The Clark County Commission (CCC), which encompasses Las Vegas, has voted to delay further discussion regarding marijuana consumption lounges for at least another 30 days, after a meeting with the county’s business licensing department left too many questions unanswered.
The main topics that still need further discussion include the overall number of licenses to be distributed, hours of operation and whether or not outdoor consumption will be permitted.
However, officials already passed a law last year which laid much of the regulatory groundwork. For starters, licenses will only be given to marijuana dispensaries, and not gaming establishments, bars or nightclubs. The first round of licensing will include 20 vendors, with half of those being “social equity applicants” who were previously impacted by drug laws before marijuana was legalized in the state back in 2017.
Other regulations are very similar to bars and nightclubs, in the sense that patrons must be 21+ and servers must enforce “cutoff” rules for over-served individuals.
The CCC’s latest postponement means that lounges likely won’t be able to open until 2023, much to the chagrin of some officials, such as Commissioner Tick Segerblom.
Segerblom told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was “hoping to have everything done by the end of the year and have that first place open,” but that likely won’t be the case “based on today’s conversation.”
Local municipalities will be permitted to form their own regulations, so long as they are not weaker than anything passed by state lawmakers. Lounges must also maintain distance from casinos, schools and other establishments, but officials are still deciding whether or not they must be attached to dispensaries themselves.
Commissioner Jim Gibson told the Review-Journal that the CCC still needs to “address some of these real important issues that will continue to affect quality of life right down into neighborhoods, into the schools, into the parks.”
