Residents will vote on limited possession and state regulation LAS VEGAS - An elderly woman wearing a string of pearls. A balding baby boomer in a gray suit. A mother with long, blond hair, gazing at the sleeping infant cradled in her arms. They may not seem like typical boosters of legalized drugs, but they all joined a crowd of volunteers who turned out on a sun-splashed autumn afternoon to film a television advertisement promoting a Nevada ballot initiative that would decriminalize marijuana. [continues 916 words]
Legalizing Pot Is On The Nevada Ballot This Fall Is Sin City getting more sinful? Question 9 - an initiative to legalize pot, making it OK to carry as many as three ounces of marijuana for private recreational purposes - pops up on the Nevada Nov. 5 ballot. Since 1996, eight states have passed laws legalizing medical marijuana - even as the federal government continues to maintain it is illegal and occasionally stages raids on marijuana clubs. But Nevada is the first state to seriously consider outright legalization. Most stunning of all is that Question 9 could actually win - a prospect that has both the Bush administration and the gaming industry taking notice. Polls, both from local newspapers and the pro-pot group Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement, show a tight race, and that has brought out the big guns to keep voters here from lighting up. Bush drug czar John Walters has visited Nevada twice since August to argue the evils of pot, and former Bush Sr. aide Sig Rogich raised more than $200,000 from the casino industry for a TV campaign featuring law-enforcement leaders worrying about the Strip's becoming a 24/7 Grateful Dead concert. With "the most liberal drug laws in the union," Rogich warns, "Las Vegas would become an ongoing Jay Leno joke." Still, many political observers doubt that Question 9's core audience - young liberals - will turn out on Nov. 5 in the numbers necessary to beat the dependable opposition from elderly voters and parents. Even so, Marijuana Policy Project chief Robert Kampia is optimistic. "Most people in the country, and most of our donors, never thought we'd win," he says. "If we lose 48-52, that's still and all-time record." And if they win, Nevada may be only the first state to go to pot. [end]
LAS VEGAS - This famously live-and-let-live state, where legal prostitution has given rise to $7 million brothel-resorts and where legal gambling includes video poker machines in grocery stores, may now be poised to break another vice barrier. A first-in-the-nation initiative appearing on Nevada's ballot in November asks the public to legalize marijuana. Not just for medicinal purposes. For recreational use, too. If the initiative is approved, it would then have to pass again in 2004 to become a constitutional amendment. [continues 871 words]
