QUESTION 9 SUPPORTERS, OPPONENTS FIND NO MIDDLE GROUND

Marijuana Touted As 'Miracle Medicine' By One Side, Harmful Narcotic By
Other

CARSON CITY -- A popular T-shirt worn this summer by New Yorkers featured
the logos of the Yankees and Mets baseball teams.

Under the Yankees logo was the phrase "Your brain." Under the Mets logo were
the words "Your brain on drugs." The Yankees finished atop their division.
The Mets ended up in last place amid allegations that seven players were
regular smokers of marijuana, a performance that reflects the concerns of
opponents of the ballot proposition that would make Nevada the first state
with legal pot.

"Look what happens to kids who get into marijuana," said Dorothy North,
former state Substance Abuse Commission Chairwoman and Question 9 opponent.
"Bright and sharp kids lose their edge. Their energy to get out and go after
it is gone."

North operates the Vitality House rehabilitation center in Elko. She said
more and more of her patients are young people having problems because of
marijuana use.

"We know it causes brain damage like an early senility," she said. "It also
causes short-term memory losses in people who are heavy users, three or more
joints a week. It is not a safe drug."

Billy Rogers, leader of Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement, points to
studies that show 80 million Americans have smoked marijuana at least once
and that 11 million are regular users.

Regardless of laws against marijuana, these people will continue to use the
drug, Rogers said. Rather than make them criminals, the state should
recognize reality and allow them to smoke their pot in the privacy of their
homes without fear of arrest.

"No one in this campaign advocates the use of marijuana," said Rogers, a
Texas-born political consultant whose organization collected 110,000
signatures to put Question 9 on the ballot. "Despite all the good intentions
of the drug czar (John Walters), it is clear they cannot stop responsible
adults from using marijuana. It is time we tried something different."

Question 9 would change the state constitution and allow adult Nevadans to
possess 3 ounces or less of marijuana. Use in public and by juveniles would
remain illegal.

The most recent Review-Journal survey, done in August, showed 55 percent of
respondents oppose Question 9, while 40 percent favor passage. Five percent
are undecided. An earlier poll showed opposition and support almost evenly
split.

The measure would need to be approved Nov. 5 and again in 2004 to change the
law. In addition, the proposal would require the state Legislature in 2005
to set up a system for the cultivation, taxation, distribution and sale of
marijuana. Pot would be sold in state-licensed stores. Low-cost marijuana
also would be sold to the 200 people in Nevada who have permission to use
the drug for medical reasons.

Holly Brady is one of those people. The 49-year-old Las Vegan has multiple
sclerosis. She smoked pot illegally for 10 years before recently securing
state permission to grow marijuana plants.

"It is miracle medicine," said Brady, who is featured in Nevadans for
Responsible Law Enforcement campaign materials.

Her husband, Tom, said she used to have nausea every morning and that they
closed the windows so her screams would not scare the neighbors.

"She was not an advocate of marijuana," Tom Brady said. "She tried it a few
times in college and didn't like it. But she tried it and it worked. She
gets around. She is not in a wheelchair. Some days are better than others."

But Holly Brady's attempts to grow marijuana have been futile. Under
Nevada's medical marijuana program, participants can grow as many as seven
plants for medical use. The state Department of Agriculture, however, does
not provide instructions or the seeds to grow the plant.

Seeds must be found clandestinely, although some exotic-sounding, highly
potent varieties can purchased from Web sites, mostly based in Canada and
the Netherlands. Prices often top $5 per seed.

Because of their inability to grow quality plants, the Bradys back Question
9. They want the state, or its approved growers, to provide them marijuana.

Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has visited
Nevada twice this fall in an effort to persuade residents to reject Question
9.

The drug czar has challenged those who contend marijuana brings medical
benefits. He says the reports are unproven and that people who need THC, the
main active chemical in marijuana, can acquire it in Morinal, a prescription
drug without the harmful effects of marijuana.

"On the face of it, the idea that desperately sick people could be helped by
smoking an intoxicating weed seems unlikely, even medieval," Walters wrote
in a column last month in the San Francisco Chronicle. "It is, in fact,
absurd."

He charged that heavy use of marijuana induces paranoia and even violence.
Las Vegas police reported recently that traces of marijuana were found in
one-third of the people booked into the Clark County Detention Center on
domestic violence charges.

The National Institutes of Health found that someone who smokes five
marijuana joints per week takes in as many cancer-causing chemicals as
someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a week. One joint deposits about
four times more tar into the lungs than a filtered tobacco cigarette.

Marijuana also is much stronger than it was back in the days of the
Woodstock nation.

A study at the federal government's marijuana farm at the University of
Mississippi found the content of THC in sinsemilla marijuana today averages
12.7 percent. Studies conducted in 1977 showed THC levels in marijuana at
3.2 percent.

But support for legal marijuana is growing in the United States. A USA
Today/Gallup Poll in August 2001 found 34 percent of Americans believe
marijuana should be legal. That compares with 25 percent support in 1980 and
only 12 percent when the first poll was conducted in 1969.

Despite Walters' assertion that legalizing marijuana will lead to more use
of the drug, use in the Netherlands is half that of the United States. The
Dutch have tolerated the use of drugs since 1975. People can smoke marijuana
and even shoot up heroin without reprisal, although the drugs are not legal.
Police look the other way as long as users do not cause trouble.

According to a study in 1997, 33 percent of Americans over the age of 12
have tried marijuana at least once. In the Netherlands, 15.6 percent of the
population over the age of 12 there has tried marijuana, according to a
similar study.

Marijuana or hashish is sold in 5-gram packets in more than 800 coffee shops
in the Netherlands, and catering to pot smokers has become a cottage
industry in Amsterdam. Tourists, many of them Americans, flock to the coffee
shops to sample the world's highest grade marijuana. Growers compete for the
annual "Cannabis Cup."

That Las Vegas could become another Amsterdam is not ruled out by Question
9. Language in the ballot question does prohibit tourists from purchasing
marijuana sold in Nevada, but Rogers said the ultimate decision on whether
to let visitors indulge would be made by the Legislature in 2005.

What bothers Dr. Joey Villaflor, chairman of the Nevada Board of Health, is
that more juveniles would acquire the drug were it legal and more drivers
would get behind the wheel while high. "It will be seen as an OK thing to
do" by children, he said.

Villaflor said road fatalities will increase with legalization.

"It is already difficult to drive" because of alcohol abusers, he said. "It
will become more difficult when more drivers will be impaired because of
marijuana."

STOP DUI Executive Director Sandy Heverly agrees.

"I honestly believe this is not the future we want for Nevada," said
Heverly, a member of Nevadans Against Legalizing Marijuana, a coalition of
organizations that oppose legal marijuana. "It comes down to a matter of
what is right and wrong."

She points to a state Office of Traffic Safety study that showed 57 people
died on Nevada highways between 1997-2001 in accidents involving drivers who
had been using marijuana. But some of those drivers also were abusing
alcohol and other drugs, according to Michael Perondi, a staff member at the
office.

Those fatalities include the six teenagers who died in 2000 when a motor
vehicle hit them while they picked up trash along Interstate 15. Driver
Jessica Williams received an 18- to 48-year sentence in prison for the
fatalities. Although a jury ruled Williams wasn't impaired, it found her
system contained levels of marijuana above the legal limit.

And the 21-year-old driver accused of causing the accident that killed Las
Vegas Sun executive editor Sandra Thompson in August had a marijuana level
seven times the standard, authorities say.

"You only have to look at the statistics and speculate how many more
fatalities we will have if we legalized marijuana," Heverly said.

But Rogers maintains juveniles would find it harder to acquire legal
marijuana. Teens won't be able to buy pot from state-licensed stores. And,
he predicted, drug dealers would disappear.

"We know what happened with (the end of) Prohibition," Rogers said. "It put
the bootleggers out of business. When Question 9 becomes law, you put the
drug dealers out of business."

North considers Rogers' predictions rubbish.

>From operating a drug rehabilitation center, North knows children acquire
alcohol from their parents. If marijuana were legal, then children would get
their parents' pot, she insisted.

Even if they didn't, some youngsters would breathe marijuana smoke from
being in the same room. They would receive a contact high.

"You almost never see people doing one drug," North said. "They use
methamphetamines as a stimulator and alcohol and marijuana to come down."

Neither North nor Heverly wants to punish drug abusers. Both back the
current law that makes possession of an ounce a misdemeanor punishable by a
$600 fine. They favor mandatory drug treatment for all users.

"We didn't declare a war on drugs in this country," North said. "We declared
a war on the victims."

Heverly's biggest concern is that Question 9 supporters will win votes
because they have more money for TV ads.

Rogers said his organization has raised $1.6 million for its campaign to
pass Question 9. Of that total, $385,000 was spent to gather signatures on
qualifying petitions last summer. Another $600,000 has gone for
advertisements that will run between now and Election Day.

Almost all of the money to Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement comes
from the Marijuana Policy Project of Washington, D.C. Its major donor is
Progressive Insurance Chief Executive Officer Peter Lewis.

Heverly has reason to worry about the lack of commercial time for her side.

Recent anti-Question 9 ads running on TV have been sponsored by The
Committee to Keep Nevada Respectable, which has raised only about $200,000
in its drive to defeat legal marijuana.

The political action committee is the fund-raising arm of Nevadans Against
Legalizing Marijuana. It was created by Lt. Stan Olsen, the Las Vegas police
legislative lobbyist, following a Sept. 27 news conference in which police
spoke out against Question 9.

Rachel Wilkie, a Rogich Communications representative who works for the
committee, said the donations have helped the group prepare three different
advertisements.

But none of them will receive as much airplay as Rogers' advertisements,
especially in Northern Nevada where they will run only a few times, she
said.

Wilkie said the Committee to Keep Nevada Respectable continues to seek
donations, primarily from businesses.

"We are doing everything we can, but they are way ahead," Wilkie added.

Despite being discouraged by the fund-raising gap, Heverly still expects
residents will defeat legal marijuana.

"No one can argue Nevada doesn't have its vices, but once you get away from
the glitz and glamour of the Strip, we have a very conservative community in
Las Vegas," she said. "We have values and morals we live by each day. I hope
that voice will be heard through their votes."