Members and guests present: Marty Ambrose, Karen Barnett, Dean Becker, Bobby Culberson, Noelle Davis, Heyward Dixon, Jerry Epstein, Pam Graham, Tami Halphen, Faye Hamilton, Clayton Jones, Duane Jones, Barry Klein, Anne Lee, Bob Lee, Cheryl Nolin, Steve No lin, Al Robison, Thomas Schubert, Art Smart, Frank Smith, Carl Veley, and Suzy Wells
Dr. Robison called the meeting to order at apx. 7:12 PM. The idea was to have a dress rehearsal of our Point of Entry for t he "Raising More Money" approach to increasing membership. Jerry had written an excellent script for the visionary leader part of the program, but unfortunately didn't pay any attention to it during the actual presentation. Nevertheless he managed to g et most of the main points made and finished speaking at about the right time. Instead of an actual video, Dr. Robison gave a short talk about why he thought we needed to develop a video (in brief summary to help get the audience emotionally involved in want ing to end the drug war). He then introduced Noelle Davis, who opened the meeting to discussion. The other members prese nt did a good job of putting themselves into the shoes of their friends and others who are far from convinced that drug policy refor m is needed, and asked a lot of the same kinds of questions that we know those people would have asked had they been there. Dr . Robison made a point of ending the discussion at 8:00 PM sharp, as specified in the RMM guidelines. Thus everyone got a pret ty good idea of how much of the time would get eaten up by the formal presentation and how much time would be left over for discussi on.
A lively discussion ensued, much too complex to be summarized here. Bob Lee made the point that ending drug prohibition was too ephemeral a goal to appeal to large masses of people, and that we should focus on shorter range accomplishable legislative goal s. Frank Smith suggested that anything beyond medical marijuana was more than most people could accept, and that talking about needle exchange programs in particular (or anything involving "needles") was nothing but a turn-off. Jerry had made the point that while our main goal was to end drug prohibition, our interim goal was to reduce the harm being caused by our present drug poli cy. Barry Klein, who had played an important role in getting the DPFT started back in 1995, also emphasized the importance of focusing on legislation that the public was already willing to support. Barry conceded that drug policy reform is a lot toughe r nut to crack than the issues he's had so much success with, namely property rights and the need to reduce taxes. He also con ceded that we could do a lot more if we had a paid staff of at least three people to work for us full time, and that we could do eve n better if we had a staff of six.
Although we were supposed to be out of Room 303 by 9:00 PM, the meeting didn't rea lly break up until after 9:30. Dr. Robison suggested that we could continue the discussion at the next meeting, which would be on May 19th.
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Latest Revision 15-May-03