Green View Magazine | December 2019

33 GREEN VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 within the United States; changing laws at the state level. We initially focused almost entirely on medical marijuana laws; about 13 of the recent medical marijuana laws are ones that MPP either spearheaded the ballot campaign for, in the cases of voter initiatives, or where we led the state legislative push. We spearheaded seven of the recent decriminalization laws that imposed a simple fine instead of jail time for possession of marijuana. And out of the 11 legalization laws, MPP led the charge in eight of those cases, including the only two that passed through state legislatures — Illinois and Vermont. In the coming years, we expect to chip away at more and more states and bring legalization of medical marijuana to them.” GVM: How do you decide which issues to focus on? O’Keefe: “There are a few factors we use to choose a state campaign. Roughly half of the states have a ballot initiative process and about half don’t. In the states without ballot measures, you can’t just collect signatures and let the voters decide. You have to convince the legislature to enact the law. Of course, in order to run any campaign, we need money. And we need to have reasons to think it’s actually viable. “My department leads our state legislative work. When we decide which states to target, we look at who the leaders are in the legislative chambers, we look at the party composition (if it’s Democrats or Republicans in control), and what leaders have said about marijuana policy. We’ve been around so long now, in many cases, first we did medical in a state, then decriminalization, and then we work on adult-use. We often have lobbyists we’ve worked with for years and we have a good feel for when states are ripe for reform. “Once we have the funding to work in a state, and we think it’s viable to pass with a funded campaign, in an ideal world we’d have one or two firms that would do the lobbying. We’d also have a least one staffer working on legislative drafting, and creating materials that would respond to concerns and make the case for marijuana legalization. We’d have organizers that help find and prep witnesses to speak at hearings and press conferences. Sometimes, we do paid advertising that draws attention to the issue. This past year, in South Carolina we ran a medical marijuana billboard featuring a veteran. We also use a variety of other media tactics to get grassroots pressure — such as Facebook ads to get emails to lawmakers, and phone banks (either paid or volunteer). To sum it up, our legislative campaigns have three main parts: professional lobbyists, organizers for the grassroots, and organizers for the grass tops, when the media come in.” GVM: How do the ballot initiatives work? Schweich: “With ballot initiatives, we partner with groups and individuals to form state campaigns. We’ll raise money into that campaign committee and it will spend money on two primary things: First, collecting signatures to qualify for the ballot initiative, sometimes hundreds of thousands of signatures in larger population states. That’s very difficult to do with just volunteers, so that’s a major expense. The other one is advertising. Once you qualify for the ballot, making the case to voters that this is a good policy decision and that they should vote “yes.” “At MPP, we partner with other national groups and in-state groups to form ballot initiative