​A bill currently before the Nevada Legislature would create a system to provide safe access to cannabis for qualified patients under the state’s medical marijuana law.

Nevada Appeal. The current system allows those with a legitimate medical need to get a card permitting them to use marijuana, but provides no mechanism for safe access. Sen. Mike Schneider (D-Las Vegas) on Wednesday asked the Commerce and Labor Committee, which he chairs, to support the dispensary bill, reports Geoff Dornan at the. The current system allows those with a legitimate medical need to get a card permitting them to use marijuana, but provides no mechanism for safe access.

Nevada needs to allow the creation of a system that fixes that problem, according to Schneider.

Several people testified in favor of Senate Bill 336 including Rebecca Gasca of the American Civil Liberties Union, who said because Nevada voters put into the state constitution the right to medical marijuana, “this is a constitutional right in the state of Nevada.”

​More than two-thirds of voters supported the medical marijuana question, according to Gasca, but lawmakers didn’t follow through with a system to provide safe access to cannabis.

“There’s no legal way for them to obtain their medicine,” Gasca said. “It’s forcing patients to engage in felonious activity.”

Schneider said medical marijuana authorization data would be computerized, enabling authorities to look for doctors issuing “too many” authorizations.

The other real issue, according to Schneider, is the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which goes after growers, providers and doctors.

The committee took no action on the measure.

Gasca said after the hearing for SB 336 that Assembly Bill 438, introduced by Ed Goedhart (R-Amargosa), is a better approach that sets up a three-tiered system of growers, processors and providers to get medical marijuana to those who need it and are authorized to use it medically.

That bill hasn’t been processed yet.