Finally, a good call

For perhaps the first time since Nevada finally got serious about implementing its medical marijuana laws, a state regulation makes sense.

The state’s Division of Public and Behavioral Health announced it would not invoke its discretionary authority to limit the amount of marijuana grown in Nevada to between 650,000 and 1 million square feet.

That’s the right call: The entrepreneurs who set up marijuana growing and dispensing businesses should be the ones making the decisions about how much they need, based on their best estimate of what the market demands. Sellers note that some products — such as lotions infused with marijuana — require more of the drug to manufacture.

Besides, says state Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, who authored the bill that authorized the medical marijuana system in Nevada, that’s capitalism.

“We wanted to attract the best and brightest (applicants), make it a for-profit model and let them come here and compete,” said Segerblom, according to the Review-Journal’s Arnold Knightly. “If they can grow better marijuana, let them grow it. We want competition so the price will come down and it’s affordable for everyone.”

Police suggested that allowing unlimited product would potentially create pressure to sell to unlicensed dealers, but one attorney representing a marijuana business said that’s not so.

“If the concern is this product getting out in the black market, then not limiting square footage is the best way to keep it out of the black market,” said Trevor Hayes, attorney for applicant Wellness Connection of Nevada and a former Review-Journal journalist. “If we limit the space and prices skyrocket in the regulated industry, people will be going to the black market to get cheaper unregulated product.”

So score one for common sense. But only one.

The medical marijuana debate in Nevada has been bizarre since its beginning. Although voters legalized medical marijuana in 2000 and 2002 — demanding the state provide a way for patients to get it — nothing was done on the supply side for more than a decade.

Then Segerblom took up the cause in the 2013 Legislature and got a dispensary bill through. Compromises were many, however, and the total number of dispensaries was limited. (This, of course, has the same negative effects as limiting the overall amount of marijuana that can be grown.)

It also shows that, no matter how much we talk about marijuana being a useful medicine, regulators really don’t believe it. Do we limit the number of Walgreens pharmacies in Nevada? Do we propose strictly limiting the amount of Tylenol or NyQuil or Lipitor or Zoloft? Do we narrowly regulate the security arrangements or supply chain of CVS?

Of course we don’t, because those businesses are dispensing medicine. According to medical science and the Nevada Constitution, marijuana is now medicine in Nevada, too, not that you’d know it from the labor-intensive way we’re conducting applications for licenses.

Remember, two states in the union have legalized marijuana outright. And Nevada may soon join them: A petition seeking to repeal the state’s marijuana prohibition and regulate marijuana the way we regulate alcohol is gathering signatures now.

Things have certainly changed in Nevada since the issue first surfaced. Once, in the early 2000s, I wrote about marijuana legalization and got a call from a nice-sounding man who informed me that a petition would shortly be circulated to get me fired for taking such a stance. I never heard from him again, and no petition ever materialized to my knowledge.

Now there are plenty of people wondering why this is even a controversial issue and predicting the eventual change in federal law that will see marijuana finally treated like other prescription drugs. That would allow medical marijuana to be sold in places such as Walgreens, CVS, Wal-Mart and Target.

But don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. In the debate over marijuana legalization, it’s common sense that’s really limited.

Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist who blogs at SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.