Approve, disapprove, like, hate, or any other opinion otherwise, one thing is fact in Washoe County – the recreational use of marijuana is legal in Nevada. With the journey to legalization spanning nearly two decades, Washoe County has been actively preparing for the impacts of legalization for the past two years.
After adopting temporary codes and regulations during 2017, the County set out to create permanent codes in 2018. As they approached the code amendments this year, we helped guide them through the public input process. Here are a few awesome takeaways from their work:
- The County is doing a great job educating the community on their role in regulation. To help the community make informed opinions and understand the role of local government, the County created a series of communications that clearly articulate their role, the state’s role, and broke down some of the common misconceptions about marijuana in the community.
- The process gave the community the opportunity to voice their opinion and concerns. The County outlined the specific areas of codes and regulation they needed the public’s opinion and guidance on. They hosted an in-person public meeting and provided a digital citizen’s survey to collect the results.
- They’ll be amending codes and communicating the outcomes. The Washoe County Board of County Commissioners will directly use the input from the community to create permanent county codes.
This is a great example of how government can tune into the voice of their constituents to create regulations and codes to impact their community. Nice work!
