Fear and Toking in Las Vegas

nevada's new ballot initiative to drastically mellow out population

l u k e o ' h a r a

This November, Nevada will vote on a bill that provides for the legalization of up to three ounces of recreational marijuana. Additionally, the bill would provide for the regulation of growth, processing, and sales industries.

Question 9 on the ballot has provoked praise and denouncements, while some are quite simply still holding their breath. But the only reason why this little tidbit made it out of the conspiracy column of High Times is because it has a chance of passing. Don’t get too excited: the bill would have to pass again in 2004 before it could become law. But, for the moment—riding the wake of the 65 percent supported medical marijuana initiative—a “Yes” vote on Question 9 is polling in the high 40 percent range.

Stop a second to contemplate…three ounces?! A Nevada police captain called a press conference recently to prove that he could role 255 joints with the allotted three ounces. Now, I know what you’re all thinking. We should head over to the captain’s because, damn, Motherfucker rolls joints in the hundreds. That’s professionalism. After his response, reporters allegedly asked him exactly what side he was trying to support with that explanation.

Nevada, the same state immortalized in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for its 60s era billboards reading “Don’t Gamble with Marijuana: 20 years to Life” is considering adding marijuana to its already impressive national “sin” industries. Nevada has become infamous for its maverick allowance of gambling, quickie-marriages and divorces, prostitution, and alcohol (during prohibition).

Nevadans have known for a while now that the lone reason for their national importance is that strange scion of the desert, Las Vegas. Centuries from now, the city will be dug up by anthropologists and understood for what it is: a cult center to our own American neon-inflected version of Bacchus.

The calls for legalization have gained force in an America slightly less cannabis-phobic than its predecessors. A Zogby poll recently asked people their opinion of which was the most dangerous drug out of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. The poll resulted in 47 percent alcohol, 28 percent tobacco, and 20 percent marijuana (coincidentally that’s also a popular Court breathalyzer result). Another Zogby poll showed 61 percent of Americans opposed to arresting non-violent smokers, with only 18 percent strongly in favor.

Nine states now have medical marijuana programs, despite federal opposition and occasional crackdowns. San Francisco, which was the vanguard of medical marijuana fight, even established a card-access system with 2,600 users and has a ballot initiative that could legalize city growing programs.

The National Organization for the Legalization of Marijuana (NORML) estimates that 45,000 people are behind bars for marijuana related convictions. Most smokers don’t go to jail for it, though. Possession of less than 1.5 ounces is a misdemeanor. Nonetheless, poor and minority users go to jail almost twice as often as white users. UK Police estimated that decriminalization saved time equivalent to the work year of 500 extra police. All of this for a drug whose proven side-effects are comparable, if not less than, alcohol or tobacco.

Opposing drug laws is somewhat like shooting intellectual fish in a barrel. The idea that drugs “promote” crime is about as dated as The Scarlet Letter. Moral opposition to the “vices” of the poor and the libertine is the cultural update of the monotheism’s repression of pagan and shamanistic rituals involving hallucinogens. Outlawing a product creates the environment in which it is possible to arrest the user. The drug war is as flimsy now as it was during prohibition. Prevalent, insulting propaganda preaches that we ought to lead clean lives of hard-working dignity, full of patriotism, without questioning this standard. Drugs are not political, but they become politicized as an excuse for the United States to pursue a low intensity class-warfare at home and abroad.

Maybe Nevada will answer the question “No,” maybe the delineation is inherent to the system, and maybe the state requires an “other” to arrest. But regardless, marijuana is part of a class we all take in college: civil disobedience. Whether you drink with a fake ID or hotbox your car, you are defying the arbitrariness of ideology. The keystone to a democratic society is civil disobedience. So, even if marijuana stays illegal, maybe that isn’t so bad if even a few people learn the tools of resistance, independence, and critical thought.