The Cannabis Education Project Works To Inform Communities On The Benefits Of Cannabis Law Reform
The Cannabis Education Project is an organization that grew out of the Proposition 19 field campaign of San Diego County. Senior organizers and supporters of Proposition 19 have decided to continue their efforts in San Diego County, with the goal of identifying and cultivating leadership and support for future legalization legislation and ballot propositions. Cannabis Education Project is a diverse organization with Latino, African American and Filipino leadership. While we are a new organization, our organizers have extensive backgrounds in progressive campaign and community organizing.
The short-term strategic goal of this project is to identify and cultivate leadership for medical marijuana collectives in targeted communities to support fair regulation of medical marijuana collectives in San Diego. However, this project also serves a longer term strategic goals of developing and evaluating messaging against marijuana prohibition to communities of color, and identifying and cultivating a base of Latino and African American leadership and support for ending marijuana prohibition in the greater San Diego area.
We propose engaging in an aggressive community outreach campaign to community and advocacy groups in San Diego neighborhoods with high concentrations of Latino, African-American and Filipino voters.
We are developing presentations and informational workshops targeted at specific communities to address misconceptions, fears and overall negative perceptions of marijuana. The material we present will be based on existing research and publications from Drug Policy Alliance and other allied groups. This will be an opportunity to refine outreach messaging to Latino, African American, Filipino and other minority audiences.
We will be presenting at meetings of civic groups, religious groups and community advancement groups. We will target groups and leaders within the community who’s political and social leanings would indicate an opportunity for support for medical marijuana. Our goal is that by identifying pro-marijuana forces within the target communities, we can help build grass-top support to counter the community leadership fighting against safe access and legalization.