Title:
Encourage your legislators to support the intiative to tax and regulate marijuana
Message:
The Nevada Legislature opened its 2005 session on February 7, and now the legislators have 40 days to either pass the MPP-supported initiative to tax and regulate marijuana into law, or allow the initiative onto the 2006 ballot. Predictably, the road will be rocky. At the opening of the session, Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins (D-Henderson) declared that, "We are not going to legalize marijuana." He said, "After putting criminals in jail for more than 20 years, I can tell you legalizing pot is the wrong thing to do—now or ever."
That the initiative would make it to the legislature had been in doubt as late as the end of January. However, in a major victory, federal District Court Judge James Mahan issued an injunction that forced Secretary of State Dean Heller to send the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana's (CRCM's) initiative petition to the legislature when it convened.
Please, Take Action and encourage your legislators to pass the measure into law.
The lawsuit stemmed from a ruling by Attorney General Brian Sandoval. Last September, CRCM began collecting signatures for its 2006 initiative and filed more than 69,000 valid signatures on November 9. As late as November 19, Heller said that an initiative would need only 51,337 valid signatures—a number based on the voter turnout for the 2002 general election—to qualify for the ballot. Yet on December 20, Sandoval issued an opinion indicating that CRCM was required to meet a massively higher signature target based on the November 2004 general election turnout—meaning that the initiative failed to qualify.
In his ruling, Judge Mahan said that Heller's processes and procedures are flawed, and that the 2002 general election figures should have applied, not those of the 2004 election. He further noted that Heller and Sandoval's decisions violated CRCM's due process and First Amendment rights.
Please visit the CRCM Web site to read MPP's filings in this case, learn more about the initiative, and find out how you can help Nevada achieve sensible marijuana policy.
To stay updated on the status of the initiative and marijuana policy reform in Nevada, be sure to subscribe to MPP's free legislative alert service, if you haven't done so already.
