POT LEGALIZATION GROUP TARGETS VEGAS

Director Says Nevada Residents Are Pragmatic About Drug

The Marijuana Policy Project has set up its first state chapter in Las
Vegas, launching another effort to get voters to legalize pot in Nevada.

The national nonprofit advocacy group is too late to qualify an
initiative for the 2010 ballot, and would likely try for 2012,
director Neil Levine said.

"Our goal is to see marijuana treated the same way as alcohol," Levine
said.

Nevada voters twice since 2002 have rejected opportunities to legalize
the use of marijuana, but in 2000, 65 percent of Nevadans approved a
ballot initiative to allow the medical use of marijuana. The law
authorized Nevadans to grow up to seven plants, only three mature, and
possess an ounce for their own use.

The general ban on marijuana use, on the other hand, is "enormously
failed public policy," Levine said. No one has died of a marijuana
overdose, he said, and making the drug illegal puts its distribution
in the hands of street gangs and drug traffickers, which increases
crime.

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2006, 14.8
million Americans age 12 or older used marijuana at least once in the
month before being surveyed.

The policy of marijuana prohibition doesn't work, and it doesn't make
sense, Levine said.

Some statistics show the rate of marijuana use among young people is
declining, though it's still high. The National Institute on Drug
Abuse's 2007 Monitoring the Future Survey showed that from 2000 to
2007, past-year pot use decreased more than 20 percent among eighth,
10th and 12th graders combined. However, more than 40 percent of high
school seniors report at least once instance of pot use.

Addiction recovery specialist Dr. Mel Pohl points to use by young
people as a primary reason he is against legalizing marijuana. In 30
years of treating drug addicts, Pohl said, 99 percent of them started
with drinking alcohol and smoking pot. Data show that the earlier
young people are exposed to drugs the more likely they are to become
addicts.

People's lives are ruined by alcohol abuse, and making it easier to
obtain marijuana would expand the opportunities for similar
destruction, Pohl said.

"Philosophically, as a culture and society, I don't think we need to
encourage mood alteration with a substance," Pohl said.

The Marijuana Policy Project, based in Washington, D.C., exists to
legalize marijuana for recreational use. Levine said the organization
has made progress since it started working in Nevada in 2001, and that
setting up shop in Las Vegas makes sense because polling data show the
state's residents take a pragmatic approach to the drug.

Levine said polls show a majority of Nevadans favoring the
legalization of marijuana, but their feelings have not translated to
the ballot box.

A 2002 ballot initiative supported by the Marijuana Policy Project
failed, collecting 39 percent of the vote. It would have legalized
possession of up to three ounces of marijuana.

In 2006 Levine led the campaign for the Regulation of Marijuana
Initiative, which would have made it legal for adults to purchase, for
personal use, one ounce of marijuana -- the equivalent of a pack and a
half of cigarettes. That also failed, getting 44 percent of the vote.

Both ballot measures needed more than half the vote to
pass.

Levine said polls show that more than 60 percent of Nevadans favor
legalizing marijuana. His goal is to meet with enough community
leaders to determine what type of ballot initiative could be crafted
that would pass.