Las Vegas Looks To Open Cannabis Lounges
Tick Segerblom, the Nevada legislator and famed cannabis legalization proponent will be joining the Clark County Commission after being voted in earlier this month. With this political move, Segerblom is hoping to be able to move forward the establishment of lounges for adult use cannabis consumption in unincorporated Clark County, which includes the the Las Vegas Strip. In order to do some preparation for his new goal, Segerblom traveled to San Francisco along with seven other Nevada legislators this past week on a one-day fact finding tour which began with a conference at San Francisco City Hall with the city’s Office of Cannabis. Concerning the trip and his new initiative, Segerblom stated that: “I want to be involved in drafting the ordinance…The goal is to get these pot lounges up and running, get marijuana out of our casinos and hotels, and get it off the streets.”
Agency director for San Francisco’s Office of Cannabis, Nicole Elliott, relayed during the meeting that the local government has allowed for San Francisco’s first quasi-legal consumption lounges to thrive unimpeded since 2008 following a “better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission” type of approach which has so far worked out for all involved. Elliott and colleague Israel Nieves-Rivera went on to say that they were confident that current establishments could be updated in order to be able to meet specific state requirements while still providing comfortable and more importantly legal locations for adults to enjoy cannabis products while in Las Vegas. Currently San Francisco regulations allow for up to one ounce of cannabis to be sold per adult individual, up to two times a day, in a consumption lounge. The limit on cannabis is already programmed into the sale systems used by the lounges’ adjacent dispensaries, and can’t be exceeded. The city’s regulations also mandate that only cannabis that was bought at the dispensary owned by the lounge proprietor can be consumed in their lounge.
However when it comes to the situation in Nevada, the authorities at the state level have for the most part taken the lead with regards to cannabis regulation policies which makes San Francisco’s more local approach appear somewhat unlikely. With current cannabis policies, lounges would be banned from opening as a part of cannabis dispensaries and by law that stipulation can’t be changed until 2020, but Segerblom promises that the current
regulations won’t deter him from moving forward and trying to implement cannabis lounges on a local level in Clark County. While developers in Las Vegas have recently built several mega-dispensaries and cannabis related entertainment complexes, like the massive Planet 13 (touted as the world’s largest cannabis entertainment complex), and Nuwu Cannabis Marketplace, Segerblom said he expects the cannabis lounges in Sin City will be bigger, even at the beginning. “We can start small,” he said. “But we don’t have to.”
Do you expect that cannabis lounges will indeed open in Las Vegas sometime during 2019? Do you believe that Clark County residents will support Segerblom’s initiatives that will allow for legal cannabis lounges?
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