It’s the latest in a string of lawsuits since the state announced in early December that it had granted additional licenses, but refused to reveal even the business names of those who won without the winners’ written consent.

State auditors found frequent discrepancies between the amount of sales that are logged into the seed-to-sale tracking software METRC, and those reported on state tax returns. The association, which represents numerous marijuana businesses, did not comment last Thursday at a meeting when the audit was first discussed, but provided a statement to The Nevada Independent about the findings this week.

J. Brin Gibson, Sisolak’s general counsel and chairman of an advisory panel that’s explored marijuana regulatory structures over the past few weeks, said the outline of the proposed bill was submitted on Thursday. A Sisolak executive order calling for more effective marijuana oversight had set a Friday deadline for completing “enabling language for the Legislature’s consideration.”

An audit of the Nevada Department of Taxation found that information reported to the state in tax returns didn’t match information entered into a seed-to-sale tracking software nearly three-quarters of the time. The report also faulted the department for using only a fraction of the money lawmakers allocated to ramp up security in state offices working with the mostly cash industry

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo told an industry group Thursday that he supports the creation of marijuana consumption lounges as long as they don’t also include alcohol sales. His comment came as he provided insight from the law enforcement side during a Las Vegas Medical Marijuana Association luncheon.

Rep. Mark Amodei has signed on to support legislation that would shield from federal penalties banks that serve the marijuana industry in states such as Nevada where it is legal. He is the last member of the Nevada delegation to back the bill.

Members of an advisory panel tasked with designing a Nevada Cannabis Compliance Board heard last week about the barriers that have left the multibillion-dollar America marijuana industry largely bank-less and — in some cases — literally burying their cash in the ground, pirate-style.

“I'll just admit it — I'm skeptical that you're able to do the kind of investigation and enforcement actions that this kind of privileged license requires," said J. Brin Gibson, chair of the advisory panel that is designing a Nevada Cannabis Compliance Board.

“It’s always been my goal to make this open and transparent as it possibly can be, and that’s what I believe that a Cannabis Compliance Board will do,” Sisolak said. “We’ll make it open, the meetings are going to be public so everybody gets a chance to see what’s happening, the same way the Gaming Control Board is.”

The agency released a list of scores for 457 applications for marijuana dispensary licenses that were received this fall, including those from the 61 applications that won conditional licenses, but is not providing the names attached to the scores unless the dispensary consents. After the department solicited such permission in December, the businesspeople behind only 26 of the applications have granted consent.

The Nevada Department of Taxation is asking marijuana companies to voluntarily let the state reveal whether they were granted a conditional license to open one or more dispensaries and how their application ranked. The move comes after the department received criticism for the secretive nature of the marijuana licensing process.

The lawsuit filed earlier this week in Clark County District Court appears to be the first legal pushback against the Nevada Department of Taxation since the agency awarded more than 60 new conditional dispensary licenses last week.

Some of the 61 licenses were awarded to applicants for the 12 counties that currently do not have dispensaries, including White Pine, Pershing, Storey, Mineral, Lyon, Lincoln, Lander, Humboldt, Eureka, Esmeralda, Elko and Douglas Counties.

A handful of highly regulated lounges in San Francisco are the first places in the country where public marijuana consumption is explicitly legal, and it’s a concept some legislators hope to emulate in Nevada.

RCG Economics released a report Friday that predicts legalized marijuana will produce $8 billion in direct, indirect and induced economic benefits from 2018 through 2024. The report was commissioned by the Nevada Dispensary Association, a marijuana trade group, and reflects a more robust industry than RGC’s 2016 report, which had predicted $7.5 billion in economic benefit over the same period.

New, over-performing streams of marijuana tax revenue have become a major talking point on the campaign trail, with candidates promising to help Nevada schools by sending revenue from the Rainy Day fund back to schools where it was intended. But are schools really missing out on millions of pot dollars they've been promised? Read on for more.

Nevada’s marijuana dispensaries brought in more than half a billion dollars in revenue during the first year of legalized sales, with the state overperforming expectations and collecting $69.8 million in taxes for recreational sales. The Nevada Department of Taxation announced Tuesday that recreational sales of marijuana between July 2017 and July 2018 brought in about 140 percent of what the state had initially expected to collect.

Airport spokeswoman Christine Crews said this week it’s impossible to offer a weight or quantify exactly how much has been collected in the six months since the boxes were installed because of the diversity of marijuana products that’s turned in — everything from cannabis-infused drinks to marijuana flower to vape pens.