Yes, it is.
Nevada’s "Medical Use of Marijuana" law was approved by the state legislature and adopted in 2001; the law went into effect in October of that year.
According to Nevada Revised Statute 453A, persons with qualifying debilitating medical conditions who have obtained a medical-marijuana-program card can legally use marijuana to mitigate the symptoms/effects of their conditions.
The Nevada Medical Marijuana Program is a state registry program that’s managed by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.
First, you order an information packet that contains all the pertinent paperwork for applying for the medical-marijuana-patient registry card from the Nevada State Health Division. That packet costs $50.
When you receive the packet, you fill out the waiver and acknowledgement forms and have them notarized ($10). You also have to supply a copy of your driver’s license and fingerprints ($10). Then you need a signature from your attending physician or a referring physician (this will cost between $50 and $150). Then you write a check to State Health for $150 and mail the packet back to Carson City.
In a while, you receive a letter explaining your temporary status while the state does a background check on you. Once the check is completed, you receive a second, acceptance, letter, which contains instructions on going to your closest DMV office, where your medical marijuana card is issued.
So it costs roughly $300 and takes a month or so to receive a medical-marijuana registry card in Nevada. Then what? Lots of luck.
You can’t legally buy marijuana in Nevada. (You can possess some; see QoD 3/15/2009). Doctor Reefer is just a consultant who can help you navigate the somewhat labyrinthine procedures of qualifying for a card. He’s not an M.D., nor can or will he sell you any pot. (He spent time in a California prison for growing and selling it to cancer patients.)
Nevada simply has no rules allowing for the sale of medical pot. The cannabis clubs and marijuana dispensaries that are all over California are non-existent in Nevada. And we predict that it’ll be a long long time before you can legally buy pot from dispensaries in Las Vegas.
But that didn't stop the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from raiding at least five medical marijuana "dispensaries" (which dispense information and paraphernalia only, both legal) in Las Vegas earlier this month. According to newspaper reports, no arrests were made (could that be because they didn't find any marijuana on the premises?), but patient and financial records were seized. It's hard to say more about this, since the search warrants and supporting affidavits were sealed by federal court order.
In a short aside, California residents will be voting on completely legalizing weed in this November’s election. And if you’d like to get a perspective on this controversial subject, it’s contained in spades in our new book Reefer Gladness: Stories, Essays, and Riffs on Marijuana by Michael Konik (author of Man with the $100,000 Breasts and Telling Lies and Getting Paid).
