You can't have your cake and eat it too. And in Las Vegas, you can't have your full legal cannabis and smoke it too.
That's because the Nevada law that legalized marijuana/cannabis possession did not actually account for consuming it. You can't smoke pot in a Las Vegas Strip hotel room or anyplace in the city except in a private home.
That has created a bit of a legal conundrum, which Casino.org's Corey Levitan explained in a recent article.
"The overwhelming majority of tourists who buy marijuana legally in these stores eventually find themselves forced to use it illegally," the author wrote.
"Various laws prevent smoking or vaping it on the street, in hotel rooms, or in cars. And even tourists who obey these laws go on to break others, since driving their unused marijuana across state lines or taking it on an airplane are both federal offenses."
You can buy cannabis but not smoke it (at least legally). That's probably good for sales of edibles, but it has created some problems, specifically on the Las Vegas Strip, that some new laws are looking to solve.
Image source: Planet 13
Let's Light Up Las Vegas
The "you can own it but can't smoke it" problem has not led Las Vegas tourists not to buy cannabis. They still purchase it and simply smoke it either somewhat clandestinely or, as seems pretty popular, right out in public on the Las Vegas Strip.
Casinos will stop you from smoking inside, and even hotel rooms that allow smoking do not allow marijuana smoking (you will get fined). But the police have better things to do than stopping people from lighting up on the Strip or in a parking garage.
That's a problem that some new laws enabling cannabis-consumption lounges should fix. And after a lot of legal wrangling and negotiations, the creation of those lounges appears ready to move forward.
"Tourists who legally purchase marijuana in Las Vegas will finally have a legal place to consume it," Levitan wrote. "In June, Nevada’s Cannabis Compliance Board voted to approve regulations for cannabis lounges to operate in the state. The first are expected to come online before 2023."
The approvals had been public since early in the summer, but the timeline for building the lounges had remained an open question.
Cannabis-Consumption Lounges Are Coming
The cannabis board's decision calls for 40 lounges in Las Vegas -- 20 inside existing dispensaries and 20 that will operate independently. No cannabis-consumption lounges will be in any casino because of federal laws.
That creates something casino operators don't want: Their customers have to leave their properties for extended periods. Caesars Entertainment (CZR), MGM Resorts (MGM), and other major resort/casino operators have worked hard to avoid this situation.
The casino firms have built properties with everything from gambling and dining to pools, spas, and any kind of entertainment imaginable, and made them accessible from their customers' hotel rooms. That's a play to keep all the money customers spend on property, which has not been possible with cannabis sales and now with cannabis consumption.
Many of Las Vegas's cannabis dispensaries plan to enter the consumption part of the business. Planet 13 (PLNHF) , which has about 10% of the total cannabis market in Nevada, plans to be one of the big players in consumption.
"We plan on adding a cannabis-consumption lounge to our cannabis entertainment complex so users can enjoy consuming their favorite strain in a bar-like environment with fully trained servers," the company said in a news release.
