Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Cannabis-friendly state legislation involving the Resort Corridor may offer a crucial opportunity for Las Vegas’ ability to attract visitors amid projected shortfalls, a gaming executive says.
The region is facing significant challenges, with nearly 300,000 fewer visitors this March compared with last year. Meanwhile, the Nevada Legislature is grappling with the state budget after financial experts cut their projections for state revenue receipts over the upcoming biennium by $191 million and lawmakers anticipate declining room tax revenue in the coming fiscal year.
Cannabis integration could help address these issues, said Seth Schorr, CEO of Downtown Grand operator Fifth Street Gaming, who points out that competition in gaming has intensified dramatically. The landscape has transformed over the past decade, with other states and online gambling now presenting serious competition.
Schorr suggests it’s time to reconsider the gaming industry’s approach to cannabis. Despite Nevada’s legalization of recreational marijuana, regulators have maintained separation between the cannabis and gaming industries due to federal prohibitions surrounding marijuana.
“There’s a million reasons that we need every tool in the toolbox as a city to drive visitation. So maybe 10 years ago, we could be conservative. Today, it’s got to be on the table,” Schorr emphasized. “We can’t afford to miss any opportunities.”
Representatives from the gaming and cannabis industries, along with state regulators, gathered Monday at UNLV for a panel on how the industries’ relationship has evolved in the past decade with the legalization of recreational marijuana sales and use in Nevada.
Despite tourists passing by dispensaries on their way to the Las Vegas Strip, one major concern for the marijuana industry is that tourists can’t legally get cannabis delivered to the Resort Corridor.
While discussing legislation to change that, representatives from the two industries were able to agree on language that would extend delivery to people who reside in the area, said David Goldwater, owner of Inyo Cannabis Dispensary.
Goldwater, a former state assemblymember who said he was “intimately involved” with the process, said the state’s Cannabis Compliance Board believed the proposed change would widen the scope of delivery too much.
“The (cannabis) industry does now know they have a good faith partner in the gaming industry to work with in the future and working with the regulator to hopefully find something that works,” Goldwater said.
Terry Johnson, who was with the Nevada Gaming Control Board and authored its 2014 position on marijuana, also said now was a good time to see “what additional tools might be at the disposal of” tourism and gaming officials as well as the cannabis industry.
They can “see what might work, how the public might respond,” Johnson said. “I don’t think people are going to stop coming to Nevada because a conversation like that takes place.”
And there is room for movement without the federal government. The required 1,500 feet of separation between Nevada dispensaries and casinos comes from state law. Goldwater criticized that rule as well, saying it’s “just numbers we picked out of the air.”
Assemblymember Max Carter II, a Las Vegas, Democrat, introduced the sprawling Assembly Bill 203, which would, among other actions, require the Cannabis Compliance Board to work with the Nevada Gaming Control Board to prepare a report with recommendations as to whether “gaming licensees should be authorized to invest in cannabis establishments or otherwise work with the cannabis industry.”
The report would additionally require that the boards examine what would need to change in federal policy to make that happen and, if it occurs, how the boards would work together.
In late April, the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee referred the bill to the Ways and Means Committee. It hasn’t yet passed either chamber, though it was given a deadline exemption.
“Given the (Trump) administration and their, let’s say,” Goldwater said, pausing. “Let’s just say they’re able to do things quickly … Nevada needs to be ready if cannabis is descheduled or rescheduled or however it manifests.”
Schorr believes there is a market to tap. Consumption lounges, legally separated from Las Vegas top attractions, were “set up to fail,” he said. But allowing them in a resort property “could change the economics exponentially.”
With daily marijuana use being more common than drinking alcohol each day, according to research from Carnegie Mellon University, Cannabis Policy Institute Director Riana Durrett asked whether Las Vegas might be missing the boat.
In “2006, not every casino had a massive nightclub with DJs. It takes long to figure it out and then we’re kind of in an industry of followers,” Schorr said. “We’ll never know how big the opportunity is until we allow operators to embrace it.”
Cannabis-friendly state legislation involving the Resort Corridor may offer a crucial opportunity for Las Vegas’ ability to attract visitors amid projected shortfalls, a gaming executive says … Read More
