With record-breaking recreational marijuana sales rocking the Silver State, it’s clear that Nevada—more specifically, Las Vegas—is the site of the country’s next “Green Rush.” Ever since Nevadans voted to legalize cannabis last November, those inside and outside of the cannabis industry have set expectations at an all-time high.
As locals look to the marketplace to create new jobs and give back to the state in the form of tax revenue, a lot of people are betting big on the cannabis industry in Las Vegas.
Betting Big on Sin City’s tourism-oriented Infrastructure
While other states with legal marijuana will wait until 2018 to begin implementing production, sales, and distribution of recreational marijuana, Nevadan legislators have worked overtime since January to make sure that cannabis users over the age of 21 have legal, readily available options when they are in the state.
Recreational marijuana ignites sales and innovation in Las Vegas
Renowned for decades as an international tourism hub, it’s no surprise businesses in the Las Vegas cannabis marketplace are stepping up their game in a variety of ways. From establishing marijuana delivery services as an industry standard to online applications that guide cannabis users through terpenoid profiles and therapeutic uses for marijuana, there’s no shortage of innovation or potential in the Vegas cannabis industry.
Further, by leveraging the unique attractions of Sin City with cutting-edge technologies, regulatory expertise, and the marijuana advertising necessary to establish a hallmark brand, it’s clear that Vegas has both the drive and the infrastructure to serve cannabis consumers in Nevada in new and innovative ways.
Existing marijuana operations are investing in everything from staffing increases to huge warehouses that will serve as future consumption lounges. Grow operations and distribution channels are also expanding since last week’s decision to open up marijuana distribution rights. Simultaneously laboratories and testing facilities are constantly improving their testing capabilities to ensure that technology and the cannabis industry grow hand in hand.
Services ancillary to the tourism industry are also taking advantage of recreational marijuana sales. An estimated 65% of dispensary sales will come from tourists, and drivers for both Uber and Lyft are taking advantage of longer rides, cash tipping marijuana passengers, and cash kickbacks from dispensaries for bringing new customers to their doors.
With estimates that Nevada’s market will be in the hundreds of millions in less than a decade, it’s clear that the powerful momentum of Las Vegas’s cannabis industry will continue in only one direction: up.
Establishing the cannabis industry on regulations that work
Although it may seem like Nevada rushed headlong into recreational marijuana sales, the state has strict marijuana regulations. Learning from the growing pains of other state-regulated marijuana industries, regulations in Nevada are also the strictest in the country.
In Nevada, marijuana flower and other cannabis products have to pass a rigorous set of evaluations to ensure that only marijuana and cannabis products of the highest quality get sold to patients and, now, adult-use consumers. State law requires the following tests before marijuana flower, or its derivatives can be sold.
These tests include:
- Visual inspection criteria
- Moisture analysis
- Potency calculations including specific levels of identified cannabinoids and, terpenes
- Screening for microbes, pesticides, residual solvents in concentrates extracted with solvents, heavy metals, and mycotoxins.
In addition to these evaluations, some marijuana testing facilities go a step further, offering microbial DNA testing in addition to plant genotyping. Not only does this cutting-edge approach benefit the marijuana business by ensuring that products in the state are pure and high quality, but it also empowers consumers in the cannabis marketplace by allowing them to customize, control, and predict their marijuana experience.
“High”-brid technologies exploding in the marijuana industry
As an industry with cross-generational roots, the strong Millennial voice in the Vegas cannabis industry means that budding cannabrands are leveraging modern, innovative technologies to create a new ‘high-brid’ industry that employs a diverse array of entrepreneurs and community members.
With the national cannabis industry projected to create 280,000 jobs by 2020, the growth is already underway in Nevada. From manufacturing, distribution, and cultivation of marijuana marketing, digital technologies, and public relations.
Recreational marijuana enables explosive growth for ancillary services
Ancillary services for cannabis businesses and consumers are one area of the cannabis industry seeing incredible growth. From medical marijuana marketing and consulting firms to tax specialists and attorneys, ancillary cannabis services are those where a company’s employees don’t handle, sell, or produce marijuana but instead, offer services nationwide.
It is a uniquely poetic twist that a PR campaign initially made marijuana illegal back in the 1930s.
Today, with companies leveraging their expertise to break into the cannabis industry, it will be a PR campaign that reverses the stigma.
Cannabis Marketing in a Budding Industry
Across Las Vegas and the United States, new cannabrands are helping set the standard for our budding industry by creating innovative, reliable, and high-quality services, products, and consumer experiences.
As the next international home of cannabis, you want to work with a cannabis marketing firm that can make the most of the unique opportunities available in Las Vegas’ exploding marijuana industry—connect with MaJor Group to learn more about our team and our approach today.