The most notable: A first-time license for a cannabis lounge will cost up to $20,000, but a “social equity applicant,” can receive a discount of up to 75 percent.
“Years ago, I was a public defender in Las Vegas,” Yeager said.
Before widespread legality, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report data, Black people were arrested at three times the rate of white people for cannabis use, nationwide.
“A few of us traveled out to San Francisco to look at their consumption lounge model because we were thinking about trying to do something potentially in the 2019 session about it,” Yeager said.
“I want to be part of a network of African American dispensary owners in Nevada,” Goins wrote.
“That person will still need to have money in reserves to be able to be considered”—enough money to run a business for a year, she said.
It’s a pop-up portable cannabis vendor bill that would allow entrepreneurs without a brick-and-mortar location to sell small amounts of cannabis at events.
New Mexico is considering a law that would offer growers with 200 or fewer mature plants a low licensing fee of $1,000 to $2,500.
It’ll be a while before all of the details are worked out and the first consumption lounge opens its doors, but with lounges on the horizon and pop-up microbusinesses possibly to follow, Assemblyman Yeager offered his advice for potential social equity applicants: “You need to collect as much documentation as you have that might show that you were somehow personally affected.