EDITORIAL: Clark County rightly recognizes marijuana dispensaries as revenue source

Medical marijuana still makes most local elected officials nervous, despite ample political cover from voters and lawmakers alike.

It’s been more than a decade since the electorate amended the state constitution to allow the sick to use doctor-prescribed marijuana, and it’s been almost a year since the Legislature finally allowed the licensing of up to 40 dispensaries in Southern Nevada. Yet local governments have been reluctant to allow the businesses that are thriving — and providing significant tax revenues — in other states.

Finally, last week, Clark County commissioners went outside their comfort zones and passed an ordinance allowing dispensaries in the valley’s unincorporated areas. Moving past the dogma of the country’s failed war on drugs wasn’t easy. To avoid being labeled as “pro-weed,” commissioners considered a handful of ill-advised restrictions that would only make medical marijuana more expensive and harder to come by for the patients who need it. One of them, a requirement that dispensaries sell products cultivated in the county, creates a big regulatory burden on entrepreneurs from the get-go.

But the fact that the county was willing to go forward with an all-new industry was highly encouraging. Boulder City has flatly rejected dispensaries. Henderson has a moratorium on dispensary license applications. Although the Las Vegas City Council last week authorized medical marijuana dispensaries, the city won’t accept license applications until July.

Clark County, on the other hand, will accept dispensary applications between April 16 and May 2, then hold a marathon public hearing June 5 to award licenses. The county thus takes the lead in pursuit of all the investment and jobs that will come with the opening of medical marijuana cultivation facilities and dispensaries. As reported by the Review-Journal’s Ben Botkin, Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak said one company estimates a single cultivation facility will create 200 jobs. And that’s after local electricians, plumbers and iron workers finish building the places. “We can definitely use those jobs in Clark County,” Mr. Sisolak said.

To say nothing of the property and sales tax revenues. Yet the same municipalities that are pushing away dispensaries are simultaneously pressing for changes in the state’s property tax caps that would make everyone pay more.

Colorado and Washington state already have legalized recreational use of marijuana, and Nevada and other states could very well vote to do the same in 2016. Marijuana already is sold and used in most every neighborhood. Tough-on-pot posturing doesn’t sell. Cities that fail to create a reasonable regulatory climate for medical marijuana will be left behind when the drug inevitably becomes fully legalized — and their coffers will be poorer for it.