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Tick Segerblom, State Senator

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Tick Segerblom
Photo: Steve Marcus

The grandfather of marijuana in Nevada, State Sen. Tick Segerblom has been perhaps the single-strongest driving force in making legal cannabis a reality in our home state. Segerblom, who was first elected to the Nevada Assembly in 2007 before moving to the Senate in 2013, started with medical marijuana, laying the legislative groundwork to open dispensaries and testing labs—along with cultivation and production facilities—during the 2013 and 2015 Nevada State Legislatures. This year, Segerblom crafted bills to make Nevada voters’ recreational-weed dreams real.

With a customized “early start” plan informed by a December 2016 fact-finding trip to meet with Oregon legislators, Segerblom helped Nevada kick off recreational sales six months before Ballot Question 2 called for it on January 1, 2018. As an early result of his desire to turn Las Vegas into an “Amsterdam on steroids,” Nevada amassed nearly $8 million in marijuana tax revenue in July and August alone.

Segerblom maintains that at its current pace and rate of growth, the Nevada cannabis industry will shatter the two-year, $120 million tax revenue figure estimated by state officials— funds that could beef up education and police forces across the state. “It’s just the beginning,” Segerblom says. “There’s a whole lot more where this came from."

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