Pubdate: Thu, 20 Nov 2003
Source: Reno News & Review (NV)
Copyright: 2003, Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/issues/reno/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2524
Author: Dennis Myers
Photo: By David Robert. When pot's legal and regulated for adults, teen use 
goes down, contends the Marijuana Policy Project.
Cited: Marijuana Policy Project ( www.mpp.org )
Cited: Office of National Drug Control Policy ( www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov )
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?162 (Nevadans for Responsible Law 
Enforcement)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/props.htm (Ballot Initiatives)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/soros.htm (Soros, George)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

SMOKIN' AIRWAVES

Marijuana Decriminalization Advocates Stoke Up A TV Ad Campaign In Nevada

Marijuana reformers are not finished with Nevada yet.

The Marijuana Policy Project, the group that contributed funding to 
Nevadans promoting the initiative petition campaign that placed marijuana 
legalization on Nevada's 2002 ballot, is now running television commercials 
in Nevada comparing high teen marijuana use here with lower teen use in the 
Netherlands.

The commercials use a split screen showing Nevada teens on the right side 
of the screen wearing shirts reading "67%" and Dutch teens on the left in 
shirts reading "28%."

Using statistics on teen use from the White House Office of Drug Control 
Policy and the Center for Drug Research, the TV spots argue that 
well-regulated but legal marijuana in Holland produces fewer teen users 
than the current policy of outright prohibition in the United States. The 
spots are running heavily on most northern Nevada television stations.

Nevada twice voted for medical marijuana in first- and second-round voting 
in 1998 and 2000. In response, the Nevada Legislature reduced the penalties 
for marijuana use and created a marijuana health use and research program.

Building on those successes, the Marijuana Policy Project last year funded 
the Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement's push to make possession of 
three ounces or less of marijuana legal. The measure failed in the 2002 
election, though 40 percent of voters supported it. The measure was 
defeated after highly publicized pre-election vehicle fatalities in both 
Clark and Washoe counties in which marijuana use was allegedly a factor.

MPP focused most of its resources in that campaign on Clark County in 
southern Nevada, but its television campaign spots are running only in 
Washoe County, though the reach of those stations is across the northern 
portion of the state.

The ads were created by the MPP's non-profit educational arm, the Marijuana 
Policy Project Foundation. MPP spokesperson Bruce Mirken says the run of 
spots is a "test run" to see if his group can address what its opinion 
polls showed was one of the principal concerns of voters last year.

"We found that voters were voting based on a lot of assumptions that were 
not true, [including] that the current system or something like it is 
needed to keep kids from smoking marijuana," Mirken says.

The advertising campaign suggests that prohibition itself fuels teen use 
and that a Netherlands-style "system of strict regulation and I.D. checks 
tightly controls marijuana and keeps it away from teens."

MPP commissioned opinion surveys of northern Nevada before the schedule of 
TV spots started running and will poll again after the spots stop running 
at the end of this month.

"They're running to provoke a discussion on the issues of marijuana use, so 
people will think about things they've accepted without question up to 
now," Mirken says.

That leads to the question of whether the spots are being used to soften 
Nevada up for a second initiative petition campaign.

"The answer, frankly, is we don't know," Mirken says. "This is a test run."

He says there have been strategic discussions in his organization over what 
went wrong in last year's initiative campaign, but no decision has been 
made about mounting another one. In the meantime, the television 
commercials are regarded as an educational effort to try to dispel myths 
about prohibition. If another campaign is launched, MPP would likely step 
away from the effort.

Nevada State Medical Association Director Lawrence Matheis, who has been 
critical of the previous marijuana initiatives in Nevada, says the 
television commercials with their teen-usage message are a necessity if the 
group intends to launch another initiative petition.

"I think they would have to address it [teen use] because it was one of the 
major issues" in 2002, Matheis says. "[But] I simply don't think it's 
credible on the face of it that Nevada has the bigger usage over Holland. 
.. Being disingenuous is better than having nothing to say."

Matheis says MPP should not again portray a legalization initiative as a 
medical-marijuana measure, as was done in 2002.

MPP is a Washington, D.C.-based organization, but two months ago it opened 
a West Coast office headed by Mirken in San Francisco. The group has also 
set up a Web page at www.stopteenuse.com, where the Nevada commercial can 
be viewed and the documentation for the commercial's claims can be examined.

The MPP was established with funding from billionaire 
investor/philanthropist George Soros, who has given away $4 billion of his 
fortune over the last two decades. Soros has been attacked for supporting 
drug reform by defenders of drug prohibition such as White House drug czar 
John Walters.

While campaigning against the marijuana legalization ballot measure in 
Nevada last year, Walters challenged Soros to come to Nevada in person.

"These people use ignorance and their overwhelming amount of money to 
influence the electorate," Walters said. "You don't hide behind money and 
refuse to talk and hire underlings and not stand up and speak for yourself."

A screenshot from the MPP's education Web site at www.stopteenuse.com. In 
related news, Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick, a principal 
opponent of last year's marijuana ballot measure, recently said on KRNV's 
Nevada Newsmakers program, "Medical marijuana makes me shiver because there 
is no such thing. Marijuana is marijuana is marijuana. [Neither] the 
American Medical Association nor the Food and Drug Administration has 
recognized marijuana to have medical effect."

However, according to the American Medical Association, the group has a 
long history of recognizing the therapeutic value of marijuana while also 
drawing attention to its dangers. A 1981 AMA report shows that the 
organization opposed the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which imposed the first 
federal restrictions on use of the drug.

"At the time," the report says, "the AMA was virtually alone in opposing 
passage of this Act. The AMA believed that objective data were lacking on 
the harmful effects of marijuana, and that passage of the Act would impede 
future investigations into its potential medical uses. Furthermore, the 
AMA's Committee on Legislative Activities recommended that marijuana's 
status as a medicinal agent be maintained."

In fact, marijuana continued to be listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia (the 
annual volume of recognized medicines) until 1942, five years after the 
drug was made illegal, and is still listed in the British Pharmacopoeia.

Since 1937, the AMA has regularly reasserted its support for marijuana as a 
medicine, including one effort in 1956 when a joint AMA/American Bar 
Association study called for less restrictive marijuana policies. In 1981, 
the AMA called on the National Institutes of Health to use its influence 
and resources to support development of an inhaled but smoke-free form of 
marijuana. (A pill form promoted by federal drug warriors is available, but 
it delivers its dosage of medication to a patient's system with a jolt, 
often causing the nausea it is sometimes prescribed to prevent. Inhaled 
marijuana delivers the dosage gradually.) The same AMA report listed 155 
studies of the medical uses of marijuana, ranging from breast cancer to 
spinal-cord injuries.

Gammick also pointed to the Food and Drug Administration's failure to 
sanction medical use, apparently unaware that it is illegal for the FDA to 
act on marijuana. The FDA was stripped of authority over the drug seven 
presidents ago. Acting on a recommendation of President Lyndon Johnson in 
1967, Congress transferred authority over marijuana to the Bureau of 
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which evolved into the Drug Enforcement 
Administration.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman