Prosecutor’s threat takes the cannabis out of Nevada Cannabis Cup

Nevada’s federal prosecutor has snuffed out plans to celebrate the state’s new recreational marijuana law by lighting up on an Indian reservation.

U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden, in a letter to the Moapa Band of Paiutes, said federal law applies and pot smokers could be prosecuted if they used during a weekend cannabis festival.

Organizers of the High Times Cannabis Cup festival said there will be music, T-shirts and souvenirs at the event at a Moapa Band of Paiutes festival site on Saturday and Sunday.

But spokesman Joe Brezny said it will essentially be just a concert.

“We’ve removed the marijuana,” he said. “There will be no smoking area, no edibles competition, no cannabis topicals or lotions.”

Brezny said more than 10,000 tickets were sold for the festival about 35 miles north of the Las Vegas Strip. The concert is headlined by hip-hop artist Ludacris.

Robert Capecchi, federal policies chief at the Marijuana Policy Project advocacy group in Washington, D.C., said a lot of attendees might be disappointed or upset that they can’t smoke on site.

But he noted that laws are different in federal areas within the eight states that have legalized recreational marijuana and the 28 states and the District of Columbia where medical marijuana is legal.

“There’s a different balance between the federal government and Indian tribes and the federal government and the states,” Capecchi said.

Bogden said a 2013 Obama administration directive that was seen as relaxing enforcement on tribal lands in states where pot is legal might have been misinterpreted. Pot remains illegal in Indian Country and on federal land, he said.

The sentence in his letter to the tribe was underlined, along with the warning that “federal investigation and prosecution may still be appropriate.”

That was enough to prompt the tribe to declare that its police and event security won’t allow smoking, selling or transporting marijuana at its festival grounds near its fireworks stand, liquor outlet and smoke shop just off Interstate 15.

“We hope that attendees enjoy themselves and comply with applicable law,” Darren Daboda, chairman of the tribe with about 350 members and a sprawling 112-square-mile reservation, said in a statement.