Patients Must Be Patient a Little Longer

Medical dispensaries for marijuana will soon appear in Nevada, but they are not likely to be accompanied by the free-swinging procedures that once characterized the California industry.

"It's marijuana," said Clark County Sen. Richard "Tick" Segerblom. "From my perspective, whatever you do, no one should be going to jail for marijuana. It's just marijuana."

Segerblom is one of a number of advocates of medical use of marijuana who have worked for years to move the state to a different stance on the medicine. In 2000, voters approved the use of medicinal marijuana. However, Nevada cardholders were required to grow their medicine on their own. Now, 14 years later, the push for dispensaries in Nevada has been successful. Up to 55 dispensaries will be opening across the state. With the exception of some of the smaller counties, all the major cities and counties have approved dispensaries in their area.

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CARSON CITY - Backers of an initiative petition to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Nevada said Friday they have collected far more than the required number of signatures to bring the measure to the ballot in 2016.

Joe Brezny with the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol said the group plans to turn in about 170,000 signatures to county clerks Wednesday. The group needs 101,667 signatures from registered Nevada voters to qualify the measure.

Brezny said he expects to have nearly two times the number of signatures needed in each of the state's four congressional districts.

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Recreational Marijuana Coming to Nevada

Republicans weren't the only ones living the high life on Election Day. Proponents of legalized, recreational marijuana also were big winners, with decriminalization measures passing in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C. Nevada could be the next state to join them. Oregon's ballot measure passed Tuesday night with 54 percent of the vote, creating the country's third legal market for recreational marijuana (Colorado and Washington state voters passed similar measures in 2012). Oregon residents 21 and older can now possess and grow marijuana. Hours later, Alaska became the fourth state, with 52 percent of voters approving a measure to tax and regulate the production, sale and use of marijuana, making its use legal for people 21 and older. Florida voters narrowly rejected recreational marijuana despite providing majority support - that state's measure required 60 percent of the vote to pass but received 58 percent.

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It's not surprising that both the Florida Sheriff's Association and the Florida Medical Association oppose legalizing medicinal marijuana. Expanding public access to legal marijuana is bad for business. Locking people up for minor drug offenses and maintaining a monopoly on the bountiful pain-relief industry are two aspects of the status quo that law enforcement and physician groups have an interest in maintaining.

Sure, they dress up their concerns in different terms. But I don't buy it.

"The dangers of marijuana have been well-documented in recent years with increased crime and traffic accidents in states that have passed legislation legalizing marijuana," the Florida Sheriff's Association announced. "For example, of the 20 states with the highest driver acknowledgement of drugged driving, 15 were states that have passed legislation legalizing marijuana."

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Nevada's implementation of the law requiring medical marijuana establishment (MME) licensing is so far plagued by hidden financing, proxy companies, questionable campaign contributions and forbidden crossovers between gambling licensees and dispensary ownership in Clark County. The problem is that the state has capped the number of dispensaries by county, has required enormous capital to apply, and the licenses are awarded by politicians. What could possibly go wrong?

When the state artificially creates a market, rather than markets creating themselves, there will be corruption. When the number of legalized outlets is capped by government, and only government can approve new applications, the opportunity for start up competition is capped as well. Without competition, there will be a few entrenched special interests who will dominate the industry. Nevada promised transparency in the selection process, but so far the process has been opaque.

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When Voters Lay Down the Law, Some Officials Balk

It was midday at Casale's Halfway Club on East Fourth Street. Though lunch is not always a big thing here, today there was a group of 10 people around a single table. Tom Case had bid in a silent auction on lunch for 10 with the mayors of Reno and Sparks at Casale's. He won, and this was the gathering.

It was a fairly affluent group gathered around the table, so it was perhaps surprising that one of the first questions was about medical marijuana, directed at Reno Mayor Bob Cashell, who had recently endorsed its health care use. Seated under a poster for Birra Peroni lager, Cashell explained again the evolution of his thinking on the matter, which involves his hearing neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta explain the issue on CNN.

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Coalition's Website Pushes for Legalized Recreational Use in Nevada

A pro-marijuana group seeking to legalize the recreational use of the drug in Nevada is getting organized, creating a website where information about the effort, including how to volunteer, can be found.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in April filed its petition to send a recreational marijuana proposal to the 2015 Legislature. Its website is http://www.regulatemarijuanainnevada. org/.

The group also has a Facebook page. The initiative petition was filed by Joe Brezny, executive director of the Nevada Cannabis Industry Association.

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Recreational Pot Petition Good Policy

Nevada voters have an opportunity to reset America's costly drug war. This week, petitioners began collecting signatures for an initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana within the state. If the petitioners collect 101,667 valid signatures from registered Nevada voters by Nov. 11, the measure would go before the 2015 Legislature for consideration. And if lawmakers ignore or reject it, the petition would appear on the November 2016 ballot.

We're guessing the petition, put forward by the Nevada Canabis Industry Association with help from the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, won't have a problem collecting signatures from less than 10 percent of Nevada's electorate. Polling consistently shows a majority of voters now support decriminalizing the drug. All the way back in 2006,when voters were far less open to the idea of legalizing the purchase, possession and use of small amounts of marijuana, 44 percent of Nevada voters backed a ballot question to do just that.

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Notable List of Southern Nevadans Making Bids to Garner One of the Pot Permits

At the height of the "Just Say No" campaign in the war on drugs, Sig Rogich was a senior adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Now Rogich, who runs one of the most powerful public relations firms in Nevada, is part of a team looking to snag one of Clark County's medical marijuana licenses.

"It was 30 years ago, a lot has changed," Rogich, 69, said of his involvement with marijuana's staunch political opponents. "They're legalizing it in 22 states now."

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CARSON CITY - A pro-marijuana group filed a petition Wednesday to start the process of legalizing the recreational use of marijuana in Nevada.

The decision probably will be decided by voters in 2016 if the group can gather the requisite number of signatures.

The initiative petition was filed in the Las Vegas office of the secretary of state by Joe Brezny, executive director of the Nevada Cannabis Industry Association.

Supporters must collect 101,667 signatures by Nov. 11 to put a petition to change a state law on the ballot in 2016. If they do,

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The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Wednesday filed a petition with the Nevada Secretary of State to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in the Silver State.

The group, made up of investors who are entering Nevada's burgeoning medical marijuana industry, needs to get 101,667 signatures by Nov. 11 to move the process forward.

The first stop would be the 2015 Nevada Legislature.

It will be an uphill battle for backers of the petition because approval would take a two-thirds vote in both houses because the petition has a tax component. All tax hikes in Nevada need a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to pass. It would also need the signature of Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval to become law.

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WASHINGTON - Hoping to get marijuana legalized in Nevada, an investment company specializing in the fast-growing marijuana industry invited the ballot initiative's backers to pitch 150 financiers at a Las Vegas symposium.

Within 10 minutes, they raised $150,000.

Political contributors are not the only ones taking notice of the new realities of the marijuana business, said San Francisco based ArcView chief executive Troy Dayton, who estimated his group will spend about $500,000 this year to support legalization of pot. Officeholders and candidates now jostle for the stage at investor meetings, he said.

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The Nevada Legislature's response to the mandate in 2000 by Nevada voters to create a system by which sick Nevadans could get access to medicine was childish and a dirty trick on the most vulnerable people in the state.

Like when Mom said, "Quit touching your sister," and you responded by holding your finger two inches from her ear, "I'm not touching her," the Legislature followed the words of the law, but let the spirit of the voter-approved law and the intention of voters dissipate like vapor.

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You can't quite call him "Senator Feelgood," but you can count Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid among the supporters of medical marijuana. Reid last week said in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun that he wasn't always a supporter of marijuana as a palliative for the sick, but he's changed his mind.

"If you'd asked me this question a dozen years ago, it would have been easy to answer - I would have said no, because [marijuana] leads to other stuff," Reid said, according to the Sun's Karoun Demirjian. "But I can't say that anymore."

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ELKO - In the summer of 2013, the Free Press ran a series on the problem of methamphetamine in the Elko community. According to Free Press files, as many as one in four arrests in Elko county are connected to drugs in some way.

"It's a multi-faceted problem," Elko Police Chief Ben Reed said, adding drug use can lead to domestic violence, burglary and child abuse.

Reed was not the police chief at the time the series was written, but he has seen the problem of meth causing property crime as well as violent crime in the community. He and Lt. Ty Trouten said it affects a lot of people, from users to family members to employers.

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There is a mad rush to legalize marijuana these days, but it's time to rethink that generous yet foolish move - generous because it lifts the onus of crime from peaceful smokers, but foolish because it harms mental development and health.

Legalization, as we have seen it in Colorado and Washington state, lifts the cloud of legal fears from the shoulders of millions of pot smokers - some of them actually languishing in prisons for decades for selling or possessing a few ounces of pot.

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The Justice Department made headlines last week when it announced a new federal policy on marijuana. It should come as welcome news to the majority of Americans who, according to an April Pew Research Center poll, believe marijuana should be made legal for adults.

The policy memo issued to U.S. attorneys across the nation says that the federal government will not interfere with state laws allowing the medical or adult use of marijuana, as long as those states follow certain guidelines in their regulation of the product. This means that people in Colorado and Washington state, where voters passed such laws in November, will be able to start selling marijuana to people 21 and older next year.

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Assemblyman Sees Economic Benefits to State While Police Officers Point to Dangers

CARSON CITY - In a sometimes contentious legislative hearing Friday, Las Vegas physician Stephen Frye called marijuana a wonder drug that helps stop cancer, does not impair driving and should be available for all adults to enjoy.

But a line of police officers disagreed with him and urged members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee to reject Assembly Bill 402.

The bill sought by Assemblyman Joe Hogan, D-Las Vegas, calls for legalizing marijuana for people 21 and older. Cosponsor Assemblyman Andrew Martin, D-Las Vegas, testified that legalizing pot could produce $470 million a year in tax revenue that would be earmarked for education spending.

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Can Nevada Turn Marijuana Enforcement Over to the Feds?

Sen. Tick Segerblom, a Clark County Democrat, will introduce legislation at the 2013 Nevada Legislature to decriminalize marijuana. Assembly Republican leader Pat Hickey is open to the idea.

While a Colorado-or Washington-style legalization is not likely in the cards-at least through the Legislature-decriminalization could lead to some substantial policy changes and shifting of resources in law enforcement if police agencies abided by the policy shift.

Because the federal Drug Enforcement Agency does not have the resources to deal with both small users and big traffickers, a decision by the Legislature to end Nevada's police enforcement of marijuana possession cases would effectively create de facto legal marijuana.

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Pro-marijuana forces are giving up on one of their favorite states, for the time being, anyway.

No effort will be made by the Marijuana Policy Project to go to the Nevada ballot with a legalize-and-regulate measure in 2012. Instead the project, which has backed several earlier Nevada ballot initiatives, will focus on Colorado, where the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol gathered almost twice the number of required signatures on an initiative petition.

Marijuana issues of one kind or another have appeared on the Nevada ballot by petition in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2006. Enough signatures were gathered for another ballot measure in 2004 but a box of petitions containing 6,000 of those signatures were misplaced until after the filing deadline ("Weeding out signatures," RN&R, July 1, 2004) and in 2010 a marijuana petition failed to attract enough signatures.

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By the Numbers

2 percent -- Share of the guns from the United States that originated in Nevada. The majority of firearms come from the border states of Texas, California and Arizona.

Two years ago, the case of Zorra Penunuri put Las Vegas on the national map in the fight against cross-border contraband.

The gun-smuggling kingpin from Southern California had purchased $100,000 worth of rifles and pistols from Las Vegas gun dealers to shuttle to drug cartels in Mexico, where the weapons would be used in the proliferation of an illicit drug industry that reaches into most U.S. cities.

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An advocate for loosening medical marijuana restrictions in Nevada was arrested Saturday at her southwest valley home with her husband after police say they found a marijuana grow operation in the house where their 13-year-old son also lived.

Rhonda Shade and Lowel Shade, both 37, were charged with child endangerment, possession of marijuana with the intent to sell, trafficking in a controlled substance and conspiracy to violate the Uniform Controlled Substance Act. Lowel Shade also was charged with possession of a firearm by an ex-felon. Rhonda Shade has denied selling marijuana.

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It's time for this state to join the 21st century. It's time for the state to stop pretending that it's 1939, the age of Reefer Madness. It's time for this state to pull its big dumb head out of its big dumb ostrich hole and establish a sane, civilized, and eventually lucrative system of dispensaries for medical marijauna.

The citizens of Nevada approved the use of medical marijuana many years ago (2000 was the second time the MM initiative was passed, and it did so with 67 percent of the vote). But the legal reality that has evolved in the years after the initiative's passage is a typically murky one: Nevadans with a medical marijuana permit may grow their own pot (7 plants max), but they may not buy it. And no entity is allowed to sell weed to those with permits.

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Will Dems' Shift On Medical Marijuana Pave The Way For Legal Pot Dispensaries?

For the first time in Nevada history, a major political party has endorsed the creation of a safe, legal medical marijuana industry -- a move that could ease the suffering of thousands of patients and finally legitimize the state's black market network of pot dispensaries.

In their official party platform, released just days after their late-June convention, delegates with the Nevada Democratic Party for the first time included clear, powerful language endorsing Nevada's emerging medical marijuana industry "as a contributing part of a compassionate, alternative health care in Nevada."

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A Nevada ballot initiative petition is now circulating to make marijuana legal and set up a regulatory system akin to tobacco or alcohol. The petition would go first to the 2011 Nevada Legislature, and if the lawmakers fail to act on it, voters in 2012 would decide whether to enact it.

There are a number of unknowns surrounding the issue, but a new study may suggest questions that need to be addressed. The Rand Corporation, a leading think tank, has issued a report on the possible results of making marijuana legal in California. The report found:

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Even though Nevada voters have rejected them twice in recent years by 60-40 margins, the drug legalizers will return to the Silver State in 2012. I hope we send them home for good next time around.

The Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) announced last December that it is again seeking signatures for a Nevada ballot measure to legalize the "recreational, non-medicinal use" of marijuana. As most Nevada voters realize, however, that would only be the first step down the slippery slope of drug legalization. The MPP will need to collect more than 100,000 signatures by Nov. 9 in order to put their misguided measure on our 2012 ballot.

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