SMUGGLER'S BLUES

Organizers of Nevada's latest petition drive to legalize small
quantities of marijuana now say they forgot to turn in a box of 6,000
signatures when they filed the documents June 15.

Billy Rogers' Southwest Group -- retained to qualify the petition for
the cleverly named Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana --
announced last week they'd filed enough signatures to get the proposal
on the state's November ballot -- about 35,000 total in Clark County,
less than 4,000 more than the required 31,360.

(Petitioners often try to submit half again as many signatures as
required, since a certain percentage are usually found invalid.)

But if 6,000 more were left under the rear seat -- and unless Mr.
Rogers can now get Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax to accept the
misplaced signatures, which Mr. Rogers claims were notarized prior to
the June 15 deadline -- the fate of the initiative may come down to
whether the group qualified in all the remaining Nevada counties.

Mr. Rogers was obviously attempting to position himself for a lawsuit
with his Monday letter to Mr. Lomax, asserting that, "Your refusal to
accept signatures gathered prior to June 15, 2004, may disenfranchise
voters. ..." In fact, the matter was expected to reach the courts as
early as today.

But our sources tell us the problem may actually be attributed to a
fateful miscalculation in the order of Mr. Rogers' "do list" for June
15:

1) Throw all signatures in van.

2) Celebrate delivery of signatures by recreating traffic stop scene
from Cheech & Chong's "Up in Smoke".

3) Actually deliver signatures to Mr. Lomax's office ... .