Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Ex-undersheriff backs Question 9

A former Metro Police undersheriff has come out in support of Question 9, the marijuana initiative.

Don Denison, who was undersheriff in the early 1980s, says he supports the legalization of up to 3 ounces of marijuana for adults.

"There are thousands and thousands of users of marijuana in the Las Vegas Valley from all professions -- they are our neighbors and our friends," said Denison, who is retired. "Do we make them criminals or allow them to smoke in the privacy of their homes and not bother people?"

The marijuana initiative has put Nevada in the middle of a national debate over whether the legalization of the drug in this state would spread across the nation.

With early voting under way, and as the Nov. 5 election nears, polls show voters are divided equally on the issue.

Denison, who also served as director of the Department of Motor Vehicles and served two terms as chairman of the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners, is the second high-profile former law enforcement officer to come out in favor of the ballot initiative. In August Andy Anderson, president and co-founder of the Nevada Conference of Police and Sheriffs, the state's largest police organization, announced that his organization supported it.

Amid criticism from law enforcement officers, the group's board announced Anderson had misspoken and withdrew support.

Anderson quit the group, though, and still endorses the initiative.

"I saw Andy Anderson take a position that was not popular with his peer group, and I told him at the time that I was very proud of him," Denison said. "He asked me why don't I stand with him?

"If I think something is important and right it does not matter if others do not like my opinion. Being an American means I can speak my mind."

Denison, who was a Metro narcotics cop in the 1970s, recalled a bust he made involving a moving van filled with 800 pounds of marijuana. He soon learned that what he thought was a lot of grass accounted for what just one group of drug dealers would sell in Las Vegas over just the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

"That was 30 years ago when the Las Vegas population was nowhere near what it is now," Denison said.

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