Question of the Day - 13 April 2025

In May 2019 in a 4-1 vote, the Las Vegas City Council approved lounges for the consumption of cannabis. Roughly a month later, the Nevada Legislature approved a bill to create a Cannabis Compliance Board to oversee the pot industry. One of the Board's first acts was to prohibit cities and counties from legalizing and licensing pot lounges until it completed a study of the issue. At the time we wrote, "That could take years."

An understatement if there ever was one. 

The next step occurred in 2020 when the legislature passed a bill permitting lounges to open, but even then, the state was in no hurry to finalize the policies regulating them. It required nearly two dozen public meetings over three years to "study" the issue. 

Since then, dozens of applications for lounges have been submitted for licensing, from which 18 prospective and 20 conditional licenses were issued. As of today, close to six years after the city allowed them, only two are open -- and neither are in the city! 

One, as you mention in the question, doesn't fall under any city or county jurisdiction. It's the Sky High Lounge, part of Nuwu Cannabis, the big Paiute operation on the reservation just north of downtown. Without being subjected to the highly engineered delays engendered by Big Gaming, that lounge opened way back in 2019.

The other is Smoke and Mirrors, the first state-licensed cannabis lounge to open in Nevada, debuting in February of last year. It's part of the Thrive dispensary complex on Sammy Davis Jr. Drive across from the back of Resorts World. 

As for the latest on the lounges, recently, the chair of the Cannabis Control Board told state legislators meeting in Carson City that 21 lounges statewide are "ready to go with a clear path," meaning operational-plan approval and a final walk through. Call us cynical, but we've heard similar statements from the bhang bureaucrats so many times in this decade that we're predicting approval by the time the A's stadium is completed and the final walk through in 2035. 

As for the rest of the lounges that have received licenses, but aren't on the "clear path," there's a $200,000 liquidity requirement, which is onerous for all but the most heavily capitalized applicants. 

Meanwhile, due to the sluggish pace of openings, the Cannabis Control Board is eliminating two compliance-officer positions, which should slow things down -- quite nicely, thank you -- even more. 

In short, we're talking about an intention and process that couldn't be more proscriptive and extortionate if they were deliberately designed to be -- which of course they were.