Barring an unexpected shift in political winds over the next two weeks, cannabis smoking and consumption lounges are likely to become a feature of Santa Cruz County’s local retail pot industry. 

In a narrow 3-2 vote Tuesday, the county’s board of supervisors supported a new law allowing cannabis dispensaries to retrofit their existing location or an adjoining address into what is essentially a weed bar, where customers can buy, smoke or otherwise consume pot products on-site.

The rule change affects only dispensaries within the unincorporated parts of the county and does not include dispensaries in the cities of Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Capitola and Scotts Valley. If the law gets final approval on March 25 as expected, it would create the only venue outside of a person’s own property where smoking cannabis is legal in Santa Cruz County. 

Newly elected supervisors Monica Martinez (District 5) and Kim De Serpa (D2) opposed the idea, following in the footsteps of their respective predecessors, former supervisors Bruce McPherson and Zach Friend, who were similarly lukewarm to the issue. Since the law change’s initial proposal in November 2023, the political tea leaves suggested Supervisors Manu Koenig (D1), Felipe Hernandez (D4) and Justin Cummings (D3) would likely carry it over the finish line, and as much appears to be true after all three strongly supported the item on Tuesday in the first of two final votes. 

The prospect of weed lounges has the potential to stimulate a local legal cannabis industry that has been ailing under market saturation and steady growth in black market marijuana since Californians legalized recreational pot use in 2016.  A vote on a second board of supervisors proposal that would have allowed consumption at county cannabis farms, in the spirit of a vineyard, was deferred on Tuesday to March 25 after Cummings had to leave the meeting early.

The public debate around cannabis lounges in Santa Cruz County maintained the same texture as most policy conversations dealing with the plant and its permissions. Educators, police and concerned residents urged caution, and argued that lounges would only further normalize cannabis use and negatively influence youth, as well as increase the rate of people driving while high. Supporters, largely represented by those in the cannabis industry orbit, accused the other side of trying to relitigate the legalization issue and asked why the same scrutiny wasn’t applied to wineries, breweries and bars. 

At the start of the meeting, County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah submitted an opposition letter signed by all school superintendents in Santa Cruz County. Sabbah said the school administrators were concerned about cannabis’ “substantial risk to our youth.” He echoed the oft-raised connections between youth cannabis use and mental health issues, as well as concerns around the trend toward increasingly more potent products and how cannabis exposure can encourage use. 

According to the California Department of Education Healthy Kids Survey, cannabis, alcohol and drug use are generally down among 11th graders — the focus demographic — since 2015, indicating that legalization and even normalization have had a positive impact.

Koenig, who with Hernandez brought the original proposal in 2023, argued that opening cannabis lounges would help to bring an awareness, and education, around pot use that doesn’t exist. 

“This idea that there are going to be all these new high drivers on the road is laughable,” Koenig said. He said the lounges offer a “viable legal framework. We can actually help monitor people and say, ‘You know what, maybe you should hang out in this lounge for another hour, you look a little debilitated.’ No one is going to do that when someone is getting high on the beach.” 

Martinez, who has led a push from the dais to include the county Health Services Agency and public health officials in the cannabis policy dialogue, said she couldn’t support a law that would “invite people onto the roads that I traffic every day with my kids to get impaired and get back on those roads.” 

The new supervisor also said she was deeply concerned that, in developing the new law, the county did not collaborate with law enforcement or elected officials in the county’s four cities who, she said, would have to potentially deal with an uptick in impaired drivers on their roads. 

“We heard from our law enforcement leaders that the technology does not exist to test [cannabis] impairment like it does with alcohol,” Martinez said before casting her no vote. 

If the supervisors give final approval on March 25, the new law would take effect on April 26. 

Bryce Berryessa, owner of The Hook Outlet and Treehouse dispensaries, said he doesn’t yet have a business plan to incorporate a lounge in his business, but said he was eager to see what kind of spaces pop up throughout the county. 

“The thing I’m most excited about is that this gives us the chance to offer adults a gathering space that doesn’t center around alcohol,” Berryessa told Lookout. “Finally, we will have places where they can legally go and consume socially together.” 

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