More than two months after CityLife predicted they would, enterprising activists are openly challenging Nevada’s longstanding prohibition of medical marijuana dispensaries.

In recent weeks, a handful of California-style pot clinics has cropped up across the Las Vegas valley, offering patients who hold state-issued medical marijuana cards the chance to get their medicine from someone besides a drug dealer.

Amanda Pacheco, who opened the Organic Solutions dispensary on East Tropicana Avenue earlier this week, says she’s tired of waiting on myopic state lawmakers to codify a safe, sane legal mechanism by which desperate patients can get the medicine they need. (Under current state law medical marijuana patients here must either grow their own or find a benevolent caregiver willing to supply them for free.)

“The reason we set up shop is we saw a huge local need for a decent place for people to obtain their medication. Our patients are legitimately sick. The last thing they need is to go into some dark back alley to obtain the medicine they need,” she says.

Pacheco, who says she was inspired to open a dispensary after her father began legally using medical marijuana to treat a severe back injury, says neither local cops nor federal agents have harassed her – yet.

“So far, so good,” she says while wondering aloud whether law enforcement agents even know about her brand-new dispensary.

Whether the cops ever knock down her door, Pacheco says she feels she’s doing nothing wrong by helping card-carrying patients obtain access to this healing plant.

The real crime, she says, are oppressive state statutes that make little provision for patients to obtain cannabis here. “We are hoping Nevada will change its laws so we can be a regular retail establishment, but what we’re doing here – it’s not a crime,” she says.

To guard against possible prosecution, Pacheco set up Organic Solutions as a nonprofit and does not technically sell weed to patients (she does accept donations), but her actions do, in fact, run afoul of state law. Although allowing medical marijuana here since 2001, state statutes don’t permit anyone to buy, sell or trade the plant, its seeds or its flowers in exchange for money or anything of value – what the law calls “consideration.”

This crop of new local pot dispensaries seems to have slightly flummoxed local and federal law enforcement officials who seemed surprised to learn of their existence from a reporter.

Officers with Metro haven’t yet commented on whether they’ll shut down the growing number of local dispensaries. However, considering that until late October federal officials were actually the ones most aggressively pursuing dispensary owners, any eventual raids and subsequent prosecutions would likely come at the hands of federal officials.

Newly reinstated U.S. Attorney Dan Bogden says his office isn’t focusing its resources on those whose actions are in clear compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. “However, the prosecution of criminal enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement policy of the United States Department of Justice and will remain so,” he says.

For the full story on Las Vegas’s new crop of local pot dispensaries – including how one of them actually managed to obtain a city of Las Vegas business license – don’t miss next week’s edition of Las Vegas CityLife.

baby elephant

The Tea Party faction of the Clark County Republican Party is going rogue. In a meeting last night at the Clak County Library, members of the Nevada Action Coalition – which is not officially recognized by the county GOP — plotted a strategy for the upcoming election.

This is the same group that seized power last year, after quietly building strength outside the official party structure. Their struggles didn’t end there. Apparently, the establishment Republicans, who support moderate politicians such as state Sen. Bill Raggio and gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval, can’t stomach the fundamentalist doctrine espoused by these upstarts. So they’re trying to dislodge them from the central committee, according to representatives of the coalition.

The coalition plans to create its own slate of candidates, which it will support with its own phone banks and its own door knockers. They won’t be sharing these resources with the GOP, unless the party nominates candidates with the proper right-wing bonafides.

This must be giving the GOP brass major heartburn. After all, they have an opportunity this year to replace U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, but it’s going to be much harder to do without a functional ground game in Clark County. The party may be strongest in the north and rurals, but its largest bloc of registered voters still lives in the south. Clark County has 242,219 registered Republicans, compared to Washoe’s 90,874.

You can bet the Dems will unite behind the unpopular Reid. If he wins, the Republicans may have no one to blame but each other.