Change to Key Las Vegas Strip Tourist Vice Rule Hits a Snag

Sin City was expected to make another sin legal (well, more legal), but a major setback has put those plans in limbo.

Las Vegas has built a reputation as being an adult playground,. Yes, a lot of business gets done at conventions in city, but that's a backdrop to the endless array of grownup fun that Sin City has become known for.

A city built around legal gambling -- something that was once nearly unique in the U.S. -- Las Vegas has evolved into much more than that. The massive resort casinos that line the 4.2-mile Las Vegas Strip and the mix of upscale and downscale properties downtown in the Fremont Street area have become a decadent pleasure city that almost feels otherworldly.

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Led by MGM Resorts International (MGM) - Get Free Report and Caesars Entertainment (CZR) - Get Free Report, which dominate the Strip, Las Vegas now offers a wide array of grownup fun. You can eat anything from world-class fare to guilty pleasures like fast food, celebrity chef takes on every kind of dining, and cake sold in vending machines that operate 24/7.

Las Vegas also offers world-class entertainment, racier adult entertainment, and pretty much any type of fun you can think of. If you want an all-you-can-drink ride in a Ferris wheel's bar car, or to be thrown off the roof of a hotel (while wearing a bungee cord), both are options.

In many ways, Las Vegas has leaned into fun over all else. You can still smoke in nearly every Las Vegas casino, and cannabis has been legalized for recreational use in all of Nevada.

That last point, however, has caused a problem. You can buy marijuana in all its forms (edibles, smokeable, and even some drinkable varieties) just off the Las Vegas Strip.

The problem is that you can't legally smoke marijuana anyplace in Las Vegas aside from a private home. That's an issue the city was about to rectify, but those changes have been delayed after the cannabis industry pushed back on how the law was written.      

Las Vegas Tourists Have No Place to Smoke Pot

Las Vegas earned the Sin City moniker because laws are pretty loose in the city. Prostitution, for example, isn't actually legal in Las Vegas (it is in more remote parts of Nevada) but it's practiced pretty openly on the Strip.

That's sort of how cannabis consumption has worked. Las Vegas has legal cannabis possession, but technically you are not allowed to smoke (or vape) marijuana in your hotel room (even a smoking room) or outside.

This has not stopped people from openly consuming cannabis, smoking it fairly blatantly on the Las Vegas Strip or more subtly in casino parking lots. If you have a nose, you know that people are openly smoking marijuana, and Las Vegas police are making no effort to stop that if the only crime being committed is marijuana consumption.

Las Vegas was moving closer to solving this problem -- and creating a much better cannabis consumption experience -- by creating a legal framework for cannabis lounges. Those rules were expected to be passed on Feb. 15, but the cannabis industry has objected to one major provision of the new rules.     

Las Vegas Cannabis Industry Pushes Back

The proposed law would allow for cannabis consumption lounges that offer a bar-like (without the alcohol) experience for people who want to smoke their legally purchased marijuana. 

And while most of the new law has been ironed out, the cannabis industry has pushed back on the piece of the legislation that requires lounges to be at least 1,000 feet from each other, Casino.org reported.

“It is absolutely unreasonable to make somebody walk more than three football fields to the next bar, restaurant, shops or casinos,” Chamber of Cannabis President Tina Ulman said at the Feb. 15 Las Vegas City Council meeting. “Why would we ever want them to do that for consumption venues?”

The issue is that visitors to cannabis lounges cannot bring their own product to consume (much as you can't bring a six-pack to a bar). Each lounge can sell only a set amount of cannabis to each visitor. That, in theory, prevents overconsumption, and spacing the lounges out stops people (or at least makes it harder) from lounge hopping.

The Las Vegas City Council will meet again on March 1.