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Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore inspects the product and learns about the different uses for and varieties of marijuana during a trip to a dispensary in Arizona on Friday, March 22, 2013.
Saturday, March 23, 2013 | 2 a.m.
How familiar are they with pot?
Six of Nevada's legislators took a trip to Arizona to inspect and investigate that state's new medical marijuana dispensary program.
Legislators were in Arizona to get a crash course in the regulation and dispensation of marijuana, but how much do they already know about the product? The Las Vegas Sun posed the question to the six: How much experience with marijuana do you have?
“Not too much recently,” said Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas.
“None,” says Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas. “We never learned anything about it in school. This is my first educational anything.”
“I've never tried it,” said Sen. Scott Hammond, R-Las Vegas. “I've been around it. I've been at Grateful Dead concerts. That's as close as I've been to marijuana. I know some of the names: Maui Wowi.” (Hammond said he hears the street names for the drug as a high school teacher.)
“I never knew what the smell was,” he said. Knocking on doors during campaign season, he said he thought to himself: “I never knew there were so many skunks in Las Vegas.”
“I've never tried marijuana,” said Sen. Mark Hutchison, R-Las Vegas. “I'm a good Mormon boy.”
“Believe it or not, I never tried it,” said Sen. Ruben Kihuen, D-Las Vegas, who was an athlete in high school and didn't want to jeopardize his athletic participation by using a drug. “In high school, I was surrounded by it. But if my mom had found out, I would be dead.”
“I plead the Fifth,” said Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas.
Sun coverage
GLENDALE, Ariz. — There may be very few times that six elected officials surround themselves with pounds of marijuana and invite in photographers, television stations and newspaper reporters.
But the cameras were rolling as six Nevada state legislators huddled Friday around a lit display case at Arizona Organix. They peered at an array of green cannabis buds with names like Gucci, Blue Elephant, Purple Kush and Platinum Dream.
Some might call this a problem, but for legislators who saw the Arizona medical marijuana dispensary's safety and security controls, it started to look like a solution.
Here's the issue: Nevada's constitution provides for medical marijuana, but critics, legislators and a district court judge have all said that there's really no convenient and lawful way for sick Nevadans to exercise their constitutional right to obtain medical marijuana.
Nevada legislators jetted to Arizona to tour a medical marijuana dispensary, visit a marijuana grow house under development, and chat with state legislators and dispensary licensees in an attempt to learn firsthand how to carefully craft a secure, safe and sensible way to let medical marijuana patients get marijuana.
“We just need to figure out a way to dispense this safely,” said Sen. Mark Hutchison, R-Las Vegas.
Arizona dispensary owners and legislators said it's crucial that Nevada carefully crafts its law.
“The infrastructure you put in place is going to determine the quality of the people dispensing it,” said Moe Asnani, partner with Arizona Dispensary Solutions.
At Arizona Organix, Hutchison, Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, Sens. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas; Ruben Kihuen, D-Las Vegas; Scott Hammond, R-Las Vegas; and David Parks, D-Las Vegas, toured the dispensary with hopes that they could bring home good business practices that they can put into a bill in the Nevada Legislature.
“Wow, it smells in here,” Fiore said as they entered.
Bill Myer, the owner, greeted the delegation with his $500 annual dispensary license.
Here was the smell of fresh green bud and the gleam of legitimacy.
Myer guided the legislators through the marijuana dispensing process: Patients arrive in the waiting room and scan a medical marijuana card into a secure government database, where licensed dispensary employees can see the patient's profile.
If the patient has a legitimate card, Myer said the patients follow a “budtender” into a secure room, where they view the product, which costs $370-390 per ounce.
The patient pays on-site and an employee logs the amount of marijuana bought before the patient leaves, thereby preventing a patient from immediately going to another dispensary to buy more above than the 2.5-ounce limit every two weeks.
“We've got some very strict regulations from the state, and we're very happy for it,” said Myer, whose dispensary opened Dec. 6 and has since seen about 100 patients per day. “Give us a chance to show you we're good guys. It can be done right.”
Even though he runs a nonprofit business, he said he will likely pay “well over six figures annually” in both local and state sales tax.
“The biggest smile I have on my face is when I hand over a big wad of money to the authorities,” he said.
Legislators roamed through the facility, talking to co-owner Ryan Wells and Steve Cottrell, the third-party quality controller for the dispensary.
They inspected fudge brownies, lollipops, snickerdoodles and sugar cookies laced with marijuana, and they handled plastic buckets full of different varieties of marijuana.
“Can you overdose?” Hutchison asked.
No, Wells said.
Crowding around a computer monitor, legislators fired off a series of questions about the card database. How do you know someone's card is real? How do you know how much someone has already purchased? Who has access to the state database?
All this information should help legislators amend Segerblom's dispensary bill.
Segerblom’s bill, Senate Bill 374, would allow for the establishment and regulation of nonprofit medical marijuana dispensaries for about 3,600 Nevadans with active medical marijuana cards.
Voters in Nevada passed a constitutional amendment in 1998 and 2000 to allow for medical marijuana, and the Legislature passed a law in 2001 to allow for it. But Segerblom said it's not working well, and Nevada needs Arizona-style dispensaries to allow patients to actually get the marijuana to which they're entitled.
“It's incredibly clean,” Segerblom said of the Arizona dispensary. “It's very efficient. It seems very tight as far as the controls. If we could duplicate this in Nevada, I don't see how anyone would object.”
Although federal law bans marijuana, the owners of two Arizona dispensaries said they are not concerned. They've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in safe systems, and they say the federal government may not crack down on them.
“The state of Arizona gave us the authorization to operate,” Myer said. “The federal government has not. We understand that. We feel, personally, at Arizona Organix that we have a degree of insulation when they come looking for bad actors.”
The company touted its safety and security systems and its earnestness to behave within state and local laws. They also said their product is safety tested and good quality.
“I've never seen bud this good,” Segerblom said. “Obviously, the prices are very expensive. It's not given away. ... My days looking at bud were when there were more seeds than buds.”
“That was a long time ago, my friend,” said Myer, smiling in front of the lighted marijuana display.
Segerblom and the five legislators asked Myer, Asnani and his business partner, Jerry Workman, a series of questions about business practices and medical properties of marijuana before interviewing an Arizona state senator.
“I think we're still a work in progress, but I do think we have some really good efforts,” said state Sen. Kimerbly Yee, R-Phoenix, who spoke with the Nevada legislators by teleconference at the Arizona Legislature.
Nevada's legislative delegation had time to take the trip, which they said they paid for themselves, because Nevada state Senate employees had to take a furlough day Friday.
"truth"serum, it is genuinely amazing that at this late date you're still insistently babbling nonsense that's been thoroughly disproved. But thinking that insisting on a thing in a somber tone of authority is evidence of their absurd claims is typical of a Know Nothing prohibitionist.
The Iowa Board of Pharmacy unanimously says that cannabis has valid medicinal utility. Have you got an advanced degree in pharmacology like all 6 members of that Board? Have you been appointed to decide what is, and what is not medicine by your State's governor? No, I didn't think so.
Why is it that you have such a hatred for the truth "truth"serum? I'd bet dollars against dirt that if the truth were to politely knock on your front door that you would call the police and demand it be arrested for trespassing.
@truthserum
You know how I know you've never actually read up on any of the studies done on medical marijuana?
Lots of pharmaceuticals impair judgement when used by patients, and as such have warning labels on their bottles. They also stick around in people's bodies, and even our waterways as evidenced by studies that have linked pharmaceuticals to reproductive issues and outright mutations in fish in Lake Mead. Don't seem to see any reports liking Marijuana to that...
The biggest benefits of Marijuana are:
1. Pain Reliever
2. Nausea Suppressant
3. Appetite Stimulant.
Those are of particular interest to cancer patients who waste away during Chemotherapy because they starve themselves (sometimes to death) when they uncontrollably and violently vomit any food back up which their body needs. They also loose their appetites and experience constant pain. All of which THC can counter, and assists them throughout the treatment period.
The only reason that Medical Marijuana has been unavailable all this time has been because it's a substance that can be cultivated at home and is uncontrolled by taxation and retail sales. It's *technically* not illegal on a Federal level unless you have that appropriate tax stamps to possess it. But since the government doesn't issue those, possession itself becomes illegal.
The other aspect is that because there are so many different strains of the plant given decades of private horticulture, corporations like Monsanto can't file a "one-size-fits-all" patent on the plant to use as a lawsuit against farmers who would cultivate it. A tactic that corporate farms already use against independent farmers currently.
I'm not a user myself, and I've never touched the stuff. But it does have huge, documented medical benefits that cannot be ignored. Certainly it has the potential for abuse, but so does anything in life. Especially those over the counter drugs like Oxycontin that even conservative mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh is a self-admitted dope fiend for.
ok so they had their little weed trip field day so now they can quit pussy footing around and get down to the business of making the herb available to the folks who are eligible.theyve been circumventing the will of the electorate since 1998.enough already,make it happen.
If we were to make it available as most legitimate medical people suggest, which is either thru using a vaporizer as an inhaler or edible cannabis...the toking potheads who want it legalized would be up in arms. The FDA has already ruled on the "smoking" aspects of medical marijuana and they are not in favor (for obvious reasons). My thinking is all these "users" of medical marijuana would throw a fit if the correct method for use was only legalized. Beyond that, I'm reminded of the 2 1/2 men episode where Charlie walks into the pharmacy and 5 minutes later he's diagnosed with glaucoma, RX is filled and he's on his merry way. Abuse will be rampant.
Wow! Talk about a pot junket! I'm sure there was a spa treatment and some time for R & R at the Scottsdale Four Seasons... Next, our six pack will travel to Amsterdam to study the recreational side of marijuana.
I am all for it...Just not on my dime!
regardless of any "medical" use, MJ should be approved for recreational use. Washington State and Colorado are leading the country and more states soon to follow.
MJ is far less destructive than alcohol and tobacco, even though that is not necessarily a good reason to legalize it, just that there aren't many good reasons to not legalize it.
And we just smiled & waved...
sittin' there on that sack o' seeds.
Y'all come back now, y'hear?
(Wildwood Weed)
Jim Stafford
And all Mexican drug gangs thank metro and the legislators for their continued protection! And they thank Obama for the much needed weapons!
Be a patriot! Grow marijuana!
Did they get free samples too?
"Purple Kush"? Gotta try that...
Sounds like Segerblom probably still remembers how to hand-roll a fat one.
Anyway, glad to see that the legislators are at least appearing to be serious on this. While there are plenty of people like truthserum who are clueless, it sounds like others are finally cluing in...