Pubdate: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 Source: DrugSense Weekly Section: Feature Article Website: http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm Author: Mark Greer Note: Mark Greer is Executive Director of DrugSense. WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP BRING ABOUT MORE SENSIBLE DRUG POLICIES Have you ever wondered how you could become a more effective activist? One of the primary reasons DrugSense and the Media Awareness Project (MAP) exist is to help individuals and organizations to become more effective and to use their valuable time and resources as efficiently as possible. Help and volunteerism is what we're about. If you have the abilities and/or desire we need help in the following categories: 1) Letter writers. Read the DrugSense weekly and select an article that motivates you then write a letter using the email address usually provided with the article. Alternately write a letter of response to our weekly FOCUS Alert Subscribe to either of the above by visiting http://www.drugsense.org/hurry.htm 2) NewsHawks. Find news articles on drug policy issues and either scan or copy them and forward them to This can be done by monitoring any of hundreds of on-line newspapers or by scanning articles from you local paper. See: http://www.mapinc.org/hawk.htm 3) Recruiters. Visit news groups, email chat lists, and other sources for large groups of reform minded people and encourage them to visit our web pages, subscribe to our DrugSense Weekly newsletter and to get involved. See a list of drug policy email chat lists at http://www.mapinc.org/lists/ 4) Fund raise. We are always short of funding. Either contribute or try to find others to do so. To contribute conveniently on-line using a credit card see: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm Or you can mail in your tax deductible contributions to: DrugSense (MAP Inc.) 14252 Culver Dr #328 Irvine, CA 02604 Checks can be made out to either DrugSense or The Media Awareness Project (MAP) 5) Start a local reform group in your state or country. If you have 20 people who will help do the above types of activities we will provide a free email list to coordinate your groups activities and provide guidance to get you started. Once you get going we will also create and support a web page for your group. All at no charge to your organization. 6) Spread the word about our huge searchable archive of news articles at http://www.drugnews.org/ It can answer practically any question on drug policy, help you prepare for debates or media appearances, provide a research tool for local media, enhance your fact checking and accuracy for letter writing and much more. 7) Use and distribute the valuable collection of Drug War Facts at http://www.drugwarfacts.org/ It is a large collection of facts citations and myth de bunkers. If the average citizen was aware of just this collection of facts support for the "War on Drugs" would erode by orders of magnitude. 8) Volunteer as a "Focus Alert Specialist." These individuals help select important news articles and write up Focus Alerts to direct our thousands of letter writing volunteers to respond to specific articles. To volunteer for this important duty please email Mark Greer at See http://www.mapinc.org/focus/ 9) Become a Public Relations Specialist. These individuals help improve our web visibility, register our web pages with search engines etc. 10) If you would like further guidance on everything from how to write a letter to the editor to how to organize your own group of activists please see http://www.mapinc.org/resource/ Please contact us for further information on getting involved in any of the above activities. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake