State Bar prez: Marijuana is bad, mmm’kay?

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It turns out, Nevada State Bar President Alan J. Lefebvre’s column attacking Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto wasn’t his only bold political opinion published in Nevada Lawyer, the official publication of the bar.

Although many of Lefebvre’s columns stick to bar business — condemning the unauthorized practice of law, searching for ways for new law school grads to deal with debt, and the like — some venture into the political. In April, he took on medical marijuana. And not in a good way.

“DOPE, DOPE, DOPE! It has been a part of the popular culture since the halcyon days of the ’60s, spawning hazy thoughts and hypocrisy in its wake,” Lefebvre wrote.

“Here was are, as a state, licensing ‘medical marijuana’ under a facade of ‘medicine,’ the goal of the privilege is to sell more dollars worth of dope, than the value of the statewide slot-drop from the old days,” he wrote. “Nevada is the cradle of libertarian thought!”

Apparently, Lefebvre was unpersuaded by the voters’ twice-approved constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana in Nevada and instructed the Legislature to provide patients a way to get the drug. (Curious, since he said in his May column that the voter-approved gay marriage amendment should be given great respect.)

“We revived a dormant law for the elixir of tax revenue and the lure of easy money,” he wrote. “Nevada attracting legit business: Why do it the hard way? Easy divorce was once scorned, too. Nevada converted the rest of the country to its way of thinking once before.”

A dormant law? The fact that the Legislature for more than a decade failed to follow the command of the voters in a legitimately enacted constitutional amendment doesn’t make it any less legitimate than, say, the gay-marriage constitutional amendment. And of that law, Lefebvre would argue just one month after the above was published, “The oath [of office] is not just to defend every other article of the Constitution. The duty applies when it is more than 110 degrees and on overcast days alike. The duties of the office are specified, as one would suspect. The duty to defend what the electorate enacts as their Constitution seems pretty basic, not at all beyond the call.” (emphasis in original)

But Lefebvre’s objections lie with the fact that federal law still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance (a list of drugs that are said to be highly addictive and to have no medical use — neither of which is actually true about marijuana). And he’s not alone in worrying about the consequences for Nevada lawyers who advise clients seeking to participate in the new medical pot industry; in fact, the state Supreme Court recently issued a rule modification on this very point.

That may not pass muster with Lefebvre, however, based on his closing paragraphs:

“The hypocrisy has a life of its own; our system of law now resembles the jurisprudence of a banana republic. Law is truly what is sovereign instead of an individual or individuals. Rulers, like everyone else, must be subject to it, and it limits what they can do and how they can do it. That is what is meant by a government of law and not of men and, for obvious reasons, is the essence of limited government.

“‘The “rule of law!’ Don’t bet on it.

“Sloughing to Gomorrah occurred east to west and doubled back. We are no worse in Nevada than the rest of the country, but, we are proving ourselves no better.”

There’s certainly a debate to be had about the supremacy of federal law (SEE, U.S. Constitution, Article 6) versus the rights of the states to enact laws such as Nevada’s medical marijuana constitutional amendment. The magazine of the State Bar might even be the best place for such a debate to take place (it’s certainly addressed issues, even controversial issues, in the past with professionalism and insight).

But it’s odd to see the president of the State Bar take such a hard-line position against medical marijuana, when it was the State Bar itself that petitioned the Nevada Supreme Court for guidance on the issue. Clearly, the president (even in a column published in the bar’s own magazine) does not speak for the organization, although you’d be excused for thinking that he might.

UPDATE: Apparently, the State Bar thought now was a good time to remind readers that just because a person is president of the Bar and writes a column in the Bar’s monthly magazine, that person may not speak for the bar. In a note about editorial policy published online today, the Bar had this to say:

The State Bar of Nevada sincerely appreciates that its members are generating thoughtful discussion regarding an editorial column that appeared in the May 2014 issue of Nevada Lawyer magazine. One of the missions of the magazine is to provide a forum for thoughtful and respectful commentary on current issues affecting our members.

…

Please note that it is the policy of the state bar that the appearance of an article, editorial, feature, column, advertisement or photograph in Nevada Lawyer magazine does not constitute an endorsement by Nevada Lawyer or the State Bar of Nevada unless specifically identified as the policy of the state bar. The views expressed in all articles are those of the authors.

So, what you’re saying is, not all lawyers think Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is a bad person for dropping the state’s defense of the gay marriage law, or that the state Legislature was wrong to embrace the voter-sanctioned constitutional amendment providing for medical marijuana? OK, then. Good to know.