Tuesday before last, the Nevada Gaming Control Board issued a bizarre letter to slot-route operators and other "restricted" licensees. When checking up on said slot operators, Control Board investigators had made the shocking discovery of "drug paraphernalia." The board, in essence, is threatening to strip the licenses from operators deemed to be selling said "drug paraphernalia."
In a Kafka-esque statement, the Control Board quotes Nevada law to the effect that "The innocence of an owner or of anyone in control of the object …. does not prevent a finding that the object is intended for use or designed for use as an item of drug paraphernalia." So you’re guilty until proven innocent … and maybe not even then.
The list of proscribed items includes simple scales for weighing, carburetor pipes and the catch-all "Containers and other objects used, inended for use, or designed for use in storing on concealing controlled substances." As City Life Editor Steve Sebelius pointed out, the banning of "Blenders, bowls, containers, spoons and mixing devices," could apply just as well to the equipment you use to make angel-food cake.
In a further touch of absurdity, "Descriptive materials accompanying the object which explain or depict its use" are further prima facie evidence of guilt. Simple packs of rolling papers could run afoul of the Control Board’s new nanny-state mission. So convenience stores may find themselves forced to choose between slots and rolling papers.
The penny drops when you see the signature at the bottom of the letter: NGCB member Randall E. Sayre. And just who is Randall Sayre? Why, he’s the very appointee of Gov. "Midnight Jim" Gibbons, who had himself sworn into office in the dark of night (in a ceremony resembling a coup d’etat or an occult ritual than an orderly transition of power), in order to foil outgoing Gov. Kenny Guinn’s appointment of Keith Munro to the NGCB.
Now, as Midnight Jim’s man on the Control Board, Sayre is spearheading this crazy-ass move to get the NGCB into the drug-enforcement business. As though the Control Board weren’t, by all accounts, stretched thin already. So, instead of investigating things like the infiltration of Nevada by Stanley Ho (read to the bottom of Liz Benston’s piece, in which she reveals that Pansy Ho borrowed most of her MGM Grand Macau grubstake from Dear Old Mobbed-Up Dad) or checking the EPROM chips in slot machines, Control Board agents are to be conducting a dragnet for ill-defined "drug paraphernalia."
Never mind that the "War on Drugs" (more of a war on drug addicts and our Constitution, if you ask me) was lost a long time ago. It looks as though Midnight Jim is hijacking the state of Nevada’s gaming-regulatory mechanism for an anti-drug crusade. As I said at the time of the Munro imbroglio, Gibbons has placed a thick, greasy thumb on the scales of gambling regulation. The sooner he is removed from office (hardly unlikely, given an oil slick of corruption allegations a mile wide), the better.
Still too good to be true? Mark Adams has found that Steve Wynn has snagged two additional parcels of land, one right behind KLAS-TV headquarters, the other the current Chamber of Commerce building. (Persistent rumor has it that Wynn covets this site in order to convert it into a strip club, thereby keeping his more lecherous high rollers on-property.)
Better still, a source in the real estate community says Wynn is making a play for the Las Vegas Country Club. Confirmation isn’t available yet but, if Wynn is still planning to grind up his $450 million Desert Inn golf course, it’s logical that he’d seek to replace it with another one. Though maybe he should have thought of that before dropping nearly half a billion bucks on re-orienting the Desert Inn course, money that Wynn is preparing — if his use-permit applications are to be trusted — to flush down the toilet.
