As research advances, experts urge cannabis rescheduling amid ongoing market challenges in Nevada

This story first appeared in our newsletter. Sign up to receive stories like this straight to your inbox.

Eight years ago, Nevadans voted to legalize cannabis for recreational use. But a lot has changed since 2017.

According to the UNLV Cannabis Policy Institute (CPI) 2024 report, the most prominent trend in the industry has been rapidly falling prices in retail cannabis—good news for anyone who consumes regularly. Those prices, according to the report, will likely continue to fall.

In most states that have legalized cannabis, prices started high. But across the US, over the past decade, legalization, growth, and technology adoption — alongside the decriminalization of the illegal market — has helped lower the so-called “risk premium.” 

Over the course of 2023, Nevada retail prices for flower and edibles fell by about 10%, concentrates fell by about 4%, and pre-rolls fell by about 1%. 

And while cannabis retail stores and medical dispensaries earned more than $829 million in revenue across the state, from July 2023 through June 2024, there is still a robust illegal cannabis market in tourist areas like the Las Vegas Strip. 

“There was an expectation that the legal market would replace the illegal market… But it has not been as easy to replace the illegal market as people thought it would be,” Riana Durrett, director of CPI, told The Nevadan. “The opportunities to purchase and consume in Nevada are probably more limited than they could be or than people expect.” 

State law prohibits legal cannabis retailers from being located within 1,500 feet of gaming establishments. According to the CPI report, that leads to illegal sellers having a 100% market share in that area. 

“A lot of tourists may be surprised that you have to go to the state-licensed store and they don’t really even know the difference between the licensed stores or an illegal delivery operation on the internet,” Durrett said. 

Durrett, who also serves on the Nevada Cannabis Compliance Board, said it’s estimated that about a third of cannabis sales are still happening through the illegal market. She said the limited opportunities to purchase and consume publicly and “just human behavior if the price is right” propel the illegal market sales. 

“There was definitely a belief 10 years ago that the businesses would be much more profitable, that sales prices were not gonna go down, that there was going to be much more economic opportunity in cannabis, specifically more tourist opportunity. And so it was more optimistic back then,” Durrett said, reflecting on the industry.

The need to reclassify cannabis

When it comes to perception, cannabis advocates say rescheduling and decriminalizing cannabis both on the state and federal level is important to paving the way to better understanding potential health benefits. Marijuana is still considered a Schedule I substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act, meaning that it has a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical benefit.

“Most Americans can agree that it has been over-criminalized; it’s been treated in a manner that it doesn’t deserve,” Durrett said. “Of course, it is not the same as heroin [which is also classified as a Schedule 1 drug].” 

In 2019, the Nevada Legislature created the Cannabis Compliance Board to regulate marijuana. It classified marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, which a judge later found unconstitutional. But last year, that decision was appealed by the Board of Pharmacy, and the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the decision citing procedural issues with the case. 

Reclassifying cannabis from a Schedule I to a lower schedule in Nevada would make it easier for researchers to better investigate the plant’s medicinal uses. 

UNLV neuroscientist and psychology professor Dustin Hines is doing some of that work — focusing on how psychedelics like mushrooms and psychoactives like cannabis affect the brain, especially in helping people with seizures, PTSD, anxiety, and overall mental health.

“Infantile seizures are something really hard to treat because if we give the normal drugs to littles that stop seizures, we also stop their brain development. And so Epidiolex, which is CBD, almost stopped the seizures in these littles in some cases,” Hines said. “This isn’t the plant out of the 60s that everyone said, you know, was gonna make you ‘reefer madness, play the piano too fast’ and do these other things—it has actual medicinal use.”

Hines’ passion is finding “novel therapeutics” for mental health disorders, he told The Nevadan. 

“Look, people have been using compounds for 10,000 years that we know work. Let’s tap into this. And so the analogy I use is, I think the plants are great but for millennia we chewed willow bark — and in willow bark we knew that we got some pain relief. So in that willow bark we found aspirin,” Hines said. “I think the plants do a good job at what they do, but from aspirin came, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, naproxen, all these other drugs. So we’re really excited in the lab to kinda look at what other cultures past and present have figured out from these plants and see if there are other molecules and other ways to understand the brain.” 

And while recreational cannabis use is legal in Nevada, he also emphasized the need to further decriminalize and reschedule the drug. 

“If we look at the use and harm of alcohol and tobacco, they’re really horrible drugs. They’re highly addictive. They create social problems,” Hines said. “When we look at people outside a nightclub with way too much alcohol in them, and their behavior, and then we look at somebody with marijuana, we see it’s not quite the devil we thought it was gonna be.”