Want an MJ business in Clark County, Nevada? Better Act Now!

This Friday, Nevada finally approved its proposed medical marijuana regulatory rules, which are scheduled to take effect by April 1st. Clark County (think Las Vegas) just this week released its local supplemental regulations for medical marijuana (which apply to all dispensaries, cultivation centers, edible makers and processors of infused marijuana, and all testing labs). These regulations make clear that if you want to operate a medical marijuana business in the unincorporated portions Clark County, you need to hand-deliver to the county's Business License Department all required documentation and information by April 22 at 3 p.m.

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Now That You Are A Real (Pot) Business. Part 1: Employment Law

As cannabis business lawyers, we constantly remind our clients that being legal businesses means they must comply with all laws -- not just those relating exclusively to marijuana. If you operate a legal cannabis business, you are going to be bound by the same laws that govern Wal-Mart or the deli down the street, plus a few more.

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Buyer Beware: Pot College and Cannabis Industry Consultants

As with any new and burgeoning market, the legalized marijuana industry is fertile ground for bad operators and scams. Chief among them are many (most?) of the “colleges” and “institutes” promising to educate patients, growers, dispensers, processors, employees, or some combination thereof on how to grow, sell, use, or provide counsel about marijuana. Add to

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They Said It On Marijuana Quotable Saturday, Part IV

This is our fourth post in our ongoing series of Saturday posts featuring great quotes regarding cannabis, mostly from public figures. This one is from astronomer Carl Sagan, the author of more than 600 scientific papers. Apparently, Sagan was very frustrated (as our we) with how science was playing no part in the banning of marijuana back in his day:

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Legalized Pot Frees Up Time/Money To Go After Real Criminals

One of the things we have always suspected would happen with marijuana legalization is a decreased workload for law enforcement.  And that is exactly what is happening in Washington State, thanks to I-502 cannabis legalization. The Seattle Times today ran a story, entitled, ACLU: Steep drop in pot cases has freed up resources, noting how only

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Feds Aren’t Happy With WA MMJ

Washington’s medical marijuana reform bill, SB 5887, died in the legislature this past week. This bill would have led to a major overhaul for Washington’s medical marijuana industry as it mandated that MMJ patients could secure their meds only from I-502 compliant stores (the stores allowed under Washington’s new recreational marijuana laws). We were not surprised

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Marijuana Across the Atlantic

As American cannabis business lawyers, we focus most of our attention on the evolution of marijuana laws here at home. However, it's also important to look at the marijuana laws and trends overseas to examine best practices from other countries. Today we look at the Netherlands, one of the first countries to liberalize its marijuana laws. Just as a side-note, our very first cannabis client was a Netherlands company that grew marijuana and produced grow lights specifically for the marijuana industry. It wanted to know about the laws in the Western United States (Washington, Oregon, and California) for both marijuana and for grow lights, so we're familiar with Dutch policies on marijuana.

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They Said It On Marijuana.Quotable Saturday, Part III

At Canna Law, we can never get enough of the pot puns and jokes. Thursday evening's Colbert Report was flush with them, as it featured several segments on marijuana. Colbert noted the Colorado (or, as he calls it, "Potsylvania") Department of Revenue's announcement this week that it took in more than $2 million in tax revenues in January on recreational pot sales. Forbes reported that the combined tax revenues from recreational and medical marijuana sales of $3.5 million is 1% of the total annual budgets for the states of Delaware, South Dakota, Montana, and West Virginia. In other words, serious coin.

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Drive High? DUI

Colorado's Department of Transportation (CDOT) has made educating its citizens on the dangers of "driving high" a priority. Both Washington and Colorado (the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana), have laws on their books regarding driving while under the influence of marijuana and both set stringent limits of intoxication that will net drivers violations for Driving Under the Influence (DUI).

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They Said It On Marijuana Quotable Saturday, Part II

This is the second post in our ongoing series of Saturday posts featuring great quotes regarding cannabis, mostly from public figures. This one is from televangelist and prepetual nutcase Pat Robertson, the point of which is not to show that even a broken clock is accurate twice a day (once if digital) but to arm our readers with a quote that they can use with a particular crowd. This comes from a 2012 New York Times interview:

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