Say what you want about his cause, but Dave Schwartz knows how to rock the press conference.

As Nevada manager for the Marijuana Policy Project, the nation’s largest such organization dedicated to the reform of cannabis laws, Schwartz has repeatedly used the power of the “presser” to inject new sanity into the ongoing drug war debate — educating most of our smug local media about the sanity of cannabis as medicine while hammering on those who refuse common sense.

On Nov. 5, Schwartz again appealed for common-sense drug policies, this time holding his anti-pot prohibition presser at the future site of Metro’s new headquarters near Alta and Martin Luther King boulevards.

“How is steering adults toward alcohol making us safer?” asked Schwartz, before rhetorically asking local cops to come up with an answer and rolling out a list of arrest statistics that shows a sharp uptick in pot-related arrests, especially in Nevada.

Those figures show marijuana arrests here jumped by more than 76 percent from 2003 to 2007 (from 4,504 to 7,950, respectively). Arrests for pot possession alone jumped by nearly as much in the same time frame, up 57.9 percent compared to just 12.7 percent for the nation as a whole. These figures are in keeping with earlier CityLife reporting here on the issue back in January 2009 as part of a larger state budget story (see Heading No. 6, Legalize pot, then tax it).

While law enforcement officers were using the law to “punish “pot smokers, says Schwartz in a press release, binge drinking rates in the state rose 16 percent in the same time period (but just 1.8 percent nationwide).

These figures are culled from the work of Jon Gettman, a professor at Shenandoah University in Virginia, whose work on this topic easily represents the most comprehensive look at pot arrests in the United States.

Schwartz most recently jolted the local media awake on their marijuana coverage at a Sept. 23 presser in which he vowed to pay $10,000 to anyone who could prove booze is safer than weed.

For more, visit the Marijuana Policy Project of Nevada at www.mppnv.org.