Panel explores future of cannabis use at Las Vegas casinos amid federal and state restrictions

It’s illegal to smoke or consume cannabis products in Nevada casinos, but marijuana use on the Resort Corridor is still prevalent.

From the storefronts on Fremont Street advertising various types of flower to the tourists crammed into alleyways or in parking garages adjoining Strip resorts enjoying a smoke, many people aren’t aware that cannabis has been outlawed from gaming establishment properties.

Legal recreational marijuana sales launched here in 2017, but a federal ban on the product still exists, forcing casinos to ban cannabis from their premises.

“That’s the best irony in this whole thing is that it’s already happening everywhere, both incidents — gaming and marijuana — are happening together, separately, but all over everywhere, so we’re talking about an imaginary line,” Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom said during a panel this week hosted by UNLV’s Cannabis Policy Institute. “Why don’t we (allow) it? I mean, we’re the Sin City, we’re the place that does all this stuff. If we do it right now, we can be the New Amsterdam.”

The panel discussion on the future of cannabis and the gaming industry was a joint effort organized between Riana Durrett of the policy institute and Brett Abarbanel, executive director of the university’s International Gaming Institute.

Segerblom was joined by Jennifer Roberts, the general counsel of Wynn Interactive and the online and mobile sports betting arm WynnBET, as well as attorney Robert Hoban, an expert in cannabis law.

In 2014, the Nevada Gaming Control Board issued a notice informing businesses with gaming licenses that they could not engage in the cannabis industry, then reiterated that message in 2018 after the Nevada Department of Taxation had banned legal cannabis delivery to gaming establishments the year prior, Durrett said.

The Nevada Legislature in 2019 passed a law requiring the 1,500-foot separation distance between cannabis businesses and properties with an unrestricted gaming license, which carried over into a 2021 bill clearing cannabis consumption lounges.

Smoke and Mirrors, located at the Thrive Cannabis Marketplace off Sammy Davis Jr. Drive behind Resorts World, became the first state-regulated cannabis consumption lounge to open earlier this year. There’s also Planet 13, a hotspot for visiting cannabis enthusiasts that opened a cannabis consumption lounge in April at its dispensary off West Desert Inn Road.

If you ask Segerblom, it’s clear that Nevada — and especially Las Vegas — is starting to embrace the cannabis industry and should do more to encourage it.

Roberts, who was speaking in her capacity as a professor in the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law and not as a Wynn employee, said casinos were bound by orders from the regulating body. Because the distribution and consumption of cannabis is in violation of federal law, the gaming and cannabis industries have not intersected to protect the interest of businesses.

There’s also some research that shows concurrent gambling and cannabis consumption may pose risks to a person’s health, said Jeff Marotta, president and senior consultant with Oregon-based Problem Gambling Solutions, who attended the panel discussion.

Marotta conducted a study of over 1,000 people in Oregon from March 2019 to March 2021 looking at behaviors of individuals who used marijuana while gambling. Of those surveyed, 47% said they had gambled between those two years, 44% reported using marijuana and 27% admitted to doing both.

He found “there is evidence to suggest that cannabis use may impair certain cognitive abilities associated with problem gambling.”

“Now, (for) adults who gamble, cannabis does appear to increase the likelihood of problem gambling,” Marotta said. “This doesn’t mean that it causes problem gambling, but there is a relationship and if problems do develop, what the research is finding is that the problem severity level is greater.”

Cannabis use showed to be more common in adults who gamble, with 57% of Oregonians who reported gambling also admitted to using cannabis compared with the 43% who only gambled, Marotta explained.

Those who gambled and consumed marijuana were twice as likely to gamble two or more times a week, and young men with lower incomes were most likely to be affected.

There are few prevention and intervention resources for people who live with problem gambling and cannabis use disorder, Marotta pointed out.

Environmental factors, stress and demographics may impact the risks and disparities of gambling and cannabis use, but Marotta found that this field of study was ultimately underresearched and needed more evidence so public health officials could create better guidelines to address problem gambling and cannabis use disorder.

Hoban shared concerns about whether legalizing cannabis in casinos would maintain the integrity — or, fairness — of a business and the regulatory program the business would follow. He said “there’s a lot of public policy fear” around the world about mixing cannabis and gaming, but separating them theoretically “maintains the integrity of two distinct gold-standard, if you will, regulatory programs.”

Even if the federal government rescheduled marijuana from a Schedule I drug, which states it has “high abuse potential with no accepted medical use,” to a Schedule III drug that would lessen significant criminal punishments among other aspects, Roberts believes it would pose new problems for casinos.

They would have to train security to verify whether guests have valid cannabis medical prescriptions, for example.

Roberts compared the federal stance on cannabis to the 1964 Wire Act, which prohibits sports wagering across state lines and has led to various interpretations from the Department of Justice that ruled it applied to online gambling. The Wire Act was created before the invention of the internet, so it has more “gray” areas, whereas the set legislation on cannabis makes it harder for regulators to “let it slide,” Roberts said.

“It’s been clear that the regulators have said this is clearly a violation of federal law, and we can’t allow that, and we can’t sanction it,” Roberts said at the panel. “I think that we’re, again, going to follow the directives of our regulators, and I just don’t see much movement until they actually change the law, which I would hope that they would. It makes sense, just like the Wire Act, but the problem is they never changed the Wire Act and that’s still around.”

Segerblom thinks the integration of cannabis within the gaming industry is “inevitable” and said it would be “a perfect integration to entertainment,” which casinos throughout the Strip provide.

Marla Royne Stafford, a professor in UNLV’s marketing and international business department, said she’s “hoping to fill that (research) gap” in Nevada with a soon-to-be-launched survey on how people use cannabis as well as perceptions of cannabis as they relate to gaming.

Segerblom emphasized that casinos could start with leasing spaces within their property to cannabis dispensaries or lounges, but the casino properties needed to take that risk.

He added that most of these businesses already have rooms set up for possible cannabis integration, but it’s up to local legislators to introduce a bill “and go for it.”

“It’s just a question whether the casinos make money on it. ... When they see that, you’re gonna see things happen very fast. And truthfully, if Democrats win (the election) in November, I would bet within two years, you’ll see it in casinos,” Segerblom said. “I talk to (casino) operators all the time, they have rooms set up to do this. They’re all ready to go. They’re just waiting for the first person to jump in.”

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