Guy W. Farmer: Drug legalizers plan another visit to Nevada

Even though Nevada voters have rejected them twice in recent years by 60-40 margins, the drug legalizers will return to the Silver State in 2012. I hope we send them home for good next time around.

The Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) announced last December that it is again seeking signatures for a Nevada ballot measure to legalize the "recreational, non-medicinal use" of marijuana. As most Nevada voters realize, however, that would only be the first step down the slippery slope of drug legalization. The MPP will need to collect more than 100,000 signatures by Nov. 9 in order to put their misguided measure on our 2012 ballot.

Meanwhile, a similar measure will be on the California ballot in November. The initiative would permit anyone 21 or older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana (several joints) and to cultivate plants in an area not to exceed 25 square feet. Having been an overseas foot soldier in the war on drugs for many years, I think that's a bad idea, and I readily confess that I'm not objective on the subject of drug legalization.

California has been in the forefront of the marijuana legalization movement since 1996, when voters approved a measure that legalized so-called "medical marijuana." Nevada followed suit four years later but due to stricter rules and regulations, we haven't suffered the serious law enforcement problems that have occurred in California as a result of the proliferation of virtually unregulated pot "clinics."

While I was in Southern California for medical treatments early this year, the liberal Los Angeles City Council finally cracked down on pot dispensaries, closing hundreds of them in an effort to keep them away from schools and children. Of course, customers complained that the city was limiting access to their prescribed medication.

But does marijuana smoke qualify as "medicine"? If a doctor determines that a patient really needs THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, he or she can prescribe Marinol, which delivers a more potent, measured dose of the drug - a more efficient and cost-effective delivery system for THC.

I'm not saying that all medical marijuana patients simply want to smoke pot, but I suspect that's a primary motivation for many of them. I share the concerns of my fellow drug legalization opponents: increased drug consumption, more automobile and industrial accidents, and reduced academic achievement in our schools. And that's not all.

A 2007 study by researchers at Cardiff University in Wales determined that marijuana smokers "had roughly a 40 percent higher chance of developing psychotic disorders later in life." Cigarettes are bad enough, but marijuana is much worse. Nuff said!

• Guy W. Farmer, of Carson City, has been a consistent opponent of drug legalization for many years.