Las Vegas Assemblyman Planning Bill to Legalize Marijuana Deliveries to the Strip

Assemblyman Max Carter is a retired electrician who claims he helped install the beam atop the Luxor. Now he's writing a bill that he says will wipe out shady marijuana delivery networks while allowing casinos and legal dispensaries to better serve tourists on the Strip. (Image: courtesy of Max Carter)

Recreational cannabis has been legal in Nevada since 2017. By most measures legal pot has been a success, serving the public while generating nearly a billion dollars in sales and more than $130 million in tax revenue annually without causing significant societal harm. 

But most people don’t know that weed isn’t legal on the Strip. While police choose not to chase down the source of every whiff of indica or sativa wafting across Las Vegas Boulevard, casino licensees are forbidden from engaging in commercial relationships with cannabis businesses, and cannabis licensees are prohibited from delivering pot to casinos or anywhere along the resort corridor. 

Nevada Assemblyman Max Carter (D-Las Vegas) wants to change that. He tells Casinos.com that he is writing legislation to be introduced in 2025 that will legalize cannabis deliveries to the Strip while also creating for the two industries to begin working together. 

“There's cannabis being consumed out there on the Strip,” Carter says. “We all know it. Let's make sure that it's done in a safe, legal way and a way that benefits our state.” 

Carter says that Nevada is missing out on a lot of tax revenue because tourists, unaware of the Strip prohibitions, are buying marijuana from gray-market operators instead of licensed (and taxed) dispensaries. 

Last Wednesday, Carter filed a Bill Draft Request for “Revised Provisions Related to Cannabis.” Such BDRs essentially reserve a place for forthcoming bills to be considered in the upcoming legislative session, which begins Feb. 3, 2025. Carter’s BDR is one of several related to cannabis on the list. 

His bill, he says, will create a way for legal dispensaries to sell their products to customers on the Strip, and begin to strip away commercial restrictions between Nevada’s two gold-standard regulated industries, gaming and cannabis.

Carter, a freshman assemblyman representing the east side of Las Vegas, was in attendance last week at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law for a panel discussion put on by the Cannabis Policy Institute and International Gaming Institute, in which lawyers, researchers and academics discussed the challenges of bringing these two industries together.

Seedy Delivery Options

When Nevada legalized recreational cannabis in 2016 (with the law taking effect on Jan. 1, 2017), there was concern about gaming licensees running afoul of federal law that still viewed cannabis as an illegal substance. At the same time, upstart dispensaries were struggling with how to handle millions of dollars in cash transactions. 

In an effort to keep marijuana money separate from casino cash, gaming regulators stated unequivocally that casinos and pot couldn’t mix. In 2017, the Nevada Department of Taxation banned delivery to any gaming establishment, and Clark County extended that prohibition to the entire Strip resort corridor, even for non-gaming venues.

Carter contends this unintentionally allowed an unregulated sector of the cannabis industry to thrive. “We created a bit of a vacuum,” he says, “which is allowing illicit trade to flourish.”

While tourists see billboards and taxicabs advertising legal dispensaries around Las Vegas, they often get hit with similar social media promotions offering delivery options that look like they are coming from legal dispensaries but are not.

“These illicit delivery operations do a very good job of masking,” Carter says, “of pretending that they're part of the legal cannabis trade.” 

He compares these gray-market pot sellers offering “delivery to your room” as similar to “card slappers” who advertise legal escort services as a cover for illegal prostitution.

Cannabis Policy Institute Director Riana Durret says that there really is no longer a need for some of the separation between cannabis and casino finances that allowed an illicit industry to pop up. 

“Initial concerns about cannabis being a cash-heavy industry were legitimate,” Durrett says, “But since the initial separations between gaming and cannabis were imposed, banking and financial compliance has become available to the cannabis industry.” 

FinCen, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, she notes has released guidance to banks and credit unions for working with cannabis establishments, which should allow them to operate within a regulated gaming framework.

Seeking Cannabis Kiosks and Casino Collaboration

Carter, a retired electrician who was first elected to the state assembly in 2022, says he’ll spend the next month working on the language with stakeholders to create a bill that can pass. His vision calls for a system of cannabis kiosks where Strip denizens can purchase edibles, vapes, and smokable flower outside the gaming properties. 

“I don't think that there's appetite yet for a dispensary inside a casino,” Carter says, “so I’m envisioning a kiosk off-site.”

The second issue his bill will address is the standing prohibition against casino operators and gaming licensees doing business with dispensaries and others in the cannabis industry. 

“We need to start looking at allowing joint ventures and relationships and not penalizing somebody with the threat of removal of their license if they have anything to do with the cannabis industry,” Carter says.

Though the freshman legislator acknowledges this part could be trickier, he believes state law can free up regulators from being handcuffed by unenforced federal laws as new standards are written.

Opposition Expected

Carter anticipates some opposition to his bill from both the cannabis and gaming industries, and their regulators, but strongly believes opening discussion is an important first step toward enacting legislative change.

“I expect them to be highly skeptical, if not downright oppositional,” Carter says. “But I'm hopeful that we can have the groundwork laid for communication and discussion. The ground is fertile to get something across the finish line by the end of the session.”

Next steps for Carter are to get additional input as he writes the bill so he can craft something that assuages the needs and concerns of various stakeholders. 

“Vegas has always been a magical, transformational place,” Carter says. “When people say, ‘Oh, isn't it terrible? They're imploding the Tropicana,’ no, it's not terrible. That's what we're about – letting the past go and embracing the future. We constantly reinvent ourselves. That's what Vegas does.”