Patrick Killen, Director of Communications over at Yes on 7 has been kind enough to provide an answer to objections raised in an earlier post regarding the risks involved in marijuana legalisation. Rather than leave it as a mere comment, I've decided to post Mr. Killen's response - which is an editorial written by Rev. Paul Hansen - in full as a blog entry:

Las Vegas Review Journal Letters to the Editor October 14, 2006

To the editor:

I'm writing in response to Linda Caterine's Oct. 9 letter in which she calls Sister Toni Woodson and any other religious leaders who support the regulation and control of marijuana in Nevada "naive."

Until I studied the issue and the proposed statute revisions, I was indeed naive -- about the level of failure of our current approach to marijuana use. Not only can anyone in our state -- especially our teenagers -- readily find marijuana today, but our current policies contribute to violent gangs heading up the criminal market.

Ms. Caterine says the proposed changes are "worthless," but admits "we have a huge drug addiction problem in this country and I don't have an answer." Haven't we all heard the tongue-in-cheek definition of insanity: expecting different results by just continuing the same old practices? How many more hundreds of billions of dollars (as a nation) are we prepared to throw away on failed policies when we currently don't even have enough money to fund drug education and treatment?

A recent Harvard study estimated that Nevada spends $42 million a year enforcing our failed marijuana policy, and a recent UNLV study estimated that $28 million a year in tax revenue would be generated from regulated marijuana. Question 7 mandates that half of those taxes from regulated marijuana sales go toward filling the drug treatment funding gap.

Right now that money goes instead to violent gangs and drug dealers. Nevadans could be extending a helping hand to those people in need of treatment, instead of our current clenched fist.

Ms. Caterine writes, "It defies logic to believe that legalizing a drug will cut down on drug addiction." Well, it may sound counterintuitive, but in Holland, marijuana use is regulated and they have roughly half the marijuana use rate as the United States. As Eddy Engelsman, the former Dutch drug czar, put it, "We succeeded in making pot boring."

What is being proposed in Nevada is stricter than the Dutch system. For example, public use of marijuana and advertising of marijuana sales would remain illegal under Question 7. The scientific studies on this by the Institute of Medicine and others confirm that criminal laws have little or no effect on marijuana usage rates. The faith community, parents, peers, and educators are the appropriate institutions in society equipped to discourage this kind of personal behavior.

Ms. Caterine claims that marijuana is a "gateway drug." Call me naive if you wish, but according to a recent study commissioned by the British Parliament, "the gateway theory has little evidence to support it despite copious research." And, according to the Institute of Medicine (in a report commissioned by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy), "There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone [to other drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect." If you ask hard drug users if they've used marijuana, it's not surprising that they have. But the vast majority of marijuana users do not move on to hard drugs.

I am proud to join with 32 other religious leaders in Nevada from 15 different religious denominations in challenging the status quo. If a policy is failing to meet its objectives, is wasting precious resources, and harms our community, I believe we have a moral obligation to support sensible alternatives. Question 7 -- the initiative to regulate marijuana -- is a sensible alternative to our failed marijuana laws.

The Rev. Paul Hansen
LAS VEGAS

Rev. Hansen makes strong arguments in favor of legalisation, but I'll take issue with two things:

1. The assertion that marijuana is not a "gateway" drug. Point blank, I don't care how many studies anyone comes up with asserting that marijuana is not a gateway drug (ie, a drug which can lead to use of much more dangerous substances): I was 13 in California once upon a time, and marijuana was precisely that. The only reason we didn't immediately go from marijuana to heroin was because herion was much harder to obtain. Plenty of friends went from marijuana to meth, cocaine, etc, etc, etc. Some of them are now buried. There is a romance for certain types of young people as regards drugs - it is entirely so glorified in the popular music and cultural icons of the young that drug use seems a mere right of passage.

2. I wouldn't trust a Dutch study on drug use any further than I could throw the nation of Holland - Holland's perennially leftwing, and inherently mendacious, governments have a vested interest in their drug policies being a success and they are thus not the best source to go to on the subject of Holland's drug use.

That said, I have decided to vote in favor of the measure - not because I think it is some cure-all for drug problems, and I'd almost prefer we didn't tax it because that is taking money off the misery of others, but because our current policies regarding drugs don't work, and I'm willing to give marijuana legalisation its chance. If we can see a drop in marijuana usage, then the case will be made for legalising other drugs. If marijuana usage remains the same or increases - especially among minors - then we'll know that legalisation is a failure.

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