Your cannabis-infused guide to Las Vegas for the Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament

With the Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament about to kick off, fans from all over the West Coast are descending on Las Vegas. But what is there to do before or after the hoops, other than gamble, see a world class show or concert and eat at a celebrity chef’s newest restaurant?

One of the newer daytrips for fans exploring Vegas has nothing to do with the Hoover Dam, the fake architecture on The Strip or shooting an automatic rifle. Instead, it’s a different kind of daytrip: visiting one of the area’s many marijuana dispensaries to purchase a little legal greenery, day or night.

“This is a 24-hour town and we are a 24-hour industry,” said Scot Rutledge, government affairs specialist for Argentum Partners.

Here’s a quick guide to Las Vegas’ budding cannabis industry, from what you can (and maybe more importantly, can’t) do, where you can go to enjoy your cannabis and what’s coming soon to Sin City.

As Rutledge alluded to, there’s never a bad time for vices in Vegas.

Unlike most dispensaries in Arizona (excluding The Mint location in Tempe), in Nevada, pot shops operating around the clock is a common thing.

More than a few establishments around The Strip or Downtown are open until 2 or 3 a.m., with others – like Planet 13 and Reef Dispensary – keeping their doors open 24/7. That way tourists can march in after a long redeye or drive and start their trips off right.

“We really do cater to… our tourist population,” he said. “That benefits our locals too. We have a lot of people that are those third-shift workers. They might get off at 3 or 4 a.m.”

According to Nevada’s Cannabis Compliance Board, an individual can possess and purchase up to 1 ounce of cannabis or an eighth of an ounce of cannabis concentrate (which includes products like distillates, extracted products, etc.).

Of course, that all changes if an individual is a medical marijuana card holder. Nevada is one of the few medical marijuana states that respects other state’s licenses.

A medical card holder may possess and purchase up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis, and up to 10,000 mg of THC products. Plus medical card holders are exempt from the state sales tax tacked onto recreational sales.

For a quick stay, that’s probably more than enough for four or five individuals, let alone one person.

And if you’re staying at your own private residence, a family member’s place or at an AirBnb (with host’s permission, of course), you can consume inside or out to your heart’s content. You can even get your order delivered to your door.

“If you’re at a residence, someone would deliver to them and whoever made the purchase would have to be verified,” Rutledge said.

Verification is step that can be done through a dispensary’s online ordering portal and consists of entering drivers license data (and medical marijuana card data, if applicable). It can also be down over the phone.

That’s right, unlike in Arizona, both recreational and medical patients can order weed for delivery.

However, there are some big limitations to where those deliveries can be made.

And the biggest limitation for delivery is, at least right now, it’s illegal to have cannabis delivered to your resort or hotel.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t “companies” that advertise such services.

“Whoever those companies are, they are operating outside of the law and given that licenses are privileged and maybe revoked, those would not be legal licensees because they wouldn’t risk losing their business over that infraction,”

It’s an issue that the industry has been dealing with for a while, according to Layke Martin, executive director of the Nevada Dispensary Association. 

“You pick up your phone and you can Google ‘dispensaries near me’ and about half the ones that will pop up are unlicensed delivery companies who are offering delivery to The Strip,” she said.

Often times the black market products are nearly indistinguishable from what can be found in licensed dispensaries, and sometimes are more affordable, since they aren’t subject to tax.

The issue with products that don’t come from a licensed dispensary are that they aren’t lab tested, Martin said. That matters when it comes to safety. And potency.

“The biggest one is that safety, the testing, it’s been tested for yeast and microbials and so many other things,” she said. “You know, the potency level, you know what you’re getting. And I think that’s a huge factor, especially if you’ve never tried it before.”

Another hotel/resort deals with consuming cannabis on hotel property grounds or in your room. Many will have signs posted somewhere letting tourists know it’s prohibited, but they can be easy to miss and Rutledge said it can be confusing.

“It’s interesting, as a tourist, as a visitor, you are not always aware of what the home rules are,” he said. “It’s sort of common sense, right? That you would make a connection: I’m allowed to go in and buy cannabis from 21 or older, at any of these retail shops, so therefore everybody knows I’m a tourist, so I’m going to consume it while I’m here.”

Most properties have some sort of fee that can be tacked on to your bill if evidence of smoking of any kind is found in your room. 

It’s also within the resorts right to ask you to leave, Rutledge said.

Also, unlike the cannabis consumption-friendly, open-air vendor fairs and events that surrounded the Super Bowl and Phoenix Open in Arizona last month, Nevada doesn’t currently allow for such gatherings.

That should be changing soon, according to Rutledge.

“You could potentially envision a legal event at a lounge or an event built around our legal infrastructure that would allow for the sale and consumption of cannabis where you could watch those basketball games,” he said.

So where can you consume? Maybe out while walking The Strip or Downtown on Fremont Street?

“There’s nowhere you can legally consume cannabis except at your home or in a cannabis lounge,” Rutledge said. “And of course there’s only one open so far. Those are the official rules about cannabis consumption in Nevada,” he said.

The one consumption lounge he’s referring to, The Vegas Tasting Room, is attached to the 24-hour NuWu Cannabis Marketplace and is actually closed. More are in the works though and more on that later.

Even if consumption lounges were open, you wouldn’t be able to bring your own products in, according to Martin. But you could check it and have it held at the door.

“There’s a ‘coat check’ option,” she said. “So if you just bought product from the dispensary next door, you could check it, and go into the lounge and purchase product there that you can consume there.”

Still, like drinking outdoors from a glass container is prohibited on The Strip and Downtown, but people do it every day and night. There’s also a good amount of wiggle room when it comes to cannabis, too.

If you are caught lighting up, police will most likely ask you to butt out. Just don’t committing other infractions as well.

“My understanding is that it’s not the policy of Metro (Metropolitan Las Vegas Police Department) to ticket individuals,” he said. “If you are consuming cannabis and there are other infractions that are occurring, that’s a different conversation.”

In the end, Rutledge acknowledged that most people are going to Las Vegas to have fun, (most) rules be damned. Just be smart.

“I don’t think that necessarily people are trying to break rules or not follow rules,” he said. “It’s that they don’t know the rules.”

Luckily, by next year’s Pac-12 Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments (which could also end up being the last Pac-12 Tournaments ever), there should be more choices for spaces to consume your cannabis as a tourist, according to Rutledge.

“By next year’s Pac-12 Tournament, we’ll likely have half a dozen or so lounges open,” he said. “We also potentially will have some events that are licensed for sales and cannabis consumption. That is a regulation that is currently being discussed with our regulatory body.”

And what about hotels? Well, one hotel just off The Strip, The Lexi, is nearly ready to open and will boast a fourth floor made up entirely of cannabis consumption-friendly rooms.

You won’t be able to purchase state-licensed weed there, but according to Rutledge, guests will be able to partake in their own rooms and possibly in the hotel’s designated cannabis lounge.

The hotel is owned and operated by the same company, Elevations Hotels & Resorts (get it?), in charge of The Clarendon Hotel & Spa in downtown Phoenix, which also sports cannabis-friendly rooms.

Rest assured that local leaders and the entertainment industry in Las Vegas are aware of the lack of (legal) consumption spaces and are working on it, Rutledge said.

“People want to smoke cannabis or drink their cannabis or what have you. And they want food and beverage and they expect, because it’s Las Vegas, that type of high-end hospitality experience. We’re so driven towards that experience because that’s how we exist: you come to Vegas, you have a good time,” he said.