During a Tuesday meeting, CCB Executive Director Tyler Klimas announced that provisional licensees have until the end of September to request another 90-day extension, stating that more than 19 entities have not submitted for an extension. 

Klimas said that with inflation and consumers having fewer discretionary dollars following the COVID-19 pandemic, the commercial cannabis industry has seen a 4 percent decrease in profits last year, and the unregulated market is its biggest competitor.

Layke Martin, executive director of the Nevada Cannabis Association, presented SB195 to the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee on Wednesday, a bill that also would place a 30-day limit on the number of days that the Cannabis Compliance Board (CCB) has to approve a plan of correction or else it would be automatically deemed approved.

For the last seven years, GLP has used natural farming techniques to keep its harvests pesticide-and-radiation-free and its farm sustainable with limited water use and waste. But a routine inspection by state regulators led to a year of farming corrections.

“Why are fees being billed for routine staff activities … when the regulator's already been fully funded because the Legislature made it a priority starting in 2017?” Martin said.

It would also represent the first major expansion of Nevada’s cannabis industry in years, and stands to expand a largely homogenous industry to include people adversely affected by the so-called war on drugs.

Even with the COVID pandemic waning, state tax officials told legislators this month that Nevadans have made what appear to be some permanent shifts in how they buy legal marijuana through pick-up and delivery modes.

Klimas said he expects the start of a new licensing process for cannabis consumption lounges later this year will help diversify the industry.

Cannabis consumption lounges are on track to set up shop in Nevada by mid-2022 and shake up the state’s marijuana industry after the Interim Finance Committee greenlit new funding on Wednesday.

Lawmakers took a major step this session to expand and diversify the industry’s disproportionately white and male ownership and also provide tourists with a place to legally consume marijuana by creating a new license type for cannabis consumption lounges.

Proponents commissioned an analysis from RGC Economics that projected the state could support up to 1,283 additional dispensaries. Nevada’s marijuana market grossed nearly $700 million last fiscal year and is on track to break that record this fiscal year.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Nevada Independent on Wednesday in Carson City, Sisolak also expressed skepticism about Medicare for all proposals championed by progressives because of their potential consequences to desirable union health plans. He also confirmed that he would not endorse a presidential candidate before the state’s February caucus.

The $504,000, two-year lobbying contract with Cassidy & Associates is up for approval at the Tuesday meeting of the state’s Board of Examiners, which is composed of the governor and other top-ranking elected state officials.

Records offer a glimpse of the challenges that will lie ahead as Nevada once again overhauls its marijuana regulation next year and adopts an oversight regime not unlike the one that reined casinos into a respected mainstream.