Nevada’s legal marijuana business may be off to a fast start, but the state’s gaming establishment is still scratching their collective heads about how best to approach the activity, given that it is still prohibited under federal law.
A panel of gaming regulators and legal experts at G2E on Monday emphasized that firm answers were still elusive with regards to how casinos handle employees’ and patrons’ use of the substance, as well as how operators should interact with third parties that are involved in the marijuana business in some form, so as not to put their licenses in jeopardy.
Terry Johnson, a member of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, emphasized that, for gaming – the state’s most important industry – there are a lot more moving parts and secondary implications to legal marijuana than voters probably realized when they opted to approve it last year.
But the safest course of action, as it stands now, is to either firmly decide whether you’re in the casino business or the marijuana business and avoid double-dipping, the panel noted, as the NGCB won’t license entities involved in recreational or medical marijuana.
Flavio Quintana, director of the Colorado Division of Gaming, said that he has cautioned gaming operators in his state away from any flirtations with marijuana because of federal implications.
“As marijuana has become more prevalent, I’ve had operators contact me saying ‘I’d like to get into that business,’” he said. “That’s going to be a big dilemma.”
Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2014.
Quintana reckoned that in Colorado, even an association or the appearance of an association with a business or an individual engaged in the marijuana business could put an operator’s licensing status in jeopardy. He referenced one individual who relinquished his gaming license to pursue the marijuana path.
The federal-state disparity in the legal framework – marijuana being legal under state law while prohibited under federal law for any purpose – figures to become a bit muddier under new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the panel reckoned.
While guidance issued in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice laid out the agency’s priorities for enforcing marijuana laws, Sessions has taken a less sympathetic posture toward the growing trend of states legalizing marijuana for medicinal and recreational use, although he has yet to reverse the guidance or make any other policy edicts.
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval has convened the state’s Gaming Policy Committee to examine the interplay between gaming and marijuana and produce a series of recommendations as to how to proceed.
