Question 2 before Nevada voters asks whether marijuana should be fully legal and widely available for recreational commercial sale. Our state has already decriminalized the drug for small quantity possession and marijuana is now legally available for medical use.

Question 2 is a 13-page initiative written by the commercial marijuana industry. It's an "insiders business plan" to benefit Big Marijuana "potpreneurs." Passage would create a state government-run marijuana program, transforming the Department of Taxation into a large, expensive bureaucracy. It will give monopoly powers to existing medical marijuana retailers and liquor wholesalers, while criminalizing Nevada citizens growing marijuana within 25 miles of proponents' pot shops.

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Nevadans will vote in coming days on legalizing the recreational use of marijuana here, as four other states have already done.

Both advocates and opponents have made strident cases to support their views. However, the two camps cite data that appears to conflict. We have mixed views on this initiative, but we are interested in informational clarity.

So, we were delighted recently to read an analysis of the objective trends by Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron and his co-authors. They use recent data from Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska to dispel many myths propagated by both sides.

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Question 2 before Nevada voters asks whether marijuana should be fully legal and widely available for recreational commercial sale. Our state has already decriminalized the drug for small quantity possession and marijuana is now legally available for medical use.

Question 2 is a 13-page initiative written by the commercial marijuana industry. It's an "insider's business plan" to benefit big marijuana "potpreneurs". Passage would create a state government-run marijuana program, transforming the Department of Taxation into a large, expensive bureaucracy.

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NCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. - An 8-member panel of students and experts spent two hours Tuesday night exploring the individual views of those in favor of and against Nevada's Measure 2 - which proposes the legalization of marijuana for recreational use for those 21 and older.

Dr. Andrew Whyman hosted the forum at Sierra Nevada College, opening up the discussion with topics surrounding marijuana about stigma, social justice, criminal justice, how it impacts youth, regulation, legislation and more.

As for panel members, despite their titles, some said they came on their own accord, and thus their views do not represent the views of their organizations.

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This is the fourth in a series on Drugs and Drug Prohibition. Today's column focuses on cannabis or marijuana.

Marijuana, a remarkably resilient plant, has accompanied mankind's journey in populating the planet from the Neolithic period to the present. Aside from the frozen tundra of the far North, the plant has flourished since the dawn of agriculture over 10,000 years ago.

The stems and stalks provided cloth and cordage; the seeds, protein and fatty acid; the roots, leaves, and flowers used in rituals, as medicinals, and as a euphoriant or recreant.

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Hopefully the people of our state will have enough sense to vote against recreational marijuana. We already have terrible drug problems in this country and this would just be pouring gasoline on the fire. Marijuana may not be addictive per se but if someone is curious enough to try it the first time, many will be curious enough to try something harder later. We are just starting to hear some of the regrets coming out of Colorado and Washington (rime, DUI, health, etc.).

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Opponents of legalizing recreational marijuana in Nevada joined the fight with barely two months left in the election cycle, but they've wasted little time in rolling out a well-funded ad campaign.

Question 2 foes launched their first series of digital and television ads focusing on children's exposure to marijuana and public safety issues.

Their funding came mostly from Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson, whose donations made up $2 million of the $2.1 million raised by Protecting Nevada's Children PAC, according to campaign finance reports released Tuesday. The PAC was formed in early September to oppose Question 2, which would allow adults 21 or older to legally purchase and use marijuana in Nevada.

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Two Las Vegas medical marijuana dispensaries have been ranked among the top 25 dispensaries in the United States by a national publication.

Essence Vegas and The Grove were ranked 22nd and 25th, respectively, by Business Insider in a Sept. 20 list of the top marijuana dispensaries selling either recreational or medicinal marijuana. The rankings evaluated more than 500 marijuana facilities across 25 states and the District of Columbia.

The list cited Essence's on-site nurse and quality service as reasons for giving the Las Vegas Boulevard dispensary its top ranking among Silver State dispensaries, while The Grove on Swenson Street earned high marks for offering a signature dispensary joint rolled in gold-plated paper.

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There are several ways to measure the failure of the War on Drugs, starting with its role in sending a grossly disproportionate number of African-Americans to prison.

Not far down the list is how the initiative affected marijuana supply and demand. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in expenditures and decades of effort on drug eradication, millions of Americans continue to use the drug.

Look it up. The 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the most recent year available, shows that 22.2 million Americans had used the drug within the past month when they were surveyed. Compared to 2002, marijuana use was up among all age groups survey save for one: 12- to 17-year-olds. Among the U.S. population of 18- to 25-year-olds, 22 percent were users.

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Just in the last year alone, Colorado has brought in $1 billion from the distribution of recreational marijuana. It is generally boosting the economy's revenue. Why wouldn't all states legalize recreational use of weed when it benefited Colorado so much?

Christian Cox-Elander, Reno

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Regarding the incessant hysteria about legalizing pot-having smoked it for 49 years now, I think it is about time to legalize. So, if you don't like it, then don't smoke it.

And I hope all you stoners will get off the couch and go vote! Because you did not vote in '06, legalization lost by about 6 percent.

Don't you think it's time to get into the real world and quit pretending it's still 1950? And no, it should not be legal for minors. Their brains are not yet fully developed, in my humble opinion.

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On Aug. 22, the Tahoe Daily Tribune ran a story about Incline Village prohibitionist Jason Guinasso. (The piece previously appeared in the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza.) The article carried this quote from Guinasso: "At the end of the day, when we just committed to the biggest tax increase toward education, now we're legalizing marijuana to contribute to a lack of performance and addiction? ... It impacts our ability to educate."

The article also reported, "He [Guinasso] cites a study from Duke University that tells how a person's IQ drops 8 percentage points by using marijuana."

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Voters in the commonwealth of Massachusetts will face Question 4 on their November ballot, a measure that mirrors Nevada's Question 2. Both would usher in the commercialization of legalized marijuana. Both initiatives were drafted and are promoted by the Marijuana Policy Project, based in Washington, D.C.. Each is locally sponsored by a "Committee to Regulate and Tax Marijuana Like Alcohol."

Surprisingly, the pushback against legalization for the commercial marijuana industry has been much more emphatic in liberal Massachusetts than in Nevada. In May, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker made common cause with three leading Democrats - Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Attorney General Maura Healey. Together, they formed an opposition organization, The Committee for a Safe and Healthy Massachusetts.

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CARSON CITY - State Attorney General Adam Laxalt and other law enforcement leaders declared their opposition Thursday to a Nevada ballot measure that would legalize recreational marijuana.

At a news conference in front of the Legislative Building, Laxalt said Question 2, if approved by voters in November, would harm Nevada children and lead to accidental poisonings, addiction and increased road fatalities.

Question 2 would allow people age 21 and older to possess 1 ounce of marijuana for personal use. It would restrict who can grow, test, process and distribute recreational pot to those already licensed to do the same with medical marijuana or who run liquor distributorships.

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The Las Vegas Review-Journal recently editorialized, "And no matter how much pot enthusiasts argue otherwise, marijuana is both addictive-one in 10 people who try pot will become hooked on it-and a gateway to more deadly drugs that kill more than 45,000 Americans a year." We dealt with the gateway theory in our July 21 edition, noting that marijuana functions as a barrier to more deadly drugs. We turn now to addiction.

The RJ does not cite any evidence for addiction-nor does it emphasize that only one in 10 people-fewer, actually-are addicted to marijuana, nor does it mention that it is a mild addiction, akin to coffee. Nor does it explain why a major public policy choice should be keyed to a tiny slice of the population. Perhaps "And no matter how much pot enthusiasts argue otherwise" means that the newspaper believes that whoever repeats its viewpoint loudest and longest wins and avoids the necessity of supplying evidence. Here, however, we believe in science.

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In an interview with Guy Farmer in the Nevada Appeal, prohibitionist Genoa lawyer Jim Hartman said of Colorado marijuana supporters, "They claimed the marijuana black market would disappear with legalization, but it didn't."

Here's the part Hartman didn't tell Farmer-legalization never came to Colorado. It came to certain places, but remains illegal in more than 240 towns and cities and broad swaths of the state. So there is still a black market. Colorado Amendment 64, enacted by voters in 2012, left it up to communities to decide whether to make marijuana legal.

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The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has just issued a helpful reminder to all Americans. In denying a petition to loosen restrictions on marijuana, the agency repeated that the drug has "no currently accepted medical use" in the United States.

This may come as a surprise, given that 25 states - including Nevada - - already allow doctors to prescribe marijuana to treat maladies from PTSD to Alzheimer's disease. Yet the truth is, research has yet to find firm evidence that marijuana can alleviate physical suffering.

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After we reported that federal and Colorado state figures conflict with a claim that Colorado teen use of marijuana has "gone up since legalization" ("Pot tale of the week," RN&R, July 28), prohibitionist Genoa lawyer Jim Hartman sent us a link to a report issued by the "Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area" (RMHIDTA).

We were aware of the report. It does indeed indicate that teen marijuana use in Colorado is higher than the national average. What it neglects to include in that statistic is the fact that its numbers nevertheless still show a level of teen use in the state that is lower than it was before legalization. In other words, teen use has gone down since marijuana became legal.

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As Nevada voters prepare to vote this fall on whether to decriminalize recreational marijuana use, they're going to hear a sinister-sounding warning that the push for legalization is being fueled by out-of-state money.

Former Assemblyman Pat Hickey, a prominent opponent of legalization, already sounded the alarm in a June 21 post on his blog, Soup to Nuts. He wrote that "the term oligarchy ('a business interest controlled by a small group of people') applies to the mostly out-of-state special interests who are responsible and largely paid for the pot legalization question on this November's ballot."

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Nevadans will pass judgment in November on state Question 2, which would essentially legalize pot for recreational use among adults. As the election nears, it's worth noting that many doctors in states that allow the drug's use for medical purposes remain wary of recommending it to their patients.

"The hesitance reflects persistent concerns about the possible legal repercussions for their medical licenses if they prescribe a drug the federal government classifies as dangerous," the Boston Globe reported last month. "It also underscores the lingering doubts about marijuana's health risks and benefits."

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