A Conversation with Last Prisoner Project Featuring Stephanie Shepard and Jason Ortiz

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Dutchie had the pleasure of speaking with Last Prisoner Project’s Director of Advocacy, Stephanie Shepard, and Last Prisoner Project’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Jason Ortiz to discuss the Last Prisoner Project and highlight their mission to set all cannabis prisoners free.

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LPP, a nonprofit founded in 2019, focuses on legal support, financial assistance, and advocacy to reunite incarcerated individuals with their families. 

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“LPP specifically is a 501 C3 nonprofit, and we seek to get anyone who is currently incarcerated for cannabis crimes out of prison and reunited with their families. And so we do that in a lot of different ways. We do have direct legal support for all the folks that are currently incarcerated. And just so folks know, there are still three thousand cannabis prisoners at the federal level and tens of thousands of cannabis prisoners at the state level, and we provide legal support through our partnership with the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers.”  - Jason Ortiz, Last Prisoner Project  

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Dutchie has partnered with LPP to support its mission and efforts, including expungement of criminal records, re-entry support, criminal justice public policy reform, and much more. Additionally, Dutchie has committed to matching the first $1 million in donations to help end the injustice of 40,000+ people incarcerated for cannabis.  

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Join Dutchie in the final stretch to raise the remaining $71,000 to reach our $1 million donation match with the Last Prisoner Project: https://business.dutchie.com/dutchie-lpp 

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By donating today, you’ll be taking action with the Last Prisoner Project to help end the injustice of the tens of thousands of people imprisoned for cannabis offenses.

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Key cannabis insights from This Week in Cannabis News:

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Virginia Governor vetoes cannabis bill 

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill that would have set up an adult-use cannabis market in Virginia. 

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More anti-reform members in Congress speak up 

U.S. Senators Jim Risch, Mitt Romney, and Pete Ricketts have sent a letter to the DEA highlighting concerns with rescheduling marijuana and compliance with U.S. treaty obligations. 

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Huge majority of young people support cannabis 

There is new polling from Pew that shows nearly 88% of Americans say marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use, and almost 57% of Americans say that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational purposes. 

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As always, follow all things Dutchie on our blog at business.dutchie.com/blog and Dutchie’s LinkedIn page.

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