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VEGAS INC Shadow network of dispensaries operate in legal gray area By Andrew Doughman, Conor Shine staff writers Operating out of an unassuming strip mall on West Charleston Boulevard, Sin City Co-Op provided marijuana to patients who had a legal right to use it as medicine under state law. But after an undercover officer obtained marijuana from the co-op as part of a series of valley-wide stings on medical dispensaries in 2011, Sin City Co-Op was shut down and its owners arrested. The raids temporarily wiped out a fledgling industry of medical marijuana dispensaries that operated on the fringes of the law. Although a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2000 guaranteed citizens a right to use medical marijuana with a doctor's prescription, no formal system for obtaining the drug legally was ever established. The Legislature started fixing the system last session; starting next spring, patients should have a variety of licensed and legal dispensaries at which to shop. For now, though, a shadow network of delivery-based medical marijuana businesses have stepped in to fill the void left by the once-prohibited and now soonto-be-legal storefront dispensaries. A search on weedmaps.com reveals at least 40 delivery operations in the valley, with names like Super Buds North, Kush Heaven and MMJ Express, with listed phone numbers and user reviews. The businesses were reluctant to reveal much information about themselves when VEGAS INC called. "Everything's in a gray area. It just doesn't make sense to draw attention to ourselves," one delivery operator said. While many of the medical marijuana delivery businesses will likely lack the $250,000 in capital required to apply for a state dispensary license, at least a few are looking at going legitimate. "We are in the process of going forward to become legal," said the owner of LV Green Care, who does business under the pseudonym Jason Pappas. "I have my lobbyists and lawyers we're paying. I have my big-money investors who are looking to move into it as well." Pappas said that the medical marijuana industry in Las Vegas is based on delivery services. He said he tries to operate within the bounds of the law as they currently are written, working only with licensed cardholders and taking donations instead of selling the marijuana. "It says 'free' on our bottles and we ask | 28 October 2013 20131028_VI01_F.indd 17 | ANDREW DOUGHMAN LEARNING CURVE: Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore learns about different types of marijuana and the uses for each during a trip to a dispensary in Arizona in March. for a small donation in return. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we don't...there's a lot of people in this town who are just doing it wrong. They're just thugs off the street," said Pappas, who also provides marijuana to cardholders from Arizona and California when they visit Las Vegas. The 10-month gap between the passage of the state's dispensary laws and when they go into effect has made policing dispensaries and medical marijuana businesses more difficult, said Chuck Calloway, Metro Police's director of intergovernmental services. "It's not that we're turning a blind eye to that and not enforcing it. It's more that there's the gray area there with medical marijuana so we are focusing more of our attention to the actual grow operations we've seen," he said. The opening of legal dispensaries next year will likely push out many of these illegal operations, Calloway said, and make it easier for police to target those that remain. "Once the legitimate dispensaries are up and running, it'll be much more black and white for us. You're either following the law or not," he said. The change in law does little good for Sin City Co-Op co-owner Leonard Schwingdorf and the roughly 20 other people arrested in the 2011 stings who now face federal and state charges for distributing illegal narcotics. "Not only is he being prosecuted, he's facing a life sentence," said Schwingdorf's lawyer Gary Modaferri. Schwingdorf and co-owner Nathan Hamilton, who both held state medical marijuana cards, operated their dispensary as a cooperative, pooling the marijuana plants each member was allowed to grow and then redistributing it, Modaferri said. The state argued Sin City Co-Op sold the marijuana, a violation of state narcotics statute's while Modaferri has argued that the co-owners merely asked for a donation. "There was no demand for money," Modaferri said. A Clark County District Court judge threw out the case against Schwingdorf and Hamilton in 2012, calling the state's medical marijuana law unconstitutional because it doesn't provide a way for qualified customers to interact with qualified distributors. The case was appealed and is now awaiting a decision from the Nevada Supreme Court after oral arguments were made in September. Modaferri said laws aren't applied retroactively, so the Legislature's recent action probably won't do much good for his client or the other Las Vegas dispensary workers still facing prosecution. "It depends," he said. "It's really fact specific when prohibited conduct later becomes legal. Hopefully the supreme court will let the sleeping dogs lie and keep the charges dismissed." SENATOR SEEKS PARDONS FOR PATIENTS By Andrew Doughman staff writer Sen. Tick Segerblom wants to pardon some Nevadans' felony convictions for marijuana possession and sale. Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, plans to introduce a bill during the 2015 legislative session requiring the state to grant pardons for medical marijuana cardholders in Nevada. "The idea is to go back and clean up some records for people whose sole crime was possession or sale of marijuana," he said. "I'm going to propose a pardon, essentially." The bill would be a way to forgive Nevadans who operated under an unclear law governing medical marijuana and inadvertently became criminals, he said. Although access to medical marijuana has been a state constitutional right in Nevada for more than a decade, patients had no legal way to obtain it. They could grow plants but not obtain seeds. They could have marijuana but not transfer it to another patient. So patients often were arrested and convicted for the possession or sale of marijuana. Segerblom and Sen. Mark Hutchison, R-Las Vegas, pushed a bill through the Nevada Legislature this year establishing a regulated, taxed and licensed system for dispensing medical marijuana to patients with state-issued medical marijuana cards. The system should make it clear who can legally grow, sell or possess marijuana. Segerblom reasoned that because the old system unjustly criminalized Nevadans trying to exercise a constitutional right, it's fair to retroactively pardon patients. But state pardons have a specific legal meaning. Only the governor, Nevada Supreme Court and attorney general can grant them. So Segerblom may need to find a different legal mechanism by which he could propose to forgive or negate such convictions. "There will be a process where you can come back to court, and if you have a medical marijuana card and you have some kind of criminal record, there would be a process where you could have that removed," he said. 17 10/23/13 4:33:15 PM