could benefit from this ancient medicine.
Barr so dislikes medical marijuana, he dreamed up and got passed a
special federal law making it illegal for the District of Columbia to
even count the votes for a medical marijuana initiative that was
already printed on the ballot.
That was declared unconstitutional.
So, a year after the election, after the lawsuit outcome, D.C. was
permitted to count the votes. Lo and behold, the voters had supported
it two-to-one.
But then Barr led Congress, which holds the purse strings of the D.C.
government, to override that vote of the people, and the initiative
did not go into effect.
Medical marijuana activists in D.C. decided they would put the
initiative on the ballot again. This time Barr wrote a federal law
forbidding anyone to circulate an initiative in D.C. on the subject of
medical marijuana.
That was also held unconstitutional.
Now that D.C. activists have gathered the signatures to once again
place a medical marijuana initiative on the ballot, Barr is already
plotting legislative maneuvers to block its implementation.
Bob Barr likes to champion himself as an advocate for privacy rights,
property rights, states' rights, free speech, free trade, and medical
rights.
Yet, time after time, he promotes policies and legislation that
trample on those same rights he claims to protect. Barr is either the
most hypocritical or schizophrenic Congressman in Washington.
Even when Barr does something that freedom-loving Americans can
applaud, it is something that would not have been necessary in the
first place were it not for the Drug War policies that he supports.
When Barr is occasionally championing something that moves us in a
pro-freedom direction, it is always merely to undo the damage that his
favorite cause -- the Drug War -- has already inflicted on us.
Barr claims to be a fiscal conservative. Yet the Drug War is one of
the most financially wasteful efforts in our history. We directly
spend fifty billion dollars a year just on enforcement.
One study estimated the total cost to society of the Drug War,
including such items as lost taxes, prison construction, lost wages of
those incarcerated, cost of goods stolen, and added welfare costs, at
over 400 billion dollars a year.
But it is Barr's fanatical support for the most extremist actions in
the drug war that best illustrates his misplaced priorities.
While terrorists around the globe plot more attacks against our
country, Bob Barr's most pressing priority has been arresting the most
helpless in our society -- medical marijuana patients who are just
trying to relieve the symptoms of painful and debilitating diseases.
It is at Barr's urging that the Drug Enforcement Administration has
stepped up its raids on medical cannabis clinics in California,
arresting caregivers, and throwing critically ill patients into the
street.
According to Gallup and Pew Research polls, 73% of Americans support
medical marijuana, and believe that doctors and patients should decide
about what drugs should be prescribed to treat their life-threatening
diseases, not politicians.
Barr even says on his website that we must ensure that health care
decisions are made by patients and doctors, not the government. Yet,
with blatant hypocrisy, he is the driving force in Congress preventing
just that for medical marijuana.
We send congressmen to Washington to uphold the Constitution, not to
trample it and our rights. It is time to send Bob Barr home!
Here's our plan to do just that.
Georgia's 7th congressional district has a strong "base vote" for
Libertarian candidates. In 2000, our statewide candidates averaged
from 7% to 9% of the vote in the counties that make up the 7th
district. So there are large numbers of voters there that are heeding
the Libertarian message.
Our candidate in the race, Carole Ann Rand, was the Libertarian Party
of Georgia's first candidate for governor back in 1990. She went on to
become president of the Advocates for Self-Government, a libertarian
educational foundation, where she helped teach Libertarians around the
country to be better communicators for freedom. She is now CFO of Food
Partners, a wholesale foods brokerage.
Carole Ann is sharp, photogenic, and an effective, compassionate
communicator of Libertarian ideas. Her professional credentials and
reputation for integrity make it impossible to caricature her as a
stereotypical dope-smoker. She is the ideal candidate to take on
Bob Barr.
And I'm sure that Carole Ann would want me to mention that she has
just attended the birth of her 8th grandchild!
Although it is unusual to do so, Carole Ann is running TV ads
attacking Bob Barr during the weeks before the August 20th Republican
primary.
Have you ever seen steam coming out of a congressman's ears?
That's what's sure to happen when Bob Barr sees our first ad,
featuring multiple sclerosis sufferer and medical cannabis user
Cheryl Miller.
In the ad, Cheryl speaks from her wheelchair about her condition, and
about how Bob Barr wants to take away the only medicine that takes
away her pain.
And she says the brutal truth, that Bob Barr wants her in jail just
for using her medicine.
And then she asks:
"Why would you do that to me, Bob?"
You can view the ad online at:
http://www.RandforCongress.com/
Cheryl is a very brave woman to participate in this ad. She has no
legal protection for her medical use in her home state.
But Cheryl has already proven her bravery. In 1999, in another effort
to publicize the issue, she used her medicine, marijuana that she
takes orally, in Bob Barr's Congressional office. The federal police
did not have the nerve to arrest her in her wheelchair, so they
arrested her husband instead -- separating an invalid woman from her
caregiver for seven hours.
We believe our hard-hitting ads will damage Barr enough to ensure that
he loses the primary, so that the only way he can return to Washington
is as a lobbyist!
There is evidence that Barr is out of step with even his own strongest
supporters on medical marijuana. Let me share an anecdote with you
from a recent debate between Barr and Libertarian talk show host
Neal Boortz.
When Boortz talked on his nationally syndicated show about Barr's
recent efforts to block medical marijuana initiatives in D.C., Barr
called him up and challenged him to a public debate. Boortz accepted.
Boortz and Barr were each given 400 tickets to distribute to their
supporters, so the crowd reaction was split evenly during the debate.
At the very end of the debate, while Barr was finishing his closing
statement, Boortz asked the moderator if he could recognize a couple
of people in the audience. He did so, and his sidekick and Webmaster
from the talk show stood up to applause.
Barr immediately jumped in with, "Let me recognize someone in the
audience too. Everybody here who is a Bob Barr supporter stand up."
Half the audience stood up and cheered wildly, and it looked like
Boortz had made a major gaff.
But Neal jumped back with, "OK, everybody who is standing up now, if
you would send Bob Barr to arrest your mother on her deathbed if she
were using medical marijuana to ease her suffering, stay standing up."
95% of this audience, composed of Barr's strongest supporters,
immediately sat down.
They could see through his lies and his "Reefer Madness" rhetoric.
And so can the other voters, if we can get the truth out to them about
medical marijuana.
If we can prove that our plan will work on Barr, it will be a warning
shot to every Drug Warrior in Congress. This one victory could have
huge implications.
Could Barr's loss persuade -- or scare -- enough Congressmen that
we'll see legislative relief for medical marijuana patients? We won't
know that unless we succeed at bumping Barr from office.
And we won't have really succeeded, unless Barr not only loses, but
loses when the issue of medical marijuana is strongly interjected into
the race.
$44,000 will saturate the district for the critical last ten days with
cable TV ads on the channels voters watch most. Each spot will average
$12.00.
We have already purchased over $10,000 in ads that are running right
now in the district -- but we need your help to be able to blanket the
district effectively.
For a budget of $44,000, we'll be able to run 3,666 ads!
If we raise more than $44,000, we'll also buy broadcast time in the
metro Atlanta market which covers the 7th district.
EVERY PENNY you donate through our secure site will go to Carole Ann's
campaign to bump Bob Barr from Congress.
EVERY PENNY you donate will help move another voter away from
Bob Barr.
EVERY PENNY you send will be a warning to Congress that the cruel war
on medical marijuana users must end!
Will you please go right now to:
http://www.RandforCongress.com/donate.html
and send the biggest warning shot possible with your best possible
donation?
Stopping Barr's congressional influence on the war on medical
marijuana users will be like cutting off the head of a snake -- the
body will wiggle for a while, but the snake will die.
We can't let the only chance we'll have to remove Barr from office
pass by.
But we can only succeed if you help. In a race this close, every
dollar makes a difference.
$1,000 will buy 83 ads on cable TV
$500 will buy 42 ads.
$250 will buy 21 spots.
$100 will buy 8 ads.
$25 will buy an ad on the overnight rebroadcast of the Neal Boortz
show.
EVERY PENNY you donate will go to help bump Bob Barr from Congress.
Thank you, in advance, for your help.
Ron Crickenberger
Political Director
P.S. Unbelievably, Barr has even gone so far as to say that free
speech and the First Amendment should not
apply to people who
merely advocate drug policy reform. In a
congressional
committee hearing, Barr shocked even
then-current drug czar,
General McCaffrey, with his proposal that
drug policy reform
advocates be prosecuted under federal
anti-racketeering RICO
statutes. McCaffrey called the proposal
"chilling."
You can read the transcript at:
http://www.RandforCongress.com/
in the "Why Bump Bob Barr"
section. You can also check out the
great press we have been getting for making
medical marijuana
an issue in Barr's re-election.
Then, please, hit the donate button, and
make your best
possible contribution.
P.P.S. You may not have heard of Bryan Epis. The press hasn't covered
him much. But he is another victim of Bob
Barr's venomous
support for the Drug War.
Bryan has just been convicted under federal
law for providing
medicine to patients in a manner that was
completely legal
under California state law. He is facing a
mandatory minimum
sentence of ten years. Ten years federal
time for drugs --
which means no parole.
Just as in the case of Peter McWilliams,
the jury was
instructed to disregard any mention of
medical marijuana as a
defense.
Ten years in prison for trying to help the
sick and dying.
Ten years in prison without even being able
to tell the jury
your primary defense.
Ten years mandatory minimum in prison for
helping sick people,
when the "suggested" minimum
sentence for MURDER is only
5.5 years!
Ten YEARS!
Bryan's is the first such conviction where
the feds have
stepped in to prosecute a caregiver for
actions that are
completely legal under state law.
If we don't bump Bob Barr by August 20th,
it won't be the last.
Please, go to:
http://www.RandforCongress.com/donate.html
and send your best donation today.
On behalf of the patients that need your
help, thank you.
Please forward this message to your friends, family, and others you
know personally who may be interested. But please don't send it
indiscriminately. "Spam" will only hurt our campaign.
January 08, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A group the Supreme Court
barred from distributing medical marijuana reopened its case Tuesday, hoping to
pursue other legal avenues in its efforts to dole out cannabis to the sick.
The move comes eight months after the nation's
highest court said the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative was violating federal
drug laws. Lawyers expect the new case to also reach the Supreme Court.
"The Supreme Court issued a very narrow
ruling," said Robert Raich, the cooperative's attorney. "We are taking
the invitation to open up other issues."
Mark Quinlivan, the Justice Department's lead
attorney on the case, said Tuesday that the government had no comment on the new
filing. A hearing before a federal judge is set for next month.
In May, the high court ruled that the
so-called "medical necessity defense" was at odds with a 1970 federal
law that marijuana, heroin and LSD have no medical benefits and cannot be
dispensed or prescribed by doctors.
But Justice Clarence Thomas noted that
important constitutional questions remained, such as Congress' ability to
interfere with intrastate commerce, the right of states to experiment with their
own laws and whether Americans have a fundamental right to marijuana as a way to
be free of pain.
In 1996, California became the first state to
approve a medical marijuana law.
Despite the Supreme Court's decision, many
marijuana clubs distribute marijuana to the sick and thousands of people grow
and smoke marijuana for medical reasons.
In October, federal agents shut down a West
Hollywood cannabis club that doled out marijuana to the sick. Other recent
actions include the raid of a Ventura County garden operated by patients and the
seizure of medical records from a northern California doctor who is a prominent
medical marijuana proponent.
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