Posted: August 1, 2022, 10:38 a.m.
Last update on: August 1, 2022, 01:38h.
Tourists who legally buy marijuana in Las Vegas will finally have a legal place to consume it. In June, Nevada’s Cannabis Compliance Board (NCCB) voted to approve the regulation of cannabis parlors to operate in the state. The first should be online before 2023.
Cannabis lounges, also known as cannabis cafes, provide users with a legal and safe place to smoke or vape while enjoying a social experience analogous to cigar bars. The Nevada Legislature legalized them in 2019, but the NCCB had to approve their regulations before they opened.
Currently, 20 legally licensed dispensaries operate just north of the Las Vegas Strip. (They’re banned from the tourist corridor.) These include Planet 13, the world’s largest dispensary at 40,000 square feet, and numerous drive-thrus that dispense dried leaves, edibles, and canisters. vaping.
Forbidden to tourists
But the overwhelming majority of tourists who buy marijuana legally from these stores end up forced to use it illegally.
Various laws prohibit smoking or vaping on the street, in hotel rooms, or in cars. And even tourists who obey these laws violate others, because driving their unused marijuana across state lines or taking it on a plane are both federal offenses. (Cannabis is still listed as a Schedule 1 drug under U.S. Code Title 21 Section 812.)
“Technically, visitors having nowhere to consume their products has been a frustrating catch-22 for years,” Juliana Whitney, CEO of Cann Strategy, a Las Vegas business advisory firm seeking to open up in this often confusing new regulatory landscape. , Told Casino.org.
Ignorance is bliss
Currently, a private residence is one of only two types of places where marijuana can be consumed in the Las Vegas Valley. But unless tourists are staying at an Airbnb or know a local, they don’t have a private residence close at hand.
According to Whitney, most tourists openly smoke on the Strip or in their hotel parking lots.
People don’t often have problems because of that,” Whitney told Casino.org. “The police can fine or arrest people for this. But you don’t hear too much about it because it’s decriminalized, so they’re not actively pursuing it.
Whitney said most tourists are unaware that public consumption is not legal “because they think that if they can freely buy the products in nice stores, the consumption of these products must be just as acceptable”.
The only other location currently legal for use is The Vegas Tasting Room cannabis lounge at the NuWu Cannabis Marketplace, located five miles north of the Strip. This dispensary opened the salon in 2019, taking advantage of a regulatory loophole as it is on tribal land.
Lounge
According to the NCCB, Las Vegas will eventually offer 40 lounges, following a lottery to determine which licensees would be approved. Twenty will be open inside the dispensaries, and 20 independently. Half of independent salon licenses will be awarded to “social equity” seekers.
Cannabis consumption in the new lounges will be limited to individual 3.5 gram servings of “usable cannabis”, according to the council, and unused cannabis cannot be removed from the cannabis lounge.
Although Whitney still finds these rules somewhat restrictive, she said, “I’m glad that at least tourists have the option of not breaking the law.”
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