cannabisnews.com: DrugSense Weekly, January 5, 2001 # 181 DrugSense Weekly, January 5, 2001 # 181 Posted by FoM on January 05, 2001 at 10:54:21 PT MAP's DrugNews Archive Tops 50,000 News Clippings Source: DrugSense Four years ago, a small group of activists who knew each other only through the Internet, became concerned that the nation's press-- for whatever reason-- was doing an inadequate job of reporting on the drug war and was allowing our misguided policy of drug prohibition to thrive without effective opposition. Convinced that letters to newspapers were an effective way to demand better coverage, MAP was founded to both educate interested parties and assist them to write such letters. An archive of pooled news articles was started as part of that effort; little realizing that it would grow to its present size and become an invaluable tool for journalists and scholars of public policy. MAP's material is submitted and formatted by unpaid volunteers. The thoroughly searchable archive is managed by a world class web master. Over the years, at one time or other, more than 850 people have become "NewsHawks" by submitting articles and opinion pieces from all over the world. The MAP idea has been cloned in Dutch. Other foreign language archives are in the planning stage. As this is written the fifty-thousandth item is about to be submitted to the archive and formatted for inclusion. It thus seems like an appropriate time to take a moment to acknowledge the efforts of all our volunteers who have contributed to making the MAP Archive the powerful force for drug policy reform that it is today.As many of you know, our NewsHawks can create their own NewsHawk line for our articles. Many do, providing links to their favorite sites.We thank you, too, NewsHawks, for providing the links as well as for NewsHawking! Below is a URL to those links, leaving out only those which are MAP/DrugSense pages. A fair number of those pages are in support of other groups, and you can find those linked from our site map at http://www.drugsense.org/sitemap.htmFirst, a huge thank you to all of our NewsHawks over the years: NOTE: What we hope is a complete list of our entire cadre of dedicated NewsHawks has been painstakingly assembled at:http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n000/a253.html If you have helped MAP by NewsHawking articles and are not on the list please let Richard Lake: richard mapinc.org know an we will add you to the list. While anybody can NewsHawk an item, not every item that comes to us is appropriate, as indicated on the how to NewsHawk page (see Hot Off the "Net below). Some articles need to have their format improved. Some are duplicates. Thus a hard working team of editors has, over the years, maintained and improved our quality control. Thank you, editors, for all that you do! Here is the list of editors, some not currently active, who have been a part of the editing posting team: Allan Wilkinson, Andrew, Beth Wehrman, Derek Rea, Doc-Hawk, Don Beck, Eric Ernst, Frank S. World, GD, Greg, Jay Bergstrom, Jo-D, Joel W. Johnson, John Chase, Josh Sutcliffe, Keith Brilhart, Ken Russell, Kiril Dubrovsky, Kirk Bauer, Larry Stevens, manemez j lovitto, Matt Elrod, Melodi Cornett, Mike Gogulski, Olafur Brentmar, Pat Dolan, Patrick Henry, Rich O'Grady, Richard Lake, Rolf Ernst, Terry F, Terry Liittschwager, ThunderWe all, NewsHawks and editors, do it for you, dear readers. And to provide a database of items which authors, reporters and researchers use every day. But we do it all the way we do, including the contact information for the source publications, so that folks can easily respond by writing Letters to the Editor.And you do, by the thousands. We hear that many of you average a half dozen or more letters sent for one published. But you still keep at it, because it is how you play a role in "Moving the Discourse on Drugs from Hysteria to Sanity and Humanity." Today about 2,500 authors are represented in the Published Letters Archive of over 5,000 letters at http://www.mapinc.org/lte/. If you use the dropdown next to the 'Display' button, you can see a list of all the authors, in three parts. A huge thank you to all of you who write Letters to the Editor, published or not!Oh, and we suspect that the NewsHawks do not find every published letter, so the archive is far from complete.And a big thank you also to all the listmasters who manage our almost a hundred email lists, a fair number listed at:http://www.drugsense.org/lists/ & http://www.mapinc.org/lists/. And our Focus Alert Specialists who write our Focus Alerts, which may viewed at: http://www.drugsense.org/alerts.htm. And all our webmasters who make all the pages happen (see the site map above). Plus special thanks to MAP's executive director and board of directors who guide us so carefully -- listed athttp://www.drugsense.org/board.htm.And finally, thank you to all who donate. Without your donations we could not support our huge server, with well over sixty thousand webpages, and over a dozen major websites.Everyone, please, give yourselves a good pat on the back! You rock! A New Years Thank you to All NewsHawks. Editors, Letter Writers, and DrugSense/MAP Supporters.By Richard Lake Senior Editor Click the link to read all of DrugSense Weekly's News Bulletin.DrugSense Weekly, January 5, 2001 # 181http://drugsense.org/dsw/2001/ds01.n181.htmlDrugSense Weekly, December 29, 2000 # 180http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8158.shtmlCannabisNews MapInc. Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/MAP.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #5 posted by FoM on March 28, 2001 at 18:24:35 PT Good Luck To You! Welcome Guy FreeMarijuana,I know how hard you are working because of MapInc. articles on your country. I hope in the future I will be able to add Australia and Canada. I'm the only one that does the news so I keep it to articles mostly from the USA but the idea is being kicked around. That would be nice if we can work it out. [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by Guy FreeMarijuana on March 28, 2001 at 09:30:43 PT: Drug War Down-Under Greetings from H.E.M.P. (Help End Marijuana Prohibition) Australia! We have been fighting the drug war for seven years now, running candidates in elections, holding rallies, pickets, smoke-ins. The major media here are generally speaking, rabidly zero tolerant ("goose-stepping/ twelve-stepping tee-toalitarians") and have been working themselves into a bit of a frenzy lately. Its easy for activists to feel isolated under these conditions, and it is through our isolation we are controlled. Good to see your service existing & know others exist. It may be a long time coming, but one day we will end these insane laws. [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by freedom fighter on January 06, 2001 at 09:53:05 PT These people deserve nobel peace prize!They taught me that Tolerance with Truth shall overcome the Zero tolerance. \/ [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on January 06, 2001 at 09:43:45 PT: Talking to Ourselves Sometimes For better or worse, 95% of the commentators on cannabisnews.com agree with the end to prohibition. The reason to write to newspapers is influence public opinion, one reader at a time, if necessary. Just say "No to Prohibition!" Write, write, write. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by sm247 on January 06, 2001 at 08:17:20 PT newspapers the problem with writing newspapers are 1. Getting them to print what you wrote.2. Only read by the people who buy that newspaper.3. Newspapers are generally thrown away or recycled. The net is the answer to the drugwar all comments here are world readable. 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