NEVADA DIVIDED ON BALLOT ISSUE TO LEGALIZE USE OF MARIJUANA

Las Vegas - Wedding chapel minister William Merrell, 78, says he has never
smoked marijuana and doesn't drink, either. But next month he will vote to
legalize personal possession of the drug for adults.

''I just don't like to see people put in jail for a couple of ounces of
marijuana in their possession,'' Merrell said between performing quickie
$100 weddings at the Say I Do Wedding Drive Thru on Las Vegas Boulevard.
``I say, let the cops use those man-hours finding some crooks.''

But his wife sees it differently. A driver high on dope fell asleep at the
wheel during the summer and slammed his vehicle into a car at a downtown
stoplight, killing a woman motorist. ''That pushed her to the other side,''
he says.

In a nutshell, this is what divides Nevadans in the Nov. 5 election:
whether to decriminalize the personal use of marijuana -- the most sweeping
statewide measure after a series of Western states have bucked the federal
government and legalized medical uses of marijuana.

Polls have gone both ways.

Known as Question 9, the Marijuana Initiative would allow adults 21 and
older to legally possess and smoke three ounces of the drug or, advocates
say, about 100 joints.

Passage would not immediately allow pot smoking in ''Sin City.'' Under
Nevada law, voters have to endorse state constitutional amendments twice,
in this instance again in 2004.

The proposed amendment instructs the Legislature to set up a system of
licensing growers and dealers to peddle a product grown in Nevada and
derive state taxes from it. A business school study has projected that
state-supervised marijuana sales would raise $28 million in taxes, based on
an estimated 75,000 adult users in Nevada.

Sales to people under 21 would be punishable by a jail term. Driving under
the influence would still be a crime.

The Nevada amendment has become the latest example of the clash between
local jurisdictions and the federal government on whether personal
marijuana consumption is a worthy target of the war on drugs.

FEDERAL SWEEP

In September, federal agents swept through a medical marijuana collective
in Santa Cruz, Calif., uprooting plants and briefly detaining the couple
farming them under California's Proposition 215 and a city ordinance
allowing such farming.

In the past six years, voters in nine states -- largely Western -- have
legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, prompting both Drug Enforcement
Administration Director Asa Hutchinson and ''drug czar'' John Walters to
campaign here on the dangers of the drug and the liabilities that such a
law could bring through potential health-related lawsuits, similar to those
against tobacco.

Walters, who is head of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, has teamed up with local law-enforcement officials who argue that
marijuana has a corrupting influence.

But in a city that already thrives on everything from brothels and
blackjack to strip shows, the initiative is also about Nevada's independent
streak.

''Nevada is the ultimate libertarian paradise,'' explains Ted Jelen, a
political scientist at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. ``You want to
get married? Do it right now. You want to get divorced? Do it right now.
You want to put a million dollars on a hand of cards? Do it right here.

'AWFUL' IDEA

``The whole idea that the government can regulate any kind of behavior is
considered awful -- just does not compute. That's what Nevada's all about.''

With perhaps one exception. Jelen says voters are expected to
overwhelmingly adopt an initiative prohibiting the Legislature from
enacting laws for same-sex marriage.

And while the marijuana campaign boasts that it has garnered 4,000 local
endorsements, it is not wholly a home-grown effort.

The campaign director is Billy Rogers, a veteran Texas political campaigner
who came to Nevada from the national Marijuana Policy Project, a lobby.
Rogers projects that the group will have spent $1.5 million on the
amendment by the time the vote is over.

Failure in Nevada is possible, he concedes, but legalization is also
''inevitable'' as the Baby Boomers grow older.

''Marijuana ain't cocaine, and it ain't heroin,'' Rogers says, arguing that
the possession arrests of 750,000 Americans last year were part of a
misplaced priority -- even in Nevada, where possession of less than an
ounce is punishable by only a citation and a $650 fine.

MEDICAL EXEMPTION

In addition, Nevada already has a medical marijuana exemption, as do
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington
state -- all adopted since 1996. Licensing adult marijuana sales, Rogers
and others argue, would mean that Nevadans who now use it medicinally would
no longer have to go to illicit drug dealers for their fix, and that police
and prosecutors could focus on violent crimes.

Walters, however, and other opponents argue that marijuana is a gateway
drug to other, more dangerous addictive pursuits and that approval of the
measure would send the wrong signal to children.

Moreover, opponents warn that legalization could lead to ''drug tourism''
in a city that has tried to polish its image with family-friendly shows and
highbrow art exhibits.

And, says Walters: ``It's still against federal law to cultivate and sell
marijuana. That's not going to change.''