For months The lawsuit over Nevada’s Scheduled 1 drug designation of marijuana is finally over. weeks after a Judge, Clark County District Court weighed in on a closely followed Lawsuit against the Nevada Board of Pharmacy finding that the inclusion of cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug violates the state constitutionthe final decision was issued on Wednesday, The Nevada Independent reported.

With the new decisionwhich follows an interesting state court-level precedent that attempted to remove the Schedule 1 classification of cannabis, Judge Joe Hardy stripped the Board of Pharmacy of its power to regulate cannabis.

The judge said the panel “acted outside of its powers in failing to delist cannabis from the List of Schedule I substances.” even though voters changed the state constitution to legalize medical marijuana.

“If the [pharmacy] if the board designates a substance as a ‘controlled substance’, but the designation falls outside the authority delegated by the legislature, the designation is invalid,” reads the new decision said.

Nevada legalized the use of medical marijuana in 2000, followed by another vote in 2017 to legalize the sale and use of recreational cannabis.

background

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada won a clear victory in September after filing the lawsuit in April 2022. Judge Hardy echoed the ACLU’s argument that marijuana has an accepted medical use.

“The idea that a state agency is able to take illegal actions because that’s what the federal government is doing — it just doesn’t work that way,” he said Athar Hasebullah, Executive Director of the ACLU on July 15 after the first hearing. “They don’t work for the federal authorities. We didn’t sue the DEA here. We have sued the State Board of Pharmacy because this is a state action.”

The Plaintiffs—Cannabis Equity and Inclusion Community (CEIC) and Antoine Poole through counsel for the ACLU– applied for an injunction alleging that despite the passing of the Nevada Medical…