Is The Weed Business About To Look Like the Coffee Business?

The next gold rush in legalizing cannabis is public consumption. Entrepreneur J.J. Walker is already one step ahead.

Sprawled in a tieless suit and sockless oxfords on a chair just off the lobby of the world’s largest marijuana dispensary, J.J. Walker is swiping at his iPhone, trying to locate a two-month-old video of him enjoying a bong hit here in Las Vegas.

Bong videos are hardly the stuff of riveting entertainment, particularly in Vegas, where pot is legal and plentiful and restraint is in short supply. At whatever moment Walker had been placing lips to bong glass, surely there were a thousand people within two miles of him inhaling and ingesting pot in just about every form imaginable. In addition to the city’s mostly pot-friendly 2 million residents, Vegas pulls in 42 million visitors a year, about a fifth of whom identify as cannabis users, and a substantial portion come from places where recreational pot isn’t yet legal. Weed, in other words, has become part of the Vegas draw, leaving the smell of it wafting reliably at almost all hours outside casinos, hotels, restaurants, and pretty much everywhere in between.

But the video, when Walker finally finds it, proves momentous, even for Vegas standards. For one thing, the bong he’s toking is two stories tall. Its bowl holds a quarter-pound of pot, requiring the assistance of a vacuum cleaner to pull the smoke through the 100 gallons of water in the bong’s reservoir. It also happens to be inside the world’s first and only commercial space designed specifically to be a public place in which to get high. “I just had to try that bong, man,” beams Walker, who commissioned its creation.

These new laws would create a legal future in which enjoying weed is as simple as walking into a bar or restaurant and enjoying a glass of chardonnay.

Yet firing up that bong — or any marijuana-ingesting device — in any commercial or public space is currently illegal in Vegas. The same reality has been true just about everywhere in the United States, despite the growing legality and acceptance of pot itself. But that picture is about to change, with several states and cities already cautiously opening the door to the so-called social consumption of marijuana. These new laws would permit any adult who purchases cannabis in a specially licensed business to also consume the products right there. In other words, a legal future in which enjoying weed is as simple as walking into a bar or restaurant and enjoying a glass of chardonnay.

Currently there are no credible projections of the size of the social-consumption market, but there’s enough relevant math to suggest it will likely be massive. Last year, Americans spent about $100 billion on alcohol in bars and restaurants. They already purchase about $10 billion a year on legal pot, a number that’s expected to triple within three years, given that the legal recreation market is still in only 11 states. (Illegal sales of pot currently account for another $50 billion or so in sales.) Those numbers don’t reflect what will happen to a market that is likely to explode once there are suddenly legal public places to consume it.

At the ready are entrepreneurs waiting to pounce. Will the winning retail formula look like a Starbucks, where friends can meet for a toke over lattes and easy listening, or a more boozy atmosphere that has the vibe of an Ace Hotel lounge? Walker, a serial cannabis entrepreneur, is convinced it’s neither. He believes the cerebral, perception-bending nature of the marijuana high calls for a space that’s more like a mind-tweaking, Alice in Wonderland playground for the baked. “Pot is incredibly sensitive to context,” he says. “I see opportunity in that.”

Walker’s first crack at this — the one that housed that larger-than-life bong — shut down in July. He and his partner decided to close it so they can double down on a more ambitious version that would place it at the center of a new Vegas retail hub catering to the stoned consumer. On the surface, the whole venture feels slightly too Vegas — all novelty, a paean to mischievous excess. But Walker’s plan for cannabis domination has whiffs of Shultzian ambition — retail environments queued up inside shipping containers, stationed next to a giant loading dock at the side of that pot super-emporium just next to the Vegas Strip, ready to scale as laws change, state by state. “National and local barriers to social consumption are starting to fall,” says Walker, an entrepreneur comfortable surfing ahead of the law. “And we’re going to be ready to pop these up quick wherever that happens.”