MASON TVERT'S MOVEMENT TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA IS CAUSING REEFER MADNESS

Kicking up his bare feet at his desk and placing his hands behind his
head, Mason Tvert says Colorado would be a better place if residents
could light up big, fat joints -- legally. That's the message the
23-year-old toils to impart from his Denver office. The space, which
doubles as his bedroom, is the statewide headquarters of a political
initiative that aims to ask voters this November to legalize adult
possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Aided by a laptop and some 400 volunteers around Colorado ----two
dozen hailing from the Colorado Springs area -- Tvert and a full-time
campaign assistant are leading the push to get the 68,000 valid
signatures needed to place the marijuana initiative on the ballot.
Their effort is referred to as SAFER, or Safer Alternative For
Enjoyable Recreation.

Tvert lurches forward in his office chair, firing arguments supporting
his initiative in rapid succession.

Research, statistics, polls and assorted news reports, he says, show
that marijuana is a safer recreational intoxicant than alcohol.

Consider the recent death of Jesse Gomez, an 18-year-old student at
the University of Colorado at Boulder, Tvert says. News reports
indicate Gomez was drinking at a fraternity party the night he died.

If pot had been legal, Tvert suggests, Gomez might have smoked
instead, and still would be alive.

"This is public-policy harm-reduction," Tvert says of the initiative.
"Marijuana is a safer intoxicant for partying. It's that simple."

Legal challenges

Tvert's arguments have infuriated some, including Attorney General
John Suthers. Suthers is working with Gov. Bill Owens and top police
around the state to establish a political committee to persuade voters
that Tvert's campaign is misguided.

"I find this group's message particularly troubling," Suthers says.
"It's a moral relativism message that we have two evils, and [in their
assessment] marijuana is a lesser evil than alcohol, so [they] promote
that evil. There's another alternative here: Let's promote sobriety as
an alternative to intoxication of any form."

Pro-pot campaign posters and bumper stickers clutter Tvert's wall,
which also displays an essay titled "Drugs," written in curling script
with green marker.

It's an inspiration to Tvert, a recent graduate in political science
from the highly selective and private University of Richmond in Virginia.

"Just say no to drugs," declares the essay, which Tvert wrote years
ago as an elementary-school student in Scottsdale, Ariz.

His parents framed the essay, along with a certificate of completion
from D.A.R.E., the nation's Drug Abuse Resistance Education program,
after Tvert convinced Denver voters last year to relax that city's
marijuana possession laws in a 54 to 46 percent vote.

Tvert chuckles at the essay, calling it the result of a government
propaganda campaign aimed at children.

"I was wrongly taught that because marijuana is illegal, it is bad,"
he says. "That's just not true."

Tvert says Suthers and other opponents incensed by his statewide
campaign can blame Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey. Last
year, after SAFER's Initiative 100 passed in Denver, Morrissey
announced he would continue to prosecute marijuana cases by
encouraging police to use state law.

"They have ignored the will of the voters," Tvert says. "What we're
doing is taking this up to the next level and changing the state law."

If successful, the initiative would amend drug statutes so that people
21 years and older may possess 1 ounce or less of marijuana legally in
Colorado.

Under current state law, it is a petty offense to possess less than 1
ounce, with a maximum fine of up to $100.

Should the initiative pass, many of the legalities would need to be
sorted out.

For instance, cities with existing laws that make marijuana possession
illegal -- such as Colorado Springs, where residents who possess or
consume less than 1 ounce of marijuana face up to 90 days in jail and
fines up to $500 -- may be insulated against the initiative.

But Deputy Colorado Springs Attorney Kathy Moore is unsure of what
actually would happen. The city would probably assert "home rule," a
kind of city autonomy from Colorado law, and continue to prosecute
cases until there was a legal challenge, Moore says.

Should the initiative pass, federal law would be the only law
prohibiting marijuana possession in some parts of the state, including
Denver. Federal law includes stiffer penalties of up to one year in
prison and fines of up to $1,000 for possession of 1 ounce or less.

Yet Suthers, a former U.S. attorney for Colorado, says the federal
government would be unlikely to go after people who possess such small
quantities of marijuana.

"As a practical matter -- and I have great experience in this area --
the feds are not going to have any enforcement efforts directed toward
people possessing small amounts of marijuana," Suthers says. "They
have thresholds [such as] 100 plants, [and] so many pounds."

Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for Colorado U.S. Attorney William J.
Leone, agrees with Suthers, saying that federal investigators and
prosecutors focus on large-scale traffickers, rather than people
possessing small amounts for personal consumption.

Working the grassroots

If you're at a gay pride festival in Colorado Springs, a fair in
Denver or a campus get-together, Tvert expects to be there. He's
constantly filling out applications to secure tables at such events to
peddle his literature and petitions.

He does this on a "shoestring" budget that, at the moment, he refuses
to further discuss. He also declines to state whether or not he
currently smokes pot.

"I don't answer that on the record because I don't think it is
pertinent," he says.

Tvert indicates he has smoked pot before. He tells the story of
visiting a country music festival in Arizona during his senior year at
high school and getting so drunk that he had to be
hospitalized.

Authorities didn't pay much attention to the incident, he says, though
he broke the law by drinking underage.

Later, while at college, police approached him merely out of suspicion
that he was smoking pot, threatening him with arrest and charges if he
didn't turn in a suspected pot dealer.

"Look at how much they cared about me smoking pot," he says. "But when
I nearly drank myself to death, where were they?"

Last year, SAFER won major political victories after convincing
students at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado State
University in Fort Collins to take a pro-marijuana stand. Students at
the two universities were the first in the nation to pass resolutions
asking administrators to set the same penalties for being caught with
marijuana as for being caught with alcohol.

Since then, as Tvert has focused on laws in Colorado, SAFER Executive
Director Steve Fox has spearheaded the campaign at several other
campuses across the country. Students at the University of Maryland
passed a resolution two weeks ago, becoming the fifth campus bloc to
join the effort.

The resolutions don't have any power to change policies at the
schools, and no administration to date has buckled.

Meanwhile, in his efforts to pressure administrators, Tvert is mining
the local news for alcohol-related tragedies.

Following the April 9 death of CU-Boulder student Gomez, who was
reportedly drinking at a fraternity party the night he died, Tvert
issued a press release saying the university was "guilty of
negligence" because it had not relaxed its stand against marijuana.

"How many tragic events must occur before the university can simply
say to its students, "Marijuana is less harmful than alcohol?'" he
asked. "Our federal government and the law enforcement community in
this country seem to enjoy demonizing marijuana, and tragic
alcohol-related incidents such as these are partially a consequence of
this misinformation campaign."

Barrie Hartman, a spokesman for CU, notes the Boulder County Coroner's
Office has yet to issue an official cause of death in the case.

He says the university hasn't changed its stand against marijuana.
Still, he adds, "smoking pot is illegal, booze is not."

The university prefers students choose neither, Hartman
continues.

Tvert says CU is in denial: "If you think college students are not
going to party, you're crazy."

Studies vs. studies

Attorney General Suthers worries that recreational marijuana smokers
could cause an increase in fatal and injurious accidents.

"If Mr. Tvert was successful in getting everybody that drinks alcohol
to get high on marijuana, I think you'd see a lot more driving under
the influence of drugs," Suthers argues.

Tvert counters that if his measure passes, alcohol accidents would
decline.

Tvert points to studies and statistical surveys, such as research
published in 2004 by doctors including Julie Gerberding, director of
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They concluded
that 85,000 people died as a result of alcohol abuse in 2000.

In the past three years, the Colorado State Patrol has tracked 300
substance-abuse-related driving deaths on the state's highways.
Ninety-nine percent of those deaths were the result of alcohol abuse,
says State Trooper Eric Wynn.

Renee Brown, a spokeswoman for the CDC in Atlanta, is unable to locate
any data linking deaths directly to marijuana and says that if numbers
do exist, they are likely small.

Yet federal officials, including John Walters, director of the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Charles Curie,
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services administrator, have
recently highlighted studies linking the smoking of marijuana to
serious mental health problems.

"New research being conducted here and abroad illustrates that
marijuana use, particularly during teen years, can lead to depression,
thoughts of suicide and schizophrenia," Walters stated in a press
conference last year.

Other studies have failed to find links between marijuana and mental
illness.

One study published last April in Psychiatry Research found no link
between smoking marijuana and schizophrenia.

Some doctors prescribe marijuana to relieve pain and even to slow the
progression of cancer. Voters made medical marijuana legal in Colorado
in 2000 when they passed Amendment 20.

Campaign issue

Tvert believes Suthers may be opposing SAFER's initiative for another
reason. The battle over marijuana legalization may become a campaign
issue for the attorney general, who is running to keep the office to
which Gov. Owens appointed him in January 2005.

"I think that this issue gets a lot of people who don't usually vote
out to the polls," he says, adding that Suthers' opposition to it
could backfire.

That hasn't changed Suthers' resolve to defeat the
initiative.

"If I saw a poll tomorrow that said 75 percent of Coloradans were in
favor of this measure, I'd still be against it," he says. "This is not
something that I come to because of my assessment of the political
winds. I've been on this side of the debate for decades."

Suthers says Tom Gorman, who heads the Rocky Mountain High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Area program, will lead a political committee that
Suthers and Owens suspect will unite a coalition of police, drug
counselors and others.

The committee probably won't find large amounts of money to launch a
counter campaign of television advertising, Suthers says.

"You're not going to get interest groups writing multi-thousand-dollar
checks to this opposition campaign," he says.

Instead, the campaign will use the expertise and credibility of its
members to convince voters through staged events, such as press
conferences.

Tvert worries federal and state officials might suddenly find funding
to run nonpartisan governmental commercials with strong anti-drug
messages. He's considering filing paperwork for what would be a
pre-emptive legal injunction to prevent such commercials from airing
statewide in the weeks approaching the election.

"We think they might try that," Tvert says, "and want to make sure
they don't pull that on us."