NEVADA NOT THE FERTILE GROUND POT PUSHERS WERE SEEKING

If you ask the folks from the Marijuana Policy Project why they chose to
make Nevada the nation's first battleground in the war to legalize
marijuana, you won't get a straight answer.

"Nevada is the only state in the last decade that's enacted marijuana
decriminalization legislation," says Billy Rogers, the man the Marijuana
Policy Project sent to Nevada.

He's referring to a move by the 2001 state legislature to make possession
of an ounce or less of pot a misdemeanor. Until then, it was a felony to
possess any amount. So, the marijuana advocates have come to a state whose
pot laws were among the harshest in the nation less than two years ago.
They must have been counting on Nevada's reputation as a
libertarian-thinking, live-or-let-die, anything-goes state.

Their reasoning is understandable. Nevada was the first state to give
gambling a home, and look how well that worked out. Nevada's rural counties
are the only in the nation to legalize prostitution, and Nevada has one of
the nation's highest smoking rates. When the federal government wanted a
place to dump its nuclear waste, Nevada was the only place seriously
considered.

Are you looking for a place to legally indulge all of your vices? Nevada's
the place to be.

Or, at least it used to be. Yes, Nevada still has the gambling, the
prostitution, the smoking and, soon, the nuclear waste. But it also has a
growing and increasingly powerful right-wing movement. And that is why the
marijuana legalization effort will almost surely be voted down come November.

Conservative groups once viewed as fringe have gained power, seemingly
overnight. The right wing now controls the Republican Party in Clark
County, the area around and including Las Vegas, where more than two-thirds
of Nevada's population lives. The county Republican chairman, Steve Wark,
has been doing his best to drive moderate-thinking or libertarian-minded
Republicans out of politics. As an example, the party failed to endorse
moderate Republican state Sen. Mark James for re-election; he ended up
running for another office instead and is rumored to be considering a party
switch.

Not surprisingly, the marijuana ballot question has drawn the ire of some
of these same right-wingers. Law-enforcement officials , led by Las Vegas
Metropolitan Police Department Detective Todd Raybuck and Washoe County
District Attorney Richard Gammick, have spoken out strongly against the
initiative, using the fact that the ballot question would legalize the
possession of the equivalent of 60 to 120 joints. That's a lot of
marijuana. And an initial endorsement by the Nevada Conference of Police
and Sheriffs was reversed following a huge outcry from some law-enforcement
officials and the resignation of the organization's longtime leader.

Polls now show that the marijuana ballot question is doomed. July polls by
the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Reno Gazette-Journal, the state's two
largest daily newspapers, showed voters were evenly split. But an August
poll by the Review-Journal, taken after the Conference of Police and
Sheriffs debacle, revealed that 55 percent were opposed and 40 percent were
in favor.

The Marijuana Policy Project may have picked the right state to start its
marijuana legalization effort. But it seems to have picked the wrong time.