Las Vegas City Council wary of going too deep into the weeds with marijuana rules

The Las Vegas City Council favors merging recreational and medical marijuana establishments into the same land-use category, but will hold off on legislating other local recreational marijuana matters.

Councilman Ricki Barlow said during Wednesday’s council meeting he didn’t want the city to define rules and have them unraveled because the state has not given clarity on recreational marijuana since November, when it was approved by voters.

“I believe it’s premature at this point to specifically tell you what we want,” Barlow told the city’s planning staff.

The city’s planning department updated the council on the implementation of legalized recreational marijuana and asked for guidance at Wednesday’s council meeting.

The council directed city staff to work toward rules that would treat marijuana establishments that secure dual licenses to sell pot for both medical and recreational purposes and to consider using the same combined standards for all marijuana establishments permanently in the future.

The council did not touch possible restrictions for where marijuana can be used, in either defining public places, dispensary lounges or commercial spaces. The council gave direction on land use because those decisions are expected to stay with the local governments.

“We’re not jumping in front of the Legislature of that,” Councilman Bob Beers said.

The other land use possibilities city staff presented to the council included creating a designation in city land use plan specific to recreational marijuana, or putting a moratorium on retail marijuana sales. No Las Vegas council-members called for the moratorium. The Henderson City Council unanimously adopted a six-month moratorium on recreational sales.

City staffers from a dozen departments have regularly met as the Marijuana Policy Operations Team to hash out how Nevada legalizing recreational pot will affect Las Vegas.

That team has been considering a range of issues tied to recreational marijuana, including data collection — Denver and Seattle were inundated with data requests following the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington, said Karen Duddlesten, the city’s deputy planning director.

Councilman Bob Coffin doesn’t want the city’s licensing regulations to “tie it up with so much red tape” that operators can’t get into the business or stay in business, he said.

Coffin urged the city to work with other local governments so there’s uniformity between the different jurisdictions. Clark County recently created a Green Ribbon Panel to weigh in on recreational marijuana issues.

Contact Jamie Munks at jmunks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Follow @JamieMunksRJ on Twitter.