Chairman James DeVolld said on Monday that he thinks his new duties will deal with major litigation between the state and marijuana businesses that argued they were unfairly denied potentially lucrative dispensary licenses. A trial on that matter is scheduled for April.

Attorney Kristina Wildeveld, who is active before the pardons board, said a pardon can take an offense off a person’s record. That could have benefits for people including undocumented immigrants, who can face deportation based on misdemeanors.

Nevada is at a crossroads: still trying to understand the implications of legalizing adult use marijuana three years ago, and how to ensure those who are driving when they shouldn’t face consequences without ensnaring those whose legal high has long since worn off.

The announcement Monday comes after Sisolak earlier this month appointed former Nevada Supreme Court Justice Michael Douglas as chair, and former Gaming Control Board Chairman Dennis Neilander will serve on the board.

In the advisory, the department said 30 marijuana dispensaries scattered throughout the state sold the contaminated products during a roughly three-month period — between Oct. 25 and Jan. 16 — and test results showed the contaminated products contained yeast, mold, aspergillus and other potentially harmful bacteria.

State officials have pinned their hopes to the board to address various issues stemming from the nascent industry, including testing labs that have recently have come under scrutiny for inaccurate reporting on product potency and for passing products with levels of contaminants that should have failed.

The complaint also alleged a list of additional regulatory violations, including failure to maintain surveillance and alarm systems, “unintentionally destroying or concealing evidence” by failing to keep a failed sample for at least 30 days, failure to destroy waste marijuana and failure to properly maintain data in the state’s seed-to-sale tracking system.

Governors who earned failing grades are those who have taken firm stances against marijuana legalization, including Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts. NORML cited a position paper Ricketts wrote describing cannabis as a gateway drug and a promise to “veto any legislation that attempts to make marijuana use lawful in the Cornhusker State.”

Several states have attempted such a feat, but if successful, Nevada would be the first state to apply closed-loop technology to legal marijuana markets that are unable to freely participate in banking because marijuana is a federally illegal controlled substance and banking is intimately tied to the federal government.

Gibson, who previously worked as head of the gaming division in the Nevada Attorney General’s Office, played a key role in designing a new Cannabis Control Board in the mold of Nevada’s well-respected Gaming Control Board. He chaired an advisory board that worked to craft the bill authorizing the new board.

The department discovered the contaminated marijuana after it failed another independent laboratory’s secondary microbial test. The closure came after previous incidents of inaccurate lab reports and amidst arguments for stricter regulations.

Fifteen percent of high schoolers in Nevada reported they had vaped in 2017, compared with less than 7 percent who said they had smoked cigarettes during that time period. The Southern Nevada Health District has reported five vaping-related lung illness cases in the last three months, including that of a 19-year-old College of Southern Nevada student who had to be put into an induced coma and on a ventilator to breathe, Ford said.

A woman’s daily use of marijuana while pregnant was shown to cause multiple health problems for her infant, such as an increased risk of low birth weight, low resistance to infections, and decreased oxygen levels.

The Nevada Department of Taxation announced on Thursday that in addition to the financial penalty for the Category II violation, it had also suspended Certified Ag Labs for a 30-day period that started on Nov. 18. The agency previously declined to confirm whether the lab was suspended.

Will Adler, executive director of the marijuana testing lab association Scientists for Consumer Safety, called last week for action against labs that appear to be fudging results on the levels of THC within their products. But told about the division’s staffing statistics, he called the situation “brutal” and said he doubted the agency could pull off the crackdown he envisioned in its current state.

Scientists for Consumer Safety, a group that represents four of the state’s 11 independent testing labs, is asking for the state to provide names to go along with data about lab results and punish any labs that are proferring inaccurate readings for their customers.

At the opening sessions of the Marijuana Business Conference & Expo (MJBizCon) on Wednesday, business leaders and industry stakeholders discussed achievements, roadblocks in the legal marijuana industry nationwide.

Regulators have not budged on their bright line. But the casino sector has still left its mark on the cannabis industry — its veterans are filling out the leadership teams of marijuana companies, and its regulatory regime is the model that the state hopes to emulate for cannabis.