Happy Furry Friday

Happy Friday! We are so in need of a weekend break! Junior is about to go to Vegas for a long awaited vacation with his wife. Bernadette and the crew just want a nap. Haha! Furry Friday is brought to you by Castor & Pollux, our favorite pet-food brand on the planet! As the leader and maker of America’s #1 organic pet food, Castor & Pollux has set a new standard with the most comprehensive portfolio of purposeful pet food. We have a great show for you, so let’s get started!

Marc Peralta

Best Friends Animal Society

Marc Peralta is the Chief Program Officer for Best Friends Animal Society, a leading national animal welfare organization dedicated to ending the killing of dogs and cats in America’s shelters. Marc also founded and runs Vintage Pet Rescue with his wife Kristen, rescuing senior pets from shelters and assisting owners who can no longer care for their senior pets.

National Adopt-A-Shelter-Pet-Day, Best Friend’s Peer-To-Peer Program

April 30 is Adopt a Shelter Pet Day. The sad truth is that millions of shelter animals are euthanized each year due to shelter over crowding. Best Friends Animal Society is working to bring this number down to zero by pulling animals from kill shelters and promoting awareness about the joys of animal adoption. While making a commitment to a pet may seem overwhelming, shelter workers, who know the pets best, can help you find the perfect match.Celebrate this special day by meeting your new soulmate. Remember, animals can live for over 20 years. They are not disposable gifts, stand-in friends, or stuffed animals. If you can’t commit, don’t adopt. Unfortunately, for every 1 dog that is euthanized, 3 cats are euthanized. 

Last year, shelters partnering with Best Friends reduced the number of pets killed at 3.5 times the rate of other shelters. That’s 63,374 cats and dogs saved. Collaborative problem-solving, when done well, feels and looks like improvisational dance. When performed at just the right time by artists who love their craft, the result feels almost magical. Of course, that magic is really just the inevitable result of passion, cooperation, expertise and ingenuity coming together around a common goal. This is what so much of Best Friends’ earliest coalition-based work with like-minded lifesaving partners was all about, Peer-To-Peer!

Jared Moffat

Marijuana Policy Project

Jared has been working to change marijuana laws since 2012 when he was an undergraduate at Brown University, helping to organize students to successfully decriminalize marijuana possession in Rhode Island. He joined the Marijuana Policy Project, or MPP, in 2014 as Rhode Island political director, Jared helped build an influential statewide coalition, Regulate Rhode Island, with the goal of legalizing marijuana like alcohol. He played a role in the 2016 Massachusetts legalization campaign as field director, and he was part of teams that successfully passed Michigan’s 2018 ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for adults as well as Utah’s 2018 medical marijuana measure. Most recently, Jared played a central role in the successful 2020 ballot initiative campaigns in Montana for adult-use legalization and South Dakota for legalization of both medical and adult-use marijuana.

Catching Up With The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)

The Mission of The MPP is to end the prohibition of cannabis. They change laws and lives for the better. The MPP activate people and mobilize resources to create lasting policy solutions that improve the quality of life for patients and their families, empower individuals with personal choice, combat injustices, and promote equity. Turning to state legislation, MPP spearheaded the advocacy campaign that made Vermont the first state to legalize cannabis possession for adults legislatively in early 2018, as well as the Vermont campaign to regulate and tax cannabis sales in 2020. MPP also played a crucial role in crafting and lobbying for Illinois’ legalization and regulation measure, which was signed into law in 2019. MPP and the campaign committees it funded also played a leading role in successful efforts to pass 14 recent state medical cannabis laws (in Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, and Vermont) and seven decriminalization laws (in Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont).

Only 23 states allow citizen-initiated ballot initiatives, meaning in most states the only way to reform marijuana laws is via the legislature. With polls showing that 68% of Americans support making marijuana use legal and around 90% support allowing medical marijuana, lawmakers are finally starting to get the message that constituents want them to act on sensible and humane marijuana policies. Two states have already legalized cannabis in 2021 via the legislative process — New York and Virginia. In a third state, New Mexico, a legalization bill was approved and will be signed by the governor any day. As many as three more states could follow suit this year — Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island, and dozens of other cannabis policy reform bills have been proposed. 

A Big Thank You!

Thank you to todays guests, Marc Peralta and Jared Moffat!

Donate to Best Friends Animal Society, here!

Read more about the Marijuana Policy Project, here!

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