Some notes: 1. This will have a 180 day signature gathering window, beginning soon after the California Attorney General gives it an official title and summary

Some notes: 1. This will have a 180 day signature gathering window, beginning soon after the California Attorney General gives it an official title and summary. It's my understanding that this window will begin within the next 65 days (I think the AG has 50+15 days to get the summary + title) 2. Signature gathering is incredibly expensive. A cost estimate for this ballot initiative would be $1-5 million just to collect enough signatures to get it on the ballot. And then either it needs to have really good initial polling (perhaps 60%+ in professionally done polls), or needs to have millions of dollars for ad spend. 3. To make this win, two things are likely needed: Firstly, comprehensive polling to figure out if this will even get the votes needed if it gets on the ballot. 60% polling would be ideal. If it polls well, then it'll need massive numbers of volunteers to collect the ~365,000 signatures from California registered voters. If you want to help: Nothing is needed yet, unless you can directly help Kevin Saunders - though soon, signature gathering help will be needed. Once the signature gathering window starts they'll either need $1-5mm in donations, or a massive number of volunteers. If you know Kevin Saunders who proposed the initiative, perhaps encourage him to do professional polling with likely voters, as there's a possibility that it could make things worse off if it gets on the ballot and fails. Also please encourage him to reach out to groups like the Drug Policy Alliance to get their expertise, if he's open to learning from them. Contrary to how it may seem, my understanding is it's not good to have a ballot initiative make it to the ballot and fail - it would be better to not have it on the ballot at all. Read about the process here http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/how-qualify-initiative/initiative-guide/ http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/how-qualify-... Also if you're a philanthropist with interest in this space, there's serious possibility to do good things right now, particularly given the increased democratic turnout that the 2020 Presidential election will bring - ballot initiatives for Drug Policy reform will have a one-time advantage in 2020. If you're a large donor looking for something valuable and underfunded that could make the world better, I'd suggest reaching out to Ellen from Drug Policy Alliance. If you're a large potential donor I'm also happy to help and answer questions over email based on what I know and share my notes, email in profile. Lastly, pretty exciting that drug medical research and policy news has been all over HN recently. As a commenter in another thread noted, these (i.e. MDMA, Psilocybin) are genuine examples of suppressed technologies - so it's exciting to see them progress.