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.”

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.