Business
Nevada Issues First Cannabis Consumption Lounge Licenses
Cannabis regulators in Nevada have issued the state’s first three conditional licenses for cannabis consumption lounges.
Visitors to Las Vegas will soon have places to legally smoke weed as Nevada regulators have issued the state’s first three conditional licenses for cannabis consumption lounges. The Nevada Cannabis Control Board (CCB) issued two licenses for businesses in the Las Vegas Valley, while the remaining permit was issued for a lounge to be located in Washoe County in the northwestern corner of Nevada.
Before they can invite guests in to light up, the three Nevada businesses must first receive local approval and undergo a final inspection by board agents with the CCB. But with their conditional licenses in hand after approval by the board at a meeting on June 20, the lounges can finish planning and constructing their sites and prepare for opening.
“Receiving this confirmation from the state allows us to move on to the final design and buildout of our consumption lounge,” said Larry Scheffler, co-CEO of Planet 13, a dispensary complex near the Las Vegas Strip that received one of two licenses issued in Clark County. “The consumption lounge will be a huge step to unlocking the full potential of the SuperStore as a cannabis destination. It will give customers the ability to try products prior to buying, watch live entertainment, and enjoy food and drink in a social setting that matches Planet 13’s incredible experiential design standard.”
Planet 13 vice president of sales and marketing David Farris said that the company is still in the planning and construction phase for its lounge. The company had originally considered a restaurant concept for its lounge, but at the CCB meeting, Planet 13 general counsel Leighton Koehler told the board that the company is considering a range of ideas from a “modest” tasting room to a more expansive nightclub experience.
“It’s a strict business, pencil out the math (decision)—we’re still looking at that and trying to decide how much it costs to implement,” Koehler said during the meeting.
Representatives of the vertically integrated cannabis firm said that they plan to submit their plans to Clark County in the coming weeks for a review by county officials that could take several months. Neither Planet 13 nor Thrive Cannabis Marketplace, the second business to receive a cannabis consumption lounge in Clark County, have set an expected opening date. Thrive hopes to open its lounge on Sammy Davis Jr. Boulevard in time for the MJ Biz Con cannabis industry trade show in late November.
Chris LaPorte, managing partner of Reset, a cannabis consultant firm representing Thrive, said the company’s approximately 3,000 square-foot lounge venue Smoke and Mirrors would be a place for “cannacurious” tourists to be introduced to different marijuana products without visiting a dispensary.
“It’s just a vibe,” LaPorte said. “It’s like any other Las Vegas nightlife hospitality, but instead of a liquor bar, it’s cannabis as social lubricant.”
Edward Alexander, the owner of SoL Cannabis in Washoe County, said that he envisioned his business as a gathering site for the community, but many patrons had questioned why they were not allowed to consume the products they had just purchased at the dispensary.
“Every weekend during the summer, we do music at our facility,” Alexander said during Tuesday’s CCB meeting, as quoted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “And every weekend, the old grouchy, tattooed hippie is out there saying, ‘I know you’re at Disneyland, (but) you can’t ride the rides.’”
At its June 20 meeting, the CCB also amended the air quality regulations for cannabis consumption lounges by reducing the required number of air exchanges per hour in smoking areas from 30 to 20 exchanges per hour and from 20 to six exchanges per hour in non-smoking areas. The change will “allow for greater flexibility in air ventilation requirements for cannabis consumption lounges further reducing barriers of entry for all potential licensees including social equity applicants,” according to the board. Officials made the change after applicants for the lounge licenses said that building an air conditioning system to meet the stricter requirements is too expensive.
“If you’re moving air every minute or two minutes, it’s a massive power consumption challenge,” said LaPorte.
Late last year, the CCB conducted a digital drawing to select 40 businesses for prospective cannabis consumption lounge licenses “via a random number selector to determine the issuance of independent cannabis consumption lounge licenses for non-social equity applicants and social equity applicants,” according to a statement from the agency. Prospective license holders must submit all required documents for a suitability investigation by CCB board agents in order to receive a conditional license.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/nevada-issues-first-cannabis-consumption-lounge-licenses/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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