Although you’d never guess it from all the presidential elbow-throwing, we’re still the better part of a year from the 2016 election cycle and the power mongers in Nevada seem to be keeping their powder dry on the marijuana question (legalizing the possession and use of an ounce of loco weed), waiting until the actual vote draws near. "We would love it if no one showed up to oppose us, but I don't think we'll get that lucky," Joe Brezny, the Republican who spearheaded the signature drive, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Indeed not. Already an Astroturf movement against the legalization of recreational – or "adult use" -- pot is being ginned up by Jeff Kaye, a lobbyist for Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) and Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-NV).
Kaye says the public isn’t ready for legal pot. It was voted down in Ohio and even medicinal marijuana failed at the ballot box in Florida, after an anti-pot campaign funded almost exclusively by Sheldon Adelson. And if Adelson is going to go to those lengths in Florida, does anyone expect him to sit on his checkbook when the issue comes so close to home?
So far, the initiative’s highest-profile ally is state Sen. Tick Segerblom (D), who argues that times have changed and that public opinion on pot has reversed itself in a mere five years. Indeed, the petition drive garnered double the needed 102,000 signatures and it will sit atop the ballot as IP1.
The trail toward legalized marijuana in Nevada was a rocky one. Until recently, possession was a felony, punishable with a $5,000 fine and possibly jail time. Possession of less than an ounce was not downgraded to misdemeanor status until 2001. Two years earlier, voters had amended the state constitution to allow medicinal marijuana. However, the state Legislature essentially nullified that mandate by forbidding the exchange of marijuana for anything of value, meaning growers would have to give it away. It was not until 2013 that medical-marijuana dispensaries were approved (40 are in Clark County and at least 25 upstate).
Voters, however, have been more skeptical of adult-use marijuana. Not only did the Legislature drop-kick the idea in 2013, 61 percent of Nevadans voted against a 2002 ballot question and 56 percent opposed it in 2006. Given the passage of time, if those numbers continue to trend downward, 2016 could be legal pot’s lucky year.
Under the terms of the initiative, each county could have two adult-use shops for every medicinal dispensary, and growers and vendors – who must be wholesale liquor distributors -- could participate in both. But the Department of Taxation would oversee adult-use stores while medical marijuana would remain under the rubric of the Division of Public & Behavioral Health. Pot advocates would also cede a 15 percent excise tax to the state, which they contend would prevent prices – as opposed to customers – "from getting too high," as the R-J put it.
While Kaye is framing the argument against legal marijuana as a public-safety issue, conjuring up visions of children wacked out on weed, cannabis consultant Leslie Bocksor counters that it’s a law-and-order issue: Brezny, Segerblom and others are bringing order to a lawless frontier. That runs counter to any sort of "What happens here, stays here" fun and games – and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority is one of the major bystanders on the issue – so don’t expect marijuana tourism to be pushed as a talking point as Election Day draws near. After all, the casino industry has already been granted the right to offer online poker and daily fantasy sports, and has largely refrained from the first and steered totally clear of the second.
