February 16, 2001

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‘Traffic’ vs. reality

Just in time for the Academy Award nominations, the friendly folks at THE LINDESMITH CENTER-DRUG POLICY FOUNDATION have put together a new website, Stopthewar.com, spelling out just where the much-hyped film ‘Traffic’ does and doesn’t intersect with the real-life War on Drugs.

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A summary of the film points out places where it accurately reflects reality (wealthy high school kids do drugs, just like Michael Douglas’ on-screen daughter) and where it misleads (unlike said daughter, most young people caught with hard drugs spend more than a few hours in jail and can’t get treatment). There’s also a jazzy Flash-animated game where players can try out different strategies to win the drug war — only to be met with sobering stats on why approaches from locking up all drug users to sending weapons to Colombia have failed to even dent Americans appetite for illegal stimulants.

Check out STOPTHEWAR.COM here.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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