IN LIVE-AND-LET-LIVE NEVADA, LEGALIZING POT GAINS SLOT ON THE BALLOT

LAS VEGAS - As soon as he took over the nation's only campaign to make even
recreational use of marijuana legal, Billy Rogers laid down a few firm rules.

No stoners hanging out at headquarters. No pot plants, either. And no
straying from the core message to voters: This is to free cops and courts
from the burdens of petty drug busts, not just to win the right to get high.

"If we were a bunch of potheads, or all had tie-dyed T-shirts and long
hair, we would be easy targets, but we're not, and our opponents can't
handle it," said Rogers, a veteran political consultant from Texas.
"They're stunned. We're talking about helping law enforcement. We're
running even in the polls. Who would have thunk it? We've got a real shot
at winning."

Nevada, land of blackjack and brothels, drive-through weddings and quickie
divorces, appears tempted to go to yet another live-and-let-live extreme
this fall and ease its drug laws in a way that few other states have even
contemplated, much less put up for a public vote.

In a ballot measure known as Question 9, Nevadans will decide whether to
allow adults 21 and older to possess and smoke as much as 3 ounces of
marijuana, simply because they feel like it, with no threat of criminal
penalty. Under current state law, anyone caught with that much marijuana -
which authorities say makes roughly 100 joints - could face four years in
prison.

The November ballot proposal forbids pot smoking in public or while
driving, marijuana advertising and import of the drug. Nevada would have to
grow and distribute its own marijuana through state-licensed outlets and
could tax every sale. Some officials say such a move could be worth
millions of dollars every year. To become law, voters will have to approve
it twice, first in November, then again in 2004.

If the measure passes, the implications could be huge in Las Vegas, where
most anything goes already. Would Sin City be consumed by reefer madness
and become an Amsterdam of the desert, teeming with drug dealers or
tourists jetting in just to take a few legal tokes?

"We don't know," said Erica Brandvik, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas
Convention and Visitors Authority, which has not taken a position on
Question 9. "But this is a place where people come to do things they don't
do at home. I can't say that the news this might happen is jaw-dropping to
people here."

Other States Act

Nevada's step is part of a larger movement, rooted in the West but
spreading nationwide, to rethink a range of drug laws. The campaigns are
growing despite the fierce objections of federal officials, who are
denouncing Question 9.

"This is a con," said John Walters, director of the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy. "This isn't going to help law enforcement -
this is going to help drug dealers. And do we really want drug tourism?"

In the past six years, voters in nine states (including Nevada) have
legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes. Several other states also have
cut criminal punishments for simple drug possession. Measures to either
reduce penalties or allow medicinal use will be on the ballot in Ohio,
Michigan and Arizona this fall.

Two years ago, California voters approved Proposition 36, requiring minor
drug offenders to be sent to treatment programs, not prison. Last year,
Nevada lawmakers reduced the penalty for getting caught with an ounce or
less of marijuana from a felony to a misdemeanor that carries no more than
a $600 fine.

The latest campaign in Nevada, like most others around the country on the
drug, is organized and bankrolled almost entirely by the Marijuana Policy
Project, a group based in Washington. It spent $375,000 just to get the
issue on the Nevada ballot.

More than 100,000 voters from around the state have signed petitions in
support of Question 9. Nevada's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas
Review-Journal, has said it could end the "needless harassment of
individuals who peacefully and privately use marijuana." No group has
organized to oppose it. Polls are deadlocked. And Gov. Kenny Guinn, a
Republican, is vowing to remain neutral on the subject this fall.

"It's a complicated issue," said Greg Bortolin, his press secretary. "He
hasn't made up his mind on it."

Bortolin noted that many Nevada voters have a libertarian streak that makes
them unpredictable. "You have to throw out all the rules in Nevada when it
comes to politics," he said.

That's one reason the forces behind Question 9 chose Nevada as a staging
ground. Another is that the medical marijuana initiative two years ago
passed with more than 65 percent of the vote. Most of Nevada's electorate
lives in metropolitan Las Vegas, making it relatively easy for a campaign
to promote its message on radio and television and at community meetings.

Drug Is In Wide Use

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the country, federal
officials say. According to the 2000 National Household Survey on Drug Use,
about 34 percent of Americans ages 12 and older said they have tried the
drug. And more than 600,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana
possession in 2000.

Proponents of Question 9 say that's exactly why it is necessary: Police
waste too much time and money busting small-time, private pot users when
they could be focusing on violent crimes.

"What we're proposing is not radical. It would still be a felony in Nevada
to have 4 ounces," Rogers said. "But look, millions of Americans have tried
marijuana, and they didn't go crazy, and they didn't go on to harder drugs.
Yet we keep arresting thousands and thousands of people just for using it
in the privacy of their homes. It's got to stop."

Federal officials, who have been cracking down on groups dispensing
marijuana for medicinal purposes, adamantly reject those claims. Walters
said Question 9 would set dangerous policy. He predicted that many more
Nevada teenagers and adolescents would fall prey to marijuana addiction,
and he warned baby boomers who smoked marijuana in their youth, without
dire consequences, to think twice about supporting the measure.

"What many people don't understand is that this is not your father's
marijuana," Walters said. "What we're seeing now is much more potent."

On November Ballot

Nevadans will decide whether to allow adults 21 and older to possess and
smoke as much as 3 ounces of marijuana, with no threat of criminal penalty.

Current State Law

Anyone caught with that much marijuana - which authorities say makes
roughly 100 joints - could face four years in prison.