The debate over a pipeline to bring groundwater 300 miles to Las Vegas from the area around the Great Basin National Park in White Pine County involves much talk about a crisis. There's the drought, of course, and then there's the idea that the Las Vegas economy, and thereby the economy of the state as a whole, will collapse if more water cannot be brought in to support continued growth.
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I wonder why so few of our leaders are willing to question the notion that a healthy economy depends on a growing population. For, while a few who are praying for apocalypse in their lifetime may be oblivious, everyone else knows that all of the evils that threaten the survival of our species, including perhaps this drought itself, have their source in population growth and in the over-consumption of the resources of the planet.
As a great philosopher put it, "We have found the enemy and they are us."
The words "economy" and "ecology" have identical meanings, if you go to the Greek. They're all about how you keep house. Economy used to mean the very opposite of extravagance. In nature, nothing is wasted, for all excess leads to the elimination of its cause.
If you think that a healthy Nevada requires a bigger Las Vegas, you do not have a healthy mind -- or maybe you're being a hypocrite. I won't ask them where the moguls of the "development industry" expect to go when they die, but I would like them to tell us where they have built their retirement homes.
Nevada's "growth economy" is like tumbleweed hooked on Roundup. The sign telling us where we're heading for was posted in 1974, when the Nevada Water Plan identified the crisis ahead. But today, stuck in gridlock, we say, "an enemy has done this."
We've found the enemy.
Louis Benezet
Pioche
Yes on 5
To the editor:
The supporters of Question 4 would have you believe that voting "yes" on 4 and "no" on Question 5 will protect our children. If you look closer, however, you will see that Question 5 is the stronger anti-smoking initiative that would protect everyone from those weapons of mass destruction and will let all of us breath just a little easier
JACK HEGEDUIS
LAS VEGAS
Public corruption
To the editor:
Here we go again. Another public official accused of wrongdoing. This time it is Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald.
She is accused of not living in the district she represents. I applaud the unions that had her followed and taped showing her clearly living outside her district. If they hadn't had solid proof prior to making the accusation, it would have given Ms. Boggs McDonald (a politically savvy Republican) time to create the truth. The unions did the right thing.
I recently read in the Review-Journal that she is getting divorced and needed time away from her soon-to-be ex-husband, which I find only adds to the union's case against her because both homes she is renting need to be in her district. Her excuses are falling on deaf ears. Let's hope a judge feels the same.
Now her constituents are being forced to endure another commission scandal. Yes, I said scandal. I for one am tired of our elected officials lying to us. Ms. Boggs McDonald's name needs to be taken off of the ballot and charges filed against her (if possible) to show taxpayers that our commissioners and council members need to be on the up and up when it comes to representing us.
zachary calk
las vegas
Going to pot
To the editor:
I'm writing in response to Linda Caterine's Oct. 9 letter in which she calls Sister Toni Woodson and any other religious leaders who support the regulation and control of marijuana in Nevada "naive."
Until I studied the issue and the proposed statute revisions, I was indeed naive -- about the level of failure of our current approach to marijuana use. Not only can anyone in our state -- especially our teenagers -- readily find marijuana today, but our current policies contribute to violent gangs heading up the criminal market.
Ms. Caterine says the proposed changes are "worthless," but admits "we have a huge drug addiction problem in this country and I don't have an answer." Haven't we all heard the tongue-in-cheek definition of insanity: expecting different results by just continuing the same old practices? How many more hundreds of billions of dollars (as a nation) are we prepared to throw away on failed policies when we currently don't even have enough money to fund drug education and treatment?
A recent Harvard study estimated that Nevada spends $42 million a year enforcing our failed marijuana policy, and a recent UNLV study estimated that $28 million a year in tax revenue would be generated from regulated marijuana. Question 7 mandates that half of those taxes from regulated marijuana sales go toward filling the drug treatment funding gap.
Right now that money goes instead to violent gangs and drug dealers. Nevadans could be extending a helping hand to those people in need of treatment, instead of our current clenched fist.
Ms. Caterine writes, "It defies logic to believe that legalizing a drug will cut down on drug addiction." Well, it may sound counterintuitive, but in Holland, marijuana use is regulated and they have roughly half the marijuana use rate as the United States. As Eddy Engelsman, the former Dutch drug czar, put it, "We succeeded in making pot boring."
What is being proposed in Nevada is stricter than the Dutch system. For example, public use of marijuana and advertising of marijuana sales would remain illegal under Question 7. The scientific studies on this by the Institute of Medicine and others confirm that criminal laws have little or no effect on marijuana usage rates. The faith community, parents, peers, and educators are the appropriate institutions in society equipped to discourage this kind of personal behavior.
Ms. Caterine claims that marijuana is a "gateway drug." Call me naive if you wish, but according to a recent study commissioned by the British Parliament, "the gateway theory has little evidence to support it despite copious research." And, according to the Institute of Medicine (in a report commissioned by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy), "There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone [to other drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect." If you ask hard drug users if they've used marijuana, it's not surprising that they have. But the vast majority of marijuana users do not move on to hard drugs.
I am proud to join with 32 other religious leaders in Nevada from 15 different religious denominations in challenging the status quo. If a policy is failing to meet its objectives, is wasting precious resources, and harms our community, I believe we have a moral obligation to support sensible alternatives. Question 7 -- the initiative to regulate marijuana -- is a sensible alternative to our failed marijuana laws.
The Rev. Paul Hansen
LAS VEGAS
Flag irony
To the editor:
Just a side note on Christopher Hansen's unscheduled appearance at the gubernatorial debate on Monday night:
Mr. Hansen is a candidate for the Independent American Party, a staunchly conservative and patriotic group, and was wearing a shirt made to resemble the American flag.
In the 1960s, the late Abbie Hoffman, a radical leftist and co-founder of the "Yippies" wore the exact same design shirt in public, and was arrested for "defacing the flag."
