Alyza Brevard-Rodriguez has plans to turn the apartment above her dispensary into a consumption lounge, but the state has yet to open applications. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | New Jersey Monitor)
Two and a half years after Alyza Brevard-Rodriguez first drew up the plans for a cannabis consumption lounge above her Jersey City dispensary, the lounge is no closer to opening.
Brevard-Rodriguez has plans for above The Other Side Dispensary for a lounge that she wants to be a safe space for locals and visitors alike to consume cannabis and hold cannabis-focused events. Instead, the room is covered in wooden planks and building materials. It needs HVAC upgrades and a security monitoring system, but Brevard-Rodriguez and other hopeful consumption lounge operators don’t know all the requirements state cannabis regulators will require for them to open.
“I can’t even smartly invest in doing the build-out without having confidence in the state, because it would just be another period of me wasting money without really knowing what would come on the other side,” Brevard-Rodriguez said during an interview at her dispensary, which opened last month.
It’s been nearly 10 months since the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission approved rules for the operation of cannabis consumption areas in New Jersey, but the commission has yet to discuss the process or open applications for retailers who want to run lounges.
Critics say this has led to a lot of frustrated retailers and some to risk-taking business owners using loopholes to host events anyway.
In New Jersey, there are few places for people to smoke besides their own homes, and their options are even more limited if their landlords ban vaping or smoking or if someone lives in federally subsidized housing, said Jessica Gonzalez, a cannabis attorney.
It’s not just an economic issue, but also an issue of social justice, social equity, and patient access, she stressed.
Cannabis commission spokeswoman Toni-Anne Blake confirmed the agency hasn’t approved any consumption areas. The next step is for the commission to approve issuing applications for dispensaries that want to open consumption lounges.
Since there is no legislative deadline for the commission to issue these applications, “it is not considered delayed,” Blake said.
In spite of the lack of movement from the state agency, people are “getting creative ideas” on how to host consumption events like puff-and-paints, said Scott Rudder, president of New Jersey CannaBusiness Association and owner of Township Green Dispensary in Riverside.
People can rent someone’s empty home for a day and host events like this there without worrying about spending thousands on security laid out in the cannabis commission’s rules, he said. This has a negative impact on the industry and spotlights the lack of enforcement, he added.
“There’s really nothing that anybody can do about it, and that’s the problem, and that’s been the problem all along … we see how people just do the workaround,” he said.
Gonzalez noted there’s a concern about how many municipalities are actually going to allow consumption. Fewer than a dozen of New Jersey’s municipalities have passed ordinances allowing consumption lounges, a fraction of the one-third of the state’s municipalities that allow cannabis sales.
She wants to see the state’s cannabis officials offer municipalities more education on what consumption lounges actually are and get more of them on board. Some officials imagine a club setting where people are recklessly smoking, ordering food, and drinking, she said — but rules lay out bans on tobacco, alcohol, and food. Gonzalez described what she told municipal officials who are anxious about approving consumption lounges.
“What you are describing already exists, and that’s called a bar. It’s called a club. It’s called, in some places, a restaurant,” she said.
No one involved in New Jersey’s cannabis space is surprised at how long it’s taken for applications to be rolled out. Brevard-Rodriguez noted it took her 31 months to get approval to open her dispensary.
But some people like Gonzalez aren’t in a huge rush for the Cannabis Regulatory Commission to start the approval process for consumption lounges. She noted the agency is prioritizing licensing retailers, cultivators, and other operators as new businesses open up every week.
And it’s going to be another big investment from entrepreneurs who may have spent years opening their doors. A $5,000 licensing fee, municipal approvals, upgrades to the facility, and hiring more staff are “not going to be cheap endeavors by any stretch of the imagination,” she added.
Brevard-Rodriguez agrees it will be another major investment to finish upgrading the apartments above her dispensary and turn them into a consumption lounge. But it would also make the dispensary more profitable, she said.
“My capability to survive and sustain as a business would be reinforced because I would have a place that people could go, I would have another revenue modality, I would have another place that could be events for people,” she said. “We could really lean more into wellness, which is what our brand is surrounded by and what our mission is.”
Leo Bridgewater, a cannabis activist, said he doesn’t blame the agency, echoing that dozens of businesses have opened up and that lawmakers keep giving the five-member panel more responsibilities without increasing funding. They’re understaffed and still have a backlog of applications to approve, Bridgewater said.
“Today, everybody wants consumption lounges. Last month, it was all about alcohol and hemp. The month before that, it was the certificates of occupancies. And access to capital is still the No. 1 issue,” he said. “I’m not saying the CRC is beyond reproach, but there’s a long ass line of priorities.”
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