Current Update

 

Questions Nevada Citizens Should Ask About the Ballot Question That Will Legalize Marijuana In Your State

July 22, 2002 – Nevadans may want to ask the following questions about an initiative on the November ballot. If passed, it will legalize possession of up to 3 ounces of marijuana. The state will be required to grow, tax, and distribute marijuana to retail stores.

1. How many marijuana cigarettes ("joints") do 3 ounces of marijuana make? To answer this question, Officer Todd Raybuck of the Las Vegas Police Department rolled three ounces of marijuana into marijuana cigarettes. Three ounces of marijuana makes 255 joints!

2. What will prevent citizens from purchasing 3 ounces from one store, 3 ounces from another, and so forth? How many more police officers will be needed to enforce the 3-ounce limit? At what cost? How many more judges will be needed to issue search warrants for police officers to determine if anyone possesses more than the 3-ounce limit? At what cost?

3. How many more police officers will be needed to enforce the initiative’s ban on driving under the influence of marijuana? At what cost?

4. Is there a roadside test for detecting marijuana in a driver's system? If not, how will police officers be able to tell if a driver has marijuana in his or her system?

5. How will making marijuana more available to more people reduce the number of drug addicts in Nevada? Currently, Nevada has the highest rate of addiction to illicit drugs and the 5th highest rate of addiction to an illicit drug or alcohol in the nation, according to the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. (See National Families in Action's website at http://www.nationalfamilies.org/guide/rankings_dependence.html).

6. Are Nevadans ready to approve a state income tax? If not, where will the money come from to treat all the new addicts who will need treatment if marijuana is legalized? (Some 65% of the 4.3 million Americans who are addicted to drugs are addicted to marijuana, according to John Walters, director of the White House Office for National Drug Control Policy.)

7. How can Nevada keep teens from buying marijuana when it can't keep teens from buying cigarettes and alcohol? Nearly one in five Nevada teenagers smokes cigarettes (17.4%) and one in six drinks alcohol (15.1%), yet both are illegal drugs for teenagers. (1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse.)

8. What will keep the U.S. Supreme Court from overturning the initiative’s ban on advertising marijuana? Initiative proponents assure voters that advertising marijuana will still be illegal. But the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that the First Amendment protects commercial speech, even when that commercial speech promotes the use of addictive drugs like nicotine and alcohol.

9. How much will it cost the state to grow marijuana and distribute it to retail stores? Will the marijuana tax be enough to cover these costs, as well as the additional costs of treating marijuana addiction and marijuana-related diseases? Recently, states realized that taxes gained from tobacco sales did not adequately cover the costs they bore for treating tobacco-related diseases. The initiative specifies that the tax on marijuana cannot exceed the tax on tobacco cigarettes.

10. Can Nevada afford the damage three legal addictive drugs will create? Keeping drugs illegal holds down drug use and all of the problems that accompany it. Today, 104 million Americans use alcohol on a regular basis, 65 million use tobacco, and 14 million use all illegal drugs combined. Those levels of use produce 100,000 alcohol-related deaths per year, 430,000 tobacco-related deaths per year, and 16,000 illicit drug-related deaths per year. Legalizing drugs will remove constraints on advertising and marketing to increase consumption and permit newly legal drug industries to contribute to political campaigns to forestall regulation. No matter what proponents say, marijuana use, abuse, addiction, health problems, and deaths will increase dramatically and soon reach the levels caused by alcohol and tobacco.

11. Why is a drug legalization lobby from Washington D.C. writing Nevada law? The initiative is sponsored by Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement, headed by Billy Rogers. Mr. Rogers is director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a legalization lobby based in Washington D.C. MPP set up Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement and financed the $300,000 effort to collect the signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Previous Updates