AND THE WINNER IS ...

Volunteers form the core of DrugSense's mission to advance the cause
of drug policy reform, and we recognize these volunteers and
contributors with several different awards.

One 'winner' recognized each week is the individual who writes the
best reform-focused Letter-to-the-Editor (LTE). Volunteer, Derek
Rea, scans the hundreds of LTEs submitted each week to the MAP
DrugNews Archive. From these, he picks five that best convey the
reform message. He then posts links to these five on a couple of
DrugSense e-mail discussion lists. List members vote for the best
LTE, and the winning LTE is published in that week's DrugSense Weekly.

Winning LTE authors have included well-known reform advocates like
Bruce Mirken of MPP or Loretta Nall, as well as ordinary concerned
citizens. Those who have composed the most LTEs during a particular
month are recognized as the Letter Writer of the Month.

At the We Get Published page, DrugSense also honors LTE writers who
have written the most letters over the last ten years. This page
lists the top ten letter writers and the dollar values for reform
accrued from their effort. (http://www.mapinc.org/lte/) DrugSense
confers three Published Letters Awards to top writers (
http://www.mapinc.org/lteaward.htm).

The Silver LTE Award is given to the writer who has at least 100
published letters in the MAP archive. Twelve LTE authors have been
recognized with this award.

The Gold LTE Award is accorded to those who have more than 500
published LTEs. Only two writers have achieved this remarkable feat,
Robert Sharpe and Kirk Muse.

Only one letter writer has earned our highest award, the Platinum LTE
Award. Robert Sharpe has had a remarkable 1,741 LTEs published in
the last ten years. That's the equivalent of giving drug policy
reform over $1.7 million of free advertising.

Sharpe has also been honored with the Letter Writer of the Year award
four times in the last seven years: 2006, 2005, 2004, and 2002. In
2006 alone, 226 of his letters were published in response to a
newspaper or magazine article in the DrugNews Archive.

On a final note, DrugSense was the proud recipient of the prestigious
2005 Robert C. Randall Award for Citizen Activism from the Drug
Policy Alliance. This award not only recognized us, but also the
volunteers who have help make a difference through DrugSense.