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Locals · Today in Vegas · November 4, 2026

In 2017, Las Vegas Planned Pot Lounges for Tourists. Today the State Has Two Open.

By Pace Lattin · November 4, 2026

The short versionNine years after Nevada lawmakers first pitched marijuana lounges for visitors with no home to smoke in, the state has licensed just two that are open in Las Vegas, as of April 2026. Legal sales peaked at $1.003 billion in fiscal 2021 and fell to $757.7 million in fiscal 2025, and casinos still keep cannabis off their property.
Neon sign of a cannabis leaf beside a lounge chair

In April 2017, Pace Vegas reported on a bill from state Sen. Tick Segerblom that would have let local governments license clubs where tourists could smoke. "Tourists don't have a home in Nevada," Segerblom told the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time. "We're trying to get $70 million in tax revenue from them. So let's give them some place to use it." Opponents warned it would put Nevada in the sights of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Lounges did not arrive in 2017. They came with Assembly Bill 341, which Gov. Steve Sisolak signed in 2021 and which took effect Oct. 1, 2021, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (June 7, 2021). The law let existing dispensaries add an on-site lounge and created a separate license for standalone lounges, with lower fees for social equity applicants.

The first state-licensed lounge, Smoke and Mirrors on South Sammy Davis Jr. Drive, opened Feb. 24, 2024, the Nevada Globe and the Review-Journal reported. It closed about a year later. Thrive Cannabis chief executive Mitch Britten blamed an "overly stringent regulatory framework," compliance costs and limited product options, the Review-Journal reported.

As of April 2026, the state-licensed lounges open in Las Vegas are Dazed! at Planet 13 and Society Elevated, which opened next to The Grove dispensary near Paradise Road just ahead of 4/20, the Nevada Independent reported (April 20, 2026). The Las Vegas Paiute Tribe's Sky High lounge operates on tribal land outside the Cannabis Compliance Board's reach. The Las Vegas Sun reported that 23 more locations hold conditional approval and are waiting on final inspections (April 19, 2026).

The other fight Pace Vegas covered in 2017 was the alcohol lobby. On June 1, 2017, we reported that the Independent Alcohol Distributors of Nevada had won a temporary restraining order arguing Question 2 gave liquor wholesalers the exclusive right to distribute marijuana for 18 months. Sales started on schedule anyway: by August 2017, recreational sales had been legal since July 1, with 53 retail stores and six liquor distributors licensed to deliver, the Nevada Independent reported (Aug. 11, 2017). The case reached the Nevada Supreme Court, which dismissed it as moot after the 18-month window expired on Nov. 15, 2018, Northern Nevada Business Weekly reported (Nov. 30, 2018).

In May 2017, Pace Vegas noted that Gov. Brian Sandoval's budget counted on $70 million in cannabis tax revenue. In fiscal 2021, taxable sales passed $1 billion for the first time, at $1,003,467,655, up more than $318 million from fiscal 2020, according to the Cannabis Compliance Board and the Department of Taxation (Oct. 13, 2021). In fiscal 2025, which ended June 30, 2025, sales came in at $757,714,911, down about 8.6 percent from $829,225,193 the year before. That year's sales still sent $95,898,378 to the State Education Fund and $37,300,235 in wholesale excise tax to the Cannabis Compliance Board (Feb. 5, 2026). Clark County accounted for $567,626,861 of the fiscal 2025 total.

A 2024 study commissioned by the Cannabis Compliance Board put the illegal market at $242 million to $370 million a year, up to 30 percent of all cannabis sold in the state, the Las Vegas Sun reported (April 19, 2026).

Casinos have stayed out. A Gaming Control Board policy issued in 2018 bars gaming licensees from doing business with anyone in the cannabis industry, the Review-Journal's Richard N. Velotta reported (Aug. 17, 2024). An earlier board notice that tells licensees to stay away from marijuana and bars guests from consuming it on licensed gaming property was still in effect in May 2025, the Nevada Independent reported (May 21, 2025). State law also requires cannabis establishments to sit at least 1,500 feet from a licensed gaming establishment, which keeps lounges off the Strip, the Sun reported. Riana Durrett, director of the Cannabis Policy Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and vice chair of the Cannabis Compliance Board, told the Sun "it does make sense to allow consumption lounges in nongaming establishments there."

In August 2017, Pace Vegas reported that the 9th Circuit had ruled against S. Rowan Wilson, a Nevada medical marijuana card holder. That ruling, Wilson v. Lynch, came down Aug. 31, 2016, and upheld the federal ban on selling guns to people a dealer has reason to believe are unlawful drug users, along with a federal firearms bureau letter saying card holders could be treated that way. On June 18, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 in United States v. Hemani that the government could not use the federal gun ban against a man who smoked marijuana several times a week, National Public Radio reported. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that "we do not address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm," and the court did not strike the law down.

The federal crackdown Pace Vegas warned about in 2017 never came. On April 23, 2026, the Justice Department moved marijuana sold under a state medical license, and drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, to Schedule 3, Nevada Public Radio reported (May 4, 2026). Recreational marijuana remains Schedule 1. A Drug Enforcement Administration hearing on rescheduling the rest ended July 15, 2026, with a decision expected in late 2026 or early 2027 (July 29, 2026). The Cannabis Compliance Board said it will "operate under current state law," which still lists all marijuana as Schedule 1.

Pace's takeIn 2017 the threats to Vegas weed were Jeff Sessions and the liquor distributors. The crackdown never came, the liquor guys lost to a calendar, and the Justice Department just downgraded medical marijuana, so the last holdout is the industry this town was built on. Nevada built a billion-dollar market and then kept it 1,500 feet away from the thing tourists actually fly here for. Two open lounges after nine years is not a policy, it's a waiting room.

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