EX-UNDERSHERIFF BACKS QUESTION 9

A former Metro Police undersheriff has come out in support of Question 9,
the marijuana initiative.

Don Denison, who was undersheriff in the early 1980s, says he supports the
legalization of up to 3 ounces of marijuana for adults.

"There are thousands and thousands of users of marijuana in the Las Vegas
Valley from all professions -- they are our neighbors and our friends,"
said Denison, who is retired. "Do we make them criminals or allow them to
smoke in the privacy of their homes and not bother people?"

The marijuana initiative has put Nevada in the middle of a national debate
over whether the legalization of the drug in this state would spread across
the nation.

With early voting under way, and as the Nov. 5 election nears, polls show
voters are divided equally on the issue.

Denison, who also served as director of the Department of Motor Vehicles
and served two terms as chairman of the Nevada Board of Parole
Commissioners, is the second high-profile former law enforcement officer to
come out in favor of the ballot initiative. In August Andy Anderson,
president and co-founder of the Nevada Conference of Police and Sheriffs,
the state's largest police organization, announced that his organization
supported it.

Amid criticism from law enforcement officers, the group's board announced
Anderson had misspoken and withdrew support.

Anderson quit the group, though, and still endorses the initiative.

"I saw Andy Anderson take a position that was not popular with his peer
group, and I told him at the time that I was very proud of him," Denison
said. "He asked me why don't I stand with him?

"If I think something is important and right it does not matter if others
do not like my opinion. Being an American means I can speak my mind."

Denison, who was a Metro narcotics cop in the 1970s, recalled a bust he
made involving a moving van filled with 800 pounds of marijuana. He soon
learned that what he thought was a lot of grass accounted for what just one
group of drug dealers would sell in Las Vegas over just the Christmas and
New Year's holidays.

"That was 30 years ago when the Las Vegas population was nowhere near what
it is now," Denison said.