Marijuana business owners and board members in Nevada are disproportionately white and male, while the industry workforce is made up of a greater proportion of people of color, according to a new demographic report on the state’s cannabis industry.

Public health officials have set their sights on raising the minimum legal sale age of tobacco products to 21, providing clearer labeling for cannabis products, improving youth education on cannabis and vaping and gathering more data on cannabis use.

“These final appointments to the CCB each bring their own unique expertise and insight to the table,” Sisolak said in a tweet. “I am confident their contributions to this board will only amplify the sound judgment and strong regulation carried out by the CCB.”

While the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did extend the eviction moratorium until the end of the calendar year — beyond the state’s moratorium ending Oct. 14 — the state’s rental assistance program continues to trickle out funds relatively slowly.

Her order gave credence to many of the complaints brought by plaintiffs who did not win coveted and limited dispensary licenses in 2018 and argued the state’s process for vetting applications was marred by favoritism and shifting standards midway through the process.

“With these guardrails in place, CCB staff now has the tools to ensure licensees understand that full compliance, including any tax obligations, must be fully resolved before license renewal will be considered,” Klimas said.

“I'm fully aware from all of the public comment and the proceedings before the Tax Commission that there were significant issues that led to this litigation,” said board member Dennis Neilander. “Certainly we're not equipped to retry these issues that are in trial now. And in the interest of providing a fresh start for us, we need to deal with these legacy issues.”

Commissioners unanimously voted on Friday to approve the settlement, which involves some 17 plaintiffs and reshuffles some of the licenses that the state awarded in the disputed 2018 application round. It comes in the middle of a trial so big that it had to be moved to the Las Vegas Convention Center and as part of a consolidated lawsuit with so many parties it has earned the nickname “World War Weed.”

There’s still much work to be done in an industry in flux. Marijuana businesses are just emerging from a monthslong freeze of license transfers, a massive court battle over a contentious state licensing round continues, and regulators have raised serious questions about whether independent labs fudged product test results to curry favor from the marijuana businesses that pay them.

A series of lawsuits dating back more than a year and a half accused the state of unfair practices in deciding in 2018 who should receive coveted and strictly limited licenses to expand the number of retail marijuana locations of their business.

According to the complaint, during less than three months in 2019, the company sold 1,793 products that did not have a certificate of analysis indicating they were laboratory tested. The company also allegedly had more than 4,100 marijuana plants that were not registered in the state’s tracking database.

Klimas said there are now 92 outstanding requests to transfer ownership interests, ranging from simple requests for a person to withdraw as an owner to “extremely complex” requests for transfers involving publicly traded companies with complicated ownership structures. Some companies have said the freeze has already stymied highly lucrative acquisitions.

The Nevada Board of Pardons Commissioners, chaired by Gov. Steve Sisolak, voted unanimously to approve a resolution pardoning the decriminalized offense. Records show that 15,592 were convicted of the misdemeanor from 1986 through the end of 2016, and there were 31,124 arrested for the offense. Recreational use became legal in 2017.

“The people of Nevada have decided that possession of small amounts of marijuana is not a crime,” Sisolak said. “If approved, this resolution will clear the slate for thousands of people who bear the stigma of a conviction for actions that have now been decriminalized.”

Although the suit does not include Sisolak’s name, it does accuse defendants of “compelling Plaintiff to make political contributions personally because Defendant had maxed out its legal donations and the CEO had promised additional donations to a candidate in Nevada.”

Company officials said Nevada’s stringent restrictions on marijuana businesses — Sisolak ordered them to move to delivery-only models and only recently opened to curbside pickup and then in-store sales — was a hard hit.

Jorge Pupo was put on leave and then left the Nevada Department of Taxation in fall 2019. State documents show Welch will be representing Pupo in an ongoing case filed in January 2019 by marijuana dispensaries that did not receive state licenses for additional retail stores and have alleged unfair practices by the state.

This year, the quasi-holiday for cannabis enthusiasts was much more of a somber affair. With dispensary storefronts closed and limited to delivery only, and tourists gone, Priscilla Vilchis estimates her sales as a cultivation business are down 85 percent.

Nevada Dispensary Association Executive Director Riana Durrett said while delivery has kept many marijuana businesses going, most are doing just a fraction of the sales they were before and some are not participating at all because the process is “too difficult and inefficient.”