Dear friends,

To have a shot at removing the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana, we need at least 26 states to legalize medical marijuana. This will give us a clear path to victory in Congress and/or the federal courts.

As of today, medical marijuana is legal in 14 states and the District of Columbia.

To get to 26 states, we need to run ballot initiatives in some tough states in November 2012 – Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. And to get on these five ballots in November 2012, we need to start the signature drives soon, with the first being in Arkansas.

Please help MPP succeed with a new experiment: I want to see if we can fund the entire signature drive in Arkansas through monthly credit card donations from you and others on this e-mail list. Please start donating $10 or more on your credit card today.

As soon as we get up to $10,000 in monthly donations, we'll start funding the signature drive in Arkansas. Public opinion polling shows that 58% of Arkansans would vote for a medical marijuana initiative there, so the key is to put such a question on the ballot for them to approve.

Assuming a typical validity rate of 60% for signatures collected, we'll need to collect 110,000 gross signatures in order to end up with the required 65,000 valid signatures. It costs about $1.50 to collect and verify each signature, so here's the cost of the campaign:

110,000 gross signature x $1.50

$165,000

legal fees, printing, travel

$15,000

TOTAL COST

$180,000

The signature drive will take about 18 months to complete, so as soon as you and other allies begin monthly credit card donations totaling $10,000, we'll start the signature drive, and then you can sit back and watch us win in Arkansas, and hopefully other states, too.

In a couple weeks, I'll update you on how much money we're receiving in new monthly donations for the Arkansas campaign.

Please help me show that this experiment can work — that fewer than 1,000 people across the entire country can join together to help the first state in the deep south to legalize medical marijuana. We need to do this if we want to get to 26 states.

Please donate $10 or more on your credit card today so that we can start the signature drive in Arkansas.Thank you.

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia

Executive Director

Marijuana Policy Project

Washington, D.C.

Help us meet our mission

Raised in ’10:$2,721,628

Goal in ’10: $3,400,000

MPP will be able to tackle all of the projects in our 2010 strategic plan if you help us meet this challenge.

To contact MPP, please click here or reply to this e-mail. Our mailing address is Marijuana Policy Project, 236 Massachusetts Ave. NE, Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20002. Any donations you make to MPP may be used for political purposes, such as supporting or opposing candidates for federal office.