Cannabis businesses frustrated by $111-per-hour Bills for State Regulator Tasks

Steve Cantwell has been cultivating cannabis for the past seven years through Green Life Productions, his Pahrump-based farm, and had no problems with state regulators when Nevada’s health and taxation departments oversaw the industry.

But that all changed when the Cannabis Compliance Board took over two years ago. At a recent routine visit, Cantwell said, the inspector raised a litany of concerns about the company’s organic growing methods, kicking off an ongoing tug-of-war that’s forced the company to pay nearly $30,000 for regulators to carry out their oversight duties.

“He came in … really just guns a blazing,” he said. “They told us everything that we were doing, literally everything we were doing, was wrong, which was a huge surprise to us.”