resignation

By David Bienenstock and Richard Cusick

 

Billionaire philanthropist Peter Lewis has left the Board of Directors of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), after resigning his position as Chairman of the Board. In a related development, yesterday ten out of twenty-nine MPP staff members were laid off. MPP Executive Director Rob Kampia told HIGH TIMES, "The purpose of the downsizing was to ensure MPP's long-term health and financial stability.”

 

According to multiple sources, Lewis has already assembled a panel including former Executive Director of the ACLU Ira Glasser, Americans for Safe Access Executive Director Steph Sherer and former Nebraska Governor Bob Kerrey, and tasked them with advising him on moving forward as a supporter of marijuana law reform.

 

Lewis was the primary financial contributor to MPP and helped it become the best-financed marijuana law reform organization in the world. In 2007 alone, he contributed $3 million to the organization. Read more »

By. Ryan Grim, Huffington Post

 

Mark Souder resigned his congressional seat on Tuesday, confessing to an affair with a staffer and ending an eight-term career as a Republican from Indiana.

 

In stepping down, he asked God for forgiveness in a rambling, all-caps public statement. "I SINNED AGAINST GOD, MY WIFE AND MY FAMILY BY HAVING A MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A PART-TIME MEMBER OF MY STAFF," he wrote. "MY COMFORT IS THAT GOD IS A GRACIOUS AND FORGIVING GOD TO THOSE WHO SINCERELY SEEK HIS FORGIVENESS AS I DO."

 

Forgiveness, however, is not a quality that Souder shares with his Lord. No Republican has been more outspoken in Congress in his moral condemnation of Americans who use illicit drugs. In order to punish such sinning, Souder championed and vigorously defended perhaps the least forgiving law on the federal books: the denial of federal student aid for any student convicted of drug possession, no matter how minor. Read more »

A sixth senior drugs adviser has resigned from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs over the government's persistent refusal to listen to experts properly when formulating policy.

"There is little more we can do to describe the importance of ensuring that advice is not subjected to a desire to please ministers," wrote Dr Polly Taylor in her letter of resignation.

Dr John Marsden, Dr Ian Ragan and Dr Simon Campbell all resigned from the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs in November 2009, following the much-criticised sacking of the chief adviser, Professor David Nutt by the Home Secretary and the resignation earlier that month of clinical director Marion Walker and Dr Les King.

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