'Legalize 2012' Reply To Multiple Marijuana Legalization Initiatives Filed In Colorado

The MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER alliance has lost the trust of everyone in Colorado by making a unilateral decision to file 8 ballot initiatives without letting anyone in the state outside of their small group read or comment on them.

Mason Tvert of SAFER sent Legalize 2012 a draft of one of the initiatives on 5/12. He never indicated that he was on the verge of filing on 5/19.

Legalize 2012 invited the MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER alliance to participate, in good faith, in a community policy debate on June 22 so that we could try to find some common ground among all the groups that have ideas for the 2012 ballot and bring unity and focus to the Colorado cannabis movement.

Mason sent Legalize2012 a letter on May 16, 2011 that stated, “I can’t stop thinking about how exciting and impactful it would be if we were able to join forces and move forward together. It would be such a huge catalyst for the movement, and we could really make things happen.”

He gave no indication that they were on the verge of filing. Mason gave no deadline for comments.

Mason sent Legalize2012 a list of people who had read their initiative language prior to May 12 when we received it. The list was quite lengthy, and when Legalize2012 complained, jokingly, that we were the last ones in the state to see it, Mason wrote to Legalize2012 on May 17: “You made it relatively clear quite a long time ago that you were not interested in working together and would be working on your own initiative.”

Legalize 2012 responded, “I am really getting tired of how you are spreading misinformation about our campaign. We never said we didn’t want to work with you. You were one of the first people I told about our Legalize2012 campaign last May 2010, -well before- you ever said you were working on an initiative of your own. In November 2010, you complained again that we never asked you to help with our initiative, so I sent you a personal email on Nov. 5, 2010 that said, ‘I am eternally sorry that my invitation to work with us a few months ago wasn’t more meaningful to you.’ And I included a more formal invitation to help on our campaign. For you to now say that we made it ‘clear’ that we ‘were not interested in working with you’ is a lie.”

When Mason writes, “these folks have opted to dedicate their time to attacking other reformers and fracturing this movement”, it is clear that he knows this is untrue. Members of the Legalize2012 coalition have been very busy down at the Capitol testifying against several anti-marijuana bills during the legislative session, from January to May 11. The Sensible/SAFER alliance barely helped at all, aside from sending one or two emails on these bills the whole session. Neither Mason Tvert nor Brian Vicente showed up down at the Capitol to testify against any of these laws. In fact, Brian Vicente told everyone who asked that he was “not working on medical marijuana anymore.”

So, instead of working together with the rest of the state, chose to file 8 ballot initiatives unilaterally without showing them to anyone outside their small group. This shows extreme bad faith on their part, and will make it very hard for anyone to trust them on any level about anything ever again.

Read the full story here about how this is an intentional nationwide strategy by MPP/DPA/Soros to divide and demoralize the grassroots by spreading lies and misinformation:
“Can we win the war without the troops? An Analysis of the Americans for Medical Rights Medical Marijuana Ballot Initiative Strategies in the 1998 General Election”
https://www.levellers.org/inits98anal.htm

MORE MISINFORMATION FROM THE ABOVE ARTICLE
Legalize2012 never used the name “carpetbaggers”.

Contact these people and ask them to stop spreading misinformation about local reform groups:

Ethan Nadelmann <[email protected]>
Brian Vicente <[email protected]>
Steve Fox <[email protected]>
Mason Tvert <[email protected]>
Art Way <[email protected]>
Sean McAllister <[email protected]>
Rob Kampia <[email protected]>
Rob Corry <[email protected]>