The Las Vegas Strip operates under a sort of "do no harm" set of laws. Police officers look aside from panhandlers, people illegally selling bottles of water, and tourists smoking marijuana out in the open.
Las Vegas has long allowed people to consume alcohol in public. In fact, it's one of the very few places in the United States that allows for walking around with open containers of alcohol and drinking from them in public spaces.
That's actually not the case for marijuana. You can legally possess cannabis in Las Vegas and you can buy it at numerous legal dispensaries. Technically, you can only smoke your legal marijuana in a private residence in Nevada.
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Hotel rooms aren't private residences, so even the ones that allow smoking technically do not allow guests to smoke marijuana. The state will soon welcome cannabis lounges, basically bars where you can smoke marijuana (and not drink alcohol) but that will not change that it's not legal to light up your joint or spark up your bong on the Las Vegas Strip.
Police, of course, generally overlook people whose only crime is smoking marijuana. If you're not harming others or making a nuisance of yourself, it's generally okay to smoke pot on the Strip.
Soon, however, a less obvious crime will become illegal on the Las Vegas Strip and police are expected to enforce the new rules.
Las Vegas Strip has a new loitering law
People who have not been to the Las Vegas Strip in recent years likely assume that it's a normal street with wide sidewalks for pedestrians. That's true in certain places, but on many parts of the Strip, people have to use bridges and escalators to bypass the actual street.
It's a sort of disjointed system where people follow a bit of a maze to get from one point to another on the south and central sections of the Strip filled with Caesars Entertainment (CZR) -) and MGM Resorts International (MGM) -) resort casinos. If one person stops to tie their shoe, take a picture, light up a joint, or simply gaze at the wonder of it all, that can cause a backup.
Now, Clark County's commissioners, the sort of legislative ruling body of the Strip, have adopted a new law designed to stop that from happening.
"County commissioners voted unanimously to approve an ordinance prohibiting individuals from stopping, standing, or engaging in an activity that causes another person to stop on Strip pedestrian bridges or near escalators, elevators, or stairways connected to the bridges," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Keep the Las Vegas Strip moving
While a law designed to keep people from stopping when they're walking on certain sections of the Strip seems extreme, it also makes some sense. The recent Formula 1 race, for example, was visible from the Strip.
If people stopped to watch the cars go by from a pedestrian bridge, that could stop traffic and prevent people from getting where they are going. The same logic applies to Las Vegas visitors gawking at the new Las Vegas Sphere, or any of the other sites on the Strip.
The new rule allows police to charge people with a misdemeanor if they break the rules. People are allowed to stop if they're waiting to get on an elevator, escalator, or stairway.
This legislation gives Las Vegas police a method to keep people moving. Previously, they had no recourse if people opted to camp out on the bridges to watch an event, or simply chose to not move.
A misdemeanor offense does not mean the city's police will start throwing people in jail for not walking, but people likely will get moving if faced with having to pay a fine if they don't.
