Can’t-sumption

Over the years, Lyra Barron has established a compound-type set-up on Early Street for the businesses she founded. In one building, Fruit of the Earth Natural Health sells CBD and other non-psychoactive herbs. To the north, a medical and recreational-use cannabis shop occupies another. And around back, the Paradiso event space that’s been years in the making remains underutilized.

Barron built a new wood deck outside the space earlier this year and had hoped it would be a place where customers could enjoy a smoke. She also aimed to serve cannabis-infused drinks from a bar inside. Her plan had been to make Paradiso a music venue “that raises consciousness” and where cannabis users could light up without shame.

When Barron heard just last month about a city prohibition on cannabis lounges, however, she had to put the brakes on the whole idea.

“It was definitely a surprise for the City Different to take and squash something like that, when it’s such an opportunity to draw more people here,” she says. “It is very strange and hard to understand.”

State law allows for cannabis retailers to establish areas where customers can smoke or otherwise partake, but the City of Santa Fe prohibits what are known as “consumption areas.” The policy—which quietly came about during rapid zoning decisions in 2021—has forced a handful of cannabis business owners like Barron to pivot.

Santa Fe Land Use and Planning Director Jason Kluck confirms that city zoning rules do not allow any sort of cannabis use, except for at private residences.

“It’s not allowed anywhere except in your living room, basically,” Kluck tells SFR.

The state’s Cannabis Regulation Act authorizes consumption areas, but also provides for cities to decide where the activities may be permitted.

Santa Fe’s first cannabis zoning rules established that retailers and producers could set up shop in certain areas. Even though the adopted ordinance defines consumption areas as “an area where cannabis products may be served and consumed by smoking, vaping, or ingesting provided that alcohol cannot be sold or consumed in a cannabis consumption area,” a table for permitted uses leaves consumption areas blank—indicating they are prohibited citywide.

“We should be able to have the freedom to make our own health decisions, including this one,” Barron says.

Across town, and across the street from Meow Wolf, Upper Crust Pizza founder Dean Alexis recently opened Canna Fe and had planned to also offer a cannabis-friendly event space. Alexis figured out pretty quickly that his original plan of having a smoking lounge was no-go, but he says that means he also avoided an insurance hassle.

“For me, looking at it just strictly as a business person, you know, your insurance is gonna go up. And I don’t know necessarily that you’re going to be selling more products,” Alexis says.

Still, if the city allowed a lounge, he would jump on it: “I want this place to be an event center as much as it is a dispensary.”

The idea of consumption lounges predates adult-use legalization. The Legislature in 2019 amended the state’s medical cannabis law to include areas where certified patients could consume.

Minerva Canna started serving cannabis infused drinks to patients years ago at its Cerrillos Road location before New Mexico legalized recreational-use cannabis. Erik Briones, the founder and CEO of Minerva, says the state’s Regulation and Licensing Department forced him to change course because he was never fully licensed for on-site consumption under the new law.

The City of Santa Fe confirmed in a 2020 letter that Minerva’s Cerrillos Road spot was approved for on-site patient consumption under the medical program. Nearly a year later, the state’s Regulation and Licensing Department sent a similar letter, giving Briones permission for a consumption lounge. But soon after, Briones says the department told him to stop.

Bernice Geiger, a spokeswoman for the Regulation and Licensing says Minerva’s approval was only temporary. The department’s problem with the application had to do with fees, not the city rules.

“On August 13, 2021, Minerva was issued a conditionally approved license for a consumption lounge as an amendment to their existing dispensary located at 1710 Cerrillos Rd in Santa Fe. This was when the fee structure was not finalized in rule by the Cannabis Control Division. The approval was considered conditional until all necessary fees were paid. Minerva would still have to apply for a consumption lounge license with the [Cannabis Control Division], which has not been done,” Geiger says in an email to SFR.

Briones disputes that claim, arguing that he already paid the necessary fees. He plans to keep pushing to get approval to reopen Minerva’s cannabis coffee bar and notes the city’s zoning prohibition leaves consumers vulnerable to run-ins with police.

“They’re creating people walking around smoking a joint, they’re creating people walking around eating an edible or drinking an edible drink,” Briones says. “So they’re creating a situation that they’re trying to prevent.”

Santa Fe County took the opposite approach in consumption area zoning—and one that tracks with most other local jurisdictions across the state. (Albuquerque, for example, has several lounges in operation.)

Since the summer of 2021, the county has allowed cannabis retailers to set up lounges in the same zoning areas that allow bars and nightclubs as long as they are separate, stand-alone buildings. County officials tell SFR that even though such lounges have the green light, no one has applied for a license to light the green yet.