DRUGSENSE HELPS PUT FEDERAL PROPAGANDISTS OUT OF BUSINESS

Ten years ago, the founders of DrugSense and the Media Awareness
Project had a brilliant idea: spread the news of the drug war far and
wide, and let those with knowledge respond.

Since then, we've archived and distributed more than 160,000 stories
about the drug war. We've helped other organizations to use that
amazing resource to support reform efforts. To see a sample of the
stories we made available just in the past few days, see
http://www.drugnews.org/ .

It was such a brilliant idea, it only took about eight years for
federally-funded drug warriors to make their own lame copy. In
January of 2004, a government propaganda site called Drugstory.org
debuted a service called "In The News" -
http://www.drugstory.org/inthenews/inthenews.asp

It was something like the MAP DrugNews service, but roughly one-tenth
as useful.

"In The News" collected stories about the drug war from mainstream
U.S. newspapers, summarized the stories, and then offered a weekly
email with links to subscribers.

I write of "In The News" in the past tense because it hasn't
distributed any stories since the end of 2005. I sent a note to the
site's webmaster yesterday to see when the service would be resumed.
I haven't received an answer.

The drug news distribution war is over, and it appears the reformers
at MAP won.

I knew we had a superior product, but with all the resources
available to prohibitionists, including direct access to the wallets
of American taxpayers, I figured they'd make it longer than two
lackluster years. But, their own unwillingness to recognize their
utter redundancy likely doomed the project.

While MAP tries to be comprehensive in its coverage, "In The News"
was much more, well, let's say selective (others might prefer the
word censorial) when it came to choosing the news it wanted its
subscribers to see. The service carried lots of bad news about
drugs, but hardly any stories that challenged the basic premises of
the drug war.

"In The News" didn't offer stories about innocent people being killed
in botched drug raids. Stories about medical marijuana told strictly
from the patients' perspective were ignored. Coverage of government
studies illustrating the devastation of drug use were pushed, but
studies indicating the failure of the drug war were overlooked.

Here at MAP, we distribute all the news relevant to the drug war and
let our readers judge value. When the National Institute of Drug
Abuse gets excited about a possible link between marijuana and
psychosis, we share the news. Now, of course, we will also share the
news when other experts challenge such findings, but that's the point.

The prohibitionists want you to have only half the story - they
aren't interested in any facts that don't support their position.
Since we offer a much better service, "In The News" failed well
before it started.

MAP understands when all the facts are out, prohibition doesn't have
a leg to stand on. However, we always need help to continue getting
those facts out.

Unlike "In The News" and its rather dense federal sponsors, we can't
just appropriate more funds from public coffers. We depend on
volunteer work and generous donors to keep going. Please consider
giving today - http://www.drugsense.org/donate/

If you pay taxes in the United States, you didn't have a choice with
regard to "In The News." You financed that and all the other
destructive madness of the war on drugs. Share a little with us
voluntarily today, and we can help to make the drug war a bad memory,
like "In The News."