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Join National Families in Action’s
Parsley Joints for Drug-Free Kids
Public Education Campaign

The Marijuana Policy Project is sponsoring a ballot initiative in Nevada that will legalize marijuana. The initiative requires the state to grow marijuana, tax it, and distribute it to licensed retail stores for sale to the public. If it passes, it will be legal to buy 3 ounces of pot in Nevada.

Proponents say 3 ounces is a “small amount.” Las Vegas Police Officer Todd Raybuck rolled 3 ounces of confiscated marijuana into marijuana cigarettes, or joints. Three ounces made 255 joints!

Because Nevada would be the first state to legalize pot, the media can’t get enough of this story. Newspapers all over the country are reporting that the state is about to legalize “small amounts” of pot.

National Families in Action is mounting a public education campaign to demonstrate how much marijuana 3 ounces actually is. We rolled 255 parsley joints, put them in a gallon-sized food storage bag (pictured above), sent them to the national editor of The New York Times, and asked him to assign a story about how many joints this “small amount” of marijuana makes.

Join the Campaign!

You can do this too. Gather friends and colleagues to help roll 255 parsley joints. Put them in a baggie and take it to the city editor of your newspaper. Roll a second baggie full of 255 joints and take it to the news director of your TV station. Ask both to educate the public about how many joints 3 ounces of marijuana make.

Roll a third baggie full of 255 parsley joints and show it to civic clubs, churches, and school PTA’s in your community. Do not take a position on Nevada’s ballot initiative. Do not tell people to vote for or against it. Do educate the public that the Nevada initiative will legalize the sale of 3 ounces of marijuana – 255 joints – which is not a “small amount.”

Parsley Joints Recipe

Ingredients:
4 oz. dried parsley (to allow for spillage)
8 packages double-wide “cigarette” rolling papers (32 papers/package) Patience

Directions: Place a small amount of parsley (the amount in a typical tobacco cigarette) on a rolling paper with the sealing edge up and at the top.

Use your fingers to distribute the parsley evenly across the paper in a horizontal line.

Then lift the lower edge of the paper and roll toward the top.

Lick the top edge and seal.

Now twist one end tightly to seal it and repeat with the other end.

When finished, place parsley joints in a 1-gallon plastic food-storage bag and send to your local media with the accompanying press release.

Takes about 3 ½ man-hours, so work with friends!

Makes 255 parsley joints (the equivalent of 3 oz. of marijuana, or a “small amount”).

Sample Press Release
(Put on your letterhead.)

(Today’s Month/Date/Year)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:

(Your Name)
(Your Title)
(Your Organization’s Name)
(Your Address)
(Your Phone Number)
(Your Cell Phone Number)

(YOUR ORGANIZATION’S NAME) JOINS NATIONAL FAMILIES IN ACTION’S PARSLEY JOINTS FOR DRUG-FREE KIDS CAMPAIGN

(City, State) – (Your Organization’s Name) is joining National Families in Action’s campaign to educate the public that 3 ounces of marijuana make 255 marijuana cigarettes (joints)!

An initiative on Nevada’s November ballot will legalize possession of up to 3 ounces of marijuana, which proponents call a “small amount.” The initiative also requires the state to grow, tax, and distribute the drug to licensed retail stores for sale to the public. Las Vegas Police Officer Todd Raybuck rolled 3 ounces of confiscated marijuana into marijuana cigarettes (joints) and found that 3 ounces make 255 joints!

(Your Organization’s Name) rolled 255 parsley joints to demonstrate how many joints this “small amount” of marijuana makes. We give you a baggie full of parsley joints with our compliments. If possible, please include a photo of it in any stories you publish about the Nevada initiative to help the public understand just how many joints this “small amount” of marijuana makes.

(Your Organization’s Name) is a (describe in one or two sentences).

National Families in Action (NFIA) is an Atlanta-based nonprofit drug education organization that has been helping parents prevent drug abuse in their families and communities for 25 years. We have enclosed for your information NFIA’s background paper on the Nevada initiative, which includes 10 questions everyone should ask about it.

Attachment

National Families in Action Background Paper on Question 9 To Legalize Marijuana in Nevada

Background
The Washington D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project has contributed $575,000 to place an initiative on Nevada’s ballot that will legalize 3 ounces of marijuana in that state. Nevada citizens contributed a total of $275. (Figures are from the August 27 campaign finance report filed with the Nevada Secretary of State.)

The initiative, Question 9, is sponsored by Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement, headed by Billy Rogers. Mr. Rogers is currently on leave from his position as director of state programs for the Marijuana Policy Project. He is neither a Nevadan nor a law enforcement officer.

The full text of Question 9 can be read on the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office website at:

http://sos.state.nv.us/nvelection/2002_bq/full%20text.pdf

10 Questions Everyone Should Ask About the Nevada 2002 Marijuana Initiative

1. How many marijuana cigarettes (joints) do 3 ounces of marijuana make?

2. How can a 3-ounce limit be enforced? What will prevent people from purchasing 3 ounces of marijuana at one store, 3 ounces at another, and so forth?

3. How many additional law enforcement officers will be needed to enforce the initiative's ban on “driving dangerously” under the influence of marijuana? At what cost?

4. Is there a test to determine if a driver is “under the influence” of marijuana?

5. Nevada ties Alaska with the highest rate of drug addiction in the U.S., according to the 1999 National Household Survey. How will making marijuana more available to more Nevadans reduce drug addiction in Nevada?

6. Are Nevadans ready to approve a state income tax? If not, where will the money come from to help all the additional people who will need treatment if marijuana is legalized? (Of the 4.3 million Americans who need treatment for dependence or abuse of illicit drugs, 2.8 million, or 66 percent, need treatment for dependence or abuse of marijuana, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.)

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

8. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that the First Amendment protects commercial speech, even when that speech promotes consumption of addictive drugs like nicotine and alcohol. What will prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from overturning Question 9's ban on advertising marijuana?

9. In the past decade, states realized that taxes imposed on tobacco sales did not adequately cover the costs they bore for treating tobacco-related diseases. Will a marijuana tax raise enough money to treat marijuana-related diseases?

10. Keeping drugs illegal keeps down the number of people who use drugs and all of the problems that accompany drug use. Some 104 million Americans currently use alcohol and 65 million currently use tobacco, while some 14 million currently use all illegal drugs combined. These 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. A legal marijuana industry will advertise and market pot to increase consumption and invest profits in political campaigns to forestall regulation, as the alcohol and tobacco industries do now. Can Nevada afford the damage three legal addictive drugs will create?