Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Regulatory delays keep lid on marijuana consumption lounges in Las Vegas

Planet 13 Cannabis Consumption Lounge

Wade Vandervort

Planet 13 Las Vegas dispensary Monday, July 25, 2022.

Planet 13 Cannabis Consumption Lounge

An interior view of Trece restaurants bar area and the future site of a cannabis consumption lounge is shown inside Planet 13 Las Vegas dispensary Monday, July 25, 2022. Launch slideshow »

Trece Eatery+Spirits serves a little bit of everything: Mexican dishes, pizza and specialty cocktails.

Located inside the Planet 13 marijuana dispensary west of the Strip on Desert Inn Road, Trece Eatery+Spirits will eventually become a cannabis consumption lounge. When that happens is anyone’s guess — something workers there constantly tell customers, most of whom are tourists searching for somewhere to legally smoke or eat a cannabis-infused edible.

“There’s lot we’re still combing through on the regulation side as we understand what’s going to be possible,” said David Farris, the group’s executive vice president. “Customers come into the restaurant all the time and ask what they can get infused. We just have to tell them not yet.”

After months of delay, Nevada’s Cannabis Compliance Board in June approved a set of statewide regulations for cannabis lounges. But local jurisdictions can add their own restrictions.

The city of Las Vegas has also been working to update its code to accommodate marijuana lounges and is expected to take up the issue in October. And after an hour-long discussion Tuesday, Clark County commissioners decided to table the matter for another month.

Commissioners mulled over sticking points from the location of the lounges to operating hours to preventing the skunk-like smell of smoldering marijuana from wafting through neighborhoods.

“There’s not any notion of consensus here,” Chairman Jim Gibson said. “We’re going to have to get a better feel for how the operations will be conducted.”

Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick, who has been skeptical of the lounges, said the smell of marijuana was already an issue on the Las Vegas Strip, where people are firing up illegally.

“We are getting tons of complaints about the smell,” Kirkpatrick said.

But Commissioner Tick Segerblom, an ardent supporter of recreational marijuana, said his colleagues were making something relatively simple needlessly difficult. He pointed out that the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe had been operating a lounge on tribal land in downtown Las Vegas for about three years with no problems.

The NuWu Cannabis Marketplace’s “Vegas Tasting Room” offers cannabis products in the form of edibles, oils, vapes, topical ointments, pre-rolled joints and THC-infused cocktails. It has a last call for service at 10:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, and closes at 5 p.m. Sundays. The room is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

“You can see and smell and realize that we’re not talking about something that’s all that complicated,” Segerblom said, referencing the lounge at NuWu Cannabis Marketplace.

Nevada legalized recreational marijuana starting in 2017, with the caveat that it could only be used at private residences. The Legislature updated the law last year to allow for consumption lounges.

Any dispensary operator can apply for a lounge license, with the state awarding about 40 licenses for lounges attached to existing marijuana retail stores. There will also be 20 independent licenses for free-standing lounges.

Since the Legislature gave its approval, state and local officials have been wrangling with the rules governing them.

Kirkpatrick zeroed in on language in the state board’s guidelines that dictates a lounge must be “permanently attached or adjacent to the cannabis sales facility.”

“This conversation, from where we started, has evolved,” she said, noting that adjacent could be interpreted as “somewhere within the vicinity.”

Gibson agreed the language seemed vague, saying adjacent might mean a lounge and a dispensary in a strip mall separated by other businesses.

“Attached seems easier, but adjacent seems a little bit more complex. If we don’t understand this, we’re going to be receiving applications from people who would have wasted their time,” Gibson said.

Commissioners also raised questions about intoxicatedpatrons and whether to allow live entertainment, such as a comedy show or painting class, at lounges.

State regulations dictate that “each cannabis consumption lounge shall adopt practices that discourage impaired driving,” which could include a “partnership with ride share to offer discounted rides both to and from the premises.”

They also require lounge operators to educate budtenders about how to deal with possibly intoxicated patrons.

The ongoing debate has put businesses like Planet 13 in a state of limbo. Farris said Planet 13 had hoped to open a lounge by the end of the year, though that now seems unlikely.

“We all want this to happen fast, but, as I’ve said before, we’d rather do it right the first time so we don’t have to go back in a year and make changes,” he said. “We’re excited because this is going to be a big positive for the tourist, who really doesn’t have a place to consume now,” Farris said.