PETITIONS TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA, FURTHER LIMIT SMOKING FALL SHORT

CARSON CITY -- The secretary of state's office ruled Monday that a
petition calling for the legalization of marijuana and two petitions
to further limit smoking in public places failed to secure enough
signatures to force the Legislature to act on them.

After receiving a legal opinion from Attorney General Brian Sandoval,
Secretary of State Dean Heller ruled the petitions were dead. But
within an hour, representatives for two of the petitions vowed to
challenge Heller's ruling in court.

"Our job is to protect the health and safety of citizens who agreed
with us and signed our petition," said Buffy Martin, government
relations director for the American Cancer Society. "We owe it to them
to challenge."

"This is a clear violation of our due process rights," added Bruce
Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project.

None of the three petitions was signed by at least 83,156 residents,
the minimum the attorney general's office decided was needed to force
the Legislature to consider adopting them during the 2005 session.

If legislators had failed to act, then the petitions would have been
placed before voters in the 2006 election.

Heller said it is unfortunate the petitions failed because the groups
were acting on advice from voting registrars that they needed only
51,337 signatures to qualify. Each petition exceeded that total.

Martin's organization was part of the Nevada Tobacco Prevention
Coalition, which collected 64,828 valid signatures on a petition that
would have restricted smoking in most public places, including
restaurants, supermarkets and most bars.

"We never were told the signature number was a moving target," she
said. "This was a 10-month project. Had we been informed we needed to
base the total on 2004 election numbers, we could have presented many
more signatures."

The other anti-smoking petition, circulated by the Clean Indoor Act
organization, a group that included bars and restaurants, secured
74,347 valid signatures.

Its spokeswoman, Lee Haney, said she doubted the group will sue over
the rejection but probably will circulate a new petition in the future.

The petition, the less restrictive of the two, would have permitted
smoking to continue in most bars and in casino restaurants.

Neither petition proposed to ban smoking on casino floors.

"It would have been nice to know beforehand how many signatures we
needed," Haney said. "We spent a lot of time and money gathering
signatures."

Mirken's organization financed the Regulation of Marijuana petition
drive to induce the Legislature to legalize an ounce of marijuana. It
secured 69,261 valid signatures.

"As late as Nov. 19, the secretary of state was telling everyone that
the 2002 election was the basis for the signature requirement," he
said.

Under the state constitution, petitions must secure a total number of
signatures equivalent to at least 10 percent of the voters in the
"last preceding general election."

A record 831,563 voters cast ballots in the Nov. 2 general election.
The petitions were turned in seven days after this election.

Petition circulations, however, began collecting signatures in the
summer under the impression they needed 51,337 signatures, based on 10
percent of the voter total in the 2002 general election when 513,370
people voted.

But Joshua Hicks, chief deputy to Sandoval, said they needed the
higher number of 83,156 signatures.

"Accordingly, the `last preceding general election' for purposes (of
the three petitions) was the election held on Nov. 2, 2004," he said.

Hicks backed up his opinion by citing the state Supreme Court's
decision in a 1994 case involving recall petitions against Carolyn
Sparks, then a member of the university system Board of Regents.

That case also involved petitioners who turned in signatures right
after a general election.

Justices ruled that the signature number must be based on "the general
election preceding the filing of the petition."