2008 - A DRUGSENSE RETROSPECTIVE

2008 saw 11,442 new news clippings added to the Media Awareness
Project http://www.mapinc.org/ archives. Of these about six thousand
were about marijuana or hemp.

Over a half million different readers from about 125 countries
accessed the clippings during the year. Selections of the 600 most
read clippings by area of the world can be found at the following links:

http://mapinc.org/find?369 2008 in Review - Australasia

http://mapinc.org/find?370 2008 in Review - Asia

http://mapinc.org/find?366 2008 in Review - Canada

http://mapinc.org/find?368 2008 in Review - South America

http://mapinc.org/find?367 2008 in Review - United Kingdom

http://mapinc.org/find?365 2008 in Review - United States

During the 2008 National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws Conference the Hunter S. Thompson NORML Media Award
http://mapinc.org/pix/norml_award3.jpg was presented to the Media
Awareness Project in memory of Derek Rea.

The year 2008 was good for our Letter to The Editor writing activists
- - even though wars, the election, and the economy tended to push
reform issues off the pages of newspapers - with 1,862 letters
printed that we know of as shown at http://mapinc.org/lte/ .
DrugSense recognizes the accomplishments of letter writers at
http://www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm

The Media Contact On Demand database now contains 31,147 records and
is being continuously updated. More reform organizations are using
this amazing free resource http://www.mapinc.org/mcod/ .

Thirty-three Focus Alerts http://www.mapinc.org/focus/ and four
DrugSense Insider Newsletters, http://drugsense.org/insider/ were
produced covering a wide range of topics.

It has also been a busy year for the Drug Policy Central
http://www.drugpolicycentral.com/ webmastering/website hosting team
supporting 124 reform websites and over 200 email lists and forums.

An Acceptable Use Policy http://www.drugsense.org/aup.htm was
introduced. The Acceptable Use Policy is designed to help protect
Drug Policy Central, its clients, and the Internet community from
irresponsible or illegal activities.

DrugSense introduced a new activist Board of Directors composed of
Don E. Wirtshafter, J.D., Chair; Mark Greer, President and Executive
Director; Mary Jane Borden, MBA, APR, Secretary and Business Manager;
Matt Elrod, Webmaster and Senior Tech Support; and Tom Angell, Media
Relations Director for LEAP http://www.drugsense.org/pages/whoweare

We have probably left out something we did during the past year that
is important to you, but it is hard to keep on top of all that
happens at DrugSense.

DrugSense thanks you all, our friends and supporters, for all you
have done to support the effort in this past year.

Because the economy, and the stock market, has hit some major
DrugSense funders hard we know that some will decrease funding during
2009. Thus DrugSense asks for your financial support to help us keep
doing what we do.

Please visit http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm

Thank You.