AFFIDAVIT OF JOSEPH WHITE

Now comes Joseph White who states as follows subject to the pains and penalties of perjury.

1. My name is Joseph White. I am married, with three children, and live in Greenfield, Massachusetts. I am currently employed as Senior Vice President of The Share Group, a company that offers consulting, fund-raising and marketing services to nonprofit organizations and socially responsible businesses. I am also the Executive Director and founder of the plaintiff, Change The Climate, Inc., an organization I founded separately from my job with The Share Group.
   
   
2. I founded Change the Climate in 1999 as a concerned parent and citizen, with the support of my family and friends, for the purpose of raising public awareness about marijuana issues, including the potential harm to our children resulting from arrest and incarceration and the inordinate amount of tax dollars spent on marijuana law enforcement. Like President Jimmy Carter expressed over twenty years ago, I too am concerned that the penalties against possession of marijuana should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. My intention in founding Change the Climate has always been, and continues to be, quite literally, to "change the climate" around the discussion of marijuana policies in our country by broadening the terms of the debate. I believe that in order to change the terms of the debate, accurate information about marijuana needs to be presented and discussed in a public forum.
   
   
3. Change the Climate's mission is to stimulate debate about marijuana issues, including, among other concerns, the negative consequences of our marijuana laws on our children, the differences between marijuana and other drugs such as heroin and cocaine, the extraordinary resources our government has devoted to marijuana law enforcement, and the proven beneficial medical (1999 Institute of Medicine Report) and industrial uses of marijuana. By encouraging and engaging in public debate, Change the Climate hopes to reduce the level of hysteria and misinformation about marijuana that has so long dominated the public domain.
   
   
4. Towards that end, I have created and operate a web site at, www. changetheclimate.org, which also operates under the internet domain name changetheclimate.com. I created Change the Climate's web site to be an educational one, where citizens can access accurate information about marijuana. I have included a variety of articles and resources, including the government's own website called The Anti-Drug, that address various aspects of marijuana policy - hemp policies, youth issues, a bulletin board to encourage discussion, scientific studies and the like. Attached hereto is a true and accurate copy of the home page of changetheclimate.org, which welcomes readers to join in the effort to "change the climate" around marijuana issues. (See Tab 1.)
   
   
5. Through provocative advertising in its media campaign, Change the Climate hopes to raise ideas and questions in peoples' minds about the efficacy of our current marijuana laws and policies. In no way does Change the Climate advocate the use of marijuana or any violation of existing laws.
   
   
6. Woven throughout Change the Climate's promotional materials, the interactive web site, and the national advertising campaign are Change the Climate's explicit messages, and my personal belief, that the truth need be spoken about marijuana and that marijuana is not for kids. These messages are stated clearly on the Home Page of our website, for example. (See Tab 1.) As a parent, I'm concerned about how we - as adults and as a government - communicate to kids about marijuana and other drugs. After spending billions upon billions of tax dollars, we have made little progress in keeping drugs away from our children. Change the Climate's goal is to foster debate to generate new ways of thinking that will make it more difficult for children to have access to drugs, which are more accessible than controlled legal substances like alcohol and tobacco.
   
   
7. In assembling the material I have placed on Change the Climate's web site, I have drawn from many sources. In particular, I have relied heavily on the expert advice of The Lindesmith Center West, ("Lindesmith Center"), a drug policy institute in San Francisco, California, and received assistance from Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., the Director of the Lindesmith Center, who is recognized as a leading authority on drug and adolescent issues. In my effort to keep current on these issues, most recently, I attended The Lindesmith/Drug Policy Foundation conference "Drug Policies for the New Millennium," held from May 30 to June 2, 2001, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Over 800 professionals took part in the conference, including New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California. Among the conference speakers was Rodney Skager, a PhD in Psychology and Professor Emeritus of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at U.C.L.A. After talking with Professor Skager at the conference, he was kind enough to forward me a copy of the text of a speech he delivered at the 2nd International Conference on Drugs & Young People in Melbourne, Australia in April of this year, that I am thinking of posting on Change the Climate's web site with his permission. A true and accurate copy of Professor Skager's speech is attached hereto. (See Tab 2.)
   
   
8. Change the Climate's goal is to make as much information as accessible to the public as possible, especially since the hysteria around drugs has taken sentencing discretion away from judges through mandatory minimum sentencing, filled our prisons with non-violent drug offenders, and prevented meaningful dialogue on marijuana issues. While various people in the legal community have spoken on these issues, (for a sampling of some courageous judges who have become vocal on the consequences of the drug war on the administration of justice, see the Voluntary Committee of Lawyers web site at www.vcl.org/Judges/Judges_speak), I believe that most average Americans are fearful to engage in these discussions in the current political climate, and so our advertising campaigns seek to open discussion and debate among parents, children and other concerned citizens. Dr. Rosenbaum agrees, and has generously authorized Change the Climate to quote liberally from her publications on our web site.
   
   
9. One section of Change the Climate's web site is devoted to the subject of kids and marijuana. Borrowing heavily from Dr. Rosenbaum's publications on the subject, this section suggests that in order to curb marijuana use by young people, adults need to first regain credibility with them by providing honest information about drugs. The reader is directed to Dr. Rosenbaum's articles, including "Just Say Know" to Teenagers and Marijuana, that have appeared in professional journals such as the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol. 30 (2), April-June 1998 and national newspapers such as The San Francisco Chronicle. While Change the Climate agrees that ideally children should abstain from using all drugs (whether it be cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana or hard drugs), it is well documented that despite repeated exposure to such "zero tolerance" messages in our schools, our trains and buses, and on billboards, the abstinence message has fallen on deaf ears. See, e.g., Donald R. Lynam, Richard Milich, et.al., Project DARE: No Effects at 10-year Follow Up, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 67 (4), pp. 590-93 (August 1999) (documenting "the absence of beneficial effects associated with the DARE program," which was true regarding attitudes toward drug use as well as actual drug use); S.T. Ennett, et.al., How Effective is Drug Abuse Resistance Education? A Meta-Analysis of Project DARE Outcome Evaluations, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 84, pp. 1394-1401 (1994) (analyzing the results of a federally funded Research Triangle Institute study of DARE that found the program's "core curriculum effect on drug use relative to whatever drug education (if any) was offered in the control schools is slight and, except for tobacco use, not statistically significant."); Office of Applied Studies, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Finding 1998, p. 174 (SAMSHA, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services March 2000) (documenting results of federal research showing that the Office of National Drug Control Policy's anti-drug media campaign is ineffective); Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum, Assessing the Effects of School-based Drug Education: A Six Year Multilevel Analysis of Project DARE, Abstract, April 6, 1998 (finding after a six year study of 1,798 students that "DARE had no long-term effects on a wide range of drug use measures," that DARE does not "prevent drug use at the stage in adolescent development when drugs become available and widely used, namely during the high school years," and that "DARE may actually be counterproductive."); L. Johnston, J. Bachman & P. O'Malley, Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use Overview of Key Findings 1999, p. 48, Table 6 (NIDA 2000) (documenting that from 1975 to 1998, "at least 82% of high school seniors surveyed said they find marijuana fairly easy or very easy to obtain," and in 1999, "88.9% of high school seniors said it was fairly or very easy to obtain."). Study after study shows that kids walk away from such non-informational messages cynical and distrustful of adults, their intelligence insulted, discounting both the message and the messenger. Like Dr. Rosenbaum, Change the Climate wants education and public discussion to succeed where so many grossly simplistic slogans ("Just Say No") and ludicrous scare tactics ("This is your brain on drugs") have failed. The reality is that kids experiment with drugs. This is why Change the Climate elevates the practical goal of keeping our kids safe from hard drugs by empowering them with the knowledge to make informed decisions over the unrealistic goal of abstention.
   
   
10. Another section of Change the Climate's web site is devoted to debunking common myths regarding marijuana by providing well documented facts. The information included in this section of the web site was taken from the critically acclaimed publication, Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, by Drs. Lynn Zimmer and John P. Morgan, with permission. Change the Climate invites readers to learn more about this publication by visiting The Lindesmith Center web site, which is hyperlinked to Change the Climate's site, so that they may do so with the click of a button. True and accurate copies of the pages in this section of the web site are attached hereto. (See Tab 3.)
    
    
11. Another section of the web site provides information on Change the Climate's national advertising campaign, including information and articles on the legal battles we have been forced to wage. Change the Climate attempted its first campaign in Boston, MA, but the campaign was thwarted in January of 2000, after advertisements submitted to the MBTA were rejected by Lucy Shorter because of her perception that Change the Climate "promotes the use of marijuana in a suttle [sic] way and also is really a reform marijuana in a [sic] effort to legalize", and that "the T's appearance & character policy and drug & alcohol policy" were "in conflict with [Change the Climate's] mission."
    
    After suit was filed in this case, the Cellucci administration's support for the MBTA's conduct, and against Change the Climate's right to engage in political speech, was widely reported in the news. True and accurate copies of a Boston Herald article, "Gov. Sticks by Pot Ad Fight - Forbids MBTA To Settle," and an editorial, "Cellucci just says no: A Boston Herald editorial" that expressed "kudos" to then Governor Cellucci for his "gutsy" support of the MBTA's decision to "just say no" to Change the Climate's "nonsense," are attached hereto. A true and accurate copy of my letter to the editor, pointing out the articles' misquotations of Change the Climate's advertising campaign, is also attached (all three are accessible on Change the Climate's web site). (See Tab 5.)
    
    
12. The second campaign that Change the Climate attempted was in Washington, D.C. Initially, the Washington Metro Transit Authority ("the Metro") rejected Change the Climate's proposed advertisements based on a policy that purported to restrict public advertisements to those "not designed to influence legislation or public opinion on a controversial subject." After Change the Climate retained the American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm of Arnold & Porter, who threatened suit on Change the Climate's behalf, the Metro relented and agreed to post 560 ads on marijuana issues. Change the Climate ultimately paid a discounted advertising rate to the Metro in exchange for illuminated signs on 10 subway platforms, large exterior signs for 50 buses and smaller signs for the interiors of an additional 500 buses. The month-long campaign consisted of three ads. The first, which was displayed in the Metro stations - including the one closest to the White House - features a young woman with the text, "Why do kids go to jail for doing what politicians did when they were young? Tell us the truth." The second ad, displayed inside buses, features a business executive with the text: "I've got cancer. I smoke pot after chemotherapy. It's my choice, right? Wrong." The third, which appeared on the outside of Metro buses, is the same advertisement that is the subject of the present law suit, featuring two police officers standing in front of an American flag with the text: "Police are too important . . . too valuable . . . too good . . . to waste on arresting people for marijuana when real criminals are on the loose."
    
    oftlineAccording to the Metro's advertising guidelines, all public service ads were required to carry a disclaimer that Metro does not endorse the message. A true and accurate copy of a page from the web site concerning our D.C. ad campaign - which includes a photograph of one of the same ads that is the subject of this lawsuit displayed on a DC Transit Metro Bus in January 2001- is attached. (See Tab 6.) The Metro bus in that particular photograph was one of 50 buses with a Change the Climate ad that ran as part of the first ad campaign. To my personal knowledge, there has not been a single reported act of lawlessness connected with Change the Climate's advertisements in Washington D.C. Nor am I aware of any study or other evidence that children or adults are reported to have used marijuana as a result of the advertising campaign.
    
    
13. In light of the positive responses we received on the D.C. campaign, Change the Climate launched a second campaign in our nation's capitol. Throughout the month of May, an ad ran on 36 bus shelters that has the following text with no pictures: "America 1992 to 1999. 4.3 million tobacco deaths. 2.3 million alcohol deaths. 0 marijuana deaths. Tell us the truth . . ." A true and accurate photograph of the ad that was run is attached hereto. (See Tab 7.) To my personal knowledge, there has not been a single reported act of lawlessness connected with the posting of that advertisement either.
    
    
14. In addition to the two successful campaigns in Washington, D.C., Change the Climate is currently working on transit advertising campaigns in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. Change the Climate received requests for assistance with advertising campaigns in Indianapolis, IN, Portland, OR and other locations. With each successful campaign, Change the Climate hopes to gain the momentum necessary to accomplish its goal of generating millions of advertising impressions in as many cities throughout the nation as possible.

I have read the foregoing this ____ day of June, 2001 and state, subject to the pains and penalties
of perjury that it is true and accurate.

Joseph White
Executive Director
Change the Climate, Inc.