News

Athlete Aids Reid moves

Olympic pentathlete Margaux Isaksen has lent her new celebrity to protection of public lands, publishing an essay in her Colorado Springs hometown newspaper and joining Nevada’s U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona at a news conference.

“The National Forest was basically our backyard, and for a time my mom ran a bed and breakfast in the area,” Isaksen wrote in the essay. “As kids, we ran all the trails and swam in all of the protected streams and rivers. Growing up next to the Ozark National Forest shaped me as an athlete and pushed me to become an Olympian.”

“One of the biggest risks we’ve seen is the efforts … to use different types of legislation to either strip away some of these protections or to stop any future protections,” Gallego said.

This was in reference to bills sponsored by U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, opening up public lands for development or recreation. Reid and Bishop called for more protection against such initiatives.

Pot tAle of the week

The Las Vegas Review-Journal last week reported, “Pat Hickey, Nevada coordinator for Smart Approaches to Marijuana … said legalizing the drug would break legal tradition; America, he said, has never legalized marijuana.”

In fact, it is a tradition of English law—on which most U.S. law outside Louisiana is based—that “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed.”

The Latin phrase nulla poena sine lege (no penalty without a law) reflects this view. Basically, it means you don’t need a law to make something legal. You need a law to make it illegal. There is no Nevada law making prostitution legal, but it is legal in the small counties on a local option basis because it is not against state law there. Only in the two urban counties is it illegal under state law.

While there may be a distinction between unlawful and illegal, it has little relevance here. The fact is that for most of U.S. history marijuana was legal by virtue of not being unlawful, although city councils, state legislatures and Congress had decades of opportunity to outlaw the plant and did not do so. Some of the founders, indeed, planted and harvested hemp themselves. (There are reports we were unable to confirm that, earlier, in the British Jamestown Colony of Virginia in 1619, farmers were required by law to plant Indian hempseed.)

Not until the 1860s did Virginia City, Nevada, and San Francisco, California, enact anti-drug measures, directed against opium, inaugurating the practice of prohibition that has been such a smashing success. And marijuana remained legal until long after that. Congress, in fact, took actions to regulate it while keeping it legal, which is what the Nevada initiative petition seeks to do. In 1906 the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act required labeling of over-thecounter medications containing cannabis.

Even the federal Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, enacted amid lurid and racist anti-marijuana newspaper campaigns, did not actually outlaw the plant. It taxed it oppressively and limited use to those who paid excise takes for certain uses. It specifically recognized and protected the medical value of the plant. However, some states—Nevada in 1923—had already outlawed marijuana by then. —Dennis Myers

Legal marijuana publicist Will Adler makes his pitch to television crews in Reno.

PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS

Sales pitch

New industry shows its business side

supporters of ballot Question two have begun pushing messages designed to calm fears that marijuana prohibitionists are trying to spread.

During the first week of September, the Nevada Dispensary Association held events on child safety to support legislation regulating the design of medical marijuana edibles so they do not attract children.

In the second week of September, the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol held news conferences to spotlight its claim that regulated, legal marijuana would produce both jobs and taxes in Nevada.

At the Reno news conference, Washoe County Commissioner Kitty Jung was on hand to endorse the measure and also introduced another factor in the campaign. She said approving the measure is a way of empowering women who tend to dominate existing medical marijuana companies.

Some critics say women tend to be out in front at the companies but that the ownership is principally male.

Jung responded, “I know two women majority owners that were at the news conference.”

Sarah Rosenfeld, listed as a corporate officer in Medical Marijuana Group Inc., said, “From my anecdotal experience, I would say there are more women in this industry.” (In June the Atlantic Monthly posted an article, “Why the Marijuana Business Is Appealing to Female Entrepreneurs.”)

BlAck mARket Asked why the language of the initiative petition favors some companies over others, Nevada Medical Marijuana Association spokesperson Will Adler said it was intended that the players

who took early risks investing in medical marijuana should have a leg up on newcomers seeking to enter the field. “I would prefer they are the first actors in the regulated marijuana market, anyway,” he said. He said enactment of the initiative petition would “take a lot of jobs out of the black market and move them into the regulated legal market.” Whether it would work out that way is difficult to predict. A visual aid he employed at the news conference projected a $464,005,000 bonanza in tax revenues for the state over seven years if voters approve the measure. In Colorado, a combination of marijuana remaining illegal in some parts of the state and an array of taxes that push up the price of marijuana have kept a black market in business. The Colorado marijuana market includes a 10 percent state marijuana tax, 2.9 percent state sales tax, 15 percent excise, and local sales taxes in some places. It is earmarked mostly for health-related spending, plus some education and law enforcement costs. Taxation often drives a black market. Nevada loses some money to black market tobacco products, but the Western champ in this field is generally considered to be Arizona, where the tax level is higher than both neighboring states and tribal reservations. Opponents of Question Two have been laying low through most of the campaign so far, and are believed to be marshalling their funds for heavy advertising buys at the end of the campaign. Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson is among leading Nevada opponents Why do some of regulated marijuana, and he companies provided most of the funding for get favored an anti-marijuana campaign in treatment? Florida two years ago. That campaign dealt with medical uses for the plant, and opinion surveys showed up to 90 percent of Floridians supported the state measure, but Adelson’s $5 million overcame that. The vote actually supported passage of medical marijuana with a 57 percent majority,

but fell short of a required 60 percent supermajority.

There has been no firm sign yet of whether Adelson will enter the Nevada campaign, but his Las Vegas Review Journal reversed its position on legal marijuana after he purchased that newspaper.

There are several organizations set up to oppose Question Two in Nevada, but they are mostly little-funded. The most credible, headed by former Nevada Assembly Republican floor leader Pat Hickey, is called Nevadans for Responsible Drug Policy, but its activities have been mostly educational and low-key so far.

Clark County Sens. Richard Segerblom and Patricia Farley have said they will sponsor legislation to deal with marijuana edibles if the ballot measure is approved. In Colorado, the physical appearance of some commercial edibles was similar to candy or dessert items and lured children, akin to the way some cold tablets resemble red M&Ms. The Colorado attorney general has twice issued regulations to reduce the risk to children. Though no Nevada language is available yet, the Farley/Segerblom measures are expected to crack down on the use of cartoon characters, animal and fruit shapes.

Farley is a Republican, Segerblom a Democrat. Ω

Family business

A list of goodies legal marijuana promoters say the state should expect.

PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS

Casale’s Halfway Club marked its 80th anniversary last week on Sept. 8. Opened by Elvira and John Casale as a bar, store and fruit stand on the long, empty stretch between Reno and Sparks, the Casales eventually added cook-it-yourself ravioli to their stock, which won a following—in particular, among local Italian families that used their own recipes for the sauce. Eventually that product line evolved into the family serving their own dinners in an enlarged building. The matriarch these days is Inez Casale Stempeck, and a dozen or so other family members are still involved in the business.